Earlier this year, I was able to turn everything off and focus on finishing Devil’s Eye. This time around, (while I’m supposed to be editing, but am I? No. I’m frolicking around with horrid ant people and some kind of pied piper in a catsuit.) I feel like I can’t turn that switch off.
Is my will less strong? Do I have too many ideas? Do I talk to too many writers? Do I have ADD? Is there some kind of magic bean that I do not possess? Why is there a beanstalk growing out of this riverbed of unedited manuscripts? And why is there an ogre-ish thing with a fork crawling down it? Am I freak? And where the heck are my glasses !?!
DOES ANYONE ELSE FEEL THIS WAY? (I’ll pay you $5 to say yes)
ps.Today is my birthday. This day always feels strange. Is this the year I'l be branded with MIDDLE AGE across my forehead? Tomorrow, I'll get over it. Time moves on. Life moves on. Young, vivacity is all in the mind, right? RIGHT? BTW- I'm 21. I would have said 18, but then I wouldn't be legal so...
Two children are kept in a dark basement and have never been introduced into to the real world. Their worlds are imagined and whispered between meals. There is a giant, terrifying deer head that is mounted on the wall. It covers a heat or cooling vent that is open to the outside world. When the wind blows, it makes this whistling noise that sounds like its coming from the deer. The boy hears the voice of the deer head in his mind one day. It tells him what must be done.
The girl never actually hears the voice, but she believes that her older brother has. The reader is supposed to think the boy is crazy, until in the end, they reach The City of Lost parents. I like to think the story is a metaphor for sheltered children finding their way. But I’m pretty sure the whistling deer head tells them much more. Because of the way they were kept at home, they have no sense of reality or even morality. They can be adorable murdering darlings and never give pause.
The black rabbits are a symbol. They are everywhere in this world. A kind of watership down influence, I suspect. Anyway, I’ll write this into a real story one day, perhaps a short novella.
I received and read a much anticipated bizarro book by William Pauley III today(!). It's one of the weirdest things I've ever read. The characters are so charismatic and visual. He has a crazy imagination and everyone knows how I feel about crazy imaginations.
Another cool thing is on the inside page he wrote down all the songs he listened to while he wrote it (a whopping three weeks for the first draft- so jealous). Sound track is awesome. There are some bands I've never heard of before-- oing a boing or something like that.
Also decided to temporarily halt all edits on Devil's Eye. I'm being possessed by a novella I'm daring to call bizarro, although if it actually ends up in any genre field I'll be surprised. Of course, it'll be horror themed.
I'm curious (that is, if anyone at all ever reads this) does anyone else ever write their protagonist as having opposite values as themselves? It's almost as if you are arguing against yourself, your inner moral code. This novella will be very much that way.
The other day I was at a pizza restaurant. There was an end of the year baseball party going on. All the stereotypes were there. The Semi Hot Coach who thinks she's ALL THAT and has a fake bleach blonde put in pony tail (the one you buy at the mall). The the super super Fat Mom holding a toddler with a diaper bag spilling of blankets extra clothes stuff stuff stuff.... she's giggling nervously and can't stop staring at the Semi Hot Coach and stuffing food into her infants mouth.
Semi Hot Coach flirts with Fat Woman's husband. Thusly, Fat Woman starts stuffing her own face instead of toddlers. (I'm not making fun of Fat Woman, but I wish she'd loose the loser hubbie and fill herself with esteem and self love vs food.) Soccer moms babble, kids dump rootbeer down their shirts, there is a general 'we are supposed to be having fun' feel, and yet no one is really having fun. Except maybe the Semi Hot Coach, everything she does causes attention and she likes that.
How can one not notice when her fake hair is fluffing unnaturally to the side and she keeps bending over and sticking her a$$ in people's faces? By the way her jeans hike up the great divide, it's obvious there is nothing underneath and that she has some developing cellulite. (ahem cough sneeze).
People are worried about Iran but I say people with fake hair, fake nails, fake boobs, and tight pants riding up their ripply rears will be the death of the human race.
Then you got the goth crowd of teens huddled in the tiny corner of the resturant -- they're wearing holy jeans, have earrings and tattoos up the ying yang, or on the ying yang (HA) but they are laughing and having a good time. Focused on the moment. There were three teen girls walking by me. One of them stops to look at something and holds out her pop glass. The other girl leans over and sips out of the straw, and the third was aware of neither and slams into the pop holder and the straw sipper. The pop spills over all three of them and they are just giggling and laughing. (including me). Sigh. Love that age. I don't know what this paragraph has to do with anything, but... here it is.
