*sigh* And so this dreadful month begins. Well... perhaps it's not dreadful, but it marks the end of the better and more inspiring part of the year for me. I don't do well in warm and hot weather. I pretty much expect that once June hits I will be creatively bankrupt for three months and slugging around the apartment with no focus on anything except why life sucks. I wish I were exaggerating, but I'm kind of dramatic and sensitive about the weather. It takes an extreme amount of will power for me to write in summer a story that I have designated as a "winter story" or "fall story", because I'm not experiencing the right stimuli. I always like to feel connected to the characters, seeing things that they would see, being able to address the simpler aspects that shape their experience. I remember there was a time when I would purposefully sit outside in November and look up the street (as we, naturally, lived on a hill that went up from our house and resembled the one in He's There) to write parts when Lily went outside or thought about it, or wondered if she was imagining "Erik"... It was years ago. I'd put on a sweater, a jacket, and my (now) Orlok coat, and I'd bring a cup of pomegranate tea.

Anyhoo, I'm also becoming numerically older this month and having to remember on the 14th that I'm alone, and on the 20th (my birthday) that Max Schreck is deader than dead.

To be honest, I'm not very happy right now. I'm very discontent with my life, disappointed where I work, how financially weak I am, how alone I am... Sometimes I'm just totally incapacitated with negativity, and earlier this year, way earlier, when I was still in school, I was having a breakdown every few weeks. I was too tired of and frustrated with living my life that I couldn't bear to even leave my apartment, so I wouldn't. A lot of that had to do with the crumbling stress levels of being a full time student, so I'm not longer stressed exactly, I'm just tired of being at work all the time and doing nothing besides that. In my free time, I never see anyone, my friends are too busy or live too far away, so I have no inspiration to leave the apartment, even if I need groceries or need to do this or that... I still seem to deal with incapacitating negativity and feeling like nothing is going to work out, nothing that I desire is accessible to me.

I've considered that I was depressed, but I lack some of the important symptoms, and I have no money to be analyzed by a therapist. But there is definitely something going on with me that made pulling creativity out of my head last year so hard, especially compared to 2012 where I can say with certainty that, somehow, I was happy. I knew it wouldn't last. I still don't know what magical thing brought it about, so I'm not sure how to get it back. I somehow loved to be alone and grew to appreciate myself. It's sad that that is gone. That now I take it as a personal defect that I don't have physical people around (besides my immediate family) who can give me good times and emotional support in between doing stressful things like working. And, at work, for a couple of reasons, I always feel inadequate. I'm reminded why I'm not good enough to some people, and that's all I can focus on because nothing else will happen to contradict that. I believe that how I feel is situational because of this unnatural solitude that no one should have to go through if they aren't wanting to be alone. I think it's good to be alone sometimes and enjoy being with yourself, but we also need others, so having no control over it when the desire for solitude passes and you can't get out of solitude... bleh.

I think I need people to be able to write. So many of the best little situations in my writing came from charming social interactions, or even just imaginings that special personalities made me have. It was exhausting just having Lily write about feeling alone and wanting to get over someone who wasn't what she'd hoped for, etc. etc., in the last chapter, but at least they were relatable feelings. Moving on from there, writing something filled with life, and light, and energy... can I even do it when I feel kind of dead inside?

My goal was to write an AIW fic this month, but I can only desperately hope I even have it in me to do it. I want to do it because I feel like I need to do it to make myself happy, but it's kind of like I'm trying to give myself back energy to live by expending energy I don't have, since writing is such a mental exercise.

How do I borrow energy in order to be creative again?  People make it sound so easy, "get out more," "bother your friends to see them more." They don't know how deeply you can burrow in solitude until you don't remember how to people anymore and it is so much work to dig yourself out. It's like being stuck in quicksand (why am I using metaphors now?) People with these suggestions assume there's something just beside you that you have been taking for granted. There is not. There is nothing beside me. I can nag my friends to see me, but then they will join me for lunch and check it off their list and that will be the end of our time together for months and months. I don't know how to make new friends because all I do is go to work, and my coworkers are not going to become my friends. (Trust me, I've tried. The one person I wanted to be closer to turned out to be a big asshole.)

