Monday, August 31, 2009

Dreams, the Internet, Boys, and the MWE

Today (but this was actually written yesterday) - oh day, oh sun, oh waking hours, hours of operation, I cannot make heads nor tails of you - today, I really did absolutely nothing.

         Every day I set my alarm for nine or ten o' the a.m. and practically every day I fling out an arm in the intoxication of sleep and turn the alarm off.

         Round noon, I finally rise (wipe the sleep out of my eyes) and reprimand myself for the nth time.


"Self," I say, "you are sleeping away your life!"


"I like sleep," I respond. "There are so many things to dream."


"Dreams," argues the logical bit of my brain, "do not pay the bills. They are selfish deadbeats, just like their fathers. They will spend all 
your money and drink all the beer."


"Don't! Don't!" I cry. "I love them! At least they haven't sold out to the man!"


"Please to be quitting the nonsense, Cam. This is rubbish. You don't speak to yourself like this."


"Well, I might."


"But you don't. You've only just made it up, because you think it's funny. You can't go misleading kindly audience types into thinking you're that clever and spontaneous."


"I'm spontaneous."


"You are a writer. You're the opposite of spontaneous. You analyse and edit everything you do and say to death so that it's publish-perfect."


"That was well expressed. Publish-perfect. I'm making a note of that."


"My point exactly."



        The real point being that unless I've got work, I've no idea what to do with myself during the day. The hours of nine to five are so uninspired - so old hat - so - so nineties! I mean what stuffed suit thought of that anyway? Why should daytime mean awake-time?


Night is much lovelier and more exciting and generally makes everyone look better. And the moon is so much more inspiring, because you can actually look at it with your eyes - not like the sun, that big, bright braggadocio.


Though, admittedly, darkness presents quite a problem to photography. And people really are very fond of their own image. I have found it out, then. This is obviously the reason for the correlation between daytime and awake-time.


I, on the other hand, being not terribly fond of my own image, prefer the more creativity-rich Night. Or a brutish, brooding storm. I'll take a good storm over almost anything. I could move to England purely for the weather.


Which brings me back round to the actual subject matter on which I wished to enlarge.


Another day wasted in front of a stupid computer screen. I have a love/hate relationship with the internet. It is a truly fantastic place in that it is like a magical abandoned mansion on the edge of town. One can get in easily, but must be wary of the porch - it looks stable enough, but its wooden planks are completely rotten in places, and the inexperienced adventurer will fall straight through, to be bombarded forevermore by utter rubbish.


Once inside, however! Oh, there is simply no end to the secret wardrobes, crawl spaces, medieval passages, Underground Railroad tunnels, walled up corpses, and, if one is lucky, a leftover cask of Amantillado. Naturally there is the attic of lost treasures. And a dumbwaiter which leads somewhere else on Tuesdays.


On the other hand (I do always consult my left, because he is an idiot savant and sometimes comes out with the most astonishing pronouncements), the world wide web is also a great, gaping black hole which can swallow one up and spit one out three years later. And on the other side, one finds she is an uneducated, malnourished loser and wishes desperately that she could go back, but alas - it was not to be. She has become, irrevocably, a lamely emaciate nerd, with a useless hobby of anagramming.


As it turns out, it is a very happy happenstance for my writing that this laptop, on which my thrilling prose is composed, does not have the capacity to host that sometime black hole which is the death of productivity.


Round about seven, I began to be restless, and despondent over my lack of popularity and the non-fruition of my genius, so I hatched a plan to save either the world or my brain, but not both. (For if my brain begins again to work properly, the world is certainly doomed). Taking my poor, crippled laptop, I made away like a thief in the night!


To Sitwells! (A most excellent coffee joint). And there I sat, surrounded by surrealist art and strange-strumming instruments and very badass hipster youths, with a pumped-up drink to hand. And sat.


And sat.


And sat.


Staring at a screen, debating whether the words "writer's block" are more akin to Voldemort or MacBeth.


(Ala - "Fear of the words 'writer's block' only increases fear of the block itself," or "A terrible curse befall ye who speaketh aloud of the Scottish impediment!")


And after an hour and a half of sitting and staring and pondering and being distracted by cute boys, when the cafe was closing, I had written one paragraph.


But before they could turn me out onto the street, I had to pee and, oddly enough, this was the reason the evening turned out not to be a dead loss. For, at the back of the place, the talented young artist whose surrealist works had been displayed about the cafe was packing away his pieces. Seeing this, I paused on my way to the loo to tell him how very fantastic his art is, and his name is Donny, and you may view his art here: http://laskroto.deviantart.com/.


