I am contemplating a Christmas without a tree. It will be the first time ever in my life if I go through with it. I still plan to find a place for the tinsel and lights though, I just don't know where.
I confess to literary snobbery. I'd always scoffed at The Hunger Games since they seemed like a ripoff of Battle Royale and the books were aimed at the YA market. Those critters will buy anything, amirite?* Well, I saw a couple pieces on story structure, and one of them said that the first book in the series was a perfect example of three-act structure, so I bought a used copy and read it and... ...it's actually quite good. It's not Iain Banks or Melville or anything, but it was quite an enjoyable read, and a lot of the parts of the movies that I liked were, surprisingly enough, from the book. Doesn't mean I'm going to rush out and buy Twilight or anything, but I was pleasantly surprised. Now to re-read it with a critical eye towards pacing and plotting and all of that, since that's why I bought it in the first place. Spoiler: * *The Amirites were the other lost tribe of Israel. They used to follow the Cohens around and push the priests for judgments favorable to them, using the argument that "everybody else agrees with me" without actually citing anyone who did.
Little late for an ETA, but I noticed a couple things I forgot to mention. First, the similarities to Battle Royale. Yeah, now that I'm getting stuck into writing a full-length novel, I just keep running into people who have had my ideas before I knew about them. Dead Like Me, Better Call Saul, this single panel cartoon I just ran into, a whole bunch of things that I'm probably deliberately blocking right now. "Hey, what if a bunch of high school kids had to murder each other in some sort of an arena?" is not such a stunningly original idea that two or more people couldn't think it up independently, nor did Battle Royale receive a whole lot of attention outside the gaijin otaku community. Second, I was warned that THG takes place entirely in the present tense. True. You know how when you watch a black and white movie, or someone places a coin on the back of your hand, or the entire world is going straight to hell socially, politically, and environmentally, you only notice the fact for the first few minutes and then get used to it? Same thing for me in The Hunger Games. Yeah, I think that's what I had to say about it, at least in this thread.
(damn I'm late on posts) Well let's just say the girls had their fun with him, and fell asleep on each other, and woke up glued together. No penetration, but he had help peel them apart, it was the least he could do. So, possibly add acrylic ballistic shield.
I just realized that almost all the regrets I have about my life involve women I could have had sex with, but didn't.
Better than regrets about women you could have slept with, but did. Those ones can be a bit spotty and lead to some rash decisions.
I'm the total opposite! Most my regrets has to do with people I've had sex with. I've heard people state something like "Sex is like pizza, even when it's bad it's good" - or something like that. That's bullshit. Bad pizza is uneatable and bad sex is hell on earth. Sorry, that turned a bit more ranty than expected...
This, so so much! But it wasn't the quality that was the issue, it was the people... Hindsight's a bitch.
I think I've broken my record of the highest number of people I ever got offended in a week. I don't usually recover from these straight away.
Skulks in. Looks around to see if anyone is here or if anyone notices me. Hopes no one is looking. Says barely audibly: Yeah, I have a confession. And it's not a veiled observation about life or a brag in disguise. It's that since NaNoWriMo I've done no writing on Book 2, and I'm stalled on pushing out the wraparound cover for Book 1. Why? Because I'm stuck, or bored with writing, or discouraged about the low sales on the e-version of Book 1? No. Well, a little of the last, but the low sales are my fault. I've done no marketing either. Nope. The fact is, I've developed a new addiction. Following on from the DNA tests my mom and I did around Christmastime, I joined one of the big genealogy research websites. And guess what? It interfaces with the genealogy software I already had on my computer. So I don't even have to open the website to have the research hints bouncing their little orange balls in my face (sorry, that sounds bad) and whispering that I should click, click, click on them. So all I've been doing since the second half of January is fill in my family tree. It doesn't help that this particular file got started a few years ago when Geni.com and Facebook teamed up to push this thing they call the World Family Tree. Come one, come all, anybody can play. I was happily constructing my own tree when some unknown distant cousin or cousins loaded it with hundreds and thousands of relatives with only surnames and first initials. Or maybe first initials, middle names, and surnames. No dates or places. And when I say hundreds and thousands, I'm not exaggerating. I made a record file and bailed, but the damage was done. I was willing to let it go for several years. I'd work on it now and then, but nothing serious. But now I've got this subscription to the website. And I've developed this physical compulsion to find out who all these mystery people are and go at it for hours on end. I can't seem to do without the endorphin rush of identifying yet one more 4th cousin one-time-removed. At the same time, what I'm finding out is depressing me out of my mind. As I bring the family lines into the late 20th century and early 21st, it seems like my kinfolk are dying younger and younger. Younger even than I am now. Up to now I've always felt I had so much more to do in life, and enough time to do it. Now? I just feel old and out of control. All this genealogy is not getting books written, or the house renovated, or accomplishing anything else of permanent value. I need to get myself and my life back. And my characters and their lives. But even now I want to run downstairs, open the laptop (I'm writing this on my PC) and see if I can eliminate yet one more family of first initials . . . What a mess. Sorry about the length of this whinge. I'm hoping by putting this in here I'll get my head back into the space of writing. Maybe I'll post the back blurb for my cover on the Marketing or Self-Publishing forum, and see what people think. Thanks for your indulgence.
Confession: When was the last time I cried over pages of my own works in progress? Not at all. Until now. Tonight. You see, I'm writing about a superhero who had died prior to the story, because I wanted him to be more than a plot device. I wanted him to be real. About as real as a character is going to get in a fictional story- especially a superhero story. So I gave him a name. An actual name. Then I decided that he had been a nurse's aid prior to being "chosen" by the inventor of devices used to turn people into heroes. Then he had, on a whim, had a hair stylist dye his hair rose- and he was portrayed so happily here... I started bawling. Why? I knew that, by the time the villain forces those memories on the main character, that that guy had already been dead. Could it have been the deceased hero's line about the sunset- a blatantly foreshadowing? I guess that I can consider this a point of no return- that I'm a good writer. (Better not hold my breath there...)
