Sister Time, School, Writing And Watching Documentaries

Nanowrimo is nearing with huge steps. It's in fact just one day away (not counting today), and I intend to spend that day in glorious vacation spirit together with my sister. She's visiting me over the day and I can't wait to see her. I love having visitors, I've missed her like crazy, and some sister-and-sister time always cheers me up. We're going to go swimming and get a nice sun treatment (we people in Scandinavia need these things when the sun decides to go into hibernation for half a year - and yes, that's totally what happens, I've always been such a scientist) that will hopefully cheer my tired body and mind up. I've prepared for making both tacos for dinner and blueberry pie for dessert. Sometimes even a student has to award themselves with a bit of luxury, and what better timing than when your sister visits? We calculated it a bit earlier today and we think that the last time she was here was during the spring, so it's really not something that happens very often. The more fun it'll be, hopefully!

On another, university-related note, I've now submitted all of my assignments and all I can do now is cross my fingers and hope they'll be well received. I spent a few hours of today worrying that I won't pass until I told myself to get a grip and simply stay put for the results. It's kind of hard though, this is one of the courses I've been the very most enthusiastic about and the impact of the grade will therefore be the bigger... I really hope I won't have to redo anything. I'll just cross my fingers and now forget about it.

I can't wait to start Nano. I'm lucky in the way that after Thursday, we're lesson- and homework-free until November 7th, so if I'm just disciplined enough I can try and get a head start for the rest of the month. After all, there'll be no deadlines in November as far as I know; the final submissions will be at the end of the course, and that's not until January. But if Nano interferes with my school results, I'll have to drop it. I'm reluctant to, I have a great idea, and even the most clear and vivid idea of my characters in my head - I might even go ahead and draw them after I write this post. Oh, I should get on with writing the Lovecraft story as well. I was hoping DJ might show up and do some word wars with me so I could finish it, but I haven't seen him around yet, so maybe I'll just do a few on my own. I'd love to have that story sent in so I can really focus on Nano. I don't think I'll be able to do that until the story has been sent in! It's a pretty interesting story, about a man who stays awake because he's afraid of his nightmares. Little does he know that he has very good reasons to be (that is yet to be revealed, probably on page four). It's overall a story about the mare, that gave the word 'nightmare' it's name; the version of it that can be found in Nordic mythology. At least I find it interesting myself and I think it's a pretty Lovecraftian mood over it, but then I'm not one of the judges. It'll be great once I finish it and submit it - it will mean that so far this year I have kept my promise, and entered every writing contest I've found, with only one exception: the Umeå annual contest, which is aimed more towards established writers. I didn't participate in it because A) there was no theme or limitations in the instructions, which strangely generated absolutely no ideas in my head, B) they only approve submissions by regular post which gave me less writing time and C) I had too many other stories going on anyway. I still feel pretty proud of my achievement and I plan on collecting all my produced stories in a little anthology and give it as a Christmas present to my grandparents, and to my mother, the three people who have supported me the most in my writing. I can't wait. Another good thing about November is that two contests will announce the results and the winners, and even though I didn't feel like I produced anything unique for either, I'm still excited to see how it goes. Who knows? I have been wrong before in situations like these. I just really don't want to get my hopes up. There are plenty of good writers out there who are quite the competition so I'm not counting on anything.

Today I've been watching various documentaries most of the day, mostly due to the fact that I'm now 'free' (with the exception of our other course, but I've worked as hard as I could on that today as well, so). I've watched everything from Norse runes found in America, experimental surgeries in the Roman empire, the artwork and film-making of Salvador Dali, the life and deeds of Mother Teresa and very briefly looked at a documentary about president Nixon. I feel twice as informed about the world as I was before, ha, ha. It's a good sign that my brain didn't fry and that I could actually focus on something that wasn't cartoons for more than ten minutes - something I'm not quite able to do when I'm stressed and hyper.

