Rage, rage, against the dying of the light

An appropriate poem by Dylan Thomas. Kind of describes my mood today.

As these teenage dreams and nightmares…

…start to fade away, I’d like to wish you all a happy new year and hope you had a good festive period, whatever you were doing. I hate the new year. The mas holiday is lovely for me because I can just chill and read and stay in bed til 12 and play on the internet and go shopping. Then the 2nd of January comes around and its time to leave it all behind and snap into attention like a lean racehorse, with two weeks worth of work to catch up on. Back to reality, back to praying I can hang on to this job for another year. Waiting to see what awful things are going to happen to me this year. Oh goody.   

I’m going to be 20 in 18 days. It’s time to stop fucking around and get on with the rest of my life. I may not ever be as good a writer or as famous a writer as Stephen King or Neil Gaiman but so help me, I’m not going to find out if I spend the rest of my life sitting about watching David Firth films. I can’t do anything else, can’t paint, photoshop or animate stuff. Can’t act either.

Watch this space. I’m working on some new material (some of which hopefully will be unshit enough to submit to a few webzines or something) and than I will be back to kick all your arses!! HA!

Here’s to 2008. I have no idea where I’m going to be by the end of it, but that’s all part of the fun isn’t it, Doctor? Who knows, maybe the good things will outweigh the bad this year! Funny how you get really exciting years and really boring years and the good and bad stuff always seems to even out. 2007 was too much for anyone from my POV. Way too much was going on. I loved the medium rare steak, but I didn’t care for the tequila (both of which I had for the first time this year). Let’s have a nice quiet year, with no shitty relationships or losing of jobs, or people dying, or being promoted (rough with the smooth and all that….), so I can concentrate on taking over the universe.

Good luck this year, dudes. Love you all.

A teeny tiny rant.

What is up with libraries? I do not have the space or the money to actually buy books, so I kind of rely on the library. But the kind of book I like is either horror or experimental fiction (in fact, horror is often experimental but they put it with the horror because they don’t know how else to categorise it) and the bulk of fiction in libraries are either crime or Chick lit, both of which I find to be the most dull and predictable sorts of books. It’s like how most of the stuff they play on the radio is fucking Take That or Shane Ward. Just because the majority of people are either too scared to break away from the crowd or too stupid to appreciatiate anything that makes them think or tries to make a statement…I mean, where does that leave me? I won’t write normal popular fiction, only weird experimental stuff. I could, but it bores the shit out of me.

Uuaaaggghhhhhhh!!!

I really do not like the thought of having to drag myself out of my lovely warm bed in the icelike temperatures in the middle of the night (7am) tomorrow. Still, only 10 days to go…

Uhhhhh…

Screwed

Ok, so I totally screwed Nanowrimo up this year. I think I ought to be forgiven, considering that I was rehearsing for a play every day for 6 days of the month, went out getting drunk on 3 days of the month, was in a play for 2 days of the month and was otherwise engaged (out with friends not getting drunk, watching DVD’s or reading). That didn’t leave me with many days really. And I was behind from the start, and I know that’s no excuse, but I’m still trying to get over…you know….

Anyway, I messed it up totally. I wrote a total of about 10,000 words on 2 different stories during the entire month. And they were both shit. But at least I had the experience of failure. And I haven’t blogged either. I know. But hey, life is goood. 14 days of having to get up at 7am and then I’m free (until January the 2nd). I love the job I’m in now, but I hate having to get up in the middle of the night to get to Nottingham.

 So, for the simple reason that I’m going to have a lot more chance of actually doing this, my challange now is to write 50,000 on any fiction during december. It doesn’t matter if I write 50 stories of 1000 words, or one long story or three stories of 17000 wordsm, 50,000 words of anything and I win. I’m not going to completely fail at this. I’m a Capricorn. I will not lose. 

I guess I’m going to fail at this now.   

Day 4 –

November 3

Well, I am doing precisly half as well as I should be. I missed Day 1 completely, wrote 1200 words on day two, wrote 1100 on day three, and today I’ve written 1000 words. I’m getting worse!!! How can that be? How is that even possible? And Ian is actually writing a novel, as opposed to a farce, like what I’m doing.

But hey, read my novel. It’s probably not as bad as I think it is! November 3

Nano Day 2

 I didn’t write anything on ‘day 1′. Still, never mind. I think this time last year I was on about 600 words. This year I’ve already got 1209. Awww Right!! It doesn’t have a title yet though, so any suggestions will be welcome. From now on, the latest ‘episode’ will be in the ‘Nano 2007′ page on the right. From there, just click on the link and you will be sent to a PDF file. I’ll also post a link to the latest file here. I hope its not awful, I really do.   

Prologue- Kareen.

Welcome to the worst day of the rest of my life. I’m walking the streets on the outskirts of town. I’m wearing blue tights that look like tattoos only legs all the way up and then down to my toes, a short green and blue dress, and there is henna like dried blood on my hands. I’m looking for the train station (or the bus station. anywhere, really, where I can make a quick getaway). I lean against a wall and rub the heel of my aching right foot. It feels as though a field of blisters has risen there since I left the place I can no longer call my home. During this pause, the tears that have lain dormant for two hours spring to my eyes. I realise, only partly, what I have done. Betrayed my parents, abandoned my family, become homeless, friendless and almost penniless. There is only one person I turn to, and he is so many miles away. How the hell am I going to get to Cambridge from Nottingham when I only have £2.38 in pennies and twenty p’s sloshing around in my purse? Oh help me god. The God I never believed in, ever since I was 12 and prayed to you to make my little kitten well and you never did, help me now, send me a miracle. Stands to reason they happen to some people, right? Why not me? Am I that bad? Am I really so far apart from you that you can’t help me when I really need help? Is this what my parents brought me into the world for? To serve you?