Why am I using my writing journal as a regular journal? Eh, when you're a writer there's not such a clear line between yourself and your act of writing. Everything about my life affects what I will have to talk about if I come here, and at my personal journal none of my friends are using this site anymore. It's either I write here or no one even knows this is how I'm feeling.

Well, that'll do it for now. I wanted to plan my story today, but I've only got a few hours to screw my ovaries on in the right direction in between working what will almost be four full days in a row.

J

Oh, I guess I forgot to update my writing journal for two weeks. Whoops.

If there's one thing I'm now thoroughly convinced of, it's that whoever decided NaNoWriMo should take place in November was a dipshit. I mean, December is right around the corner - Winter break for those attacked by school, which I was. Repeatedly. My progress went to oblivion. I had to know this was coming along, with four classes, but I was too starry-eyed about writing. I didn't surpass even last year's record, which was a bigger failure, but I feel like I accomplished more for He's There this time. I'll have to see it that way.

It's kind of funny, though... I was having a smile about the fact that nothing was distracting me this time, as NaNo 2010 had me all obsessed with the musical, and the German musical - it was Phantom Phantom Phantom! and I was still stuck. This year, it started off Phantom Phantom Phantom! in all the right ways, it was most beneficial, and then BAM.

Nosferatu.

Even now, I've only been thinking of vampires. My Phantom passion is out the window. Why couldn't I have written earlier, like in the summer?! When I was taking all those notes - when I CARED so much?!

Things are finally slowing down - the big stuff was due yesterday and I was a success. Two midterms will be on Wednesday next week and I'm not worried about them. I have two chapters of He's There that need adjustments, and one that isn't finished, so I can get back to that, but it won't be as easy as before. I'm afraid I'll have to start relating "Erik" to a vampire in my head in order to get through this, which luckily isn't a serious leap of interpretation.

I can promise the chapters, but I'm strangely not bummed. I simply love obsession and I haven't had one like this over something new since AIW, almost three years ago. I need to find something creative to do with it. That is what obsession always brings, for me - a new, exciting angle and world of inspiration. SAW brought me Dorian and Wooden Light/Unknown Color, Akira brought me the Crystal Palace series, Phantom brought me He's There, AIW brought me... well, more AIW, a world which sometimes I consider as much my playground as the worlds I made up myself.

How will Nosferatu work its way in? I don't know, I just know that it will. Like AIW did for my stale Alice in Wonderland appreciation, Nosey did for my appreciation of vampires.

I think what I like about the interpretation best is that it isn't glamorized, and yet the vampire is still powerful. It shows the give and take of the condition. Super strength, super speed, telekinesis (he could sail a ship with his mind!), immunity to disease, and ESP, yet look at him. He has to "sleep" in plague-infested soil, he's "hideous" (even if I think he's cute), he's all alone (at least Dracula had vampire women), he can never see the sun rise, and yet young virginal girls need only to invite him into their bedrooms to stay all night, and he won't refuse, and then the sun comes up, and.. yeah. By that condition, the most seemingly powerless victims are the only ones who can kill him. You just have to accept that you will die yourself.

That put, as I read in an article, the story and its characters in perpetual twilight. It wasn't black and white, good vs. evil like Dracula was, where the characters were obnoxiously Christian and banned together. Lucy (here named Ellen) had to isolate herself and do away with the vampire by means of cross elimination. It was a new twist that I wasn't used to - that a character, a woman, had to address the darkness in her heart.

But further, that the vampire could be driven to move and made to die because of her, and perhaps a desire for her company, whatever twisted interpretation he has of that. (If I could ignore my own romantic ideal, he's a monster - it seems his idea of romance is simply being invited into someone's bedroom and being allowed to nuzzle them and suck their blood. X3)

Anyway, I've gone off topic. Short version - it's December. I'm returning to my novel, for shizzle-dizzle, and also, Kate and I are about ready to premiere the Crystal Palace 3 website. After months and months, I can finally post the poster on DeviantArt!

