McD reflections

Making it through this week is a bit of an accomplishment, since there's still a fair amount of modeling clay in my respiratory system. Sometimes I would exercise my child like fascination, looking at my expectorate and marvelling at its structural integrity, wondering to myself how something like that managed to come out of me. I've also been avoiding speaking in general, everytime I try to utter something resembling a sentence, my throat would itch and I'd end up coughing. I imagine most people do not find coughing appealing, especially since the flu scare has probably got everyone ingesting Purell just to keep themselves sterilized. So I just figured I wouldn't talk much, so that I couldn't cough. Somehow being anti-social sat better with me than being diseased.

So my National Novel Writing Month has bombed so far, kicking off with a week long flu and then just wallowing in general fatigue. I've been going to bed so early this week that I've qualified myself for dreams again. Usually my brain doesn't get to go into REM state, it just naps before it snaps to conciousness again like an angry bulldog, looking for something to do for the whole day.

After some thought today, I'm thinking of switching my novel to a play format, because I've been having a little trouble making my book effortlessly funny. Also, I think it'll work slightly better as a play anyway, since novel writing isn't my strength. We shall see, since we are talking about rewriting a whole two pages or something. Bah. What a terrible writing schedule. I used to write so easily and now it's a chore and an experiment on my ability to doubt myself.

Have a few hours of work tomorrow, going to a training class that someone enrolled me into. Not quite sure who decided that I should take a class called "Value stream mapping", even joked to my supe that maybe they needed a gnome to fetch coffee so they decided to sign me up. But glasses have to be half full for me, I have to look at it as an opportunity of sorts. I'm sure having taken this class is sure to bump me up somehow.

Been listening to the Creative Screenwriting podcast and it's just amazing. Listening to their work process and knowing that it's a lot of writing and rewriting, a lot of patience, and a while lotta luck that gets people where they are. But it's just work. Breaking down the story to see what works and what doesn't, and tearing away scenes that you love because they simply don't serve the story. Probably the best ones so far are from the writers of Watchmen and Walle. These guys have spent years and years, rewriting and writing. It's just humbling to know that they have to work as hard as anyone else to make the story work.

Well, fatigue and the antics of the McDonalds playground are distracting me, so that's it for me. I've counted five kids crying so far. It's like a brutal gladiatorial ring of sticky-fingered midgets trying to trounce each other.