The Shame of Publication - Part One: The Monkey.

I actually downloaded a copy of the "final version" of Chaucer, and read through it - paranoid that all my editing and reworking of certain passages had still left a half-complete mess of a fan-fic-style slobber on the face of digital publishing.

Ugh.  If this is the kind of shit I'm gonna put out, maybe it'd be better if I didn't make it as an author.  I knew the second that I'd hit the "Publish" button that I hated the ending.  I wished like hell that Chaucer... that the apes at EPRF were..  well, I didn't like the ending is all.

I'm not gonna change it.  I'm gonna go back and edit it (again - sigh... lesson learned; third party editing) but I'm done changing the story.

Now I just need to get outta work while I'm jazzed to write something, and maybe that book can be done before I turn 900.

Ouchr

This pain in my head right now is the most powerful thing I've ever experienced. It's like a fucking kidney stone in my mouth. If you've never experienced a kidney stone, they say it's the closest a man will ever come to the pain of child birth. Now imagine delivering a 9-pound baby through a hole in your fucking tooth.

It hurts like a sonufabitch.

Now imagine you've been in labor for eight hours - trying to push that little shit out of your mouth. I felt the first twinges of pain around ten. I took a 500mg Ibuprofen and put another in my pocket, just in case.

Then the pain flared up - and I'm talking wrath of god shit here - around noon and I took the second. Neither really helped; or else, god help me because I don't want to know what it would have felt like without them.

I managed to keep my wits about me. I didn't tell anyone to "fuck off" who needed it. I didn't punch anyone who really wanted punching.

There were a lot of people who really wanted me to punch them in their bitch faces today.

I got off work and came home, where I took a pill for nerve pain. I don't know what it was. It just says "nerve pain" on the side of the bottle, in hand-written letters, with "3xDay" and "No Alcohol" written below that.

Motherfucker, it didn't work. At all.

Since then, I've added another 1000mg of Ibuprofen and I just took my very last Oxycontin.

If I die of pain killer overdose it was most certainly not suicide. My life sucks the shit right now, but I know I can do better. Son of a bitch, I'm trying.

Still no improvement. I'm waiting for the Oxy to kick in, but it's taking so long...

I tried salt. Sea salt and black pepper, ground and mixed and applied to the site, often helps relieve tooth pain. I tried chewing gum. I tried Listerine (usually helps). I ran around the block to get my heart rate up. That helped a little. I did push-ups when the pain came back. I even tried stuffing some over-the-counter temporary filling repair stuffed into the offending hole. It just wouldn't stay put. Then there's the half-tube of Sever-Pain Orajel.

The only thing that helps so far is resting my head on a soft blanket in a sort of lazy "child's pose" from yoga, with my mouth open, drooling on the carpet. I don't know how important the drooling part is. Once I get up, though, it only lasts about a minute. Then I have to go back to the floor.

Okay, I'm back. Maybe it will stick this time. If I don't die from this, I promise: I'll go looking for a dentist who'll let me pay-over-time in the morning. That can be step two of my "make Dave a better person" list instead of whatever it is (down after "get medical & dental insurance").

On a slightly brighter note, I'm about 15-16,000 words into the book. I don't know exactly, because I'm writing it long-hand and then transferring it to the PC. I was meant to be writing now; but I'm preoccupied.

I just don't want to hurt.

The Writing Fairy

(This is old as dirt, and is here as much for me than anyone else. I don't know who to credit for the writing. Love it.)

Here’s a fun question to ponder. What do The Stand, The Hobbit and A Christmas Carol all have in common? The answer is simple. Too simple. Irritatingly simple.

A few years ago I decided to write a novel. I had characters all outlined and plot points galore. I had my settings down pat and a nice storyline that would illuminate the main character’s journey into a self-activated person, hopefully sending a touch of inspiration my reader’s way when they turned the last page of my novel. I had a large amount of notes in an even larger amount of notebooks. I was a writer. Right? Wrong. I wasn’t a writer yet because I was still enchanted by the Writing Fairy.

