Tonight

Collapse. After our second day of video shooting tomorrow, I'm hoping things at work will slow down (ha ha).

Apartment viewing Friday! Yay!

Decided

I've finally decided.

You don't get people like this every day.

Life

Work writing. Fiction writing. Chipotle. Looking for apartments. More work writing. Work socializing. Fiction plotting/planning. Some reading (not enough). Some working out (not enough).

I need to go bowling next month and get the hell out of the house, but there's so damn much going on right now and so many deadlines that I'm having trouble getting my head unstuck.

Good news is: things are good.

Black Desert

I get really irritated when the Plot gets in the way of the exploding heads.

Life, in General

Behind at work. Behind in fiction. Behind with workouts. Too much Chipotle. Not enough time.

Dear Hobb

Um. Two words: Time management.

Writing is writing. Manage your writing in the way that makes the most sense for you. If you're bleeding all over blogs and not bleeding enough in your fiction, stop blogging.

If you get satisfaction from both, manage both. If you write about insurance and tax prep at your day job in return for health insurance, write on your blog about writing, and fulfill your three-book contract on the weekends while taking kickboxing classes and working out four times a week and eating pancakes, awesome.

There's this fiction that we can have one thing and not another, that we're all or nothing. I write to survive. Health insurance, yo. I blog to reach to different sort of audience and fill a different need. It does completely different things for me than fiction writing does.

And I write fiction because it's what I love, what I've always done, because the pleasure I get out of that keeps me sane.

Survival. Socializing. Sanity.

I need all three.

And so I manage my time really, really well.

Grand Revelations

Working on writing up website text about insurance, revising a bunch of scripts for work, then come home, use up some more Chipotle money (carnitas fajita burrito, no rice, no beans, no sour cream, no cheese - wow, this has suddenly become a full-on "healthy" meal. "Only" 745 calories!), off to bookstore, crank out the requisite 1500 words of Black Desert:



Home now, time for line edits and reading and packing up gym clothes for tomorrow (they apparently have kickboxing at the Y downtown on Thursdays. Our membership is free through work, so really, why not go? We'll see how it goes).

Another day, another dollar.

It's all a step at a time. Sometimes there are no grand revelations, just hard work.

Black Desert: Still Behind

...but gaining. Am about 7K behind schedule, but that's 3K less than I was this morning, so that's something. This week is more relaxed at work, so I figure I'll be able to catch up a bit before falling behind again next week. Heh.



As you can see, I am not the world's fastest writer. But I'll have a draft by the end of April, come hell, high water, and sales season.

Also, Rhys sure is long-winded. I think I wrote 2K of pure internal self-introspective narration. Whine, whine, whine.

See, I like unreliable narrators, but I believe that there are these moments when some of us really do truly see our actions for what they are. These moments of lucidity are fleeting, and immediately after we realize them we tuck them away again and hide from them, cause if we lived with the truth for too long, well, then we'd actually have to DO something with that truth.

So I do enjoy putting in those moments when we stop hiding our motives behind our actions and see them for what they are. It's nice to capture it in print. Doesn't mean they're any more reliable. We just got to see a brief moment of lucidity.

Nyx and Rhys are incredibly different, but they both lie to themselves with the same incredible desperateness of ingrained self-preservation and perpetual self-hate. It hurts them. And it hurts the people around them.

Also, this printer the not-Boyfriend got me months and months ago? It kicks ass beyond all measure. It's like 30 pages a minute, yo. It's amazing.

It's like, the sort of printer a WRITER would have.

And yeah, if you wonder where I get all of my material from? You don't read this blog. It's all sillily transparent.

But hey: the blog inspires folks on one end, maybe the books will inspire folks on another. I actually like the idea that they'll reach totally different audiences, and I'll get totally different sorts of fan mail for each (yes, I've gotten my fair share of blog-related fan mail. It's why I post things here that are so personal. Sometimes it *does* help people. Other times, yes, I'm just ranting).

Mostly, ranting.

I'd like to say I should be ranting a little more in fiction and a little less here, but they tend to feed each other. When I'm writing, I'm writing, no matter where it is. When I'm not... well, I'm not.

Anywhere.

So.

Now I'm just drifting, so I'll stop. Good night!

Black Desert: Excerpted line of the day

"Her name was Azizah, and she ran with a crew so hard-bitten and bloodlusty that they made Nyx nervous."

