NaBloPoMo: You Have Been Warned

I've given some serious consideration to joining in on NaBloPoMo, and by serious consideration, I mean that I read a few lines about it and said to myself, "Hey! That looks like a great idea!"

So I'm going to try and post one a day for the entire month of January. Those of you who have subscribed to my feed have an apology in advance. I hope you can bear with my while I ramble like an idiot more often than usual.

But seriously, all horrible expectations aside, I encourage anyone else out there running a blog to join in on National Blo Posting Month as well. You just might learn something about yourself, and as frightening as that sounds, it just might improve your blogging and writing experience in general.

I'm warning you right now that  you're probably going to see quite a few posts about why it isn't snowing, or how damn hard it is to keep the pen moving once you get it started. More often than not, they'll just be about all the books I've started but never finished because I keep telling myself I've got to work on a novel that I haven't really been working that hard on.

Like, you know, this.

I searched far and wide for that clip just because I identified so much with that skit when I first saw it on Family Guy. I'm sure all of you did, too. I'm sure all of the published writers out there are more than glad that there are so many of us that just can't get our shit together, however.

You're welcome, successful douches. I have eliminated the competition by sitting on my ass.

Bonus Post: I Don't Want To Live On This Planet Anymore

Because people like this guy live on it, too.

You know, we writers are often lauded as intellectuals. Actual writers know that such is far from the truth, as most of us are simple dreamers and lowly scribes. A solid grasp on ways to accurately and efficiently use the English language are not always testimonies to how much a person generally knows about reality.

Hell, there are people out there with Ph.Ds who have no clue what the real world is like. This, friends, is why the human race is doomed.

You all know that I don't support SOPA or PIPA already. I've done a rant on it before, and I intend to do many more before the shitstorm has passed. Because of SOPA and everyone who is backing it, I'm seriously considering following in the footsteps of Cory Doctorow and releasing all of my books under a Creative Commons licence. I normally keep swearing to a minimum so that I'll appear to know more than 100 words, but I absolutely hate how everyone claiming ownership to art has taken all of the passion out of creation. e.e. cummings truly did see a clear picture of society and its future when he claimed in his poem Now Does Our World Descend that "create" had become "contrive".

I wonder if he suspected just how true his statement of how freedom was what made a slave would become in the following century. Everyone wants nothing more than to be worshiped by "the little people" for their amazing talent. I have no more talent than a monkey, and I'm not afraid to admit it to anyone. I'm a firm believer in the creative belief of the artist as a vessel. While most people like to think of themselves as  great geniuses of their time, I know that I just put my pen down on the page and write what comes out. I don't sit in front of a fireplace with patches on my elbows and a pipe hanging out of my mouth muttering, "Yes. Indeed." every time a good idea occurs to me. The best writers are nothing more than idiot savants to something greater and larger than themselves.

Maybe Lord Xenu. No one really knows for sure.

That being said, I don't want to rock back and forth with copies of my stories hissing, "No, they're mine and you can't have them!" to everyone who tries to get close to me. I hate to break it to anyone who has ever worshiped their own work, but that story stopped being yours the moment someone else read it. Without readers, writers are nothing more than glorified bums.

I've mentioned before how much I loved the manga Hanako and the Terror of Allegory just because the protagonists kicked the writer's ass at the end for getting too greedy with her stories, which belonged to the readers.

In light of SOPA, I want to go ahead and tell everyone reading my blog and future stories that my most urgent wish is for you to make them your own. I was appalled to find out that people have actually been sued over fanfiction, because in my opinion it is the sincerest form a flattery a writer can receive. Stop being an money grubbing asshat and be proud that you've created something so great that it lives outside of itself. Can you imagine what our language would have been like today if something like SOPA existed in the fifteenth century and Shakespeare had everyone who used one of his invented phrases put in jail?

Everyone who has ever lived owes me three times the national debt. 

