Proof of Life

Another long day... 8 hours of work followed by choir rehearsal until 10pm. I'm ready to collapse, but I will try to write first. Just wanted to get this in before midnight, even though I don't really count the day over until I've gone to sleep. And since I don't work tomorrow, that means I still have plenty of good writing hours ahead of me tonight.

I will give you a snippet of the short story, which made me giggle, just to prove that it is not some mythical beast, but a real (if anything made up of ones and zeros in a computer might be called 'real') story.

Her mother and sister (who was a full eight years younger than she, and much like their father had been, which is to say, rather more romantic than was good for her) only saw Laknir Lodge once after she moved in. She took great care in cooking a large meal for the three of them (proving to herself, as much as her mother, that she was capable), and dragged the table outside so they could enjoy the forest in all its beauty. Her mother commented on the repairs she had done so beautifully and efficiently, and remarked that the house was both comfortable and well-cared for. Her sister complained endlessly about the journey, and that she’d developed a sore from sitting in front of mother on the saddle for over an hour. But she also noted that Flora was a most excellent cow, and spent most of the afternoon petting her and telling her what a good cow she was and a pretty cow, and how she must look after her sister who was a bit of a dope sometimes.

That's all for now, see you tomorrow.

All Aboard!

I just finished working on my short story and ended up writing over 950 words! It's up to 4 pages now, WOOHOO! Here I go, just chuggin' along: choo-ch-ch-ch-choo-ch-ch-ch WOOO-WOOO!

That was me on the writing train. I should probably sleep now.

The Short Story Continues

I want to post now before it gets much later, lest you think I've forgotten. I haven't actually done my writing for today, but I know that I'm going to work on my short story some more, so I won't share anyway. And no, I'm not going to cheat by saying that since I wrote something extra yesterday that means I don't have to write today. The idea was to write EVERY day. However, I tend to be a bit of a night owl, and since I worked all day again, my time to write is limited to the evening.
Further, I'm sorry this short story is taking so long, but it didn't occur to me that the hardest part about writing every day would simply be finding the time. I don't work that much, and I really don't do anything outside of work, so I should be virtually made of time. And yet...
I would say that I could cut back on reading books, watching shows, taking walks through the park, and browsing the internet, but all of those things are what feed my imagination. Rather than wasting time that could be spent writing, those things are what give me the drive to write what I write in the first place. So the long and short of it is, I'll finish this story when I finish it, and not a moment sooner. I haven't decided yet if you'll get to see it before it's finished. It will depend on how excited I am about it, and whether I can't wait to share that excitement.
OK, enough rambling, this was supposed to be a quick update.
Good night, and I'll see you tomorrow,
Julia

Bad Haiku

I’ve been dreading this: having to write on a Saturday. Saturdays are my longest work days, and after spending 8 hours dealing with people at the store, I want nothing more than to sit around and veg out. The absolute last thing I want to do is think coherently.

And, here’s the thing, as I said before, I have already written something yesterday to post today. So why am I taking the time to write this, especially when I’d really rather not? Well, it’s starting to feel weird posting things a day after the fact. Once it’s no longer current, who cares? Besides, I worked on my short story yesterday and wasn’t going to post anything anyway, except to tell you that I worked on my short story. Maybe I’ll compromise and let myself off the 600 word hook tonight. Maybe on Saturdays, I only have to post 300 words. There I go, making excuses again. But hey, I’ve been really good, haven’t I? And I’m only asking for a small break one day a week.

I like my short story. It’s coming together entirely different than I anticipated. Stories have a tendency to do that to me. I think I know what’s happening and where things are going, and then it all takes a sudden right hand turn and I’m left grabbing the wheel trying desperately to compensate.

And now, a haiku:

Mythbusters

Science in action

Missing eyebrow

Don’t look at me like that, you’re the one who said I should write. I blame this entirely on you. I never said I could write well, I just said I liked to do it.

Youtube videos

Asking about episodes

Never praising me

Now that was a technically correct haiku because it was 5-7-5. But seriously, that’s all people want to know about my videos. “What episode is this clip from?” This is especially true if I have already answered their question in the comments. And it seems to become more true the more I have repeated that answer. Why can’t they take five seconds to read the other comments and see if maybe I already answered their question? WHY??

OK, clearly my brain is fried. I’m going to quit while I’m ahead, and hope that tomorrow I will be able to make words into sentences again. And, you know, have them make sense.

Good night.

The Royal 'We'

I worked seven hours, exercised for an hour, ate dinner, and now I have to write something. Blah. Thank goodness I gave myself that extra day, because if I had to post something right now, I think I’d go crazy. I also don’t want to be up too late because I’m getting up at 4am to watch the Royal Wedding. (For some reason, I felt that needed to be capitalized, as though it were the title of a performance, which, let’s be honest, it will be. I mean, come on, those Brits know how to put on a show, amIright?) And why, you ask, are you going to watch this wedding at 4 am?

Let me start by saying I have shown absolutely NO INTEREST in this wedding until Wednesday evening. And then my mother told me that she remembers getting up at 3 AM to watch Diana and Charles tie the knot 30 years ago. And it suddenly occurred to me that this wasn’t the sort of thing that happens every day. We’re Americans, we don’t have royalty, so the traditions and frenzy over this wedding seems strange and archaic. But for Britain it is a celebration which unites her people. All over the world people will be watching the ceremony live, and there is something powerful about being a part of that. It makes me feel united too, even though I’ll be watching alone in my apartment. Also, I really like weddings.

