That Superman Movie ;Slightly Better Wordy Wednesday

Oh, wait. I do have something. It's not complete but it makes my brain hurt so...I think I'm gonna leave it as is.
I went to watch that thing that calls itself a superman movie. I'm actually kinda glad they didn't have superman in the title because as far as a friend was concerned, no superman ever appeared. All we had was some guy who just happened to be from a planet far from here that just happened to have a lot of shitty stuff occur and share the same species with a dick who believes him to be an abomination and is, ya know, a genocidal maniac.

For most of the movie, he just reacted. People died and he reacted. His holo-father delivered the solution, his real father was morose and really did not instill in him the cheerful strength of mind to more easily deal with issues and he seemed to mostly try and ignore his powers except to limit his perception, up until when he found the shadow of his spacedaddy (holo-father, not farm daddy). At no point did he think, "This is cool!" He just thought, "I'm a monster," apparently. There had to be some point where he, I don't know, made an ant Aztec in the dirt with his heat vision or something. What kid wouldn't mess around at least a bit?

This perception of himself did change somewhat after he found the spaceship, which was, by the way, a little odd. Perhaps it was singing to him? Yes, I know he heard about it at the bar, By the way, anger issues! He does not inspire confidence.
 We didn't see him practice his powers before then, other than the strength.
I have more difficulties with the movie than that but I'll leave it at my most fundamental ones.

Not a Real Wordy Wednesday

I lied. Apparently.
I'm taking care of a heartworm positive dog going through treatment right now. He seems determined to get himself killed. Yay. He's also determined not to let me get work done.
I am unhappy.
I will try next week to post a proper story or journal entry or something.

Wordy Wednesday...Fail!

I was busy, I guess.
No, I was tired.
No, I was exhausted.

Here's the truth. I was beset by allergens, cats, a dog and assorted when I tried to sleep last night. I laid my head down and drifted off, content to let the world go dark so I didn't have to think for a few hours and cigarette smoke invaded my room!
I don't like when it gets inside the vents and when someone is a chain smoker and you breath in deeply when you're sleeping, it gets inside your damn pipes and you wake up at noon, wondering why you feel so sick and exhausted.

I'll have something more substantial next week, I hope.
Something that will be a literary equivalent to This!  Oh, how I love their perfumes. I'd try this one in a heartbeat if my stuff was selling.

Thanks.

Wordy Wednesday 7

Purgatory, Part 1
Solitary and awash with tears every other day. I kept in contact with those I loved, roaring infatuation encased within my heart, with each excited beat, pulsing tendrils of this feeling throughout each of my limbs and back but this was not enough to staunch the pain of abandonment. I was alone, bombarded with irrationality from each corner, locked within my room each day, sneaking out to snatch food and coming out for comfort with my furry companions and to eat dinner which was often the only time I exchanged words with my female relatives. I was far away from life, from friends, from love and from freedom. To be just outside a country town, sandwiched between busy roads and in a place with speeding behemoths of trucks and a homogeneous, hostile populace when one cannot drive is torment. Even my solace, traveling on foot through neighborhoods, observing and contemplating was lost to me on those gravel roads because with every house I passed I was jarred by barking dogs, as hostile as the people.
Day after day I worked, keeping myself busy, watching mystery serials so that I could hear calm, assured voices. I crocheted for a while and I knitted, but the thing that comforted me the most was writing. I did not think to hard about whether I was the most highly skilled or the best, what I thought of was the emotion I felt emanating from my writing and the warm, assurance I felt when I wrote. At first, I was flighty, tearful and hurt and I would throw myself around, crying bitterly, shrieking quietly so that I was not heard. Once I'd finally cried myself out, I would begin to work on some project or other, relishing that I could bring myself to finish projects, something that had before eluded me many times. I wrote every day, then, I began a novel and worked on it, gaining pleasure from the cobbling of its pages. I held within my heart, along with my infatuation a hope that I would finish this book and another and that I would be able to make enough to do all the things that I needed to do to get out of there.

Wordy Wednesday; Mario Bernadett, Lost on an Island 2

My book got over a hundred views! So...I put it up for sale again.
I also figured out more things to add to The Wind-Up Terrier. After misery and confusion and wandering around like an automoton for months, my creativity has returned and is becoming as powerful as it once was.
With that, I will begin this week's snippet which, I might add, is on time for once.