You know what the Writing Fairy looks like. She is that magical creature that will take the dialogue running through your head and place it onto the page. She is the person that will fill in those little blanks that don’t seem worth worrying about while you’re in the brainstorming stage. She is the mythical beast that will take all of your imagination and creativity and turn them into a book for you. The Writing Fairy sits on your shoulder every time you pace up and down your room thinking up great new ideas for where your characters are heading and convinces you that you are on your way to being an established author. The Writing Fairy’s touch is the only thing you are waiting for before you begin to actually sit down and pound out the pages of your manuscript. Yes, as soon as the Writing Fairy says that it is time, you will begin to write in earnest. I have news for you. The Writing Fairy is none other than you because you are the only person who can do these things for you. And the moment you are waiting for? I have some news concerning that, too. That moment either comes right here right now, or it never comes at all.

Am I saying that brainstorming about characters and muddling over speeches is a waste of time? I most certainly am not. What I’m saying is that you reach a certain point where your outline doesn’t need to be refined any more, where it’s time to put it onto the page and nail it down in a more concrete sense. The Writing Fairy will make you hesitate to do this, promising you that thinking really hard is writing. She’ll tell you that you aren’t ready to put anything down on the page yet, or you’re not ready to go on with the next scene because everything just doesn’t seem right. Don’t believe her, she’s deceiving you. I’d like to say that she is flat out lying, but she’s not.

Things aren’t going to seem right when they first start to appear on the page. This is what seems so contradictory about the writing process. Your dreams and aspirations seem to shrink down once you actually put them into writing. Being creative seems harder and harder as more and more words get put down. Don’t worry though; your dreams are big enough. Acknowledging that your finished piece is not going to live up to the sparkling gem you have inside your head is something that every artist goes through…it could be the reason why so many of us seem a little bit crazy. Pick any piece of art. Now, as great as that finished product seems to you, there is not a single book, painting, opera, movie, whatever, that came out exactly the way its creator intended it. That is a very large part of the creative process: surrendering to its limitations. And accepting this fact goes a long way towards chaining down that Writing Fairy and actually producing some work. Don’t listen to her siren song. Don’t think that it should feel one hundred percent right the first time. It won’t. That’s what the rewriting process is all about. Believe me writing is truly in the rewriting. Even Kerouac rewrote his stuff. However, in order to start the rewriting process you need a hard first draft to pick over and toy with. You need something concrete to look at and see which scenes fit and which don’t. You’ll find that a lot of your brainstorming gets thrown out the window. This isn’t a stifling of your creativity, is channeling your creativity into your selection process. And it doesn’t matter how horrible and off the mark your first draft seems to be turning out, you’ll polish all of that out later. But you need that first draft to really start things off, and it will never get finished if you continue to believe the Writing Fairy’s misleading comments.

Take another look at the opening question of this article again. Any closer to an answer?

I have more bad news about the Writing Fairy. Simply sitting down in front of your keyboard and starting your novel cannot vanquish her forever. She’ll be back. She always comes back. Here and there she offers a much-needed break and a much-needed step back from your work to rethink things. More often than not, though, she’ll pop up as you write more and more detailed character sketches, or get sucked into researching something for hours and hours and days and days. She is very good at convincing you that more outside work is needed and that you don’t need to sit down at your keyboard quite yet. She must be stopped. When you really hit a roadblock, you’ll know. If you just need to sort some things out that does not qualify a three-week break from your manuscript. That’s the Writing Fairy singing her sweet song. You need to do more then just sit down and start in order to silence the Writing Fairy. You need a schedule. “But how can you turn your writing on and off like that? How can you force yourself to write if you aren’t feeling it?” I imagine that some of this is flowing through your head right now. The answer is that you can. It’s that easy. I’m not saying that you’re going to sit down and write Nobel Prize winning page after Nobel Prize winning page. But you must keep writing. Keep fleshing out your story and your scenes. Keep plowing through with your writing when you say your going to even though it doesn’t seem to be very good. You’re not going to submit it as it is anyway. The ending of my novel changed about three hundred times in the course of writing it. What’s more, I never would have reached the ending if I had continued to go over and over my first twenty pages wanting them to be perfect. It’s really silly when you think about it. You don’t have an entire book yet, how can you make sure the opening is perfect if you don’t know where it’s supposed to lead the reader? You don’t really know your characters yet, how can you expect them to be just right? Believe me, it is better to write it horribly wrong and then fix it than to never write it in the first place. Keep plugging away, keep going, keep heading towards that ending that doesn’t seem to fit and that you don’t really even like. Carve a few hours out of each day and just type away at the keyboard. You can always make a scene longer. You can always take out some dialogue. You can always change a character or a point of view. You can really do anything you want to, which is why it’s easy to get bogged down in the beginning. Keep in mind that while you can always change it, you have to write it first.

