Things.

• Crackfic / WAKING MAGIC is now 11k and growing. If this turns into another book, I will be disgusted with myself but quite happy. I mean…seriously. Pissed-off warrior-fairy with shark teeth, gender-swapping, combining magic with bioengineering…what the hell was I drinking when I came up with this?
• Agent blogs are not conducive to finishing work. (Neither is this one, but I waited until I was caught up to post. So nyeh.)
• I’m currently dripping from countless orifices (well, okay, only my nose and eyes). It’s like being a baby again. All the little buggers do is sit there and drip all over everything.
• I’m at once amused and disappointed that so many people retweeted this post, but only one commented. Thank you to everyone who retweeted, though. I wasn’t expecting that kind of response.
• I’ve decided that I’m going to enter ABNA 2010. Probably with the crackfic, not SB – assuming I can finish and edit the crackfic in time. SB…I’m still up in the air about what to do with that, pending response from agents with fulls.
• Still haven’t started proofreading the rewrite. Been too busy reading friends’ manuscripts, plus I want a little more distance from it. Okay, I’m scared of it. Just because it’s rewritten doesn’t mean it’s better, and who knows, this version may end up on the scrap heap.
• Kerry is a bloody awesome writer. I’ll be finishing her manuscript today, after work. There are penguins. Quiver in fear.
• Going to Cirque du Soleil tonight. I’m not sure what to expect, but the show previews had a definite Vaudeville feel. Looking forward to a night out, especially when it appeals to both my cultured and baser pleasures: theatre, well-stocked with man-candy.
• Charles de Lint’s THE BLUE GIRL is a gorgeously written book, and I’m enjoying the hell out of it.
• Everyone’s so quiet. Sihaya, Lessa, Indikaze, etc…granted, it might help if I said something worth responding to.

That’s all.

Hybrid.

This crackfic shouldn’t be so fun to write. I almost wish it was one of my “serious” projects; if only they all came this easily. Then again I often think if it’s easy, I’m doing something wrong. Part of the fun is the work; writing is one of those things where I enjoy the struggle. I enjoy driving myself batshit, glaring at things, stomping around muttering under my breath and cursing like a sailor, ranting and railing and chasing Hikaru into the office with my frothing until I finally rip an answer to my problem out of my skull (along with a few clumps of hair). Writing can be damned hard, but it’s the effort that makes it so satisfying.

But it’s also satisfying to relax, take a break, and write some sheerly stupid crackfic. I don’t need my brain for this; while I work on this, my brain cells are off recharging. It’s like Gatorade for the grey matter; crackfic even comes with electrolytes. A friend’s read it and said it’s not as fluffy-silly as I think it is, though. It’s taken on a darker overtone: post-apocalyptic sci-fi with a touch of fey magic and a little Shinto animism. It actually reminds me a little of Spirited Away, though the environments are totally different. Maybe Spirited Away meets Bladerunner meets David the Gnome meets the Kowloon Walled City.

Insert some random line here about four things meeting to becoming a crossroads, juncture, etc. Who cares. It’s crack. It’s pixie stix snorted up the nose until you’re dizzy and singing “Jingle Bells” in some obscure Pushtu dialect. I love it.

I may post excerpts here. Not sure.

Pondering entering ABNA next year. I really don’t know. There were some bad snafus on Amazon’s part this year, only escalated by Amazon personnel handling it very poorly. Many people ended up disgruntled, disenchanted, and insulted. Part of me says I should shun the contest on principle. Part of me can’t help but wonder if I’d have a better chance this year, as now rather than one $25,000 prize/contract there are two $15,000 prizes/contracts: one in Adult fiction, one in Young Adult. Part of me wonders when I started having Principles (note the oh-so-illustrious capital P).

We’ll see. I’ll think about it. Still holding off on a lot of decisions, waiting for certain things. I should know by the end of the year what I want to do, and how I plan to do it.

Christmas is coming soon. I’m not really all that down with the jingle, but y’know, I wouldn’t say no to a pet Spock wrapped up in a nice little bow.

On a more personal note:

A few months ago I ran into my ex-boyfriend from a very long time ago; I first met him during what was basically my second childhood, when I escaped the restrictions of family’s censure to go a little wild with the wannabe-goth image and pranced around flaunting my long hair and black nail polish and all those other things that are just too much of a pain to bother with now. I wanted to be dark, I wanted to be dangerous, I wanted to be badass, and I apparently enjoyed taking three hours to get dressed. So did he, so we fit each other. We fueled each others’ youthful daydreams, and for a while, all was good.

