Salisbury.Fake Weekly Update, writing

Writing Journal #23

Who’s your favorite Disney princess? If you say anyone other than Joanna from Rescuers Down Under, we need to talk further. Always herself, obsessed to the point of trouble, accidentally helpful, and a lizard. What else do you need for a role model as a child?

I’m a bit sleep deprived. I finished my content rewrites last night and then stayed up reading until about nine this morning. I slept for about two hours before an appointment and now I’m getting ready to start typing up the second half of the book I left so kindly for myself to do. Every time, you know? Every time I say “oh, I won’t leave the whole book for me to type this time.”

And yet, here we are. Currently, the book sits at 45k something. I basically rewrote the entire second half of the book, which I had a feeling I would do since I changed a bit of a setting. “A bit” like I didn’t change the entire heckin’ biome.

I’m reading, as well. And on Monday (tomorrow, me. wait no. today is saturday) I’m going to start beta reading for someone. Take a break and let Lazarus sit for a bit while I focus on something other than Frankie and her sadness.

The sun is out today, and my car was hot when I got into it after my appointment. This is my least favorite season. I like the nostalgia of summer, but the heat makes me want to peel my skin off layer by layer. I’m not a kind person when I’m sweaty and uncomfy.

What was I talking about? Oh, right. I’m going to get typing now. My dad has a play this evening that I’m going to, and then I’m going to do a big ol’ fuck you clean to my depression shrine that’s been existing for a while.

I’m ashamed of it, but it’s hard to keep up with the sad when all you want is a bagel and you don’t have any clean plates because you don’t buy paper for the environment. I did get paper towels for my most recent tattoo (so I wouldn’t get my plasma goo on the towels, even though that’s what they’re for) for sanitation purposes, so I’ve been using them as temporary plates.

Are we temporary? I guess so. We like to think there’s a bit of infinity within our carbon, but sometimes the infinite and finiteness dance too darkly, and we forget that dust is what we are.

Mmmmm, we’ve hit the sleepy rambles. Maybe I shouldn’t type up today. Hah, nah. I don’t want to be responsible yet. So, chapter fifteen here I come, baby!

Until next time, friends. May your plates be clean and your socks be dry. Watch out for them there puddles, babes. Pretend I winked here. I can’t actually wink in real life unless I think reeeeeally hard about it. So I guess I just blinked at you.

….fuckin’ hell

Salisbury.Fake Weekly Update, writing

Writing Journal #21

Morning!

Nope. It’s after noon now.

Whatever time it is, I hope it’s well for you.

What have I been doing? Well, I’ve been putting the edits into a second content draft. That will probably be revised, parts rewritten soon. But I’m finding out more things about Milton Fogg that are just diabolical, as the children would say these days. I kind of hate him. But in that “he’s so bad he’s good” kind of way. I’d go on, but I don’t want to spoil things. I also am biased, so maybe he’s not that deep of a character. We’ll find out.

I’ve been doing a shiiiiiiiiiiiit ton of work on the language. Found a new phrase the Moarteans use. If they’re startled or uneasy about something, they say “the hair of my stomach is bad” or “hair of my stomach!”

somsuk res xixba-mi

They also, when greeting people formally, will say “Are you well?” if it’s someone they respect, or just, “You are well,” if it’s someone they want to have a quick interaction with. It’s not fully disrespectful, but it is barely polite if you are told you’re well instead of being asked if you are.

These creatures and their social niceties, haha.

There’s a phrase they use that’s an insult that I just love. It’s essentially “lick death” but the literal translation is “use your tongue on death.”

bren ostipa-ti kil moartea.

Sometimes I find myself talking to my brain in Moartean and I look at where I’ve been and where I’ve gotten to and I have this moment of “oh shit.”

Saw a reel from Steve himself, the Blues Clues Steve, and the question was “What are you most proud of?” and my answer is two-fold. First, I stayed and I’ve gotten to see my brother be a dad. His kids are perfect. I know all aunts say that about their nieces and nephews, but if I could show you just how bright my life is because I’ve gotten to see a person grow into who they are, because my brother is the man he is, I would give that to you.

But then take it back because it’s mine, ha.

The second part of that answer to Steve’s question is: I am proud of my words. The ones I toss together in books, but especially the ones I’ve made up. I’m obsessed with words. I love them with so much of my heart sometimes I forget to exist outside of them.

But that’s what nieces and nephews are for. To keep us real. To keep us from getting too far away from ourselves.

I hope you are doing well. I hope your words are friendly, and if they’re not, shape ’em up, yo. They belong to you. You belong to them. It’s a dichotomy of osmosis. Or some shit. I don’t know, wanted to be pretentious at the end here.

