This mind can't contain all these words
Between Harry and me, we only got a handful of pictures to share. I’ll be honest, I didn’t whip out my phone until the end of the night and the three pictures I managed to capture reflect that.
Honestly, I need a professional photographer to accompany me to these sorts of things because I am terrible.
Also, it’s easy to tell the difference between Harry’s pictures and mine. Harry’s are the good ones. I also thanked him in every caption.
Most of my short stories take place in fictional places that only exist in my head. Some people notice that some of the small towns in my stories bear a striking resemblance to the small town I live in.
It’s true. I think my hometown is a great place to set a story. It’s got character and charm and personality. It looks sweet and innocent with a lurking darkside that just catches your eyes at the very edge of your line of sight. There are a lot of times that when I’m coming up with a story, a section of my small town pops right in there as the perfect place to set it.
The benefit of writing about a completely fictional place or one that I know very well is that I do know them so well. No one can tell me that I’m wrong. I don’t have to worry about people correcting me because I’ve either made everything up or I know everything so well. The details have to be good, of course, but I don’t have to worry about yanking people out of the story because I got something wrong.
Two of my novels are set in Chicago. Now, I spent a lot of time in the south suburbs about 10 years ago and I’ve been to Chicago several times, but I don’t KNOW Chicago. I don’t know the streets and the businesses and the people and the flow as well as I know my little town in the middle of nowhere. I can look on the map (and I’ve used Google maps A LOT) to get an idea of where things are so I can be technically correct about certain details and so I have an idea of where I’m at…literally…in a story.
But when it comes to the feel of a city, I have to actually walk the streets. I’ll have to experience the EL and the neighborhoods and the traffic for myself. As much as I’d like to gloss over these things, it’s these kind of details that can make or break a story. I can’t call an EL stop part of the Red Line when it’s actually a Brown Line stop (I have no idea how accurate this example even is). A mistake like that can totally wreck a story for someone.
Place is important. Stories don’t happen in a vacuum (unless for those in which they do). It’s important to get those little details right.
I guess this means that I’ll be spending a lot of time in Chicago if I want to get these stories right.
You know what
? I don’t mind.
Hey, look! That’s me! I am that fat girl in the picture. When I usually post pictures on the Internet, it’s usually just a head shot because, come on, I have a gorgeous face. Upper body shots are usually designed to highlight the breasts because I paid for them and they look good in the right bra/shirt combo. I don’t try to hide the fact that I’m fat; I tell people that all the time. I just try to put up the most flattering picture I can because, hey, I’m just as narcissistic as the next person.
I know I’m fat. However, when I look in the mirror I don’t see the same fat girl everyone else sees. It’s like the opposite of those skinny girls that look in the mirror and see a bloated cow. I don’t necessarily see a super skinny chick, but I don’t see a girl as fat as I am. I see someone more voluptuous, with curves in all the right places and some of the wrong ones.
But I’m not out of touch with reality. I know that what I see and what other people see aren’t the same thing. At Casino Night last week, waiting for the elevator, I had two stereotypically beautiful women in evening wear give me a disgusted once over before turning away. I know what they were thinking. How dare a fat girl wear a short, tight, black dress?
Well, I dared and I looked good.
And that’s the thing, isn’t? I know what I think about myself, but I don’t let it cloud the reality of what society thinks about me.
I make jokes about myself. I make harsh, truthful statements about my weight, too, and it tends to upset the people who know me. That’s because they don’t see me as “fat” because “fat” is bad and they don’t think I’m bad. I’m Christin! I’m Kiki! I’m Chesh! I’m Skitz! I’m good, not bad!
Well, I am fat. It’s an accurate description of my physical state. And I get treated differently (often poorly) because of that physical trait.
Scroll back up and look at that picture. You see those hips? There’s actually not a whole lot of padding to them. I have naturally wide hips. And those shoulders? Not a lot of fat on those, either. I’m built to last, baby. The point I’m making is that I could improve the perceptions that people have about me by losing weight, except I’d never be able to lose enough. I’m not built to be a size zero. I’m not sure I’m even built to be a size 8. I could starve, exercise, nip, tuck, and suck myself as thin as possible and it still wouldn’t be enough to make me acceptable by society’s standards.
