It's possible I just need to calm down, sometimes

I missed the last two writey meetings because I had a cold, so despite post-icy conditions, I went to this week's critique meeting. And got very, very annoyed.

I don't know what it is about group discussion that gets me all riled up, but it invariably does. I've noticed it in staff meetings and roller derby meetings too. I think maybe it's because not everyone recognizes the correct way of thinking, i.e., mine. I wait patiently for others to say what I'm thinking, and not only do they often not say what I'm thinking, they often say things that are contrary to my way of thinking. How lame!

At this meeting in particular I was disappointed with folks' seeming lack of familiarity with speculative fiction. One writer submitted a nice first chapter of a YA fantasy. It was fun and funny, and overall promising. In it, s/he made up a word for the name of the underworld. One guy said he'd read the word and said, 'what the hell is that?!?' Then others chimed in suggesting she use a real word, but just in a different language. I was irked. It's fiction, and furthermore it's FANTASY fiction, so you can MAKE THAT STUFF UP. You can invent an entire language if you want to.

Furthermore, if the author had used a different language, s/he'd inevitably run into the A Clockwork Orange conundrum: when you use a real language that readers don't recognize, they assume it's made up. The slang in A Clockwork Orange is just Russian, and yet even folks who should know better, like Orson Scott Card, refer to the amazing slang the author invented. This in turn pisses the Russians off. And you don't want to do that because then they'll sulk twice as hard. So I really hope s/he doesn't change the word.

Then another author wrote a post-apocalyptic retelling of a famous piece of literature. I sat and waited for someone to ask what kind of apocalypse had taken place, and how long before the start of the story had it taken place. Instead they talked about whether the author used too many 'and's'. Then I eventually asked what kind of apocalypse it was, and everyone was like, meh, who cares. (It totally matters. You have to choose your specific means of world-destruction, because it should inform just about everything. A post-nuclear wasteland is different from a plague-ridden one, and post-nuclear people are different from post-plague people. Unless they're zombies, which is possible in both scenarios.)

My enjoyment of the writer's group depends on who's leading the discussion, I've found. Some leaders start with small things and gently coax the group into bigger issues, which I'm perfectly comfortable with. Then it seems like we're starting off easy, which is good, considering how nerve-wracking it is to have your work critiqued. Others lead the group in a way that pisses me off - they focus only on one aspect of the story, or they suggest alternate dialogue for the characters right off the bat. I understand that you can take or leave advice, and oddly, I wasn't annoyed by anything anyone said about my story when I got it critiqued, but I do get defensive on behalf of other writers.

In other news, I'm going to try and finish up my current story this weekend, and then I'm going to put it through the shredder. Mmm, tasty kindling.

And in the No Sh*t Category...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090128/ap_on_go_pr_wh/obama_winter_weather

Update: Ow ow ow ow ow!

In keeping with my not really a new year's resolution to lose weight, I hit da gym on Sunday. I did arm weight machines, which I haven't done in like two years. I took it slow and easy, lifting 15 pounds at most, and only ten for the majority of the exercises. And now I am in SO MUCH PAIN. I'm crazy sore about the arms, to the point where I am having trouble lifting them up beyond waist height. Crazy!

In terms of writeration, I spent almost two whole hours working on a story yesterday. I did not feel at all like writing when I got home, and when I opened the current thing I've been working on I was like, wow, this is just awful, really; really really terrible. So I wrote for ten minutes and then switched to watching Dr. Who, but then I actually felt worse because I wasn't writing. So I went back to writing and managed to keep going for quite a while, to the point where I didn't hate myself or what I was working on anymore. So I guess it's becoming a habit, which is good. Hopefully I can finish this one, and then I'm going to rewrite the hell out of it.

Illness: Myths and Facts According to Moi

Today my superbizor told me she had to leave early because her daughter wasn't feeling well. I said I hoped her daughter felt better, and she said, "Well, I like for her to eat fruit as snacks, so I gave her some fruit, and I told her to WASH the fruit before she ate it, and she didn't."

I was like, o.... k. Hence this list:

Things That I Don't Think Make You Sick

• Eating unwashed fruit. Unless you eat a metric ton of it, in which case you might absorb enough bacteria/pesticide/wax to make you ill. But then, eating the metric ton would probably make you sicker, in general.
• Going outside with wet hair.
• Not wearing a coat. Unless you count frostbite or hypothermia as illness, which I don't.
• Picking your nose. My grandmother's theory: picking or even TOUCHING your nose will introduce harmful finger bacteria into your sensitive nasal cavities.
  

