August Sweeps - Day 198

 That's what my heart yearns for now, love and pride.

Today's the day I'll either finish "Hatchling," or discover it's not over yet, even at 32,000 words.  Or, I'll get into some kind of accident, and death will save me from having to work.

I decided to hike up a mountain again today, despite it being August, and in the high nineties out there.  Maybe I did have a death wish, some kind of psychological glitch that wants me to keel over with heat exhaustion instead of finish this story.  It may be the same mental saboteur that wants me to be forever alone.

Regardless, I hiked up the mountain for the third time this year, and though I sweated like crazy and had to sit down and drink part of my water on the way up, I made it up (and down) faster than I ever have before.  

The sunset was pretty, but when isn't it?

I think you could've filled a Mason jar with the amount of sweat I produced.

Charming, ain't it?

There were a lot of hikers up the mountain today, including some really attractive young people, going up when I was almost down--despite the fact that it was now nearly dark.  The first time I ever hiked up there, about twenty-five years ago, it was at night, but I've never gone at night again since.  Next time I do so, I'll do it at night.

I talked to Big today, wondering whether I should end the story where I'm thinking of ending it, or if it should continue.  Big remembered me saying that the story had stopped being about the titular hatchling and was now about two young people who fall in love, then lose that love, and that if that was what the story was about, then the ending was fine.  Finally, I decided just to write it, and if it felt like the end, the end it would be.

Well, I went ahead and wrote it, and I didn't know how I would end it--with dialogue, with a "they all lived happily ever after," with a kiss, or just with a look.  Turns out, it was with a couple of lines back and forth, and then . . . it only felt natural to type "the end."*

Big Anklevich told me how it felt to finish his second novel for the year this week.  The way he described it is how I feel when the prettiest girl in the room/town/world makes eye contact with me.  Of course, she always breaks the eye contact to look elsewhere, but I take what I can get.  Big asked me if I still get such a thrill from finishing my short stories.  Honestly, it's the same whether it's a story or a novel.  But like the end of a sweet vacation, there looms the frown-inducing knowledge that it all starts again tomorrow, and I'm basically back to one.

Sit-ups Today: 50
Sit-ups In August: 2859

This is also the first day that the writing was easier than the sit-ups.  After hiking for miles (and so strenuously), I got a leg cramp doing my sit-ups and had to stop.  I waited for the pain to subside, then I started up the exercise again, and my leg cramp came back, along with a smaller one in my other leg.  I took that for a sign and quit for the night.  Then I found I couldn't stand up because my leg hurt so much.  I think it's just overworking the leg muscles, but I can't say for sure.  We'll see if I'm good as new tomorrow.

Words Today: 1019
Words In August: 15,845

*I don't know why I refuse to capitalize those two words, but it has become something personal to me, to have lower case "the end" as the final bit of each story.  Then I'll usually write "A Word About The Story," and do a little author's note.  I've done it so many times that I'd hate to depart from that, even for novelty's sake.

August Sweeps - Day 197

 

Another day, another zero words.

I don't know how a real writer does it, facing the reset word counter (ie, the blank screen) day in and day out.  Except of course, a real writer has the promise of owning their own home waiting on the horizon.  

Big Anklevich finished another novel yesterday ("The Gauntlet"), which makes his second for the year.  I don't know if I would feel better about all this if I had finished two novels this year (instead of just one*), but I have to pretend that it's not a competition between us, but I'm only competing against myself.  And I've easily doubled the amount of words written in a year already, and it's only mid-August.  Still, if I never publish any of it, it's not as much of an achievement, is it?  Kind of like when they say "Pics or it didn't happen" on the internet.

I guess I'll just publish "Three-Time Visitor" with a temporary cover again, and maybe Gino will help me with a better one down the line.  I need to just do that with everything: publish it with an imperfect--or even crappy--cover, and upgrade when I can (or want to).  Then I'll go on to the next project.  Perhaps then I'll feel a modicum of solace.

Yeah, I nearly said "quantum of solace," but you know, that phrase makes just as little sense today as it did ten years ago.

I had to reboot my desktop computer the other day (I should've thrown it against the wall years ago, but I use it too much), and when MS Word restarted, it hadn't saved the work-in-progress I had on there, even though it always does, even garbage I thought I'd deleted months ago.  It's stuff like that that mires down the creative process even more than it usually is, boys and girls.

