Can I go back now?

At least my insomnia-ridden nights in athens pass peacefully....here, I got inexplicably sick, like REALLY sick, throwing up and everything. wtf? So now I'm not only wide awake, I'm also nauseous and shaking, and bored.

Not cool, Canal Winchester. Not cool.

Oh My God

The new South Park from this past wednesday just made my week. I missed it Wednesday, so I just watched it, and WOW. It was so funny. If you're a Twilight fan, a South Park fan, or a general fan of brilliant satirical humor, please watch it. You can find it here:

http://www.surfthechannel.com/episode/198/142956.html

or I'm sure www.comedycentral.com has it somewhere.

Four Hour Delay

Rachel and I have worked out a good way to explain my insomnia. My brain is four hours behind. When it's midnight, my brain seems to think it's eight. That's why, at 4 a.m, I start to get a little tired, because hey, it's only midnight! If I'm not asleep by 6, I start to get a little loopy, because it's 2, and it's time to go to bed!

Then I get up at noon (eight, my time), and repeat. Ugh. It's exhausting.

I have a final today. Super. (And excerpt from "Cai"!)

I should be studying, or at least sleeping. But sleeping? Ha. That's a joke. An earlier conversation with Rachel should underline my point:

me: "You're going to bed? It's only midnight."
her: "Yeah, well, I only got three hours of sleep last night. I'm tired."
me: "I live on too little sleep. Last night I-"
her: "You're an insomniac! You don't count."

haha. I guess she has a point, though. So here I am, three a.m., trying to sleep and it's a big FAIL. but hey, a plus for anyone who cares: I'm gonna put up, in this post, an excerpt from the project I'm working on. I'm calling it "Cai" (pronounced 'ky') at the moment; that's the name of the main character.

This scene is in the first couple pages of the book, and it really sets a tone--a dark, almost scary (i hope) tone--early on. Please give me feedback on what you think, and go easy on me...I just wrote this, and it has been edited 0%. It's pretty graphic and bloody, and if it grosses you out or scares you, that means i did my job.

Just as Cai began to believe she was mistaken, that this strange man meant nothing, she saw him blink.

The man blinked, and blood ran down from his eyes like tears.

Cai couldn’t make a sound. She watched in silent horror as the man opened his mouth as if to scream. Blood dribbled over his lips and ran in steady rivulets down his neck. She didn't feel like she was still breathing. Why wasn’t anyone else seeing this? Why didn’t she see the look of horror mirrored on other faces? She couldn’t move.

The man in the doorway took a lurching step toward her. He smiled. No, he grinned. The blood colored his teeth red. He started coughing, but he didn’t lose his grin. Blood sprayed with each breath, with each cough, but he kept on grinning.

His hand came slowly up from his side, and he pointed at Cai. A knife was suddenly in his hand.

That’s when she started screaming.

She closed her eyes and let the built-up scream escape from her choked lungs. She opened her eyes. His face was inches from hers. He was still grinning. His breath smelled like stale smoke buried under a pool of blood.

Cai opened her mouth to scream again just as the maniac buried his knife to the hilt in the side of her neck. Her scream came out as a gurgled moan.

“Cai!" She heard her name called from far away; it was too late. She knew that. Someone else had finally noticed the bloody maniac, but now it was too late.

“Cai!”

She choked on her own blood. She coughed trying to speak. Blood dribbled over her lip in a horrible reflection of her killer. The man. The bloody man. Cai started to float.

“Cai! Come on!”

She decided to open her eyes one last time to try to say goodbye to the voice. Lily, it was probably Lily. It was always Lily.

Cai opened her eyes.

No bloody man. No knife. A classroom. Students, all staring at her. Lily—it was always Lily—was there, shaking her arm and saying her name over and over.

A dream. Oh, God, it was all a dream.

Feedback would be great, peoples! Thanks!

Watching the sunrise

I think I'm gonna stay up to watch the sunrise today. It's 5:00 am, and I looked it up; the sun rises at 6:43 here today, and I know there's no way I'm gonna fall asleep between now and then. I think I'm gonna walk out on the bike path, all bundled up because it's friggin freezing outside, and just watch the sun come up. It'll be nice.

I'm so sick of not being able to sleep. Today's program is explainable--yesterday morning I slept until almost three pm, because I had a headache. But even then I didn't go to sleep until almost seven.

My sleep clock is just not right. I try to go to bed at midnight; best case scenario, I take an Ambien and fall asleep by three. That's, like, amazing case scenario, because three is early for me at this point. Four is more reasonable, and five is normal. That's ON the sleeping pills. If I don't take them, I don't sleep at night, and then I take tiny little hour-here-hour-there naps during the day, and then i don't sleep again, and blah blah blah

it's a vicious cycle.

One good thing that's coming out of this is that I am getting a lot of writing done. I've done about fifteen pages in five days, that's three pages a day...not bad. I really like where the story is taking me, and where the characters are going. It's such a great feeling, just creating these people and saying, "Okay, here, go!" and they really do pull you along. It's great.

Okay, I'm gonna go do something to fill my time while I wait for the sun to rise.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

Oh. My. God.

If you like Joss Whedon, Nathan Fillion, and Neil Patrick Harris, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE check this out:

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.

I found the whole thing on Hulu...it's amazing. It's a 40-or-so minute musical about Dr. Horrible (Harris), an aspiring super-villain. Captain Hammer (Fillion) thwarts him at every turn, and believe me, hilarity (and surprisingly good music) ensue.

AMAZING!

Update

I've got a new project I'm working on, hopefully it turns into a novel. I've written about ten pages in two days, which is pretty damn productive. It always slows down in the middle, but I'm just happy I've got something to work on again!

Why, just look at the time!

I am insomnia's bitch

UGH.

This is getting ridiculous.

4:34 am. Wide awake, looking to drive to florida. or virginia. any takers?

Sound Familiar?

"I can’t help but to write, I have an inner need for it. If I’m not in the middle of some literary project, I’m utterly lost, unhappy and distressed. As soon as I get started, I calm down."

Thank you Rachel

I was talking to Rachel the other night about how my writing is like BLOCKED and how I was getting kind of stressed out about it. I told her that I had a project that I'd written almost 40-50 pages on, but then I'd just stopped. She said that I might not like hearing this, but she thought that the best thing I could do was just take the best things out of that, and start over. She said that maybe if I tried to do the same thing in a different way, it might trigger something that will work. At the time I said, yeah, yeah, uh-huh, i'll try.

But I did that tonight. I started thinking about my most recent failed project, a book called "Sacrifice." I've always really loved the plot, and it would be an intense thriller if I did it right. So I pretty much just started free thinking, writing down anything that came to mind that i thought might be cool, and I came up with something that I'm really excited to start writing. It's very different, but it keeps the basics of the plot intact while making the main character more likable and the deaths more sudden and upsetting. I can't wait!

So thank you to Rachel for listening to me bitch about not being able to write, and thank you for your very wise advice.

Woo-hoo, i think the writing machine is back in order!

Augusten Burroughs

I just love this excerpt from "Dry," a memoir by Augusten Burroughs:

"There's no traffic on the way home. The sunroof is open and I have my head in Foster's lap, looking up at the sky. It's so clear and black, with tiny pricks of white everywhere. You don't see stars in the city. It's easy to forget they even exist. The last time I saw stars was in rehab. These look very different from the rehab stars. And immediately, I know why. Stars should not be seen alone. That's why there are so many. Two people should stand together and look at them. One person alone will surely miss the good ones."

Is it just me...

Is it just me, or is this fucking terrifying?

YouTube - Baby Laugh-a-Lot Commercial