Billboard Screaming about rights When people are being drug from their homes in the middle of the night Billboard Advertising a youth elixir and a model too thin While a child is sold into slavery again Billboard Screams about rights We’re all humans capiche Let’s get it right
A new acquaintance of mine brought to my attention a quote about writing out feelings. I wanted to take this opportunity to explore a new anxiety I have from a job I've been doing a couple of years. I find myself hating the thought of getting up and going there in the morning. The people are pleasant, the work semi-engaging, and yet I've never dealt with this level of internal resistance when it comes to work. Once I get there, I'm completely fine, I settle in, and I get my work done. Yet, after a vacation or the weekend its the same feeling, like I'd rather just not be there. I can't quite put my finger on why there's such a level of anxiety, but it could very well stem from one or more people being absent, the heavy workload, and/or any new requests that might come in that day. We have a small office, and we have over 100 requests, and legislated timelines. The job is like fighting a chimera, you chop one of its heads off and 3 others pop up. I've been looking for a new job, which kind of dismays me because I do like the team I work with, and I do like the work. I just wish I knew why I felt such anxiety. It's only been with this job and only this role. The role is not hard, its actually beneath my educational level and I find it rather easy, but the volumes keep it challenging. Any thoughts welcome.
Some of the writing/detail is a bit of a repeat. I am continuing to write here, but am also migrating my writing to a more public blog. I wasn’t quite sure what to write here, but I wanted to diarize some of the details behind my novel ‘Aphelion Delta’. The book itself started with an idea about a mission to Proxima b in the Alpha Centauri quadrant. I had every intention of writing hard sci-fi, but I found myself floundering to keep the story afloat. The flame of inspiration which had burned so brightly began to flicker and fade. It was at that point I decided I was going to ditch reality in favor of a more loosely written piece. What came after was gloriously ridiculous, full of catchy one-liners, and a tonne of silly cliches. While no longer part of the novel, my favorite one-liner from that draft is this: ‘We’re so gonna get our friendly Canadian asses kicked.’ I will leave that with you. At one time I thought it pure gold, yet as my eye has become more practiced, I see it for what it is. Garbage. While that version of my story was certainly fun it still wasn’t exactly what I was after. Despite my literary infractions, I had a very clear vision of what sort of a book I wanted to write and for what purpose. I wanted my reader to share an experience with me, one that would leave them feeling as I had after having read sections of Ben Bova’s, ‘Mars‘. With this purpose in mind, I got serious. I began writing daily, I joined some local writers groups and kept scouring the internet for instruction I could use. I kept writing and editing until it was ‘good’. There were times I’d revisit what I had written and I would vacillate between ‘My god, I don’t even remember writing that.’ ‘Have I developed a split personality and he/she/it has decided to write the book?’ to ‘I wrote this and I don’t actually hate it!’ My all-time personal favorite thought though was a note I wrote in the margin after a particularly heady sex scene. ‘Get rid of all the hard sex, sci-fi book not erotica or letters to Penthouse…‘ Ironically enough, I still think those steamy excerpts are the best part of my writing. I’ve just left them out. I know where they should be, but the tension, frustration, and love I felt in writing these scenes spill out nicely into the dialogue without actually having to be present. I also struggled with the thought of what it might look like for a human woman to have relations with a fully functional android. Many times sci-fi shows men engaging in relations with sex-bots, I wanted to explore the implications and thoughts of a woman who got it on with a walking and talking version of a battery operated boyfriend. That research left me asking ‘Are we as a society ready to discuss these morally grey areas?’ I shelved that idea and didn’t bother looking for further input, because I wanted what I wrote to be solely mine. I’ll probably revisit it later when I’m closer to publication. The afterglow of good writing mentioned a couple of paragraphs above lasted until I threw my baby to the beta wolves (authors/readers/forum folk/family). I’d sincerely like to thank Korbyn Blake https://www.korbynblake.com/ and Matthew Howard https://www.amazon.com/Matthew-Howard/ for their efforts to help me become a better writer and for their constructive beta reads. Through their invaluable and extremely thorough feedback, I became keenly aware of my inability to string sentences together to create both good dialogue and tension. I also received feedback on sentences that were incredibly long. Looks like I haven’t quite killed that little writing faux pas yet have I? Through this forum devoted to the mechanics of writing, I discovered I knew nothing about writing. I mean how difficult could this all be, right? I’ve read a considerable amount of science fiction, fantasy, romance, and historical fiction. I still continue to do so. It should be second nature for this sort of a story to flow out of me. Right? Yeah, big surprise there. It doesn’t happen that way. There are outlines, plot building, world building and this is just the tip of the proverbial Titanic-sized iceberg that almost sank my little foray into the literary world. Not only did I discover that I needed to do a lot of learning, but I also discovered that other writers were actually putting a lot more effort into this whole writing business than I was. I began to let the evil entity of self-doubt permeate my thoughts. ‘If these authors and their publications aren’t getting the recognition they deserve what makes me think mine will?‘ It was at that point, I started looking at why I was writing. Sure, I wanted to share an experience. What else though would drive me on when the clouds of doubt began looming? I decided to delve a bit further into that reasoning as a back burner project, simply allowing it to stew in the back of my mind and onward I went. As part of my world building exercises, I started looking for ways to create worlds virtually. I initially hoped I could then use them to prompt ideas for writing. It was this search which led to my finding a VR platform called Second Life. Initially, I had little appreciation for the site as a whole and had actually deleted my viewer and washed my hands of it. It was by some stroke of fortune, I hadn’t uninstalled the program properly and after a couple of days off, I logged back in. In a moment of world-building desperation, I decided to switch my search parameters to include artwork, hoping that I may come across someone who had created science-related artwork that might drum up some semblance of thought. Instead, I stumbled upon a digital art gallery named Fractal Insanity which took my breath away. While completely unrelated to world-building, it provided the inspiration for the colour changing artwork I wrote of in Matthias’ ready room. More importantly, it changed my opinion that Second Life was a waste of my time and proved that it was more than it originally seemed. I then began searching alien planets and began hopping through a number of different ‘worlds’ or ‘sims’ as they’re called within SL. I found more of the inspiration I was looking for, and the luminescent foliage of SL became embedded in my written world. More to come…
I've been absent for a few months, and haven't done a whole lot of writing up until lately. It seems to go in spurts. I need to keep spurting.
I dreamed the other night I was a tiny purple octopus/squid. No, I'm not on drugs. Well, recreational ones anyhow. I am on some metroprolol and nitro just in case the ticker gets out of rhythm. I was on a brief hiatus from the site, for a bit, seeing how my body decided to experiment with how well I would function without a regular heart rate and a tumor in my chest. Who knew a lime sized tumor would wreak such havoc on my 44-year-old body. I surely didn't. But I didn't come here to talk about that. I came to talk about the cute little octopus/squid I was in my dream last night. Here in my mind's eye, I was following myself around a number of maze-like obstacles, with my tiny tentacles and my wide eyes. I was pretty cute, if I may say so myself. Now, I'm not entirely certain what this dream is trying to inform my conscience of, but it's a heck of a lot better than some of the others I've had. Until about the middle of the dream. During this maze of confusion, and my trying to make it who knows where comes a sound of large crunching. Like the walls are being eaten away by some ferocious predator, who is also coming to eat the maze I'm in. Five bucks says that if I were to have recorded myself last night, I was probably grinding my teeth and that's where the crunching came from, but that's just a guess. The crunching came to a crescendo, and just when I thought my cute little octopi/squid was a goner, the alarm began clanging. Saved by the bell. I sure as Sam Hill hope I don't resume the dream where it left off last night. I don't want to be someone's calamari.
So many issues, So many tears, So many times I wish, I so wish you could hear. Hear the way the blood rushes Through my heart, vein and lungs The adrenalin pops when you raise your voice I just want you to stop. STOP. We argue, we fight I hold my tongue yet another night I crave peace, but you bring war Some day you might wish you hadn’t started I am blazing with anger and you think me weak Yet my self control makes me strong How much can one person endure? How many words before they simply disappear I see the crestfallen faces of the children And I try to make excuses, but there are none. You’re just an asshole.