Things That I Think Do Make You sick

• Not getting enough sleep. This is top of the list as far as I'm concerned.
• Working really hard to get something accomplished over a few weeks or months, and then accomplishing said thing. Example: rehearsing for a show and then performing in the show. Right after closing night, expect illness.
• Commuting using public transportation. Last year I got sick three times in a six month period. Thank you, NJ Transit! And thank YOU, all you NJ workaholics who pack the train to work whilst hacking and wheezing!
• Getting a flu shot. This is just hubris, people. We are not, have not been and will never be entitled to a cure for the flu. Don't front.
• Upping the amount or difficulty level of exercise you do regularly. This is sad but true: you have to run faster, lift more, and work out for longer in order to get stronger, but at the initial point of doing more, you're more illness-prone.
  

Observations on the Groodthings Family Outting to Greater Tuna at LTA

As promised, the folks and I went to the Little Theater of Alexandria to see our dear hobbit friend Shawnie B starring in a production of Greater Tuna. Some notes:

• There are many, many elderly residents of Old Town Alexandria, and they're all seeing this show.
  
• Shawnie B. looks too amazing in pink cat's eye glasses and a blonde diner-girl wig.
• Just because the Groodthings family agrees on a calendar date to go see a show, don't assume that someone else will purchase the tickets when it is clearly your job to do so.
• It is always, always funny to see a middle-aged man dressed in a flowered dress totter around the stage saying, "Where is my strychnine! I know I have some!"

I feel like I should have more, but honestly, we got home at 11pm, and that's officially Past My Bedtime, so today I'm all groggy and sleepy. Aging is a sad business.

Groodthings Tested, Mom-approved

Last night I had the pleasure of hearing Atomicate's band, Bette Noir, play at Bangkok Blues in happenin' Falls Church. Because all right-thinking people are Atomicate fans, my mom'n'dad came too. We opted to have dinner first, so we got to hear the sound check - Bangkok Blues is a nice venue for rock bands, they have their own PA and sound guy, and a little stage in the dining room. Earplugs are even provided by the establishment, a nice indication of their comittment to those about to rock.

And rock they did! Bette Noir is quite good I must say. Atomicate mostly takes lead vocals, and the lead guitarist does some of that too. Everyone in the band sings, so they do nice harmonies and backups. They all play their instruments well, and the drummer is particularly entertaining - he is so happy to be a-rockin' that he's as much fun to watch as to hear.

They did a mix of covers and originals. I really liked the covers they did - Mazzy Starr via the Gin Blossoms, Billy Idol and, just to make my heart skip a lil' faster, some Bee Gees. How can you not love that? You can't. You literally cannot not. They're like a wedding band but a million times cooler.

We could only stay for the first set, on account of me mum having the consumption. Afterwards she said, "You know, when I'm feeling a bit better, I wouldn't mind seeing Atomicate's band again." I concur.

Oh wait, it's a whole 'nother year?

Atomicate alerted me to the fact that I posted only the title to a post - Combatting The Great Dark, Strategies, without posting any strategies... Apologies. I've been sick and started to write it and then was like, aaaahchoo, and left it. The strategy, fwiw, is to listen to lots of disco. Yeah, sometimes a little wockachicka is the only way to go: Bee Gees, Irene Cara, George Michael... it helps me, anyway. 

It feels a little weird to be not posting about the noggaration happening all around us, but I'm opting out of anything not Daily Show-related. Which means I'll be watching the Daily Show after the fact and that's all I can  commit to at this time. But I do have tomorrow off, so, yay noggaration, for selfish reasons! 

This week is going to be chock full of event: Wednesday night I'm going to see Atomicate's band Bette Noir at Bangkok Blues, and then on Thursday I'm going to see Shawnie B star in Greater Tuna the Little Theater of Alexandria. I love seeing my friends creating culchah, so I'm excited.

I'm going to be missing writer's group for music time. It's a workshop week, and the workshop title is Goals. The plan apparently is for everyone to go around and say what their writerly goals are for '09, because saying your goal out loud makes it real and then the group can help you plan out ways to reach your goals and hold you accountable and whatnot. So by missing this crucial meeting, they can't hold me accountable for anything! Ha ha, suckers. 

But it's a good idea. Goals are good, right? Sure. So I figgered I can blog the goals, writerly and otherwise, and you, my five or sometimes six or seven readers can bear witness. Please don't try to hold me accountable tho'. Or if you must, please use the carrot and not the stick. I like carrots. Carrots are part of the plan. 

