InsaneJournal

Rocking and Zombie-Killing

Text message conversation between me and Chris, Friday:

ME:  Would chopping up the bodies be too much?
CHRIS:  Not at all

I'm really glad I decided to buy On Writing, because today I got a big splotch of pizza grease on page 62. That stuff never comes out. Anyway, here are some more great tidbits that I've recently highlighted...

"..Writing poems (or stories, or essays) [has] as much in common with sweeping the floor as with mythy moments of revelation. There's a place in A Raisin in the Sun where a character cries out: 'I want to fly! I want to touch the sun!' to which his wife replies, 'First eat your eggs.'"

Woot! Juxtaposition! I love that.

"..Stopping a piece of work just because it's hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position."

Wow. If he says so. I often feel like I'm shovelling shit from a sitting position. Of course, when Stephen King shovels shit, it's made into a major motion picture. It's not quite the same with me.

When he said the second quote, he was talking about how he wrote three pages of Carrie and then threw it out. Then his wife took it out of the trash and read it and told him he should finish it. First of all, I HATE it when people do that. The D'Amico's have been doing that to me for years. When I was a teenager they used to come over my house and pull stuff out of my trash can all the time. Then one day I'd find some crappy poem I thought I'd gotten rid of framed and on display in their living room. Elena would be like, "Jenny! I found this in the trash! Why did you throw it out??" I'd be like, "Um.. because it's garbage?" They still have stuff like that lying around their house. Ugh.

Anyway, after Stephen King's wife pulled Carrie out of the trash and told him to finish it, he was like, "I don't know jack shit about high school girls," and she said she would help him with that. So I'm wondering why she didn't tell him that girls don't get their period when they're just standing in the shower, or when they're in any kind of water. What's the deal, Tabby? I guess they didn't want to sacrifice such a compelling image. I mean, all these years later, if you start shouting "Plug it up! Plug it up!" most people will know what you're talking about.

So, once I've got "Skin Deep" out of the way, I'm taking another stab at "Home by the Sea." I stopped writing it for the exact reasons King mentioned: It's hard, both emotionally and imaginatively. The emotional thing is a problem I usually have. I tend to write stuff that plays out like a movie, where you're watching everything happen, but you have little to no insight into the characters' personal feelings. There are two reasons for that: 1. I watch a lot of movies, but I don't read a lot of books. 2. I have no feelings. "Home by the Sea," has to involve a lot more emotion than I'm usually comfortable with. There's no way around it. I'm feeling nauseous just thinking about it. Hmm... Maybe I should throw it out and see if anyone scoops it out of the trash.

I spent this weekend rocking out and killing zombies. It was pretty cool. I'm thinking I might do a zombie story next, but I need some kind of unique angle besides the whole "zombie apocalypse" thing. I was reading about the history of zombies on wikipedia. The concept of zombies derives from an ancient voodoo belief that an evil sorcerer can resurrect the dead with no will of their own. Some people believe this affect is caused by powerful drugs, first making a person appear dead, then making them appear to have no will of their own. I don't know. Maybe I can do something with that, you know, take zombies back to their roots. Hmmm... Don't steal my idea! Copyright 2008 Jen Heller Meservey!

In other news, I found a gray hair in my bangs again. That's like the fifth one, but they keep showing up in the same spot, and they're pretty spaced out time wise, so I'm thinking it's just one that I keep pulling out and it keeps coming back. How peculiar. Either I'm going gray prematurely, or I have one freak strand of hair.

The bad news is, it's Monday. The good news is, I'm heading to my dermatologist's office this afternoon to see a new doctor... or, A doctor, I should say. Hopefully this one actually knows what she's doing. I'm ready to tell her all about how much the fake doctor sucks. I hope he gets more complaints and they fire him. He messed up my face. I'm going to have so many scars, they should give me a complimentary laser facial, just to make up for his incompetence. I mean, this is my face we're talking about here. It's not like he messed up my leg or something I can easily cover up. Grrr I'm so pissed at this guy. That's all in the past now, though.. the past six months. This summer I'm going to have clear skin, damnit.