Defeated by Nature (both mine and MOTHER)

HI! I AM DRAFTING! This means my mental illness number is a living thing with ropes and grappling hooks that goes creeping up and up and up and up until I see its flag has been planted on the peak of Kilimanjaro. It is currently wearing a “THE MOON OR BUST” T-shirt and STILL climbing.

The newest symptom is this weird LOCATION thing. All last week, I kept having to change rooms, ‘Frinstance, I’d work in my bedroom and then I’d realize, Hey! This is not a writing room. It is a room for sleeping. Suddenly, I could not see how I could POSSIBLY be expected to WRITE in the same room in which I SLEEP! What am I? AN ANIMAL???? I had to IMMEDIATELY sleep or leave.

OR take my office, a room we set aside specifically as a room to be WRITTEN IN. It also happens to be where I play World of Warcraft, and last week, while working in it, I several times had the instant and inescapable realization that I had I some VERY IMPORTANT WOW to play. I had to either play WOW or leave. I spent all last week making laps of the house, room by room, laptop and coffee cup in hand, cats who HAD been asleep beside me trailing me, one mournfully, one muttering foul curses.

Over the weekend, it has gotten much worse. Rooms stopped feeling USED…they started feeling used UP. Not only do I now have to MOVE, but I cannot go back to a room I have been in doing something else, EVER, and expect to write. The rooms do not RESET anymore. Every room in my house has PERMANENTLY become the place where I eat or cook or do laundry or watch TV or bathe (YES! In the spirit of TMI, I admit I DID in fact spend a good hour yesterday drafting in the bathroom with my spine pressed up against the cool side of the tub.)

If I can’t draft in my own house for the love of little ducks, I have to GO SOMEPLACE, and if I GO someplace, I have to change out of pajamas and who can write if they are NOT IN THEIR PAJAMAS???? What am I, a PARAMECIUM?? A one celled ANIMAL WANNABE? It can’t be done. It. cannot. be. done.

I have a writing retreat 3 states away set up to begin Saturday – THANK GOD. And Sara has a WHOLE HOUSE chock full of rooms I have never used for ANYTHING. But I have to have this first third done by then because I plan to DRAFT the WHOLE MIDDLE there. I am one scene and some polishing away from being ready to do this, but my house is used up and I am not putting on pants. Period. SO! It was catch 22.

There was nothing to do but move out to the backyard.

I told Scott I had to go write in the yard, but I had a problem. The cats are INDOOR cats and I can’t write without an animal around to have a companionable heartbeat and bathe my fevered aura with dim, cheerful brainwaves. This means the DOG has to come outside with me, and the dog is NAUGHTY.

I had a vision of how it would be…He would see there was a fat delicious electrical cord running across the deck, and he would wait until I was deep in my own mental Texas watching my narrator wreck havoc and then he would BITE INTO that cord and electrocute himself, blow up my computer, AND cause a flashing, fast electrical fire that would burn the house down, killing my children. I was sure of it. I told Scott what would happen and he set out to prevent all of it with DUCT TAPE. Duct tape can fix ANYTHING, even, apparently, psychic visions of complete doom.

So Scott got the duct tape and TAPED the cord down to the steps and ran it to the table and tied it off around a post and made it all very dog safe, and Bagel and I went outside and I was working VERY FRUITFULLY and he was snoozing very Fartfully and outside did not feel USED at all, it was HOT and BRIGHT YELLOW and smelled like CITRONELLA and FRESH CUT LAWN. Perfect!

UNTIL! I noticed these teeny little blue-tailed skinks were CREEPING up under the tape and STICKING themselves and being Very Upset Indeed. It takes a good ten minutes of careful picpickpick to get these stupid skinks safely untaped and off on their way, and then I put the tape back to protect the cord from the dog, and then the thirty seconds worth of memory skinks have resets and they CREEP BACK UNDER THE TAPE or they send their COUSIN in to see if he fares better, and the next time I look, I have SKINK TAPE again.

EDIT in response to comments: IF you do not know what a skink is, the ones in my yard are about an inch to an inch and a half long, and here is a picture lifted off wikimedia.