1. Lose a bunch of weight. Always and forever, this is a goal. I'm still totally planning to get it done. I have to anyway or the back pain will NEVER EVER NENVER NEVERNEN NORFEN NIRVEN go away, and that would be bad. I'm going to join a gym in February, when all the New Year wannabes have dropped out. I admit that over the holidays, good intentions were jettisoned in favor of marzipanimals and beef wellington. I'm only huuuuman, flesh and blood, a chiiick.

2. Do good at work. No, seriously this time... I'm going to care about doing my job well. I will care about it despite the fact that often, striving to do your job well means poor performance reviews and lots of people at work being annoyed with you. Don't ask me why X equals Y in that equation, but often it does. But no matter! I will not let weird corporateness turn me into a corporate slacker! As a first step towards do-gooderness, I completed several online training modules today... and I took notes. Yeah. 

3. Write every day. 

4. Finish stories. 

5. Revise said stories. 

6. Share said stories.

I'm getting better with writing every day. Finishing stories... well, that's harder. And you have to have a finished story before you can revise it, right? Maybe? I don't know. 

And to get even more brain-stormy, here are things I've thought I'd like to write that I've never sat down and tried to write. Maybe posting them here will motorvate me to write them, or kill the ideas forever so I can think about something else.

A Mummer Show

I've always wanted to write and perform a Mummer's Play with my friends. I don't know a ton about them, but the tech kids in college did one and it was awesome. I'm attracted by the idea of broad comedy, costumes made out of paper, basic themes of good vs. evil battles, and making my friends do something stupid with me. Also rhyming couplets, I like those too.

A Musical

This one would be a collaboration with Atomicate. We were thinking a roller derby musical. It could also include rhyming couplets. 

A Novel

Am I serious? I don't know. I do know that I keep saying, "I should write a book!" A novel is a book. So there. 

Found Stories

I've asked my mom and sister why they don't write. Both of them read like crazy, and are certified editors, and write very well. My sister says she's not creative (a blatant untruth) and my mom says she doesn't have any stories in her. The logical me-centric question then is, do I have any stories in me? I think I do, but more to the point, I think everyone does, because we tell our experiences in stories because stories are happening all the time. 

Example: on my first official day at work, I went to the deli downstairs to have lunch. I sat at one of the tables in the hall outside the deli and had just tucked in to some beef with broccoli when I heard a loud clatter behind me and a woman started yelling "Oh my God! Somebody help! She havin a seizure!" I turned around and a woman at the table behind me had fallen off her chair and was lying on the floor twitching. A crowd immediately formed around her and several people called 911 and then shouted that they had done so and that an ambulance was on the way. Her table-mates crouched down next to her and were telling a man in uniform who she was; it was her first day at work too, her name was Marie, and she'd seemed fine until now. Marie came out of the seizure and started moaning without words. She sounded terrified and struggled to get up, while her friends tried to hold her down and said, "Marie, stay down. Stay down, Marie. You're ok now, you're ok! Just stay down, honey!" I stood at a loss; I couldn't do anything, but I also couldn't just sit down and continue eating my lunch while this woman who was clearly in terrible distress was on the floor behind me. I felt sick but also hungry, and remembered when my back went out, and how time seemed to slow to an agonizing crawl while I stood with this awful new pain and the worse knowledge that there was nothing anyone could do, not the paramedics or my friends, there was no help and I was just stuck there until the pain went away to the point where I could function again. I felt bad for Marie on the floor because time was stretched out again for her while she waited for an ambulance to come on her first day at a new job, and how embarrassed she must feel on top of everything else for her new work buddies to see her like this. I stood for a minute and then packed up my lunch and brought it upstairs to eat at my desk. 

So my point is, stuff is happening, and it is a story. So I want to write stories that I see happening, which is like journaling, but different. 

Goals. Done and done.

Word of the Day

Iterative - characterized by or involving repetition, recurrence, reiteration, or repetitiousness. 

It came up a bunch in my corp training, and I sadly did not know what it meant, so I looked it up. I should  have been able to figure it out from reiterate and iteration, but it's possible aging is having an endumbening effect on me.

Dear Sport and Health: Um, no

I went to Sport and Health yesterday, cuz work has a discount deal with them and with Golds. Sport'n'Health is right in the complex, so it'd be muy convenient. I figured they'd be a bit pricey, but also figured maybe the work deal would make it do-able.

The nice gym salespeople told me the deal was actually quite amazing: sixty bucks a month and only fifty dollars down! I immediately started putting on my coat. But wait! Maybe they could offer me NO money down, so it'd just be sixty a month! Still, no. Not so much.

