Ramblings · of · an · Aspiring · Writer

Why can't Adam fucking understand that I don't want him going through my stuff? He thinks he can just rearrange whatever I own however he the fuck he wants. I already have no say in the state of the things we collectively own. I can't place my DVDs or my games where I want because they have to be worked into the pattern he has for his own games. Never mind his prized fucking collection. If I'm in the same room as one of those plastic pieces of shit when it falls over, it's my fault. Somehow, in his mind, it's perfectly reasonable that I have no right to touch his stuff, but he has every right to mess with mine whenever he wants. A few weeks ago I tried to clean off the kitchen table and within moments, he was blocking me from getting near the table, pushing me back, telling me "he'd deal with that later. He'd clean it when he has time." Physically blocking me with his size from going over there because he doesn't want me to move anything. Why the fuck can't I clean a space in my own fucking house? And god forbid I should put the groceries away. Because then he'll have to move everything. He doesn't like how I load the dishwasher either.

So, I tell him repeatedly "Stop going through my stuff. Leave it alone. It's midnight, I have a paper to write, and I don't need you stressing me out by doing this." (Nevermind the noise.) In his fucking head, a pile of papers and books on the coffee table is an unbearable mess. So he has to go through it, deciding where things should go, so I have no hope of finding anything when I need it.

And then he turns this on me and claims I'm some kind of control freak because I want to be able to find my own stuff, like it's crazy that I should want to retain ownership of anything in this relationship. But I should have already known that. Like when he spent over a hundred dollars of my money without my permission off my debit card, used it like a personal loan. Or when he threw out greeting cards from my family because he wanted the shelf space they were sitting on. Or when he threw a cosmic hissy fit because I ate one of his 'special school granola bars' and then when I bought my own granola bars and tried to reserve them for myself in the same way he had done, he ate all of them before I had a chance to open the box.

Sometimes, I really wish I could leave. I know I'm a deficient human being, someone who needs order and routines to function, but it would be nice to have some level of freedom at home. But who am I kidding? Where would I go?

I'm going to miss my Short Fiction class.

Today was the last day. Afterwards, our teacher invited everyone who could make it to a bar and he bought drinks. (I don't drink drink, but still. Pretty cool. =X) The class was out at two, but nearly everyone was still there at 8PM when I had to leave. (Final quiz tomorrow. Should study.)

Man, a lot of fun. I exchanged emails with a few people, so hopefully I'll have some good writing buddies for criticism outside of class.

I hope, hope, hope that the revised story I handed in today makes it into Pearls. (The school's anthology of student work.) >.>' My revision was a little shallow, but still. I can hope, right?

I haven't updated for a while. Nothing really exciting to report.

One week until my semester is over, aside from exams. Woohoo. Then I need to figure out what I'll do for the Summer. I need a break from writing, or at least school writing, so I don't think I'll take any classes. (Though these writing courses have really been helping me to improve. I feel like I've learned more in these past six months than in the previous four years about writing.)

I ran into Katherine in Metrotown mall recently. That was... really random. o_o I hadn't seen her since in moved away from Kitimat.

Adam's little family dog that he's had since he was seven died today. =/ His mom called to tell him. It's rare to see Adam cry, but he did. The last time he had a chance to see her was Christmas a year ago.

Teesha had a long life, though. She was sixteen years old. (I'm just glad it didn't happen while my parents were babysitting her. It was only three weeks ago. It wouldn't have been their fault, but I don't think Adam or his Mom would have forgiven them. =/)

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Have to register for next semester's courses tomorrow. I have a good idea of what I'm going to pick. Just hope there are seats open by then.

I got written comments back on the first two chapters of that story I want to finish over Christmas. Not too much to say about it overall; I pretty much knew what was wrong with it already.

But one person... made really bizarre comments. o_o This person literally went through my entire story and in every single place where I used a contraction, every single can't, don't, or shouldn't... the person crossed them out, then wrote them out above. (Cannot, do not, should not.) Even in dialogue. o_o'

Has this person been told by someone that you can't use contractions? I can understand in an essay or something, but in a... story... with dialogue... Just wow. I really wonder if this person did it in all ten of the stories we workshopped. If so, just... wow. That person has a lot of time to waste. Seriously. If he/she thought my contraction use was a problem, why not just say 'No contractions' and underline one example?