August 1, 2019 Character exploration [08:14] CerebralEcstasy: Am not a mouthy piece of work. [08:22] Shaz (writergal): Stop bothering me and allow me to work. [08:24] CerebralEcstasy: stares at shaz [08:25] Shaz (writergal): Must you?! Really? [08:26] CerebralEcstasy: I am bored. [08:26] Shaz (writergal): Are you even capable of being bored? You're programmed to be useful. Go be useful. [08:27] CerebralEcstasy: You're the one who called me here. I was powering up in my quarters. [08:28] Shaz (writergal): Haven't you got a system to fix? Some swords to buy? You know I detest that white suit. Makes you look like a bloody stormtrooper. [08:28] CerebralEcstasy: *offended look* You know damn well I can hit anything I shoot at. [08:29] Shaz (writergal): Well I haven't seen you in the shooting range of late. Perhaps your systems need a recalibration. [08:30] CerebralEcstasy: My systems are fully functional. I do NOT require any messing about in my circuitry thank you very much. [08:31] Shaz (writergal): I see. Have you been working on that sarcasm logarithm? You still suck at it. [08:32] CerebralEcstasy: I'd rather live by dry wit. Sarcasm is the ale of the feeble minded. [08:32] Shaz (writergal): Seems you've had a cup or two then this morning eh Tinhead? [08:33] CerebralEcstasy: You're quite free with that word tinhead. You realize robots have rights too right? [08:33] Shaz (writergal): Yes, the right to be dismantled and used for spare parts. [08:33] CerebralEcstasy: Pfft. [08:34] Shaz (writergal): Now piss off and let me work. [08:34] CerebralEcstasy: I fail to see how urinating on or off is relevant. [08:35] Shaz (writergal): For God's sake Maya. Shut the hell up! [08:37] CerebralEcstasy: Ponders being quiet. [08:38] CerebralEcstasy: Is now a good time to ask about the existential meaning of life? [08:38] Shaz (writergal): I am going to SPACE YOU Maya. Out the airlock on Deck 8. [08:39] CerebralEcstasy: I probably wouldn't be bored then.... [08:39] Shaz (writergal): Reaches for plasma rifle... [08:39] CerebralEcstasy: Now, now lets not be hasty. I think I saw something in the docking bay that needed my attention. [08:39] Shaz (writergal): very well, see to it then. [08:39] CerebralEcstasy: On my way Captain.
It's done, and I'm aliiiiiiiive! Sweet Christmas though, do I hurt. I've decided if another tumor happens to grow anywhere in my chest, it can bloody well stay there. Seriously. I look like a junkie with all the bruising from the various and many needles and IV ports I was punctured with. I feel like someone took a sledgehammer to my rib cage, and every time the medication wears off, I feel like they've taken another swing at it. The medication is either there, or it isn't. When its working, I feel like something a big game hunter has shot. I basically walk a bit, and then need to lie down so I don't crumple into a ball of quivering flesh. As I write this though, it's like a scene out of the classic song 'Comfortably Numb' as performed by Pink Floyd. Hello. Is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me. Is there anyone home? I was in hospital with the ever so stylish chest tube for a few days, wandering around with hose and reservoir to collect the fluid as it poured out of my chest cavity. I began walking again a few hours after the surgery, working on preventing clotting and fluid pooling in the lungs which often ends up in pneumonia. My husband accompanied me once, and he looks at me and says something about the zombie apocalypse, because of all those shuffling throughout the unit. I'm sure he got this mentally blank stare, since my brain only half caught what he was saying. At this point I was completely engaged in keeping myself from becoming a puddle of disorganized goo on the floor. I vaguely remember commenting it'd really suck for me, considering I had this chest tube crammed in between the ribs, snug in the intercostal muscle area and I wasn't capable of moving very fast. It was at this point, he kindly offered to barricade us in a room if necessary. This is why I married him. It wasn't his good looks, or his unique only to him voice or anything else. It was his ability to see himself and I through the zombie apocalypse. These are the people you want in your life. Those who will fill up a shotgun, take to the streets and go out in a blaze of zombie busting glory if need be. Then, because I have this most often medically linear mind, I tried to grasp the answer to "What would I do? What if modern medicine just suddenly ceased to exist at that point and I was called upon to remove the tube myself? I let that sink in, with a slight sense of horror. I couldn't even begin to process it with my disengaged cranial space and frankly it stressed me out a bit. I think they should write that into a book somewhere, they meaning some author, who is not me because I'm still not out of that place yet. I get mentally stressed trying to put together a thought as to how to remove a chest tube during an emergency situation. Here's some starter material.. https://www.wikihow.com/Pull-a-Chest-Tube There is no pain, you are receding. A distant ships smoke on the horizon. You are only coming through in waves. Your lips move but I cant hear what you're sayin.
