Blah Blah Blah

Yeah, I've been bad the past two days and haven't written anything. I haven't been feeling well, and have been trying to figure out my life, with debatable success.

But tomorrow, I'm putting aside the greater portion of the day to write. Boxing in the morning, my friend's birthday party at night. In between: writing mania.

Nothing else to say. Leaving for vacation in 5 (now 4) days. Beginning to dread the flight. Planes are scary dammit.
- LV

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It Was A Dark And Stormy Day...

I love cold, rainy days. I think they're very peaceful. They make me feel contemplative and serene.

Of course, I'd feel a lot better if my stomach wasn't hurting me so much. It feels like there's a tiny, angry man in my stomach with a pitchfork. Maybe eating cold cans of soup and little else isn't the wisest way to live. But it is cheap. And cheap beats out smart right now.

I submitted a poem to an online magazine the other day. It got rejected. I'm not surprised - it wasn't one of my better poems. But I liked it, and I'm a little disappointed. Poems don't make much money anyway. But still, being published is being published, right? And being rejected is being rejected.

I want a literary agent. Except I can't finish a single story, so I have nothing to offer anyone. It's aggravating - my story ideas are too dense for short stories, but I run out of ideas halfway through, so I end up with like thirty pages. Maybe they could be long short stories. I need a writing group, or a writing teacher, even though I am of the mentality that you can't learn to be a good writer.

But I digress. I have some E-Mails to write that might result in jobs, and then I'm working on the zombie story. Here are some of the projects I'm working on. Comments, suggestions, and open mockery are welcome.

* Zombie story, post-apocalyptic.

* Chick-lit, about writers and father/daughter relationships.

* High school presidential election with a sinister twist (short story).

* Author bargains with the devil.

* Death as a super-hero.

* Crime story I've been writing on and off since I was like, 13. 

None of its very good, but I'm still having trouble thinking up good ideas. Inspiration is standing a block away, mocking me and dancing just out of reach, promising glory and then throwing scraps in my direction.

Maudlin enough for you?

I want NEIL GAIMAN's career. He's had it for a long time - it's time to share, damn it. Incidentally, his blog is great. Very entertaining. I hope that reading the work of those I admire will inspire me. Or something.

So. I have a hot cup of coffee, bad daytime TV playing quietly in the background, and it's time to get to work. Hope everyone has a good day.

- LV

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Writing Life Update

I know my career stories aren't nearly as fascinating as my endless pontificating about pop culture, but maybe someone out there can help me on the path to fame and fortune.

* I am having a book review published, but I'm not getting paid. So plus one for experience, but negative one for lack of funds.

* I've been trying to perk up my angsty teen poetry I wrote back in the days before antidepressants and when I had blue hair. But it's really, inexcusably bad. A few are salvageable, but most of it should be thrown onto the eternal bonfire and offered up to the Bad Writing Gods as penance for my sins.

* I'm giving two incredibly shitty novels another go, and starting a third. One redeeming quality of the third novel: ZOMBIES. 

* I'm going to try to sell my thesis as a book to a literary agent. It's depressing and very nichey, but anyone who takes a media studies class might find use for it. Of course, I'd have to expand it significantly to include about fifteen or twenty more movies, but I don't want to spend all that time and energy if nobody is even going to humor my obsessive behavior. NOTE: If you don't know what I'm talking about in reference to the thesis, ask and I shall explain.

* I'm trying to write comic book scripts, a la HARVEY PEKAR and the genius of AMERICAN SPLENDOR. His stick figures are better than mine. As is the story. But my memories of high school and college make for surreal reading - and they would be funny if drawn well. Now I just need to find an artist...

* In other news, IE the real world, I have a job interview tomorrow as a hostess. Spent an inordinate amount of time today bawling over my writer's block, which is officially out of control. 

I want to start calling up authors I admire and asking the much-maligned question: Where Do You Get Your Ideas? Because I need inspiration. 