I'll now return to my strange world,
♥ J

I finished reading Phantom of the Opera again, second time this year, and made it through the end without crying. But it may have been because I was reading it for soaking up ideas and not to really submerge myself in the content. It really did touch me again hearing Erik beg for marriage, though... "...But you'd have fun with me!" Oh, it gets me.

In fact, I feel so differently appreciative of this story right now, like I've never felt before. A few years ago I wouldn't be sold on the idea that I was going to find the book so capturing. For years, I didn't think the book was very good, but I know now it was because my stupid young self thought Gaston Leroux was too wordy and the gravity of the scenes was lost on me.

Now I feel like a book nut -- I know why a friend of mine loves it so much, even enough that it's her one true commitment (and she doesn't think the musical's that great.) I'm a little different from her because, even though the musical IS very much a straying interpretation, I feel like it captured a lot of the feelings from the book and did have music that I can hear while I read it. It's very close to me, and it's not ambiguous at all that my "Erik"'s mannerisms and outward show are musical-like, because he knows Lily likes that. He's There shows it's made by a musical lover, but that's not all that I am.

And neither am I a lover of just a couple of the movies. I know right now that I have closed the period of time in which I wrote He's There, inspired by Robert Englund and Charles Dance. I believe the rest of this book is going to have Leroux splashed all over it and that will pack the BIGGEST punch. It will unite phans who might be a little torn by their opinions of what's the best adaptation by bringing them back to the darkness, passion, and obsession that started it all -- what made this story cared about 100 years after it was written and retold so many times. I lament, however, that there isn't much said by Gaston Leroux about his own characters. He was alive during the shooting of the silent film, though he died two years later... did he have a hand in that? I don't know. I should probably look into it...


That said, I'm in a state of mind where, when I think of Erik, I see the man in the book instead of the man in the musical, which was my natural and preferred vision for a long time. (Please feel free to view my fanart by clicking on the thumb. :D)

While I was reading, I sometimes got carried away with my ideas for imitation of him. What I mean is, I would be so in that world that I would be so out of the He's There world, and it would become apparent to me later that not every way that Leroux Erik acts works with my "Erik". Despite how much inspiration I've had from all over the place, my "Erik" is his own person, so with my pages of notes, I had to put into the plot what was believable given what he's already like. On the other hand, not all that he does is what's natural to him because he feels kindred enough with this Erik -- this Erik he thinks existed, and all the others don't -- that he sometimes finds himself willingly hijacked by the impulse to do what that character he looks up to would do.

I thought about, also, how different he is from Leroux Erik, and yet he still thinks he shared his spirit. Where is his musical genius (even if he can play the piano quite well?) Where is his mastery of ventriloquism, of magic, of his own voice? I have to remember before I consider him a disappointing fraud that he IS technically a fraud and that is the point - that from the outside of his troubled mind, he is clearly not Erik to anyone but poor Lily whose treatment has been so tailored, she doesn't care if they're confused together about his identity. Also, Leroux Erik is 50 years old and lived that life - a life "Erik" has never lived. "Erik" is younger than Raoul! "Erik" is a depressed young man who was overwhelmed by the world and said "fuck it". I consider him, if anything, as a seedling of the real Erik, and I think he does too. He has just started on a journey he deems similar.

Even with all of Leroux Erik's experiences and growth, one big thing I think they have in common is neither has really grown up, or in a way they've grown up in so much emotional isolation that what they are now isn't agreeable with everyone else. Yet they know it and stubbornly maintain their own ideas about how they will live. Other people's rules are meaningless to them. It would be too overwhelming and painful to try and change, so they get by without changing. Thinking they need only their privacy, room to create as they please, and a woman who's supposed to endure that lifestyle so against the grain they must be isolated... He thinks he can make her drunk off love for him and she'll just be fine living like a beautiful thing put into a box.

It made me feel so uncomfortable that he didn't know the real way to be with and love someone else - that he had a fantasy about being loved and would kill everyone if he couldn't realize it.

