Monday, March 19, 2012

This is my brain on me.

Apparently I don't get blogging angry as often as I thought. Or possibly I've just been to busy banging my face off my keyboard in an attempt to finish a book. I mean really, it's not like I don't provide myself enough distractions in my real and virtual life. I have the kids, the housework, the kids, video games, the kids, facebook... I think you get the point.

So yes I am writing a book, well a few books. I'm trying to focus on a single book but here's where rage kicks in. My brain is an asshole. The book I'm working on I started writing when I was a teenager, and for a book about a 20 something written by a 15-17 year old it's not horrible, that doesn't mean it was good the people who've read what I'd written up until I stopped it enjoyed it, but a lot of them also think Kristen Stewart is an awesome actor.

So it's been an emotional journey. A lot of the times I teeter back and forth between being embarrassed for teenage me but laughing because Oh crap my girls will be teenagers like this eventually, and totally enraged with how smart I thought I was. What's that teenage me, you know how the heart works and a bunch of fancy medical terms, that's fucking brilliant why don't you jam them into your story for the hell of it. I also have to deal with some of the shitty shit that happened to and around me as a teenager. I don't usually reference it in the book but I often find myself , editing a chapter for re-writes and remember exactly what what happening while I wrote it, sometimes this is not fun, which is part of my current problem.

You seem my brains survival tactics are doing some serious self sabotage. It's like I'm riding my bike up a hill in 6th gear, I know it would be easier to switch to first, but I can see the top of the hill, I might as well just finish and enjoy the swift trip down right? In writing it's similar, I can see the end, I know I've passed the half way point, if I could just get past these next two chapters I'm on the home stretch. Then it happens, my brain starts to flit about like a feret on crystal meth. I start to have conversations with myself while I'm working, they're not productive conversations. No seriously, I talk out-loud to myself, my husband makes me work upstairs if he's home. The conversations go something like this

Brain:
This is reminding me of something horrible.
-I keep working, put on some music that fits the mood of the scene-
Brain: No really, this is making me uncomfortable. Hey. Hey. Hey look outside. I know you have a glass of water but you should get a soda. Hey get a soda. Hey.
Me: Fuck off. -turn up the music, because loud music drowns out the voices in your head amirite?-
Brain:I know you're working on this story and that's cool, you know if you're cool with skeeving me out and stuff but I was thinking about that other story you printed off the other day. That one you want to switch to 3rd person from first. DO you remember that one.
-I get up and get that soda hoping to shut my brain up with fizzy distractions-
Brain: No, no, I was thinking we should change that chicks name to Blair. Remember, you could turn her into the chick from the other story and go back to the original name.
-I start reading the little bit of work I've gotten done out-loud claiming to check the dialogue flow if someone hears me and asks what I'm doing-
Brain: You should change her hair colour, make it red, not pink. I mean eventually, maybe she starts out with platinum hair and there's a MAGICAL ACCIDENT, that would be cool right, then she could turn into the other character, you could give her a kick ass alias, EMBER that would be cool.
Me: Fuck, fuck this. Fuck. -switch to other story and edit the first chapter and sit down to commit some re-writes to .doc-
Brain: What are you even doing? This is boring as hell, BLAIR isn't even in this part. Ugh. You're hopeless, you didn't even get the right kind of soda. You know what I don't even care anymore, I'm taking a nap wake me up when you do something interesting, I dunno like shoot something on a video game.

Eventually I've been at my computer for 3 hours, I've written a paragraph and spent most of the time screaming at myself; so I go to bed. Then inevitably as I'm laying in bed trying to fall asleep I'll get a brilliant idea of exactly what should happen, I'll wait until the next day to implement is because it's 2am I need to be up in 4 hours to take my kid to school. Of course by the time the kid is at school and I have time to sit down and write it out I can remember enough to get another paragraph in before Douche-bag brains starts in at me again.

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