Flash Fiction: Psychic Kitty

My entry for The Fairy Ring Writing Contest over at Yearning For Wonderland. Because I could never pass up a chance to write about fairies, right?

Psychic Kitty

“Hey dude, you ever wonder what your cat’s looking at?” asked Amy.

Lil took a sip of wine, “You think my cat’s schizo?”

“Or what if he sees things we don’t? Cats' eyes are always focusing on 'imaginary' stuff. Even chasing it. What if he’s seeing things on another level?”

“What like, ghosts?” Lil looked at her innocent grey tom.

“Nah, a cat wouldn’t chase ghosts around –”

“Maybe the ghosts of mice.”

“Mice don’t get ghosts.”

“Look who’s suddenly an expert on the supernatural,” Lil snorted, “Please, what’s my cat seeing? Bunnies from parallel dimensions?”

“I’m thinking more like fairies.”

“I’m thinking you need to get your head examined.”

“Why not?" said Amy, "Animals have better instincts than humans… what about those goats who know when earthquakes are coming?”

“Well, since you’ve brought up the irrefutable scientific evidence of the goats who know when earthquakes are coming, I guess I have to submit to your premise.”

“You can get all sarcastic, missy!” Amy grinned, “But life’s full of weird shit.”

“The weirdest shit this cat’s ever done is somehow convince himself that I enjoy seeing dead birds on my doorstep in the mornings,” Lil scooped up the tom and looked into his green eyes, “Are you psychic, my fluff? Are you a psychic kitty?”

“Well, obviously he’s not gonna admit to it…” said Amy cheekily. 

The cat had decided he’d had enough of this patronizing cuddle-fest and squirmed out of Lil’s lap.

He strutted outside into the pale light of the new moon, raising himself up on two legs which quickly became straighter, more humanoid, as he effortlessly morphed into his true form: a proud faerie prince with a plush grey fur coat.

Smirking, he decided it was a good night to hex some sparrows. 

(Words: 306. Doh!)

Here are the contest details, and other entries!

Comedikachu, I choose you!

So, genre - what's up with that?

I recently took a lame quiz in order to determine my direction in life. I got this rather ominous result:

You Should Be a Joke Writer

You're totally hilarious, and you can find the humor in any situation. Whether you're spouting off zingers, comebacks, or jokes about life... You usually can keep a crowd laughing, and you have plenty of material. You have the makings of a great comedian - or comedic writer.

What Type of Writer Should You Be?

Blogthings: Free Quizzes for Everyone

So the question is, does a writer choose a genre - or is it the other way round? Could I write bodice-ripping romance stories with gag-inducing sincerity, or hardboiled detective novels without falling asleep at the keyboard?

Some may turn to religion for these big questions. I turn to Stephen King:

Sometimes I speak before groups of people who are interested in writing or literature, and before the question-and-answer period is over, someone always rises and asks the question: Why do you choose to write about such gruesome subjects?

I usually answer this with another question: Why do you assume that I have a choice?

Writing is a catch-as-catch-can sort of occupation. All of us seem to come equipped with filters on the floors of our minds, all the filters having differing sizes and meshes. What catches in my filter may run right through yours. What catches in yours may pass through mine, no sweat. All of us seem to have a built-in obligation to sift through the sludge that gets caught in our respective mind-filters.... The sludge that catches in the mesh of my drain is often the stuff of fear.

- Stephen King, Night Shift (Introduction)

Isn't that a neat thought? That genre is not a choice but rather an obligation, some built-in leaning you have to discover rather than invent. In this ridiculous writerly world of drafting, editing, rewriting, re-editing, agents, queries, self-publishing, indie publishing, small presses, the big six, and fifty gazillion things you have to decide with nothing to guide you but your gut and the bad decisions those around you have made... it's nice to know some things are meant to come naturally.

I have no idea what my genre is. I know I like writing funny things, morbid things, and ludicrously postmodern things. And maybe that's all I need to know. It's not the most popular or maybe even the most sensible combination, but at least I know my brain's filter-meshy things are working.

So, writer friends, what catches in the mesh of your drain? Do you like the idea of having a genre, or reject the whole concept? And, most importantly - doesn't Comedikachu totally sound like a real Pokémon?

Clandestine - Five Sentence Fiction

A tiny story based on this prompt from Lillie McFerrin Writes.

The room was dark. Cold tile pressing into her bare feet, she followed the path she'd memorized long ago. Sweaty palms opened the single door that didn't creak, careful not to leave fingerprints on the aluminum handle. Pupils dilated, ears twitched at the crackle of the foil and then the simple, sweet snap between her teeth. 

The tastiest cookies are the ones you steal.

Keep Your Trenchcoat Closed

A writer's impulse to flash can be a dangerous (and occasionally illegal) thing.

Because once you're past that point of OMG OTHER PEOPLE SEEING MY WRITING IS LIKE FALLING INTO BOILING ACID FULL OF SHAME AND REGRET, well, it's rather pleasant to show your writing off. Especially when (not to name names) certain relatives and fellow amateur writers say nice things to you.

Things like:

I like this.

This is nice.

This is great.

This is excellent.

This is my favourite thing ever.

You should be worshiped as a goddess.

Of course, there are those negative (oh, excuse me, I meant constructive, helpful, and my personal favourite: just being honest) comments that send your ego screeching back into the boiling acid stage. But more often than not, I find if people don't like something they just wander off - someone who takes the time to comment is generally pleased with the thing.

