The Omnivorous Geek

Just started writing the last chapter of Coming Down Book 4. It's going great. There might be an epilogue, as well. It will probably close out the Coming Down story--if I write more in the 'verse, it will be something completely new, possibly getting into canon timelines.

Maybe then I'll work on other unfinished fanfics, though, as well as my original writing.

Of course, I'm sick again, probably because of stress. When I got laid off I told myself I would try to write 2000 words a day, use the time to my advantage, but I haven't made that quota yet. Still, I'm writing every day and having a lot of fun. My sneezes are obnoxious, though. They keep startling my pets.

I've been writing a lot lately. Mostly original, because I want to re-form my life into the life I want--one where I can live off my writing. But I miss fanfiction, I miss Dean and Sam and Cas. Funny thing about writing is that once you get going, you don't run out--you just find more inside you.

So while I'm editing some original stuff, taking a break from writing that particular project, I'm trying to keep up the writing streak. So here's what's coming out.

It's not ready. At all. I'm thinking I'd actually like to treat it like a Big Bang, finish it, maybe find someone to do a little artwork, make a soundtrack--but yeah. I've missed fanfiction. So here's what just poured out of me, unedited, and maybe it looks like fun.

( Coming Down again )

Have written first sentence of Coming Down on a Sunny Day Book 3.

John Winchester had four sons, but when people asked, he said he had three.

I tried that writing analysis thing that's going around and keep getting different results for different stories. But the three that pop up most often are Margaret Atwood, Chuck Palahniuk, and Vladimir Nabokov. I feel like an utter plebe, because I haven't read anything by ANY of those three. (And I read a lot, or at least I used to.) Can my beautiful, smart, highly educated flist tell me something about them and if their writing styles are really similar to mine? Cuz I'm kind of weirded out.

This is less awesome in the contemporary sense and more awesome in the original sense, as in full of awe or awe-inspiring.

Roanoke F4 Tornado Footage

I'm currently working hard on my Sweet Charity fic for sparkyjoe. She wanted a story about Dean and Sam facing a tornado from someone who has grown up in the Midwest and understands exactly what it's like to live under the threat of this kind of disaster that can come out of the blue and wreck an entire town.

It's pulling at a lot of deep memories for me. The little town where I live still tests its tornado warning siren every Wednesday at noon during tornado season, and the sound is always so creepy and alarming, even in the middle of a bright, sunny day. I remember one time babysitting a family of little kids. The wind was really high that night, shaking the house, so the kids were scared, and I sat with them up in the loft where they slept and told them stories to keep them calm until their parents came home. Later I learned that there had been a light tornado that night that tore off the tops of some trees a couple streets over from where I was babysitting. I wasn't scared at the time, too busy taking care of the kids, but to hear that later... Well, I know what it's like to feel your heart in your throat.

Another time I was babysitting some toddlers in a trailer park on a nice afternoon in the summer, and the sirens started crying, so I knew it wasn't a test. I stood outside and looked at the sky, just watching, though they said on the news that the tornado was way up north from where I was. All I could think that was if something happened down where I was, at the trailer park, we wouldn't have a basement to hide in, and I had little kids to protect. No damage came from that one, either, but the fear was there, compounded by my need to look after the little ones in my charge. There are other times I can remember herding my siblings down to the basement, dragging a two-liter of orange soda with us, and listening to the radio while they played. And that was only a tornado watch, not even a warning.

The video I linked there is footage compiled from two folks of an F4 tornado that hit my parents' hometown in Roanoke, Illinois in 2004. We have many friends and family there and visit several times a year. Soon after that tornado hit, I visited my grandparents, and my grandma gave me a guided tour of the damage. We drove in a car from where the tornado first touched down all the way to where it lifted. It was frightening and awe-inspiring. The cornfields were already recovering, mostly, but I could see places where the corn wasn't going to grow back, because it was just gone. I saw houses missing roofs, others torn to rubble.

The worst damage that tornado did was to a manufacturing plant. The tornado reached its height there, F4 strength (the highest the scale goes is F5). It hit the plant dead on. The 137 people inside only had a couple minutes of warning. But the owner of the plant had had a previous experience with a tornado and vowed that his employees would always be safe, so he had built secure shelters on the property, almost like concrete bunkers. They practiced tornado drills twice a year and trained workers to keep a watch out. Everyone got to the shelters on time.