Now, do you want to know the Writing Fairy’s major-super-bonus-end-all-be-all secret? Here it is. Keep it quiet. Put it in the bag somewhere next to the cat or under your hat if you prefer. Here is my secret. You are a writer. Right now. With only what you have in your head as it is. You don’t need anything else. You are a writer. You just need to keep writing. Don’t let the Writing Fairy tell you that you aren’t. That you need something more, that you’re pretending to be something you’re not. Hemmingway wasn’t Hemmingway when he started. He was just a guy names Ernest who sat down at his typewriter. Believe me. You are a writer. You are a writer. You are a writer. And no, you don’t have to repeat that while clicking your heels three times. You don’t have to do anything but write. And that’s the Writing Fairy’s horrible little secret. I stumbled upon the moment I stopped waiting for her to show me a sign that the time was right to actually start typing and just went ahead and did it. Now is the right time; now or never.

So let’s go back to the question at the beginning of this article. Any ideas on what those three books have in common? They’re all in English? Okay, I’ll add Les Miserables to the list. They’re all from the last few centuries? Okay, let’s throw The Iliad on there. Give up? What those books have in common, what every book you read has in common, is that it was written. Simple isn’t it? I told you it was. That is the only difference between what is in your head and any book you have ever picked up. All the books you see every day were actually written. Someone sat down and wrote them out. That it. That’s the secret. That’s what the Writing Fairy is hiding from you. You’re ready to write your book. You just have to sit down and do it. I said that the secret was simple…I also called it horrifyingly so at the beginning of this article. Why is it horrifying? Because, as I’ve mentioned, the Writing Fairy is you. She makes it seem like she’s someone else. Someone or something you’re waiting for before you begin. But that someone or something doesn’t exist. The only thing that exists is the fears she creates inside of your head. And that means that the person telling you to wait is you. The person holding you back is you. The person hesitating to write is you. And the only person who can make you ignore all of this and just start writing…you guessed it…is you. So come on, stop reading this, open up a new document, start clicking away at those keys, don’t be afraid, just trust me on this one…you’re a writer.
EAVB_FFDRGIEWJY

Of Nightmares and Dreams

Wherein the Dave discusses roleplaying, music, and the idea that it might be a good time to start writing again.

I was inspired by this image (at right) - wich is from some deviant's* idea of what the TARDIS might look like within its own microverse (the outside of what's inside the Police Box) - to begin work on a World of Darkness Campaign combining elements of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos with Doctor Who.

The basic idea (barring any spoilers) is that the Player Characters - in the course of investigating (or running from) some weird shit - discover an abandoned TARDIS. As to what's going on within the TARDIS, why the PCs can get into it, and what unfathomable terrors lurk beyond Time and Space? I'll leave that to your imagination.

The Campaign is tentatively going to be called "the Horror from Out of Time."

*You can look at ~Clone-Artist's deviantART gallery here.

---

I was born in 1973. I was pretty stoked to learn that Queen's debut album came out that same year (as did Aerosmith's and a few others I don't care much about).