Writing vaguely emo pieces about the guy who didn't like me when I was 15 or the threesome I witnessed when I was 16 is not how I want to be remembered as a writer. Although at this point, even having people DESPISING my work would be preferable. At least then I'd know people are reading it.

Someone should just pay me to blog. But yeah, if Warren Ellis, Amy Sedaris, Joss Whedon, Neil Gaiman, J.K. Rowling, Hunter S. Thompson, Sir Arthr Conan Doyle, Jon Stewart, Joan Didion, Kurt Vonnegut, Russel T. Davies, or Matt Groening (or a thousand other people) want to call me up and tell me where they get their ideas, I'd be very very grateful.

Or, better yet, let me rip off your ideas and call them my own! 

I wrote a really great script in middle school that was essentially FROM DUSK TILL DAWN without vampires, and a female character. 

That's all for now. If my head explodes from a lack of ideas [or would implodes be more realistic?] I'll let you know. 

- LV

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Can You Have Writer's Block If You're Not A Real Writer?

And by real writer, I mean published. Successfully. Something you actually thought up and wrote, not ripped off of better authors. 

My writer's block is driving me to distraction. Even my usually vivid daydreams are faded and dull. My daydreams hold no interest for me. That is a bad sign. And every idea I think up has been done better. Like Joss Whedon. I want to be Joss Whedon. Or Charlie Kaufman. Or Tim Burton, even though he's a director. Or J.K. Rowling or Hunter S. Thompson or Warren Ellis. All my ideas sound stupid or trite. Or worse, chick-lit. 

Except for Jennifer Weiner, who is my guilty pleasure, I deplore chick-lit. It makes me actively angry. And I don't want my writing to be defined by my nether regions, or the fact that I think Johnny Depp is hot. Maybe if I ever get a good story idea again, I'll write under a pseudonym. 

You know which movie I wish I wrote? KISS KISS BANG BANG. I totally wish that was my idea. Something funny and genre-bending and exciting and under-appreciated. But at this point I'd settle for just being geisha girl to Hugh Laurie.

I've been working on my novel, which turned into chick lit somewhere on page 3. I think because it's a first-person female narrator, and I'm not Sylvia Plath. Do people count that as chick-lit? 

I don't mean books written by women. That would be idiotic. And self-defeating. I consider chick-lit to be books written about a female protagonist who's 'quirky' and 'original,' like fucking Meg Ryan in all those awful movies. And she ends up with the bad guy who turns out to be pretty nice, not the hot guy who turns out to be a shit, and everyone lives happily ever after. Shit. Shit, mine kind of goes that way. I FAIL AT LIFE! HURRAY!

I need to read more. I spent two or three months obsessively rereading the HARRY POTTER series, and I know I could never write anything like that. So I need to read more, and get more inspiration. I wish you could order it, like cigarettes or booze. This is just free-writing.

Random Movie Notes

* SECRET WINDOW is a bad movie, but Johnny Depp is so amazingly funny that it is entirely worthwhile. Like, just him farting around that cabin talking to himself is fucking hysterical. Also, he's real pretty. I'm on a bit of a Depp kick at the moment. It happens. And John Turturro is just always rad. It's a pointless piece of film but it's fun if you ignore the plot.

* SPIDER MAN 3 is also pointless crap, because it's a mess. But it has one good scene. I try to find one worthwhile thing in every movie. This one has several, but only one I actually want to mention. WARNING: SPOILER FOR SPIDER MAN 3. I think James Franco's death scene is fantastic. It's just so sad, and sweet, and surprisingly understated considering how much of the rest of the movie was about explosions and loud noises and grandiose gestures. It's just this very sad, quiet sort of scene, and he's wonderful in it. I'll miss him.

* In HARRY POTTER & THE GOBLET OF FIRE, David Tennant is scary as everloving fuck. My friend put it quite succinctly: "He does a great job of going from a really elegant guy to totally fucking deranged in like two seconds." I'm paraphrasing, but it was a good line.

I need to read something good. But not tonight. Tonight I'm going to watch crappy movies and fuck around on the computer. Like a true writer. 

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