It Came From Outer Space…

It’s funny how things come to you after you hear something from a caller or see something online.

“I’m gonna tell Turner about the tm-t88iv,” Steve was persisting in saying. Dane was having a hard time tuning him out, “it’s so much better, all this color, faster, the customers will love it.”
“I don’t think the customers give a shit about color. They just want their receipts, and they don’t want to have to come inside for them. They want to get them out there,” she pointed to the pumps, “not in here, and that doesn’t look like it’ll fit out there,” she pointed again.
“What are you saying?” Steve asked.
“I’m saying you need to get your ass out there and change the tape in the pumps.” She chewed on the end of the lollipop stick in her mouth, getting the last possible iota of flavor off the little stump.
Steve looked at her. She looked back. His eyes slid away from hers, and he slunk around the counter picking up the keys he would need and tromped outside into the cold. She sighed.
That was mean!
She jumped, the stump of lollipop stick dropped to the floor, “Stop doing that!” she hissed.
Why? her eternal tormentor inquired. It’s such FUN.

I’m trying to establish Dane’s angel as being playful despite the severity with which it acts in the prologue that I have written so far. I need to work a little better on the attitude, and get across the energy and spunk with which it engages in it’s very depressing job.

I remember another of my step-father’s brilliant career ideas for me was writing greeting cards. He came up with this after I did our personalized photo graduation invitations on my step-sister’s computer so that he didn’t have to order them through the school and pay extra money.

He also thought I should be writing books for children instead of the stories that I normally write. That I would be a great children’s book author. I don’t know why he thought that considering most of the stories that he ever heard me read sections of involved war-torn alien landscapes, people being taken prisoner and their families dying (though that would be appropriate for Disney); but that’s not appropriate for children. He kept saying I could take the things I write and tone them down, make them educational and all these other things which would have meant diminishing my creativity.

As I get older I’m not saying that I couldn’t write children’s books, it’s just not something I’m interested in. My husband has often joked that I should make a book series called “Helpful Declan” about our son and all his attempts to assist me with household tasks that end in comedy, and maybe that would be something, but I have a lot of other crazy stories that have to get out of me first.

Some times words are hard to come by. I don’t get writer’s block quite as much recently while working on the story. However, I’ve been trying to come up with some personalized gifts for my family and that is where it gets a bit tricky.

I really just need to write what comes to me, but it gets hard some times to write what I want to when it’s coming from the heart. I feel strange putting such deep emotion out. I’m not sure why it gets so difficult. It’s like I lock up, freeze, I think it comes from a nervousness at expressing my feelings.

I should employ the same routines I use when I’m writing a story but that always seems to go out the window when I’m not writing stories.

I find it helpful some times to just do random blurbs even if they’re not related to what I’m working on. I liken it to running salt and ice through a filter, it gives your brain a cleanse and a rinse and enables you to focus more clearly on the task at hand. In my case the task at hand is working on “Too Deep” but I’ve come to a rather sticky area of the plot which is very emotional, where the main character is recounting coming across a friend of his, a girl he grew up on the streets with, being attacked by boys in his school and comes to her aid.

So, to cleanse my brain I’m going to write a bit of another story instead and then go back to “Too Deep” ready to slog through the muck and come out the other side. So, this is actually just a random aside with a character I have in another story I haven’t mentioned who is a pilot, who was in an accident, or so she’s being told.