And that praise, however lukewarm, tends to be a little addictive. For a sensitive (read: cripplingly insecure) soul like mine, there's something edifying about someone (often a stranger) telling you that what you're doing is worthwhile, that something you made had an effect on someone else.

And there are so many options for flashing now: between FictionPress and Jottify and Livejournal and Smashwords and blogs and facebook notes and haikus that fit into tweets. It's all about showing off, pimping, and the instant gratification of comments, likes and shares. And all the cool kids are doing it - tweeting lines from their books and even posting 'deleted novel scenes' to their blogs (which I really don't get - isn't that the literary equivalent of serving leftovers to dinner guests?)

While deep in this oversharing phase, I happened upon the first piece of advice in Dorothea Brande's Becoming A Writer: Don't whore out your amateur stuff, you idiot. It's counterproductive.

Okay, maybe I'm paraphrasing. But that's the gist, and it's been bothering me ever since.

I have the manuscript for my first novel, Sarai, complete and sitting on my laptop. I could format it tonight and have it up on Smashwords by tomorrow. And that is so bloody tempting - but I know it's not good enough yet. It's far from good enough. It's embarrassingly inadequate, actually.

But the truth is that I've posted writing - here and on my Jottify account - that I didn't like, that only marginally passed the not-embarrassingly-inadequate mark.

But I posted it anyway, because it was 'good enough for the internet.' I flashed it because I wanted a reaction, even if it was just a passing like by someone who simply hoped I would like their stuff back. But the hard truth is that unless someone is a professional writer or editor, their opinion, however glowing, will not make you into a better writer.

So I've made a resolution to keep my trenchcoat closed, and face those hard edits, ask those hard questions of myself and make my work stand up to my own (punishingly high) standards, rather than taking the easy road and flashing bits that I know aren't at their best yet.

Do you think writers these days - especially n00bs like me - suffer from chronic oversharing?  Share (or overshare) your thoughts in the comments!

Short Story: A Girl And Her Skeleton

 Inspired by The Skeleton Song by Kate Nash. Since this is basically a fanfic, let's have a disclaimer: these characters are not mine and I'm not making money off them. Cool? Cool.

 Everyone thought Kate was strange. She didn't look or act particularly strange, but someone who's friends with a skeleton can't be that normal, can they?

Everywhere they went, people would ask Kate about the skeleton.

"Is that a real?"

"Does he talk?"

"Why's he wearing clothes, then?"

"Where'd you find him?"

"How does he talk? Where's his voice box?"

"Don't you like real people?"

Kate didn't know how to make people understand that the skeleton was always kind to her. When her parents got divorced, the skeleton listened to her cry and patted her back with his bony hand. When the kids at school teased her and threw prestick in her hair, the skeleton would cut out the sticky mess with such care that you could barely see the difference, and soon they'd be laughing about buying a silly hat for every day of the week.

As she got older, Kate became more conscious of herself, and of her skeleton. She used to stick her tongue out when people sniggered at her friend without flesh - now she'd blush and edge away from him.

"What's with the bone-bag?" A boy called as they walked down the street, "if ya want a real boning you know where to look, sweetheart."

The skeleton simply pulled his spine a little straighter and ignored the calls. But Kate crossed her arms and wished the skeleton didn't insist they always walk together. Didn't he have any other friends?

After she left school, Kate realized that skeletons lived a long time. The indulgent smiles some strangers gave her happened less and less – a little girl or moody teenager with a skeleton for a friend might be seen as a phase. But after she'd grown out of pigtails and later out of black nailpolish, her skeleton began to look more and more like an ominous sign of upcoming spinsterhood.

At night, Kate would lie awake and wonder how different her life would be without the skeleton. She could walk down the road with nobody bothering her. She could go to the shops and not have to deal with the awkward explanations that every passer-by and curious shopkeeper forced her into.

One night, Kate was still awake as her room began to glow with pre-dawn light. She rolled over and stuffed her pillow over her head, as if that would drown out the voices in her memory, all those worries she wished she could do something about. She quickly thumped her head on a cold metal object - a hammer. Underneath her pillow? She hadn't the faintest idea how it'd gotten there.

Friday Review: Becoming A Writer by Dorothea Brande

This book is dope.

A short but content-rich read, Becoming A Writer is a fluff-free gem of sensible advice about how to stop being a tortured artist and start being a happy and productive writer.

Written in 1934, it's a classic of the writing-on-writing genre. It's easy to see why. Even though it's been around for over 70 years, the message was fresh and relevant to me.

I repeat: dope.

There are some cool exercises, all practical things that should turn into habits rather than fill-in-the-blank homework. Some I haven't tried yet, as they tend to build on each other, but the one I love so far is getting up a little earlier than usual each day, and writing FIRST THING.

You shouldn't read (or preferably even speak) a word until your allotted writing time is up. I've done this for a few days and let me tell you: it's a pain in the ass, and it's totally worth it. Writing before consuming any information (and therefore influence) really lets you find your own rhythm and voice. Highly recommended.

Though the tone is generally kind, one moment Brande actually says that if you consistently fail at one of her exercises, you're probably not cut out to be a writer. (To be fair, the exercise was focused on discipline rather than skill.) I really respected her for saying that. Though she condemns instructors who aim to discourage writers, she doesn't offer blind encouragement either.