In other news, I got many fine books about writing for Christmas. They were all recommended by The Rejecter, (www.rejecter.blogspot.com) an agent's assistant who writes romance novels and has been through the dreaded creative writing MFA. Of her recs, I got The First Five Pages, A Guide To Staying Out of the Rejection Pile, Immediate Fiction, and a book on writing sci fi by Orscon Scott Card.

Immediate Fiction is good but a little self-helpy - lots of phrases in bold so that you too can be a better writer. The First Five Pages, on the other hand, is amazing. It goes through all the reasons agents/publishers will reject a manuscript, and then offers exercises to help the writer fix said problems. For example, second on the list is Too Many Adjectives, so the exercise is to look at something you've written and take out all the adjectives and make a list of them, and then read what you've written sans adjectives. Then you look at the adjectives and decide which are cliches, and see if you can find better ones. Then you put back a third of the adjectives and see how that goes. It's good stuff, I tell ya.

So my plan is to churn out a couple of stories, using some of the prompts in Immediate Fiction, and then try some exercises from The First Five Pages to revise them. It's going slowly. I can write for about an hour, and that's including various little procrastination techniques and internal whining. It's easier for me to write a story in twenty minutes in the writing group using prompts than to sit by myself with hours ahead of me and no prompt, which I think comes down to expectations. In writing group I have none, and by myself I think I should be coming up with something good.

I haven't read the Orson Scott Card book yet. I'm leaving him to last for a couple of reasons: 1. he has gotten worse with age, and 2. I have a feeling the basic elements will be the same, because the basic elements are always the same. It's amazing how much writing stuff is like theater stuff. Someone has to want something, and it has to be a matter of life and death, and they have to face an obstacle and then take action to combat the obstacle. No big mac moments, show don't tell, every character you create is you, even if it isn't.

I also spent some time writing up a critique of a first chapter for the group on Wednesday. I found it quite challenging and am not sure I'll be able to do it for the other pieces up for crit. But, I do feel an obligation - all of the folks up for crit this week gave me comments when I was up, so I reckon I gotta.

Shorter Stories

Last night I dragged myself away from warm Christmas-lit home out into the pouring rain to go to the writer's meeting. I didn't really want to go, after a day spent opening presents and eating lots and lots of cheese and cookies, but it was definitely good that I did - if I'd stayed, I probably would have kept eating. And eating and eating and eating.

So this was a writing exercise night. Billybob read us two personals ads and we all wrote about 'em. One was of a wheelchairbound tech-head ISO a hipster Asian punk girl, and the other was a missed connection between a guy on a DC-bound bus and a tall Asian chick in a green peacoat. I wrote about the second one, and so did almost everyone else. I didn't read mine out loud at the group, but liked what I wrote, so I'm posting it here.

Bus Incident

I watched you on the bus again today. I always sit near the back, on one of the center-facing seats. I get on two stops before you. You are maybe 25 or 27, and you wear khaki pants and a blue button down sirt or a blue and white striped button down shirt. Do you only have two shirts? Or do you have three blue shirts and two blue and white striped shirts, or some combination thereof? If you only have two shirts, you must do laundry at least twice a week; they always look clean.

These are the kinds of questions I would maybe ask you if you ever struck up a convo with me, and we became friends and had drinks and went over to each others' apartments to watch Dr. Who or play Left 4 Dead, my favorite zombie-killing video game. But we never talk, because you're alway staring at that Asian chick.

Usually you just stare at her. I would like to tell you that if I were that Asian chick and I happened to look over while you were staring, I might move to the other end of the bus. It is more than a tad creepy. Granted, you are reasonably attractive, with your floppy blonde hair and blue eyes. But still.

You seem to think you are doing a rom-com stare. That is to say, you think your gaze is soulful, and that you are seeing hidden qualities in her that she has never even seen in herself, and if she happens to meet your eyes, she will see that you don't just see her, you REALLY see her, and that the two ofyou will know in that isntant that despite some comic plot twists the madcap DC life will throw at you, you'll ultimately spend the rest of your lives together.

This is not actually what your stare conveys. It actually says, "I'm really lonely, and you're hot, so I think I'll stare at you for the duration of our ten-minute bus ride together."

Also, a note about Hot Asian Chick: she is stupid. I learned that today, and I wonder if you did too. Today, you offered her a seat beside you next to the window. She said, "Uuuum, whaaat? Oh, no, I'm getting off at the next stop. HAHAHAHAHA!"