Anyway, that's about all I had to say for now, I should really get to vacuum cleaning and finishing Lovecraft.
See you in the glorious Nano Land!
POET IN THE JAR

Monster Walk

Seems like the only thing I can write right now are random blog posts, but who cares, since I'll have all the writing I'll ever need come November. Not to mention that Lovecraft contest entry that I'm meaning to write but haven't gotten the chance to. Honestly I don't know when I might get the chance to, since we have all our animation deadlines on Sunday, and all our storyboard deadlines on Monday, and I'm far from done with either. Typically for me I was going to fix up one of my previous animations today, in which the character is only supposed to try and open a heavy, locked door; but ended up playing around with giving him a monster walk. If I was at least a little bit responsible I would let the monster walk wait until I had at least made him try that door but there goes. My mind is a little messed up lately despite all my efforts with studying schedules and whatnot. And that just reminded me I should go look at my studying schedule. There, I have now looked at it. Oh, so that's what it says about tomorrow. Two hours of animation and the rest of the day for Storyboard - and if the Storyboard work doesn't take too long then two times two hours of animation. Wow, I have really covered all possibilites. I like looking at my planning of the week, more often than not I am surprised at how cleverly and neatly I have structured my time (now let's just hope I can keep up with that).


But enough about boring schedules and studying.
I'm so excited about Nanowrimo! It starts in just a week, luckily just when all the deadlines have been submitted. My main character Madeline attempts suicide and fails. Afterwards, she finds it impossible to remember the real reason why she wanted to die. It bothers her to the point that she goes to a hypnotherapist, Doctor Ava Lynn Gardner, in order to find out, and hopes the good doctor will be able to help her deal with it if she nears another breakdown. And so her journey through hypnosis begins. She'll be travelling through five different areas of her mind, all influenced by different traditional fairytales. The first fairytale is a dark and twisted Little Mermaid spinoff, where Doctor Ava Lynn to her great regret is forced into the shape of a human with a fish's head. Since she physically remains in the office where she sends Madeline into her own mind, the good doctor can only enter the fairytales with her voice, and her body takes on different shapes in each area. I'm currently trying to figure out what shape she will take in the Thumbelina area but that, in essence, is a whole different cattle of onions.


Well, that's that for now, I think. I need to get to bed early if I want to be anything remotely close to efficient while working on my assignments tomorrow. Good night for now and I'll see you in the various November posts about how Nanowrimo is going that the Poet is predicting. Oh, and she says hi, by the way.
POET IN THE POETRY JAR

Writing And Thinking And Going Haywire

I'm pretty sure this song wasn't in the playlist I just chose, but that's just secondary, and not really what I was thinking at all. Listening to some Shinedown while thinking about stuff. There isn't even anything for me to do in the apartment because I already cleaned and did the dishes yesterday. Odd feeling, there's always something I should be doing but being in front of the screen; but now there isn't - and to top that off I have even spent my planned hours on studying too today, so I've been quite ambitious! Still, my mood swings up and down like the pendulum in a grandfather's clock. It has been pretty stable since I heard Elton John sing I'm Still Standing on the radio when I was taking a drive over to the supermarket, but before that it went haywire. I really felt like just taking the car and going home to Mom and Dad and my sister, even though I wouldn't have arrived until after midnight, which I doubt would have been very popular... still, it's quite tempting to do it tomorrow morning and just surprise everyone, and to, I don't know, just get away from everything around here. It would be cool taking a drive just over to the gas station, stop there, fill up the car, have a coffee and then drive back. I think I might just do that, who knows. I really don't feel like being here tomorrow, there's even a big party planned which will probably be fun, but I'm broke and yeah... a little tired of partying, at the same time as it's the only thing I want to do. No, correction. Drinking is something I want to do, partying - not as much. I kinda miss the times when I was just sitting at home in my little apartment, writing away or watching stuff like Red Dwarf or reading Stephen King, drinking wine and being creative. It's in some ways incredibly depressing to be around the same parties with the same people all the time. I really want to meet new people and maybe make some new friends just for a change, but I always end up with the same people and just, blah. I don't know, it's not that I don't like the people I hang out with because I really do, I appreciate them all a lot - I'm just looking for some people who might have more stuff in common with me. Even though we have our school in common, well... it remains for people to realize that a person is more than what school they attend and well, I have a lot of hobbies that would be interesting to discuss with someone. I think that I might try to go to some write-ins, or maybe even arrange some, when Nanowrimo is here. I'm not sure I'll be able to do the full 50K since I've got both school and I need to squeeze in two more working weekends between now and New Years (already have one scheduled) but I'll be damned if I'm not going to WRITE. I have a pretty good idea too, so I'm quite excited for it! I've posted in the Nanowrimo forums for people in my area who might want to meet up, so far no replies. If no one is active in my area I think I will ask if I can join the Gothenburg people. They're probably friendly and I don't think they'd mind another Nano on board. I could really use some change of scenery - seriously. I don't know exactly why that feels so important right now.