Did I mention this was written seventy years ago? That tripped me up a bit. Here are some fun archaic moments:

• The word 'behooves' always makes me chortle. Behooooooves.
• "The typewriter has made the writer's way more rocky than it was in the old days of quill and pen." Ah, the old days! When you had to climb into the eagle's nest to get a fresh quill. Good times.
• Brande suggests that you not allow your fancy white friends judge to you for listening to "Negro spirituals" while you write.
• NEGRO SPIRITUALS. At no point between 1934-2011 did anyone think to backspace that and replace it with something not so ridiculously offensive? 'Gospel' would've worked.
• "Talking pictures should be very rarely indulged in." Oh, them talkies are the devil's work!
• She uses the idea of 'duplicity' (every writer has two sides, the one that makes shopping lists and the one that writes poems about the moonlight) and spends at least five pages convincing the reader this duplicity is "not psychopathic". I guess back in the olden days of quill and pen, people spontaneously went on killing sprees after doing a particularly creative scrapbooking project.

Despite these jarringly oldschool moments, some of the advice is nothing less than New Age by today's standards. Brande encourages clear-eyed awareness exercises that would make Eckhart Tolle proud*, and the main technique she prescribes for unleashing your 'genius' is simply a focused meditation.

But you know what's really great about this book? It gets to the root of why most writing advice misses the point completely. Anyone who's suffered from writer's block, stared at a blank screen (or blank vellum sheet, their quill unyielding) or wondered why inspiration hit only once in a blue moon has usually sought advice. But studying plot structure and approaches to dialogue aren't the solution, because the problem isn't the writing, it's the writer themselves. Brande understands the personality pitfalls of being a writer and offers imminently practical solutions.

This is one of those rare books that makes you want to go write! I'd give it a 4.7/5 or 9.4/10 - if you're a writer, this belongs on your bookshelf right next to Stephen King's On Writing.

D. O. P. E.

*Does Eckhart Tolle feel proud about anything? I get the feeling he's perpetually just-okay with the universe, man.

Go Build A Tree

I have almost a dozen trees outside my window, the tallest standing at least ten metres high. It struck me, while I was lying on my bed and putting off opening the first draft of Sarai, that a novel is like a tree to me. 

All those thousands of leaves (words?) anchored to their branches (chapters?), which are anchored to the trunk (of plot?), which is supported by strong yet invisible roots (themes!). Who knows how deep they go – the point is they hold the tree up against the harshest storms (of criticism?)*. These trees are calming yet interesting: serene, they have nothing to prove because they're old and know they belong here. 

The novels I love and admire are like these trees: strong, graceful, whole.

And someone telling me to write a novel is basically saying: Go build a tree.

That 'someone' is of course a part of myself. The ambitious part that wants a Jag in my driveway even though I don't drive. 

Go build a tree? It seems a bizarre and unachievable task. I may have a pile of sticks and some half-rotten leaves, but any Frankenstein's monster* I construct out of those bits would look pretty bleak. I couldn't call that odd thing a novel any more than I could call a scarecrow a person. 

I never believed I could write a novel until the 29^th of November last year, when I looked back at my NaNoWriMo attempt and realised I'd written one. Maybe it wasn't just selfish ambition – it'd be nice if Sarai was a bestseller, but even nicer if the people who read it (even if it's just the four poor souls I bribe into beta-reading) would enjoy it. And if they don't? If they give me the stinkeye for wasting their time? It's dangerous for the ego, this whole writing thing. I don't know what's scarier, that the whole thing might fail – or that it might succeed and people would actually expect even more from me next time.

So here I am, with my first-draft monster made of sticks and leaves in front of me, wanting me to bring it to life. I'm rubbing the paddles together and shouting CLEAR, not knowing who I'd like to electrocute more, my novel or myself. 

But maybe if I love it enough to siphon more and more life into it, cutting away the dead bits and supporting the scrawny trunk with one of those little splints you get at the garden centre, it'll start to grow. And maybe once it's finished, a reader I've never even met would download it, fly through it in a day, throw it down and and inexplicably yell, “It's alive!”

*I promise the actual novel doesn't have so many cumbersome mixed, extended flora / zombie metaphors.

Writing Wednesday! Extract from 'The Singing Diamond'

Clear. Something like birdsong, almost like a voice. The diamond sang and would always sing. 

Nobody knew how or why. 

They say it was found by a rogue traveller in the rainforest, who had walked past the trees and his eyes had been blazed with a beam so white and so strong he turned towards it. He marched out of magnetism he took for curiosity, and found it perched in a tree amongst birds of paradise. It was flawlessly cut and heavy as a pebble in his hand, and as it pressed against his palm he could have felt the tiny vibrations of the throatless voice, if he'd stopped to notice.

Many people stole it and sold it, and their lives felt quiet and cold when they let it go. 

It was a myth and a curiosity. The bloated aristocrat who owned it for twenty years and wore it in a pendant to every party (where she had to talk over it) held it in a room on the very farthest tip of her estate. She hated the sound and loathed wearing the damn thing, and even so far away she'd swear she could hear it, taunting her, interrupting the self-obsessed whirl of her thoughts with its lilting song. 