Just for the hell of it, and because I wanna, here are my top 5 albums from the year I was born.

1. Queen - Queen :: Now, I didn't listen to Queen in 1973. I have no idea if I listened to Any music in 1973; but I didn't discover Queen until the 80's (and organized sports) when I started hearing songs like "We Are the Champions" and "Bohemian Rhapsody" - you know, the songs everyone knows. With the advent of the internet, however (and the awesomery that is in no way actually "piracy." I've become a huge fan of Queen. "Keep Yourself Alive" might be everyone's favorite from this album; but I also really like "Great King Rat" and "Night Comes Down."
   
2. Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd :: This list is mostly a nostalgia/ anecdotal list or else Dark Side of the Moon would be first. I didn't discover Pink Floyd until my brother, Chris introduced me to the Wall; and I didn't find out about Dark Side of the Moon until I heard about the whole Dark Side of the Rainbow thing; and that was awesome. "Breathe, Money, Us and Them," there are way to many good songs on this album for it not to be number one; but I just - for some ungodly reason - don't listen to it as often as I listen to Queen.
3. Billion Dollar Babies - Alice Cooper :: I don't think of myself as having belonged to any high-school click; but - as much as I regret it - I probably fell somewhere between Metalhead and Redneck. Though I'm not a fan now - that's not true, I just don't listen to it any more - Billion Dollar Babies is the album on this list that I've listened to most. "Billion Dollar Babies, No More Mister Nice Guy, Sick Things, Mary Ann." God! Now I have to download this album again. Pirate Bay, here I come. brb.
4. Back. Pat Garret & Billy the Kid - Bob Dylan :: My Mom & Dad had an extensive record collection. Highway 61 Revisited was among those albums and I listened to Pat Garret & Billy the Kid because I figured my Dad liked it. At first it was kind of a let down (aside from "Knockin' of Heaven's Door," of course), but then I saw the movie. I really liked it (It was one of the first Westerns I actually paid attention to - I was not a fan of the genre). James Coburn is awesome.
   
   
5. Aerosmith - Aerosmith :: I found out about Aerosmith in the late 80's with Permanent Vacation and Pump. I found out how old they were one afternoon when I got into the car with mom and put Pump into the tape deck. Mom said, "is that Aerosmith?" And I was completely blown away by two things: 1. How cool my mother was for liking a band that was actually cool, 2. How little I knew about any music after 1968 (thanks to my parent's totally awesome Classic Music collection).
   

---

On the writing front - I haven't been. That's disappointing. Brain Squids. I'm working in a dead-end job that harbors only the slightest fractions of joy just so that I can a) have the time to write, and b) so that I'll have some motivation to do so. Most of the writers whose blogs and Twitter accounts I follow have given up things like Television and Video Games. I've already moved these things in my life to the back-burner - and the majority of my gaming time is spent at my brother's house anyway; I hardly ever watch television now.


If only I could curtail my internetting. By the way, I've been catching up on Chuck; Kristen Kruek is cute as a button. She's no Jamie Eason; but I guess there's a reason she was "the Girl Next Store" in Smallville.

---

My plan is to pick up my novel tomorrow morning. Also look for something here in the next couple days - probably an Electroverse Update, though I'll be porting all of my previously published short fiction to this blog as I shut down all the things (MySpace, LiveJournal, etc) I no longer pay attention to.

So you want to be a writer?

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.


if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

-Chales Bukowski

Discursion

I wanted to take a moment to discuss my writing process (and to find another way to put off the actual writing). It can be very difficult for me; but it makes no sense to me why it should be so.

Today, for instance: I decided some time yesterday that today should be devoted to

1. Writing (Catching up on my Nano book, blogging some-any-thing, scripting more Rotworld)
2. Laundry (I really have an awful lot of it and need to do more. Right now)
3. Drawing (Been working on the Rotworld storyboards, character designs for a web comic about the horrors of working at the W/D, and TQU - which you probably don't know about yet, but I don't want to spoil [spoilers coming soon]).

