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.

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:

emquilxy sends me all kinds of awesome shit in snailmail, and this article on Japanese knives was no exception. Better than the article, though, which features Masaharu Morimoto talking about knives and showing off his mad skills, is the set of pictures below, and my cousin's commentary on a picture of him slicing a daikon radish in a very specialised way:

( HOLY FIRKING SHIT. )

The only thing that tops this is the time she sent me a review of Villas's book, Pig, and drew an arrow to the cover and wrote, "I KNOW THAT." If you're a True Blood fan, it will take a minute but say it in your head in your best drunk Andy Bellefleur voice.