When the opportunity came to pass it on came, her greed gave way to her frustration. Her son's new wife, whom she hated only slightly more than the diamond, was suffering under the truth of the aristocrat's disapproval. The aristocrat saw the gorgeous opportunity to both appear vastly generous while making the new girl's life secretly miserable with this sparkling curse, and she gave the diamond to her daughter-in-law with manic flourish. 

As the aristocrat lay down in bed that night, knowing full well the damned thing was traveling further and further away in a padded box in her daughter-in-law's arms, she wept. Because she knew the diamond was gone, but she could still fucking hear it.

 *

The Singing Diamond is a completed short story that I'm not sure is strong enough to put into my collection. It's hard to make a compelling story from the point of view of an inanimate object. It's gone through several edits and... I still don't know.

Writing Wednesday! Extract from 'Livestock'

Have a bite of my work-in-progress, Livestock, also known as Project: Stone Cold Bummer.

The manager pulled it from the factory cages and took it to the medical wing. 

The wing was huge, white and grey, usually reserved for quarantines. She didn't let anyone else look at it, not even to hose it down. She was smart that way. 

She washed it herself, then ran its barcode. A yearling – somewhere from twelve to fourteen. In that case, it was a runt.

She clapped in its face and it started. She tugged its hair, pinched its scrawny arm, and it squealed, backing away from her. 

 

She drew a pen from her pocket and threw it across the room; its clear blue eyes followed the ballpoint to rest.

Livestock don't do that. 

Something was very wrong.

Poison - Five Sentence Fiction

Tiny little story, triggered by this prompt at Lillie McFerrin Writes.

The thin gold chain felt heavy on her neck, and she had already unscrewed the hollow pendant which held one dull brown tablet. Footsteps thundered up the stairs. The pill passed her lips, tasting of rubber as she placed it gingerly between her molars, hoping - she might not need it, they might not find her.

A boot thrust into the door of her bedroom, slamming it open.

She crushed the pill between her teeth.

8 Awesome Quotes for Writers

I love quotes - those bite-sized, perfectly worded, honest and wise little things. They're like the cupcakes on the dessert menu of literature. 

Mmmm. Wisdom.

With NaNoWriMo over, I've clocked in my first win after 2 failed attempts in previous years, and these eight cupcakes (erm, I mean quotes) have given me the mental sugar-rush I needed to get through the toughest and most productive month of my writing life. Enjoy!

#8. It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give up because by that time I was too famous. - Peter Benchley (author of Jaws)

This sort of stuff always cheers me up because it reminds me that perseverance, not talent, is generally what makes people successful. I read somewhere that it takes the average actor ten years of work to become known, and most actors give up within one year of embarking on their careers. I'm sure it's the same, if not worse, for writers. It sounds depressing at first but it's actually very grounding – I may not be able to control how much inspiration visits me, but I can control my attitude and make sure I don't give up.

#7. Believe in yourself and there will come a day when others will have no choice but to believe in you. - Oscar Wilde

This ties up to the point above, and although it may sound a touch trite and 'inspirational', my boy Ozzy knew what he was talking about. Although all artists crave external validation like sugar-coated crack, it's no substitute for believing in yourself – or, at the very least, believing in what you create.

#6. The best kind of writing, and the biggest thrill in writing, is to suddenly read a line from a typewriter that you didn't know was in you. - Larry L. King

I bet anyone who takes writing seriously has had at least one moment like that, and it's just swell. This quote is great to get you through the slow, painful days when it feels like you're wrenching words out of your stingy muse's mouth with blunt-nosed pliers. Gosh, that was a violent image. Sorry, my muse and I have a really dysfunctional relationship. Moving on...

#5. All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them. - Walt Disney

This one's not strictly about writing, but it applies perfectly to the craft. Courage isn't a word I use often, but in this context it's not about slaying dragons so much as slaying the paper tigers of your own anxiety. There's nothing quite like saying “I want to be a writer” to inspire looks of pity at your naïvety from everybody who's doing more sensible things with their lives. But in a world where you're constantly bombarded with other people's opinions, isn't it a small act of bravery to believe that your own insensible dreams can come true?

#4. How vain it is to sit down to write, when you have not stood up to live. - Henry David Thoreau

This little line means so much to me. And what's a quote collection without Thoreau? To me, this quote isn't so much about life experience (I've met 50-something 'writers' whose wooden prose made me weep) but about awareness. Presence of mind, presence of spirit, experiencing the immediacy of life instead of dismissing it with tired labels. There are too many writers, both amateur and professional, who depend on the linguistic and structural conventions of their genre to give their work validity, at the cost of letting their writing live on its own terms. Life isn't on the page, it's all around you. Stand up to live.

#3. Just write. Do not wait for an idea. Start writing something and the ideas will come. You have to turn the faucet on before water starts to flow. - Louis L'amour

I've loved this quote for a long time, and my NaNo experience really proved its truth to me. It's amazing how you can meander pointlessly for a thousand words and then suddenly, out of the ether, the best stuff shows up. Mine is almost always fashionably late, but it's the life of the party and makes all the other words seem fun and interesting.

#2. The first draft of anything is shit. - Ernest Hemingway

This quote got me through NaNo because I have a really bitchy inner editor. I could easily spend an hour staring at the same line and rewriting it, until I eventually backspace it and wonder if it's too late to apply for a Master's degree in Not Writing. Letting the imperfect stuff stay on the page, at least for a while, is the best new habit I've learnt in November.