I told Big that I could probably finish "Hatchling" today if I wanted to, and we'd both have a book done (although mine is about 32,000 words, instead of the requisite 40,000 to be considered a novel by the Hugos).  But I'm much less focused on length than most people (and I'd have to be).

Which reminds me, I'm getting closer to done with Patrick Rothfuss's "Wise Man's Fear," and I keep noticing long meandering parts that feel like they should've been trimmed but weren't.  I guess there are people who underwrite then fill in (like me, though I need to learn to do it better) and those who overwrite then cut down (which I guess is preferred).  I am well aware that I'll never write a hundred thousand word novel (Big's is at 120,485, to be exact), but like Fred Savage said, "I don't mind so much."

I'm now at the park--the same park where I saw my first post-pandemic wedding months ago.  And to my surprise, there's one going on right across the way right now.  The bride is in white, getting her picture taken, the groom is standing by the duck pond, looking bored, and there are two photographers milling about.  You know, I think this is just the wedding photos, not the wedding itself, but it amuses me that it's being done beside what my nephews and I refer to as "the dirty pond."  It's a filthy brown pond filled with ducks, duck poop, feathers, and various trash fish.  

In my idea this week for a Natalie-centric "Dead & Breakfast" story, she goes off to do a photoshoot for some bridal magazine, and gets made up, her hair done, holds thousand dollar flower arrangements, and a dress that costs more, and is swept up in the magic of it all.  It's probably a pretty dumb idea for a story, but I'm reminded of two things: 1) it was Cary Grant who said, "If I don't at least fall in love a little bit with my co-star, then I'm not doing my job," and 2) I worked on a pilot that never went anywhere, where a pretty blonde girl sat next to me for three hours, and even though I didn't even get her name, it was one of the most enjoyable days doing extra work that I experienced.

My priority, as soon as I finish "Hatchling" (which honestly, could've been today, if I'd let the damn kids stay a little longer), should be to finish the long D&B story, but I am tempted to write this shorter one, just to see what Natalie's heartache would feel like.  We'll see.

My cousin came over to see JURASSIC PARK with me tonight.  The local theater (which was going to open in mid-July and show MAD MAX: FURY ROAD) finally opened yesterday.  And they're doing that half-price thing, which will encourage me to go see more movies.  

It was cool to see JP on the big screen again (it had been about twenty years, and I never got to see it when it was new), and you tend to notice things when you're in the theater that you don't notice on video (for example, the scene where Sam Neill sits down on the grass after seeing his first dinosaur was obviously not the first take, as he had grass stains on the seat of his pants already, something I'd never spied before).  I enjoyed trying to figure out which shots used the animatronic dinosaurs and which shots were CG, since most of them are done so well it's hard to tell.  It made me want to see the other Jurassic films as well, even the bad one.

This was the first time I'd seen JP since reading the book last year, and I was surprised that they left in the scene where Hammond and Arnold talk about "the lysine contingency," because it goes absolutely nowhere in the film.  Its a holdover from the book, I guess, but it's a few lines that really could've been trimmed, unless there's some logical reason--a sequel setup?--Spielberg left it in.  If you remember that bit from the movie, you might enjoy this photograph I just took:

I got in my sit-ups and did my run after the movie, and I gotta say, if it weren't for the music I listen to while running, I think I might have stopped long ago.  I have the mix on Random, and sometimes something like King's Love & Pride will start playing, and I'll actually say, "Oh, that's a good one" aloud, then start running just a little harder.  

If only there was a song mix for writing.

Anyway, Sit-ups Today: 150
Sit-ups In August: 2809

I was happy to not have to write after going out, so I did a little bit of recording.  That gained me an extra 170 words, so I'll not complain.

Words Today: 1158
Words In August: 14,826

Oh heck, I might still complain.

*Although, now that I mention it, I'm not sure what novel I would've finished in 2020.  As far as I know, "Only Have Eyes For You" is my only novel-length achievement this year . . . and I never finished it.

August Sweeps - Day 196

If I force myself to keep going, in four days I'll have been writing for two hundred days in a row.  Crazy.

