Well, I'm not going to win, that much is obvious. And at the moment my goal of, "If I just make it to halfway I'll be happy" is also about 5k words and 12 hours away from being a reality. I would love to say I am proud to just have written more words then ever before and gotten as far as I have in the story, but I am not. I wasted many, many days that could have been productive. Like today, for instance. I spent the morning playing Heroes trivia on Facebook. I could have written a grand or so in that time. Then there was that weekend early in the month where, instead of writing, I read Harry Potter books one, three and most of four. (who the heck did I lend book two to???) I may have written 4,000 words in one day last Monday but I haven't even tried to be productive since then.
On the up-side, I will say I really believe in my story. Every once in a while I write a passage that I think is pretty awesome. And a lot of my hesitation at the beginning was, as a good friend pointed out to me, because deep, deep down, I didn't think I could really do it. Now I know I can write 20,000 words, and even do one or more chapters in one day, and actually like what I wrote. That is a huge hurdle to get over, confidence-wise. Now I just have to tackle the Wall of Discipline. In an earlier post I mentioned the challenge I helped develop called R1. We have decided to do something different this upcoming January. We will have an "Add 25k Words to Your Novel Month". It can be something you've been working on for a while, or something you have just begun to think about. No rules, no restrictions, no cool web badges or counter widgets; just a bunch of people writing at the same time, checking in with each other and giving encouragement. Then comes NaNoEdMo.... but I'll worry about that another day.
Maybe, just for shits and giggles, I will try to make it to 25k by midnight tonight. If I make it, I buy myself the shirt. Because then, to me, I'll have earned it. Um... gotta go!
Witnesses said the surging throngs of shoppers knocked the man down. He fell and was stepped on. As he gasped for air, shoppers ran over and around him.
"He was bum-rushed by 200 people," said Jimmy Overby, 43, a co-worker. "They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down too...I literally had to fight people off my back."
Note: The picture is just random, not from the Wal-Mart story
When I was a kid, my brothers and I spent a lot of time unsupervised. It was the 70's, my mom was a single mom raising three kids, and also worked and went to school. Back then, "latch-key kids" were pretty much the norm. My older brother was a huge fan of scary movies. The gorier the better, at least to me it seemed. Because I idolized my big brother, and what girl didn't if she had one, I wanted to watch what he watched. By the time I was 13 I had seen Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, The Omen, Carrie, Alien and Jaws. A couple of them in the movie theater. My little brother was six when Jaws came out, and I know we all saw that in the theater because afterwards he was too scared to take a bath for a year because he thought a shark would come out of the drain and eat him. In addition to watching scary movies, my older brother also read about them in fan magazines and books. He would show me pictures of how the special effects were done, and when we watched the movies on TV he could point out the obvious fake heads and rubber knives to me until the scary movies had little-to-no effect on me. It took a lot to scare me when I was a tweener. And I was pretty darn proud of that. When I was 16 and at an all-girls boarding school (which sounds a little like it could be the opening to a slasher flick script in and of itself) we had a Halloween night scary movie marathon. As the girls around me screamed and hid their eyes from the creepy killer chasing kids around in Halloween -- probably, I don't really remember what it was -- I sat and pointed, saying things like, "that's not even a realistic blood spurt, and look, I can see the 'dead' guy breathing. Sheesh." I probably ruined it for the others, but at the time I couldn't believe anyone could have been fooled by such schlock.
That doesn't mean I was never scared by a movie. There was one in particular. One movie gave me the heebie-jeebies more than anything ever has. It was the movie that made me lie in bed, wide-eyed with vivid images of dozens of tiny little hands coming out from under the bed to grab me and drag me under... to drag me away. I think I was around eight or nine. Definitely old enough to have had the mysteries of movie gore totally explained to me. This movie, however, had not blood, nor ginormous glinting weapons, nor masked menaces jumping from behind doors to fill the screen and startle me. This was a made-for-TV movie that was called Don't Be Afraid of the Dark. It is from 1973. It's about a couple, Sally and Alex Farnham, who inherit an old mansion from Sally's recently deceased grandmother. After moving in, she discovers a bricked-up fireplace in the basement den, and asks the estate's handyman, Mr. Harris to remove the bricks, and allow the fireplace to be used. He reluctantly does so. It turns out some bad little critters come out of that fireplace once it is opened up, and they want the "spirit" of Sally for themselves. The embedded video below is the last eight minutes of the movie, and this is the part that set off a long stint of my life where I made sure every spare item of clothing, and/or all toys that could be spared were shoved into every square inch of space under my bed. I figured, if all that stuff was under there, then the little demons couldn't possibly fit. But just to make sure, I also kept my sheets tucked into the bed so they couldn't get to my feet. I'm not kidding. I still kind of do that last one. At this point in the movie, the little demons have spiked Sally's drink with sleeping pills, cut off the electricity and locked her friend out of the house. Her husband had been over at the handyman's house when Sally called and was abruptly cut off. This clip starts off during the frantic car ride home where we learn why the fireplace was bricked up in the first place. (And yes, the handyman is Uncle Charley from My Three Sons.) Don't be surprised if you sleep smack in the middle of your bed tonight. With the lights on.
ETA: I found out while looking for the clip that Guillermo Del Toro is remaking this movie but it doesn't mention a release date.
Well, I'm not going to win, that much is obvious. And at the moment my goal of, "If I just make it to halfway I'll be happy" is also about 5k words and 12 hours away from being a reality. I would love to say I am proud to just have written more words then ever before and gotten as far as I have in the story, but I am not. I wasted many, many days that could have been productive. Like today, for instance. I spent the morning playing Heroes trivia on Facebook. I could have written a grand or so in that time. Then there was that weekend early in the month where, instead of writing, I read Harry Potter books one, three and most of four. (who the heck did I lend book two to???) I may have written 4,000 words in one day last Monday but I haven't even tried to be productive since then.