I’m grateful to you. For reading my words whenever I drop them here. Like little crumbs of my consciousness. Glimpses into the maze of TV static that is my mind. It’s not always awful in there. I do spend quite a bit of time in it, so I’ve found some nifty things along the way.

Feel the wind today. Let it lift your face to the sky and you smile at it. Give those clouds, the sun, the rain, whatever! Give it a smile and let it warm you even if it’s cold out. You are just as much a gift to it as it is to you.

Until next time, friends.

Salisbury.Fake Weekly Update, writing

Writing Journal # 20

Well, well, well. We meet again. Hello.

I’m buried in edit mode, and I’ve been basically rewriting the whole thing. But that’s how edits usually go, right? It’s not the whole thing, I’m not that bad of a writer. But there are definitely spots that need some expansion. I’ve added about three hundred words so far, which sounds like I’ve not made much progress, but the way I’ve rearranged sentences and removed others entirely, it feels good.

I don’t really have much to talk about this round. I’m going to try and get back into reading a bit more now. Had a weekend of books, some gifted, some I spent too much money on. All adventures I look forward to eventually.

I hope you’re doing well. Maybe next time I’ll talk about how I find little pieces of real life to stick into my main character’s life. Scenes along a road. Drifting in limbo of a sort.

Until next time, friends.

Salisbury.Fake Weekly Update, writing

Writing Journal #16

Hi, hello. Hey.

Cool news! I finished my November Writing Thing literally a few moments ago. My final word count (out of 15k) was 15,041. So, solid success. I think it could be edited into something rather decent and kind to the characters, but for now! I’ve finished with writing for the year.

Yes, that’s right. I’m not going to write anything else the rest of the year. I’m pinky promising myself because I need to take a break. And it’s only a month. I can do a month, right?

I’m going to post stuff in December, don’t worry. I’m not abandoning you yet. I’m compiling a list of my favorite books this year and I’ll do a post similar to how I ended last year, with a “this is what I liked the most!” I’d originally thought the list wouldn’t be that long because I thought I didn’t read that many, but joke’s on me, I am almost in the 70s. Again, most of those are romance novels because my brain needs to shut off a lot, but I think I’ve hit my quota of those for the year and the rest of the reading I do will be stuff from my actual REAL LIFE TBR. Shelf books. Stuff I picked up because I thought it was cute.

So yeah. I accomplished the thing. I hope you’re doing well and I hope your words find you when you least expect them, but not while on the toilet. That’s a bit awkward.

Until next time, friends! ❤

Salisbury.Fake Weekly Update, writing

How Do People Do This?

I received the author copies of Daisy I ordered, and I opened the box a little too enthusiastically. Holding copies of my books in my hands is such a strange feeling. Strange because I think it might be pride, and I’ve never really allowed myself to feel that before. I did just find a typo in it, but ya know what? I don’t give a fuck. This book I put together entirely by myself, and I’m not perfect.

When I was first working on Fulcrum, I didn’t have a printer that functioned, so I asked my mother if I could use hers. She agreed, and I printed out around 70 pages of the first “real” draft of Fulcrum I felt was actually going somewhere. I was holding it in my hands, staring down at the words, and I kind of said to myself, “I wrote this.” Then, I smiled and I looked up at her and I said a little louder, “I wrote this!”

“And I printed it!”

Instant deflation. I couldn’t have one thing for myself. One of the few times I allowed myself to feel pride, and she ripped it away from me.

Not anymore, though. I’m trying to give myself the gift of being proud of myself for the things I accomplish, and typos or not, I am proud of Daisy. I know I wrote about how it was a struggle to get this one done, and I’m not trying to say it wasn’t, that the end product is overwriting (hah, get it?) the struggle to get here. But I think I figured out why it was such a challenge for me to finish this one.

Ellie’s story is deeply personal to me. Author inserts and all, setting that aside, I understood her character in a way I don’t understand the others I love dearly. I’ll never be a chosen one, bound by destiny to save the world like Frankie, but I have been an abused child. I still have this lingering feeling of “don’t tell people, they don’t need to know. Don’t tell them so they know what she’s really like. Let them love her as she wants to be seen.”

I still love my mom. I love her painfully. It’s painful because I see mothers behaving and being the way I wish mine had. I accept her as she is, I accept that we will never have what I need from her. But no one can ever say I don’t love her.

Maybe it’s because this is exactly a year after the last big holiday I saw her that I’m feeling really sentimental, and seeing a finished book about a character I actually was is unleashing grief I refuse to feel. Or maybe it’s the insomnia that’s got me by the balls, leaving me overly sensitive to big feelings because of sleep deprivation. I don’t know.

