More grey and dreary days

Honestly? Ow. Yes, still at it. Cold sore (herpes) in combination with ...hell, I don't know. Wisdom teeth, only I had the little buggers removed. Either way, my right cheek is all swollen and achy - on the inside. Don't get any chipmunk images in your head, cause it doesn't show...well, apart from the grumpy mood I am in. The cheek aches, leading to my head aches, and then the rest of my body sort of aches just to sympathize with the head and cheek. Hello, body? You are not supposed to behave like this. Is it because I am not giving you sugar? I bet it is.

Yes, the house is sold, papers to be signed, and we're to move out - pronto. Oh, and the good news is that the kitchen for the new house arrives on Tuesday. Next week. Meaning...gee, there is a shitload of things to do, and so little time. Ow. And Christmas. My mother is starting to lean towards no Christmas at all, and I am SO not happy with that idea. I want Christmas! I want a tree, I want Christmas food, I want santas everywhere, I want candy (err, not supposed to eat it, but it is supposed to be there!) and I want presents under the tree, and the feeling that we might have outdone ourselves in the presents department.

Trying to feel positive here (see, Lori, I am trying!), and applied for two jobs yesterday - web producer and a team manager position (where they specified they wanted someone interested in language and computers - here I am!). I have applied for so many jobs lately, I am not even keeping track any more. Now that is just ...horrible. And yeah, they all said that thank you, we have your application, we will get back to you. Oh, right.

So, my life is a mess. My things are packed up, and I am living out of boxes - which, by the way, sucks. Honestly. You spend half an hour looking for a thing, just to realize that it is probably in one of the boxes in the new house. 800 kilometres away. Ugh. And I hate having my clothes in boxes and bags, cause I never get to wear anything. Err, of course I get to wear clothes, honestly! It is just that half of them are packed down, and I am not packing them up just to wear the lovely sweater at the bottom of the trunk. So, sticking with what is easily accessible.

-sigh- And there we go, I think I need a nap.

On a so-so day

I am just so tired. Don't know why really, since I did sleep for a good 8 hours last night, but here I am, falling asleep at the keyboard. I am also hurting, since it seems like my herpes is blossoming up - meaning that half my mouth feels all swollen and achy and eating anything hard is out of the question. Unfortunately, herpes also means that I am likely having a cold on the way, the lil bugger only bothers to pop up whenever he has company. Misery loves company, perhaps?

Well, there is plenty of it, too. We might have sold the house, which perhaps isn't misery, but it also means that we have to move out. Now, the house where my parents are gonna live is in the north of Sweden, say...800 kilometres to the north, and they are still working on putting it into a condition where you can actually live in it. Dad found a lot of water damage in one of the bathrooms only last week - so it will have to be redone. (Though, insurance company will pay for it). Also, the kitchen needs to be redone, and all those things have been ordered. It's just that they are to be delivered at December 17th.

Then add the chaos that is here, with furniture, what's left of boxes, the fact that I still haven't got a job and am getting pretty damned desperate. And feeling depressed too, since I have been looking for a job since March, and been on several work interviews. It plain sucks, and those thoughts do not go well with the misery of feeling that I am getting sick, too. Ow.

Also, holidays coming up. I love Christmas, I really really do, and this year it feels like everything is chaos, and nothing is turning out to be what it usually is. I mean...no money for presents, and then the family is spread out, and it is quite possible that we will not have a kitchen for Christmas. And I really really dislike moving north, cause it is a helluva lot colder there, and I am already freezing. And we're still staying above zero degrees Celsius.

So, tell me that this is going to be fine, or I am gonna slip into bed, and not come out of til January. February. Oh hell, maybe even March.

Snippet no 4

Gatsby straightened a little; waiting for her to finish with the thought of train he could clearly see was running through her mind. Small train, but with bright and shiny colours.

“Perhaps there was a purpose with his disappearance?” he suggested politely, but the moment he said that out loud, it became clear that Susan had landed at the same platform with her thought-train. “Very well then, if that is the case, then maybe we should try and find out wherever the unfortunate Mr Fairweather is at the moment?”

“Yes,” said Susan, “but how?”

“If the mirror is not cooperating, and I would not think it will, after all, it is an inanimate object,” Gatsby started, and he cleared his throat after a quick glance to Susan who was not going to have any more of the elaborate speeches, “err, I mean. How about trying to find him with the crystal ball? It only seems logical, since it is a bit of the human world and the Second Dimension. We are trying to locate something that is all human in the Second Dimension.”

“It should not be all that hard,” said Susan. “They are keeping much closer track of human goods in the other realm, these days. Apparently, they got a bit tired of the writers sneaking in at all times, trying to come up with crazy plots. Just look at how that fellow, Lewis Carroll, ended up. Writing gibberish, and all. My aunt did not yell to cut off his head. Well, she does, but we all mean that she means it in the most kind and affectionate way.”