The tornado ripped through, tossed every car in the parking lot into the cornfields, and reduced every building to tumbled concrete and twisted steel. When the rescuers arrived, they were sure that they would find bodies and many injuries. But the workers emerged from their shelters, whole and unharmed. No one was killed or seriously injured by this tornado, and that can only be attributed to Midwestern hardiness and preparation, as well as the grace of God. Roanoke was without power for three days, and everyone was only thankful that it lifted before it hit the town itself.

It's a long video--thirty-eight minutes--and you might not have time for it. But I find it completely riveting. My grandparents know the folks who took the footage and told me stories about them while we watched it, but I can't remember them now. Listen, though, for the little kid who keeps declaring "That's the biggest tornado I ever seen!" as if he had seen many tornadoes before, lol. Also, the guy who keeps saying, "This is insane, I should not be doing this, I should turn around," while he completely fails to follow his own advice. I believe the two folks taking videos crossed paths toward the end of it, too.

And the church you see toward the middle of the footage? That's my grandparents' church, the one I visit several times a year. That's the one my parents grew up in, where they met and fell in love and were married. Seeing a tornado behind that grand building, whipping the sky into a frenzy and filling the air with debris, is a chilling sight indeed.

It's Big Bang season! So many fandoms are having them, and so many of my flisties are going for it, which is very awesome. I decide to dust this off as a belated Valentine's Day gift for you guys. ♥

In 2006, I graduated from college with a degree in Professional Writing. In the same year, I made this "mix CD" for some of the writer friends I had met in that college, who I loved dearly (and still do). It's amazing to think that even that recently, downloading large files over the internet was mostly impractical, at least as far as I knew. Did broadband even exist then? But yeah. I burned these to CDs, and made my own artwork, and printed out "liner sheets" with the lyrics.



Track List:
My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors by Moxy Fruvous
The Engine Driver by The Decemberists
I'll Be a Writer by Soltero
Paperback Writer by The Beatles
Seize the Day by Carolyn Arends
Open Book by CAKE
Novel-Writing (Live from Wessex) by Monty Python
Song for Myla Goldberg by The Decemberists
Shadow Stabbing by CAKE
Breathe (2 AM) by Anna Nalick
There She Goes, My Beautiful World by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
See the Flames Begin to Crawl by Five Iron Frenzy
That's How the Story Ends by Five Iron Frenzy
Escape (The Pina Colada Song) by Rupert Holmes

Included in the liner sheets was this little story. I've added a few parenthetical phrases and a PS to make it more applicable for my current readership.

A Musical, Writerly Journey

This album is a gift to some of my very favorite writers ever. However, note that the songs on this album are very eclectic. Therefore, you may not like one or two or ten. That's okay. While you're deciding whether you like them, enjoy the story they tell about the writer's journey.

First of all, I figure that pretty much every writer starts out by liking books. Having a spouse who shares that inclination would just compound the problem, of course. "My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors," you may have noted to yourself. But that was okay, because you did too.

So there you were just living your life, as a cafe worker or librarian or student or perhaps even an Engine Driver, when you had an epiphany. "I'll Be a Writer," you declared one day. "It can't be that hard."

But deciding to be a writer was not enough. Then you had to decide what kind of writer you would be, a poet or a columnist or a critic or one of those people who write illogical letters to the editor (or comments on the internet). "I want to be a Paperback Writer," you declared further.

That was it, then. It was time to Seize the Day. Your life would be an Open Book, prepared for the perusal of strangers. You were ready to share all of your insights and wisdom, humor and love. It would be eloquent, moving, and entertaining, an instant best-seller.

And you began to write. It might have been more exciting with a commentator on some sports-like show, perhaps called Novel-Writing (Live from Wessex) or something like that. But no matter. You pressed on. Already you were thinking about an interesting, attention-grabbing title for you book. Song for Myla Goldberg, maybe. Or perhaps something a bit more ambiguous and poetic, like Shadow Stabbing. You had lists of ideas, but hadn't hit on the perfect title yet. It would come, you were sure. Well, pretty sure.

