amand_r

Hello all, it's been a while, so I shall UPDATE BY NUMBERS.

1. Cookies have been awesome. I am taking a break. I have many new things that I want to try, but they aren't going to ship well in this heat. That said, if you ever want some cookies, feel free to drop me a line. I am now making shit on demand. Except the chocolate caramel shortbread. They are a pain in the ass.

2. Kidlet is done with preschool! Well, for this year at least. I have embarrassing video, but I am too lazy to upload it.

3. My computer died recently! It was horrible. I was trying to log on, and it kept telling me my user profile couldn't load properly. After shedding bitter tears, I managed to save all my files from safe mode onto an external drive, and then I had to reinstall the OS from factory settings. Strange how everything runs now. On the other hand, there's something cleansing about getting a fresh start.

4. I have been reading a great deal. You can find my reading on Goodreads. Right now I'm reading about the monster of Florence.

5. I MADE PASTA FROM SCRATCH. IT WAS AWESOME.

6. YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE IS AWESOME? HOT DOGS.

7. Here is the story of how I am bitter:

One day I started watching Wire in the Blood. I watched 2 eps and then forgot. Then a month later I was all, “I should check out Wire in the Blood”, and lo, I already had. I resumed my watching. BY THE WAY the special with Tony in Texas was the best thing ever. I lolled so hard. Anyway, I got to the end of season 6 when [spoiler] and it ends with [spoiler] and Then I click ed the “Next” button on the Netflix streaming screen.

Nothing happened. I looked and saw they only had up to season six. Never mind, I will download the torrent somewhere.

That's right, in my head I had convinced myself that there are 8 seasons.

Oh wait, no, that's Waking the Dead.

It became increasingly difficult to locate the season seven torrent No one had it. I was going to do a shot out to my flist. Then I decided to see when it was released. So I checked wikipedia.

Boy, am I bitter. WHAT A FUCKING WAY TO END. NOT TWIN PEAKS EPIC, BUT JESUS.

8. I read the new Sookie Stackhouse. Yeah.

9. I had so many things to say! I have no idea where they went.

10. Lastly, I have a novella/thing coming out in October, and the publisher, Candlemark and Gleam was nice enough to send me promo postcard things to distribute. I was thinking of handwriting some short short stories and offering to send them to people for postage. Would anyone be interested? Want one? I guess if you sent me five bucks, I could send you the card and a half a dozen cookies. Or something.

Postage has gone up package wise, by the way. That's how they get ya.

Off to read more about excising vaginas.

Okay. So.

I opened a document to start a new story (in which vampires are normal and humans are the myth. I'm working on it.), and I couldn't face the whiteness. So I opened episode 8 and corrected the grammar there, and then. Then. I looked down.

There, from under the L key—dust. I saw that.

So after about twenty minutes of tweezing clumps of cat hair and dust and detritus from my keyboard, I stopped to consider that I might have a small problem.

Writer's block.

It's not like I haven't had it before, the erectile dysfunction of the literary world (can you tell how desperate I was to make that joke?), but this comes at a time when I am teeming with ideas. I have about a dozen scenes in the season 4 that I'd love to put down. I have about thirty short stories in various stages of development. I have four stories that I should edit and resubmit.

I'm going to have to drop out of the tw genfic fest. I know it's not going to be done. It's not even started. It's planned. I could start it and get myself rolling, but I can think of so many other things that are more important, like the stories for money. I can't make myself work on fanfic because I think I have to get more stories done so I can sell them.

I have to relax.

Here's how bad it is: I get Poets and Writer's Magazine, and I use the back to mine for submissions, and I haven't opened the last 2 (it's every other month, so that should tell you something) because the Jan/Feb issue is titled 'The Inspiration Issue'. Look at that cover and tell me that's not intimidating. Or it could just be me.

It's not a new thing that I don't like to listen to other people talk about their writing. And I don't mean in a "this is my plot" way. That's okay. I don't like to listen to meta about writing. I don't care about why someone writes, or how they do it, or what drives them. Because it makes me think about what drives me, and I don't care about that either. Everyone seems more together than me. Everyone seems to think this is…important enough to talk about (I think I'm doing that now). All I know is that the more I think about my process, the worse my fic is received, the less it's liked, so I don't LIKE to think about it. So, there.