“Right,” said Gatsby. “Talk about getting off track here. Crystal ball, lost human, now?”

“Right,” said Susan, and headed off towards her workroom once more, and just to be on the safe side, she brought along the mirror manual so she could call the support in the Second Dimension.

Snippet no 3 - Blame It on the Weatherman

Susan went to answer the door, and was not all that pleased to find out that the visitor from the other realm was a door to door salesman. He was hovering on the black doorstep, a huge suitcase under his arm, dressed in impeccable suits and with salesman written all over his honest smile. Yeah, Susan could almost smell the deals he brought with him, not to mention the smell of persuasion. It sort of hung around him, and she sighed, reaching to tap the frame, and make her visible to him. He brightened up immediately upon spotting her, and launched into his sales pitch.

“Good day to you, madam, what a lovely day this is, only a mild rain of frogs, I was just telling my colleague that we are indeed lucky chaps who get to go out in this lovely weather, and sell even more lovely weather, my name is Narcissus Smith and I represent Good Weather Incorporated. Have you seen our commercials on the Witch Channel by any chance? We can offer you all the weather you need, and I have here some samples that I would like to demonstrate to you…”

He could have gone on, if Susan had not stopped him.

“Mr Smith, I am afraid this is not a good moment, and if you…”

He continued, still moving briskly with his sales talk.

“I take it that you are a sunshine lady, Madam, and I have to say, we do have some lovely drops of sunshine here. Drop one in your garden, and your plants will grow like mad. Perhaps you would like a drop of rain to go with that, no need for the watering of the plants, my own mother uses this and she swears by it, saves her both time and money she says, and she always knows when to put on her boots in case it is muddy, you can even modify it with this small potion, only costs a few silvers more, and then you will not even have to worry about the mud as the rain will spread evenly over the garden, in the spots you have picked out.”

Susan cleared her throat, a bit more firmly, but still politely.

“Mr Smith, this is not a good moment, and I am afraid…”

“Thunderstorms, maybe? A bit of a rainbow for your party, that is always a classic. I also have some hail, powerful to use on your enemy!”

At this point, Susan was getting very tired of the salesman, and she was in fact sorely tempted to zap him with one of his own thunderstorms. She tried to break off the sales pitch, but it was in fact like talking to a wall. If the wall talked back, that is. She turned lightly with the creak of the staircase, thinking it was Gatsby returning to annoy her, and she pondered if she could in fact sic him on the salesman. It would not be the first time, either.

“Oh, there you are. Please come and help me, he just will not leave!” she said, only to grow silent as she saw who it was coming down the stairs. It was not her cat, but the repairman, who now looked very puzzled.

“Who?” he said, coming towards her. “Are you talking to yourself in the mirror?”

Snippet no 2

Saffron might have looked like Dolly Parton with a twist, but she had the mind and tactical ideas of General Patton. And that is exactly what Susan feared as she stepped back from the mirror to allow her mother and the extra visitor the space of the vestibule as they arrived from Second Dimension. Gatsby had moved away from the mirror as well, and taken up a seat on one of the steps of the staircase. His huge yellow eyes were watching the happenings of the hall, with a small conceited cat smile.

Susan almost groaned out loud as she saw who the other visitor was – her aunt Hyacinth. To have to deal with Saffron was bad enough, but to have to tangle with aunt Hyacinth at the same time…well, maybe she should just beg for mercy here and now. But no wars can be won by begging for mercy, so Susan tried to find those positive, happy thoughts inside her, as she stepped forward to greet the visitors.

“Mother, aunt Hyacinth,” she said, with a smile in place on her lips. “What a pleasant surprise to see you here, I hope the journey here was not too troublesome?” She almost winced inwardly as she helped her aunt with her coat; it smelled heavily of moth balls and sulphur. Hmm, maybe aunt Hyacinth had been dabbling in dark arts again. Susan readily abandoned these thoughts as she hung up the coat, and was presented with Hyacinth’s hat. Ah, Hyacinth’s hat. Now that was something different, even for the Second Dimension. For some reason, Hyacinth’s hats were always …different. Eccentric, one might say. This one was a black satiny one, with a stuffed…vulture as its crowning glory. Susan swallowed as she met the unnervingly alive gaze of the stuffed vulture, and she could not be quick enough with hanging up the hat.

She turned to gaze over her mother and her aunt, both prime examples of witches in their best years. Well, to be honest, a witch was always at the prime of her years, so it did not really matter what actual age she was. Her mother was somewhat on the plump side, but still managed to look impeccable at all occasions in her designer clothes. (Designers from the Second Dimension, of course. Saffron would never even be able to think the thought of wearing something a ….human..designer had made.) Hyacinth on the other hand was tall and gangly, and wore a mismatching collection of clothes that seemed to have come from the trash bin somewhere. It was hard to believe that the two women were actually sisters, but alas, Susan thought, they were, and they were her family.