And now you were down in the real nitty-gritty of your novel. It was beginning to come a bit harder. You realized that you were sharing some rather personal things, and didn't know if you could write anymore. Either that or you realized that you were writing utter crud, and weren't sure what do about it. You kept trying, though, until one day you found yourself awake at 2 AM in the morning, clutching a pencil in one fist (or pounding on your keyboard with that fist), the other pressed to your burning temple as you blinked your gritty bloodshot eyes and struggled to Breathe.

It was that most dreaded of maladies: writer's block. It hit you hard. You could not get around it. "There She Goes, My Beautiful World!" you cried in despair. (Writer's block stinks a lot. It also inspires melodramatic cries of anguish.)

For days upon days, you fought your writer's block. You wrote pages of drivel, crumpled them, then smoothed them out to see if you had been wrong, then decided that they were definitely drivel and crumpled them again. At last you had piles of them, enough for a bonfire. So you set one, just to See the Flames Begin to Crawl. It was very satisfying, in a morbid way. So you decided that That's How the Story Ends. Rather easy decision, it was, in the end.

And now you just really, really needed to Escape. So you wrote your last creative effort, a personal ad sent to the newspaper, and you found someone who liked pina coladas as much as you did. Good for you! That's really the best final destination for your journey that you could have reached.

After all, this writing stuff, with its sweat and blood and many, many tears, is for chumps of the first degree.

The End

PS: Or you could always come to the dark side and write fanfic. IT'S SO MUCH FUN YOU HAVE NO IDEA.

Download from mediafire 100 MB, 54 minutes

Single tracks uploaded on request.

I wrote a lot of fanfic this year. It kept me sane in a lot of ways. Sixty-one posts marked fanfic on this journal, and I have at least a couple of commentfics that I never reposted here, plus some collaborations from the spnwriterlounge Writer Olympics thing that I'm not sure how to quantify. I'm also not counting the bits of fic in my google documents that I wrote but never posted--have at least three partially finished stories in there.

( STATS! )

And now the fic meme, amalgamated from several sources because I'm self-indulgent like that.

( This gets long )

I'm in a very introspective and thinky mood right now, so I'll open this up for questions. If you've ever wondered something about my writing process, ask away. Or if you have questions about specific fics and 'verses, where they came from, where I think they're going, what changed along the way... Anything like that. Be prepared for a lot of vague mumbling and meandering explanations, though. I love writing and I can go on for a really, really long time if you get me started.

Like I said. Self-indulgent.

Went through some stuff today and found some VERY old poems I wrote. I don't know when, but it must have been a long time ago, because I kinda like football now. I must have been in my mid-teens.

WARNING: They are bad.




Lakes

Lakes are nice.
In winter they are ice.
In summer they're fun,
And sparkle in the sun.
In spring they are blue,
But icy and cool.
But in the chilly fall
No one sees them at all,
Cuz everyone is playing football.

( two more along that vein... )

The fog was so thick this morning, wow. Schools are on delay and I don't blame them at all. Stuff is dangerous.

On my way back home from my early-morning client I missed the turn I usually take and ended up driving by the St. Joe river for awhile. I felt that I was looking into a story, a painting in shades of dark, deep blue-gray with the black of trees standing stark and cold. Like some gothic novel.

And, oh, wouldn't that be a wonderful book? The Moors of Indiana. A lonely farmhouse stands in the center of miles and miles of rustling corn, the scene of Amish angst and romance. Will Amos and Rebecca ever find each other again? Why are the cows so restless? Will the harvest EVER get in? These are the questions that must be asked.

If any of you guys were still trying to come up with an idea for NaNo, I totally just gave you the awesomest one ever. I demand ten percent of the royalties.

In other news, I had a donut, and it was delicious. Mmmmmm, donut.

I mentioned awhile ago that I was thinking of a taking a table from spn_30snapshots for Rain Falling Down. Well, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna do it, but I just CAN'T DECIDE whether to go with the Elemental or the Paranormal State table. You can look at them here.

So help me out? Mah brane, she is teh frozen.

[Poll #1458071]

In relatively good news, I may very well have a short for you either today or tomorrow. ♥