Companion to Day Fifteen: Vote
I’ll be writing another twittertale after “Worse Things Happen at Sea”. Some possible features are below for you to say “Yes”, “Maybe” or “Please No!” to. (It should be noted that I may ignore all votes, depending on what ideas work at the time.) Further suggestions are VERY welcome.
The length will be between 2 and 3 months, so it’ll end on 31 December.
Please add your suggestions below – but I won’t be using any other writer’s characters, world, or magic (so no vampires, people).
Genre/setting:
A) Crime
B) Romance (definitely combined with another genre)
C) Fantasy on Rahana (same world as “Worse Things Happen at Sea” though not necessarily same characters or historical period)
D) Different fantasy world.
E) Canberra (works well with using Christmas as a part of the tale – sarcasm guaranteed)
Plot:
A) Something heroic, eg rescuing a people group from a tyrannous leadership.
B) Quest
C) Household renovation
D) Plague/Pandemic
E) Solving some kind of crime (probably murder)
F) Invasion of giant bugs
Characters:
A) Sol and Ulandin
B) Oldy
C) Characters from my realist novel (including religious and/or homosexual characters)
D) Characters from “Stormhunter” (set in Rahana, but 200 years later) – probably including Ani, who lacks the usual instinct for self-preservation but definitely keeps herself entertained.
E) Kelvin Redd: the PM with a secret superhero identity.
F) Princess Ana (Sol’s optimistic and naiive relative)
G) Traveller (a feelsmith – effectively a psychic – from the world’s edge.
Sugar and Sauce
If I exercise tomorrow, I’m back on track for exercise (according to my “Fifty Grams” plan). If I eat 30 grams or less of chocolate tomorrow, I’m back on track for chocolate consumption. I’m not actually losing weight, but at least I haven’t failed my plan. At the moment, that’s enough. I have a stronger beginning-point when I get more serious about weight loss.
Today was a long day, preceded by a long fortnight. I had three red tags today (red for dangerous levels of emotion). Usually one is pushing it.
Tag 1 was my last day as nanny. One kid refused to go to school, the other dawdled slightly. I resisted urges toward violence (successfully) but should have threatened Kid 1 with his mother’s displeasure. Mark: D+
Tag 2 was a schmoozefest – or, as some people call it, a “networking” lunch. I behaved well socially and found two new lines of networking to follow, but didn’t gain any twitter followers. Mark: B
Tag 3 was a new tutoring job – that just always freaks me out. It went great, though I probably helped a little TOO much with the assignment. Mark: A-
Came home and immediately began drinking creme de menthe. It might not taste good, but it has sugar, alcohol and colouring. Bring it on.
Companion to Day Fourteen: Textnovel
“Worse Things Happen at Sea” is displayed in a nicer format at textnovel.com (search by the story title and you’ll see it). Each “chapter” is one day, and you can actually read it from begining to end (rather than having to read from the bottom up).
You do have to sign up to view it, but you don’t have to post anything yourself (unless you want to). And, as an extra bonus, I’m just 20 votes off being in the top 20 most popular stories in the competition (first prize is $1000, plus probably publication and more money). Click on the thumbs-up icon to vote (don’t worry, you won’t skew results – there are impartial judges for the final stages).
COMING SOON: pictures drawn by the illustrious Mel P! They will be here on the blog, and of course on textnovel.com.
Companion to Day Thirteen: Silence
A man is dead.
This is one of those rare moments when twitter actually helps the story – because nothing else happens until tomorrow.
The story dictates a moment of silence.
The Future
My dreams have changed a lot in the last few years. Until relatively recently (certainly well into my adult years) my idea of the future involved hopes of finding a dirty but community-oriented slum in which to live somewhere in Indonesia. (Believe it or not, I’ve been to some pretty nice slums. I planned to work as a volunteer teacher in Indonesia, and prepared for it for twelve years before I got mentally ill – then eventually realised I didn’t actually want to go even if I still could.)
So anyway. . . I got married in January this year – to an Australian who’s never visited anywhere overseas (we will be visiting Indonesia and China next year, but just visiting). At about this time last year there were three main things I wanted:
to be married (I really wasn’t sure my partner was serious, but clearly he was – as he told me all along)
to be out of debt (it was impossibly large, and was later cancelled by family friends)
to have a book accepted by a major publisher (hasn’t happened yet)
The reason I mention those things is that I would have put them in the reverse order. Book publication was the most important, because it represented a purpose in life, and an identity (something that’s still sorely lacking after giving up on a twelve-year dream to move to Indonesia). It would also help with getting out of debt – debt is something that has an absolute immoral quality to it in my value system (excluding mortgage and hecs). And yes, I know debt is common. Not for me. Never again. (Mental illness = major debt. I still don’t think I could have done anything better.)