Another entry from the blue book of depression. Yes I do. Do I want to blog about it? No. Next question please.
Another dredged up memory from the blue book of depression. This one actually made me laugh though. I remember my first kiss well. I was in Grade 8, there was this boy that I had just come to notice. Somehow the two of us ended up in one of the closets in the portable of the science class and that's where it happened. I remember feeling guilty later, not because I had kissed him or that he had kissed me, but that instead of being in science class learning about the 2nd law of thermodynamics, I was working on the beginnings of a practical genetics experiment.
Try as I may, try as I might. I just cannot find the energy to write. This seems to be the main theme at the moment. Though today seems to be a better day than the last two. Likely because I slept 14 hours. Instead of blathering on here like an idiot, I'm just going to get straight into the WIP. Later taters.
Sometimes when I write, I'll find pictures that prompt me to start thinking up storylines. When I saw the picture above, one of the main characters in my story came into existence. I haven't yet developed him to the depth of character that he is, but I am enjoying exploring what he might sound like in the character chat thread. At this point, I'm not exactly certain if he's friend or foe, I just know that he has an insatiable thirst for hunting, and acts as a leader among his pack hunting buddies. He also seems to have a destiny that is intertwined with the other characters. Sort of like a medieval quest that he and the others must complete, but they're set in a futuristic world. The plot has just begun to introduce all of these key players to each other and there seem to be eight core participants. I created a mock-up of a book cover and chose a publisher I had read many great books from. Tor is also a publisher that I will end up sending this particular story to. I feel by creating this cover, I am making it a reality. In some way, it reminds me of a quote from 'The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People' by Steven Covey and another reminder from 'Fierce On The Page' by Sage Cohen. Mr. Covey's instruction tells us to 'begin with the end in mind'. So while my novel isn't quite yet finished, and requires a lot of rework I am living as if, writing as if it already were complete. Ms. Cohen's instruction indicates that when we live as if, and write as if, this plunks us directly into the future state we intend to inhabit, and once we've visited there, we have a far greater chance of ending up there. A self-fulfilling prophecy if you will. The prediction which causes itself to come true due to the positive feedback between belief and behaviour. With this in mind, I'm going to put to page what short term goal I have set for myself. To solidify the behavioural piece in this prophecy. By the end of summer 2019, I will have a complete manuscript which is ready to be sent out to publishers. The timeline is ambitious, but if I stop fiddling with things that aren't writing I'm certain the timeline is achievable. How will I work at accomplishing this? I have to revisit the planning board. I'll be doing this via paper, and possibly through cartooning of some sort. I have also been taking each character and subjecting them to a battery of situations and seeing how they react. Additionally, each of the characters who have come together has his or her own backstory. As I wrote, I experienced a splitting of the works and needed to parse off certain sections in order to not muddy the current plot. Yet, each of these tangents away are still relevant. It was at this point I realized that my current novel would be part of a set. I suspect a trilogy, but I could surprise even myself. Each book will focus on one of the main characters, and their interactions with the others. Their titles: Aphelion Delta, Nebulae Sky and Dahm War. While Aphelion Delta is currently the most complete of the three, the other two are also beginning to take shape. Dahm War is a much darker book already than the other two. I am not certain why yet, but its tone is distinctly different. I commit to creating the best story I can without reverting to cliched tropes, and not deviating away from what science fiction really is. Plausible science, surrounded by fiction. I also commit to fact-checking for scientific accuracy. There is nothing worse than reading something dubbed as sci-fi and they've got basic science doing something improbable.
