January 2, 2009

Cheese and Pie, George!

The title has nothing to do with this post, but is a line from my novel that I am rather proud of in an absurd Ican'twaitforpeopletoreadthisnovelandaskthemselvesifI'mreallyasstableasIclaimtobe kind of way. I hope everyone had a wonderful New Years Celebration. For, like, the 8th year in a row we stayed up and got busy until someone finally yelled "Oh hey! Happy New Year!" at 12:15, then someone else said "Oh hey! We've got some wine/champagne/cider." This year's champagne was not very good, however it did become absolutely fabulous when mixed with Lingonberry juice concentrate! And no I stuck to one glass, and not twenty. I find it really funny how people love to assume that I am some sort of lush, when I drink maybe three or four times a month. My mother calls me a verbal alcoholic. I think this mostly stems from the fact that all my alcohol stories are pretty funny in a omgareyoureallythatstupidAshley? kind of way (remind me to tell you all about the one night in Worcester, England as two 16 year old girls walked the streets of a foreign city as pissed (which is drunk in England English) as possible trying to find a taxi to get to their home, where the people who said they couldn't pick up said girls are sitting very peacefully watching the news. It was all somehow very funny at the time, especially the rubbing alcohol I had to put on my newly pierced ear).


Anyhoodles, I spent New Years Eve working on my novel which is almost complete. I still have two chapters to write, which oddly enough are in the dead middle. It may be three chapters depending on how much I talk, which if any of you know me, will probably be a lot and end up being four chapters. I wrote the last chapter last night and man is it corny! But in a good kind of way. Like it makes you all warm and happy inside and then you sigh and say "oh yay that's what love is supposed to be and how a book should end but please tell me more about these absolutely fabulous characters who are so peculiar and quirky I just need to know more!" and then I'll say "well ain't that just jolly, cuz guess what it is now a series! Mostly because my poor brain just kept going and now I'm kind of attached to their children. and damn I am going to have the hardest time killing off that one character." So needless to say I have lot's of plans for my dear characters. It's funny too because I really am attached to these people my mind created, like they're my real friends. Georgie, the heroine, is admittedly based on me, but she also has some differences, though I'm not going to tell you any of them, because I am not going to publicly divulge secrets of that nature when you all might just think they are figments of my imagination when on paper. That was a hard sentence to write. But anyways, I've learned a lot about myself as I watch her. I've learned a lot about how I see the world and why I've had such a hard time accepting things that I see when they don't match up to my ideals. And the character of Teddy has been really fun to develop. At first his name, Theo/Teddy/Ted (you'll have to read it to understand why it changes), was just something I pulled out of my bum to fill space. I intended to change his name at some point to Charles or Reginald, or Boris or some crap like that, but then he molded into Teddy, and the more I learned about him the more I liked him. I don't really write with a purpose. Usually I have an idea and then I kind of just let it flow until I get bored with it. I like to write as if I am the reader, so when something pops in my head and suddenly I'm like "holy crap! where did that come from!". But in this instance I knew exactly where I was going and how this story was going to end all along. Which is funny because I've written the ending about 37 million times. The dialogue and basic events were all mostly the same, but the setting and how they got there always changed (well mostly, I mean she still had to get on a plane and Zoe still had to call him, but you get the idea). Then I was laying in my bed half asleep, trying to take a nap when the most utterly perfect scenario jumped into my head. It was just so perfect! It was just as obnoxious as it needed, and involved music, and totally opened up a HUGE can of worms for the second book, and left just enough unknown to bring you back for more (why does her dad think he gave her something?), plus it was just soooooooo deliciously corny and romantic and tied into the first chapter so beautifully! I was soooooooo excited! So I ran into my mom's room and switched on her computer where I've been writing and began to type like crazy as I listened to Adele's cover of Bob Dylan's Make you feel my love on endless replay. It was a magical moment. Truly. And by truly I mean I'm the only one who thought it was magical, because when I told Chelsea the brilliant last line of the book, she laughed hysterically and told me to change it or she'd "disown" me. This has slightly annoyed me because I'm pretty sure she's just saying that because it was rich in sap, and being 16 you cannot openly admit to loving the sap, however on the inside she is bawling like a baby saying "OH oh, when will a boy ever say that to me!" and possibly is also melting in warmth and fuzziness. By the way if anyone ever reads my novel, they would know from the first line that I wrote it because it's told from Georgie's point of view and thus written like I talk, which hey wadda ya know is how I write my blog! Also all my catch phrases make several appearances.


In other news I'm so excited for all that I have planned for this year! Chel and I went to go do some shopping tonight and had a really good conversation about running off with your dreams. It made me hopeful and happy and really excited for the future. I think I've finally figured out who I want to be, and what I want to do, and where I want to go, and how I want to do it all. What's funny is it was always there in front of me, I was just too concerned with the other crap that wasn't important, and with doing what everyone else thought I should. I'm a horrible judge of myself and my abilities (which is probably why I do so many stupid things), so for a long time I just did what I was told, because it was easier than figuring out the truth (btw this is one of the themes of my book! Art imitates life y'know). I'm not sure what it was that made me see it, but something did. I think it was a series of events. A lot of them are silly, but serendipity is like that. what's really cool about my plans now is that I can't see them. I'm entering psycho territory here, but I've always had this theory that if I could see myself doing it, or being there It wasn't going to happen. SO whenever bad things seemed inevitable I've always imagined that they had happened and tried to live them out in my head so as to keep them from happening. It's worked pretty well thus far. But the bad thing about it is that when good things are coming my imagination gets the best of me and tends to cook up these horribly absurd adventures and jolly happenings, and they almost always (like 99.999% of the time) fall through. So what I find funny is that I can see myself where I want to be, except they're visions of the past. It's me seeing things I've already done. I've tried to imagine the future, but I physically cannot! It's so weird! Of course this whole theory is weird and should get me locked up.
Okay well I think I've yammered for long enough and made plenty of you think I'm crazy. Unless you're crazy. In that case you're probably all "man that's deep. you're one insightful chicky-babe, and I kinda think I'm in love with you." to which I will say, "oh golly Rob Pattinson, what a co-ink-y-dink! I'm in love with you too! let's get married and move to the Swiss alps and learn to ski, and then live in a tiny chalet, where we are too poor for wood, thus have to cuddle for warmth." And then we'll kiss at a rock concert just as the band starts playing a power love ballad. See what I mean about that imagination of mine.....

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