via lilpuddlejumpers

Last night you talked yourself half crazy with what ifs and impatient longings.

No matter how much you talk, think it through, hope wish sigh, there's no guarentee that what you're doing will move you somewhere good, somewhere close to what you want to be.

Dreams so fat they shine. Trying to squeeze their terrific potbellies into your smallness. Pushing and shoving, stretching your insides to make place. That hurts sometimes. They're so happy with themselves: Alive and Allowed Ha Ha! Smilng swollen dreams, banging around and laughing too much in your secret place. They tell you who you can be, ignore who you think you are. 

Not knowing if they'll ever come out of the secret place, you just hold tight to whatever fleeting hope comes low enough to grab. That you can be someone better and bigger, that you are that someone already.

Simple things that make me happy

roses from my parents' garden

1. I think I have discovered what eating a rainbow would taste/feel like.
A mouth FULL of colourful 100s and 1000s. Yes, I currently have a mouth FULL of 100s and 1000s and it feels wonderful.

2. Mat has gotten into subliminal advertising. The other night he spent a good half hour "sending" messages to me via, the throw cushions, my laptop and anything else he could pick up and hold in front of his face as he hauntingly chants "driinnnkkk coca colaaa..." or "getttt maaat a cooooookie..." I think he has confused subliminal messages with being a ghost.

3. The ending for my novel has struck me suddenly and so haphazadly that I feel like if I hadn't been paying attention it would have totally missed me. I like that.

My first novel

 

I am so close, but so so far away from finishing my first draft of my first novel/la! I have 12ish days left of 2009 and 9000ish words to reach my modest target of 50 000 words.


I have never been one of those disciplined people who sets personal goals and knock them out of the park, so I feel incredibly charged and bewildered that I've come this far! And a very big, stubborn part of me wants so badly to get there, if only so that I can say: "Ha, imaginary people who doubted me, I did it!"


Due to my blasé and fairly mental attitude toward silly little things such as, plot, structure, general logic... I would say that  once complete what i will have is a very strange and messy extended piece of work. I will reserve judgement for after I read it all together, but I know there is a long road of editting and fleshing out ahead of me, if I decide to make it work.

So can I write 9000 words it 12 days? Well this is the plan:

1. Tell everyone I know about my race to the finish line so that they start asking that annoying and challenging question: "Soooo, how's the book going?"

2. No more working on middle chapters - I can flesh those out later. Write to an END. Maybe write several ends and pick one later?

3. No more reading until I finish - Mr Rushdie will be my special treat to work towards.

4. If my body insists on continuing to wake up at 3am every morning I will punish it with coffee and writing - Hai yah! Take that cerebral temporal lobe!

Also, I plan on posting parts of chapters here. So keep an eye out and definately give me feed back. If you have lovely things and encouragement to share, please by all means comment! If you think my writing and stories are rubbish, comment anyway - I value all opinions, regardless of how foolish they are, hmph...

I blame my mother.

Today I found the number eight in my bag. As in a number that you stick on your house so that when people drive to your house for the first time, they see your number and go, oh that's 8 Whatsit Road, that must be zz's house. No I don't live at number 8 so it's not mine. I found in on the ground when I was exploring an inner city suburb with my husband.

This leads me to the following question: Do I have problems? Is it normal to see things on the ground, and think, oh better pick that up and take it with me. I cannot begin to articulate the justification process behind that.

Another time, I was walking to the train station to go to school and I encountered about 100 digimon trading cards spralled across my path. What do you think I did? I picked every single one up and put them in my bag. I was 17, I did not watch digimon. Is this a sickness?

Oh and while I'm confessing, if you're wondering where all you're pens are, chances are I took them, one at a time. I can't help myself. If there's a big bunch of pens, they don't seem to bother me. But if there's just one pen, flying solo on an empty table/bench/etc, I pick it up surreptitiously and quietly slip it into my bag/pocket/hair.

Dear Diary

I began journaling when I was nine years old. I only wrote two entries that entire year. One was about a trip to a miniature golf course, and the other was the biggest secret I have ever kept.

I don't know why I wrote the secret down; it was not something I wanted to re-read or to remember. Maybe I felt that it deserved to be documented. Maybe if I wrote it down, it would be just another story.

Trying to remember my nine year old self's reasoning is difficult. But now that I really think of it, imagining myself sitting on my bed, thoughts of it filling my head, the main thing I remember is my diary. My mum had given it to me earlier that year. It was beautiful; a shiny "My Little Pony" cover with pink, lined, strawberry scented pages. Do you think they spoke to me? Maybe those pages drew me to them, pen (and pen license) in hand, willing me to spill.

Now I have a box of diaries from age nine to twenty-something. A box of secret thoughts and hopes and fears. Sometimes I think I’d like my future grandkiddies to read them when I’m gone, most times I’d like to throw the whole lot out! A lot of what’s hidden in there I wish I had never let into the world - I find I’m most verbose when I’m sad or trying to figure something out.

Curious. Why do we commit to paper things that we don’t really want anyone to see - ever?