I have no desire to get married, but I would like a wedding someday. Yeah, yeah don’t look at me like that. I have decided I won’t say I’ll never get married, because one shouldn’t close doors if one can help it, but that doesn’t mean I’m chomping at the bit. And I think I could arrange a party to which I wear a wedding dress when I’m rich and eccentric.

Oh, 600 words feels like agony tonight. I’m certain there were other things I wanted to write about, but I can’t think of them now. I just want to curl up, turn on Mythbusters, and fall asleep to the dulcet tones of science. I could finish this tomorrow. You wouldn’t even know. Ah the power I have. I could tell you I wrote this in twenty minutes whilst on the treadmill eating a salad, and you would have to believe me because HOW DO YOU KNOW??? OK, maybe that was a little far-fetched. And now I’m worried that you will never trust me again. I must tell you something honest.

You know that post I put up on Wednesday? At the end of it I said I was going to go to a kick boxing class. I didn’t go. My mother pointed out that it was there, in writing, I said I would go, and doesn’t that make me accountable? It should, but it didn’t. I got caught up watching this BBC show called The House of Eliott. Excellent show, I definitely recommend it. It is set in the 1920’s, and follows the Eliott sisters who are left penniless after their father’s death, and manage to open a successful dress shop. The fashion is wonderful, and the characters so delightfully British. We’ve been passing it around Otto, first to Deirdre because she had vein surgery and had to sit still for a long time, then to Annette, and finally to me. Anyway, I got caught up watching it, and didn’t go to the class. But I did exercise today, with weights and everything! I have no doubt I will have extremely sore arms. I used to have some nice muscle on my arms but now they’re just limp noodles. Is that 600 words? Yep.

Mythbusters here I come!

Julia

PS- There was no need to get up at 4AM, because nothing happened until 6AM. Still, I'm glad I watched it.

Never learned to share...

I'm just kidding, of course I learned how to share! My mother is a Kindergarten teacher, after all. I'm just not going to share what I wrote yesterday. Yet. I started a short story, but I'd like to have more than a page to show you, so I'm going to wait until I have more. You will just have to be patient. Just to tease you, it's called "The Man in the Forest" and I have a good idea how it ends, so hopefully that means I'll actually finish it.

See you tomorrow,
Julia

Update on Life

I’m already cheating. OK, maybe not cheating exactly, but let’s just say I started this project with a little cushion in case I miss a day. I wrote the first post on Sunday so that I would always be one day ahead. I’m still technically writing something every day, but if I do happen to miss a day, you won’t even notice!

This is also already proving more difficult than I thought. Yesterday, I was working on one of my perpetually unfinished novels, and suddenly found myself wasting an hour researching Greece. It wasn’t really a waste per se, because I did use that information, but it occurred to me that maybe instead of measuring my writing by number of words I should be measuring how much time I spend working on it. Sometimes I can write several pages in an hour, and sometimes it takes me that long just to eke out a paragraph. And, some days I have more time to devote than others… Listen to me, already making excuses. I will do absolutely anything to soften the blow of failure despite the fact that I haven’t even failed yet.

It never ceases to amaze me how much I try to save myself from feeling anything, while at the same time, I crave emotional experience through safe outlets like books and television and movies. When I finish a show (or ‘project’ as James used to call it when I was living with him and Kathleen) I mourn the loss of the characters as though they were real friends. In fact, I read an article on that very subject. I probably won’t be able to find it again, but the gist of it was that we use the same parts of our brain to engage with fictional characters as we do with real people, and therefore the relationships we share with them are just as ‘real’ as our real life relationships. The article even mentioned that when a show ends we enter a sort of mourning process in which we genuinely miss those characters like we would miss our friends. No wonder people are so nuts over celebrities. We connect to the characters they play and find difficulty in separating the two in our minds.

Anyway, enough melancholy nonsense. Let me tell you what else has been happening in my life. On Sunday, I took the opportunity which good weather and being off work provided by walking around the park. I hadn’t really meant to walk the whole park (which is a 5k run, by the way) but I missed the turn off, and by the time I got to another I figured it was probably just faster to continue around since I would most likely get lost otherwise. I walked again on Monday, though not the whole park this time, but plenty to get my heart rate up and make me wish I had a teleporter. I know for a lot of people exercising can feel wonderful. They reach a certain point and all their endorphins kick in and they get this amazing high and feel like they could go on forever. I’m not one of them. I reach a point where I just wish I was home in bed and why did I come out here in the first place and goodness me my legs are tired. On Tuesday morning (which is yesterday from your perspective because of course I’m writing this a day ahead of when you will see it) I got out of bed and had to do the Frankenstein monster shuffle just to get to the bathroom because I’m so sore. But it seems to be working because I had to eat four times on Monday just to keep up with my jump-started metabolism. I must remember to pick up snacks when I get groceries today. And on Wednesday I am going to take a Kick-boxing class at the YMCA. The same class I’ve wanted to take since I joined the Y a year ago, but this time I’m actually going to do it. Wish me luck.

Julia