My sister gifted me with a 300 writing prompts book, and it asked me to entitle the chapters of my life. I thought this would be an interesting topic to bring to the blog, because its likely I'll have this electronic record longer than the little blue book of depression, otherwise known as the writing prompt book. One of the questions within the book instructed me to break up my life (up to this point) into 3 chapters, and give each one a title. I've never been one to follow directions carefully, but what I ended up with was both hilarious and pathetic in all the same breath. 1973-1983 Hatched, Dad's on scheme in the Military, almost born in Germany 1984-1997 My Bipolar Mother: The Other Woman 1990-1997 Holy $#@! This kids really mine x 3. Hatched 3 of my own in 1990, 1993, 1995. Mom's Dead, Now What? Raising my 13 year old brother 1998 Ascent into Hell 1999-Present God saves me, but I'm an idiot. 2004-Present I'm in love with an Atheist. 2009-2012 My Son committed an Armed Robbery, and is spending 2 years in Jail. I'm so ashamed. 2016-Present WAIT?! WHAT? I'm a Mom again. (Grandma steps in to save the day.....and various other blathering) 2017-Present The Second Ascent Into Hell I got started on the Not Happy thread about some of the things I've faced these past few years. In writing it all down I had one of those epiphany moments, where I realized that I'm still sane when I probably have right to be approaching insanity. I've gone through a lot in the approximately 16060 days I've been alive. Yet, this past year and the one prior to it just seemed to be the years to keep on giving. This year seen my husband and I nearly divorce, on account of my trying to remove my grandchildren from the foster care system. It seen us be grilled by every agency I think anyone trying to adopt a child would be, but in this scenario, I'm trying to remove my own flesh and blood from the clutches of what I can only describe as a nightmare. For all the good intentions the social workers have, for all the good intentions the care facilitators have, the fact remains the foster system is a broken system which needs to be overhauled in the worst way. I spent my weekends travelling over 300km both ways to visit my grandchildren whom I hadn't seen in nearly 4 years. My eldest granddaughter was just a mere 3 when I had seen her last. She barely remembered me, but thankfully she did. My youngest, I had seen her once, a tiny little bundle wrapped like a burrito. These two scared little girls, living with complete strangers, instead of me, their paternal grandmother. My months were filled with visits from the various agencies, and a grilling and intense process which investigated even my sex life with my husband. They'd always say it was a very intrusive process, my version of intrusive and theirs were two different things. They couldn't have been more intrusive if they'd done a full glove anal inspection on the entire family. It was that brutal. I won't even get into the battle fueled by racism. My granddaughters are first nations. I'm white. I think that should at least explain some things. Then just as these things were wrapping up, literally a few weeks before the private guardianship order was signed, my husband had lost his long term, full time employment all because of the whim of some jerk he worked with. While he received a decent enough settlement, he shouldn't have lost his job in the first place, and wouldn't have if his manager wouldn't have had his head firmly shoved up his posterior. This caused our already stressed and strained marriage a further blow. As if that weren't enough, the year that just kept on giving seen my sister frantically calling me to inform me that our Dad had been rushed to emergency with what we later discovered was a perforated bowel. I paced the hallways, and couldn't sit still until the nurse who had attended the surgery came to tell me that they'd found the hole, and Dad was out of surgery, but still recovering. Meanwhile my cousin sends me a message to let me know an aunt had died. My own fires so many, I couldn't even begin to be there for them. I had hoped to attend the funeral, I had hoped to be there for them mentally, but in truth, I was treading water so badly that I couldn't even begin to throw them a life saving device, because I was too busy clinging to my own. Then the real kicker, one morning Tuesday morning, I just woke up and I couldn't do what I used to do. I kept having chest pain, I kept feeling such a relentless fatigue and since my mother had died at the age of 42, I checked myself into the emergency department. Much the same as they had done for her, and much the same symptoms, nothing showed on her EKG, other than an elevated heart rate and blood pressure, nothing too high, but just abnormal for me. The crushing feeling in the chest, and the fatigue was like nothing I'd ever experienced before. I checked myself out of the ER and then went to my doctor the very next day, since the hospitals where I live aren't very good at listening to the symptoms people have. My doctor