This morning, for every three minutes I have spent writing, I have spent a good five PICKING SKINKS. It is a SKINK PANDEMIC. I had to remove all tape and come inside to blog. I have been defeated because they are SO cute and every time I pick one free I am scared I am going to be too hasty and rip a little skinky leg off (EEP!) and also, I keep thinking they BREATHE with their skins (I may have made this up, but it feels like a true-science-fact) and if SO then having half their BREATHY PARTS stuck to tape is probably causing loss of brain oxygen and permanently damaging them so they come BACK to the tape just like those crazy swallows come to Capistrano, only with more lobotomy-like side effects.

Nature wins. I QUIT. I will write again tomorrow. Probably in a closet. *martyred sigh*

Sprechen Sie Klingon?

The pink motes I see floating in the sunlit air around my sleeping dog's head MAY VERY WELL be the last few brain cells he has jumping ship, but I THINK they are little hearts. Deep in the doorknob he keeps at the top of his spine, he knows it is (!!!) GEEK LINKY LOVE DAY(!!!)

I know… I keep this VERY under wraps, but TODAY I am going to confess to you, and only you, O pretty internets…. I am an ENORMOUS GEEK. *cough* Yes, let me help you up off the floor where you have fallen in shock.

SAMPLE GEEKDOMS YOU MAY HAVE HEARD ME MENTION:

*I play MMORPGs, notably World of Warcraft. But I have also played Ultima Online. And Diablo. And Starcraft. MAYBE a couple more.

*I’m an art house girl with a fair measure of movie-pretentilicious-smartipants-ness left over from grad school...but I ALSO like movies that take place in space, preferably with rubber puppet aliens eating people, or at least some time travel-fueled avenging.

*I got 90% of the references in the fast-rap part of the Barenaked Ladies song, One Week. (yes, I AM in tune with Sailor Moon, thanks for asking)

*My first crush was Spock.

*My second was the constellation Orion.
(Yes. Really)

*Yesterday I drove over an hour to get to the MALL OF GEORGIA by 7:30 see a 9 am opening day showing of BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT. (We got there at 7:30 so we could get in LINE for GOOD seats. We considered CAMPING OUT. )

*While watching Batman, I BURST INTO SPONTANEOUS APPLAUSE. Three times.

SO, take this link with a pinch of salt. If you are, ever were, or someday aspire to be COOL, this link will not HELP YOU. If, however, you secretly think of JRR Tolkien as your REAL daddy, if you ever missed a school dance because you were in a basement rolling 20 sided dice to see if the vorpal sword of orc slaughter you just found in a chest can deflect a level 22 axe of monster-plus-plus, if you know who Summer Glau is INSTANTLY, without resorting google, then click on…

Like most geeks, I fangrrrrrl <3 me some Joss Whedon. Thanks to a heads up from bj, I learned he’s had his fingers all over a BIZARRE and spiritually damaging little project called Dr. HORRIBLE’S SING-ALONG BLOG. I freakin’ loved it. (Also, YES! OKAY! I admit I like looking at Nathan Fillion. Sue me.) You can see it FREE until tomorrow, and you can buy it for keepsies off i-tunes.

PS. The H in my name is silent, so Joss is the short version of my name I;ve been called Joss since I was a kid. And my friend Deb just sent me a link to This T Shirt. I know it refers to Mr. Whedon – that B is from the BUFFY logo. But…I am strongly considering getting those shirts for both my kids. JUST SO THEY DO NOT FORGET. Maybe Scott, too.

National PJ Month SOME MORE

If you are not regularly a comments reader, you SHOULD break open the ones on the entry below this. There is a RAMPANT WEASEL STORY and more entertaining goodness down there…

Today when I came downstairs AFTER A TRIUMPHANT MORNING OF PRODUCTIVE DRAFTING (bells!trumpets!parades!angels!) my son said, “Do you have writing group?”
I said, “No.”
He said, “Date with Dad?”
I said, “No, I just came down to make a sandwich…Why are you asking me this?”
He said, “Well, you put on real pants, so I figured you must be going someplace special…”

I am WARPING my children.