Yesterday I think I made a huge mistake by violating one of the great Stephen's many rules about writing - keep the door closed. I even think I've blogged about it myself, but I couldn't resist. I had just finished a story I call Grammofonen for the Bonnier Carlsen's horror story contest and I really wanted to get some feedback on it. The feedback I got was: "It's well written and I got curious - but then I got disappointed. I don't understand the story". I didn't want to explain too much because I'd like people to read it and start thinking about what it means and what really happens in it; but it didn't work all that well. And now I'm stuck in doubt about this story. Did I make it too cryptical? Does the reader really have to read the other three stories connected to it in order to make sense of it? Is it too poetic, is it too abstract? I don't know, and I'm having such doubts. I'm letting the story rest for now and we'll see how I feel about it when I look at it a bit later on. Bonnier Carlsen accepts multiple stories for their contest so it doesn't really matter, I can always send in another submission if I should feel like it; but still... I don't know. Every writer doubts, I know that. I just wish I hadn't been so eager to show it to someone, because now it feels like the story has a wounded leg and can't walk properly; and I was actually happy with it when I'd finished it. I think in the end I will send it in as it is, because of one simple reason - it was a story I'd been thinking about for a long time that links together some vital things from other stories. I just thought that it would work as a stand-alone story. Maybe asking someone else to read it might also work, if I can get another perspective on it perhaps. OR, that would be repeating the deadly mistake. This close to Nano - don't let anyone make you doubt your writing or you're doomed! Ahhh, it's so easy to give advice to yourself, you just never listen to it properly. Sigh.


On another note I'm quite unusually broke (yes... probably the fifth-hundredth post about lack of money!) and I put up some stuff on this auction site for sale and hoping someone will pick it up. One auction for a bundle of band T-shirts and tops that don't fit me anymore and one auction for three of my prettiest dresses, which I can't wear anymore either. They're just lying around in the closet anyway so what's the use in keeping them? Still it feels a little sad. I wish I had something better to get rid off that would actually give me some money. These are really just pennies and nickles. But it's better than nothing. It's actually come down to the point where I'm going to exchange my leftover Euros from Vienna tomorrow. They're worth far less when they are exchanged back into Swedish money than they were before they were exchanged into Euros but I need every penny I can get to last me until payday. The reason I'm so broke right now is that I borrowed money from my London fund to pay for Vienna, and I had to pay that money back on the following paycheck. In worst case scenario I could borrow again from the London fund but that just ruins the entire purpose of having it. It's not an emergency-fund, it's the London fund; and I'd still have to pay that back again next paycheck so it's really a Catch 22 as far as that's concerned.

Really, really hoping I will get that job for the university, working at the Gamex game display in Stockholm! We got the chance to sign up for it last Monday and I signed up right away. Two or three days standing in the display case marketing the Computer Games Development Programmes - there are harder jobs, and more boring ones as well. I'm waiting to hear back from the teachers. It would help me a lot because it would give me some of the London money I had expected to gain with the writing job that didn't happen (a subject I'm only touching on lightly because I don't want to think about it and be all disappointed all over again).


Right, what are you standing here for, back to swabbing your decks and so should I. I have a long day of doing nothing mixed with possibly some storyboard drawing and possibly some alcohol later on in the evening.
POET IN THE JAR

Constellations

How great it feels to see your dreams break
To lose that little ounce of hope
that you had just managed to conjure
out of many long and sleepless nights
You drew dots of hope in constellations of stars
while blocking every other thought away
As if you could paint a better life for yourself

How great it feels, when that bubble bursts
The illusion that the circumstances might someday change
That someday you might be that person you wanted to be
That you would have done everything you wanted to do
That you had opened your eyes to everything you wanted to see

How great it feels to see all those grand plans
Abruptly and recklessly torn from your hands
instead of slipping slowly through your fingers
You're left with that feeling of surprise and confusion
And it clings to you and lingers

And it hurts, doesn't it
When everyone told you, you were too naive
Doesn't it hurt when they turn out to be right
Doesn't it hurt, doesn't it hurt
When everything breaks
And you break