But what I do know is how very proud of myself I am for telling Ellie’s story, and giving her a place to exist in the world. I don’t ever promote my shit, much to the befuddlement of others, but I’m of the mind that my words will find those they’re meant to. Ellie is probably the truest character to my heart, and I feel kind of like a parent watching her kid go to school on the first day of kindergarten. Out into the world to become herself. Be what she wants to be.

I’m rambling. I’m tired. It’s a holiday, and I am grateful for you. Thank you for reading my wombles. Thank you for being part of the world at the same time as me, because you make it just as neato as I do.

Until next time, friends.

Salisbury.Fake Life, Uncategorized, Weekly Update

Little By Little

Sometimes, my dad hugs me just a little longer and I am lighter than I was before. Sometimes, my sister drops a random moment and I laugh like it’s how I breathe. My stepmom will give me a smile and I am okay for another day.

My niece tells me about her little almost seven years old life, and I wonder if anyone ever listened to me with such gusto.

I’m always going to be thirty years older than her, and I still see how small she was when she was born. She’s not my kid, but she’s my kid.

When I see the little ways people love me, the quiet ways, the moments just us, it makes me panic that I don’t appreciate it enough, that they don’t know how much it means to me.

I’ve hated my birthday for a long time, never wanting to be reminded of my own existence. I know I’m here, don’t tell me about it. But this year I started asking myself why.

The attention being on me is certainly one of the reasons I hate it. I hate being cared about so openly. It makes me feel like I need to do something to “pay back” and when people don’t want the reimbursement of their love, I don’t understand.

But I want to.

I want to stop being uncomfortable when someone does something for me because they want to, because I exist in their life and they find value in who I am. I want to see why birthday candles are fun things to look forward to, the wishes blown out a promise of future happiness.

I spend as much time as I can around my birthday in the trees. Seeing the world as big as it is reminds me I’m small and insignificant, but not so I can use that to hate myself. It is my way of proving to myself that my existence is necessary. That I am part of the great woven masterpiece I drape around my shoulders, and I am not meant to leave it yet.

Little by little, I tell myself. Little by little, we’ll find our way back. One day, I’ll smile when my birthday rolls around. One day, I’ll embrace myself the way my father hugs me, and I’ll hold on a little longer each time, too.

Until next time, friends.

Salisbury.Fake Weekly Update, writing

Writing Journal #12

Mornin’, folks.

I’ve been, as I told a friend, almost neurotic in trying to get this book done. I finished marking up the manuscript a… day ago, and I’m already on chapter eleven (this morning) with going through to fix things. If all writing were this fast, I would get more done, I think. I did spend about an hour and a half last night before bed reading through Lazarus Rising.

That one I’m pumped to get back into. I forgot how dastardly Mr. Fogg is, and as I was reading through his sections, I kind of forgot I wrote him and just “man, this guy.” So that was fun.

I’m possibly going to have my summer project, aka Daisy, ready by the end of the month, and I wasn’t going to do a big release of it, but I think I might just announce the completion and be all “hey, here it is.” I’m only going to do a print version of it, I think.

I wrote out a list of the front matter I need for this one (the bits in front of the book, for those who don’t know the lingo I didn’t know until I finished Fulcrum), and I definitely think I’ll put a content warning in. It’s not smut on the romantasy level, but there are some descriptive moments. It’s one of those things where I kind of … It’s necessary for character development in this case, like, very necessary, which is the only reason it’s been put in. And the descriptions are there for the characters and how they’re feeling/experiencing things. I hope I did it well. I am going to take one scene out because it is gratuitous, and I think that’s very editorial of me, haha.

I’ve had Daisy in my head since high school, and I never really thought I’d finish it because it just kind of sat for a few decades. It’s got many, many iterations. I’m pretty sure this final content version is in the teens in terms of drafts for it. But that’s the beauty of being a writer. You grow and life experiences color and graft onto your writing style. What I knew in high school is useful, but I’m able to parse through the stuff in my brain far better. Well, maybe. That’s a different story for a different page.

At the end of the day, I’m proud of this book and the story within it, even if I felt like it was an undertaking now in my thirties versus my late teens, early twenties. Maybe my thoughts about love are a bit different, too. Actually, no maybe about that one. I joked around with some friends that I hate love, and then said I don’t, and one of them said back “don’t lie to my face.” I don’t hate it, I just don’t think it fits me right now. I love it for other people, though. Which I think is why this project has kind of been a lot for me to work on.

Good news for me, though, because once I finish this, I’ll never write a designated romance novel again in my life, haha. I will leave that to the professionals, and if there’s romance in my other stories, it won’t be the focus. It’ll be a side quest.