Another odd meeting took place as I was exiting Sitwells. I was hailed by a quite handsome fellow I had never met before, who turned out to be Michael McIntire, guitarist and singer of The Marmalade Brigade. He was enormously friendly and chatted me up for a bit, and I gave him my number, and I'm beginning to think Sitwells is the place, you know. To meet cute, artsy chaps.


Even if it is not the place to write a brilliant masterwork of sheer genius.


And now, since this has degenerated into utter frivolity, and it is four o' clock in the morning, and I've developed a powerful need for a spot of soothing tea, I bid you a very. Good. Night.


[Bows, with much flourishing of her plumed hat.]


And now about the very exciting today times!!! I have finished the first chapter of the Mystery Wrapped in an Enigma (MWE)! Oh, but there is still so much more to write! It is an exhausting thought!

Anyone care to guess what the MWE actually is based on my playlist? If you guess I shall give you ... something really great! Cross my heart and hope to die!

"What the F*** Was That!?" - Evil Dead the Musical
"Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" - Daft Punk
"Another One Bites the Dust" - Queen
"Smooth Criminal" - Michael Jackson
"Blood" - My Chemical Romance
"Beautiful" - Moby
"Battesimo del Fuoco" - The Dear Hunter
"Earth Died Screaming" - Tom Waits
"Mending of the Gown" - Sunset Rubdown
"Don't Make me a Target" - Spoon
"St. James Infirmary" - Louis Armstrong
"Double Trouble" - John Williams
"Climbing the Walls" - They Might be Giants
"Exterminate Regenerate" - Chameleon Circuit
"Supermassive Black Hole" - Muse
"Remains of the Day" - Danny Elfman (from the Corpse Bride)
"Hedwig's Theme" - John Williams

Haha! Stumped? Anyone care to hazard a guess?

IT'S HERE IT'S HERE IT'S HERE!!!



Today in the post, I received a package. Oh, dear, thought I, what have I accidentally ordered? The internet is entirely tooclickable.

But then I noticed that the package in question was from Amazon.

A book.

I rushed to the calendar. 2 June.

Not just any book. The book. Her book. It had finally come.

Sarah Rees Brennan's The Demon's Lexicon.

(If you do not know who Sarah Rees Brennan is, go here. She is beyond amazing.)

Then the ripping began, and the shrieking, and the petting, crooning softly to it, rubbing it to my cheek, and more shrieking. I am afraid the neighbors may be under the impression I was being brutally murdered. Meanwhile, I was dancing like a wild thing on the loose. Somehow the furniture survived my cartwheels of glee. I phoned Meg and shrieked at her a bit, as she is the only one who would understand what I was raving on about. As usual, she was calm and understanding. She is much like me, but without all the hyperventilating. To calm myself, I made a cup of strong tea. With the tea close to hand (but not so close as to be knocked over in one of my many fits), and under the mood-lighting of a stormy sky, I began to read.

Here, in my trembling hands, I held Nick and Alan and Mae and Jamie! As I read, the characters spun by Sarah's words lifted themselves from the ink, blossoming from the pages like shifting shadows to play their story in my sitting room. Everything I love about Sarah Rees Brennan's writing was here, especially her signature wit, which I cannot imagine her writing without. She combines a dark, sometimes terrifying, adventure with quirky, real characters, with real flaws (none of this sparkling perfection nonsense), who I instantly fell in love with, and adds to it moments to make you reel with laughter. These moments allow you to relax, while subtly tightening the strings of dramatic tension. Nothing could be more true to life. Who ever feels only one emotion? She confuses and dazzles you with comedy alongside the Very Serious, like writer Cassandra Clare and filmmaker Joss Whedon, until you are whipped into a whirlwind of emotions - pretty much the way you feel about life.

Now, I must confess, I have not finished it yet, but I have a very good reason! As you can see from the photo above, I do not read books. I devour them. I am a bibliophile. But I do not want to treat this book the way I treat Christmas chocolate - that is, I eat it all in one sitting, make myself sick, and the next day I have nothing but sweet-smelling wrappers. I want to enjoy it slowly, savouring every unique flavour. So I will wait. I will make myself wait.

I hope Nick does not mind being nibbled on. He is just so scrumdiddlyumptious.

I imagine I will be saying, "Many people think I'm a blueberry scone." for years to come. I immediately began quoting out bits of it to my confused, but tolerant, father, who chuckled and said it was just my kind of humour. I hope that Sarah Rees Brennan will agree someday. For, when I become a published author, I will beg my agent to arrange a play-date with her, and hopefully she will not say, "I thought I was a bit mad, but you, madam, are a true lunatic," and brandish something sharp at me.