So, I put a load of laundry in the washing machine and I turned on some music (I started with Regina Spektor, but gradually moved over to Amanda Fucking Palmer. That album just finished and I haven't put anything else on my recently re-formatted PC. Maybe some Cash? Anyway...

Filled with dread, I took a seat before the cluttered, cramped, dirty drinking glass-infested space that is my writing desk. I logged onto Facebook, because - well, you've got to tell people you're writing, don't you? Then a quick Twitter and a couple more stumbles. Check out my RSS feeds.

Why am I putting this off? I asked the mess on my desk. The answer, of course, was fear. Fear that I'm not good enough, fear that I'll never finish by the "deadline," fear that I don't really like writing after all, and it's just something I say to people to make being a directionless bum sound more palatable.

Eventually, I found the keyboard and my fingers made there way into the story and Gan began seriously to flow. And it was good. It was fun. Writing a story for me... I know what story I want to tell, and it usually comes out, at least, similar to that; but I never really know what's going on until it happens. But still...

I went to Taco Bell for some Bean Burritos (no cheese, sub guacamole). I came back and sat down filled up with run-for-the-border goodness (which, of course is nothing like actual goodness); and...

I couldn't do it. I didn't want to. I didn't think I'd be able to. I didn't know how to start or where to begin. Picking up where I left off seemed like a horrible idea. I just completely fail as a writer and there's no fucking reason for me to keep doing this. There's no real creativity and imagination in me anyway. Fuck it.

So I diddled around on the internet some more, wrote a few comments on Facebook. Looked at some friends' MySpace changes. Finally, I looked at someone else's Nanowrimo stats and she (and her buddies) were writing. Getting it done. I tried again. I just put my fingers on the home rows and started fucking typing.

And it was great. The story moves itself along nicely, the characters seem to know what they want, even if I don't. The thing doesn't quite have a mind of its own yet; but it wants to go somewhere. It wants to be told.

Something new happened today. I wrote something that made me cry. Maybe I'm turning into an old woman. I don't know. I've only known these characters for a week - well, I've known one of them for over a decade; but not like this. I didn't know this about her, and - well, that was new.

I ran out of laundry detergent. My sister was going to the grocery store in a little bit, so I asked to go along. I decided to take a little nap until then, then write when I got back. We ended up going to Dragon Cafe with friends. It was nice. I always forget how much I like Edamame until you put Edamame in front of me and I start eating it.

And we came home and here I am again. Paralyzed. It seems that whenever I'm not writing, I cannot do it, I'm going to suck at it, no one's ever going to read it and if they do they're going to hate it so much they're going to come over to my house and take a dump on my front lawn. And then somehow -

when that miracle happens -

-when I start writing and I find the story and I begin to understand it again... Nothing else matters. It doesn't have to be written and I don't need to write it; but I get to - and it's fucking fun.

I'm a writer, a storyteller, because, on those rare, wonderful occasions when I'm writing, telling a story - I'm home. I'm doing what I was put here to do. And fuck you if you don't read it, or if you don't like it. And who the hell takes a crap on someone's front lawn anyway? What the fuck's wrong with you?

Now the trick is to start writing. . . . . .C'mon!

The Trouble with Dave

The trouble with Dave isn't that he can't find inspiration, or even motivation. His Muse is seated in comfy chair across the room, in plain view; and she comes up with the best stuff. He has lofty - impossible - unreasonable goals for his life, because reasonable goals never amounted to more than two point five kids, a house a dog a yard a mortgage (and an eviction in today's market); and that's not enough. Dave wants more; and he knows the only way he's going to get it is by doing more about it.

The trouble with dave isn't even that he has a colony of these little brainsquids living inside his head. Though that's a big part of it.

The brainsquids feed off of guilt and repressed desire and procrastination and loneliness. But more importantly, the seek out (through their host) mediocrity, banality and repetition.

