I’ve reached that point in the novel that happens every time I reach the middle, nearing the end.  What now?  What happens next?  I should make a list of plot points that need clearing up, but I’m not sure that would help much.  Because there are things I want to carry over into later books, and things that I’m not sure should happen in this one, and I just don’t know.

That’s the biggest problem, really.  If I knew exactly where the end of this book was, I could work my way to it, but I don’t.  Right now, I feel like there’s not enough action, too much character development, and I haven’t worked the conflicts enough.

This is a first draft.  This is a first draft, kind of, and the important thing is to just get it done.  Right?  Right.

Now I just need to convince myself of it.  If I can just reach the end of this book, get everything, good and shitty alike, written out, then I can go back and scrap section, rewrite section, clean things up.  Get a better feel for the flow, and stuff.  Getting a solid feel for it is impossible right now, because it’s not finished.

Okay.  That being said, I’m going to go finish this chapter, come Hell or high water.

Three days of being miserably sick – three books. The first of which was The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie.

The book follows three principal point of view characters, plus a slew of minor characters in the second half. Let’s get the important part out of the way first: None of them are likeable.

There’s Captain Jezal dan Luthar, an egocentric little prick whose only reason for falling in love seems to be that the lady in question is “damn fine looking” – it certainly isn’t her personality, take that from me. There’s Inquisitor Sand Glotka, a cripple who hates everybody and their mum and, judging by his name, seems to be the child of Portuguese and Dutch immigrants (kidding, but: the names in the book enraged me with their wanton inconsistency). And then there’s Logen Ninefingers, the only one of the sorry lot that seems to be even remotely likeable, although he is thick as a brick, which doesn’t go far towards endearing him to me.

Supporting characters include Ferro Maljin, an escaped slave woman whose only goal in life is killing and spitting in the face of every other living being on this planet, including her allies. Major Colleem West, who will trick you into thinking that he’s likeable until you find out that he is just as uncaring and egocentric as his buddy Jezal. And Dogman, who doesn’t seem to have a proper name and enjoys pissing himself…

In short, an endearing lot.

The book isn’t helped by being the first part of a trilogy, the part where everything gets rolling. It consists of long, detailed (I’m not using that as a compliment here) descriptions of how our characters become part of the team and what they have to endure to get to the eventual starting point of their mission. One very brief scene tells us a little bit about the larger picture, but since that scene is (no doubt deliberately) written as a conversation between two high mages that already know everything, it might as well be written in Swahili. The rest is mediocre jokes, unending fight scenes and a love story so horrible that you want to tear your eyes out.

Don’t. Read. Trust me.

Blarg

Alice Thursday is being postponed until this weekend, I think.  I didn’t sleep at all last night, and I’m not going to be sleeping at all tonight either.  I’ll be lucky to get everything done in time.  I’ll try to make up for it later.

Another bad day. I mean, not that yesterday was bad, just that this adds to the count of bad days I’ve ranted about here.

I don’t know why. I just get irritable when I see someone. I don’t know why. And then it messes the rest of my day up.

Bleh.

I didn’t even run the mile…well, walk it with Mina today. Blah.

Oh well, whatever, I probably bother her enough as it is.

sighs.

I feel entitled to complain and have people listen to me and be sympathetic. Which, I shouldn’t, because I’m not entitled to it.

lolz.

And I’m a morbid cynic.

Apparently.

