annafdd

I'm too tired for much, including updating LJ.

My day: woke up at 10 am after sleeping since 11 pm. Read email. At 11 am felt irresistible need to go back to sleep.

I decided that enough was enough and called the Mental Health Center and asked to see the shift doctor.

The doctor was a very young and gentler version of China Mieville and listened me with lots of sympathy. He admitted that it was possible that the lethargy was a result of the antidepressant, and told me that there are three possible course of action - getting off the drug, reducing it, and changing the time I assume it. The first two things, unfortunately, are not his to decide, since I'm not his patient.

So we decided that I will take the pill in the morning and see. If nothing happens, by God I'm reducing the dosage myself.

So I went home, noticing some really really cool chalk grafitti on dark tarmac that look like a great photo. Ate, and then lay down a little. That was about 13.30. I woke up at 17. pm.

F**** it.

I have produced my first microapplication, a MacOSX Dashboard widget. It's wee, it's simple, it doesn't even flip, and I copied most of it off another widget, but hey, it works. It simply takes in the name of a city in Italy and brings you to a web page with the movies showing there.

I am incredibly proud of myself. It's silly but hey, it's a first step.

The only thing that really stumped me is the icons. Apple gives you a generic empty icon but I found modifying it with Photoshop really hard. I'm sure there is a better resource somewhere.

Not so hot a day today. Could basically not sleep last night - I had maybe a couple of hours in all of fitful napping in front of the TV. At seven I gave up, got up, washed and went to work. Managed to revise about fifteen pages - not much but reasonable - before totally crashing.

I came back home feeling achey and tired, went to sleep, woke up at seven but was too sick with migraine to be able to cook. I had some milk and corn flakes and some coffee. This, of course, is not helping my migraine any. One of the things they recommend you to avoid migraine is to keep a regular schedule, get plenty of sleep and don't skip meals. Right.

All in all, I'm in good spirits but so, so fed up with being sick.

I saved a lizard yesterday by picking it up under Zip's nose and depositing it outside. Zip was very disappointed. And last night I saw the hedgehog again - 3.15 am seems to be his moment for shuffling around in my garden. I noticed him, he noticed me, he turned and did his rock impersonation. I wasn't fooled but he persisted. The cat noticed him, went to investigate, stopped prudently away and then came back. I shut off the light and left him to uncurl and go about his business in peace. He's been using my waterproof box though - the cardboard inside is all scratched.

I keep reading truly depressing stuff about katrina. I should be in a state of outrage fatigue right now but I'm not, I am just sickened and enraged and maddened by it. Everything is so, so wrong.

When I went to see my psychiatrist yesterday I didn't tell him about this strange feeling of disconnect I feel - working by night, basically on some other time zone, listening to the CNN and reading compulsively about the politics of other countries. I feel so out of place here. I go around and look at my city and feel a kind of preventive longing, I think of all the things I will be missing (but missing gladly) if I do manage to go away.

I wonder why at one point I started feeling I was in the wrong country. I know when it happened - during my second visit in the UK, when I was about fourteen - but I don't know why. I remember the happiness, the sense of rightness, of being in my place, of being at home - but I search and search and I don't come up with a reason why. Was it because I read too much English fiction at an impressionable age? Was it all that Tolkien and Watership Down and Douglas Adams? Was it that hanging on in quiet desperation was so much my place, and so far from the boisterous loudness of the Italian soul? Was it because English was the one thing I was really good at - was it because it's so much a writer's language? Was it the music? Did I spent too much time brooding to the tunes of the Pink Floyds and the Who?

No word from London yet.

I have now started to worry about my next job. I can find a book that will sit a lot better with me than the last, but my usual contact at the other publisher vanished and I'm not sure these guys have another job for me.

Ok, despite the lack of laptop and the migraine I have managed to hack out a thousand words or so of the endlessly rewritten novel. They're not particularly good, but hey.

Getting them out of the good old Wintel laptop and into the iMac has been a pain, including a panicked search for the Ethernet adaptor, but in the end, success.

Finished the book! Yippiee! yay!

Now, tomorrow I'll take the draft file to the publisher, just in case, and Monday morning I'll start the revision. I think I'll revise at the publisher, which means that I've got the weekend to get my circadian rhythm in some sort of order.

Ahhh.

I have finally managed to switch off the TV. I haven't started working yet. I am so sick with fury and disgust that I can't concentrate.

If you haven't happened on this link yet, here's the account of the - there's no other word for it - internment camp in Oklahoma. Bear in mind as you read this stuff that the people about to be taken in this camp are people that were, until last week, free adult citizens with jobs, family, pets, tvs, lives of their own.

A long time ago I put down Downbelow Station because I could not bear any longer the anguish of reading about Q-deck.

I tried telling me that I shouldn't be so angry, so shaking with fury, because it's not even my country, but it won't wash. Some things go beyond national borders and make you feel dirty just because you're a human being.

I must switch the damn tv off and stop reading the blogs. I did absolutely nothing tonight. Not one page. Damn.

Going to bed now. Tomorrow is another day.

Nothing done tonight. I had a nice feeling of accomplishment yesterday because I managed ten pages, but it's almost 7 am now and more important, I feel tired. I spent the night watching the news and telling myself I should work.

I managed to make myself a cup of coffee so vile I had to literally wash my mouth out. I'm still wondering what went wrong. I think morgan_x is right and I put too much grounds in it.

I can't stand this job any longer. I can't function. One day I manage my ten pages, the next it's nothing. I really hope I get the job in London because I do need to get out of this.