The brain squids want television, movies, video games; and they don't care - or rather, they relish - what their host has to give up to get at them.

Dave's colony of brainsquids is already too big for his head. He's fed them well over the years; and now the normal methods of brainsquid extermination just won't work. He's tried outthinking them; but they're a hive-mind - the more of them there are, the smarter they grow. Also, they live in his brain and they can "hear" the impulses of his thoughts before he can think them.

Study and application through self-improvement won't work now. The colony has established enough of a foothold that they inevitably lead the man to simply repeat what he's already studied, but never mastered until they've gorged themselves on the repetition, grown fat and happy and allow him to stop - thinking he's done good; but knowing he's fooled himself into quitting yet again.

Sleeping only seems to give them more purchase in the oozy grey lands of their struggle.

Pounding on his head never seems to work. They just move to the other side, or swim down the obdula Oblongata to get out of the way. He's considered putting them into a stupor by obliterating himself with Scotch; but (while that may be fun), it puts a damper on the writing skilz, and almost always sends the muse over to her mother's house.

Dave's muse detests a drunkard.

Only in rare moments like these - when the colony sleeps - does the man feel he can escape the pop-culture prison he's locked himself in, and attempt (however feebly) to make contact with the world.

The muse in the corner eagerly wrings her hands. The only way to kill the brainsquids is to fight them, she says.

The trouble with Dave is, he doesn't know how to fight the brainsquids. The muse tells him he must drown himself in things the brainsquids don't feed on. He must find a way to access his inspiration and motivation, he must write and dream and compose and draw and paint and sculpt and build and fix and study and style and all the ten-thousand things that make an unreasonable man grin.

But the brainsquids are waking up again. Already they've stopped him from being to work on-time, without aid. Already they're whispering that there's another episode of Lost on Hulu. That Yellow Beard is probably still funny as hell and so easily accessible. Or hell, what about Urban Dead? Does Rotten Stan have enough energy yet to break down another barricade and drag another hapless survivor out into the street? Maybe Dave can finally beat Alizon's score in this round of Bejeweled Blitz.

The muse slumps back in her chair, not defeated; but exhausted. She'll have to wait until they're dormant again. Maybe next time she can get through to the man. Maybe one day, he'll break through to her. Until then, she sits in her chair in the corner and laughs and loves and longs for the words yet unwritten while the brainsquids grow and multiply and crowd themselves out of Dave's head.

Feel free to ignore this post

I haven't written anything longer than 1,000 words in a long time (at least since my last post here). I haven't drawn but one image, and it wasn't very original - though I was happy with it. I don't think I've photographed anything in half-a-year. I haven't listened to any new - or any good music in nearly a year. My Japanese is worse than ever and my German is still atrocious.

I've watched a lot of TV, though. And I've spent a lot of time playing video games I've already beaten, or playing free previews for games I'm not going to purchase. I've collected an - hell, there's no other word for it - awesome amount of trash and dirty clothes in my room. I stopped working out, I haven't been eating; and when I do it's nothing good for me.

I bought a barn for my Farm Town farm on Facebook. I met a very nice girl whom I totally failed to get off with - she went off with a produce guy. She was a smoker anyway. And I still kid myself that I'm picky that way. I wonder if I actually am.

Oh well. I've been spending the day watching movies on Hulu and making a half-assed effort to clean my room (again). I'm off early tonight, and I hope to finish before bed.

I still really believe in the story I'm not working on at the moment. I don't know what's keeping me from going back to it. Mostly television and the internets. I guess that 1,000 word bit at the top was a lie, though. I wrote at least 3K worth of Simon Mercy notes. Changing the format, may make that a viable story to tell.

I wonder what happened to my Electro-verse pages...

Anyway, more to follow.

On Writing & the General Failure of a Man out of his Element

I recently overcame what I considered to be a major obstacle in the writing of the Grimm book; and I was surprised at how easily that allowed me (today) to slide right back into the flow of the story.

