Gloucester

Yesterday, we went to a little seaside tourist town called Gloucester. It was cute, though half the shops are closed during the week during the winter. It was lovely. The narrow little alleys and old houses, with the view in between out to open water reminds me of Istanbul, along with the smell and sound of the sea.

It was very pretty and a lot of fun. I love hopping on rocks and ran out along a spit sticking out into the water. Good exercise. I love the ocean. We shopped a bit as well. I guess that's quite the tourist place during the summer.

Now, last time I was out here, I was with David. This is his family. And we watched family videos where David was thirteen, giving his goofy little David smile. I was starting to miss him a lot. He was still at his job site, so I talked to him and tried to convince him to come straight here. He'd be able to drive back with us. He told me it was going to be too expensive, and wouldn't be able to get much back for the ticket he had for Des Moines.

He wouldn't answer my texts all the next day, making me kind of hopeful, but still didn't think much of it. I figured it was more hope than logic, and confided as much to Jessica.

So we were walking up the street back to the car and I was daydreaming. Actually thinking about how David might sneak in and where he'd be if he did. And as I was walking along, I finally look up and there in between two signs I see a pair of familiar blue eyes all crinkled up in a smile. I ran around the signs yelling and there he was with meme and papa. What a great guy.

Finally made it.

I had a lovely little post called "Boston, Ho!" I wrote it one night when I felt in the blogging mood, but just saved it as a draft, intending to publish it later. Well, that will have to happen when I get a computer. The Blogger app refuses to show it in the list of posts.

We finally made it. I am beginning to question some of the logic around our departure time. We had been planning to leave around noon on Friday. But Melissa was so excited the night before, she's like, "let's just leave now!" Jessica had a class the next day she didn't want to skip and Melissa started to work on her. "If we leave at night, we get the night driving done first while we're still fresh."

Well, maybe. However, I soon learned that if you leave at night, you end up being sleep deprived for the entire trip instead of just half of it.

We departed Cedar Falls around 11pm. It was estimated at a 21+ hour trip and with three drivers, that was 7 hours each. Mel set it up so that it was three and a half hours at a time with one person remaining awake with the driver co-piloting and the other in the back allowed to sleep or whatever they wanted.

It was long. I might have gotten a little crazy. But we made it. Trying to fight back sleep deprivation now.

Hopefully done with tangents (cont).

Where was I? Ah, I had just finished on the first of my two very large tangents from my original idea. Let's recap, shall we?

Outline:
Idea: Long length stories (leading somewhere)
Tangent 1: Infernal Devices by Cassandra Clare
Tangent 2: Twilight and vampires
Conclusion: The Abandoned! And that I really need to contain myself when typing, I do.

We all on the same page now? That page being my blog page? (giggle, slaps knee) Oh fine, I apologize for that awful pun.

So, anyway, I wrote a few scenes from something called The Abandoned in my head. I was taking what I liked about the "institute" idea from Cassandra Clare's books, but trying to make it more like X-Men where supernatural creatures go to learn supernatural things, that is how to be the best werewolf they can be, or whatever. But in those days, the days of private tutors and privilege, there is no way upperclass vampires would send their... well, whatever they are... to school. And werewolves would have been too into their pack. Unless, of course, a vampire or werewolf was abandoned at creation. Maybe it was an accident. Maybe their sire was killed. Maybe they were exiled.

It was actually more of a steampunk conversion of a high school vampire/werewolf/mermaid, etc idea that was a conversion of a sci fi urban fantasy involving those same elements. Kind of a long chain. So I thought about it, and figured I liked the modern high school version better than the steampunk one, so I just left it. It was just an idea after all. But David said he rather preferred the steampunk version.

For some reason I was thinking on it recently, I'm not sure why. The characters were more personal than I had made the other versions, contained more life. Elijah was like William from Infernal Devices (my favorite character), but as with everything else, whenever I insert a character, they adapt to the story and change. Elijah doesn't have William's backstory, just his cocky wit (which was supposed to be alienating in William's case, but I thought it was more on the entertaining side), so he ends up much more self-assured than William. And much more into clothes, as he is a vampire. Patrick was just Elijah's sidekick, as William had a partner, but I wasn't as much a fan of him. So Patrick became serious to Elijah's wit. And with his seriousness, he developed a quiet, unemotional nature and a keen eye for seeing things and collecting information others didn't think he knew about. And Keelin is just what I figured a headstrong female orphaned werewolf would be like. For all her impetuousness, though, she knows she is different and that makes her cautious, more than I originally thought. But since she is strong and somewhat self-assured, she goes into everything with an idea of simply barreling through it.

I reread what I had written again recently. This usually somewhat embarrasses me, as I am far more capable of recognizing good work than I am of producing it. But, the little fixes aside, I found myself wishing I had written more of the story, simply so I could read it. I had a host of unanswered questions and found myself pondering them. And then, I figured, I needed to write. If I spent too much time thinking, "does this scene advance the plot," "what are the answers to all the questions," and "what is the map to this building," I would never write. Not to say that plotting and planning are bad things, but I honestly don't consider myself to be at the stage of constructing a full actual book. And ideation is practice, of a sort.