Please take this blog post to heart. I know this sounds cheesy, but I need all of you so much. A writer who wants to hurt his readers for keeping his stories in their hearts and lending his books to their friends is no writer at all. He's just a tiny version of those big record companies who don't give a crap about how many tears you've cried while listening to that one song that the artist only got half of a cent for. I felt sick when I found out that book lending actually does piss off quite a few writers.

Like Whitman, I'm a noiseless, patient spider casting out my web and hoping that it catches on to one of your hearts. Just one. That's all I need. I've listened to readers talking about how much their favorite writers have changed their lives and dreamed of the day when someone, just one person, would give me that same look and tell me how the stories that I've written have helped them to escape.

The Writer's Toolbox: A Review

My rule of thumb is that the crazier and more "wtf?" inducing a plot line sounds in summary, the better and more enticing of a story it will make when it's actually written out. I've recently scribbled out an idea for a fantasy novel in which a prince has a lover that he stashes on an island a few miles off of the coast of his kingdom. He feels emasculated, and is often trying to prove himself strong and manly. In other words, he's a douche. Things begin to grow complicated when an escaped convict washes ashore on the island where the prince's lover is kept a virtual prisoner, and she takes him in hoping that she can easily hide him from the prince.

I think I'm going to say, "screw you" to the lover and have the prince and the escaped convict end up together just for the Hell of it. Also, there's probably a flying horse or something in there somewhere. I could very easily grow this one little possible novella-sized fantasy work into a four party series that is absurdly more complicated and epic than it needs to be.

This story idea, one of many scribbled down in my notebook that may or may not see the light of day, came to me while I was screwing around with The Writer's Toolbox, a fascinatingly stimulating and gloriously fun box full of inspirational writing games that I sorely wish I had already bought ages ago.

The box consists of games designed to spark the imagination of writers young, old, and uncreative---just promise yourself that you won't ever discard any idea, no matter how absurd.

In light of the many other story ideas that have come to me over the years, my crazy-assed love polygon  story actually pales in comparison. The best part about using The Writer's Toolbox is that you can easily look at the first lines, the protagonist wheels, the sixth sense cards, and say to yourself, "How on earth did I get this story idea from all of these random collections of words?"

That, my friend, is how the human mind works. It is the very reason why there is a creative writer inside of us all. The Writer's Toolbox takes advantage of the strange ways in which our minds operate, allowing us to quite literally create a fantastical cyberpunk thriller out of a random suggestion of a first line such as, "Jim liked to eat sandwiches."

My advice to anyone who makes the wonderful decision of using The Writer's Toolbox would be to just go nuts and think about nothing else but having fun. That's why we all decided we wanted to be creative writers for a living anyway, isn't it? Who needs a desk job when we can make a living off of our daydreams?

The only difference between writers and non-writers is simply that non-writers judge or fear their daydreams and leave them inside their heads.

Write on, fellow daydreamers!

God on high, kill me for allowing myself to utter those words...

Merry Freaking Christmas!

I'll admit that there's been a huge lack of Christmas related posts because I've been finding it hard to get in the spirit of things. For me, the Christmas spirit requires cookies and candy, none of which I have been making. I've been getting into the spirit later and later each year, which means that it goes away even later. The past few years, it's been December 30th with me still singing carols and dancing around because I haven't started feeling all tinsel-y until the day before Christmas Eve. I used to go holiday crazy the moment Thanksgiving dinner was over and the dishes were in the dishwasher. I blame the lack of Christmas specials lately that aren't live-action Hallmark specials, but what can you do?

I miss the Grinch so, so much. And Rudolph and that weird little elf who wanted to be a dentist and ruin everyone's cookie-crunching, candy chomping fun.

I hope you all got what you wanted this year! If you got coal, all you have to do is shove it under a crapload of pressure and then throw your brand new diamond in Santa's stupid, judgmental face.