But I am HIP DEEP IN THE BOOK NOW, WHEE. Today I am ESPECIALLY smug because I finished a sex scene, which means I do not have to write another sex scene for quite some time. I will have to revise this one, but no DRAFTING SEX for a good month or two--- I am PRETTY certain no one is going to do it for at least another 5 chapters. “Keep it in yer pants, oh my fictional beloveds,” says I, and if they whine, then I will say, “TOO BAD ON YOU! UP TROU! IMMEDIATELY! All rampant weasel stories *ahem* will be limited to the comments section of the blog. AT least until August.”

HEE now you are RUNNING to read the comments! But no, in the comments, it is a real alive MAMMAL sort of weasel, not a METAPHOR. It’s just when you spend all morning writing a sex scene, everything starts to sound dirty. I do not LIKE writing sex scenes. Makes me feel pervy and like I am watching something I have no business watching.

My friend Vahz asked me, “SO why do you keep writing them then? Can’t you close the door?”
I told him my whole thing about sex and forward movement and character development, and he said, “Well but give yourself a break! Maybe next time you could just end the chapter with, ‘And then they knocked boots!’”
I said, “Well…if they both keep their BOOTS on, that DOES tell me quite a bit about their characters, right there!”

Maybe I will go with that.

Was thinking as I read over my sex scene, this is another book my niece can’t read *sigh* and then I realized she may well be 16 before it comes out. YARG! In the comments you’ve been talking about what age is appropriate for my books, and yeah –with gods in Alamaba especially, I think, “You must be THIS HIGH to ridet his ride.” In fact, I told one teacher that wanted to have a school wide read I wouldn’t come if they did gods in Alabama---asked them to change to BETWEEN (girl wasn’t out yet).

THAT SAID --- if sneak reading is your teen's greatest vice, then dude, you are both lucky and doing a GREAT job with the parenting.

I was a DREADFUL sneak reader. DREADFUL. I read VERY grown up things like JAWS and ROOTS and THE GODFATHER etc etc on the sly in grade school. And I tell you, I do not THINK of books in the same way I think of movies and TV--- Movies and TV and video games show you things that you can not unsee. Ever. Books tell a story in words, and you can only accurately picture/understand the things that you have the life experience to be ABLE to picture/understand.

I remember this part in roots where Kunta Kinte is dreaming of marrying the prettiest maiden in the village, and in the morning, all the women would display the bloody sheets and there would be feasting, and if there WERE no bloody sheets the girl would be sent back to her father in SUCH SHAME!

I remember being SO enraged with that DUMB TRIBE! What a HATEFUL thing to do to a girl! How on earth could any girl be expected to time her wedding so exactly, MONTHS in advance, so that she would get her period the very next day???

Yeah. Well. I was probably ten.

I had NO idea of how sex worked, really, and I came away from Roots with my innocence still perfectly intact. I didn’t really have an INKLING about how to even PICTURE sex in the books I sneaked to read until 1982, when I boght a tiocket to some Kristy McNichol PG fest and turned left instead of right and walked in to see CONAN THE BARBARIAN instead. Conan TOTALLY does it with a witch in a tent. Very totally with the doing it. Shortly afterwards, I clandestinely read Lady Chatterly’s Lover, which was chock full of gasping and passionate fingernails raking across heaving flanks and sweat-slick bosoms, and I blush to admit that in my MINDS eye, the titular lover of Lady C looked a LOT like DER ARNOLD in breeches (and out of breeches) instead in (and out of) a fur loincloth.

HEE!

ALSO – let’s talk WW for a minute…I am having a HARD TIME sticking to it right now. I want to go see HELLBOY 2 and eat MOVIE POPCORN. But my friend Amy snapped this shot of me at a recent signing at MM house and LOOK! I am SLEEVELESS! I don’t think I have been body confident enough to wear sleeveless since 1992, so it MUST be doign me some good...except I realized that a tank top leaves NO PLACE to safely put a nametag.