I’d also look really gross. I’d have to lose all of my body fat and most of my muscle mass to even get close and even then, my bone structure would render it all for naught.
For the most part, despite society’s best efforts to change my mind in various abusive ways, I’m good with the way I look. I can work with what I’ve got and come up with something pretty damn good looking. Do I want to lose weight? Yeah. I’ve got about 35 pounds I need to get rid of to get back down to where I was. But this weight loss is motivated by feeling better. The reduction of my ass size is just a bonus.
I’m a fat girl. I will never not be fat by society’s standards. Now you all can see exactly how I am fat. So when you read something I write and enjoy it, or retweet me on Twitter, or like a Facebook post, or buy something I’ve written or made, you’re enjoying and supporting a fat girl.
I hope you can handle that.
Wednesday night, by virtue of the fine people at Wrigleyville Magazine, I and my friend Harry attended The Dempster Family Foundation Casino Night. It’s a fundraiser to help raise money to help those with 22q disorder, a chromosomal disorder. It’s very classy, very expensive, and very fun.
The first hour was the VIP experience where we got to mingle with the players, past and present, and other athletes and local celebs. I admit that I did more people watching than mingling. I’m not a good mingler anyway, but put me in that situation and I was a little overwhelmed. It’s an interesting experience to be waiting in line at the bar with Bryan LaHair or have to scootch past Matt Garza or Dale Sveum to get somewhere. Just surreal. And a little intimidating when the players would group together for conversation. It’s daunting for a not good mingler to approach that.
We moved to the gaming room at 7 where the players and others worked the tables. There was also an auction, a silent auction, and a raffle. Since Harry and I knew we wouldn’t be able to participate in the big stuff (there were things that sold at the auction for 20 grand), we each bought mystery bags. We also got little goodie bags as we left the VIP room with a t-shirt and shot glass.
John Vincent and Crystal Bowersox both performed sets. I never head Crystal Bowersox before and I have to say, I quite enjoyed her.
Theo Epstein was a hit at the blackjack table as he would intentionally bust his hand at times by pulling a card, then throwing it away. Ian Stewart’s table seemed pretty popular, too. Harry and I played at a less popular table and our dealer, a lovely woman, was a tough one! But we still managed to leave the table winners, always managing to come back from the brink of bust.
We were two of the stragglers reluctant to clear out at the end of the night. I was pretty impressed with the guys that stayed the whole time. Chris Volstad, Paul Maholm, James Russell, Darwin Barney, Kerry Wood, even Theo Epstein were still around after the lights came on (obviously, Ryan Dempster was still around).
It was a great night for a great cause and I know I’m not doing it any justice (I’m writing this on four hours sleep and a three hour drive).
Just take my word for it. I’m thrilled to have experienced it.
I’ve spent the past couple of days breaking in a new pair of heels. I haven’t worn heels for quite a while. I’ve gained some weight and messed up my left knee since the last time I did. It’s taking some work to get used to them. If I’m going to be standing in them for several hours, comfort is important.
The same thing could be said for this new novel I’m writing. I’m taking this new approach of outlining a few chapters, writing them, then revising them. After doing it for several weeks (I started back in April), I can definitely say it’s taking some getting used to.
On the plus side, I’m able to go back and fix major story problems immediately. I don’t have to wait until I’m finished with the first draft and into revisions to fix something that’s nagging at me. For example, the first three chapters of this draft were terrible. They were a downright boring info dump. So before I went on, I had the opportunity to fix that and better mete out the information while keeping it all interesting. I don’t have that specter hanging over my head as I move on.
On the other hand, it’s definitely slow progress. If I were doing this in typical NaNoWriMo style, I’d either be done or at the very least, close to done by now. I’d have a shitty first draft as usual, but I would be done. And that shitty first draft would probably need a lot of work. As of right now, I haven’t gotten past the initial first story-fixing revision on any of my novel manuscripts.