So I thought about it, and wrote a few more scenes. If it ever gets published (doubtful), it will have to be trimmed and edited a lot by the time I'm done. But that's not the point.

And now, I've been thinking on the questions. Occasionally, plot ideas get added, but they rarely answer questions, simply create more of them. Here are a few I have right now:

Why is the Schoolmaster setting Keelin up?
If Elijah is privileged because he is not actually abandoned, then what is the point of his presence at the institute?
Why was Patrick made and abandoned?
What is Chelsea's ulterior motive?
What does she hope to gain from him?
How will Keelin deal with the death of her sponsor?
How will Keelin deal with him (not trying to be elusive, I simply haven't named him yet)?
His he actually a good man or actually a bad one?
Why was the Skyrider kicked out of his clans?
What is the Skyrider culture?
How does the Skyrider justify bringing death? How does he kill?

And honestly, most of these don't have answers I know yet. I wrote it like I knew why the Schoolmaster was setting her up and why Patrick was abandoned, but I honestly cannot remember the answers, cannot remember if I ever knew or was merely putting in details I figured I'd fill out later.

But all the same, it's rather fun to have a project. Then little tidbits can come in and open up story avenues for you, things you didn't think of before.

However, if you know the answers to these questions, tell me quick!

Tangents, apparently.

I'm beginning to see why I cannot write. Oh, I've dashed off short clips about scenes that come to my head, and I've plotted highly improbable stories until they cease to amuse me, and I've told myself tales to put myself to sleep for as long as I can remember.

I am almost incapable of going to sleep if I don't have a story to tell myself, especially if I'm not particularly tired and have seen a movie recently.

But actual writing and graphing out the plot and research and writing anything anywhere near book length has always been beyond me. I play with a story until the thing that interested me about it no longer interests me, and then I drop it. I don't have a whole lot of staying power. I've been trying to start stories that have longer plotlines and now seem as incapable of breaking from that as I do of writing it.

Recently I read back over a highly fantasy bit I wrote. I was under the influence of a series called Infernal Devices by Cassandra Clare and generally in the grip of the Steampunk idea, as well as still somewhat interested in supernatural creatures, that being werewolves and vampires.

Don't hate me, I've been interested mildly in vampires since I saw part of one episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and she had a friend who as a vampire and was good. How can someone be good and a vampire? I wondered. I didn't do anything about it then, but never really forgot that interesting conflict between vampiric bloodlust and human compassion. In college I read a book called The Historian, about a search for Dracula containing very historical facts about Vlad the Impaler and other actually events. Almost makes you want to believe it about vampires, too. But after I finished that, I wanted more vampire books that weren't in what I call the "smutty romance" section. You know the section, the one where the guys are all shirtless and buff and the girls are all buxom and falling out of their clothes.

So, I found and for a while, enjoyed Twilight. I'm slightly ashamed to admit it, but that's the truth. It still bothers me because it's not a redeemable story. There isn't much for greater conflict. A girl meets a vampire, obsesses over him, and he wants to suck her blood. At least interesting tension there, until the end of the first book where he discovers he likes her too much to kill her and therefore isn't a terribly interesting vampire for the next three books. She continues to obsess with him. They obsess with each other. In the end they get each other. "Love."

But that's a tangent out of my tangent. Infernal Devices by Cassandra Clare does have vampires and werewolves in it and is set in a steampunk world, that being a rewritten version of the Victorian Era. It was one of those books that I somewhat enjoy, but I don't know why I enjoy it. There was humor in it in a snarky British way and some interesting conflicts, but there was also the inevitable love triangle that makes me ever so annoyed with much YA fiction often written by women and some weird elements like demons and warlocks and fighting using the names of angels but never seeming to think there was a God.

Anyway, I didn't totally like those books (although I am on the list for the next one at the library, whenever it comes out), but I liked enough about it that I had it somewhat in my head. So I combined a few things I liked and wrote a few scenes. What came out was about the Abandoned.

Goodness, look at the time! Well, actually, that hardly matters, but look at the length of this post! I guess I'll have to break it up, yes?

(to be continued)

But I don't even like herbal tea!

As you probably know, I play a computer game called "The Sims 3." I've never been able to come up with a satisfactory answer as to why, even to myself. I stopped playing with toys as a child because my imagination expanded beyond the point where I could reproduce it with toys. Sims 3 tends to be just as limiting, if not more.

It is a simulation game, like many of EA/Maxis's other games. I remember playing Sim Farm and Sim Ant and Sim City growing up. The Sims is a game that to some extent simulates normal day to day life. The expansion packs add more dynamics to that life, most of them being somewhat real, like the ability to have pets or adding seasons.

I guess the best way I can explain the attraction for me is the combination of having pets and a soap opera. Soap opera of pet people. Hey, some people have pets and like to bug them, I have virtual people. I make up stories to explain their actions as I guide them from day to day. I can't really use them as character from real stories because of the limited nature of them game.