My list so far (I have over four Christmases to go to today x.x) includes some amazing perfume I asked for and a Kindle Fire, which makes me absolutely ecstatic. Once I get near some Wi-Fi when I get home I'll let you guys know just how awesome it is, but so far I'm dumbstruck. You know...because I'm not that hard to please and all.

Seeing as I have no money, Christmas is the only time I really get to have nice things, since other people are buying them and all.

Perhaps things will be looking up once I've finished my novel and am collecting a small pittance from 99 cent book sales that I can use to finance my addiction to television shows and books that I'm much too old to be watching/reading.

Begotten

I'm a horror junkie, and every single movie that I watch seems to desensitize me to the last. That was, of course, until I watched about twenty minutes of Begotten and decided that I could go no further.

I plan on finishing it one day. It's sort of a right of passage for Internet Horror Junkies. The movie is a lot creepier if you know what's going on. Basically, in the beginning the bleeding weirdo you see is God, and he disembowels himself. Mother Earth comes along and impregnates herself with...I guess...what's left of him or something. She gives birth to a full grown man and such. It gets worse from there. Here's the Wikipedia page, which has the full summary.

After watching what I did, I'm convinced that my novel isn't dark enough to be considered a dark fantasy and needs an execution or two. After all, if I truly want the readers to be afraid of the Queen, she has to prove that she's not above killing someone. Up until the point in the story I've reached, it seems she's all talk but is too afraid to act. I did get the idea for her character while listening to Heads Will Roll, after all, so I need to make her live up to her inspiration. I want her to be an absolute terror to her realm.

Amazing what seeing a little bit of horrifying weirdness can do to you, isn't it?

Seeing as I have OCD, I probably shouldn't have watched as much as I did. I read Ibitsu and had some of the worst and scariest nightmares I've ever had involving a woman haunting me who had an over-sized mouth spewing blood and empty bloody eye-sockets. The more something disturbs me, the more likely it is that I won't be able to stop thinking about it until it eventually gets into my dreams.

Anywho, if you're willing to lose sleep for a little while, this is Begotten, quite possibly the most horrifying horror movie ever made. If you can't handle it, you probably shouldn't watch it.

Though you know you totally will.

I Never Was Good With My Hands

I don't have a picture for today's post, so here's a random tree behind my house.

I am trying to learn how to crochet. It's supposed to be relaxing and, well, my Zoloft just isn't working as well as it used to and I can't really get the dosage upped for another month. I feel like I'm even more on edge than before. The other day I almost tripped trying to avoid a square of sidewalk that was too big for me to take exactly two steps inside of it, no more, no less.

Which, of course, brings me to the crocheting--a word that hilariously resembles "crotch-eting" in the present participle. Whoever said that this crap was supposed to be relaxing obviously found a bowl of nails floating in anti-freeze a nutritious and delicious breakfast. Two minutes in and I already feel like stabbing something with my crochet hook. I find writing much, much more relaxing, and half the time all I can do is stare at the page and think, "What in the name of Zeus and Mother Mary is supposed to happen next?"

Surprisingly, the one place that my OCD seems to disappear is when I'm writing my first drafts. Grammar mistakes, spelling errors...all of those things disappear completely as I try to focus entirely on letting the story fall out onto the paper. Of course, the editing process feels the ultimate wrath of my nit-picking tendencies, but while I'm writing the first draft I'm totally free.

I also have to admit that, for reasons unknown to me seeing as it's December, everyone around me seems to be constantly sucking on oranges. Gah. The sound is absolutely maddening. I don't feel like smashing things like before, but I cringe every time.

My word of advice for those whose lives have been completely controlled by Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is to note what it is you're doing when you feel yourself completely relaxed and free of that gnawing sensation at the back of your neck. You know the one I'm talking about. For me, there's nothing better than my favorite playlist, a pen, and my spiral-bound notebook to take me away from the fact that I can't stop thinking about the feeling of paper between my teeth, and I don't know why.

