Facebook status updates part XXIII (Mar 2014)

“Fall in love? My dear boy, no poet has ever done that. One should rise in love if one is to do anything at all.”

Whenever anyone asked how Mister Anthony could sell afterlife insurance, he just smiled and said he hadn't had any complaints so far.

Six-word story:
I keep forgetting to hate you.

There was a plot twist. They happen every so often in our lives.
One happened to you today, though you might never know it.
I wish I could say it involved me.

The cemetery cut off the city a little but was the usual rush of students using the walking path as a shortcut to school. A few waved; I waved back, said hello to a few classmates as we walked. Qirjin fell silent and said nothing to them.
I let his silence stand.
Part of me wanted to tell him he didn’t need to be shy, but I didn’t know him enough to know what he needed.

Coworker: dream catchers are good; you can put them in a child's bedroom and they won't have nightmares.
Me: They'd be good for older kids too. You could have a wet dream catcher.
.... Don't you wish you worked with me?!

I harbour a deep suspicion that, for any author, hell would be a time machine and seeing what people do with their properties in the future.

From notes files to current WIP:
I think Romeo and Juliet would have been a worse tragedy if they had married

Writing joys of the weekend:
* Realizing I didn’t have to change the time Alcoholics Anonymous was founded. 1935 is more than old one enough for my story, thankfully.
* researching food labelling regulations in Iran (or trying to)
* checking out child labour laws in north america regarding kids working in their parents store.
It says much about me that in a stories with djinn who grant wishes and dream-worlds with trees as big as mountains, whether one character is being paid adequately by her parents for working at their store is
a) in need of research
and b) see a.

*looks up from writing*
I watched some game shows, and some reality TV program. CSI: Thickos, or something like that. Take various crimes, and have ordinary people examine the clues and try and figure out what happened, with ex-police officers doing scathing voice-over.
... this might, actually, not be that bad an idea for a show

In two days I have (so far) written over 500 words toward the current WIP. During breaks at work. In the notes section of my iPhone. I think this story is consuming my brain.

'Justice Dept. applies same-sex rights to itself'
*eyes headline*
... there are so many ways to read that.

This weekend's novel research:
* the history of the saturday morning cartoon. (For the curious, it pretty much doesn't exist anymore.)
* whether the phrase "high-scent jobs" exists, even if it made perfect sense for the one character to say. (It doesn't exist, per-se, but I'm using it anyway.)
* reliability of internet connectivity in Iran. (Throttled.)

Someone pointed out to me that they were 3 months behind on reading stories I'd written. At which point I sat down and did the mental math for last year. From June-Dec I wrote 2 short stories every week. On top of that: 2 novellas and 2 novel drafts.
.... that is a wee bit insane.

According to my dreams, Dolly Parton is a) not human and b) helps run a school that teaches non-humans how to integrate in human society.
... Consider this exhibit A as to why I don't get story ideas from dreams.

Heartsache is it real;
Pain is not a poem.

“If some part of me didn’t hate you, there would be no part of me that was not sane.”

Conversations with an immortal:

"What is your biggest regret in living so long a life?"

"I have seen bellbottoms come back into style." A pause. "Four times."

my notebooks are full of fragments

poems begun, half-done

and lost

Secrets my heart holds (a journal for a novel character)
- We learn anger from the words of our parents; I am terrified of my own.
- I feel like a secret everyone believes they have not cracked; the traditions of the gifted are shroud and armour both.
- Anyone we trust could destroy us. But the walls we build are prisons.
- The more we hide, the more I hunger for something more.
- I am scared at how easily this list came to me.

The dream that seeks a dreamer hunting
hinting me down like a poem or story
the play unrehearsed lines in foreign tongues
The hanged man becomes the drowning one
I am drowning in an ocean I wish was Lethe
There is something that is too bright
There are no shades I do not cast

Signs it is time to stop writing and sleep include writing the following:
I stumbled out of bed and into the kitchen in my boxers to find Dad drinking the paper and reading coffee

"You are actually building a black hole generator and putting out a press release on how it has a 3% chance to destroy the world?"
"Of course. The Large Hadron Collider entirely failed in its goal, you see."
"What?" the interviewer said.
"Doctor Who didn't arrive to save us. I think we have the odds figured out better this time."