Now that I’ve been married a little while, I know it’s much better than any kind of publication, and will have a greater impact on my life. It’s funny, because being married was never an important part of my self-image – it was always a luxury extra to life (and one that was pretty unlikely for me). But of course I like being a Mrs, and in a few more years my single years will look like a foreign country.
This does all kinds of strange things to my brain (like suddenly wanting matching plates – which, incidentally, I have. A set of twelve). Most importantly, it means I’m safe in all kinds of ways. Marriage isn’t especially hard, but everything else in life is (almost always) easier.
And this marriage thing means I’ll most likely have children. (Side note: I’m at the house of the babysitting kids right now, but was unable to write this entry until the kids were asleep. They’re just too scary when they’re conscious.)
Friends will know that I generally express my desire for children by boasting of how much time my kids will spend with their grandparents. It’s not that I don’t like kids – I’m just freaking terrified of them. I’m scared of their effect on my mental state, of passing on my crazy to them, and so on and so on.
But I keep having these dreams that my partner and I have just bought a house. They always feature a kids’ room. I really like these dreams.
Also, interestingly, the dreams tell me I’m not ready – every single house I’ve dreamed of has been the same size or smaller than the flat we now rent in. It’s clear my subconscious just doesn’t have the guts to dream big enough.
Yet.
But it’s fun all the same – the dreaming.
My nephew
Every dog. . .
So I’m doing a bit of overnight babysitting. It’s been fun playing house, and I get paid. The household has two small dogs, but they haven’t bothered me.
One evening I bought a pack – 150 grams – of unshelled pistachios. (Unshelled so they’d take longer to eat, and distract me from the lack of multiple kilos of chocolate.) I ate about half that night, felt a bit sick from eating so much (and licking the salt off the shells), and eventually stopped shovelling them in. I folded over the top of the pack and placed it on my bedside table (the opening facing down so its own weight held it semi-sealed) to eat during the rest of the week.
The next morning I took the kid to school and left the pistachios beside my bed.
When I returned later that day, the pistachios were gone – as if they’d never existed. Not a crumb remained on the table or floor. The plastic packet had also vanished – so thoroughly that I looked around for it (and found no trace of it anywhere). All that remained of the entire pack was two pistachio shell halves – both licked clean of salt.
Companion to Day Twelve: Blackbeard
I think a large number of historians would agree that among the historical pirates (murderers, thieves, cutthroats, and fiends), the worse is Captain Blackbeard.
One evening during dinner, he took his pistol from its holster and shot a member of his own crew in the knee, permanently laming him. His explanation was that people would forget who he was if he didn’t kill someone every once in a while.
Children: Is there anything more horrifying?
I am still waiting on Harper Collins’ reply to my young adult novel. The longer I wait (the time they said is now about a week ago) the better my chances – because a “Yes” takes longer than a “No”. My chances of getting that book published are significantly better than my chances of becoming a twitter celebrity and getting publication that way.
There’s not much more pathetic than an unpublished writer. (I already hear the voices of my friends raised to say that they’re MUCH more pathetic than me.) All those hours to create a gift no-one actually wants.
*topic change*
Today I mediated in a fight and had both parties (two children) blaming me by the end. Which is technically fine, since I know (a) It was a fight that needed mediation – a rare thing, but true in this case – and I was the only other person around (b) since they blame me for everything, they’re friends again (c) It ended the way it needed to, with the victim’s safety given back to her.
But I feel hideous – together they accused me of mistreating a child. Just the thought makes me feel sick. (Sure, in my teaching days, I sometimes made kids cry – that’s different. Unfortunately it’s a side effect of our school system.)
But I’ve been thinking about teenagers lately, and how one reason teen life is so difficult is that you simply have no scale to measure things by – if you feel sick, you really might be dying. If you’re in love, you’ve genuinely never felt that way before. Later on in life, you can recognise more accurately the severity of your problems. And me getting blamed for a badly upset child isn’t that big a deal. I’m only upset because it’s one of my nightmare scenarios (if it really was my fault, I mean), and I’m not good at sorting out fact from fiction if anyone says anything bad about me. As long as it’s not real (and possibly even then, since everyone makes mistakes and no-one was permanently hurt), there’s no problem.
Children scare me. They’re too important to mess up, and I mess up a lot of things.
Companion to Day Eleven: Secrets
Yep, it’s all on purpose: Oldy (is that even a name?*) is a beggar who gives away food. He’s also someone who knows sailing – but pretended not to know until now.
Gee, I wonder what’ll happen next!
*No. It’s an abbreviation of “Old Man”.
Companion to Day Ten: Hair
Captain Sol likes being outside. I really don’t. I may have mentioned that it’s WINDY on board ship. Plus lots of salt in the air. And sometimes rain. With very limited drinking/showering water.
I’m not generally fussy about my hair, but filthy things happen at sea. Just imagine itching, stinking, permanently tangled hair filled with chunks of solidified salt particles – and you’re pretty much there.
Yucky things happen at sea.
Felicity Banks 