I had intended to go to the park today to write (it would've been three days this week), even going so far as loading my laptop into the car and heading out.  But I decided I wanted some exercise* instead.  So I came home and once again pumped up the inflatable canoe (there has GOT to be a better way to do it than filling it up at home, putting it in the back of my dad's truck, and hoping it doesn't fall off on the drive to the lake) to head to the water before it got too dark.

Both of my nephews wanted to come along--the oldest so he could fish (I swear, this kid is more obsessed with fishing than I am with women who are inappropriately young for me) and the nine year old so he could go out on the water.  This was actually the earliest we've made it there, which isn't saying much, but we at least got a half hour or so of rafting before it was too dark to continue.  Because the twelve year old never comes in when I tell him it's time, he made me a deal where he'd give me ten dollars, and if he could only get it back if he came in the first time I told him to do so.  When we got to the lake, I asked where the ten bucks were.  He told me he forgot to bring them, so he said I could have his phone instead.

It's nice to have two new phones, and one without a cracked screen even.

The above was a photo I took the last time I was at the cabin.  There's a story behind it, but my laptop is wanting to reboot, so I don't have time to tell it.  I think it would make a pretty good cover image (I took several, some where you could read the words and some where the fire obscured them), but we'll see.

This was my fourth trip to the lake this year (fourth in four years too), but it was the first time I didn't take any pictures.  As the sun was going down and its reflection was orange on the water, I did wish I'd brought my camera, but I tend to get wet enough when I go on the canoe that I left it in the truck.  My nephew was not as clear-thinking, and got his phone quite wet by leaving it in his pocket.  It seemed fine though.  Hopefully when I sell it to GameStop tomorrow they don't notice any water damage or fishy smell to it. 

Because of that, it was another one of those days where I had zero words written by the time night arrived.  Instead of complaining about it, I'll simply say that I did my sit-ups, went on my run, and forced myself to write before sitting down and watching "Agents of SHIELD," a truly awful episode I'd recorded back in July sometime.  

Sit-ups Today: 111
Sit-ups In August: 2659

Words Today: 906
Words In August: 13,668

*I kid you not, I originally typed "I decided I wanted some sex instead" before catching it and fixing it.  Dr. Freud would not be pleased.

August Sweeps - Day 195

Fun in the sun, boys and girls.

I came to the park again, spread out my blanket, and promptly had to go to the bathroom, as usual.  It's Pavlovian at this point.  But I forged ahead, since I was at the park partly to write, partly to . . . wait, why else do I come here?  What more can I do?  Who am I here?

Little STEPFATHER reference there, folks.

Sometimes, when I am writing, I will text Big Anklevich to ask him for a name for a character.  Today, I discovered that I had never given Rick, the main character of "Hatchling," a last name.  Well, I suspected it, at least, so I spent half an hour (or longer) compiling all my daily bits of writing it into one file, and completely forgot about the last name as I was doing so.  Turns out the short story is over thirty thousand words already.  Guess that makes it not a short story. 

Oh, so I decided, pretty arbitrarily, that his last name is Ashford.*

I watched MR. DEEDS with my nephews tonight, since I had already gotten my writing done and I remembered liking the movie back in 2002.  But man, it just wasn't very good.  I was impressed by how good Winona Ryder looked in it, and that Sandler played such a low-key character instead of one as big as Billy Madison or The Waterboy or Jack/Jill or The Zohan.  But I probably should've been doing something else during that ninety minutes.

Not blogging, of course, but something.

Sit-ups Today: 122
Sit-ups In August: 2548

Afterward I did my sit-ups and went for my run, and I started thinking of writing a Natalie Whitmore-centric "Dead & Breakfast" story.  It would take place after my (seemingly-abandoned) novel-length "Only Have Eyes" story and I think I would have her go on a photoshoot for a bridal magazine, someplace majestic and beautiful in Idaho, and she falls in love with the dude playing the groom.  But the groom just ain't feeling it, at least, not like she does.  She finds out the groom recently lost his father, who asked for him right before he died, but the son didn't get there in time.  So she becomes focused on getting this would-be lover to the bed and breakfast on July second, so that he can find out what his father wanted to say to him.  

As I type it right now, it sure sounds lame, kids, but while I was running, it was something I really wanted to write, as well as a scene that establishes that now that Mason Bradley is seeing someone else, he and Natalie actually become good friends . . . something that is patently impossible in real life, but might work in a story.  We'll see.