Basically, I sat down with a blank sheet of paper and started thinking about all the ways I thought the story was failing, and what I would need to do to get around (or plow through) those shortcomings. It, admittedly, began with a glimmer of an idea I had while working; but once I started, it flowed out of me like - well, that's kind of crass.

It is entirely plausible that I am back on track and the first book (that I'm going to publish) should be ready to farm out to publishers (and agents?) before Halloween. Maybe a lot sooner.

In other news: a recent personality profile I was labeled, The Observer - hit the nail on the head in new (and somewhat sobering) ways:

It's possible that you have tremendous knowledge, gained through the analysis of books, movies, games, and scientific research. You probably know far more than men who are more successful with women, but you can't seem to find opportunities to display your intellect and talent. One of your major obstacles is your inability to take action, which prevents you from accomplishing your social goals.

You can occasionally be found at the back of a social event clutching your drink and perhaps looking busy. You sometimes feel afraid to get out on the dance floor, or even to speak to strangers. You may watch your friends cavort on tables or drink body shots with women while you quietly nurse your drink. Often, you find yourself standing on the sidelines watching others have all the fun.

Maybe there are times when you can't even muster the courage to get out of the house just for the opportunity to meet that special someone. You are generally considered shy. Fear of rejection and validation keep you in your invisible Plexiglas box. You have a strong desire to be liked and accepted by others, but you have a tendency to not put your self on the line, thus closing your self off to the very thing you so desperately seek.

There you are, sitting on a park bench as life passes you by. Your mind races constantly measuring the temperature of the situation to see if it's OK yet to dive in and take a social swim. Meanwhile, as you are sitting there, at least a dozen beautiful opportunities pass you by. At least you get to admire their backsides. As Grace Hopper said, "A ship in port is safe, but that's not what ships are built for." Time to start living your life to the fullest.

I don't feel, now, as cooped-up inside as - say - a year ago; but it's still the starting point. I'm amazed when I evaluate my life how far I went, and how far I've fallen. It would be depressing if I wasn't learning how discomfort causes us to act.

I'm not writing... but I should be.

There are a half-dozen things I've been letting get ahead of me instead of writing.

Grand-Theft Auto: San Andreas

I've played this game a few thousand times. I've beat it twice. I have no clue why I keep coming back for more. Because it's there maybe? I don't want to say that, though - I wouldn't want to compare something as stupid as playing a repetitive video game with - say, climbing a mountain.

Right now, though, I'm trying to get all 100 spray tags, 100% on Pimp, Paramedic, Fireman, and Vigilante missions, 100% with girlfriends, and all the little side-quests (including taking over the whole city for Grove Street - GSF for Life!).

Sliders

I missed about two seasons - right in the middle of this awesome show (I forgot how damn cute Wade was - pic very relevant). I saw how it started & I saw how it ended; but I missed the whole middle part.

Thanks to the devil-aliens at Hulu, I'm up to and through the first third of Season Three. 's pretty great.

Tony Robbins

In all fairness to the giantest of all gurus; I wouldn't be trying to write a novel (and get it published by the end of the year) if it wasn't for Anthony Robbin's Get the Edge Series. It's probably why I'll be updating this regularly; but I'm like some kind of self-help junkie. I can't stop listening to this stuff, doing the exercises - applying what I'm learning. Getting my shit together - all that.

Your Mom (nsfw - it's just tasteless porn; and not even good porn)

She's nowhere near as hot as Sabrina Lloyd; but she'll do. Do whatever the hell I tell her to get her fix. Oh! That little whore*.

The World of Darkness, D&D, and Mutants & Masterminds

I've got three or four potentially great ideas for five or six games/campaigns. Really neat ideas - basically things I don't have the energy (or conviction) to write; but think the guys would really enjoy. I spend a lot of time writing notes, scenarios & synopsis for these - plus the half-dozen ideas that come to me every few days.

It's kind of late now, but my plan is to put a couple thousand words on the page tomorrow morning.

*Okay, that bit was uncalled for and I apologize.