#1. Stories are found things... fossils in the ground. - Stephen King

This is the most important quote for me, because it points towards that fact that (for me at least) writing is an act of faith. You have to trust that the story will reveal itself to you if you just keep digging. It also implies that every story has a perfect, true form that you can strive towards, and that's comforting in this bullshit artistic realm where people keep telling me 'there are no right answers' – I don't believe that. Maybe there are no simple solutions, but there is truth. Why not strive towards it?

So those are my eight favourite cupquotes. What are your favourite quotes - about writing, cupcakes or anything in between? Share in the comments!

Rainbows and smileys and some bad writing.

I ordered business cards from Moo (to be fair, they're baby mini business cards) and as I was browsing through the designs available, my first thought was 'do they have Hello Kitty ones'? Now, you might think nobody who wants Hello Kitty business cards should be allowed to have business cards at all. They should be given printer paper and crayons and sat on a tiny plastic chair. That's what I think, anyway. Maybe it's a symptom of the chronic childishness my generation is trapped in – but screw it. I'm a writer. I'm artsy. I'm whimsical. All the smart, pastel designs seemed boring. I'm a special snowflake, goddamnit.

So I got rainbow business cards. They'll be delivered around Christmas. I'm psyched.

Now, I'm aware that I keep calling myself a writer but please let's not get our wires crossed – this self-imposed label is not some sort of delusional, narcissistic thing. It's an affirmation which I know for a fact is currently false (with the definition of a writer being someone who writes and gets paid and knows how grammar works – see extract below for evidence to the contrary), but which will hopefully become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you're not esoterically-minded, humour me and pretend that an affirmation and a lie are separate things.

I also did something sorta crazy the other day. I've been reading No Country For Old Men and while I'm not mad about the plot, Cormac McCarthy's style just blows me away. When I was still labouring under the delusion that I could mentally handle two years of Masters, I wanted to focus on Cormac McCarthy's novels for my thesis – because The Road is probably my favourite novel of all time. And he's too cool for quotation marks.

So while working on Project: Not A Fanfic, I wrote a whole chapter in a weak impression of McCarthy's style. It turned out to be rather spectacularly bad. Have an extract:

She stood and went outside. It was dark and it had just rained and there were strong winds knotting her hair and raising goosebumps on her skin. The air smelled wet and fresh. The rustle of the wind chewed on the edges of her mind and she pictured a thousand enemies waiting beyond the edge of the darkness for her, breaking twigs and shifting restlessly in the distance waiting impatiently for her to come within reach, within swiping distance.

She shivered, looked at the moon, and went back inside. He asked her what she'd been doing outside. Fresh air, she said. She looked to the ground so he wouldn't see her pupils had become tiny pinpricks in her muddy green eyes.

He said he was going out and that she should have a hole dug by the time he got back. She said how big. He said about six foot long and six deep. It should be easy in this mud.

If she had been sober her stomach would have dropped and her skin would have grown to match the green of her eyes but none of that happened. She nodded and made herself and him a cup of coffee. Most of the time even when he said he wanted coffee he wouldn't drink it. His cup stayed full and a thin brown ring started to stain the cup around the edge where the coffee ended. He packed up his things, real organised, and left. She listened to his truck start and chug dead and start again. She looked at the cup he left behind and downed the lukewarm instant coffee that had a sludge of sugar at the bottom. He hadn't even stirred it. 

She tied up her hair in a knotty tail then twisted the tail around into a messy bun that would stay off her neck as she sweated. He kept the shovels in the shed which he kept locked because some of the tools had blood on them and no point letting people wander in there. Although he liked things clean some stains were sentimental.

I doubt this chapter will survive revisions, but it was fun to write.

Project: Not A Fanfic is going well, by the way. I'm on schedule in terms of word count (37,086 words as of this evening), and just yesterday I tackled a massive action scene I've been putting off since day one. Anyone who knows me knows I consider it a feat of strength to walk and talk at the same time, so my co-ordination and spatial reasoning skills aren't quite at action-adventure levels. Luckily the good folks in my story have guns* so they don't have any messy, confusing, multi-limbed hand-to-hand combat for me to grapple with.

One of my characters gave me a pleasant surprise too – while I thought she was relentlessly blasé and well-adjusted, turns out she's been faking it. I'm thrilled, because she's more real and relatable now. She was bordering on Mary Sue-ish before. Although I realise how problematic it is that when a male character is perfect it's heroic, and when a female character is perfect it's unrealistic.

Like any adult with rainbow business cards, I use smiley stickers to motivate myself.

My new favourite quote and motto for NaNo.

Luckily, perfect people are boring and I won't tolerate them in my stories. Right now every character in Project: Not A Fanfic is so damaged I'm surprised they get anything done. Hell, I don't even expect much from them, I'm just hoping the poor bastards manage to get to the end of the book without turning into a suicide cult. 

*I dislike guns and I don't really understand them. If it were up to me, my characters would shoot jelly babies from slingshots at the bad guys. But since the bad guys don't care how I feel, and have guns with bullets, I fear this could put my team at an unfair disadvantage.

On money and the lack of it.

All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.

- Spike Milligan

When I was about eight, my sister and I opened up a bunch of cool, shiny batman figurines in the toy aisle of the Shoprite. With our boundless stealth and cunning minds, we assumed that Batman, Robin and Catwoman could have a quick adventure, and nobody would be the wiser. An assistant found us, obviously. My mom had to pay for the toys, obviously. And they were what, R50, maybe R60 each? Big money. She took our pocket money away, and a measly R10 a week would go towards the toys until they were paid off.