Who laughs when someone offers them a seat? And who laughs like that? Stupid Hot Asian Chick, apparently.

I have been noticing you for the past six months. In six months of riding the same bus, you have never noticed me. This despite the fact that I am also Asian. Yup, I'm Korean. And I don't have a stupid laugh. But am apparently not a hot Asian chick, so I don't get to be stared at.

I did not realize how much this not being noticed bothered me until today. Maybe it was watching you make your move and actually sort of not really talk to Hot Asian Chick, and seeing how you smiled warmly at her stupid annoying laugh. I felt less of you after that, I must admit. I was bothered by the fact that all of your bus-staring energies have been focused on one woman, entirely neglecting the other staring possibilities that exist on our fine bus. If you don't want to notice me, fine, but what about blonde librarian chick? She's cute, and wears glasses and puts her hair up in a retro bun. Or what about aging but still sexy divorced lady? I don't know if she's actually divorced per se, but she doesn't wear a ring. Anyway, she could use some stare-love too.

All this is by way of explanation for why I stuck my foot out into the aisle as you were exiting the bus. I thought you would stumble a bit, but I had no idea the timing would be so bad, nor that you would lose your balance quite so spectacularly. You tripped, and then in trying to right yourself tripped over your own feet and fell again, and went sprawling just as the doors were opening. I believe you executed a perfect double somersault down the steps. Your gymnastics were almost beautiful and I'm truly, truly sorry you didn't stick the landing.

I really hope you recover OK. Of course the bus had to stop as you lay unconscious and bleeding on the pavement, and I wanted to stay and wait for the ambulance, but I had a meeting to get to so I boarded the next bus along with everyone else. But I am sorry. You have the right to stare at whomever you want to, and I should not trip you.

I will give you this note when you return, which I hope will be soon - I'd like to think the fall didn't damage your brain and therefore ability to work. I'll give you the note, and then I plan to start taking the subway.

Are we there yet?

It is the Eve of Russky Christmas. Russky Christmas Eve.

When I was a wee tyke, we would have two Christmases: American Christmas: presents! and Russky Christmas: Church! and a few presents! Now we just celebrate Russky Christmas: Church and presents!

Around Halloween I start to feel the weight of the holiday season settling in, and it becomes a countdown. Halloween: dress up, check. Thanksgiving: eat a lot. Check. American Christmas: a furious buildup of work at the office as folks try to shoehorn everything in before the end of year stuff and before they go on vacation, followed by a couple of weeks of dead silence and clock-watching, followed by weird coworker/manager gifting that puzzles everyone and makes almost everyone uncomfortable, followed by a couple of days off that I spend sleeping and hanging out with my immediate family.

This is closely followed by my mom's birthday, which I often forget because it comes so close after American Christmas. (It's not an excuse, it just happens...) I routinely panic because I've forgotten and fail to buy a gift because my mom assures me she doesn't need or want anything and I try to find the funniest card ever to make up for it. We have a nice dinner somewhere.

Then I realize it's time to buy gifts for all, and gift-buying ensues. Then I realize I have to wrap said gifts, and I do wrap some, but generally have at least ten items left to wrap on Russky Christmas Eve.

Finally Russky Christmas arrives, and we go to church and have the Festival Of Greed, followed by the Festival of Eating A Lot of Meat And Cheese. Much happiness, indigestion and exhaustion ensues.

Then comes the great dark of winter. My birthday and my dad's birthday follow in February, tiny lights in the abyss. My sister and I battle our varying degrees of seasonal affective disorder with sun lamps and vodka. Maybe the holiday countdown is a countdown to russkiness: I feel most Russian when huddled in layers of sweaters and coats and stoically trying to withstand cold weather blues.

I don't mean to sound ungrateful; Russian Christmas is, for me, a time to reflect on spiritual joys and feel gratitude for blessings, and I do. But even in the churchy sense, Christmas is the beginning of the story, and we build up from there to the loud jubilations and singing for Easter, the end of the story that is also the bigger beginning. So, it makes sense to me that russky Christmas brings me feelings of trepidation - it so closely coincides with the secular world new year, and the great dark, and questions both lofty and practical: will DC get snow, how much, will my car make it, what new shennanigans will our politicians and policies bring, will we survive and how?

My new year looks promising, but I'm wary. My new year looked promising last year, too, and well, it turned out to be The Year of Shit and Fans, to borrow a phrase from an ex. I wish everyone joy, and also luck and strength. Onward through the fog.