“Susan,” her mother started, with a faint disapproving tone in her voice. “You are not wearing…human clothes again, are you?”

Susan sighed. Oh, it would be one of those visits.

Thursday Blah

It is a depressingly grey and dreary Thursday outside, all rainy and windy. Something is sure to tell me that it really is November, in all its dreary grey glory. And this is when Swedes get hit with depressions, trust me. I once read a book called the "Xenophobe's Guide to the Swedes", and they describe us as people who suffer from "svårmod" (A quick translation of the word would be gloom or melancholy). At least in winter. A tourist arriving in summer in Sweden will think that...wow. Look at all them Swedes...no clothes (well, almost), smiling happy people everywhere, lots of light...this is awesome! Same tourist coming to visit in ...oh, November, would not recognise the Swedes. Dressed heavily, all suffering from melancholy, shut away in their homes...yeah.

I really like reading those sort of books, though. We have a superb columnist here in Sweden, whose name is Herman Lindqvist. He used to work as a reporter abroad, and now writes both excellent history books and causeries. He never fails to make me laugh when comparing Swedes to for example French....Yeah, I sure wish I could write causeries like him. Well, next project, eh?

Cause I have to say that I actually got a kick in the butt with NaNo. I am now up in 3619 words, yay me. Thank chloe for doing word battles with me, and not giving me an excuse to say...I'll do it later!

Even more writing

...well, I at least got down 700 words yesterday, which is a record. We're working on it, me and my inner muse. She is one to get distracted by other things, and I try to keep her focused with coffee. Mostly. I also try to keep her focused with reading...which might just be a little of...getting off track.

But well, have you ever read a book and just felt that it was just...right? That's how I feel about "Writing Down the Bones" by Natalie Goldberg (not Goldman). She lists just so many things, explains some, and tells us of how she works. Like for example.... a chapter in the book is called "Writing Is Not a McDonald's Hamburger". And she is perfectly right about that. Even though I am trying to do this, write so many words - I must really take in account that it might not be perfect. And I cannot worry that I am just at the beginning of my tale - cooking is slow, and you never know where you will end up. (At least not in my family where cooking is always experimenting, and seeing when you end up. We never have the same casserole twice, I can tell you that.)

I swear, things get so complicated sometimes

I do believe I think too much. Especially whenever I sit down to write more on the NaNo novel, which up to date is not so hot. I really need to get off my butt, and stop with the procrastinating. And I do. But would you believe it, the small snippets of dialogue and characters just come along whenever I am not by the computer! Argh. I swear, it is driving me nuts, since I cannot very well carrying around a note book when I am walking the dogs, for instance.

This is just like when I was writing on my paper. I can sit at the computer, and stare at the screen for hours, and then when I walk away...poof, lots of ideas. Drives me nuts, it does. Problem is that I really do think too much, and then I end up with writer's block. So, more prompts and writing exercises to just get the writing actually flowing.

I have this great book. Well, I actually have a lot of great books on writing - I just love reading them. But the one I am referring to is called "Writing Down the Bones" by Natalie Goldman. I recommend it to all writers out there, she is writing about writing in a not so strict way - more like a creative way, where each chapter is about something new. New advice, new ideas. I love that. For instance, she writes that "learning to write is not a linear process"...amen, sister! Mine is definitely not linear in any way. Not any more.

Alright, just thinking it over actually brought up a whole new world of thoughts concerning my writing. You see, I was the Queen of Writing Long Stories when I was younger. I loved to write. Loved to get more and more ideas to put into the stories I wrote, and I savoured the language lessons in school when we got to write our own things. When I was twelve, I entered the writing competition the school had, where you wrote a story around an image they had picked out. Oh, that worked great for me - I just popped out a story in no time - and even better, I actually won the competition. That was really a glorious moment.

Went through the 7th, 8th and 9th grade - still the same, I wrote long, elaborate stories that my friends loved to read, and perhaps not my teacher - but she at least encouraged me, and said that my language was excellent, and that I had a most vivid imagination. Ohyes, that I did. It didn't matter what the theme was, I wrote it. Back then, I did get stuck on fantasy, though.

And then I started the gymnasium (which is high school in Sweden, 16 - 19). My Swedish teacher did not like me, by any means. And she certainly didn't like my long writing - because that made her read all the more. I wrote a very long fantasy novella my first year, and well, to say the very least, she did not appreciate it. All I heard for three years was that I needed to not be so wordy, to cut down my stories, to be more focused in my writing. Well, to be focused is a good thing, but to have to put up with the less appreciating comments on my work, when others wrote so ...boring things. Well, and worse, actually. I never got a good grade in Swedish in the gymnasium, even though I did very well on all exams, and such. I think it simply was because my teacher didn't like me that she put me down for a medium grade.