In the long run, my mom made a profit out of that embarrassing day, because she never restored our pocket money. It's been fifteen years, and I'm still paying off that bloody Robin.

Here's the thing about money.

People who have it don't think it's a big deal.

I kinda hate those people. And I kinda am one of those people.

My formative years (do people still say that?) I didn't have a lot of money. My dad loved casinos more than he loved our house, and he ended up trading the latter for the former. My mom worked at a deli and then as a taxi driver to keep the family afloat. I can't remember a time when she wasn't exhausted from work. We moved a few times before landlords could kick us out for not paying rent. My clothes were faded, exuberant numbers from family friends who'd clean out their wardrobes and think of poor Janet's girls.

While I saw myself as poor, I didn't have much angst about it. It wasn't a reflection on me that the adults in my life were selfish or mathematically challenged or whatever, right? And why would I want to go on school trips to Warmbaths anyway? I had my carefully curated collection of Pokemon tazos, and while I wasn't happy, I didn't let myself get miserable by entertaining the hope that I'd ever have anything more.

But things started to take a turn when I was about sixteen and my mom took a risk and opened up her own business: selling replica oil paintings at a stall at the local market. I helped out every weekend and things were painfully slow at first. We didn't have a single sale for almost four months. We'd be on our feet, showing people paintings, hope lifting the corners of our mouths while defeat dragged our shoulders down.

But one day, a nice blonde woman bought a Mediterranean scene and paid with a cheque that, to my astonishment, cleared. Money started trickling in, so slowly that I didn't realise we had any until we moved to a bigger flat in a nicer area two years later.

My sister, through sheer irrational willpower, had gotten herself through a year of university before it was time for me to apply. I told people I wanted to study publishing, because being a writer was far too foolish an ambition. Anyone can write, what made me think anyone would want to pay me to do it?

University changed my life because it changed my perceptions. Suddenly I was surrounded by people who didn't worry about money – they didn't even think about it. They had new cars and shopped in Sandton and didn't even know how much their course fees were. They had cards to pay for a R50 salad from the cafe every day. One of my first weeks there, I had a conversation with a guy who said he liked to travel, so I asked where he'd been. “Brazil, England, Greece, New York,” he began - I specifically remember my eyes widening at this point, so much so that I daren't remind him that New York wasn't a country. He was surprised at my surprise and even more surprised when I asked him how he managed it. “Well, just family holidays and stuff, you know...” he said edgily, as if I'd take all his travel away from him if he didn't justify it.

I had plenty of moments like that – accidentally making rich people feel uncomfortable by making them feel rich. Of course, making people feel uncomfortable is one of my undeniable talents, but I think I've gotten better at this particular strain of awkwardness. For instance, I no longer respond to people moaning about Paris being so crowded in the spring by sunnily saying, “I wish I had your problems.”

Though my mother's business was paying rent, I was reliant mostly upon my dad's sporadic support when it came to paying fees. For three years my stomach twisted every month's end, knowing that this will be the month that the money doesn't come together, this will be the month that they'll kick me out because I'm a fraud and these clothes belong to my mother's best friend who brought them over to our house in a big plastic bag.

But I made it through – call it luck or the law of attraction or a small financial miracle, but I got my degree. And after that, I got a year's Merit Award to carry on and do Honours, which I did simply because you don't turn down free stuff. Education doesn't grow on trees.

But the problem is that once I'd gotten out of university and out of the cast-iron socially acceptable excuse of having no money because I'm living 'the student life' (although I never abused alcohol on a regular enough basis to be worthy of that title) I've finally come to a conclusion.

I want to be rich, damn it.

There, I said it. The depressing thing is that I don't just want to be rich now, I want to be rich five years ago. I've seen life on the other side. I want to be rich five years ago, so that I didn't have to spend my weekends at the bloody market holding up paintings and grinning like a maniac, so I could drive to house parties on the other side of the world in my own car, so I could go to fests where everyone walks around in flip flops and sleeps in tents and pretend to be poor for a long-weekend. And most importantly, I want to be rich five years ago so I could take all that stuff for granted.

The truth is, I'm sorta rich now – well, the teenage me would've thought that I'm loaded. I have a whole R500 in my bank account – do you have any idea how many chip packets with the tazo-strip that'd buy? I 'work' one or two days a week (still at that selfsame hell market) and don't have income the rest of the time, and yet a roof magically stays over my head and the good pickles are still stocked high in the cupboards. I spend my days writing, pushing, straining to get something of decent quality out of the hormone-soaked creative cesspool of my mind. I've written over twenty-thousand words this month, and all but eight of them are ugly.

I'm living a borderline-moneyless existence, while almost everyone I spent four years studying with are driving their lovely cars to work in posh buildings, or overseas traveling or studying or suffering the crowds of Paris.

And while I know it's only temporary, that maybe one day my words will be pretty enough to sell, I can't help but feel like I'm still paying off that bloody Robin.

Project: Not A Fanfic

So last night I had a dream about this amazing novelling software that helped with planning, note taking, quote collecting, and making high-waisted Guess jeans fit. Just a fun fact that has nothing to do with the rest of this entry.