So with this new approach, what I can guarantee that the draft I’m left with when I write the last sentence should be in better shape than a draft written the NaNo way. That’s the theory, anyway. It will still need revisions because what I write will always need revisions. But it shouldn’t need as much in the way of revisions. At the very least the story should be solid.
It’s too soon to tell if this will become my main way of writing novels. I doubt it. After all, I don’t plan on wearing my heels every day. But this will be a nice method to pull out in between NaNoWriMos when I’m feeling restless and tired of working on short stories and sick of working on novel revisions and I need to create something original or when I have an idea I just can’t shake.
For the those times when I need something a little different, I think this will work just fine.
So, I had a week of what some might consider bizarre luck. On Sunday, I found a dead body. That Friday, I won two tickets to The Dempster Family Foundation Casino Night, an event I’ve been wanting to go to since it started in 2010. Now, I’ll tell you this. I felt like the time between that Sunday and that Friday was weeks, possibly because these two things are like polar opposites of what you want from your day (unless, of course, you’re looking for a dead body and you can’t stand the Cubs and/or casinos, but let’s not go splitting the hairs of a bald man here and focus).
When I won the tickets I couldn’t believe my luck. I don’t have that kind of luck. No one would call me a lucky person (unless it comes to avoiding dying in fiery auto crashes and in that case, I’m really quite lucky). If there’s a group of people and something good could happen to one of them, I’m not that one. So my natural reaction is disbelief followed by thinking it’s either a dream, a delusion, a joke, or I’m misinterpreting something. After I won the tickets, I told Carrie that I hoped my luck would hold through Casino Night.
But that got me thinking…what does that even mean?
Someone once told me that luck is when preparation meets opportunity. I’ll buy that in terms of good luck. Too often I’m ready, but the opportunity doesn’t present itself. And then when it does present itself, I’m not ready. At least for me, these two points converge only rarely.
But if we go by this definition, then bad luck is either not being prepared or not having an opportunity. So me finding a dead body wasn’t bad luck, like some people said. It was just unfortunate. And therefore, winning the tickets wasn’t a turn around of luck that week. It was just a spot of good luck after an unfortunate incident.
I was presented with the opportunity and I was prepared to say yes (having a little black dress at the ready didn’t hurt).
So this leads me to think about the rest of my life. Preparation is important and I know that. I do try to be prepared. I fail at that a lot, but it’s not for lack of trying. I have very little control over opportunities presenting themselves. I try to make my own opportunities, but like being prepared, I tend to fail. It kills me when I get a shot at something I’m not ready for, particularly because I know it’s not going to come around again.
And so, I am unlucky. I tend to have bad luck.
But those spots of good luck, however rare they might be, keep me working to be prepared for opportunities. Some day, I will turn my luck around.
This month is all about novels.
Okay, that isn’t entirely true. In my quest for 50 rejections, I’ll continue to review, revise (if necessary), and submit my short stories. I’ll also do another round of revisions on “Gone Missing” to try to get it into publishable shape.
But my main creative focus is going to be on two of my novel manuscripts.
The first doesn’t have a title yet so I’ve just been calling it The Ivy Novel since the main character’s name is Ivy. I started working on the first draft last month, taking a different approach. I outlined the first five chapters, wrote the first four, then revised what I wrote. I’m going to do this leap frog method of writing for this draft just to see how it works out for me after doing so many first drafts in the NaNoWriMo style.
Not that I’ll ever stop doing NaNo. I’m addicted to that self-competition. And I like revising a crappy first draft into something better. It’s a winner all-around. But, I also think I should explore as many methods as possible. It’s all in the pursuit of getting better.
I also intend to revisit The World (Saving) Series. I do not deny that I hit a wall when it came to revisions because while I knew significant changes needed to be made and I had a good idea what they were, I also felt like the manuscript was lacking something. Between work on The Ivy Novel (which has a slight connection to Series) and the magic of me getting ideas in the shower, I think I found my gimmick for the book. I want to test it out on the first few chapters of the revised manuscript to see how it works.