The holo droned and flickered and flickered and woke her up. Holos weren’t supposed to flicker or break up that was part of the point, that and the crisp clear visitation of the events right to you as though you were involved. This was a definite hiccup. The daily deals being offered to contestants on a game show were discorporating the news broadcast that had come on.
She reached for the picture, stumbled and almost fell out of bed. That was when she remembered where she was. This wasn’t her room. Her left hand was completely bandaged which explained why it didn’t move the way she had expected either, as she’d reached for the newscaster. The bed didn’t go the way she expected. There were wheels and beeps and a strange stickiness against her forehead. She reached up with her right hand, the fingers were stiff, and two of them were splinted, but at least she had some motion. A monitoring beacon, well that made sense.
Things were out of place though and not just the rooms’ inability to look like her own room because it wasn’t her own room. The holo shouldn’t flicker, and even if it did she should be able to see why it was, and fix it. Machines had been in her blood before oxygen. Now there was an absence, she felt as though her limbs were lead, things were wrong…
The door opened and a woman in a white uniform walked in. Spying her charge reaching out in quiet desperation towards the hologram she rushed over, “Oh, honey,” she said, “if you need to change it the comm button is right here,” she murmured, “how are you feeling?” she put a hand on her charge’s forehead, despite the fact that all the information was being transmitted to the padd she had at her hip.
“Dry,” she managed, realizing that speech was causing her throat to crack, “it’s wrong…”
The nurse went to the door and picked up a bottle of liquid and brought it in, “Are you one of the cult of Sanqui…I’m sorry I can’t pronounce it, but you know what I mean, right?”
“Yes and no,” she said, then frowned, “I mean, I’m not, but I get it.”
“While we’re at it, what would you like me to call you?” she said, and then realized she was still holding the water, and, “Sorry,” she started to hand it and then stopped, unscrewed the cap and opened it and then offered it.
“Denny’s fine,” she replied after draining half the bottle, and carefully setting it on the table, “I’m sorry though, um, which hospital am I at?”
“It’s Sword Coast,” the nurse replied, “and don’t worry P.D.F. made sure to bring in their own people so they’d fix you up appropriate to, you know,” she wiggled her fingers.
Denny frowned again, “Right,” she said, slowly, “Well, then I’d like to be talking to those people and very soon.”

It’s always interesting when you’re writing a character and suddenly realize they’re racist. Hello Nurse?

It’s been a slow writing day because I need mechanical breakdown insurance. I went to drive the car and she was dead, again, because if I don’t drive her for a couple of days the battery decides it doesn’t have to work any more. So, we jumped her and I took her to the shop because her doing that reminded me I’ve been meaning to take her for an oil change for a couple of weeks now.

I found out that as well as needing a new radiator she’s also going to be needing a new intake manifold soon. Joy! I’m going to the mechanic, “I was only joking about signing her death warrant,” but then not really. She doesn’t owe us anything my poor car. Hubbie and I have spoken before about the fact that we’re essentially running her into the ground. We’ve also talked, especially since I’ve had to quit work again for health reasons about dropping to a one-car family.

We may have to at this point, because I’ve done 2 grand worth of repairs to her since I got her in 2002. To do that much in the space of a few months when we’re barely surviving financially…I can’t bank on finishing a book and getting it published and making it that well, though it’s nice to dream.

I’ve gotten a lot of outline planning done for “Too Deep” over the past few days; but I got stuck yesterday. I have 20 pages of outline and am about halfway through the story (probably) I know where it’s going; but I’m still not quite sure how to get to the outcome. I had some ideas but they were a bit too cliche, and I keep scratching things out and coming back to it and still being stuck.
I’ve been thinking about actually working on the story itself and then coming back to the planning, get things out a little more, much the way you might go to www.fatburner.org to get help with losing weight if you’re stuck on your diet.
Some times changing things up a bit does help with getting things moving again, and that’s what I’m hoping to achieve.

A lot of my stories take place in the future so I tend to do a lot of extrapolating as to how things will be then. From the mundane to the highly technical.
For example the CONDOR story that I have takes place, primarily, on a spaceship. While there are a lot of television shows that think and show how life on a spaceship might be in the future I try to steer away from certain things that have been done, like transporters or teleporters. I look to other things, such as ways to keep in shape while in space, ways to generate artificial gravity, ways for oceanic species to exist among air breathers, even if they might need acne treatment creams, toothcare, transplants, artificial limbs, ocular implants, communication systems, how television would work.