Whatever, it fits for now.

~~~

Life sucks when you’re unhappy and you know you shouldn’t be.

I like etiquette.  I think it’s neat, if not in practice then at least to read.  I like the idea of conducting oneself in a manner befitting a proper gentleman or lady.  Granted, I  think that etiquette is sometimes carried too far, but general courtesy is something which is seemingly rare nowadays.  Etiquette is nice in that it provides a helpful guide for people in any given situation.

That is, except the subway.  Well, sort of.  Subways are awkward.  There is definitely unspoken etiquette at play, such as seating rules or standing rules, but it tends to make things complicated for me.  Everyone knows that you generally shouldn’t stare at others or make eye contact.  Books and newspapers provide a nice outlet for people, because people then have somewhere to look.  This doesn’t work for me.  I’ve tried reading a book on the subway, and I always get too absorbed and miss my stop.  If I concentrate on the T’s location and count stops, my concentration is lost to the book and having it is pointless.  I can’t set a timer, because my phone does not function when underground.

So, I listen to my iPod.  This works out well.  I can divide my attention equally enough to be able to pay attention to the current stop and my music.  It also gives me time to think.  What it does not give me is somewhere to look.  There are adverts in the T, but those take approximately twenty seconds to read, and I have most of them virtually memorized as is.  I never know where to focus my eyes.  I’m always afraid I’ll end up looking at someone and break the unspoken rule.  All that I can ever really safely look at are my hands, my lap or outside the window (when we’re above ground), and I don’t exactly relish the idea of staring at my hands or the threads in my pants for an hour.  I could do it, but there are other methods of torture that I’d rather experience first.  I have a hierarchy of preference should I ever be faced with that sort of decision (assuming the person torturing me is polite).

I have yet to devise some sort of solution to this problem that is workable and tolerable for me, and I have the feeling that the solution is going to be to train my inner clock to just know or to learn to not get so absorbed in reading.  Then again, closing my eyes and sleeping for an hour does have its appeal and provides an easy solution.

How about you?  Do you run into situations like this?

I grew up catching spiders, dragonflies, grasshoppers and whatever bugs my cousins and I would find in our little “adventures.” I would cut the tail of lizards so I could see if the tail would grow back. I would cut earthworms in half during the rainy season because I was told that they could still survive that (now I’m wondering if I doubled their population). My brother had pet mice that I would always pick up to play with. Big cockroaches on the wall that would fly to you? I’d happily get a fly swatter and swing it like a baseball bat to see the cockroach sail through the room.

Show me just a picture of a real frog and I will jump and run away.

One night when I was about 5 years old, I was riding my bike up and down our driveway. My mom had an NGO meeting in our house and one of the attendants had a big bodyguard who was standing outside smoking. As I rode my bike up the driveway I noticed a big toad sitting harmlessly near our front door. I said “Ooh, a frog!” The bodyguard turned to look at the toad – and stepped on it.

I got confused. Are humans supposed to kill frogs? I gaped at what was going on in front of me. Thankfully the toad was still alive. I guess it was too big to die from being stepped on. The bodyguard noticed and stepped on it again. “Dude what the freak are you doing?” (I didn’t exactly say that but something along those lines that a 5 year-old would say). I couldn’t believe what was going on so I asked him to stop. He took his foot off and, once again, the toad was still alive. Looked either annoyed or tired, but still alive. I was impressed.

The bodyguard then stepped on the toad again and really squished it with the heel of his shoe and put his entire weight on it. White goo oozed out of both sides of the toad’s face. Its entire body got squished real bad. I would describe further, but just thinking of that moment makes me want to throw up. Bleh.

Ever since then I’ve been scared of frogs. It’s not that I think they would eat me or harm me or anything. Every time I see one, even in pictures, I get reminded of how squishy a toad or a frog is and how gross that is. So if there’s a frog near me, I’m scared it would accidentally jump on me or even touch me and I’d feel its squishiness.

Seriously it was really gross watching it get squished.

My throat hurts…

Has anyone had the Vegan Brunch Scrambled Tortillas yet?

They’re amazing… especially served with slices of avocado and doused in hot sauce… but see above for why there’s no pretty picture of them in the book…

Someone make me Scramble Tortillas with a side of Vitamin C!!!

Blargh,

Guava

Sometimes the only thing between me and suicide is the fact that  I don’t want my parents or friends to come up here looking for me and see the squalor in which I’ve been living the past few weeks. Dirty clothes everywhere, mixed in with schoolwork and a travel mug and all sorts of shit. Sheets that haven’t been changed since late July with blood and marker stains.

Other times the only thing between me and suicide is sheer laziness: I am too lazy to go and get pills from other parts of the house or too lazy to cross the room and find sharps hard enough to dig in deep or too lazy to find a way to describe the particular dress in which I’d like to be buried.

Other times the only thing between me and suicide is vanity. I don’t want anyone to see my skin in its current state, and I doubt that it’s easy to put makeup on a corpse.

Other times the only thing between me and suicide is the fear of failure. I don’t want to go back to the hospital and if I do it wrong that’s where I’ll end up.

Very occasionally but honestly less often than all the above the only thing between me and suicide is the image of Leah or Emily crying, after. I can’t imagine Anna or Mary or my parents or sister, though. They’d all be fine eventually, anyway.

Dry mouth, dry lips and the water seems to make me dryer. I don’t know what this is [panic anxiety depression] but I don’t like it. I’m riding it out with water and music but this is giving me a headache, sharp jabbing pains in the brain. I don’t know why she worries. She’s allowed to go off in an almost-panic with a simple “i need to go lie down and take deep breaths” but i’m not? Just because I almost killed myself once does not invalidate my needs to be by myself sometimes, semi-healthy needs. Sometimes I don’t feel well and even the woman I love is not what I need and she needs to deal with that. Love is no panacea. My eyes and legs are tired, my mouth and skin are dry. Everything is hot. Drink more water. It’s not cold enough but for really cold water I need to go downstairs, or have it be winter. It’s still summer, or at least the ground still holds the summer’s heat, and the pipes are still full of just-cool-not-cold water. “on the last day of jimi hendrix’s life he poured himself a glass of water. He put four ice cubes into the glass. There is nothing like cold water, there is nothing like cold water.”

My stomach is full of room-temperature water and I still feel dry and dull and a little bit– wrong. Talking would make me want to hurl [vomit, throw things] and so I am not talking. Input from the outside when I am in certain moods is always incorrect. I have to stay inside myself and my bubble. My music and my words and my body and my bed. My is a term I use loosely. I did not pay for these things or find them or make them (with the exception of the arrangement of the words) but they are mine nonetheless. “Something can be fact and be an absolute lie, and something can be made up and be truer than the truth.” So too with the concept of possesion, of ownership.

My eyes and legs are so tired. My words are so tired. The skin on my hands is oddly dry, a fact of which I become acutely aware when I bend them to type, especially my left hand. My teeth embed themselves in my lip when I write and because I am dry they stick when I open my mouth. I think at this point gallons of water could not cure me. I think I am a human desert – but the most beautiful thing about the desert, after all, is that somewhere, hidden in it, there is a well. Where’s the well?

I lick my lips and feel the split place they bled earlier (she was here, she was here!).  I shift my body and the residual moistness between my legs makes the fabric stick (she was there, too). My eyelids droop from waking up in the night and chomping as efficiently as possible on granola bars (shh, she’s here) and I think about koosh-ball trees and shallow clear cool oceans and old women wishing and little girls blowing bubbles and soft butterfly kisses on every inch of my skin (oh, oh, she’s here…).

Now I’m at my mother’s computer and my dog is snuffling for a walk and my sister is watching TV and she’s not here anymore.

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