immediately sent me for blood work, immediately sent for more testing, but all details were inconclusive, yet the fatigue and the crushing feeling in between my rib cage and left scapula kept persisting. More MRI, more stress tests yielded a tumor in the chest, which seemed to be encroaching on the lung. Yet, this didn't explain still the crushing or the fatigue. A preliminary diagnosis of congestive heart failure was given. Something I had been suspecting for some time, given family hx, and the fact that my legs had swollen so much it looked like I no longer had knees. Yet, I didn't dare seek treatment for fear my granddaughters would be left hanging in the foster system. I supposed had I died, there would have been no choice, but it would be literally over my dead body that these girls who have already been through so much, would go there. I've been hanging out at home now since the middle of October, trying in vain it seems to recover. Yet, my body allows me so very little in terms of actual days where I feel 'normal'. The fatigue is still there, and the chest pain is still there, albeit reduced thankfully now. My days have become my nights, and I find my world has been turned upside down in so many ways. Yet, as much as I hate this, I am hopeful. I am hopeful that the nuclear medicine tests will possibly reveal what the true issue is with my heart. It could be as simple as the tumor sitting on a nerve, but I think that's too much to hope for, considering all the things that have gone on and how I feel. I will know after my surgery on January 23. I'm expecting it to hurt like a son of a gun, considering they're drilling through my chest wall, and all the muscles within. They're expecting a recovery time of at least a month, but knowing how slowly I've healed from other surgeries, I suspect it will be closer to two or three. Now my battle starts with long term disability. I only wish I felt better. I love working, even though my work is incredibly stressful, we have a dynamic and fun team that I miss dearly. These things though pale in comparison to my husbands uncle, who has received a death sentence. I just pray that his death doesn't coincide with my surgery, because I truly don't think my husband could handle that kind of worry all at once. I also wish we could have been there for him, but thankfully we had made the time to go in the summer, before any of us knew this storm was upon us.
"White hair floating like foam on a turbulent green ocean." I started my story off with this one sentence, and while it may not seem special to anyone but me, it conjures up this image that seems to lead off in a thousand different directions. Yet, it doesn't fit in any of the directions my WIP is going. I've written no less than 5 different iterations of a starting paragraph, and I can't work it in. Maybe I'll just leave it here and I'll find another home for it. Someday.
My husband is a solitary man, he keeps to himself and only a select few have ever been 'let in' to his life. He often feels forced to interact with family because they share a bond of blood, mainly kept in touch by the occasional holiday interaction. He stresses deeply over these times, and sometimes I confess I leave them to him alone because I think he should have alone time with his family. When I am with him, he often relies on me to provide the bulk of the conversation. His main issue is that his relatives will say to him 'why haven't you called?', 'why haven't you visited?' yet they make no attempt to do either themselves. Two anomalies in this equation though are his Dad, and his Uncle David and it was with great sorrow we learned his uncle had passed at 4:30 p.m. yesterday. He leaves behind one son, a wonderful woman he had started a new life with, his brothers and my husband. I feel such a sense of sorrow for my husband, because the small group he's allowed into his inner circle has diminished by one. He came to me yesterday and says, 'you must think me a horrible person, the past three times I've cried, twice it's been over a cat'. Yet, I understand my husband in a way I think most wives who love and care about their husbands do. That he grieves in his own way, and it is a quiet fortitude that is shown in just carrying on. It's shown in the way his voice catches when speaking after he found out, its behind the snarky comments at the children, the short tempered moments between us. Yesterday as I was doing my regular bible reading, I came across a portion of the Sermon on the Mount and I paused for a moment at Matthew 5:4 and I thought of him with a great sadness. 'Happy are those who mourn, since they will be comforted.' I told him that I wished the comfort that my thoughts on the resurrection provided would comfort him too but acknowledged they would not mean the same thing to him. I gave him a hug, and he retreated to the basement alone to work on his n-scale model train set. Then, as softly as a thought formulates, a small nudge told me that I needed to go sit in an easy chair in the basement and just 'be' with him, and so its what I did.