I would say I am sorry for your sorrow
But you have such gentle tears

There are so many reasons for the dead to hate the living: wills are only a small part of that.

You licked my wounds clean

Your tongue sandpaper-soft

"I am running out of words to bookend our silences with."

"You think you’re so clever, don’t you?" was spat from the other chair.

Eyes traverse the dull cracked walls and grimed kitchen. “I wish I was. Some days I truly wish I was.”

A description of my current WIP … as given to a friend:
It was mostly me wondering about Chosen Ones and the notion that, if it is hard to be one, then it is surely harder to love one, to befriend them, to know they are going to go places where you can’t follow and all you can do is wait….

Yesterday at work:
Manager: "So, that customer said you were rude to them."
Me: "I wasn't. What I wanted to say to them WAS rude, so whatever I said wasn't rude at all."

I even paid attention to Mrs Thompson, who had decided to tell the class that in every person was the ruin of a great teacher, and how one only had to look at the teachings of Jesus to understand that. For a moment, I thought I caught a hint of some hint of a plan to her lessons: no one so much as looked shocked, because it was Mrs. Thompson and she always said crazy things. Then she went off on a tangent about how multiple choice tests didn’t work and how they destroyed the foundations of democratic systems. Even I tuned her out after that.
..... I have far, far too much writing this character.

"It’s over," I said, because I was too scared it might not be.

The prophecy had said that he would die in battle — but he had expected a war, not this racking cough he could not shake. Not the mounting pity in others’ eyes.

I had a blank page to fill in a notebook. I didn't write about you.
I guess this means it's over.

I can't seem to work my fists
Punched walls until fingers broke
To distract me from your pain

After the divorce: six words of horror
"I misfiled your taxes for five years."

"We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.” He smiled about the boardroom. “This, of course, means we are leasing it from them at a rather enviable rate.”

Signs the third novel in a series is going to be odd:
The main character will be captured by the military so that they can weaponize his digestive system.

End of a flash fiction piece:
“Ah, yes.” The One cut him off, causing a murmur from both sides. “Science will save us, because it has always done so. Because each time we were about to fall, someone built a bridge. That cannot go on forever. Every sign says this is a dead-end road but no one believes. Such is the power of science, such the strength of the promise. Do you not wonder at that?” the One continued, softer still. “If we did not have this hope, we would be forced to make due with less. We would pull back. We would entrench and put reign on the drives of growth.”
“We will be undone by hope?” the Other said, but his laugh cut off as the One merely nodded.

My uncle used to tell me bedtime stories to help me sleep. Like how the wise slept deeply, or how one could find the true meaning of anything only in stories. And he would punctuate each story by falling asleep in the middle of it. It was almost twenty years before I found out what narcolepsy was.

I don’t want to write these words that keep falling into me like bruises

I don’t want to write these words that keep falling into me like bruises

My brother wants people to leave time and date on his voicemail. He got this:
"It is September 19. The year is 2053. It is the end. You were right. It is the end."

All I can boast of is the illusion of movement.

Pondering whether I can really call Ghoulish Happenings a YA novel when the MC is heading off to eat the corpse of a police officer. Mind you, the officer has asked him to, but even so.

Note to self: some day, I must write 'The Wolf Who Cried Boy'

"I'm so boring," he said. "You don't understand: I don't even have a single fetish."

The bedtime stories were one thing; one expected old ladies babysitting to offer those. The morning stories were a surprise of gleaming teeth and bright eyes glittering in the dawn.

“Good morning! The sun is out, you are nice and plump after winter and spring makes for such rosy cheeks!”

No one was sure how old Ms. Wilkins had got in during the morning without setting off the alarm, but the police took her away and mom and dad refused to talk about her ever again.

They told me Cassie moved away overnight.