Archive for » December, 2009 «
Are we that inept as a country that we are incapable of feeding ourselves nominally healthy food so we have to rely on fast food joints to dole out the calories for us? First it was Subway and Jared and him losing two and a half people by eating Subway three times a day. Nevermind how you could have saved all that money by just walking down to the grocery store, buying those same exact ingredients and make those salads and sandwiches and wraps on your own. No. You have to do it through Subway or you won’t do it right.
Then it was McDonald’s because Morgan Spurlock handed them their own deep-fried ass with Supersize Me so they felt the need to get health conscious. Apple slices and milk with Happy Meals. A variety of salads and yogurt (nevermind that yogurt cup thing is like eleventy-billion calories and you’re better off eating the non-biodegradable french fries). You want to eat healthy and feel like paying triple the price for a quarter of an apple? Come to McDonald’s.
Now it’s Taco Bell. I kid you not. Now they have a Drive-Thru Diet (per their ad, not a weight loss program) with their own female Jared (only she’s in a bikini) saying how much weight she’s lost by eating these “lower” calorie foods from Taco Bell. So it’s one of the most ambiguous commercials ever and she rightly could eat Taco Bell once a month for all it matters. The point is, she was able to eat Taco Bell and lose weight. The correlation doesn’t have to be huge. It just has to exist. Wonderful. Now people are going to go into Taco Bell and order off of the “smaller ass” menu but top it off with a bucket of soda, those twisty crunchy cinnamon things and a Gordita and wonder why their secretary butt is getting bigger. Just great. Well, Taco Bell does have a tendency of balancing itself out. I mean, how many of those calories and grams of fat can you possibly absorb when you’re rocketing the entire meal out of your bum a half hour later?
So I want to get my entry ready before January 25th for Amazon since they’re only going to be accepting the first 5,000 entries for each portion of the contest. Aside from the manuscript (duh), I need a hook. I hate these things. There’s nothing that sucks more than condensing 55,000 words into 100-word catching summary. Why not just rake my body with rusty nails while you’re at it?
So I’ve started putting a hook together. I’ve got a sentence. Sort of. I’m still rewording it, working it around, because it’s not sitting right with me. I think it’s the goo gun part. But I just don’t think it’s snappy enough. What do you think? Would this lure you in? Or at least intrigue you?
It’s just another earthquake until Sylfaerie Stallone pistol-whips someone with a goo gun.
I feel it’s a little too wordy. Not a lot. Just a little. Is it ‘goo gun?’ ‘Someone?’ Should Sylfaerie just bring the beat on instead of pistol-whipping? But I like pistol-whip. I want tight. Like spandex on a fat person. Help!
To enter Earth Shatterer into Amazon’s Breakout Novel competition for YA.
It gives me the ass fire I need to finish editing it plus a deadline. Here’s hoping I don’t forget this one. And me not wanting to light my manuscript on fire when I pick it back up.
As a writer, one of my worst fears is waking up one day with an empty brain. All of my ideas, my ability to spin stories, gone.
I’ve had ideas all my life. Doesn’t everyone? But when I write, they flow and mold into something so much more than a drop in a bucket. What if I lose that? What if it just disappears? That in and of itself is a decent idea for a story if taken down the right path.
This thought first occurred to me when I was in California last year. A bunch of us were respectfully visiting a cemetery and I felt a fear in my chest that made its way up to my head – no more ideas, I can never write again. It was all-consuming. I couldn’t think of anything else for a solid hour after that. It literally made me shake. I may have even sweat a little (or, at the very least, gotten a hot flash or two). Sure, I’m afraid of the dark, but this very concept of losing my ideas was terrifying.
Of course that spurns an urge to write everything and anything as quickly as possible just in case. Just in case. Could it ever happen? It’s not impossible. A good knock to the head can wipe everything away. I’ve experienced a mild version of that already and I’m still feeling the effects of it.
It’s not good to dwell on something like that because, probably, it’ll lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Definitely don’t want that. But still . . . what if? Maybe I’ll write a story about it and it’ll ease my fear because I can control the ending. Can’t I?
