Today is the 15th, and I still have residual Valentine's Day sadness. I know that I can't be the only one.
God, I hate Valentine's Day. Honestly, there are pet peeves that certain people have that may border on irrational (for example, I had a roommate who would lose his mind if somebody ever complimented Julia Roberts, my uncle absolutely HATES violence toward women in movies [I suspect he thinks that it inspires real-life violence], a lot of people hate pornography, the mother of a girl I know goes on spitting, semi-rabid diatribes against abortion, another uncle absolutely seethes with hatred toward Mexican immigrants [despite being born in Chihuahua, along with my mom], I have a friend that hates militant political ideology, a buddy of mine hates "South Park" with all his mind, strength, and scrote, and come to think of it, Eric Cartman hates hippies, immigrants, poor people, and Jews, etc.), but I would happily get on a city council with the goal to ban Valentine's Day in my community.
Oh, it sells a effload of flowers, and enough chocolates to bring Jabba the Hutt to orgasm, but wow, the damage it does. What a shit holiday.
Of course, this is personal bias. You may love it, and that's great. Good for you. Count your blessings, honestly. But I digress. All I can say (in closing) is that, if Valentine's Day hadn't been this week, mine would've been a very different one.
A better one? I don't know, but I could've used a bit less misery and feeling like I was a worthless loser between February 8th and 15th. And so could a lot of people, I imagine.
I keep thinking about writing this story I dreamed up about a town where Halloween is not celebrated, and the teenaged girl wants to celebrate it anyway. I think I could do the same with Valentine's Day. The mayor could be Rich Oxfeld or something, as a little wink to the audience, and the teenaged girl could hand out valentines to a couple of kids in class anyway (or maybe anonymously in their lockers), only to find out that there was a very real and sensible reason the town didn't allow that to happen. It's a story with so much potential in my mind.
Oh, if I weren't so tired, I might write it right now.
But that's just an excuse. I still did the stairs today, and I'll still do my push-ups, no matter how tired I get. Because if I don't, then entropy wins.
And Mitch McConnell. He wants me to fail, and you as well, whether you celebrate Valentine's Day or not.
Now that it's past the halfway point in February, I guess I have to think about what I'm going to do with my March. Am I going to keep writing every day? If not, what emphasis do I put in its place?
I made a You Are Enough video two weeks ago, and I desperately (DESPERATELY*) tried to post it on Instagram yesterday (honestly, I created an account Just For That...and it still hasn't worked), because there can't be a lonelier day than V.D. in a young person's life, so it was important to me to put it up then. But the phuquing thing just wouldn't upload, and that makes me want to quit Instagram, which was never intended for people like me in the first place.
And maybe, if it could make a difference in some young person's day, it's worth redoing "live" into the fudging app on the phone, but seriously, I drove to a river, parked on the soft shoulder, climbed down to the shore, and recorded my video as it was starting to snow so that it would be visually interesting enough that strangers might watch it, despite my face being in it. I'd hate for that to go to waste.**
So, this Saturday was the hardest day at the writers conference. I've just spread myself too thin, and it caught up with me today. I told somebody I knew I would take my recorder and talk about how I felt when it was over, but I was just so exhausted, I didn't even call Big to give him the annual report (ugh, I originally typed "give him the anal report," and it wasn't flagged as a typo).
All I know is that I couldn't stay awake through or concentrate on some of the panels today, and I found myself so hot and sleepy in the last one (some like it hot and some sweat when the heat is on), that I just went home when it ended, despite there being an hour left in the schedule.
And oh, my nemesis (not the Tommy Pickles guy--I don't really think about him much anymore) was invoked over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again this weekend (I actually typed those out, instead of copying and pasting, which would've been smarter). I started texting Big every time he was brought up, which was more often than Jesus is brought up in a Sunday School class.
Then, after the three o'clock panel ended, I was trying to get out of the room, and I just couldn't. The doorway was clogged with an influx of souls, keeping anyone from moving in the other direction. It was a veritable flood of fat, sweaty genre fans pushing into the room like the slow-motion wave from the elevator in THE SHINING (only with cottage cheese instead of blood), and unlike anything I've ever seen outside of a Black Friday sale.
I could not get out of the room, and the assholes just kept squeezing in. The line behind me was getting longer and longer (somebody at my back said, "Come on!" like I was the problem). The assholes could see us, but they would not make way for us to get through, they just pressed forward. I was frustrated and shouted, "Guys, there'll be more room in here if you'll let us out!" But they just looked at me, like, "Whatchoo gonna do, wop?"*** Finally, the big bearded security guy in the hall had to yell for the assholes to clear the way, forcing them to separate enough for us to be able to leave the room.
