less than this

So, I heard a rumor today that my father is planning, at some point in the near-ish future, to disband our Verizon Family Plan. Which is to say that right now my father, brother, sister and I are all sharing minutes on a single plan and thus sharing the costs. The total phone bill for each of us comes out to between $25 and $35 (depending on texting plans &c.) and because the bulk of minutes used are "IN-Network" we never get near our "anytime" minutes limits. Like, we use a couple hours of anytime minutes a month between the four of us. Anyway, these rates are obviously somewhat lower than the cheapest plans offered by any of the major carriers.

(more...)

Based on evidence available to anyone living in my head in the last couple of days, and especially in the last half hour, I feel confident concluding that the new ham has it well within its power to give me a headache, simply by being ingested.

I will conduct an additional Ham Experiment (Ham Experiment #4) tomorrow, in which I will test the control group of "No f_cking ham for lunch" to rule out the last possible variable: the pre-sliced Tillamook cheese. My "No f_cking ham for lunch" sandwich will likely consist of said cheese and a thick layer of bread and butter pickles, each of which I have eaten dozens of pounds of in the past with no ill effect. Then, perhaps this weekend, I will conduct the "Ham overdose" wherein I will just eat a handful of the stuff and see if my brain explodes out the back of my head.

Also of note: Much of NIN is incompatible with a headache.

(Of note to those of you who didn't receive this as an email earlier today: I had a terrible migraine for about 8 hours on Sunday, starting a little while after the first time I ate this ham. It is the first real migraine I have had in a very long time, possibly since I had one triggered by some mocha flavoured ice cream at Cold Stone Creamery - to which I have not returned since. I don't like migraines much. On the other hand, I may slowly be building up an immunity to the ham. Each day's headache has been less intense than the previous day's.)

I tried to start a post last night, but failed to write more than a couple sentences, and failed to do anything with those. I did happen to be watching a very strange movie at the time, and it was late and I was tired, but I'm not sure those are really any good, as far as excuses go. Anyway, I've brought my iBook to the desk in my room with the intention of working on some fiction, so here's the post which serves temporarily as procrastination. I suppose all I need to do to succeed at something is to set my mind on doing something else, and with any luck my advanced procrastination will get everything done.

Heck, at this rate, I'll probably get around to cleaning the kitchen soon! (Probably not tonight - I've been having a heck of a migraine.)

Came across another "new" website tonight. 1000keyboards.com, a website for authors and readers, sortof Web2.0 (if that really means anything) site built around short fiction. Alas, by "short fiction" they mean stories not less than 800 words and not more than 1000 words. That's a pretty slim target, and a pretty small goal. Ooh, here's what Wikipedia has to say with regard to the length of short stories (I know, I could go change it if I wanted to, but it isn't exactly wrong), emphasis mine:

Determining what exactly separates a short story from longer fictional formats is problematic. A classic definition of a short story is that one should be able to be read it in one sitting, a point most notably made in Edgar Allan Poe's essay "The Philosophy of Composition" (1846). Other definitions place the maximum word length at 7,500 words. In contemporary usage, the term short story most often refers to a work of fiction no longer than 20,000 words and no shorter than 1,000.

Anyway, the short stories I've been writng lately have fallen generally above 7,500 words and under 20,000 words, so I figure I'm just being ... verbose. Or something. I had just been writing what felt right at the time. One of them I'd hoped would be a novel, but came out short, only around 10,000 words. Another one I thought would be short, but it seemed to have a life of its own and came out around 10,000 words. The vampire story I'm working on now, which is broken up into small chapter-like sections, appears to be on track for around 10,000 words. And then there's the one I believe will end up being the titular story of the collection I'm planning on putting them all in. It's over 12,000 words and I have no idea where it's going or how long it plans on taking to arrive there. Hrm... looking around at other people's ideas of what a short story is, most people agree that the 800-1000 word pinhole of this site is shorter than they would prefer. Better than certain other sites with 1024 character limits (Ugh), but still a little on the shy side. I've been writing poetry in a little spiral-bound journal, nothing over one side of one page, no planning, and many of those poems probably go over the 1024 character limit.

Actually, looking at what other people think of when they think of writing is ... somewhat disturbing for me. I should know better. It almost always is. What other authors have to say about writing... I just don't think that way, I don't operate that way, I don't want to operate that way. In talking about the difference between the novel and the short story, they assume more intention and vision in a novel than I tend to have in my short fiction, but they're using novels as the example of the looser, more easy-going, less strictly planned and with the least direct intent of the two. Whenever people start talking or writing about "themes" I cringe -often physically- at the concept. I don't connect with that at all. Not in my stories, not in my novels, not even in my art. I'm not trying to express a theme, I'm not intending to illuminate any particular idea or an emotion most of the time, and there isn't really a deeper meaning behind my work. About half the time I had an idea of something (("What would it be like to interact with the rest of the world if one were travelling backwards trhrough time? How would that play out?" or "In a world where Jesus will forgive anyone of their sins and all they have to do is believe in Him, what possible role could a Sin Eater play? Is there a use for such a being?")), the other half the time I don't have any ideas at all, but either way I just do the same thing: I sit down (at a computer, or typewriter, or pad of paper, whatever) and I let the story come out however it wants, and I do my best not to interfere with it by planning it out or thinking beyond the phrasing of the current sentence or the selection of a word from a thesaurus (mental or digital), and then read it later to see what happened.

