amand_r

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.

FIRST:

1. It is the middle of the night, and you wake from a dead sleep because you have to pee. You shuffle to the bathroom and don't even bother turning on the light because you know the way. While there you realise that you have to use feminine protection. You also notice that you run out of loo roll. You unwrap the loo roll and pull the old roll from the spool, and then sit there, half awake, holding the spool in one hand and the new roll in the other.

The spool is, I repeat, the spool is NOT the feminine protection that you have yet to retrieve. No, I stopped myself before it got that far, but I did wonder why it was so big around whilst I held it.

There's a moral (sp—is that spelled right? Moral? Morel? No that's a mushroom. Moral reminds me of sorrel, which always make me think of High Chapparal. Chapparal? Chaparale? Fuck. I'll quit before I start questioning the spelling of "the" and "chair") here, but I don't know who it is.

2. Watching season one of the Tudors again. Why does everyone give each other brooches? From now on, everyone's getting brooches from me.

Side note: OH HAI THAR, EXTREME HOTTNESS THAT IS JOHN RHYS-MYERS' ABS. HOLY FUCK.

3. In cleaning my house, I am stunned by the sheer amount of junk I have, in the form of bits and baubles and things that I cannot simply throw in a box and label. I have baskets and small boxes of little things that I simply don't know what to do with—things I no longer want and haven't needed in the past three years, not enough to unpack them from the basement boxes in which a great deal of them reside. I find myself pitching large quantities of crap. I want to be as light as possible.

Likewise, wow, half-price books, you are awesome.

Additionally, in going through my shelves and boxes of books in the basement, I am slowly filling a box of books marked, simply, "unread". So this year, I shall endeavor to empty that box. It's filled with contemporary novels, non fiction, and a bunch of classic lit I never got to. Like some Dickens and Orczy and even one or two poets whose volumes I purchased and never finished. I would promise not to buy any more books until I finish these, but that is foolhardy and something to which I can never hold myself. So I shan't lie that way. But it's a goal—read more. Read well. Read smartly.

That said, I read the latest Hamilton Merry Gentry book, Divine Misdemeanours. ( Hey, it's in my ereader. OMG SPOILERS )

4. OH HAI. RPF/RPS CARNIVALE THIS WEEKEND. RIGHT THE FUCK IN THIS LJ. cruentum IS SO EXCITED HE'S ABOUT TO VIBRATE THROUGH THE INTERNETS. THEN HE WILL BE THE GHOST IN THE SHELL, AND HE'LL HAUNT YOUR ISP AND WHEN YOU'RE IN THE MIDDLE OF WRITING YOUR THESIS, HE'LL REPLACE ALL THE IMAGES AND PIE CHARTS IN THE DOCUMENT WITH PICTURES OF JB'S ASS. YOU MIGHT BE AMUSED. YOUR THESIS ADVISOR AT THE ENTOMOLOGY DEPARTMENT PROBABLY WON'T BE. I think I already addressed this above, but whatevs.

Don't let that happen to you. Write for the Torchwood/Doctor Who RPF Carnivale.

5. So we have a little bit of snow in Pittsburgh this past month. So some mutherfuckers decide it's a great time to do some URBAN SKIING. My favorite is probably the Joe Montana bridge at about 4:00 to the end, and if you watch the credits you not only see some awesome FAIL, but you hear them make fun of Yinzertalk, which is always fun. (h/t emquilxy)

6. I'm in season two of the Sopranos again. How did I miss this gem? TONY: (frustrated and with finality) Cunnilingus and psychiatry have brought us to this.

Yes. Tony. Yes.

7. My TW season 4 file is corrupted or something, and it was my back up copy. I checked the original and it has no changes since last month. It's like Jesus doesn't want me to write TW anymore. Okay, Jesus.