Hapless Fruit

News! There’s news! Season 3 of Roadtrip ZPocalypse Road–is now up for preorder. (Yes, there will be a paperback version, too.) Also, I hived off my editing, cover copy, and formatting services to a separate site. 1

I’m kind of waiting for that email address to start receiving the email equivalent of cold calls. There’s been a rash of them lately, people wanting me to stick links to something or another in one of my blog posts. I’d almost be willing to do so if their content was reasonable…except for the informality of their address. I’m much more likely to consider a request kindly (or at all) if the stranger making the request doesn’t start their email with “Hey Lili!” Or “Hey Lillith”, or “Hi Lilly”, or some other version of the same. Strike one is acting like you know me; strikes two and three are misspelling my name. 2 Some days the offers on tap even amuse me, like the “anti-piracy service” that wants me to give them my phone number.

Mostly, it’s the hapless and transparent that amuse me. There’s a line between that and insulting my intelligence, and some days my drawing of the line is dependent upon my mood.

Consequently I’ve been having fun consigning things to my spam folders. True to form, I have a little song I often sing when I have the time and the inclination and a few things to heave into the spam pile. It’s basically just me repeating “You’re dead, you’re dead, you’re dead to me,” to the tune of whatever music I heard last. (It gets really fun when I’ve been on an opera jag.) Since today is apparently all about Depeche Mode, you can well imagine.

Yesterday I also wrote 7K of a weird steampunk-y romance, but I don’t think it’ll go anywhere. I feel so bloody liberated at not having to keep forcing myself to write the one book that was prompting heaving and all sorts of internal damage, I’m just slopping over with creativity. Unfortunately, today I have a million things to do that do not involve wordcount. In between the grocer’s, baking, and paperwork, I’ll have to steal away for a few forbidden sentences.

That’s the most satisfying kind of writing, and sometimes I think I fill most of the day with trivia in order to make the writing feel like stolen fruit. Other times, I’m sure that it’s the trivia that provides grist, or that I simply amuse myself until my most creative time–from about 3pm to 10pm–rolls around. Interestingly enough, 3-4pm is the doldrums, that time during which i am most likely to feel that my life has no meaning and I might as well walk off a cliff, so I begin writing to force away the urge to find one.3 When I’m allowed to pursue the schedule my body wants–rising about noon, at work between 1-2pm, a long walk/run in the evening, more work and going to bed between 3-5am) the doldrums don’t occur, but my internal clock is at variance with the rest of the world, including children’s school hours and the dogs’ stomachs.

Adapt and make do.

Anyway, this has taken an hour, since I am distracted with lists of things to do today and dogs who need petting and cooing such a good girl, such a best boy. The coffee has soaked in, and it’s time to embark upon Monday.

Over and out.

  1. Related: when your theme eats your services menu and you go looking for the .htaccess file and then figure out that the problem is your own fucking ignorance instead of anything wrong with the theme OR the damn WP install…yeah, like that. Web stuff gives me headaches.
  2. I really don’t mind if you mispronounce it in person, or if you’re a barista writing it down and misspelling, because hey, you’re doing the best you can. I do mind some asshole who doesn’t even take the time for reading comprehension misspelling my damn name.
  3. This is quite distinct from the 3am Whatifs, which is a function of insomniac anxiety and the fact that sleep, during my childhood, was a vulnerable time I hated.