Back to Mario Bernadett, who I started talking about in a previous Wordy (wends)day, here
I uncurled from the rock and allowed myself to fall over onto some sandy grass where I lay still, until I began to wonder if there were ants or beetles int the grass. I stayed where I was. Ignore it, ignore it, I thought, but when I began to wonder about spiders, venomous spiders that would crawl inside my polo shirt and up my chest to my neck and all the way up to my face before biting, swelling my eye shut and making my head look like a half carved piece of rock, entirely organic on one side and a human face on the other as I slowly fell into convulsions accompanied by searing, blinding pain which, hopefully, would come in waves instead of sticking around for the duration. After that, I would be either permanently scarred or I would die, slowly losing control of my limbs as the venom ate its way through my nerves until, eventually, I would feel nothing, no pain at all and lose the ability to breath. I figured there would be a not-pain component, even if my nerves had fizzled out.

So, I sat up and then I stood, carefully looking down at myself and brushing off my front, jumping whenever I spotted a bit of dried grass. I screamed when I saw a spider and danced around, terrified after I flicked it off.
I needed to go find food. I wondered if you could eat grass. I didn't think you could. Things that could eat grass didn't usually eat meat and I ate meat, at least in theory, anyway but I had a feeling my vegetarianism would have to be put on hold while I was trapped on this BARREN ISLAND.
Coconuts! No, it couldn't be that easy, could it? Get trapped on a desert, no, deserted island and find coconuts to eat. I shrugged to myself. If I found them, I wondered what I would do with them. Egh, at least they were vegetarian. I set off to wander closer to the coastline, where I had a vague idea that coconuts grew.

Wordy Wednesday Bubble's Vet Office Ordeal 1

Okay. I'm still calling the story posts Wordy Wednesdays but I make no promises to post them on Wednesdays.

I really did do a snippet in advance but then, alas, I forgot. I've had some things to do. 

Here it is. 

So, yesterday I went with my boyfriend’s dog to the vet. They wanted him to drop off the dog but the dog, sweet boy that he is, has anxiety issues and instead of him being put into a kennel, he wanted me to stay the several hours with the dog while we waited for the ultrasound technician to come that afternoon. I was dropped off around eight in the morning. I don’t mind waiting, especially when I’m a little short on sleep and slightly drowsy and the environment is quiet and cool and the dog needs reassuring. My boy mentioned at least twice that I would be staying with the dog and I had two people, a vet assistant and the receptionist mention to me that it would be several hours. Finally, I had the receptionist tell me that he’d confirmed that the tech wouldn't be there until about two. The last straw was the vet coming out and talking baby talk to me to get me to drop him off.

People are weird.

We’d been quiet. I’d taken the dog out a couple times and, really, save for me forgetting to bring a blanket for the dog's hips on the tile floor (because doggy and kitty facilities are deficient on even something as simple as a washable rubber pad) there'd been nothing to suggest the dog wasn't happy, no altercations with other animals at all, especially since there hadn't been many to begin with. The dog was just mildly curious for them. 

A few hours in, we were escorted to an examination room. My boyfriend was called and managed to explain to them that I couldn’t just leave, having no ride and bus stops being unknown in this area. At this point, the dog was examined.

I fail to understand how a vet who can be pretty good with animals feels the need to talk to me like she probably believes small children should be talked to. She began with, “So, you write?” Quite a nonsequiter. I mean, I do but it was out of the blue, sort of the kind of thing my school counselor would start out with. I did like my school counselor, though so points for that.

Anyway, I began to wonder at this vet office. The place is a little run down and not particularly bright or cheerful but that probably just means they don’t overcharge. What gets to me is that the blanket they gave Jager at my request is tiny, a baby blanket and wouldn’t do shit for lessening the hardness of these floors. He’s currently using it as a pillow. I wondered if there’s stuff going on. Paranoid little me, huh. I’m not impressed by the veterinary staff but I don’t believe they’re part of the fur trade either. Still, I got a story idea out of it.

