Back to the cabin already. It was raining like a sunny day in Oregon when I woke up this morning, and my mom was aghast that I was still going to the cabin* but I know it's going to be too cold soon (she pressured my brother to winterize this place already, just in case it freezes early), and I'll miss the heck out of it.
It was cold when I got here, and it's cold now. I finally brought my Robert E. Howard Conan book with me (which I'd been promising Tom Tancredi I'd do all summer), and sat down on the couch to record a story . . . and promptly fell asleep. Heck, if I were smart, I'd delete that whole twenty minute recording and do the first chapter again, because I know it'll be mostly infuriating, unusable outtakes.
I sat down before I'd even turned on the electricity or tried (and failed) to make a fire in the stove and wrote a couple of paragraphs on my Dead & Breakfast Christmas story. I think what I need to do is go outside and shovel gravel tomorrow, and see if I can't think of three ghost scenarios I could write about in the story. But since I'm still writing every darn day, I may not have that luxury.
Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In October: 662
I did sit down and re-record the first four sections of "Underdecorated," and I started editing the new stuff today. The main character of Katianna, who is (I believe) sixteen, is pretty cold and selfish and unlikeable, and I know that I played that up in my narration. But I wonder if I went too far with it.
I remember Jamie Lee Curtis telling us at a screening of HALLOWEEN in Hollywood that she went to see the film with friends when it came out in 1978, and at one point, when Laurie Strode stupidly decided to go back into danger toward the end of the film, one theatergoer shouted at the screen, "You stupid bitch, you deserve to get killed!" We all laughed, but ever since that day, I've sat up and paid attention to what I call You Stupid Bitch You Deserve To Die moments (I've probably even talked about it on this blog).
I'm currently reading (in between Walt Disney sessions) a Sarah J. Maas (YA?) Fantasy book with a super-willful female protagonist who is utterly incapable of taking the advice of others or keep out of other people's business, and there have been two or three moments in the book where I have shouted, "You stupid bitch, you deserve to die!" which is how I always say it.
And you see where I'm going here, right? Katianna is headstrong and insensitive, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if that audience member shouted the same thing when reading my story. See, she's supposed to learn a lesson in the story, so I had her be self-absorbed and kinda catty when we first meet her, but she discovers a bit of steel and compassion within herself as the story goes along. By the end, I would hope that the audience no longer roots for her death, and wants her to succeed in something.
You never know, though. The Sarah Maas book (this is the first of her works I've ever read) almost had me turning it off early on, when someone tells the protagonist, "Whatever you do, don't light a candle at midnight and turn around three times while chanting 'Ricardo Montalban!'" and guess what she goes and does thirty seconds after the old housekeeper tells her this? I'd hate to be responsible for that sort of thing . . . except I didn't turn it off. Or at least, not for long.
Push-ups Today: 100
Push-ups In October: 790
Unfortunately, I didn't get any more words written before I got too tired. You see, I forced myself to finish the Howard Conan story, and it was a super long one (I'm sure, when it first appeared in a pulp magazine, they touted it as a "new novel by Robert E. Howard!" on the cover), and this may amuse you, it got darker and darker in the room the longer I went, making it harder and harder to narrate. I had my phone plugged into my laptop in the other room, and I could hear it connecting through the wall, and every time it did, the lights dimmed a little (so strange, but I guess we're at the time of the year where the solar collectors don't get enough sun to keep everything going all at once.
Words Today: 552
Words In October: 3885
*I swear, one day she's going to drive up on a day I'm not here and see an entire harem of blow-up dolls all sitting around a table having tea and say, "Ah, so that's why he comes up here so often."
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