Also: everyone I know is writing a book. One of them sold their book. Others are submitting theirs. I don't even have a short story to send anywhere. Every time I try to sit down and edit, I think, "God, what's the point, editing isn't going to make it better." /whine (If you are one of those people reading this, I sincerely wish you nothing but the best, really, I do.)

Anyway, I am blocked. I even have an idea for a two-column poem about a man licking the print advert for gum in the subway car. See? Ideas. Still. Who's going to buy/print that shit? My gum poem? Fuck that shit.

Part of it is this doubt that I know where to submit my stuff. I don't know. It's not like the shit I read in the samples, and I can't find a place that has stuff like mine. And that bothers me, or something. Or maybe I think it's interesting. I dunno. I just have to find the place.

I feel better just writing all this.

Fuck all that. Okay. Coconut Man, Moonheads, and P.



Next on Amanda blogs: I have discovered how to exercise, and nyah nyah nyah, you bastards. Also, Cashmere Mafia was the worst trainwreck of a show I have watched since The L Word, but I couldn't stop watching.

I HEAR WHAT YOU SAY, AND ALTHOUGH THE WORDS ARE THERE, I THINK THAT I WILL ONLY TRULY UNDERSTAND YOU WHEN I HEAR YOU SCREAM THOSE WORDS. AND YOU WILL SCREAM. YOU WILL SCREAM.

It has a shallow drop, but how lovely.

also: GOTTS SUCK A ***** IN THE PARTY ZONE:

1. What's with Family Guy's Conway Twitty thing? It started with short clips, and now 7.13 had a whole performance of "I See The 'Want To' In Your Eyes". Not that I didn't LOL, but what up with this? Did Seth MacFarlane get the rights to all Conway Twitty's music or something?

2. The drawback to CLEAN ALL THE THINGS in my house is that I don't want to write. Why does this happen? It happens when I have a shitload of things to do, that's for damn sure. Wholas, kinky krimmas, the twfemfic fest, about six original fic things to do, plus that charity book thing (NO I HAVEN'T FORGOTTEN, TWITTER PEOPLE). I need something to jumpstart my ass. OH AND ALSO I HAVE THAT SEASON OF TORCHWOOD WOT I BE DOING. JESUS.

SOMEONE KICK ME IN THE ARSE.

3. My fried egg fu is sufficiently warmed up, so tonight it's stout and cheddar rarebit with fried eggs and the old stand-by, carrots and leeks. Oh carrots and leeks, why can't I quit you? I am using balsamic vinegar again instead of red wine vinegar.

4. My kid is in preschool! She started Monday, and so far so good.

5. This year she wants to be Snow White for Halloween. See Mander drive from one store to another.

6. I SEE THE 'WANT TO' IN YOUR EYES.

7. Ever look at all your junk and become filled with the urge to see how much of it you can sell? Because I think that might be my new hobby.

8. Writing a short story about a unicorn showing up on a midwest farm, and it's not going to have a happy ending. But all this urban or modern fantasy, I have no idea who takes it. My horror is not going over well with the horror markets. All my rejections are like, "This is good, but it's not us. Do you have anything more us?" It's enough to make a girl turn to poetry. Which, oh hai quiet passion.

9. I keep all my books that I'm currently reading stashed about the house in places. I have, at any given time, about 8 of them, and sometimes I substitute more when I get in a new pulp crap thing that I'll do in three days (or hours). So I finished Wharton, and picked up The Abridged Tale of Genji, like a responsible reader. Then I got waylaid by The Murder of Biggie Smalls. BUT THEN I GOT WAYLAID BY LKH'S NEW ANITA BLAKE BOOK. OH MY GOD IF MY READING HABITS WERE A NASDAQ CHART, IT WOULD LOOK LIKE BLACK MONDAY. With any luck I can skim my way through LKH and back into Biggie and then into Genji and the Burroughs I cracked the other day.

10. Okay, I just want to state for the record that I find it humourous, given the general attitude that the lyrics of Death Row records used to have re: the police, that they would only hire off-duty cops for their security. On one hand it's heartening, because it shows that it's possible to believe in the corruption of some of the police dept and still believe in their abilities or that some of them are good. On the other hand it's lol.

11. I have a mental image of Jack teaching Lois, Maggie and Robert how to lindy hop after hours in the atrium, to this song. They all have their shoes off, and they're goofing off in their stocking feet in the atrium. Gwen and Dee are in their offices pretending they don't hear. But they do. Gwen gives in, but Dee puts her head phones in and listens to Barry Manilow. BEANS AND CORNBREAD.