Words Today: 1165
Words In August: 12,762

*Gotta say, though, that I regretted naming him Rick almost immediately.  It is just kind of a bland, unspecial name, especially next to a name like Talia.  But I guess it's too late to change it now.

Twilight Groan 9: Mirror Image

Rish and Cathexis talk about season one's "Mirror Image."  'Tis the last of our pre-pandemic episodes, kids!

To download the episode directly, Right-Click HERE.

To support me on Patreon, Left-Click HERE.

Next up: we discover how good life is.  A good life, it turns out.

August Sweeps - Day 194

The boys have gone to their baseball game/practice, and it was my sister's turn to take them.  So that leaves me with plenty of time on my own to writ . . . zzzzzz.

Yeah, I'm super sleepy now.  I took the boys out for lunch today, went to the lake for an hour (or less) before the sun went down, and got my second haircut for the year.  Honestly, I knew I was way overdue for a haircut weeks ago, but I kept not getting it done because I liked the way it felt and occasionally, the way it looked.

I ran over to the park while I was waiting for my haircut and jotted down a few paragraphs on my story.  It's not enough, of course, but I did what I could, inching ever closer to the end.

Before

I've mentioned before that the Mexican lady at the salon at the bottom of the hill where I normally get my hair cut had to close her salon during the COVID-19 outbreak, and I've been growing my hair out ever since (she cut my hair in February, and that was all she wrote).  I knew I needed to get it cut, but I liked having it long--I no longer had to put sunscreen on my ears or neck--and I knew it would piss off my father.

Anyhow, it occurred to me the last time I was at the cabin that I had her business card, and maybe she was still cutting hair somewhere else, and the number would still be good.  Of course, there was no way to call it up in the mountains* so I promptly forgot about it.  But I called her number, got a machine, and as I was leaving a message, got an incoming call which turned out to be her.  Yes, she still cuts hair, but her new location was in a word I didn't know, number four something.

Well, I've mentioned before (often?) that I used to speak fluent Spanish, and it bugs the life out of me that I don't anymore, and am always wanting to improve my skills, so I was determined to figure out where the lady's new salon was.  I tried to ask if she could text me the address, but wouldn't you know, I don't know how to say "send me a text" either.  Somehow, she understood my meaning, and sent the address, which turned out to be only two minutes or so from the park with the stairs I've been going to to write, occasionally exercise, and just as occasionally not be able to get to the bathroom in time.**

I left the park, driving to what turned out to be a trailer park with three minutes to spare . . . and then I couldn't find number four.  This trailer park, pardon my snobbishness for a moment, was so rundown and sketchy that I actually started getting scared walking around it, looking for number four.  There were barking dogs, half-naked children playing in the dirt, broken-down cars in various state of disrepair, and a couple of Iggy Pop-skinny folks sitting outside glaring at me as I tried to find the right number.  I found trailer one, five, and three, but no four.

A couple minutes later, my phone rang again, and the lady--whose name is Eva, it turns out--called me, asking me something I couldn't understand in her language.  I told her I didn't know where number four was, but I was by number three.  And she said she'd come out and find me.  

Turns out, number four has no house number on it, because nobody actually lives there.  Eva bought it when her salon closed down and turned it into a haircutting place, which she says has been open since May.  Because I didn't show up in time, another guy took my place, and as soon as I sat down, a third guy came in for a haircut, so she's really doing good business.

I asked her if she wanted me to wear a mask, but she said she didn't care.***  The trailer was very hot and unpleasant, despite Eva having two electric fans blowing, but I waited patiently until it was my turn.  When she cut my hair, her friend came over, and the two of them jabbered back in forth, and I tried hard to follow the conversation, but I have to admit that every time she addressed me instead of her friend, I had no idea it was me she was talking to.  I'm really going to have to study up if I ever made good on my goal of going to Mexico and visiting every single brothel in Sorona.

After

Anyway, it was nice to hear the lady refer to putting a little "hell" in my hair.  Been too long.

Right now, it's only 11:04pm and I can barely keep my head up.  It feels like a watermelon has been attached to my neck.

I forced myself to get up and go do some sit-ups, but I'll be honest, when I first laid back on the floor, I thought about just going to sleep and leave my count at zero.