Naturally we broke up, things being the way they are. The inconstancy of youth and the impermanence of relationships based on mental retardation, etc. So when we ran into each other again, it was a bit of a surprise. A pleasant one; it was nice to know he was all right. In the many years since the demise of our relationship, I’ve outgrown the kind of overdramatic idiocy we used to indulge in. I no longer need to slink around trying to look dark, I no longer care who thinks I’m a beautiful boy or not, and I’ve had enough boyfriends confess their “true vampiric nature” to me that I’ve seriously pondered staking them just to get them to shut up. I don’t find it edgy to make everything about sex anymore; I find it dull, immature, tedious, and a bit crass. I’m still an idiot, but I’m not that kind of idiot anymore. I’ve matured – at least, I hope. I assumed my ex had, as well…that with adulthood, he’d grown past childish fancies to achieve stability and adult graces while retaining his creativity.

I was wrong. I’m not going to bash him by detailing how I was wrong; suffice to say Dramatic Things Happened that led to a nasty, shocking realization:

He’s no different than he was 8-9 years ago.

He’s still the Rebel Without a Clue, who thinks it makes him cool to not be able to hold down a retail job because of his authority issues. He’s the Eric Cartman who flips the middle finger when asked to bag groceries. He thinks he’s badass because he can’t keep friends; they “just don’t get him” (or why he’s sitting at McDonald’s filing his fingernails to points and talking about his dark hungers – the desperate desire for hot, juicy meat, the need to stalk his terrified prey: the McGriddle). He constantly talks about how dark and twisted he is, with a kind of pride that borders on desperate grasping because he doesn’t have anything else. Even while trying to talk big…he jumps to obey his current boyfriend and do the housework with an almost slavish obedience, because without the current boyfriend he’d be out on the street. You go, Lestat. Scrub that bathtub. Make sure you get in the corners of the grout; vampires hate mildew.

When I look at him I ask myself, “What happened? How can he still live in this altered version of reality and think it’s in any way viable? Why hasn’t he grown up? Was he dropped on his head as a baby? Or last week?”

And right now you may be asking yourself: Why the hell am I blathering about this on my writing blog?

Before you answer anything to do with LSD, it’s mainly because I can’t help but see the differences in us now – both of us in our late twenties, me a pragmatic, cynical writer who’s vaguely flailing around in the adult end of the pool, him a stifled man-child splashing in the kiddie pool with vampire bats stencil-painted onto his rubber floaties. It’s like the Lewis Black of the literary world meeting Gary Oldman’s rendition of Dracula cast as an unemployed mid-twenties loser. I shiver a little when I look at him and think, if not for the fact that I started writing, that could’ve been me. Well…maybe not. He and I are entirely different personalities, and even back then I found him a little ludicrous.

Who am I kidding, anyone who stretches their sibilants to sound like a snake is a frickin’ idiot.

But the point is…I channeled all my daydreams into stories. I separated them from myself, consigned them to fiction, and grew up while still having an outlet for all the silly, fantastical things I used to wish for as a boy. I think in some ways the time I spent with the ex helped to shape me as a writer, because he gave me an outlet to explore my creativity. But it was just that: an outlet and an exploration, not the foundation for a way of life that would end up ultimately crippling me because I believed my own fantasies.

I think a key thing to learn as a writer is how to separate your fantasies from reality – not just so you don’t end up a stunted man-child, but so you can edit yourself, improve your craft, and avoid a vacation in the psych ward. If you’re too in love with the fantasies you’ve written, if you want too much for them to be real, then you won’t be able to stand being as brutal as you need to be to shape those fantasies from self-fulfilling drek into a story with real plot and purpose. It’s sort of the same as being able to separate your fantasies from real life to shape yourself into a mature adult with goals, responsibilities, and common sense. Self-editing doesn’t just apply to writing; it applies to life, and to learning appropriate behavior in a society that requires some form of cooperation for it – and you – to survive. Individualism is one thing, something to be encouraged and applauded…but blatant immaturity, also known as “special snowflake syndrome,” is just stupid.

Eh. This is just meandering without much point or purpose, and no real end goal in mind. I’ve spilled my troubled thoughts, and now I’m off to find a good movie, curl up, and relax. To sum up:

Don’t be a damned Mary Sue. Not in your stories, and not in your life.