I don’t think there’ll be flat screen television. I’ve always thought that television would be more projection based, a full experience rather than just flat watching, and it seems I may be on the right track with that. I also figure that there’ll be a lot more interaction, society as a whole is embracing the digital nature of communication. A lot of television shows are embracing Facebook and Twitter to interact with their fans and get direct input. I could see in the future that television shows might even embrace that to the degree of being live and getting input from their fans as to how things should go, in a sort of “choose your own adventure” fashion.

I also figure that work outs will go the way of the Wii, that they’ll be highly interactive, using perhaps gloves and leg sensors and pads that sense the amount of weight that you’re putting out.

The previous post about editing mad me thinking about fanfiction.net and how long it’s been since I’ve been there. I got my original account when I was a young proactiv-smearing college student. I, actually, deleted that account after saving anything I thought might be viable and restarted in the hopes I would actually perfect and finish some of the stories that I’d been writing.

Except it didn’t happen, partially due to the depression, and a lot due to the fact that my tastes have changed. I feel strange writing and getting comments from people who are in some cases less than half my age. It makes me feel uncomfortable.

For the most part the content on there is…strange, twisted, drivel. There are some gems, but a lot of it is just not good at all. It’s the same way with places like deviantart. They attract anyone who wants to showcase their work whether or not it’s good. A bit like an American Idol audition.

I haven’t written much about this before because I’ve yet to complete a story enough to have it really be an issue. Though the one story that I did complete (when I was sixteen) when I review that now it makes me gag. It’s full of cliches and repetitive language and melodrama.

Some times those things can be used to emphasize a point, but when they’re the entirety of the story then it becomes trite and pathetic. When you find someone to be a reviewer and editor for your work you need them to be unbiased and brutally honest about what they’re reading, like the people at the hgh website claim to be. It’s no good if you have a reviewer who just tells you, “It’s good. I <3 it!!" as a lot of the people on Fanfiction.net are known to do. Instead you need someone to point out to you when your characters appear to be acting out of type or when there’s a plot hole you could drive a car through.

They not only have to be able to correct spelling and grammar but also challenge you to improve not only your work but yourself.

I decided just to do a little mini-blurb based on some of the planning I’ve been doing for “Too Deep”. It’s when he’s telling Brad about the time that he gets re-recruited, after a resistance member overhears him having an argument with a gang member, and then tracks him down in time to prevent him successfully committing suicide.

Brad let go of his hand, so that he could reach up and wipe his own eyes, “Sorry,” he murmured.
Sam gave a shrug, “Shit happens, I guess.”
Brad shook his head, “No, I mean…most of the people I grew up around they were the sort of shallow like your ex, Roy, where they would want to kill themselves if their family didn’t buy them the best best acne cleanser, so they had to go to school with blemishes, or they’d find some other vapid way to manipulate their parents…it’s not like I haven’t seen the scars before, and there has to be more than one time, based on those…” he hesitated reaching a hand out towards Sam’s sleeve, to roll it back and trace the lines, “Of course most of them would have the scars cosmetically removed after a certain time when it was no longer cool. Us poor Earthers with our terrible problems,” he laughed sarcastically.
Sam gave a slight smile, “It’s still kinda stupid,” he said, “here I was on the one hand wanting to help make things better, and then I did that, but I was completely lost. I knew the father had connections, but everything was so mysterious, I hadn’t had time to find anything he had written. I was terrified that my leaving the orphanage so quickly meant the idiot military police had found that information and torn apart the entire resistance. Not logical thought I know, but still…”

I’m having an issue deciding on tense. I had to go back through and edit the blurb a little because it started out past tense, shifted to present somewhere in there and then back to past. My issue with the tense is based on the fact that he’s telling the story of his past in his present, so I feel as though it should be in present tense, except for the flashbacks being in the past; but I don’t know if that will be too jarring.