I’m looking forward to working on these two projects. I need to stop avoiding the work it takes to produce a good novel manuscript in favor of the more instant gratification of the short story.
It’s time for me to long-haul this with some focus.
The Universe has an interesting sense of humor. Last Sunday, just days after I finished re-reading Deadhouse: Life in a Coroner’s Office and typing up a blog post for it (it’ll be up Friday), I found a dead body.
I took my cat Maudie Moo for a walk (our “walks” involved wandering around the yard together; Maudie likes it when her people are outside). At the end of our yard is a narrow alley and on the other side is the backyard of another house. It’s fenced in with a weird sort of chain link privacy fence that makes it difficult to see into the yard. I got down to the alley and walked down it a few feet, trying to lure my cat into the sun.
There I was, standing in the alley, singing along with Paul Simon on my iPod (“50 Ways to Leave Your Lover”) when I realized there was someone laying in the neighbor’s yard. At first, I was a little embarrassed that I’d been singing along without realizing someone was there. Then I realized the person that was there probably wasn’t in any condition to hear me. He was laying on his back next to his lawn mower, one arm outstretch, his other arm curled up with his hand on his chest. A water bottle stuck out from his sweatshirt pocket. He looked like he was napping, but I knew he probably wasn’t.
I approached the fence and asked him if he was okay. No answer. I got closer and asked again. Still no answer. I got right up to the fence, peering between the weird privacy slats that blocked the view but didn’t. He wasn’t moving. It didn’t look like he was breathing. His skin had a waxy look to it.
I figured he was dead, but I ran to the house and got Dad for a second opinion. He confirmed it (Dad is uncanny with his ability to determine death without taking a pulse; 25 years as a cop helped develop that skill) and called it in. I then sat back and watched as first police officers, fire rescue, and paramedics, then the coroner, dealt with the body, my dad holding court with all of them just as he had when he was still working.
Meanwhile, I was left to explain to the neighbors (and friends of the neighbors who were on vacation, but heard the call on the police scanner) what had happened. Near as we can figure, he’d been out mowing that morning between 10 and noon. Dad saw the mower out, but didn’t see him, which he didn’t think much of at the time. I found the body sometime later, around 4:30. Dad said the mower was in a different position than when he last saw it, so he probably came back out, maybe started the mower again, maybe even mowed some, and then collapsed. He’d been laying there for at least four to six hours. Rigor was already starting to set in, so he wasn’t long for the world after he collapsed. There probably wasn’t anything that could have been done for him. Speculation is that it was most likely a heart attack, but he’d been taken to the hospital last week for his blood sugar, so maybe that was the deciding factor. I’m not sure.
Carrie felt bad that the man collapsed and died in his backyard and no one noticed for several hours, but really, I think it was a blessing. He was a quiet man, not exactly social, though very nice when he did speak. If he’d died in his house, it might have been days (or longer) before anyone found him. I think that would have been worse. And really, it was a nice day to die in the yard. A little chilly and breezy, but sunny. Not much in the way of flies, if you want to get scientific about it.
People kept asking me if I was okay since I was the one that found the body, which one hand I found odd, but on the other hand, I appreciated. It was nice of them to ask, but I couldn’t understand why they thought I’d be upset. I didn’t know the neighbor very well. And as my personal beliefs dictate, the soul or spirit of the man was long gone by the time I found his corpse. That’s all it was. A corpse. Out of the ordinary, sure, but not traumatic.
This isn’t to say I didn’t feel bad. I did. It’s a shame. But I guess I’m just one of those people that doesn’t fall apart at the sight of a dead body. I suppose, with reading all of those books about death and decomposition, it makes sense.
However, I’m not immune to those weird human thoughts when confronted with death on a back lawn. At the time I’d been sick for over a week and I was still dealing with a cough. While standing at the fence, waiting for the circus to arrive, I kept coughing and every time I did, I thought it would get the dead man’s attention. And then later, a slight case of embarrassment set in when I was recounting the story to someone because I’d realized that I’d asked a dead man if he was all right. Of course, I wasn’t certain he was dead at the time, but still I felt a little silly admitting to people that I’d tried to start a conversation with a corpse.