Ah, but I'm going off on such a long tangent. The book is a trip to a dark place in all our hearts, where we've been before, whether in reality or imagination, when we loved someone so much it hurt; hurt even before it became clear they would never see us that way, so that afterward it felt like the world was ending. The part that makes me cry is Erik's fruitless fighting, every word dripping with realization that it isn't reaching inside the girl, who's become too terrified even to refuse him. It's almost worse than anger and an open desire to get away. Imagine someone you love afraid of you because they see you as a monster, who hurts rather than understands. Sometimes I worry my father feels that way.

Another tangent!

He's There chapter scripting starts today, hopefully. I'll write soon.

...I think everyone will be pleased. I think what comes out of him will be what we could suspect him hiding all this time.

One last thing -- I was very excited to learn that one of my favorite Phantom of the Opera songs, Let Me Love You Now, is from an entire album of music written by Vox Lumiere for the silent film. It's very clear they're inspired by the book as well as that film, and it gives me shivers thinking they are writing ABOUT the Phantom, and it isn't coincidental lyrics that I'm applying to the story.

I found this little gem while looking on the website... Oh, so simple but expressive!

http://audio.isg.si/audiox/?q=node/64500

Mine could be the name you long to say!

♥,
Jennifer

I don't know why, but I need to be in motion whenever I want to really think about something. About half the time I can just pace (for a while) with my ipod and the pictures will start coming together and I'll feel all grand about my story afterward. XD It's really sad. But other times I just can't stand being in the house. I kind of wish we had a treadmill again just so that I could walk as long as I wanted without needing a large distance.

But yesterday I parked my car on a bigger street and walked down to the park, returning to this cute little path I found going around a bunch of foliage and berry bushes. I was thinking that it would be beautiful in Autumn (which is is no help to the Autumn-craving I've been going through!) Being that it was summer, I walked through a number of spider's webs and I'm pretty sure I swallowed a gnat. Or a baby mosquito. Whatevertf it was.

Anyway, one section of the path cut out into the end of a large field, and there was a bench, and the sun was just sparkling in, not just throwing all its light down, so I sat on the bench and I had "Something to Believe In" on my ipod and I swear I saw the entire He's There trailer front to back. It was extremely epic. I'm gonna have to describe it later when I have more time.

But this was good because I was there to work this out. After I posted what I had of chapter 39, and had started chapter 40 while the laptop was gone on Hermy #1, I realized SHIT, I'M STUCK. Not stuck like not inspired, stuck like I have 21 chapters to wrap this up and all these notes, and most are plot ideas until this certain thing happens instead of definite chronological lists. So I realized that I really needed to actually assign the remaining chapters things that needed to happen. Or else I'm going to end up in a mess and skip things, or drop bomb B before bomb A or something. So I need to do that first, and my schedule being what it is, I sincerely hope I can do it this weekend because the week is totally unfair.

But I was imagining later scenes, some very important ones, while on the swing-set, where I must've been for like an hour because the next morning my hands are still kind of soar. It really helped though. I once imagined a confrontation by Erik to Mariam on those swings one night at like 11PM back when I was trying to 'escape' the house, and it was dark. lol I won't spoil any of that.

Anyway... that's the news on what I'm doing.
I could blabber on about pining for more time in a day, but that's old hat.
♥, Jennifer

I just remembered this guy that I think has been subliminally inspiring me for the Phantom's character.

Many of "Erik"'s problems come from my friend Greg; he's been in fights, he's been to juvi, he's had to deal with schizophrenia since he was in his early teens (I think), and sometimes he's homeless because of issues with parents or maybe other reasons... But! He never much exuded "Erik"'s personality, which is why I knew there was some puzzle-piece missing about who this person was that I felt I had experienced before.

But now I know! It was an upperclassman named Aaron. I called him Casper-Guy at the time because his light blond hair reminded me of an old character. I think he was a senior when I was a sophomore. Often when I saw him, he was by himself. Like I remember once, I got stuck in freshman traffic near the front doors and on the way out he was standing at some nearby post just looking down at them, as if he was looking for someone. He dressed pretty dark, but I remember thinking "hot damn, that black button-down looks good on him". XD

Even though he was really pale and blond, he had extremely dark eyes that really hit you hard when he so much as glanced at you. I felt so intimidated! Never said a word to him.

