Aging Is Not A Pleasant Process

I turn 29 tomorrow.

yeah yeah turkey baby, no birthday parties because my friends would rather hang out in their gene pool for the week and i'm usually hit with the flu/pneumonia/relapse just long enough to miss out on pie and BBQ.

Suffice to say, I don't normally enjoy my birthday. But I do tend to treat it like my own personal New Year's and reevaluate my life. I'm going on 29 but still in college. And why? Flimsy excuse of "changed my major" "tried to find myself" "kept wanting tomove to Greece/Ireland/London/Tokyo" just don't do it anymore. I am disappointed in me. I'm supposed to be hitting this pinnacle of life experience by now. Old enough to start commenting on the folly of those "youngsters" back in their teens who think they have a grip on the world. Instead, all I have in me are questions of my own.

I spent 3 hours yesterday on the DavidsBridal website looking at dresses, playing with the 3D maps and designing wedding party attire. I'm not engaged. Most of my friends are married and popping out their 2nd and 3rd offspring by now. But Google takes me strange places when I let my mind wander.

I looked over my notes for this book. I think I've accomplished so much in the storyline but I can't seem to find that motivation and drive I had at the beginning. I tried taking a break from the work, but that just feels like forced procrastination. But then again, I feel ike I need a vacation.

A real vacation. Not a stay home from work for a week because I'm coughing up my lungs and still have to clean house "vacation". No. I want one like they get on those infomercials. The ones celebrities take their whole entourage on. Like the romantic movies. Some remote beach where my only responsibility is to enjoy each day and re....lax. Not gonna happen. I'm a cube slave. A full time student. And at home I have to play the role of non-wife housewife and addicted MMO gamer.

I step back and read over the life I have constructed for my Miss. JD and I know, it's me. I'm Mary-Sueing my own crap existence away into a novel. Escaping through her to the life I wish I was brave enough to run away to. Dear god, I've become a S.Meyers. It may not involve eternal pledges to sparkly immortals, but it's just as lame and shameful.

I should be reading to escape, not writing it. I apologize to my future readers if any trace of the pathetic rhetoric remains in my finished book. Any reflection of myself upon her will only tarnish her and make the story itself seem trite and ridiculous. I think I'm going to make a conscious effort now to make her contradictory to who I am. It's about time Jayne does something I wholly detest.

I heard that!

Did you ever read a line in a book and instantly imagine it on the big screen? The message and weight of those words was so powerful that you could hear the orchestra swelling up behind them, a coming-soon-to-CD crescendo accenting the final syllable followed by naught by profound silence, letting those words sink into the viewer's memory...

Maybe it's just my visually spoiled 80s generation talking, but I love when that moment pops out of a book. Almost as much as when I get the "Oh! There's the title reference!" moment.

I have a friend who is working on a screenplay adaptation of the ancient Celtic tales of Cuchulainn: The Hound of Ulster (most modern Western audiences know Ulster Cycle of the Knights of the Red Branch's English adaptation as the King Arthur Chronicles). I distinclty remember such a line from The Tain (the earlier part of the Hound's story) in which Cuchulainn chooses his destiny by taking up his father's sword. He is warned that to remain untarnished by battle, he will live a long life of obscurity. But to take arms he will die young, a hero. His reply while grasping the hilt:

"I choose greatness."

Translation debates aside, that's something that would stick with me as a moviegoer. How many of you would be so willing to accept a shortened life for glory? On that note, can't wait to go see 2012 for my birthday this weekend. I like to see acts of bravery when people are pushed their limits. Makes me wonder how many people outside, in the real world, could pull up enough courage to do the same.

Three Deaths and a Birth

I have this sick obsession with starting off a story with a death*. In this case, three. I have three main characters. The protagonist, the antagonist and the neutral narrator (the book). I decided a while back that all three should lose their fathers though at different stages of life and from different circumstances.

At this moment I have written the prologue/first chapter as the opening of a film. Curse modern technology and its influence on my writing style!

The antagonist, JD, will attend her father's execution. On the way home she will be passed by a speeding car housing our protagonist, Michael, who is on his way to the hospital for the death of his father. At the hospital, Michael will recieve a last gift from his father, a family heirloom. It is the mad raving diary of his mother. In here, Michael will read of the death of another man. An author who gave his life to create a book.

Yeah, I'm no Spielberg, but I'd watch it.

*side note: I once wrote a short story where the narrator commits suicide and the entire story is told in flash back as he dies. Don't ask.

Stepped Away; Wandered Back

They [those who write fiction author advice books] always tell the burgeoning writer to step away from his work and come back to it with fresh eyes. So, I have done just this. Forgotten in a folder on the C drive, I have ignored my work for months now. But, after a recent conversation, I am back and reignited by inspiration.

I also hate almost every word I previously wrote.

Fantastic.

Time to go oldschool notebook jotting on this idea. I don't want to let it die, but I might have to destroy it and rebuild once again. We shall see.