Anime Face Generator - Seasons Four

I'm Doing NaNoWriMo

This is my account. I don't know if I'll be able to pull it off without my health and grades suffering, but here's hoping.

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Seasons Four Behind Closed Doors

A sequel to Seasons Four Open the Door. The Lord Summer (formerly Jared Derkins, geeky American nurse) announces his plans to institute both democracy and legal polyamorous marriage during a conference of demigods hosted in his own castle. Hilarity ensues.

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Doing double-duty for NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month), I will briefly chronicle how this goes every day, and provide links to read my output if you are of age to do so. My BlogHer page is here. Publicity and prizes, people! XD

Writer's Trickle

Written for my Creative Writing portfolio.

A logical question to pose someone with multiple published novels at the age of 21 is why she would wish to take an Intro to Creative Writing class at all. My knee-jerk answers have been that this is a prerequisite for other Creative Writing courses that I want to take, I need the credits, I believe I still need plenty of assistance before I reach a level I want to be (regardless of where I am compared to my classmates), and that it's more fun than anything else I can see around here that will help get me to graduation. These are all true, but upon reflection there are some deeper things going on here. First, I am retaking this class to spite the universe for giving me a health-related catastrophe that forced me to withdraw last time. Second, I am struggling to get through the driest writing period I have had in six years, where I am writing more than most people do, yet all the while internally panicking about whether the well is running shallow.

It hasn't been writer's block, fortunately, because the last time I seriously had that it was the worst three months of my life. I've been able to eke out the little bits and one decent short story you will see in this compilation, though it's been like going from dancing to shambling in terms of ease. I'm also working on a one-act play for a different class. I even produced a few well-received pieces of one of my old guilty pleasures, fanfiction. So someone who doesn't know me well could look at my output and think that I am being productive.

I don't feel like I am, though, not compared to the real me. I was used to writing at least ten pages a week of unassigned original work for the sheer joy of it, constantly eager to get to the next book over the horizon, playing out scenes in my head every waking moment not occupied by immediate concerns. I don't know what happened. And when I try to talk about this, people usually say I've written plenty already, that it's okay to be low on inspiration for a while when I have done so much. Guess what? I've eaten three meals a day almost every day of my life, but eating nothing one sandwich every two days would leave me hungry and weak no matter how well-fed I was to start with.

Taking this course has been part of my attempt to fix this issue. If I was required to write, I thought, maybe I could tap into the source again by sheer brute force. Perhaps the prompts would awaken something. At least in the meantime I could refine my phrasing and improve my cliche elimination rate, get better at receiving criticism, possibly be helpful to others, and work on all the other little things while the big things elude me for a while.

I succeeded at the last, anyway. The short story is pretty good, especially after the editing help, and I think is worthy of sending out to be published. The journals were at least therapeutic. The exercises have their moments of charm, the occasional clever sentence. I am still feeling pretty empty and alone in my head. It reminds me of the end of The Amber Spyglass when the heroine can no longer magically use a certain oracular device, but instead has to learn how to read it slowly and painfully. I realize that this may sound ludicrous to many. I have a candle flame to light my darkness, still. I feel petty for it, but I long to have a forest fire again.

Something I wrote for Creative Writing

Prompt was "death scene". I thought it came out well.

There’s a song I’ve got stuck in my head as I watch my premature infant struggle to breathe in the incubator. By Death Cab for Cutie, a song called “What Sarah Said”. It’s got a nice piano backdrop to it, better than the hiss and whir of various machines trying to hold back the inevitable.

My baby is only about the size of my partner’s two fists pressed together. My partner is still recovering from her ordeal. I’m not sure if they’ve told her the percentages, the steady unravel of all these months of expectation and hope. She’ll pull through, the doctors say, but they don’t want to stress her until she has a better handle on remaining with us.

Technically it’s not “my” baby in the sense that I am not a man, I did not insert Tab A into Slot B. But my cousin donated the sperm. More importantly, I’m the one who held my love’s hair back as she threw up from all those days of morning sickness, the one who fetched her toasted seaweed chips and pho from the Asian market downtown when she yearned for them, who rubbed her feet, who picked up the slack of taking care of the two cats and chinchilla. I feel this is pretty much the same amount of involvement as a father has. I was convinced I was okay with being Mommy Number Two.

She’s such a misshapen doll, our baby. We came up with girl names once we knew, but if I start thinking of this little scrap of fading as the name we liked best, I know – just know – that I’m going to break.

This was supposed to be a celebration of life.

“It better not be contractions,” was how she broke the news to me, “but we should get this checked out.”

How I prayed. You’d think a minister’s prayers would hold weight, but then again there is no guarantee that heard prayers will not be denied anyway, for part of some greater scheme. I have to hold onto that.

She waves her little hands feebly. I wonder where she thinks she is. I wonder how much she’ll notice the slip from here to eternity.

I’m not even sure why they bothered putting her in an incubator if they’re so sure she’s not going to make it. I suppose because you have to let them go on their own schedule. You have to try, so you don’t spend the rest of your life wondering if you accidentally blocked a miracle.

My stomach growls, and I am dismayed at such a mundane thing breaking into what is supposed to be tragic. Yet I am not crying. I’m not doing much of anything. I am sitting very still, watching the millimeters’ rise and fall of her little chest, and I have an alternative rock song running through my mind’s ears.

I’m not sure how you love a lump of flesh that will soon become a shoebox’s worth of burial. What earthly good does that love do anyone? All I know is that I do. Maybe it’s best that my partner is not present.

I must tell her myself, when she wakes. I owe it to her.

The fingers stop moving. The breathing dwindles. A lump is a lump is a lump.

And I’m thinking of what Sarah said:

That love is watching someone die.

I've been interviewed!

Go to http://www.novelspot.net/node/3917 to see it in full! :D

Since times are tough...

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