Well I guess it does, in a way, as it concerns novelling (novelizing? noveltry? novel-mongering?) I figure since I keep declaring myself a writer, I want to somehow back that up by talking about the stuff I'm working on. (You can tell by the elegant structure of that last sentence that my Pulitzer is in the post.)

I have two big projects on at the moment, which will hopefully both grow up to be novels. The first is an idea I had about eight years ago and have been afraid of tackling since – let's call it Project: Stone Cold Bummer (30 Rock reference!) because not only does it involve elements of genocide and the moral bankruptcy of wealth and feral children, it's also forced me to do a lot of research into factory farming and modern agriculture, which believe me is a stone cold bummer in itself. If you don't believe me, just google ‘factory farming’ and you'll see why I'm thoroughly depressed about the world. And then google ‘do a barrel roll' to cheer yourself up.

But anyway, the second project that's alive and kicking right now is my NaNoWriMo attempt, and perhaps the kindest name for it would be Project: Not A Fanfic (I like the colon in my project names - it has a Mission: Impossible feel.) I've attempted NaNo two or three times before, but always faded away because I never actually planned much beyond “I'm just going to keep writing until I get hungry.” But this year, I made notes. Hell, I even have an ending! And a beginning! The middle, though, is a slightly different story... or rather, a lack of one.

Notes! What is it about a new black pen on fresh white paper that gets me all tingly?

There's just the tiny matter of this blank page.

As for the (incredibly kind though not highly accurate) name of Project: Not A Fanfic... you see, I've been watching Supernatural quite a lot lately (soon we'll have a whole blog entry devoted to the deranged excellence that is Misha Collins) and it's possible that a few elements of the story are shamelessly stolen from inspired by the Supernatural franchise. 

It's not a big deal, so maybe I'm referencing tiny insignificant things like a character (or three) and maybe the overarching plot or even a forbidden angel-human gay love story - but come on, what adventure fantasy doesn't include that these days? It's practically a given! (Like hobbit-wizard relations with homoerotic undertones. Or lightning-shaped scars that hurt when one is near a bad guy who killed one's parents.) I'm critically addressing the tropes of the genre! It's not copyright infringement if you're consciously troping, right? Right!

So Project: Not A Fanfic is roughly a quarter through its first draft, and it's been a bit of a mission to pull out of my brain (or out of the ether? Let's pretend my brain isn't made of ether) and get onto paper. I think part of the problem is that the devil-monkey on my shoulder – the same thing that tells me it's okay to have that third cup of ice cream or stay up past 2am watching Comic-Con panels on youtube – realised early on that I was serious about this project. Some people's devil-monkeys organise flat tyres, friends who call crying in the middle of the night, and computer viruses (*spits three times* *crosses self* *gives the monkey ice cream*) to keep them distracted from the work at hand. My monkey lacks this sort of initiative and creativity – it just makes me stare blankly at the screen, mind soaked in self-doubt, and convinces me to take a break every thirty seconds for either coffee or the bathroom (one habit tends to enable the other.)

So this project is alive largely due to the glory of the productivity steroids woven into Dr Wicked's Write Or Die. The web app is free and quite useful, but I highly recommend giving this god among men ten bucks for the desktop version. It's great because you can customize how harsh you want 'punishments' to be (I'm sensitive and easily spooked, so the screen going red is quite enough for me without the soul-shattering sound effects) and you can customize a bunch of other stuff too. It really is a lifesaver if you've got to write a first draft in a hurry and / or you suffer from devil-monkeys.

In case anyone cares, my devil-monkey looks roughly the same as the Chicken Licken orangutan, but mine wears those kitsch little light-up devil horns you find in every Cardies on Halloween.

Is it bad that this is one of my favourite ads ever? I love the music and the puppetry and the fact that this guy looks more like a strung-out junkie than a fried chicken enthusiast. But I can't think about those hot-wings without feeling a little sick. I won approximately a metric tonne of them once... let's just say the devil-monkey made sure they didn't last long.

Editor's Note: Sorry about the impossible amount of ellipses and brackets in this entry. I'm definitely in first draft mode... (and ellipses... will always be a bad habit... from my fanfic days... don't they just... imply so many... impossible.... to... articulate... feelings...?!?!)

OMG Dante!

An extract from my ranting-diary for Travel Writing... Rewriting Dante's Inferno from an OMG!blogger point of view ~ Yeah, it seemed like a good idea at the time ;)

Actually, how I got to see hell is a funny story. You see, *clears throat* …

Midway upon the journey of our life

I found myself in a dark wilderness,

For I had wandered from the straight and true.

I had taken one too many bribes while in local government (how else was I going to keep myself in Prada?) and found myself wracked with guilt after a few bottles of wine, stumbling through a forest looking for a decent place to throw up. And then I thought I saw a long-dead scholar idol of mine, and I was like “OMG Virgil!”

And Virgil was like “OMG Dante!”

And then we totally hugged.

And Virgil was like, “Dante you’re such a loser. You should stop being a loser and be awesome instead.”

And I was like, “But Virgil, I don’t know how to be awesome. Will you show me?”

And Virgil was like, “No dude I can’t, I’m totally dead! And I was a giant Roman heathen anyway. But since you’re already trippin’ (never mix shrooms and wine, dude) I can take you on a journey through hell so you can see what happens to losers who don’t become awesome before they die.”
And I was like “WOOO! ROAD TRIP!”

