Flotsam

A grumpy, crabby kind of blog post

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Yesterday…

Well, yesterday I did not run away and join the circus, but it was probably one of those days where I would have if I had viable circus-type skills and access to a travelling circus to run away with. I did not turn into the Incredible Hulk and smash things in a frenzy of anger. I did not resign from my dayjob to take up a position that would be more useful to the world at large, such as hunting werewolves or wrangling wild unicorns or, you know, going into politics.

But, oh,  I was sorely tempted.

Especially by the werewolf thing, which, really, goes to show how much I disliked certain aspects of yesterday, because I’m actually quite fond of werewolves.

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We actually had a full cohort at write-club last night, which is the first time all four write-clubbers have been in the same place since other people started joining the inimitable Angela Slatter and I on a regular basis.

As predicted, I did the sensible thing and started working on the next installment of Flotsam. We all gathered and ate and ate chocolate, and 2,311 words later, I was still starting on the next installment of Flotsam, largely because it was one of those days with there irritations of the dayjob had carried through to writing.

Finally write-club was over and everyone went home, and I was again afflicted with the not-sleeping which has become so common of late, so I dragged out a pad and a pencil and took another crack at the story, and it’s possible I came out with something that may actually be a beginning.

Then I lay in bed, still not-sleeping, and pondered how much can be considered enough to satisfy the guilt of not-writing-enough, and I still have no satisfactory answers.

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There is, most likely, another potential buyer walking through my flat this morning. I can’t be entirely sure, because the real estate agent no longer sends the appropriate documents. I just get cheerful text messages asking if there’s any chance of having a quick pop-around in the morning, which I’m not entirely sure means we’re coming and there’s nothing you can do about it or say no if you want, and we’ll respect it.

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So, yes, it’s a grumpy and crabby kind of bloggery from me today, because it’s been a grumpy and crabby kind of week.

Ordinarily, when this happens, I tell people to pat me on the head and go write until whatever isn’t working turns around and actually starts working, and for the most part they do and the grumpy goes away and I start sleeping normally again. It may take days or weeks or, in one instance, months, but eventually it works.

And, really, I guess that’s what I should probably go do.

Grr. Arg. Zzzz.

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Last night, because I am classy, I ate a dinner of hot-dog franks and baked beans and melted lite cheese slices with BBQ sauce. Then I wrote and wrote and wrote and accidentally fell asleep at the keyboard, which is one of those things that hasn’t happened to me in about fifteen years, and is even less productive than it sounds ’cause you wake up and discover all the odd things you’ve edited into the story by rolling onto the laptop in your sleep.

In a less sane and reasonable world, I would have woken up this morning and gone back to writing, fixing the editing mistakes. Unfortunately I live in a world where the landlord is insistent about things like rent, so I got up and went to work at the dayjob instead.

I may have done all of this, up until the going to work part, in my underwear. It’s also entirely possible I did not. I’ll leave you that to ponder those possibilities, at least until the thought skeeves you out and the shuddering begins.

I find myself wishing my life was less sane and reasonable right now. I’m still trying to figure out how to achieve that without, you know, starving, but on the whole I’d be far less cranky and surly and other such dwarves if I were writing right now.

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There are days where I’m utterly amazed that anyone reads this journal, largely because some of the people who comment on it, by and large, tend to be much better writers that I am. I mean, go back to yesterday’s entry and read Thoraiya Dyer’s comment about autumn, which is far more eloquent than the post she’s responding too (you could also go and buy her book, if you wanted too, and I can’t think of any reason why you wouldn’t).

In totally unrelated news: apparently if you mention Fight Club on twitter, you get an automated reply from a twitter-bot channeling Tyler Durden. I imagine that’s one very busy twitter-bot, and it’s far more entertaining than the twitter bots that usually follow me, offering real estate deals and fitness programs and dire warning about the machinations of the Illuminati.

 

Storms & Minotaurs & OMG, Sleep

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You know how you're writing a story about the end of the world?

On the evening of my dad’s sixtieth birthday we were all sitting on the thirteenth floor balcony while a storm rolled in. If we were in a movie the rapidly moving sheet of clouds would have been the special effect that signified the end of the world is nigh, so we all unearthed our mobile phones and digital cameras to take photographs.

About fifteen minutes before I took the  shaky, blurred mobile photo featured in this post the view from the thirteenth floor was all clear skies and blue ocean, and it was pretty enough that even my jaded-towards-beaches approach to life acknowledged that it was a pretty good place to celebrate someone turning sixty.

I gave my dad a book – the Collected Stories of Gabriel Garcia Marques, ’cause everyone should read A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings – and a CD/DVD of Leonard Cohen’s 2009 tour ’cause we were meant to go to Cohen’s show last year, but dad’s heart-attack derailed those plans. Then the family collaborated to get him a kindle, ’cause it seems the thing to get a man whose using retirement to catch up on reading. Given my dad’s taste in fiction, and the existence of Project Gutenberg, he may never have to buy a book again.

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The inimitable Jason Fischer released a free ebook version of his story House of the Nameless, which won one of the quarterly contests in the Writers of the Future competition and scored him both publication and a trip to California to further workshop his writing skills.

A dinner at a minotaur’s house brings an unwelcome intruder. Raoul Mithras, a godling both old and new, is forced to pursue an old foe across a surreal landscape, hoping to prevent the awakening of the One-Way-World – if he is not destroyed first.

So yes, free e-book goodness, distributed to familiarize people with his work prior to the Ditmar vote closing since the Writers of the Future anthologies are hard to find in the Land of Oz. Hopefully, if enough people download it, he’ll put the rest of his Raoul stories online as well.

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Last night was a particularly low-key kind of night. I arrived home from work late, I did some paperwork for the second job I’ll be taking up in March, then I proceeded to rearrange my trip to  Swancon due to the fact that the money I’d earn for working the new job that day far outweighs the costs of messing about with re-booking flights and accommodation.

So I’ll be hitting Perth on Friday afternoon  rather than Thursday afternoon, and missing the first eight hours or so of the con, and hopefully I’ll still have the time to catch up with all the people I’d like to catch up with.

After that it was nine o’clock, so I went to bed with a notepad and scribbled Flotsam-y things for a bit, and then I fell asleep. This wasn’t what I’d planned, but tired writer is tired and all that, and I’m trying to get better about managing my sleeping patterns these days.

This afternoon I’ll probably add some more things to the big list of novels I’d like to write, a document that is already far to long given that I’m still working on the first entry, and I’ll rethink my stance on this sleep thing all over again.