February Sweeps - Day 384

I did two story pitches in the last twenty-four hours.  Not professional pitches, but just telling others about two story ideas and getting their opinion.  The first was to Big Anklevich as he was stuck in the car driving home from work last night.  There was a story contest I saw with a premise I thought I could get behind, and I told him my idea.  Unfortunately, I later discovered that it was one of those writing contests where there's a fee for you to enter it, and I'll admit that that deflated my excitement quite a bit (Big likened it to a vanity press saying, "You pay us and we'll publish your book!").  He did suggest I write it anyway, not necessarily for the contest, but I have SOOOOOOO many works-in-progress that will never get completed that it seems foolhardy to even consider that.*

The other pitch was today, to that twin that I have been pestering, telling her I had come up with a twin-centric story for her.  About halfway through the pitch, she said, "Wait, where is this from?  This is something you've made up?"  I couldn't tell if she was impressed or disgusted (probably the latter), but it was a pretty darn good idea, if I do say so my own self, and later, I came up with the way it could end, but didn't quite dare bother her with it, since she seemed less-than-impressed that I came up with a story about her and her sister.** 

Push-ups Today: 50
Push-ups In February: 1822

I came to the library and found almost no one here (my suspicion is that young people have exciting and fun things to do on Friday afternoons, and they're off doing them), and sat down in the exact same chair I sat in yesterday.  But yesterday, I was annoyed to discover that the legs were uneven in the chair and I rocked back and forth as though there was a hole in the floor or something.  Of course, I am far too lazy to get up and sit somewhere else, despite this chair rocking to a John Cougar Mellencamp song only it hears.

I got very little writing done in my time at the library.  Although, in my defense, I did write up notes on my story "Identical" (although it might be better to call it "Exact Duplicate"), so that, a year from now, when I stumble upon the file, I say, "Oh, I had completely forgotten about that idea!"***

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In February: 1963

I saw somebody online mention how much they loved the song "Drivers License" on Wednesday or Thursday, and remembered hearing a few seconds of a song called that after leaving my cousin's house Tuesday night (playing 9s and 10s to stay awake until the icy road did it for me).  I checked out the song myself, frankly pretty dubious, since the singer/songwriter was born in 2003 (she turns eighteen tomorrow.  Whoa).  

But to my surprise, "Drivers License" by Olivia Rodrigo, which is apparently the biggest hit song of . . . the 21st Century? . . . completely wrecked me.  It didn't matter that I have stains on my pillowcase older than Olivia Rodrigo or that I've been around way more than twice her lifetime (while only racking up a third of her life experience, oddly), the song totally spoke to me and broke my heart.  And I've listened to it a dozen or more times since, like a fudgin' Zoomer.

My whole life I've been afraid of saying I love something, because you put yourself out there when you do ("Holy smoke, I love SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE."  "That movie's gay and so are you."), and it's so much easier to just say you hate something (which I do often . . . maybe too often).  But dude, I'm old enough now (I've started getting those Reed Richards white streaks in my hair right above my ears) that I need to just own what I love and give as few shits as possible that people feel differently.

So, hey, I'm a fan of this song, even with that awkward "insecure" in the second verse.  I guess it's like my unabashed love for Taylor Swift, that Ed Sheeran song where he says "grass" but makes it sound like "cross," or PEARL HARBOR (which I apologized to Kate Beckinsale for asking to autograph the poster of), or just last week talking about that "Golem and the Jinni" book, or JENNIFER'S BODY, or the greatest movie ever made, 1987's MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE.  Except the last one is kind of meant to be funny, even though it probably isn't.**** 

Words Today: 550
Words In February: 13,770

Christ, I'm gonna keep talking.  We always--we old people, I mean--always talk about how worthless and stupid teenagers are (I know, I do it too), and how their feelings aren't real feelings, their life experiences aren't real life experiences, and when they get older and grow up they'll understand that all that drama in high school was for nothing.*****

But at the same time . . . it is real.  The teenage years tend to be (a generalization, yeah) when you fall in love for the first time, break up for the first time, make new friends and lose them, and experience so much newness that I can forgive them for all the noise and melodrama.  I remember what that was like . . . because it was five minutes ago.

And this girl, Olivia Rodrigo, really seems to be feeling it in the song (whether that's manufactured by her billion-dollar record label or not).  I believe it when I hear the song, and that's half the work right there.  And I feel it too, even though her experience is surely 99% different than my own (or lack thereof).

Part of me will never get over my bitterness about my teenage years (and believe me, I've enough bitterness to fill a Smiths album, two Counting Crows singles, plus a Fallout Boy EP), and that may be why I'm always writing about teenagers.  In a lot of ways, I never evolved past that stage of development--I'm still that kid that wanted to cry because the Eighties were over and I never got to do anything in them.

I'm never going to be a successful writer, I realize that.  But I'm gonna keep writing my "little stories" (as my dad called them), because that's what keeps me sane(ish), and because it gives me purpose and a feeling of control in my life.  And maybe, just maybe, somebody will read one of them one day and say, "Wow, that was really excellent, and exactly what I wanted/needed to read tonight."  You never know.

Yes, this is what you think it is.

*I got this idea on the drive to the library just now of doing an Outcast episode where I talk about unfinished stories/novels, and read either Edgar Allan Poe's last incomplete story or one of my own, or both.  Still think there's something there worth talking about.

**I had told her, a month or so back, "I'm gonna write a story about it, about identical twins," but she must not have considered the icky implications of that.  And by icky, I mean, absolutely no implications whatsoever.  

***Stephen King would tell you that, if you forget about an idea for a story, then it wasn't that good an idea to begin with.  According to him, it's the ideas that nag at you, over and over, to write them, that make the best stories.  And I'll bet Big Anklevich would agree with him.

****When I first saw it in 1999, I proclaimed it to be the GOAT, and it upset my roommate so much I've never not said it since.

*****I often talk about the one production of "Romeo & Juliet" that I went to in college, and how the director said (in the program) that the titular characters were a couple of naïve, pubescent know-nothings that threw away their lives for no reason at all, and how wrong-headed letting someone like that direct the greatest romance in stage history seemed to me at the time (and even more so to me today . . . like whenever I'd hear Jack Sholder, the director of NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2 [and about five other horror films] complain that he hated Horror, and yet the only jobs he got offered were in that genre and how I'd think, "You ungrateful knob.  Stop doing horror movies and go on the effing dole then, and let somebody who loves that subject matter take over), but I still was both thrilled and moved by it, regardless of the director's attempt to screw over his own production.