Still, I fought my way through it, and grabbed my shoes and went out and did my run.  And it was hard--harder than it usually is--and I was tempted to turn and quit after only a block or so.  But I guess that's when it really matters, when you don't want to do it, and even though I'm fatter today than I was a month ago (despite all the sit-ups, amazingly), the fact that the exercise is part of my dail--nightly routine has to be good, no?

Sit-ups Today: 111
Sit-ups In August: 2426

After that, though, I didn't have much more to give.  I briefly considered opening my editing program and trying to get a few minutes of editing done, but even that was beyond me.  So I watched a YouTube video, farted, and was done for the day.

Words Today: 717
Words In August: 11,597

*My mom told me that there is a telephone at the gatekeepers cabin right as you get to the lake that you can use at any time, for emergencies or otherwise, and I should have/could have used that to call her to tell her I couldn't find her checkbook last week.  Probably I'll forget again the next time I'm up there (going to skip this week, just because), but it's possible I could send texts or even post on Facebook from there if I really need to.

**Sorry to be scatological (again), but it is like a curse--every time I go to that park, I have an urgent need come upon me to to go to the bathroom . . . like right now.  It is so consistent that I have been thinking about writing a Lara & the Witch story where Lara curses one of the boys at her school "Every time you would normally grab a girl's butt, you will have the uncontrollable need to poop your pants."  Then she could just stand back and see what happens.  I guess the EC Comics ending would be that the student--Eric Choner, probably--starts wearing Depends adult diapers to school, and still fondles the buttocks of girls left and right.  Lemonade out of lemons, apparently.

***Oh, I meant to mention this: I lost my mask on Tuesday night when I was out with my cousin.  I don't know what happened to it--probably it was on my lap when I was in his (or my) car and it fell out when I got out, but I couldn't find it the next day, and I'm 99% certain I've lost it now.  In these updated status quo times, losing your mask feels like losing your wallet or your car keys.  I had a cheap disposable one I picked up a couple of weeks ago, and I've been wearing that, but the one my mom sewed for me back in March was made for my face, and anything else (I grabbed a black cloth one yesterday and have been trying to get used to it) has been hard to get used to.  I'm like one of those Eighties slasher movie characters, I guess, and I feel naked without my William Shatner or hockey mask.

August Sweeps - Day 193

Today was my early day again.  It was a good day.  Oh, don't get me wrong, I'd still be better off dead, but hey, give me my minor peaks among the many valleys, would you?

My nephews are starting school again next week.  They will be going half days every other day, but not on the same odd days.  Part of me wonders what it's all about, Alfie.  But this too shall pass.

After hearing that damned Harry Styles song dozens of times this year--and pretty much always changing the station (you see, kids, I still listen to the radio, because I am a hundred years old.  But when a hundred years old you reach, look as young you will not), because hey, who needs it?--I finally ended up stuck someplace where I couldn't change it . . . and darned if I didn't like the song.  

My, how the shitey have fallen.

Because I have to do my runs before I go to my cousin's house on Tuesdays, it means running during the--eeeeeeeeieeeie!--daylight.  But the upside of that is that I actually see other joggers when I'm out and about . . . and they're nearly always female.  Why is that, I wonder.  Is it because our hateful patriarchal society has inculcated upon women that they must be in shape, whereas men are free to get fat and still succeed in life?  Is it because men exercise in gyms and garages and on treadmills and women actually use the outdoors as their gymnasiums?  Is it because our hateful patriarchal society has trained me to ignore the male joggers that I see and only notice the female ones?  Or are there just way more females than males in this world, the way Brigham Young intended it to be?

Whatever the answer, an attractive young woman was jogging in my direction, and instead of fleeing for the safety of the indoors as they usually do when they see me, she smiled and kept on running.  I hope she lives to be a hundred too.

A few years ago, when I was just starting out selling on eBay, they bought PayPal (which is an online banking site where you can send and receive money), and promptly announced that all eBay transactions would now have to be paid using PayPal.  No more money orders or personal checks (which I did accept), no more "carefully-concealed cash" (which I did accept)--you had to pay using PayPal, which charged a fee for every received payment.  So suddenly, in addition to eBay taking a fee for using their site (a Final Value Fee), and in addition to what you pay to have an eBay Store (if you do), you had to pay a transaction fee to PayPal.

