Nanowrimo day 8.

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Things are. . . coming along. Day 8 and I've only been averaging about 500 words the last few days. Luckily the first couple days got me far enough ahead it hasn't been a huge issue. Hoping to pound out a bit before bed tonight. As pictured above I hung out and got to my daily minimum at the Flying M in Nampa. I absolutely adore this place and it would probably make me barf if I ever looked at how much money I've spent there.

I said it before and I'll say it again: Jonah is hard to write. He's depressing. He's never in a good mood. He's helpful but he's an asshole. Having a completely character driven story is FUCKING MISERABLE when you want your character to do something or learn something but they CAN'T because that's not how they work. They're assholes. They can't. It has to come SLOWLY and. . . ugh. It's always tempting to let him slip out of character so something will happen.

Following what is apparently suit, here's a few of his songs.

"Bukowski" by Modest Mouse.

• "It seems to me that every day turns out to be a little bit more like Bukowski and yeah I know he's a pretty good read but god, who'd wanna be such an asshole?" Jonah would. Jonah would want to be such an asshole.

"Ghouls" by We Are Scientists.

• "We all recognize that I'm the problem here. Can't help but feel attacked-- what's that supposed to mean? And no I won't relax or act like it's 'no big deal'."

"Videotape" by Radiohead.

• I don't know why but I decided at some point this was his favorite song. He relates to it without it hitting so close to home as to upset him.

in early. out late.

I am not who I want to be. I probably will not ever be.

Nanowrimo day 3.

So I don't remember what I put in that first post about what I was doing to prepare but I almost guarantee I didn't do it. Pictured above was what I used for sprints last night. Didn't get a WHOLE lot done as I ended up iChatting with Miranda. Alcohol and a new pen and my already abused spiral notebook and pear vodka and whiskey and Hersheys mini cookies and cream left over from halloween. I am a cycle of bad habits.

I'm currently sitting at a bit over 8k and I worry how long it's going to last. This story is largely introspective and exploring Jonah is really depressing. He's a terrible little dude and he breaks my heart. But! Having him interact with the others is fun.

A note on editing? I'm aware once I go back over this its probably going to be cut down to about 10k. . . if that much. But this is extensively flushing out the characters and I think that's worth it.

I'll end this with a couple of songs on his playlist.

"All Along The Watchtower" by Bob Dylan.

• There is a theory that this song is about the book of Issiah, which goes along with one of Jonah's themes. The song also simply "feels" like someone running away or being in the process of running. Something urgent.

"Snow" by The Antlers.

• If I love The Antlers for anything, it's the absolutely heart breaking vocals. That's a lie. I love The Antlers for everything. The song is slow and quiet and is basically an anthem to crying in bed to abstracted metaphors of your own creation.

"The Fruit That Ate Itself" by Modest Mouse.

• One of my favorite songs ever. "Are you gonna be your own goddamn best friend?" + the fact Isaac Brock is literally yelling it at you is pretty great.

Everything will be alright. Everything. Will be alright.

I've made people laugh until they cry. I can cheer my friends up. I still have friends despite the sopping shit rag I've been lately. I've been told I'm a good story teller. I've been told I have a lot of potential as a writer. I've been told, despite episodes of crippling depression and anxiety, I'm hilarious.

I had my best friend stab me in the back. I had the most important person in my world lie to me. Despite it being 7 months now, it still hurts. A lot. It still crosses my mind more than I wish it would.

But you know what? I'm doing alright. I'm working on doing alright. The sadness that made me useless for months has devolved to a level of frustration as my other stressors (school, money, pets, never being as internet famous as I feel like I should be) and I feel like I can put a cap on it when it flares up most of the time.

Falling out of love with someone is the hardest thing I've had to force myself to do. I wish I was exaggerating. Literally the hardest.

Do I still hate myself? Who the fuck doesn't. Do I still wake up, a little bit bitter that I didn't die in my sleep? Sure enough. Is my sadness a bit more well distributed? Yeah, I guess so. I have more things to be cynical about than a girl that broke my heart.