I can't wait until I finish this book. Not because it's a BAD book. It's actually a pretty GOOD book, but I feel like I've been working on it, like, forever.

And yes, I decided on my own that "bloodlusty" was one word.

Sue me.

Wanted

Today's Song, Stuck on Repeat

It's been stuck on repeat for two days, actually. This may have something to do with reading and (thus far) enjoying Armor over the last couple of days, too (full rant to come).

For some reason, these fit together in my head. Though this one's more upbeat.

The Decemberists - Sons & Daughters

When we arrive
Sons & daughters
We'll make our homes on the water
We'll build our walls aluminum
We'll fill our lives with cinnamon now

These currents pull us 'cross the border
Steady your boats
Arms to shoulder
'till tides are pulled
Hold our grounds
Making this cold harbor now home

Take up your arm
Sons and daughters
We will arise from the bunkers
By land, by sea, by dirrigible
We'll leave our tracks untraceable now

When we arrive
Sons and daughters
We'll make our lives on the water
We'll build our walls aluminum
We'll fill our mouths cinnamon

When we arrive
Sons and daughters
We'll make our homes on the water
We'll build our walls aluminum
We'll fill our mouths cinnamon
(when we arrive sons and daughters
We'll make our homes underwater
When we build our walls of aluminum
We'll fill our mouths with cinnamon)

Here all the bombs fade away
Here all the bombs fade away
Here all the bombs fade away
Here all the bombs fade away

Deal with the Devil

One of my coworkers has offered to pay my 6-month Wow subscription if I do his resume and he gets to run other characters on my account when I'm not logged in.

These guys are serious addicts, yo. This could be my future.

Honestly, tho, you know: I'm sick of being better. I would like to hide in pixelated goodness for awhile.

There are no broken hearts in pixelated goodness, just rending the flesh of my enemies with my mighty fists.

But really, I should be doing that in kickboxing class.

Whine Whine Whine Bitch Bitch Bitch Moan Moan Moan

I find my ability to be full-up with self-loathing even when my life is full of awesome to be incredibly annoying and certifiably silly. Which just goes to show you that happiness has nothing to do with external stuff. It's not that you just need a new house, a new car, a new significant other (OK, yes, sometimes that's the case, but sometimes you're just full of self-loathing), it's that what needs changing is so often on the inside. It's the rotten, poisonous core that needs to be given a shot of antibiotics, right there at the heart of it.

Cause the hate and self-loathing, though fleeting now and merely something to gnash my teeth about on a Monday night, never go away. I have to change something inside. Some key part of how I see the world, see myself, see my place in it.

I'm not sure where that change needs to come in, or even if it does. After all, I get down on myself far less often now than in the past. But still... something inside needs to change. I need to let myself be happy with what I have, what I've accomplished. I need to stop focusing on what I don't have, what I could lose.

Now is all we've got. External "fixes" won't change it. It's all about me. I'm the one who has to change. To let go.

Other things I discovered today that are silly: Chipotle burritos without sour cream and cheese. I mean, really, what's the point?

Life

I think some days you just get tired of trying to be better all the time and you have to just hole up and say "fuck it" for awhile.

Another of Life's Inexplicable Truisms

The dates you WANT to call you back?

They do not call back.

Le sigh.

At least I still have my brutal bounty hunters cutting off people's heads in Tirhan? And World of Warcraft? And Chipotle? And Zumba on Fridays? And a killer job? Yes.

Yes, indeed.

Hard Heart

There needs to be an ambush scene.

And then, the infamous Meeting.

And then: HORROR.

Writing books is full of teh awesome, really. It's writing all the in-between stuff that's so fucking tedious.

Ways to Spend a Snowbound Weekend

I now have a level 10 WoW warrior... and no additional words on Black Desert.

Hey, my Cossaks disk finally went kaput on me. I needed something to fill the void.

Also, I don't think you can write off your WoW subscription even if you name your characters after your book characters. Thank goodness I can't afford a subscription. Free trials are just the thing for a snowbound weekend.

BUT I WILL NOT GET SUCKED IN.

IT IS MONTHS OF MY LIFE THAT I WILL NOT GET BACK!!!

Quote of the Day

"Sometimes bad things happen, but life is good."
- T.A. Pratt

Wonder

Here.

You Just Can't Make This Shit Up

I mean, seriously.