I could've stopped selling then--I hope a lot of people did--but I didn't.  I was over a barrel.  Where else was I going to go, Yardseller?  It was just the price of doing business--the vig, so to speak.

And then last year, PayPal announced that they were going to stop refunding their transaction fees if you gave someone (or were forced to give someone) a refund.  That was something of a blight, because I'd always played ball with the people who had purchased multiple items but didn't ask for a combined invoice with cheaper shipping, or those who had buyer's remorse and wanted to back out of the transaction, or lied and said it was not them that purchased the item, or even the lovely folks who lied about what they got and demanded a refund after the fact.  Now, I would have to eat even more of that money than I ever did before, so I changed my own policy of giving people shipping refunds if they overpaid, because I still had to pay PayPal, even if I made nothing out of the transaction.*

But now, in August, eBay has stopped using PayPal (there's probably an interesting--but infuriating--story behind that), and users pay eBay directly, then in three to five business days, they send me the money.  On paper, that's great, and I don't even mind having to wait to be paid, since I should be getting paid today for what I sold last week, and next week, today's payments will get transferred to my bank.  But for a decade, I've shipped everything using PayPal, and that's still how the process is set up on eBay today.  But I have no money in my PayPal account anymore, because the payments are no longer going there, so my savings account gets charged.  No problem, you say, except that I am only allowed six transactions on my savings account per month before I am charged a fee . . .

. . . and that means that I am already over the six transactions, and am racking up these obnoxious fees right and left.  So I changed my fallback payment source on PayPal to be my checking account instead . . . but it kept charging my savings account.  So I changed the payment source to be my credit card . . . but it kept charging my savings account.  So I tried to remove my savings account from my PayPal account altogether, so it would no longer BE ABLE to do so . . . and it wouldn't let me because I still have pending transactions going to that savings account.

It went from a lose-lose situation to a lose-lose-lose situation.  Not sure why I'm telling you all thi--

Oh yeah, I didn't feel like working for a little while.  Well, mission accomplished.

I accidentally called a girl "honey" today.  That has literally never happened to me before.  It's something I've only been called myself by my mother and waitresses at diners and truck stops.  It's not like I'm mortified or anything (somebody once told me the story about accidentally calling someone the British slang for cigarettes, and I couldn't get it out of my mind, the horror of that . . . which this can't be nearly as bad as since it's a term--What?  It is?  Oh, sorry.  I didn't realize.  Maybe I'll hold off publishing this one for a while), but it does make me think I've been writing too many days in a row.

Either that or I should be institutionalized for a while.  Or both.

Sit-ups Today: 123
Sit-ups In August: 2315

Went to the park again, just as the sun was getting low in the sky.  I didn't have much to write, and texted Big that I only had sixty-six words written.  By the time he let me know I only needed six hundred to go, I had sort of got into the rhythm of it all, and made it nearly to a thousand before deciding it was time to take off.  If I end the story where I was thinking I would, I should be done either tomorrow or the day after.  This may turn out to be a really lame place to end the story, though.  Guess I should decide whether the point of the tale is the hatchling itself or the relationship between the boy and the girl.

Words Today: 1051
Words In August: 10,880

I just glanced at the clock and realized it was 3:41am.  Whoops again.

*This is something I suffered greatly for recently when an eBay hiccup suddenly made available a bunch of items I had listed in October, and hadn't had in months, and almost twenty of them sold before I realized what was happening.  I had to swallow all of those fees, and PayPal just beat off harder in the corner.

I Narrate "Big Brother" On Pseudopod

 

I recently recorded a story for Pseudopod, the Horror podcast.  It was "Big Brother," by Evan Marcroft.  

It's a pretty unpleasant story, and I don't know much about Mr. Marcroft except that when I went to his website, the headline was "It only gets worse from here."  As the man said, you're damned right.

The story itself is about an unfortunate bullied boy who discovers he has an overprotective, supernatural imaginary friend . . . a violent one.

It was a while ago, but hey, it's new for you.  Check it out at This Link.

August Sweeps - Day 192

This may (or may not) be entertaining to you, but last night, I did my evening run, and as I neared the house where I saw the ghost last week . . . the streetlight on the corner went out.  Okay, that's an exaggeration--it went out as I was rounding the corner, long before I reached the house, but the point is, the whole front yard of the haunted house was engulfed in darkness.  And I couldn't help but remember seeing that girl standing there, and how she was gone a moment later.

