Update in honor of Six Words

Hey everyone (and by "everyone" I mean the no one that reads this blog),

I wanted to update the blog, mostly because I haven't in so long. I'm thinking about deleting it. Any objections? I thought not.

Anyhoo...I wanted to say YAY! because I finally got something published. Not a book, not a short story, not even a poem...six words. Just six words. But it's in a book that's on the shelves, and my name is finally in print. This may make me a horrible egoist, but I downloaded an e-copy of the book and looked for my name. Found it! No misspellings, no "anonymous", none of that crap. Just the words and then my name:

Writing's my escape. Pills were hers.

Catherine Maynard

It's weird seeing my name in a published work, but it's also very, very cool. I looked it up and over 250,000 people submitted their six-word memoirs. I think they only chose around 1,000. Pretty crazy, huh?

Seeing it just kind of reaffirms, in my mind, that I am determined to publish a work of my own some day. A book, a short story, I don't care what comes first. But something's going to come. It has to. Right?

It has to.

Show and Tell

My new story, "Show and Tell,"  will be the death of me.  I really like it.  I really do.  But it just WON'T END.  I thought, when I started it, that it would be a short story.  Like "December" or "Five".  To give you some perspective of what I'm talking about here, "December" is 5,277 words.  "Five" is quite a bit longer at 11,487 words. 

"Show and Tell" is, at the moment, 21,619 words.  

Much, much, too long to be a short story.  Not long enough to be a novel.  A novella, maybe, but not a novel.  And I thought I was almost done with it a couple days ago.  About 1,000 words ago, that would be.  Ugh.  I know how it's going to end, but getting there is taking forever.  I haven't worked on "Cai" in weeks because of this story.  I haven't made any of the MASSIVE changes to "Shades of Grey" because of this story.  It's taking all of my focus at the moment, and that's kind of irritating.  Even hanging out with friends, a part of my mind is in that school with my characters, figuring the best way to finish or start the next scene.  (The story is about a school that goes on lockdown after a man comes in with a gun.)  A part of my mind is always thinking about it.  It's been a long time since something has had its hooks in me like this.  And for all I know, the story is going to turn out to be complete crap.  I'm trying a lot of things stylistically that I've never done before, so that makes me nervous.  Excited, but nervous.

I don't know.  I don't think anyone actually reads this blog anymore, and I'm completely okay with that.  I've been thinking about deleting it.  I just wanted to write down how frustrated this story is making me since it's 2:20 am and Rachel's out of town and my friends have gone home and no one else will be awake.  

So yeah.

I love Stephen King

"This is how we go on: one day at a time, one meal at a time, one pain at a time, one breath at a time.  Dentists go on one root-canal at a time; boat-builders go on one hull at a time.  If you write books, you go on one page at a time.  We turn from all we know and all we fear.  We study catalogues, watch football games, choose Sprint over AT&T.  We count the birds in the sky and will not turn from the window when we hear the footsteps behind us as something comes up the hall; we say yes, I agree that clouds often look like other things--fish and unicorns and men on horseback--but they are really only clouds.  Even when the lightning flashes inside them we say they are only clouds and turn our attention to the next meal, the next pain, the next page.  

This is how we go on."

I love this song

Wow

 Holy crap this is hilarious.  Another winner from Dan Savage's team over at the Seattle Stranger...this is a link to a particularly funny entry in today's SLOG:

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2009/02/03/your_psychic_friends_are_back


It's a must-read.

I think I see a light at the end of the...no, never mind. That's a train.

SPLAT.

Today was horrendous.  My scar popped open on one side, they won't sew it back up, so now it's gonna heal like that.  They had to scrub--SCRUB--my open wound with the cleansing stuff, so that hurt like a...well, let's just say it was very, very, painful.  They wouldn't give me good pain medication because they probably thought I was going to sell it or some such thing, and by the time I got the fuck out of there, all the pharmacies were closed.  So I have an open scar which has been thoroughly messed with all day, I'm in serious pain but have no pain medication.

All that being said...I'm smiling right now.  Six hours ago I was ready to drive my car off a cliff, but I'm okay now.

What shifted my attitude from looking for the nearest cliff to smiling?  Honestly, and however cliche and lame this sounds...it was Rachel.  That's pretty much it.  Tonight I really remember why we're friends, why we work so well together.  I remember why I missed her so much in France.  Just talking, hanging out, playing games, making fun of each other, supporting each other by making fun of each other...  I just kind of remembered that...well, we're....

Rachel, if you're reading this, you'll appreciate this:

WE'RE AWESOME.

;-)