I asked him, "Are they giving out bags of money in there or something?" And the security guy said, you guessed it, "Brandon Sanderson."
Sigh.
So, I probably should've left right then and there, because I was no good to anybody in the last two panels of the day. Seriously, the last one was about marketing your books, and when the author said, "Of course you need to write more books, whether the first has sold or not. If you have a lot of books to sell, all the better," I got this image in my mind of a stack of used books I'd bought over the years that I could sell to some guys at a bookstore. My brain was no longer processing what he was saying.
Of course, it didn't help that it was so hot in that room (and I love heat and hate cold [sorry, Anon]), that I could've thrown a frozen pizza on the seat next to me and eaten it at the end of the panel.
I will definitely try to do an episode where I talk about the weekend, however. There were really good and inspiring things said in the panels (and in my notes I put this: The last episode I recorded will be a Patreon exclusive . . . and what's more, it'll be a freebie. Thanks, guys, for supporting me. Never stop never stopping.). Though I can't decide whether to do it as a Rish Outcast by myself, or a That Gets My Goat with Big Anklevich (which is twice the work for none of the reward), or just talk about it in a week for my March Patreon address.
So, I took off early, because I was just exhausted. I still went to the stairs and ran them until my legs began to twitch and shudder, but for the last hour, I've just been lying here getting my Planters peanuts warmed by an overheating laptop, just vegging out reading emails and Facebook posts.
And then, crazy as it sounds, I went over to Audible and looked at the books that needed narrators. I saw two books by a famous/infamous Horror writer, and for a moment there (okay, more than a moment there; I actually went on Amazon and read the reviews for the two books), I considered auditioning for one, despite vowing never to do it again. Saner heads prevailed, but I'll always wonder if that would've been profitable for me.
I managed a thousand words on my Ben Parks story in between panels, which is good, but I'd say there's only a 15% chance I'll finish this one. After all, I've abandoned it twice before.
Words Today: 1336
Words Total: 21,433
*I mean, over ten times trying to upload it, get it to post, get it to show up on my phone, and it never did.
**And takes? I did it over and OVER, until my fingers were frozen and the cold had seeped into my very taint. I wanted it all in one take, so when a guy walked by with his dog and said, "Who you talkin' to?" I had to delete and start it again. It pisses me off endlessly that I can't just go onto www.instagram.com and post a video that way, once again reinforcing that I never should have been on that app in the first place (which reminds me, I wrote a blog post about a year back that I never published about the point of Instagram. I really ought to finish that. As well as the one hundred short stories I've started and left unfinished in the last ten years). A woman's work is never done, like they used to say.
***Not sure why he used that particular slur, except that my hair is really greasy and dark right now. No offense taken--Italian is a beautiful language.
Oh, if I weren't so tired, I might write it right now.
But that's just an excuse. I still did the stairs today, and I'll still do my push-ups, no matter how tired I get. Because if I don't, then entropy wins.
And Mitch McConnell. He wants me to fail, and you as well, whether you celebrate Valentine's Day or not.
Now that it's past the halfway point in February, I guess I have to think about what I'm going to do with my March. Am I going to keep writing every day? If not, what emphasis do I put in its place?
I made a You Are Enough video two weeks ago, and I desperately (DESPERATELY*) tried to post it on Instagram yesterday (honestly, I created an account Just For That...and it still hasn't worked), because there can't be a lonelier day than V.D. in a young person's life, so it was important to me to put it up then. But the phuquing thing just wouldn't upload, and that makes me want to quit Instagram, which was never intended for people like me in the first place.
And maybe, if it could make a difference in some young person's day, it's worth redoing "live" into the fudging app on the phone, but seriously, I drove to a river, parked on the soft shoulder, climbed down to the shore, and recorded my video as it was starting to snow so that it would be visually interesting enough that strangers might watch it, despite my face being in it. I'd hate for that to go to waste.**
So, this Saturday was the hardest day at the writers conference. I've just spread myself too thin, and it caught up with me today. I told somebody I knew I would take my recorder and talk about how I felt when it was over, but I was just so exhausted, I didn't even call Big to give him the annual report (ugh, I originally typed "give him the anal report," and it wasn't flagged as a typo).
All I know is that I couldn't stay awake through or concentrate on some of the panels today, and I found myself so hot and sleepy in the last one (some like it hot and some sweat when the heat is on), that I just went home when it ended, despite there being an hour left in the schedule.