You know, I started this blog to journal the process of going from random some schlub who scribbles out weird scenes in her mind to an actual writer who makes something of those crazy-ass scenes. Day by day and post by post it becomes more of an insight into what it's like to be a writer with a personality disorder that unfortunately wasn't diagnosed until I had chased off all potential friends for thirteen years by sanitizing my hands after every handshake.

"It's not you, it's me!" I would tell everyone in hopes that they wouldn't be offended. "If I don't do it, I feel like I'm suffocating."

But you know how hard it is to get people to understand something they don't have. Even those wonderful, beautiful people who try their hardest to be of assistance to you don't really get how it feels, though you're eternally grateful to them for not getting pissed at all of your little ticks.

I would like to end today's post by doing a follow-up on the SOPA bill that I posted about earlier. So far it's been postponed, but the fight is far from over. The best place to learn about the bill is this subreddit on Reddit, a site that I fear will cease to exist if SOPA passes. It's where I've been going to stay caught up.

**I've decided to go with a new layout instead of the older one. Though the last one I had was beautiful, I had no idea how to make Next Blog work with it, and I like the Next Blog feature as a way to support other bloggers.

Punk

You're wicked--
A master of the art of bending reality.
Maniacal--
An absolute and total curse upon humanity.
Look at yourself smile.
You're proud,
and why not?
The darkness engulfing you
is all that you've got.

You don't even understand yourself, punk.


This poem is to be read slightly tongue-in-cheek. It all popped into my head as I was staring at myself in the mirror with an insane grin on my face. Today was a really hard day, and like always, I began laughing hysterically once all the crying was over. I guess at how silly it all seemed in the grand scheme of things, I don't know.

I was inspired by this music video by one of my favorite artists. I warn you, it'll make you question your sanity:

SOPA? So What?

THIS is what, damnit.

So SOPA is probably going to pass today. I've been listening to the hearing, and the entire thing can basically be summed up with one phrase:

"I'M OLD! WHAT'S THE INTERNET?"

I'm also guessing that no one--or almost no one--who is reading this blog post even knows what SOPA is. That almost makes me as sick to my stomach as the things being said in Congress. This thing can and will kill the entire Internet, and ninety percent of the population hasn't even heard of it.

Imagine every single website that even mentions something copyrighted is taken down.

Now imagine that websites can be taken down just because someone claims to own a copyright that they do not even own.

That's pretty much it. Only, well, it's so much more complicated than that--and horrifying. The Internet will be completely void of content provided by users. If you're thinking, "Hey, wait, that's the entire Internet!" then good job, you  understand the dangers.

The Internet was once the one and only place that total free speech still existed. Well, not anymore. What's perhaps the most sickening part of this whole fiasco is that SOPA won't just effect the United States. It's going to effect other countries, too, and just about everyone who uses the Internet.

There are lots of reasons why I'm an indie author, and none of them are that I'm a hipster. I hate hipsters with a burning passion.I don't want my stories to be at the mercy of what someone out there thinks people want to read. If someone wants to read what I write, they can. If they don't, they shouldn't. I don't want to change it to make uninterested people read it. If it's not their cup of tea, it's not their cup of tea. My worst fear is having an editor change my hypothetical zombie novel into an erotic spy thriller before it hits shelves. I want to write what I want to write. If there's editing, I want it to be because I screwed up in the plot consistency or made a grammar error.

Ladies and gentlemen, they are now going to edit and regulate the Internet if this thing isn't stopped.

And let's face it. If what I heard in those hearings is true, they're going to pass SOPA no matter what because they gave the bill a fancy enough name.

Here are more links:

The nightmarish SOPA hearings
How SOPA would affect you
How SOPA Affects Gamers
Stop SOPA, Save the Internet
And one more

Well. I'm going to go listen to Rage Against the Machine and prepare myself for the imminent shutdown of my blog because I mentioned "Rage Against the Machine" and I don't own the band.

Fairyland 1

Fairyland 1, a photo by KennediAmber on Flickr.

