... Lurks the black-hearted, alienated soul of a sixteen year old emo kid. This will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me. I spent a lot of time earlier this year dealing with my many and varied issues, but I realised recently I haven't actually overcome many of them. I'm still constantly punishing myself for what I "should" be doing but aren't. I'm still berating myself for not living up to other people's standards - standards, I should add, that I have created out of thin air and exist entirely in my own imagination. To some extent, I've managed to sap the joy out of the things I love by setting all these goals for myself and then failing to achieve them. Writing being the biggest one. Every time I open my laptop and try to work on something I get this huge sense of "why bother?" and pack it in again.

Something has to give, and usually it's me. I'm determined that this time it won't be. I had planned to spend the Christmas holidays finishing the first draft of Death for the Born, but now I think I'm just going to do nothing instead. I mean, I'll still do stuff. I'm critiquing (and loving it, I might add,goth_huntress) and I'm not boycotting writing entirely, but I think I need to relax and stop beating myself up over how much I'm doing, and just write what I feel like. I'm going to read lots and recharge, and eat chocolate and generally loaf around my parents' house like a total slob. I'm going to get my hair dyed. I'm going to actually put into practice some of the stuff I learned this year and take some of the pressure off myself. I want to enjoy next year. I want to send a novel to my agent that she thinks will sell, and that means I need to be loving what I'm doing. At the moment it's just a chore and that's no way to go about anything.

Except chores, I suppose.

Anyway, I do solemnly swear this is my last emo, soul-wrenching, angst-ridden livejournal entry of 2008. In 2009 I'm going to be totally candyfloss.
 

If, like me, you're weirdly charmed by giant squid (and squid in general), then my blog is the place for you. Seriously! This guy was 9m long when he was originally caught! And isn't preserving him like this so much better than pickling him?

Oh, and my quest to be Macbeth took a blow last night when I went out for a three course dinner instead of writing. But I'm not giving up! Tonight will be different. I'm getting back to work on my NaNo project, and saving Wild redrafts for the weekend when I'll have an empty house and therefore nothing to distract me. In theory.

Okay, enough moping, you guys. I've got a short story out today at Dark Fire Fiction - the feature story, no less. I heartily recommend you go check it out.

I'm putting Dark Eden on hold indefinitely to work on redrafting Wild. Deep down, I really believe I can make Lizzie's story a killer one and so everything else is taking a backseat while I look at the plot and get it up to scratch. I suspect one day I'll go back to Dark Eden, but as part of my new resolution to simplify my life, I'm focusing on one thing at a time for now.

Anyway, why are you still here? Dark Fire Fiction!

So I'm seriously stalling on Dark Eden. I don't know why; I love this story, I love the world, I love the thought of writing it all. But I can't get myself to get back into it, having written the prologue. I think it's partially that I have so many other ideas swirling around my head right now: my focus is shot to pieces. I know from experience I can't really work on two books at once, so I'm trying to ignore the desire to start all these other books in a mad flurry of info-dumping, but it's hard. Partially it's because I'm waiting to hear from Ricia about Wild and I'm really worried she'll tell me it's shite.

I have to keep reminding myself of all the awesome things Dark Eden has for me to play with: zombies, schizophrenic demons, mutilated angels, depressed nephilim and megalomaniac kings of hell... etc... Why am I not writing more?!

Also, I saw Cloverfield last night - awesome film, but scary. Pip and I practised our bloodcurdling screams on the way home in case a monster attacked Cambridge. I don't think one will, since Cambridge has no major landmarks that might attract such a monster. Also also, we saw a trailer for the new Hellboy film and ... OMG, was that Cthulhu at the end? Seriously? It looked like Cthulhu. *has fangirly fantasies about the Cloverfield monster and Cthulhu battling it out for world domination.

(From King Missile's album "Failure.")

So, I haven't quite made the target for NaNo. I was close - oh so close - but I've just too many other things going on to dedicate all the time it needed. My personal life has been a mess for the past few months and it's taken me way too long to make the decisions necessary to sort it out. But now I have, even if one of those decisions was to go back on antidepressants. I'm confident it won't be for long this time, and even if I didn't get to 50k on Death for the Born, I've still got the first half of what I think is a pretty decent book.

And there's always next year! 

Anyway, enough of my moping, how did all the other NaNo-ers and Pico-ers out there do?

In the mean time, my interview with Midnight Times is tomorrow. I'm pretty excited! I feel like I'm actually making progress as a writer!