Chapter 1- Annie.

I’ve been holding on to this 10 pound note all day. I found it on the floor of the bus station this morning and I have been carrying it around in my trouser pocket, taking it out and looking at it occasionally, partly to make sure it was still there and partly to take a moment to wish upon it. For it isn’t a regular old ten pound note. On the back, on the right hand side, running down the paper sideways so you have to turn it to read it properly, reads ‘For those who need help. Here I am.’ Throughout the day as I photocopy letters and type up memos I wonder who could have written the words on that note, and why they wrote it, and if they were writing the truth when they lifted the dove grey pencil. And how would I ever know? Who left it? Did they leave it there deliberately? I imagined the person it could previously have belonged to – one of those flowing witch types, with long skirts and hair dyed in miraculous colours, large amount of exotic jewelery dribbling from their hands, necks, ears, and a quiet, perpetually calm way of speaking. Or a an elderly man with a staff and a long white beard. Maybe a messed up kid like me. I thought of my own problems, my ma’s drink problem the way my teeth ache when it’s cold, the boy who never called me back, the fact that I am completely broke four days after pay day and with Christmas only four weeks away. My cat that ran away across the streets and didn’t come back. All the regret and pain and bitterness that my life has gathered over a few short years.

It was then that I decided to find someone more deserving of ‘help’ than myself, and give the £10 note to them. My good deed for the day. Who knows, perhaps karma would smile on me and send me a reward. Something had to happen anyway. A deed like that couldn’t go unnoticed, even though it didn’t really matter as I had found the money, not earned it. What the hell, I would find someone who needed help, and not only would I give them my foundling, I would give them £10 of my own. Let’s face it, there are too many people who need help in this world, in this city.

I had a late lunch, my office manager suddenly sprang it on me that I had to cover the reception while Denise had her lunch. I sat there for an hour, seething and starving, and chewing on a fingernail. And in my spare moments, staring at my note and making up even more stories for it. When Denise came back I bolted, shot into the cafe across the road, ate, and then wandered off into town to get my bearings. I walked – I still had half an hour so I had no care where I walked or what shops I strolled into. I was looking for someone to help. The obese mother, pushing two shrieking babies in a pushchair, a maroon jumper stretched tight over her sagging stomach, lank brown grey hair like string. A kid my age, limping with a left leg shorter than the right. A blind man, walking in his very own space, the people around him clearing a sort of plaugue path so he could walk safely with his cane without whacking anyone’s ankles. Worried looking woman pushing her husband in a wheelchair through the centre. No. no. No. No. And no to the pregnant fourteen year old crouched outside greggs holding her hand for the cash I was not prepared to give. I wanted someone like me. A fool. Someone who had made their mistakes and didn’t regret them for what they were, only regretted the consequences.

I was on the way back to work when I saw her. A little girl in a blueish dress and blue tights. As I got closer I saw that the dress was green with blue flowers, and she was older then she looked. MAybe a couple of years older than me, but the same sort of soul. Someone who had dared to stand up for what she wanted and had suffered the backlash. As last I was running to meet her. She didn’t appear to be going anywhere though, standing against the wall of a shop, obviously lost. I hurled myself at her in case she ran and touched her arm. “Hey!” She recoiled in surprise and nervousness. Her brown eyes were huge, the face of a frightened bambi. I wanted to soothe her and say ‘Whoa there, girl. Easy’. She was like a spooked foal or something. “It’s ok. Whats wrong? I can see there’s something wrong…”

As I spoke, I felt the arm I held lightly relax a little. “I’m all right. I only want to find the train station. I need to get to Cambridge.”

“Bloody hell. You’re a long way from home!” I tried to make a joke of it, even though she had a simialr East Midlands accent to me, although not as sloppy.

She backed off again then. “I don’t have any money. I can’t go home.”

That was all I needed. I didn’t even want to know her story. I had enough of an imagination to imagine it. And it would keep me occupied for the rest of the day, as well as the bus journey home. It would save me thinking about Freddie anyway…. I said, “

No, that’s not a mistake, I deliberately left it in midsentence.
 

After a long leave of absence…

Sorry. I didn’t mean to not post anything for two weeks (again), but life has kind of been running away with itself. I broke my internetconnection, which was hilarious, and then I started an online rune course and I haven’t had time to do much, let alone started this wretched novel that still doesn’t have a name. I might have to do that tonight, as at the present time, I’m doing worse than last year. At least last year I knew vaugely what I was doing.

Help!

No, I’ll pull it together. I always do. Well, mainly. Someone on the Nano forum has already written 30,000 words. I haven’t even done one! Shocking.

You did miss a hell of a post just before my interweb broke. I was having this grandoise rant about the possibility of the legal drinking age in the UK being raised to 21. I’m pissed off about that still, but I’ve lost the momentum of the rant so unfortunately I can’t recreate it. My internet died about 3/4 of the way through this rant. I was bloody annoyed about that as well.

“So…uh…how’s that little novel of yours com-” *BANG* 

An observation…

God, I love Top Gear. It’s so conservative. Proper I-can-do-whatever-the-hell-I-like-including-smoke-a-pipe-in-a-public-place-and-drive-at-294-miles-per-hour conversative, not ‘stick-up-arse’ conservative. You don’t see that on British tv much these days. It’s all fucking political correctness and safety-safety-safety and not-calling-a-spade-a-spade bollocks and we-must-have-a-black-guy-and-an-asian-guy-and-a-lesbian-chick-in-this-or-else-we-will-get-called-racist. And oh-my-heavens, I’ve gone all Ira Levin on your arse. Rosebaby’s Baby is a fantastic book, but the dashes are so annoying.

Missed me?