The Word Cloud

Now no one said it was going to be easy. In fact, riiiight from the start I've been told that writing a story and all the trimmings that come with it, will be bloody difficult. So three and a half years ago when I began battering away at my imagination and my computer I was in a lovely naiive place, where all that mattered was having fun and enjoying what I do.

But now.

Now I am actually, maybe, possibly, absolutely, perhaps considering (after more editing and help ofc,) that I might send it off. So I start looking through different parts of this website other than the critique section and start reading the W&AYB 2011 - and then I nearly had a coronary.

I am not naiive (much) and am fully aware it is an agonising, rejected, painful, impatient process, but on top of that, I don't even understand it! I'm not one for sending unsolicited MS' because frankly, I don't see the point in this day and age, but at the same time, an agent?! Me?! You must be joaaaaking.

So ontop of the disbelief that I should be considering contacting agents, I also got lost at the parts where the W&AYB talked about "soundbytes" and "synopses" and "CV's" and "SAE's" - bloody hell!
You simply have to get this process right the first time round, or else risk being doomed to float in publishing purgatory for eternity.


Eek, I'm going to become a Koi Carp keeper.

Seriously.

I just got thinking, about writing and the like and how difficult it is. Everyone knows writing is impressive, finishing your work is even more impressive and getting it published, even more so.

However, although I respect (some of them) I would like to ignore all the bigwigs who are currently selling their ten millionth book and got published by sheer luck. All the people whose books actually suck but still somehow they got published.

I would like to honour you.

You are the people who slave away endlessly inside your own minds, being beaten up by your imagination and cursing yourself for not "getting that once scene just right."

You are the ones who sit for hours at your computer screen, writing a line and then re-writing it, then deleting it completely and then undoing the delete because it actually wasn't that bad.

You write in the strangest of places and get teased by friends and family who simply cannot understand the love and passion that is trying to eat it's way out of your soul. You put up with "oh have you not sent it off yet?" - NO I have bloody not. In fact you stupid ignorant person, I haven't finished it yet.

You try to curb the pain of rejection and the dreaded writer's block by drinking copious amounts of alcomohol and then eating all the biscuits in the cupboard - the only problem is, to everyone else you have no "real" reason to do that, or to feel like that.

So I salute you. Because although it's a passion and a love and blah blah blah, at the end of the day it is still bloody difficult. So good on you, as Winston Churchill said in an episode of Dr Who: Keep Buggering On.


Here, have a funny picture of a duck:

I actually drank, I took a sip of that elusive sensation letting myself fall into a realm of experience I've skipped over. The feeling of being drunk is quite a interesting one, I felt dizzy, my vision blurred, my balance drifted away into another world and my mind became less fluid--but against that I kept walking, everything I drank failed to dent me into some kind of Fooly Cooly submission. I didn't let it take away my control, I drank a whole glass of vodka--to the surprise of many--without feeling my body responding to the odd liquer.

I had a drink simply called the "Terminator", my sister and her boyfriend (they took me out to drink) said it would get me in twenty minutes at the pace I drank (half a glass within a minutes) and somehow, it didn't get me in the two hours until I was watching the news. My mind--even intoxicated--could take it without question, I watched the news drunk and got it. And even when I had two glasses of vodka--each one gone within a minutes to surprise of many at the rate I could drink--I could feel the sensation of it trying to get me, but I still watched the news on The Sun supporting the fucking Conservitives, I got it.

People were quite surprised at me taking achohol without a problem--for my first time--from some assuming I'd be a angry drunk. Quite the opposite. I was enjoying myself and completely overjoyed in the experience being quite easy to take--completely different from what I expected and quite nice I can choose when I experience being drunk. I like the feeling, but I prefer to feel it a month at a time--nothing more or less.