dum de de dum dum

well, it's happening already. barely eight pages and three character sketches long, and already i am starting to do with my current 'book' project what i have done with every other intended book in the history of me -- thinking that the idea is crap, that it's so been done before, and that i am a stupid fuck for believing i could ever write something interesting, creative or good enough to be self-published, much less paid for by a publisher. sucks, sucks, sucks. this after a blitz where i wrote pages and pages without even having to stop and think about them, this after a moment of i-can-totally-do-this certainty. ah, what a difference a sleep makes. don't really know what to do here -- even though i definitely write for pleasure and escapism (notice i don't write for literary value -- i have no literary delusions of grandeur -- i just want to write fun, entertaining pulp fiction, i want to write the kind of books that i have read and loved and consumed like crack for my entire life) i am also writing because i want to make a living as a writer. shudder. that is just ever so slightly less trite and overdone than wanting to make a living as an actor (no offense meant to any starving and aspiring actors out there). but how can i make a living as a writer if i suck so much at it?!?!?

perhaps these were the thoughts going through harvard chick's head when she rationalized plagarizing like FIFTEEN PEOPLE. (yes, i am still stuck on her.... fuck you for judging me.) my great friend jenny, knowing how interested i have been in the subject, kindly fowarded me two recent (as in published yesterday or today) articles cataloguing the catastrophic plunge of harvard chick into infamy. the first one is a quote from salmon rushdie (just one of the virtual football team of authors she is accused of copying from) talking about what a shame it is that she would do something like this and jeopardize a writing career this early in her life. the other is from the harvard crimson, the paper that originally outed her, and it refers to further possible incidents of copying from such well-known authors as sophie kinsella (the shopaholic series). holy moly cow. and you want to know how she defends herself? she says (hold on, i'm laughing too hard to type now) she has a photographic memory, and she internalized these passages without realizing it. hah! my above-mentioned friend jenny could be said to have, if not a photographic memory, nearly so, and let me tell you -- she can remember a lot of shit, AND she remembers that she READ it. she doesn't think she came up with, for example, durkhiem's theory on tribal spiritualities. again, i am amazed that a girl who could get into harvard could be dumb enough to come up with these weak defenses. i guess she can't just come out and say she did it on purpose, and that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and all that for legal liability reasons. but i would certainly respect her a lot more if she did. i mean... let's see. unintentional, almost word for word copying. victimized and betrayed by her amazing photographic memory that's not quite photographic enough to remember the real authors' names....have mercy. gotta roll my eyes here. a lot. again.

alright, enough of that shit. when i don't have the dumbest harvard chick ever to occupy my thoughts, they return to the endangered future of my book. i feel like a schizophrenic manic depressive (please, no comments here about my callous use of the schizophrenic and manic depressive conditions -- my mother has suffered from the latter and my mother-in-law still suffers from the former, so, having lived with people who live with said conditions, i feel that i have earned the right to invoke said conditions in my blog... again, fuck you for judging me). i mean, one day it's like, i am going to be a writer. as in a W-R-I-T-E-R. and the next day, it's like, i am going to suck at everything until the day that i die, and i will probably suck at that too (how does one suck at dying? well, maybe they drown in a hundred pounds of elephant crap or maybe they die of auto-erotic asphyxiation or maybe they use too much easy off and then stick their head in an oven.) at this point, you can probably read a sense of panic in my words. panic is exactly what i am feeling. which is weird, cause while my prevailing emotion is usually annoyance, it isn't panicky annoyance. i guess this is what happens when you want something really really badly. or when you love something. i have this same panicky feeling but worse when i remember that chris is mortal and that i am so ridiculously imperfect and one day something might happen that removes him from my life. okay, i am glad that i got that out of my system. i think thinking about something (someone, i guess) really and truly important, no, essential, to my existence has put the book into some perspective. i'll either work on it, or i won't. i'll either finish it, or i won't. and just because i don't finish this one doesn't mean i won't start and finish another. but jeez, i hope this is the one. cause i don't have any more ideas. heh.