The genius also underlined 'Chapter 2' and wrote '?'. Yes, I did include a second chapter. I'm writing a story with shorter chapters, as it is for younger children, so rather than writing one eight page chapter, I wrote two four page chapters. o_o' I'm sorry if I... confused you.

Reminds me of this person who, in my other writing class, went through my story and underlined all my short sentences and wrote 'sentence fragment'. Uh, I'm sorry, but it's actually not length that determines whether or not something is a fragment.

My children's writing teacher, on Friday, asked to speak to me in the hallway. (Yeah, I did think 'Aaaahhh, what did I do?' at first.)

She said that she really enjoyed the first two chapters of my story and asked if I had anymore. It's not often that she asks her students this, she said, maybe a handful in the years she's taught the course. (Not to mention, she's a published author. She has about 13 books published.) I told her that I hadn't really gotten any further on it, since I've been so busy with other classes, but I'll probably work on it during Christmas break. (I don't know if she'd want to look at it by then, but after that she said 'I just wanted to tell you that, since I won't be here next week when your chapters are workshopped.')

Okay, to the bad plan: Instead of looking for good paying work over Christmas, I spend it typing like a maniac to finish that story. (It's going to be a chapter book for kids, so it doesn't need to be as long as some of my other stories, though that doesn't mean it's going to be any easier to write.) Not in the 'Yay, writing is fun sense.' I had before. In the new 'This is what I want to do with my life, so I'm going to fucking do it.' attitude that I've had to adopt for finishing writing assignments with no inspiration. So, on to the bad plan...

Step one: Finish story in December, no excuses. Just do it. (Hopefully earlier than that. It doesn't need to be as long, so it shouldn't take me as long as NaNo.)

Step two: >.> Ask the teacher if she wants to look at it, since she offered. (I have both her email and phone number from the class. Hopefully, she should be okay with it.)

Step three: Mercilessly edit the story. (Hopefully with some time left in December. I know I wouldn't have the time during school. Maybe during the first two weeks, though.)

Step four: Actually submit it to places. (>.> If I get this far, maybe I could ask her how you go about doing that? Though according to my course outline, we should learn a bit about that on the last day of class.)
Step four: ???
Step five: PROFIT

Bad plan? Probably.
But if necessary, I could skip step two and just write, edit, and submit without the input.

Ugh. Why do I find these so hard? I can write an entire story from nothing more than a blank page, but when it comes to listing out character traits on a page and laying out the plot beforehand, I struggle so much.

The worst part is, they're completely useless for me. Either I end up ignoring them and allowing my characters and plots to develop organically, as they always do, or I try to force my story to conform to them and I ruin the story. When I use an outline, my character's behaviour seems forced. They don't seem real.

I imagine they're very helpful for some writers, but I don't even use outlines for essays and I've always done fine. My other writing teacher seems to understand that. (He said that not everyone writes with a clear idea of where the story is going to go. And we don't have to do any pre-story work in that class.) I feel like this teacher is just forcing her own methods on us because they work for her. =/ She only teaches this one class, once every two years.

...
If I had the time, I'd just write the actual story assignment first and /then/ do the outline/profile. I've just been sitting here, trying to start this, when all I really want to do is the write the actual story. But I left this until now because I'm been dreading it so much. I ended up crying for three hours when I wrote the outline/profile for my picture book. And guess what happened? I completely ignored the profile. (The outline I pretty much stuck to, but there's not much room in a picture book for a character to take the story in a new direction.)

Ugh, I've been sitting here for an hour and I haven't written anything down. Adam is going to get home soon and then it'll be impossible to do this assignment. He's going to bitch and moan about how I have the computer. Or he'll start coming up and bugging me like a five year old. He gets so needy when I have work to do. X_x' I think I'm going to cry.

Edit: What the fuck. The outline and profile is only worth 5% less than the actual fucking story. Ugh. I wish I had never taken this class. It keeps making me so upset.