Well, after a long hiatus, I seem to be working again. Nothing yesterday, six pages the day before, ten pages tonight. Sixty pages to go, it'll be over in six days if I can keep it up.

It's raining heavily and I have prepared a little box wrapped tightly in plastic with packing tape for the hedgehog, but he hasn't got into it. The box is in the only marginally dry place, that is, in front of the garden door, so maybe he feels too exposed there. Or maybe he's holed up somewhere a bit drier. Oh well, he's a wild animal and it's not so cold anyway, he can weather a bit of summer rain I guess. I wish I had a better refuge to offer him. (Or her: I don't expect to be able to tell its gender any time soon.)

The cat also was out in the rain, ran in when I called her, let herself be towelled dry purring loudly and leaving wet paw prints all over my white duvet, and has been sleeping on my blue blanket with a paw over her eyes ever since.

Well, I finally managed to work. Ten pages no less. It wasn't even difficult.

The snag? It's six o' clock in the morning and I've just finished.

I don't know if my body wants me to work at night or if it just wants me to suffer for twelve hours before I can get into gear. God knows. But I am sure of one thing: living at night is not easy in this country. I have to buy stuff tomorrow (Coffee. Not to self: COFFEE! COFFEE! This is the third time you forget. COFFEE!) and this means that I have to be awake some time during the day.

Groan.

Still in hiatus, but I've been waiting for this:

Well, the short movie I helped (a little) shoot ended up among the ten finalists, and it's finally up for streaming and downloading!

direct link - careful, it's 63 MB
http://www.insomniacfilmchallenge.com/ifcvids/IFCcinemessiah.wmv

The page with all the finalists:
http://www.insomniacfilmchallenge.com/video.htm

No paid work today, but 1213 new words on the suicide story. That's ok I guess. Actually, I think I'll try my best to finish this story tomorrow so that I don't have to sacrifice it to translation.

Paid work: five pages. Not bad, all considering.

New words on the suicide story: a whopping 1045. Go me.

Translation: sigh. Three paragraphs. That's right. I do not feel happy about how this is going at all. It's true that this book doesn't sit really right with me. I liked it when I first started it, I was very excited, but it goes on in fits and starts and the descriptions, which were vivid and complex and memorable at the beginning, have begun to feel limp and, well, boring. Still, I've translated a lot of crap very quickly. Tomorrow I'll have to do better.

Movies seen: War of the Worlds. I thought it was pretty cool, although the whole Tim Robbins episode dragged a lot, and the thing with the blood was unnecessary and not icky as it wanted to be. I was perplexed by the lack of credit to George Pal, to whom some pretty obvious homages are paid. Also I would have enjoyed this movie a lot more if the central character of the father who's a hopeless jerk but in the end likeable was played by somebody I could actually like.

I do not feel the need to cover my eyes during scary bits at the cinema any longer. This means I guess that I'm really a grown-up.

Well, I didn't manage to revise my story yesterday and it doesn't look like I'll do it today either because the plan is to go see War of the Worlds with Andrea, but what happened - and it's a very rare occasion for me - is that I had a story idea yesterday night while I was winding out to sleep. it's a nice jolly tale about suicide. No, really. I'm afraid it's also a nice quiet mood piece about dying, with a happy ending.

People tell me that they have lots and lots of ideas all the time. It's not like that for me. I'd suspect it's because we mean different things with "ideas", but that only goes some way I think. Jay Lake's advice is to write a story each week, and it would be wonderful advice if only I could follow it. He obviously can, so he does seem to have story ideas galore.

Me, I burned up lots of story ideas stashed away over the years at Clarion, which was why I could sustain a good productivity. Since then, I've had only few ideas, and I think only one didn't go anywhere (that was the human sacrifice idea: I'm still toying with it but I fear it's dead).

I can actually count them: the communication with the aliens or twins story, the two lonely women one of which is a ghost story, the human sacrifice story, the immortality through killing children story (currently being written: idea dates back to early June), and now the suicide as a positive thing story.

So a story idea is definite cause for celebration. Better yet, this story was born in quite a lot of detail, with full story arc and theme and secondary characters, including the geriatric cat.

So - what is it that I do call an idea, and how does it get born? I'm not really sure. I think among the random juxtaposition that go bump in my head without me knowing, some create a spark. For example hearing a friend say that he'd be willing to kill a child if it meant living forever didn't spark a story but thinking of a lonely woman dumped in an airport by an insensitive lover coming to realize that there is a disquieting dark side to a culture she loved, colliding with the child-killing immortality thing, did.

I think that was why the cenote story never took off: I have one pole, the human sacrifice, but I lake the corresponding pole to create the spark. Maybe one day it will come around, but I doubt it.

I wish the Very Fast Picket Priapus could get off the ground. I'd love to write a humorous piece.

Now, if only I could WORK a little, I could then devote myself to writing matters. Grumps.

559 words, and finally, finally, something is bloody happening in this story.

Today has been a glorious day of achievement. I have:

Mowed the lawn. Thanks to the fact that Riccardo hacked the jungle that I had left to manageable proportions, it just took ten minutes with the lawnmower. Now it all looks nice, green and neat.

Calculated the money I owe to a friend, so that now as soon as I get paid I can pay her. I've been procastinating this the better part of a year and my guilt had reached cosmic proportions.

Managed ten pages of translations! It wasn't even impossibly painful. Now the trick is doing it every day...

I haven't written, but one thing at a time.