That’s all the shoes on this rack, kids. I hope you have a lovely weekend and I hope the fall air is crisp in ya lungs as you go about your day.

Until next time, friends.

Salisbury.Fake Life, Weekly Update, writing

Writing Journal #8

A few thoughts and then I flee again. Not much to report, really. I’ve been

s t r u g g l i n g

to write my summer project. Most of it consists of staring at a blank page of notebook paper and wondering if I finally developed carpal tunnel from my decades of writing everything by hand. I mentioned something about maybe “outgrowing” a project, and I think I have a little here. And by a little I mean a lot. I still want to tell the story, but it feels like every other romance novel out there. What separates my characters from anyone else’s? Why should anyone give a shit about this story?

Am I being morose? Yeah. There’s a starvation in my chest. An ache where I wish I could stuff someone in there and love them. Loneliness and yearning I can’t explain rationally. But is that kind of thing ever rational? I don’t know, but I feel so stolen by it whenever it finds me. Kind of jerked out of time, a bit. My brain just rattles around trying to find the place it fits and the room is a mess.

Trying to write while being suspended above yourself is rather impossible. I could shove all I’m feeling into the story currently eluding me, but no one wants to read realism in romance. We all want to be swept into a reality not our own, and if I put down on paper my vulnerabilities like that, what am I setting loose into the world?

I know, I’m writing it down here, but no one really reads this, so I’m not too bugged. I want to be seen, but unknown. If you only see what I drop onto this screen, I still own myself and I am not beholden to anyone other than the gromblins chewing on my cerebellum.

How do you put such distended limbs on a person you create?

If I could find the right words, I know I’d find the story properly again, but for now, they’re going to remain buried in the pile. Slippery from being disgorged out of the intestine of my thoughts.

Do I even want to write? Do I want to see my words continually fail? Maybe if I write the wrong ones enough times, I’ll get something to make sense.

Salisbury.Fake Life, Weekly Update

Writing Journal #7?

Heyooooo what is up my friends?

Actually, give me a second. Gonna go look at the last journal and see what all I said.

Ah yes. Well, the car is broken broken, and I now have a new vehicle to cart me on my adventures (to the office because all I do is work). I wrote a short story for a contest on a writing forum. I’m currently …. with some votes.

Have you ever “outgrown” a story? I felt lost with the novel I’ve deemed the “summer project” and I was worried I’d lost my way with it. Not necessarily that it was a bad story, but maybe I no longer felt like it needed to be told.

I rearranged a chapter and rewrote some other scenes and now I’m writing like a fiend. I still think I have some lingering “am I no longer able to write this story?” but for the most part, it feels like I’m moving forward at a steady pace. My right wrist and middle finger say “maybe lighten up on how you hold the pen, fool.”

I think that’s all I have for now. I hope you are doing well. I hope your stories are coming to you word by word and page by page.

Until next time, friends.

Salisbury.Fake Life, Weekly Update, writing

Middle of the Week–What?!

That’s probably the last time I’ll try to get cute with titles. Maybe.
Probably not. I’m fun like that.

Hello. Welcome. Thank you for being here. In general, and also looking through my rambly show-and-tell of sorts. What have I been doing? A whole bunch of working for my day job, and a bit of everything else. I went on a trip to another state with some friends this last weekend and got myself some books and rocks. I don’t do the crystal thing, but I do like the way rocks feel when I touch them sometimes, so I got the ones that felt the best. I had a blast hanging out with my friends.

Writing wise, I’ve been outlining a project I hope to complete this summer. I’ve been struggling with writing it first because it just falls so flat on itself and I’m forcing moments when they should be happening as they will. The bones are there, now time to stick the goo on it. I don’t know if I said so last time, but I finished the first handwritten draft of my third book in the Maker series. It’s currently sitting on my printer waiting to be typed up. Might do that with the rest of this week I have off.

My car broke down (truly a joy) so the plans I had to go to the movies and do some fun outings by myself are pushed to a weekend or something. The car shall be returned to me on Monday, so fret not, in case you were. I’m not pleased with the cost of repairs, but ya know, it’s not the price of a new car, so, there is that.

One of my best friends brought her chainsaw over and we got the bushes in front of my house cut down and I’m pretty stoked to start my summer outside projects. I despair at my backyard, but I also think once I get out and start groovin’, it’ll get figured out.

Sometimes it catches me off guard how many people enjoy being around me. Kind of like tapping the part of me that is obsessed with hating itself on the shoulder and whispering loudly, “You’re not the trash you demand you be.”

That’s all the cheese on this block, friends. Thank you for stopping by. It was truly nice to see you.

Until next time!