And sometimes it's long, and sometimes it's short, and usually people tell me they saw interesting themes in it and they talk about the deeper meanings and the social and political references and I play along. Sometimes I'll go back and re-read what I've written and try to think of what people will make up about it, or to come up -retroactively- with some sort of intention or point. Other times I'll just integrate what various people have suggested with some random garbage I think will make people feel good and spout it at whoever asks. Mostly I don't like to talk about my work at all, because ... I haven't much to say of any value. Not about the content. I mean, I could go on and on, but... it seems hollow. Or maybe not. I don't know, why don't you listen to me talk about my stuff sometime and tell me what YOU think. How can I be an accurate judge of my own interpretations of my work, especially if my basic interpretation is that there is no correct interpretation?

Alright, my head hurts again, I quit for now.

((Of note, the body of this post is over 1100 words. In case you wanted an idea of how long 1000 words is. I didn't do it on purpose - in fact, I had about twice as much to say, but my head hurts.))

I have been fighting with various versions of Moveable Type, trying to get the darn thing to work properly, and having a heck of a time. This post is basically just to test stuff, see what's working, what's not.

Every time I think I'm about to be able to be open and honest and not give a second thought about ... whether what I say is okay to say... Things change. Hopes, washed away. Expectations and realities inconsistent. Realistic and unrealistic expectations alike, unmet and unequaled.

I have supposed to be writing. Last week, this long weekend, writing. But there is pressure, pre-emptive stress, internal conflict, and things have not gone to plan. And things not going to plan -writing and elsewise- diminish my ability to relax, to concentrate, to focus or to create. Poetry, fiction, even the ability to journal have been disenchanted, placed justoutof reach.

I say, I know, if I sit down at a blank page, a typewriter, a text input field of one sort or another, words come. The words are always there, waiting just behind my fingertips, waiting in the folds of my brain, waiting for me to give them a chance to face the world. In the last month I've tried writing here, I've tried saying something about my life, but without actually forcing myself to sit down in front of an input window I have been able to avoid actually writing anything. If there are other tabs in the browser, information to surf, to search, updated this or that, new sites to discover and explore, more and more and more than I could ever absorb, it's easy to do that until I pass out, without a word written. If I can avoid bringing up the webpage to write into at all, that's half a step further away.

Even the window I'm writing into now is a form of procrastination, avoidance, separation from the window behind it, the one I'm supposed to be developing fiction, characters, a family, their lives, their experiences into. A story I'd hoped would be book length seems to be pointing towards being a short story instead, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be written. And writing it is what I am not doing by writing this. You've read this before, a hundred times before.

((I've been thinking of going through my online journal and collecting my entries into a series of books. Not exhaustive, not every post, but -for example- start with the most intense and emotional posts and/or the posts to and about Sara for a start. Perhaps a collection about writing, all the thousands of words I've written about writing, about not writing, about putting off writing, and this. Perhaps. It can be compelling reading, I know, and it is true, true memoir sells, yes?))

So, in brief, I have not been writing because:

I failed to remain celibate, almost immediately, and in an on-going fashion.

I have been quite depressed, avoiding most social contact, turning inward and too deep in it to see much else.

I have been feeling defeatist about my own failure to market/sell my books & art, and know that "blogging" about it is not really going to work on its own.

I am still somewhat involved with Mandy, but we ... we don't really know what it is, or where it's going, or what, so it's hard to talk about. (I am at her flat right now, for example.)

I have been having difficulty focusing, concentrating, and more - I have been so scatterbrained that I haven't written much until this break, nor worked on art nor much of anything else in months and months and months.

So.

I always say I'll keep trying, right? So I'm saying it again: I'm going to try to write more. Here, and for my new stories and books. I'm going to try to work on art again. My brain wants to do something with tens of thousands of tiny, unique stickers, applied either to something vast and/or something sculptural, inspired by the stickers I've recently ordered from moo.com. I'm going to try to not give up on whatever is going on with Mandy as we move into her new school & new school year and into my trying to be productive again and not going too much more mad.

I have been very reluctant and dismissive for years of the suggestions and assistance which has been offered to me with re: marketing my art and my books. Please do not let me be. Force me to try. Make me go talk to Bookman's, to Changing Hands, to go around to the independent book sellers in town and see if they will carry a local author's books. Suggest publications to read, publications to submit my short fiction to, workshops, meetings, whatever, and if I dismiss them, put them in my hands. Put it in front of my face. Help me learn to ... to have faith in myself. Because the real problem is that I don't believe I'm good enough. The problem is that I worry that I'll walk into Bookman's and talk to them about putting my books in the Local Authors section and they'll laugh at me or dismiss me or worse. The problem is that I've been so effectively discouraged by other people's horror stories about rejection after rejection that I've never even tried - I've not sent a single short story or poem, let alone a novel, to a publisher, not ever. If the most brilliant writers were rejected hundreds of times, for years and decades and sometimes until after their deaths, what chance have I got? That's my thinking, and I don't know how to break out of it any time soon without your help.

Alright, I'm going to go try to write some more of this bizarre vampire story. Later, I'll be at the Art Walk. Tomorrow, I'll be in Pine, doing hard work, and then it's another work week. Gotta keep going.