So. Sad optimism. Things'll work out.

Nanowrimo Prep.

I'm already getting excited. I'm honestly going to attempt the 50k in a week and come what may the rest of the month. We'll see how this goes.

In preparation I'm doing the following:

• Writing out a list of prompts. Cutting them up. Putting them in a box.
• Getting a box shaped like a book. Paint and collage it with things that remind my of my main character. Put prompts in here.
• Make a brief playlist for each character involved.
• Turn the spare/storage bedroom into an office/writing hovel.
• Invest in some Field Notes notebooks.
• Write down what I do everyday so I can seriously evaluate how much time I waste. A lot, I'm aware.

YEP. So this blog is temporarily ~nano blog~.

10am Thursday morning.

It is 10am. I am still in my night gown but I've bothered to put my glasses on (why? they're not real, anyway). There is a load of laundry swishing around the washer. I have a pile of books strewn across my living room table and a shift to work at 5pm tonight. I'm listening to: old Looney Tunes, the sound of two of my cats wrestling each other and that washer I mentioned earlier. Things are alright.

I write this because I normally hate mornings like this. They drive me crazy. You remember when you were in grade/middle/high school and you were sick (like actually sick, not playing hooky you douche-bags) and you'd be laying in bed-- it was around 10am you would wake up (I mean you're sick but COOL you got to leep in) and just lay there with your swollen throat and puffy sinus and wonder if your friends wondered where you were. What were they doing. Were they making fun of Mr. Preggir? Because his nose looks like a dick? Then it hits you: you miss school. You miss feeling not sick and your friends; maybe not school. Suddenly you feel useless and gross- no amount of shower can get this layer of "sick" feeling off of you and you haven't done any homework and you've just watched cartoons all morning and coughed into a pillow and whined at your mom.

. . . I sincerely hope that's what other peoples sick days were like, because I'm going to feel fucking stupid if they didn't. Anyway.

This is still programmed into me- hanging out around the house at 10am = being useless and gross. Especially if I'm still in my pajamas. For some reason I'm totally okay with it today though: I'm being productive, I know I have to work later (even though that's usually frustrating also; I HATE closing shifts when I have nothing else to do during the day. I just sit around and wait for work to take me like the hand of death in the night #dramatic) and I know I have homework to do. Usually at this time of the day I'm itching for an excuse to leave the house; go do my work somewhere else.

But here I am. All is well. Viva la Thursday morning.

Total Side Note: Has anyone else gone back and watched Looney Tunes as an adult? I liked watching them when I was a kid, but listening/watching them as an adult, the writing is really clever and the timing really is fantastic. Sometimes I still really want to be an animator. Is there some kind of degree in the historical impact of cartoons? I'd be on that shit.

A few things on the subject of "literature". Largely cheesy.

Literature and the analysis of it is the ability to rip the skin off of everything with words. It's beautiful, having that much power over text; any text. I feel so thankful and inspired that I have the ability to work with it like this. On this level. I feel like books let me understand them sometimes, not the other way around.

This is the few things I'm confident in. Literature makes me feel so confident, makes me feel intelligent but makes me feel tiny, insignificant and, for lack of a better word, stupid. It humbles me. I will never completely understand it and that, in itself, is comforting. This is a realm I'm comfortable in my insecurities and lack of understanding.

A theory is that literature is completely defined by the community and the environment; if you're involved with a church-- your state, your government, your peers. . . those are what determine what is technically literature. I found this amusing before I realize I'm surrounded by other English majors. Who also are the ones that study theories like this- that we only think it's literature because this group said so. Not really worth delving into right now (I'm pretty sure I'd give myself a migrane) but interesting, none the less.

The physical world holds no place for me. I find my comforts in line breaks and the indents of paragraphs. You are flesh and blood, but I am a semi-colon wearing a human skin. The sole purpose of these hands is to hold a pen, and moments spent doing otherwise feels a waste.

"My words become me. I suit them."

(The Invisible Man)