And as I ran past, for a second there--just a second, mind you--I saw her: a white-faced girl dressed in white, lunging out of the shadows at me.  I literally leapt into the air, made a startled sound, and ran into the middle of the street to get away from her.

Now look, I KNOW that she wasn't really there, that I imagined her because of that faulty brain of mine.  But my adrenaline hit anyway and I ran super fast away from the house, laughing at myself while my armhairs danced and the two boys went to ground.  I nearly stopped and texted my niece about it because it amuses her endlessly that I claim to have seen a ghost and am now afraid of that front yard, but instead, I just tried to put it out of my mind and concentrate on writers block and unrequited love--you know, the normal things in life.

Not sure if that was worth sharing, but hey, there you go.

And speaking of which . . . I had a bit of a waste of time that I very nearly recorded a video about.  Instead, I did a mini-podcast.  Enjoy?

Today, while I was doing my sit-ups, my three year old nephew tried to do them with me.  After a moment, I grabbed him, sat him on my chest, and did sit-ups with him as a human weight.  He seemed to really what to him was probably a game, and it made the sit-ups slightly harder.  Win-win.

Sit-ups Today: 150
Sit-ups in August: 2192

I keep thinking that the moment this daily writing thing dries up, I'll get a ton of stuff published--short stories, podcasts, audiobooks, videos, etc..  But the truth is, I think I'd find something to trip me up, even then (like watching that new "Perry Mason" show, which I keep not getting to).

Big told me that he is mere days away from achieving his goal for the year of writing 300,000 words.  While I am not at all threatened by that, it did make me wonder how many words I had written this year.  Unfortunately, there's no way of knowing.

I didn't start writing until midnight or so, and wrote a bit where Rick tries to talk to Talia post-break-up, and it doesn't go well.*  It was a short scene, and not very good.  But then I wrote the intro to what I'm assuming is the climax, where Talia tells Rick there's a fire and they go to investigate it together.  This scene worked a lot better, and before I knew it, it was a little after one, and I had . . . 996 words.  Dang, only four under a thousand.

So, I sat down and changed the line "She glanced in the direction of Egg Hill," to "She glanced in the direction of what they had come to call Egg Hill," and thought that was good enough.  But then I wrote another paragraph and a couple lines of dialogue.  Even better.

Words Today: 1112
Words in August: 9829

*This goes without saying, but I find it way easier to write from Rick's point-of-view than from Talia's.  Rick is a dumb guy, so it's easy to have him say stupid things, or impulsive things, that gets him in trouble.  But Talia is smart, so the stuff she says is (unfairly) harsher, even meaner.  I'm not making apologies here, but I do worry that a reader will say, "Why is Talia such a bitch when Rick is such a nice guy?"  
Maybe they will say that.  It doesn't really bother me.  The thing is, Talia's not a bitch at all (despite having a dad who named her after a Batman villain), but she handles the break-up in a different way than Rick does, and she leans toward being like me a little bit more than Rick does (despite her being smart and working hard in school).  I may have to do another pass of the story before I put it out there (ugh, now I've got to come up with cover art.  Hopefully I can just ask Gino to make me a Photoshop of an egg with interesting markings and avocado-like texture).  But at least we're moving closer to the end of another project (something like this would've taken me a year or more in my younger days).

Storage Unit Serenade 25

One of my goals for the month was to publish one of these a week.  I have failed so far . . . but I heard there are five Saturdays, Sundays, and Mondays this month, which kind of blows my mind.  It's all for you, Damien.

Ye Olde Stats
Pre-Eighties Songs: 8
Eighties Songs: 7
Nineties Songs: 5
Aughts Songs: 0
Teens Songs: 5

August Sweeps - Day 191

I had an interesting dream last night.  I was training for some job--the details evade me now--and has part of the training, I had to put on a diving suit and breathe in that pink liquid oxygen from THE ABYSS.  My instructor was not particularly concerned or gentle with me, only warning me, "Okay, this is going to be bad," when the helmet started to fill with the stuff.  