This trippy little flower is dead now. Nature is hilariously cruel.

Can We Save Writing and Reading?

If not, then we should at least form our own little underground book bootlegging club once the written word has been banned for good.

You would be surprised by how many people out there think that books should no longer exist--educated people, I might add. I'm not talking about just printed books either, but e-books too. I once had an acquaintance of mine say that books were the lowest form of entertainment next to television. His choices for the top two?

1. Video games
2. The Internet

I must agree with him, because we all know how smart and stimulating people on the Internet are. If there was a sarcasm font I would be using it in bold right now.

It absolutely baffles me to see people all around me claiming to be intellectuals and stating that books are beneath intelligent people.

I hate to break it to you geniuses, but you have the same opinion as Kanye West. That's right. In my mind, you are a clone of the epitome of ignorance and intolerance that is Mr. West, regardless of how many degrees you have.

Any avid reader knows that real life (if there is such a thing) would be nothing without the stories that shape it. Think about it.

How differently would you perceive things--how many events in your life would have been affected---had you never read Harry Potter? Or Animal Farm? What about Fahrenheit 451 or Brave New World?

I don't think that Bradbury's world of book censorship will come to pass like we expect it to. Maybe people will just stop reading books because there aren't any pictures that move, and start watching movies that are mostly pretty lights and fireworks with no plots because there is nothing more dangerous than the opportunity to think. If human  beings think, they come to two terrible and frightening realizations: they have the ability to create things and they can't always control what they create. Whether it be a paranoia turned reality or an entire world springing to life in the wake of a moving cursor, we fear what we create because it come from us and yet is not of us. It's bigger and greater.

Writers do not conquer this fear. We merely learn to embrace it and thrive on it.

Image via Wikipedia

I would let Kanye finish, but for the sake of future generations I have decided to drown him out with  Florence and the Machine.

Behind Grandfather's House

Behind Grandfather's House, a photo by KennediAmber on Flickr.

Just as the title suggests, I took this picture behind my grandfather's old house.

I've been dabbling in random picture taking lately, and I've decided to share the results on my blog from time to time.

I would also like to report that my Christmas break is only days away. If I can only get through finals, I just may have enough sweet, delicious free time to finish my novel's first draft in the three weeks I'll have.

Children? Ba-HUMBUG. Regretsy v. Paypal

I'm going to let you guys in on a little secret. I hate PayPal just as much as PayPal loves money.

Believe me, ladies and gentlemen, that is a lot. They are nothing but a privately owned scam, and the majority of the Internet knows this. I would probably hand my money to a hobo with a needle currently in his arm and tell him to take it across the country to a vendor than send it through PayPal. To be completely honest with you, there isn't much of a difference between the two scenarios. Both of them involve you never seeing your money again.

A lot of you may not know that I follow Regretsy, because the website is freaking hilarious and they're always doing some sort of charity work that makes my heart as fuzzy as two week old refrigerator fungi. This year, for example, the site owner was to donate thousands of dollars to poor children who weren't going to get a Christmas this year. The money was quickly raised before PayPal froze the account and claimed that charities weren't worthy causes. They ordered the money refunded and kept their "fixed fees". I truly feel for the parents who have already told their children that they will be getting a Christmas after all and now have to break their hearts in telling them otherwise.

Apparently, donating money to a sick cat is a worthy cause, but helping poor people is not. As all of you know I am a poor people myself, and I am therefore how you say.... "outraged."

Within minutes both the Internet and Paypal's Facebook page exploded. Twitter showed them no mercy, as Twitter does not know the meaning of the word. The Consumerist, The Daily Dot, The Wall Street Journal have already at least linked to the story, and this only happened a matter of hours ago. The Internet is a hydra with many heads that only multiply as you sever them.

Even Barbara Streisand had to learn that, you know.

                                                         Image by mau3ry via Flickr

We're very sorry, little Timmy, but you just aren't a cat.