National Pajama Month

I am spending July (and most of August...) in Pajamas, writing this book. I am living in my head, my eyes turned so far inward that I am walking into walls, and I have virtually stopped sleeping. It’s neat, but there isn’t much to blog about.

I am lonely here in my Pajamas---what would I do without you, Best Beloveds? All weekend long I left my upstairs hole where I am writing this book on the INTERNET FREE laptop and crept down here to the big computer to check comments. THANK YOU! Comments is what I am having in lieu of actual adult human contact this summer. HI! I wish I had something to TELL you back. Um…MY HEADACHE ISGONE? I can breathe through both nostrils? YAY! Or I could tell you insomnia stories, which are mostly made up and paranoid…

For example, last night at about 2, I was coming to go to bed and try fruitlessly to fall asleep again after a bout of writing, and I heard Suspicious Rustling. It was a SCRABBLING, TICKY sort of rustling. Something CLAWED was very busy somewhere IN MY BEDROOM. I lay awake trying to decide if it was a squirrel in the attic, a cat under the bed, OR a terrible possum---possibly rabid, definitely befanged and slavering ---- pretending to be a squirrel or a cat to soothe me before it crept up and blew its fetid possum-breath on my feet and then opened its yawping gape-hole, filled with disease needles, and SANK them into my flesh.

In my imagination last night, it was a very FAST terrible possum. It fled and there was no way to KNOW if it was rabid so I had to go to the emergency room and get 17 excrutiating shots in my stomach, which may be an actual treatment for possible rabies OR merely what the HATEFUL Terwhilliger kids who lived next door to us when I was seven TOLD me was the treatment.

(These are the same kids who lay on top of a Dempsey dumpster, waiting endlessly in preternatural silence with a bag of bricks and then bashed my brother’s head in with it as he went past. My brother had to go the emergency room for stitches and a concussion check, and when confronted by my family POST-hospital, those three children blinked with their empty, inhuman eyes, and the youngest lisped, “We just wanted to see what would HAPPEN,” in lieu of an apology. I am VERY sure they are off somewhere on a compound in rural Montana practicing ritual cannibalism by now.)

I broke at 3 am and woke Scott up and said, WHAT ANIMAL IS THAT? WHAT ANIMAL?

He listened for a moment and said, DEFINITIVELY, that it was a squirrel in the attic and even MORE DEFINITIVELY that I should GO. TO. SLEEP. SO I went and worked on the novel to give the terrible possum time to move on, which he seemed to have done around five and then I was sure he had died under the bed and soon I would smell his terrible ROTTINESS and he would open red glowing reanimated dead eyes that were sinking into his sockets and begind to CRAAAAAWL toward me... Yeah. On and on.

This hyper-active night-fear is probably because I reread Stephen King’s MISERY yesterday --- you know how BIRD BY BIRD is supposed to be a book about how to write, but SECRETLY it is a gorgeous, hilarious, and unstoppably great memoir about parenthood and family and loss? I am sure there is a lot of concrete writing advice in there too, people TELL me there is, but that’s not what I remember from it. That’s not what I take away every time I reread it.

In the same way, MISERY is supposed to be a dreadfully suspenseful tale about a lunatic and her own pet writer---a twisted retelling of 1001 Arabian Nights. But that’s not what I take away when I reread it. A few weeks after a rereading, all I remember is the love story to writing it contains. That book is a poem to the GOTTA, to the CAN YOU, with gloriously CONCRETE and EXACTLY CORRECT directions for writers about how to get unstuck, and it explicates perfectly the difference between HAVING and GETTING ideas. It’s awesome, and I reread it every coupla years to remind me how to find the hole in the paper and what a pleasure it is when I can find the way and fall through it.

What I FORGET until I am two chapters in and hooked all to hell, is that it IS actually a dreadfully suspenseful tale about a lunatic and her own pet writer, and even though in six weeks what I will remember---what I will have taken away---is the passionate love story of BOY MEETS PAGE, BOY LOSES PAGE, BOY REFINDS WRITING, last night I was all up ons from the AXES and the BLOODY BIRTHDAY CAKES and it led to imaginary undead possums and three hours of sleep.

Thanks, Mr. King!

And I MEAN that.