Horror Show Halloween

Even though there's a lot of things currently on my mind, most of them having to do with school assignments; most of today I've been unable to focus simply because of what I dreamed during the night. It was so unsettling that I can't shake the feeling, even though I've been awake for hours now. The details have blurred up a bit, but in the dream, me and my friends had acquired an old, creepy mansion to have our Halloween party in and spent hours decorating it until it looked like your average horror mansion. Then, we went shopping for alcohol in a huge grocery store which didn't make sense at all, all the items were sorted by some obscure logic that took forever to navigate around. When I'd finally found some bottle of red wine we headed on to the mansion and for some reason we were now going to sit down and feast with all of the mansion's staff which had magically appeared. When we got the mansion earlier, it had been abandoned for ages. But that wasn't the weird part - the weird part was that all the staff was me. Different clothes, but they were all still me. It was like in that scene in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End where Jack Sparrow orders around a bunch of versions of himself on the Black Pearl; except this was the mansion and I was ordering around me. I also switched perspectives constantly between the different versions of me, and soon the guests were all me, too; I was everyone who was at that party. The party was going to start with a dinner and the snobby guest-me told the butler-me to go get more beer, and I became butler-me, gave a huge sigh and thought that there wasn't any more alcohol to get because the store was closed, and that I'd have to give her one of my beers, and that I didn't want to do that. But I did it anyway and made sure to take the snobby guest-me's change while I was at it (it was over four hundred, not really change but her entire wallet). And then every meal I put out as the staff I didn't get the chance to finish it as the guests before we were all lifted up by some invisible power and placed on the balcony on the floor above, complete with guests, chairs, the tables, the dishes, everything. And we just kept climbing floors and I realized that no matter how much I drank from my glass as the guests the wine never came down my throat, it vanished in my mouth.

I can't stress enough how freaked out I am by this dream and it's one of my worst nightmares in a while - even though to you it probably sounds silly, even peaceful, no action. But the environment was enough. It was completely surreal. I wish for better dreams tonight.
POET IN THE JAR

Your Shallowness

Were you always this shallow
Or have you perfected your image with time
A transparent compensation for past actions
A transparent bandaid for your past wounds
Your past scars

At what point did you lose your depth
And everything that made you interesting
Everything that gave you appeal
And satisfied your own hunger

At what point did you turn your back on the world
The world that was inside your head

Is everything that counts now notches on your bedpost
Your rank among people you never cared about
Is popularity the eighth virtue or the eighth sin
Have you given that some thought
Did you let it sink in

Have you gone over your priorities just yet
Have you looked back and remembered
Remembered the reason you came here
Remembered why you chose it
Why you fought for it

It's not going to match up with your current ideals
Isn't it sad and sentimental how your values always change
And how still the core of things seems to stay the same
And everything's rooted in the past,
no matter how many branches reach out
Everything can be tied to the day
your childhood and naivety died away

Wouldn't it be great if we could brush it off
like dust from our shoulders
Wouldn't it be great

Let's pretend it's possible to run
Possible to settle down
That the demons never follow you
That you could trick them
Let's pretend

I'll let you take care of the pretending
I'd rather take the harsh truth than live in a lie
And I've come to realize what's important to me
And I don't need to feel included in your secrets
I shouldn't feel like I was the one who was left out
Just because I value what goes beyond the most basic
There's a poet inside of me screaming to get out
What's your place to tell me to quiet down
Have you ever had screams
Tearing at the inside of your mind
You have no right to tell me
I'm anything less
than what you are

And I am nothing less
than what I'm capable to be
I don't expect Your Shallowness to see
I don't expect Your Shallowness to agree
But you can turn the tables a dozen times and still find
You're not venturing like me
You're not venturing like me

Jack's World Of Hypnosis

I'm sitting here passing some time before grabbing my coffee thermos (Achievement Unlocked: Caffeinated) and heading off to school to start on my character rigging assignment, and I'm thinking about an idea for a story that I thought of the other day, for now called "Jack's World of Hypnosis". It's about Jack, a man who's been playing with irresponsibility all his life. When his whole life situation reaches a point where every way out is a dead end, Jack is sent to a therapist specializing in hypnosis. To the good doctor, Jack is an interesting subject because he, unlike every other patient, remains present while under hypnosis. In the story we follow Jack as he submerges in the world of hypnosis and is forced to face different metaphorical creations from his own past, confronting past actions and neglect. The story to me feels very alive and caught my interest, but so far the story isn't anywhere but in my head... it seems I can't find the right words to put it down on paper. But who knows? Maybe I need to think about it for a while, letting it slowly brew and finally becoming the ingredient I need to get started. Maybe some wars'll do the trick (whenever I'll find some time for that...).

Off to school now, though, and for a completely different kind of mental challenge.
POET IN THE BUSY BUSY JAR