And Virgil shook his head and was like, “You are so wasted this may as well be a Contiki tour.”

And I was like “WOOOO –”

And then I threw up.

Fragment (consider revising)

I was born in Russia | and raised in South Africa | I sound American | and feel like an alien | been dreaming of Japan for a decade | but I don't drive, dammit | What do you do with a B.A. in English? | It seemed like a good idea at the time | Burning daylight waiting for my life to start | Deadlines are more like guidelines | I have braingels (brain angels) | People say I'm smart, but I know better | I like purple and Hello Kitty and sleeping late | I do everything Oprah tells me to do | I get defensive and critical and grumpy sometimes | My Circadian rhythms fail me | I heart gingers | Who the hell am I without varsity? | a little paranoid | a little reckless | I like comedy and satire and Cormac McCarthy | It's not my fault that life's more fun when I'm tipsy | If I know you, I've probably had a few perfect conversations with you in my head | life's better with pets | I only like attention in theory | I should really stop tearing my hair out | At home, I usually walk on my tiptoes | I believe in miracles.

The Curse of Old Man Willy

This was my first assignment for Travel Writing, a fun yet disturbing true story about hiking in Drakensberg...

I've never been on a proper hike – although I've heard it's just walking, it seems a lot harder. But hey, I'm in Drakensberg, there's this Blue Grotto thing -- I could hike. I don't have any hiking clothes, so I wear the hikiest stuff I brought on the trip. My off-black Guess shirt and Betty Boop hairclip probably don't have counterparts selling at Cape Union Mart, but I'm feeling pretty hardcore. We set off on the trail and are quickly immersed in a seemingly endless lush forest. As the mud squishes beneath my virginal trainers, I start to think I'm a natural at this hiking thing – that is, before I lose my balance on huge boulders crossing a tiny stream, and my left leg plunges knee-deep into icey mountain water. Our journey is lengthened by overwhelming obstacles – well, actually just by our B.A. tendency to photograph every funny-looking tree and magical-looking spiderweb we come across. Two hours later, we reach what seems to be the end of the trail: a dusty cliffside. We look at each other quizzically and realise that none of us knows what a 'Blue Grotto' actually is. Edging further, the cliffside opens up to a gorgeous waterfall which creates a placid pool. As my friends dip into the freezing water of the pool, an old man emerges from the forest and jumps in – buck naked. Gathering our stuff and averting our eyes, we hike back to civilization in under twenty minutes. We do not take any pictures of funny trees along the way.


While we were discussing the story in class, Emily and I mentioned that we'd dubbed the random naked guy Old Man Willy. Nobody knows if Old Man Willy lives in the forest, if he was just out of sight behind us the whole time, or if he's an apparition that haunts the pool waiting in the hollow darkness of eternity for the opportunity to make girls uncomfortable. Anyway, I don't think hiking is for me.

T-shirt ideas

I had completely forgotten I'd made these until I was desperately scouring my documents for something decent to put into my writing portfolio.

As for my portfolio, I didn't find anything but about 20 pages of an awesome Sylar x Mohinder fanfiction (that's Heroes, y'all) but I don't think fanfics really count as 'creative writing' so much as 'perverted plagiarism' ... but maybe if I change Sylar's name to Rolex and Mohinder's name to Raj, and add a little prologue: "So Rolex is an evil superdude who steals other superpeople's powers by cutting their heads open; and Raj is an adorable scientist guy who's technically from India but sounds more like he's from California and trying to sound like he's from London. Cool, now on with the fanfi -- Uh, completely original work of prose!"

Yes, this sounds like a plan.

It was a dark and stormy writing class...

I had my first Creative Writing seminar yesterday, and the upside is that it wasn't as soul-shatteringly terrifying as I was afraid it would be. The downside is that apparently, I'm not the only person in the class who can string a coherent sentence together (damn it!) so I'll have to work a bit harder if I'm looking for standing ovations.

We did a couple of in-class exercises including one where we had to write really horribly (to get over the fear of writing badly, which is a huge block for amateur writers.) This is what I came up with:

It was a dark and stormy night when Clarissa, a stunningly beautiful young lady, fell off her loyal steed while riding to the next village to get more leeches for her ailing mother. As Clarissa toppled off her shining black steed, her ruby red hair cascaded from her headscarf and gleamed in the lightning-light. Her emerald green ballgown shimmered with mud as she splashed to the ground. Her usually loyal steed was spooked by the storm and disappeared into the tempest, leaving Clarissa in a dark, despairing ditch of despair. Her ankle twisted, Clarissa's gorgeous honey-coloured eyes widened in pain and dismay. It was then that, in the dark distance, she saw a tall, striking figure coming towards her ominously. As he approached, Clarissa's soft strawberry-pink lips parted in awe. It was an Adonis-like, totally hot guy with broad shoulders, a strong angular face, and a black cowboy hat...


Every time I read this it gets worse. I'm quite happy with it! The funny thing is that it really does reflect the problems I have when I write: I tend to repeat myself and use too many flowery, opulent, magnificently diverse adjectives.

I'm looking forward to carrying on with the course. I hope the "workshopping" part won't be too heartbreaking. At least, this way, I have to write and I can't flake out on it. So there won't be any "I'd love to write a book, but unfortunately I don't have a pen" business. Yeah, that's from Little Britain. The catchphrases are slowly working their way into my subconscious. It's a right kerfuffle.