I thought I was right next to the bed, last night, so I jumped onto it. >.< But I ended up landing... on the corner of the bed, with most of my weight on my knee. A very dumb, painful thing, that. >.O It's kinda puffy now. I think it's going to bruise pretty badly.

Got back another scene in one of my writing classes. I received an 'A-/A'. Another weird split mark. Not sure why he likes them so much. Maybe because they're more specific than a single letter grade? I just find them confusing. >.>' I'm getting a B so far in class participation, though. My strategy of saying next to nothing in class and leaving really detailed written comments... apparently doesn't work.

I suppose I'll have to force myself to speak up. >.<'

Edit: 24 hours later, my knee feels hot and swollen and feels kinda weird... tingly. It looks a little puffy. No bruise, though. Just a really dark red spot where the corner pressed into my knee the most and a surface cut leading away from it. I guess I'll keep an eye on it? (The whole ankle thing has made me a little paranoid.)

Having a history midterm the day after elections day is evil. Hard to study when you want to watch the results.

Ah well, I think I did okay. The marks I've been getting thus far have been pretty decent, so I'm not overly worried.

(I only just barely finished, though. o_o' Literally down to the last minute. And I was the fifth person done. Most of the people in the class didn't finish. It was about 20 pages of writing. All writing. My hand still hurts.)

Sidenote: I wonder why I was given a higher mark than the rest of my group on my recent project, when I really don't feel that I did the most work and I /marked/ that down on the group evaluation form thing? If I mark myself lower than someone, it's probably for a reason. >.>' I know how much I contributed, you know?

I ended up revising that picture book story and giving it to the teacher last Friday and I got it back today. She said she was really impressed with how I applied the criticism to improving the story and that moments like these are 'the reason she teaches', that it pleased her on a personal level. This version got 85%, but judging by the comments and the individual scores that added up to that (all scores of eight or nine, not a average made up of low marks and high marks) that I guess it was a solid 85%.

It's the biggest difference between writing for fun and doing it for real, I guess. I love sitting down to a blank page and just... creating. But the part where I have to chop it up and take out the 'unnecessary', reword the vague, and show instead of tell... that's so hard that it hurts. It's so hard to separate the words from the writer, from me. If there's a failing in the story, isn't it a failing of mine?

It's scary to think that the real, true difference between being /just/ a writer and being a published writer is /editing/, that thing I really hate to do. Heh.

But I guess I can do it, even if my knee-jerk reaction is to be really, really upset about it.

Does anyone remember those Dr Brain games? You know, those edutainment games made by Sierra in the 90s? I have this sudden wish to find one of them again: the Lost Mind of Doctor Brain. That game was... great. I bed it wouldn't even play on a Vista computer, though. Probably would need... windows 95 or something like that. Oh well.

I want to attempt to make a turkey for thanksgiving, but Adam won't let me. I just want to make a little one. They sell tiny ones now. He thinks I'd mess it up. >.>'

Is it a bad thing to take allergy medicine to help myself fall asleep so I don't stay up all night worrying before a midterm?

Otherwise, I just keep thinking and thinking, lying awake until it's time to get up. At least on days when there's something kinda scary happening the next day. I don't do it all the time. >.>

I have a group presentation tomorrow, too. I hate speaking in public. I'd almost want to take more of the allergy medicine before that, but then I wouldn't be alert enough to answer the questions at the end.

Meh, on the plus side... my marks so far for both those classes are high enough that even if I did a miserable job at either, I'd still do okay overall. (Especially the Anthropology midterm, since it's not worth very much compared to the observation exercises, which are... easy.)

I watched a few hours of the debate last night.... and I still don't know who to vote for.

All I know is I can't stand Stephen Harper and his god damned sweater and his condescending little commercials where he tries to appeal to female voters who vote with their ovaries instead of their brains. He didn't miss a single opportunity in the debate to mention/exploit his kids. I think that if I were a parent, I'd be deeply offended by the way he parades his son and daughter around like they're just another piece on the chess board to be played.

There's something slimy about the man that goes beyond policies.

I can't watch this ad without feeling like he thinks we are all a bunch of little kids and he's the gentle 'all-knowing' father who knows what's best for us.