And now, recently, Sims 3 University Life came out. I bought it because I loved playing the Sims 2 University when I had it, and because they finally have a dreadlocks hairstyle... tons of hairstyles in different versions of long and short and up and down and no dreads! Indecent, I tell you. Really, they don't have much in the way of curly hair either, now that I think about it.

So, I played Sims 3 University Life quite a bit over this last week. And it got kind of weird. I made Sims of me and David and sent them off to college. There are social groups, so I made David a Nerd and me a Rebel... I have dreadlocks and libertarian leanings, so it's possible! And then my Sim got a cool hacky sack. And was good at it. I want a hacky sack! So I got one. But I'm no good at it. I made my Sim major in Communications, like I did. But she needed a skill called Charisma for that, so I made her lots of friends. She knew people all over campus. Can't say I was much like that.

And then my Sim got out and got a job in Politics, like I sometimes dream of. The ability to change things, not the meetings. But in the Sims, you don't have to get elected, don't have to have a platform, and if your Charisma is high enough, you can convince most people to donate to your campaign fund. And it's not hard to get promoted. Like I said, no elections. You just go to work in a good enough mood and with good enough Charisma, and you'll get promoted eventually. My Sim is just shy of becoming Leader of the Free World. I've never aimed that high. Partially because I never want to be the president or leader of any world. But that wasn't my Sim's life ambition. She wanted to be a published author with 4,000 simolians a week in published income. She wrote books in her free time and achieved that.

And now me, sitting home playing the computer, feels rather bad. I want some of this life! I want politics and books and visiting cute little coffee shops and drink herbal tea and snowboard and hackysacking and whatever else. Convicting much. Yes, Sims is different than real life. I dismiss it often as "learning skills isn't like that!" but if I did repeat some skills, over and over, and ground things out in real life instead of dismissed them... maybe I could actually learn them.

It's downright embarrassing when your computer game character makes you feel bad about not doing anything.

Oh, and I want to make myself like tea. Cause it can be good for you. And warm. And it's still not coffee.

I'm fat and I don't like it.

I need to lose around 30 pounds. Well, alright, I NEED to lose a little over 15 pounds. The rest I just want to lose.

But to lose weight, I have to navigate the nasty world of diet and fitness. Why is it nasty? Because for all diet and fitness being scientific ideas, everybody and their dog seems to have come out with their own special promise-it-will-work, best-workout-or-diet-ever book. Kettleball is the best exercise! No, dance! No, Insanity is the thing that will save you! P90X! Try military diet! Try Metabolic Cooking! Just eat healthy and balanced (whatever that is)!

This is all too complicated for me. And it drives me nuts because I feel I cannot trust anybody. Exercise I can see being more forgiving. As long as you get moving and keep moving, you should be doing something. However, exercise is often marketed by itself. Flat Abs Fast says a magazine workout. Six weeks later, I may have abs, but they are still not flat. Exercise seems to need at least some sort of diet or something along with it to make it effective. So now I'm skeptical of every exercise claiming, well, anything. Oh yeah, I'll look ripped if I follow P90X for three months... and, lesser known, strictly follow their diet. That includes freaky food like Butternut Squash Soup.

Which leads me to my next pitfall. I hate diets. It's not just the giving things up, although I'm certainly no good at that. Diets are work. You have to cook different food, you have to figure out different food, and you have to shop for strange ingredients and figure out how it all goes together and "healthy" food often includes things like peppers and tomatoes. There's got to be a way to eat healthy without eating those kinds of things. And I tend to not like cooking either. Complicated recipes make me want to just toss the whole thing.

And working out is often incredibly boring. Or painful. Or both. I can start doing workouts, but my motivation wanes as I think of spending an hour doing something that is just no fun. I actually made it through two weeks of P90X on my own mostly by guilt tripping myself and telling myself that an hour really isn't that long. It's not. But it's still boring. Do I want to graft something boring onto my schedule forever, or should I just go find something that isn't boring?

Exercise with a purpose... beyond my often-unrealized dreams of having killer abs... is one of the only things that makes exercise seem attractive. Doing random exercises is boring... punching a punching bag... now that's fun. Martial Arts are fun. Dancing is fun.

But then I come back to an earlier problem. Will any of these things actually get me in shape? Do boxers do normal workouts to get them ready for boxing? I know if I actually ever wanted to box, I'd have to run. Boxing requires serious stamina and I have none. Dancing is fun, yes, but is it enough work to burn calories? Same thing with Martial Arts.

Bleh, all this makes my brain hurt. I want someone to tell me what to do and when to do it! I had a personal fitness trainer for like two sessions once. First session was ok. He made me do more things than I thought I could do simply by saying "one more" enough times that I questioned his definition of "one." It's harder to give up when they are sitting there watching you, unlike DVD workouts. Second workout was with boxing gloves... and it was epic. And destroyed my muscles. I wish I could afford a personal trainer or someone who could just tell me what to do and I would somehow be able to trust that they knew what they were talking about.

Maybe I should work on not being a cynic first.