Filipino Prison Thriller Remake

Next week, Tom and I are going on vacation. You have no idea how excited I am.

I think God wanted to hit Tom and I up with all sorts of crazy goodness right before the trip so we’d actually enjoy the time off, rather than stressing about a million and one different things while we were supposed to have a little fun.

Tom got a new job. Finally. This is a huge answer to prayer, as he no longer needs to commute daily to Buffalo, the armpit of America. It’s more money and where he works is right across the street from my parking garage. So guess who’s being chauffeured to work every morning? That’s right, ME!

Downside: Heavy Metal in the AM sucks.

Also, it’s not official yet but my boss is being promoted. Apparently the hold up on the announcement is that he’s on vacation this week, so it will be announced next week. I don’t want to say too much about this yet until it’s official — granted, only two people read my blog, but it’s the principle. Know what I mean?

The boss tells me that when he moves up, he’s taking me with him. So that’s a promotion for me — possibly. When I mentioned that we needed to discuss my work schedule for the upcoming school year, he cringed at me as if he wasn’t keen on the idea of me working a weird schedule in the new position. If he doesn’t want me to go to school this year, then I’m going to ask to stay in my current position.

The new position is more money, but I have to keep my eye on the prize: A degree. Granted, it will take me a million years to finish a degree, but I personally think that being able to pursue my other interests is more valuable. At least it is to me.

Speaking of pursuing other interests, I am still writing. My book got a little hiatus — yesterday was the first day I had pulled it out in almost three weeks. I’m not sure if I’m happy about that or not. It’s sad because I really want to work on it, but it’s also a good thing because I took some time off to step back and think about what I’ve written so far, and where I want to go with it. I’m on Chapter 13, which involves a lot of fighting. The evil necromancer (as if there is a good necromancer), Ilnoti, hires mercenaries to go after our antagonist, Daenath, who is the leader of the assassin guild, Du’bana Xirna. (Made up names for the win!) The mercenaries will be complete idiots and decide to attack the assassins in their complex, which, as you can already guess, is a stupid move on their part. It will still make for an interesting chapter, except that it involves more fighting.

I hate writing fight scenes. I might enjoy them, except that I start to feel really stressed out about writing them. What in the world do I possibly know about fight scenes other than movies and video games?

Not much.

So, I stress about them. I stare at the page and maybe in an hour I can eek out a sentence or three, one of which I delete because I think it sounds stupid. That sucks when I’ve only written one sentence, because then I’m left with nothing. Then again, I’m writing fantasy. It’s not like I need to research actual military intelligence: the characters are fighting with swords and magic and some weird creatures that I made up in my head. Still, no matter how many times I tell myself this, it is still a huge cause for stress. I want my writing to be good and I don’t want the fighting scenes to come out sounding stupidly. And I think they do. =/ Meh.

Work on the LoO story continues! Last week was pretty busy in the office — actually, I was just torturing myself over the fight scene that I was writing for it. Three sentences in one hour sounds really bad, but for me it’s actually really good. Actually we’ll have to say it was only two sentences, since one of them was: “He ducked.” Not exactly a brain buster to get that one down on paper. Still, I cranked it out with no planning whatsoever. Whatever came to my mind at the time was what I put on paper. There are now two chapters in the story that do not go together at all, and I’m not sure how I’m going to get the two to meet.

I’m sure I will think of something.

The chapter ended up a little long, and towards the end I was just rushing to get it out since I had somewhere to be and I wanted it posted by the end of the day, which means no proofreading. The next morning I read it over and kept cringing as I finally read it through. Oh well, it’s supposed to make me a better writer, right? /cringe

At least I’m having fun with it. This week I will probably write two chapters so I can post something for this week and another for next week when I’m on vacation. My boss is out this entire week on vacation (as I said earlier) so I’m hoping to have plenty of time to write.