Bubbles the king Charles spaniel settled into his portable kennel. He knew where she was going and it didn’t worry him a bit. A trip to Paws and Purrs, his salon was not a cause for distress, rather it was something to look forward to because they washed him gently, massaged his back and legs and gave him a pedicure with tangerine polish. The little dog panted contentedly. He was feeling so strung out and this was the perfect treatment.

The small, green leopard print pet taxi tipped very slightly in the seat it was buckled to as the car stopped. Bubbles looked lazily through the mesh side of the carrier as he was conveyed out of the vehicle. His eyes widened.  This was not the salon. This was a bleak, off white box of a building with clapboard additions built on. Where was he being taken? He looked up through the mesh at the hand holding the carrier and then strained his moist, marble eyes to see the person attached to it. Who was that? He barked quizzically. There was no reaction, except that the carrier swayed a little more than he was used to but that may have been happening from the beginning. The dog growled under his breath. Curse his complacency! There was something nefarious going on.

The person carried him through a doorway and then the carrier jolted as he was set down. Bubbles mustered up his gumption and peered again through the mesh. There was an unknown human right in front of him, sitting bellow him and fiddling with papers. Was this a vet’s office? It did not look like his. His was bright and he knew the smell. He turned to the mesh on the other side of the carrier and peered at the person who had brought him. It was not Mable, as he had expected! It was a male, her nephew. The nephew had kidnapped him. He’d waited until Mable put him in the carrier and snatched it away without Bubbles even noticing!

The dog’s eyes narrowed. How evil! He snuffled. If only he hadn’t been struck down with a cold, none of this would have happened! He wouldn’t be stolen away if he’d been able to smell the degenerate nephew. He would have bared his teeth, flexed his muscles and escaped! He would even now be back in the arms of his beloved mistress. This was a lesson for him, don’t trust the nephew. Bite him as soon as possible so that he knows who’s in charge. Then he would take him back and it’d all be done and somewhat forgotten, save the occasional bite to drive in the point.

Bubbles staggered and let out a startled bark as he was picked up again and led to a dark room. Inside was a bunch of different doggy smells, all of them scared. Bubbles really began to worry. At his vet, there was anxiety and some piss and, of course feces, but there wasn’t normally fear. That was for first time visits. Fear was for puppies. 

Writing, What People Say and Kurt Vonnegut

So, I've been editing. By editing, I mean, being sick but before that and after I got a bit better which happened pretty much in the last six hours, I've been editing. Or, thinking about it. I really haven't been editing all that much in the last month but I've changed locals and been ill and, worse than that, really confused about what I want to do.

See, I've read books on writing.

These can be very helpful.

They can also whisper poison words into your ear. Sweet words like; You shouldn't be in every character's head. You shouldn't know everything. You should show what they'r feeling.

I agree with this but I just can't seem to do this completely. Also, I don't know how right it is. I like to know what a scene looks like but I've also read that describing a scene in too much detail, or even at all, is unnecessary. I agree. I hate reading pages of description of a tapestry in a castle, I definitely do, but I like clothes and shoes. I like to describe them. They're characters too, I guess. In some squalid corner of my head, which is round by the way, not square so how can any of use think literally outside the box, I've decided that they are important, mute little characters.

It occurs to me that I don't have those writing books, being a lapsed avid user of the library system. I would like to get them. They were well written. I'd like to remember them and read them again. It occurs to me that some of those books were written more entertainingly than some of the fiction that their authors' created. I would like to write a writing book but I need to figure out what I know about writing first, beyond that it depends on whether you're drunk, silly, sad, dull, or wild and a bunch of other things.

I just found the author of the quote that I was looking for and, while searching for the quote, I found another one. I didn't tend to use semicolons much until I got a college boy friend to edit for me. He's more fond of punctuation than I am. Now I'm not sure how to feel about them.

“Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.” 
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country
Goodreads is apparently pretty good for quotes. 

Anyway, I think I will include bits inside the character's heads a little more and if this book is not so good, I will fix it next time. The point that many writers have put forth is that you have to write to create good stuff. You also have to write to create putrid, vibrant green, oozing filth that sticks to your shoes and cooks eyes in their sockets. So, I will continue!
And perhaps lay off the chocolate cake. It makes me weird.