Still with me? Then we skip ahead in time, up to the point when I am writing my first thesis in Swedish, which was a comparison between translations of "Anne of Green Gables", and my supervisor...was not very kind, or helpful. Those who knew me back then know how torn apart I was, with having to write chapters of the thesis ...again and again, and then the final straw to really break the camel's back - my supervisor told me that I did not have a very good language. Now, I can just look back and think that...well, I did not have a very good formal language, perhaps, because I had not really tried to write that thesis in formal language. But well, it was another blow to my self esteem as a writer.

Now, it is 3 years later, and I won a scholarship for the best paper in Informatics - written in a foreign language. It's odd, isn't it.

To sum it up....we all have something sitting on our shoulder, whispering in our ear that we are not good enough, and this will and can for sure give us a good-sized writer's block. For me, I have the ghosts of teachers past, ghosts of disapproving family members who whisper in my ear that I am not good enough, that my writing is not good, I should stop it now. And whenever I am now hearing that, I try to think of the other ghosts by my side, the teachers who did encourage the writing, the friends telling me that they want to read more, my parents telling me that I can do anything if I put my mind to it. Yes. I try to listen to them, and less to the negative ghosts. But they are all there, in the back of my mind.

Gah.

Ok, so I know what my problem is. Not writing, and very much just adding to plot and characters, and not writing.

More wine.

...a snippet

Right. Mind you, this is a snippet. Something I start to write at 1 AM at night, trying to get into the feel, which means that it is not really fitting in anywhere, but rather...a way of getting to know the setting, char and plot. There we go, you have been warned!

***

Truth be told, Susan was not a very good witch. That is, she was rather mediocre in her witchcraft, and not turning to the dark side of it. No, Susan was not a black witch for sure – not with her organic potions, good-spells-only policy. Of course, this was not very easy.

Susan lived in the small village of Bedworth, somewhere in the middle of England. This would make her British by nationality, but that is not the entire truth either. Susan was, as mentioned earlier, a witch. Which rather should be spelled with a capital W to indicate that she was in fact, witch by birth and occupation. Her mother was a witch, and so was her grandmother before her. In fact, you could count back generations of witches in the family, and most of them had been excellent, brilliant, skilled witches who had worked their craft flawlessly. So, Susan was a bit of a black sheep at the end of the line, and this… was perhaps a bit unsettling for her mother. No one wants a mediocre daughter – that is, no one wants to admit they have one.

Continued Writing

This was supposed to be the day when I really got down and wrote a whole chunk of ...writing. Or so I thought. But well, for the same reasons as yesterday (simply too many other things to do and finish), I haven't written...much. But, on the bright side, I have small scenes popping up in my mind, along with the chars and the...idea of a plot. Gee, perhaps it would have been a good idea to have worked out all this before November, but well...don't do today what you can do tomorrow. Hah. That's me alright, in some aspects.

Some aspects, some of the people who read this blog will say. In others, I am actually good with getting things up and running. Which is of course....good. I just wish that I could do them in more aspects of my life.

So, to the writing. The setting is somewhat there, I have my main character, and at least a few sketchy secondary characters. Oh, and Gatsby the Cat, who was presented to me by chloe, a friend of mine whom I asked for good authors names. Well, Gatsby the Cat just rung so well with both of us, so he got stuck in there. chloe...is still blamed for dragging me into this, too.

So well. We can hope I get massive inspiration and write lots during the weekend, or it is going to be hell when we come to the end of the month. I must start writing, I must start writing, I must start writing.

A new month

It is November 1st, and I cannot believe how fast the year has gone by. How can it be November already, when it was June and July just moments ago? Some times, I think someone pushes the fast forward button when I ain't looking. And hey, it is my life, and therefore, really unfair that I don't get to push that button!

Beginning of November means that I also signed up to do the NaNoWriMo. (http://www.nanowrimo.org/) Which doesn't make sense at all if you are looking at it - but essentially, I signed up to write 50 k words in a month. I totally blame chloe for getting me into this. She started with a whopping 5 k - I am up to...almost 200 words. Yay me. Problem is really, that I started out, all decided to write a fantasy novel of sorts. Yeah, but when I started typing it out, somehow, it transformed into something else, and it is not really all clear on what the hell this one is. It might be a chick lit with fantasy elements...hmm. Yeah.

Either way, I have to finish all my other usual start of the month business, so I can actually sit down and do this! Mmmyeah. We'll see how it goes. Maybe I should have gone with the whole blogging thing instead.