For some reason I really hate posting these “how I am doing” updates. First of all, everyone who reads my blog talks to me all the time and already knows how I am doing. Secondly, I have a really hard time reading other people’s “how I am doing” posts, unless I have a vested interest in said person, so why pretend that anyone else is interested in reading it? Why “My Space” is so popular, I have no idea. The thought of scouring through one hundred posts about people’s cats and their favorite movies and their thoughts on Paris Hilton does not thrill me in the slightest, so I can’t understand why it would rock the socks off of anyone else. Maybe it’s just me.

As the title says, things are going really well. Tom’s going to be training in Atlanta next week and on July 30 we are taking a vacation to Ocean City, MD. This will be our first real vacation since we were married nearly three years ago. There will be a beach and water and Starbucks. I have already purchased new beach clothes and bikinis, and our hotel reservation has been made - somewhere swanky on the beach with a view. He spoils me. So now Tom has to take me on vacation, no take backs. Of course he could cancel it pending some emergency, but he will probably sustain injuries in the process.

Now that July has rolled around and is cruising by a bit faster than I had expected it to, I need to start thinking about school. This fall, I must start taking the architecture drafting and perspective classes. My biggest concern is that it will not fit in to my work schedule. Last year my class was an hour and a half long, this year it’s an hour long with a two hour lab. Bleh. Soon I will hit my boss up with my proposed work schedule for the fall:

Option #1: The class I need to take is being offered Monday and Wednesday from 9:00 - 11:50, so Monday and Wednesday, work half days. Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, work longer hours so I can at least keep a 35 hour work week. This will allow me to keep my medical and dental benefits, which are paid for by my company.

Option #2: The class is also being offered one day a week as an all-day Friday. My option would be to work extended hours Monday through Thursday and take Fridays off.

Option #3: No school for you. Work 40 hours a week and like it.

I’d love to go with Option #2 because it would give me a full week to work on homework, rather than Option #1 where I’d have to scramble to get Monday homework done in time for the Wednesday class, but we’ll see. Needless to say my least desired option is #3.

Writing! I’m still writing, but I’ve stopped concentrating so much on my fantasy novel and I’m trying to branch out. The LoO webpage is getting some attention again and that makes me very happy simply because it makes my friends happy. Anything random (like my “24″ episode) will go here.

This fall, I plan on taking my first web class for creative writing (English 200). We’ll see how it goes, but for now I am very excited. In the meantime, I’ve been reading a lot about how to write and what makes a person a better writer. One bit of advice that I keep coming across is that if you really want to be a better writer, you should write every day. Some say to write 500 words a day - I read from one person that you should write 5000.

The person who says to write 5000 words is on crack.

I’m never going to be able to crank out 5000 words a day, so that quack can forget it. I can’t even do it if I spend one entire Saturday sitting in the same chair with my laptop, doing nothing other than write. Sometimes, writing 100 words can be a challenge. What I can do is go for the 500. That is much more feasible as long as I can write something that doesn’t stress me out and make me think so hard and obsess over the words.

Let me explain. My book stresses me out. Sometimes I worry so much that what I’m writing is crap that the words don’t come, even if the idea is so clear in my mind, so tangible that I know if I just forced myself to start typing I could do it. But no. What I needed was something that I’m not too invested in. Something slapstick. Something that I don’t obsess over.

For a while, I considered writing an ongoing story that involved the friends I play online games with, and I thought for a long time about what a plot might be. Nothing came to mind. Finally, Tom said it was obvious: Pirates. Yeah, the guy’s a genius.

I’m going at this with the same style as the tv dramas “Lost” and “24″ — apparently the writers don’t plan anything out long term. The writers sit down and start writing and whatever happens is what happens. That’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to sit down and start writing stuff, and whatever happens is what happens. No obsessing, no worrying, just writing. Of course I will probably end up with the plot holes and inconsistencies of Star Wars, but who cares? Yesterday was my first attempt and surprisingly enough I ended up with a little over 700 words after about an hour’s worth of work — while I was at work! I can only imagine what I could come up with if I sat down at home to write it. Hopefully some improvement will be made along the way.

Today’s word count: 992!