Have no idea what he was like. Just very quiet, and you could say mysterious!

His vibe, in retrospect, definitely reminds me of the Phantom, for anybody that would've seen him at school back when he went there. Lily thinks right now that she has never seen him, but I'm still deciding how I'm going to deal with that. If you're not looking for someone, it's easy to forget what experiences you may have had with them, even if now you don't know how you could miss it.

"Erik" would have given off that vibe though. Just this dark looking guy that you would never want to notice if you were staring at him! Whenever you see him, even though you're in the same place, you don't feel like you understand anything about him and the idea of making an approach is ridiculous. Just let him do his thing and when he shows up go "hey look," *nudges friend* "there's that weird guy."

And then you sighhhhhh because deep down you wish there was some situation where he would have to talk to you because you secretly think he's kind of hot and has pretty hair.

:D

I'm feeling kind of strange about my writing lately... I mean, I've had a whole week of spring break to write a new chapter, and I haven't, so it's not a matter of time... But wait - maybe it is... I'm worried that having so often BEEN busy or having to tackle a big homework assignment, my brain has gone into constant "there's no time, stay away from that" mode.

Take He's There for example. When I write this story, the room I'm in disappears, mostly. Some people (I think mainly of a guy I met recently) can write and then decide they want to take a break after a couple hours and then that's that. He can break out of the scene. But for me, if things are going how they should, I can't break out of it. I could sit in front of my laptop, in the BATHROOM (yes, I like how it looks in there with a candle, so I bring in a dining table chair and sit at the counter, how weird am I), for four hours, as I did last week. In that time, all I really know is what's happening with the characters, and I sort of... I don't know... breathe them. It's very easy to figure out what they would say to each other because I'm almost there, acting them both out. Walking to each side of the room and putting on a new voice, like the Queen did in the last episode of Adventures in Wonderland. lol Then, by the time the whole chapter is done, I feel almost euphoric that there is a new installment and that I was able to do it seemingly so quickly, before I look at the clock and see it is almost midnight and I've skipped dinner, and a number of other important things I was supposed to do.

(In fact that night I was supposed to call my childhood friend Erick who wanted to catch up. And I heard my phone ring at about 10:00 but I didn't answer and I said to the air: "I'M SORRY, BUT THIS ERIK COMES BEFORE YOU." Oh man...)

Anyway... I tell myself that I will soon be returning for the next chapter, but then I don't, because I very easily slip back into my world and like... forget the intensity of where I left off. When I wrote this story 2 years ago, it wasn't like that at all. Pretty much all the time I thought of the characters and what I was going to write next and all these things reminded me, and I'd sit on heat vents with my coffee at nine in the morning, talking to myself about it. Now, I don't do that at all. I have passing thoughts, and sometimes I think "god, this will be interesting," and "can't wait to write that," or I'll tweak things in my head, but it isn't nearly the same level of obsession, and I kind of miss it because it helped me be consistent with updates, and when I'm consistent with updates of any kind, I feel like I'm doing my job as a human being. I feel complete and inspired and happy.

Also, with Us Against the World, my AIW fic, I've reached a point I don't know how to continue and I keep telling myself not to dare trying to just get past it for the next day because so far I've been proud of the fact that I've taken advantage of the comedic potential in every scene. What I've appreciated most about the fic so far is that it doesn't reach a dull point, and I don't want it to. I want it to all be my best, when I'm inspired, so having a 'bump' that has left me uninspired SUCKS...

I wish I could write both of these at the same time and update every week... but that could never happen... I've got to find a third class to take this Spring and when I do, my schedule would never allow it...

It'd be nice to have my shit together AT LEAST during Spring break, but it's Friday and it won't happen. I'm going to try, though... to set myself up tonight, put the tea on the stove, and just do it. May have to be revised later though.

Does it make me less of a writer that I can't spew things out? Authors have to make their living having a novel out like once every year or two... What have I completed in the last 7 years of being a writer? Well... one loooong fanfic, one 50pg short story... also a fanfic, and one movie script. I love the short story and the script, but I thought I'd have more by now.