And oh, my nemesis (not the Tommy Pickles guy--I don't really think about him much anymore) was invoked over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again this weekend (I actually typed those out, instead of copying and pasting, which would've been smarter). I started texting Big every time he was brought up, which was more often than Jesus is brought up in a Sunday School class.
Then, after the three o'clock panel ended, I was trying to get out of the room, and I just couldn't. The doorway was clogged with an influx of souls, keeping anyone from moving in the other direction. It was a veritable flood of fat, sweaty genre fans pushing into the room like the slow-motion wave from the elevator in THE SHINING (only with cottage cheese instead of blood), and unlike anything I've ever seen outside of a Black Friday sale.
I could not get out of the room, and the assholes just kept squeezing in. The line behind me was getting longer and longer (somebody at my back said, "Come on!" like I was the problem). The assholes could see us, but they would not make way for us to get through, they just pressed forward. I was frustrated and shouted, "Guys, there'll be more room in here if you'll let us out!" But they just looked at me, like, "Whatchoo gonna do, wop?"*** Finally, the big bearded security guy in the hall had to yell for the assholes to clear the way, forcing them to separate enough for us to be able to leave the room.
I asked him, "Are they giving out bags of money in there or something?" And the security guy said, you guessed it, "Brandon Sanderson."
Sigh.
So, I probably should've left right then and there, because I was no good to anybody in the last two panels of the day. Seriously, the last one was about marketing your books, and when the author said, "Of course you need to write more books, whether the first has sold or not. If you have a lot of books to sell, all the better," I got this image in my mind of a stack of used books I'd bought over the years that I could sell to some guys at a bookstore. My brain was no longer processing what he was saying.
Of course, it didn't help that it was so hot in that room (and I love heat and hate cold [sorry, Anon]), that I could've thrown a frozen pizza on the seat next to me and eaten it at the end of the panel.
I will definitely try to do an episode where I talk about the weekend, however. There were really good and inspiring things said in the panels (and in my notes I put this: The last episode I recorded will be a Patreon exclusive . . . and what's more, it'll be a freebie. Thanks, guys, for supporting me. Never stop never stopping.). Though I can't decide whether to do it as a Rish Outcast by myself, or a That Gets My Goat with Big Anklevich (which is twice the work for none of the reward), or just talk about it in a week for my March Patreon address.
So, I took off early, because I was just exhausted. I still went to the stairs and ran them until my legs began to twitch and shudder, but for the last hour, I've just been lying here getting my Planters peanuts warmed by an overheating laptop, just vegging out reading emails and Facebook posts.
And then, crazy as it sounds, I went over to Audible and looked at the books that needed narrators. I saw two books by a famous/infamous Horror writer, and for a moment there (okay, more than a moment there; I actually went on Amazon and read the reviews for the two books), I considered auditioning for one, despite vowing never to do it again. Saner heads prevailed, but I'll always wonder if that would've been profitable for me.
I managed a thousand words on my Ben Parks story in between panels, which is good, but I'd say there's only a 15% chance I'll finish this one. After all, I've abandoned it twice before.
Words Today: 1336
Words Total: 21,433
*I mean, over ten times trying to upload it, get it to post, get it to show up on my phone, and it never did.
**And takes? I did it over and OVER, until my fingers were frozen and the cold had seeped into my very taint. I wanted it all in one take, so when a guy walked by with his dog and said, "Who you talkin' to?" I had to delete and start it again. It pisses me off endlessly that I can't just go onto www.instagram.com and post a video that way, once again reinforcing that I never should have been on that app in the first place (which reminds me, I wrote a blog post about a year back that I never published about the point of Instagram. I really ought to finish that. As well as the one hundred short stories I've started and left unfinished in the last ten years). A woman's work is never done, like they used to say.
***Not sure why he used that particular slur, except that my hair is really greasy and dark right now. No offense taken--Italian is a beautiful language.
2 comments:
Oh, Brandon Sanderson was there! He's so dreamy. I will definitely be there next year.
He's always there. In fact, there's a girl I know who likes Fantasy books, and absolutely loves Sanderson, and I very nearly asked her if she wanted to give me a book to have him sign for her. It's not that I'm interested in her in any way, but I knew I'd see him, so I thought I'd take advantage of it.
However, there has been a giant leap between how beloved he was when I first met him to last year, where he went out into the hall after his panel to sign autographs. And then this year, where the Beatles on Ed Sullivan were quickly replaced in the zeitgeist by the unwashed masses at a Brandon Sanderson panel appearance.
At least Abbie Hilton still dares talk smack about him. The pods must not have gotten to her yet.
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