And honestly, I felt less awkward trying to talk to a dead man than I did trying to talk to the living neighbors.
That’s because death is more natural than my socialization skills.
When we last left our hero, the first draft of the personal essay I was working on, I wasn’t happy with it. I couldn’t get the emotions working the way I wanted them to. I was struggling because I was too hesitant and couldn’t stop myself from holding back. The solution was rewriting the first draft from scratch and then working with the new draft.
The good news is that this approach worked. I rewrote the draft in my journal where my emotions are free to roam without judgment, and then typed up the result. Subsequent revisions from this new draft worked well and I’m pretty happy with the end result. I think I fixed the problems that plagued it in the beginning.
The bad news is that I really don’t have the confidence to submit it to the contest. I like it, but I’m not sure it’s good enough. And with money tight, spending 25 bucks on something I’m not sure of doesn’t make sense. I feel like I could benefit from more practice before I think about submitting again.
I know that I submitted one piece to a contest before, but that was just to do it. It was an opportunity to try something new. However, if I’m going to pursue this seriously, then I’m definitely going to have to get more practice and build up my confidence before I submit again.
I don’t mind taking my time in this case.
I’m an active sleeper.
What does that mean?
It means that when I go to sleep there’s no guarantee that all of me goes to sleep. There’s a spot in my brain that doesn’t always sleep and it has the ability to keep my body awake without the rest of my sleeping brain knowing it. As such, I’ve done some weird things in my sleep.
I’ve always known I was a talker. My mother once came in to yell at my sister and I for talking when we should have been sleeping only to find out that we were both talking in our sleep. Mom said it sounded like we were having a conversation but when she really listened, we were talking about two completely different things.
I had a couple of sleepwalking incidents as a kid, but nothing serious. For the most part I keep my activity contained to my own bed.
That I know of.
My roommate Carrie once walked by room on her way to the bathroom and heard me calling her name. She stopped and responded. I apparently asked her about something, but she couldn’t understand it. She said yes anyway and said that I told her okay and then she heard me get back in bed. I sounded like I was right on the other side of the door. I have no memory of any of it.
I’ve woken up sitting up in bed unsure of how long I’ve been sleeping that way. I’ve woken up completely turned around in bed with my pillow and head in the open window. I’ve woken myself up screaming, yelling, gesturing, laughing, and spitting in my sleep.
I once dreamed that someone punched me in the nose and woke up to my own fist hitting me, resulting in a nosebleed.
It’s always interesting when I close my eyes.
There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason or pattern that I can discern. I’ll go through a quiet period and then one night wake up sleeping half on my bed or wake up one morning with the sheets off the bed, but the blankets intact.
It’s a little disturbing sometimes. Obviously, punching yourself in the face in your sleep is bound to be disturbing. But the freakiest thing for me (so far) has been waking up to find that I had been sleeping sitting up. I tend to wake up a little bit when I roll over or otherwise move, so to find that I’m sitting up and have no memory of moving into that position is really bizarre. When I have an active sleeping period, I wait for that particular incident to happen again.
Being an active sleeper, it makes me wonder what will happen should I ever acquire a human to sleep with full-time. I already refuse to sleep with my cats, not because I’m active sleeper, but because I’m convinced there’s no bed big enough for me and a cat and I currently sleep in a twin.
But I’m open to sleeping with someone else and I wonder how that will work out during active periods. Will they stop because I’ll subconsciously know that there’s someone in the bed with me? Or will we be able to find a bed big enough to accommodate those active periods? Or will I have to sleep on the couch?
Those are questions that I won’t be able to answer until I’m actually put in the situation, so there’s no sense in worrying about it now. I’m in no immediate danger and neither is anyone else.
Until then, I’ll go to sleep wondering how I’m going to wake up in the morning.