I started to hold my breath, and then thought, No, I'm going to be brave and impress her, and I started to just gulp the liquid in.  But it burned like inhaling alcohol, and my body thrashed, and I realized I didn't know if it was supposed to be like this, or if something was terribly wrong.  I tried to ask her, but I couldn't speak, as my lungs were filled with pink goo.  Not a nightmare, per se, but one I thought about quite a bit when I woke up.

I awakened all cottonmouthed, like I had been chortling alcohol or strange men in a Newport Beach danceclub, though I'm pretty sure I hadn't been.

Hopefully, it's just COVID-19.

I got more movies from the library a couple of days ago (they're about to start charging late fees again and I think I still have items I checked out from Before that I haven't seen in months), all starting with B.  BROKEN ARROW (Jimmy Stewart), THE BEST OF ENEMIES, BEN-HUR (Heston), BULLITT, BLACK SWAN (Tyrone Power), THE BLACKHEATH POISONINGS, BUTTLOVE VOLUME 18, BROOKLYN, etc.  The library has a pretty wide selection.  

The flick I chose to put on was BRIGADOON, and though I know I've never seen it, I keep feeling that I have, and recently.*  It's one of the worst kind of Musicals--one where the songs are too long and the narrative stops dead in its tracks for them, and worse, it's got tons of dancing in it.  I understand that you've got Gene Kelly front and center, and not having him dance would be like hiring Jackie Chan to play Robert T. Ironside**, but it's just so egregious and elaborate and endless (and other e-words) that I found it hard to take.  If there's one art-form I don't understand, it's dance, probably because the only kind I relate to is the kind of dancing Billy Idol sang about.

But even so, there's something so charming and remarkable about the film that I'm enjoying it in spite of myself.  It's funny when that happens, kind of the like the Dua Lipa song I'm always going on about.  I remember the first time I heard it (it's called Break My Heart, baby), wanting to change the station because it was just so annoying, and for some reason I didn't.  And the next time I heard it, I was again shocked by its intentional obnoxiousness, but again, I didn't turn it off.  I keep hearing it on the radio, and liking it a little bit more each time, despite knowing it's not for me.

  

And now, mid-August, it's up there, in my top three or four songs of the year, and I say, with only mild chagrin, that the part that goes "Centre of attention, you know you can get whatever you want from me, Whenever you want it, baby" is my favorite part of any song in 2020.***

But I digress.  I'm supposed to be up here editing and writing, just the one day on my own, in which to get in as much as I can.  Oh, and sit-ups.  Always plenty of sit-ups to be found around here.  Like moths, which are constantly getting into the cabin somehow, and littering the windowsills with their dried husks.

Dancing with Myself.  He had a song called "Dancing with Myself."  

Well, it's just past noon now, and I only have nineteen words for the day.  Not sure I'm entirely cut out for this writing thing.

When I'm at the cabin, I tend to have very little embarrassment or body shame (except for last month when those kids made fun of me for having my shirt off).  I lift antique milk cans (that's NOT a euphemism, though yeah, I do that too), I try to jog (usually failing), and I tend to get more sit-ups done because I can do them throughout the day, and not just when everybody has gone to sleep.  Today was pretty good.

Sit-ups Today: 571 (okay, if that's not a record, I'll eat my hat)
Sit-ups In August: 2042

I decided to leave the cabin early--literally every time I sat down to read my R.A. Salvatore book, I'd fall asleep (seriously, it happened three different times), so I packed everything up and got ready to go.  But then I thought about a scene I'd considered writing last night, where Rick encounters a rattlesnake (the story takes place in Arizona, in the same town as another of my stories, so I'm pretty darn confident there would be rattlers in the hills where he found the egg), but I'd forgotten about it.

So I sat down and wrote it, and gee, a half hour or more passed.  I'm really, really close to the end on this now.  I think, if I spent the night tonight (not that I can, I've got work to do tomorrow), I'd have it done.  But I can try to finish it this week (it's past 20,000 words now), though I have so many more distractions at home, I don't know if I have the will to do it.  We'll see, as long as I don't crash coming down the mountain.

Words Today: 1605
Words In August: 8717

*I checked out MRS. MINIVER a month or so back, and the same thing happened: I realized I had already seen it, and just in the last two or three years.  Yet I had no memory of ever checking it out and even now wonder how I could've forgotten it completely.

**He was a TV lawyer in a wheelchair.

***Yeah, I spelled "center" wrong.  But she's British, and it just seemed like the thing to do.