Alex Gets a Job

Short story for Taylor, since she isn't getting Trap tonight.

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“Fffffuuuuuck.” Alex grumbled as he slammed a hand over his alarm clock. The cacophonous noise stopped, but his head was still ringing.

He stared at the ceiling and counted to ten, savoring his last few moments in his warm cocoon of quilts and blankets. At ten he cursed, groaned, and rolled out of bed to fall with a hard thunk on the floor.

Alex took a moment to remind himself that he needed this job, he couldn’t blow it off. He couldn’t go back to his old employment. Sure, some of his previous clients would still be willing to take him back, but the possible consequences weren’t worth it. Mortimer’s grinning face flashed through his mind, and Alex found the will somewhere in his body to pull himself up and take a shower.

“On your resume it says that for your last job you were self-employed, and the dates listed span five years, but you didn’t list an occupation. Is that a new way of saying ‘unemployed’?”

“Oh, no. Sorry, I was an escort. I must have missed a blank when I was filling in the paperwork.”
“Escort? Could you be more specific?”

“Prostitute.”

If she had been shocked she hadn’t shown it, and the rest of the interview had gone smoothly. The next day Alex had a call back telling him he got the job. It wasn’t much, minimum wage was a bitch, but it was something, and it would pay the bills. Alex was glad for once that he lived in a tiny craptastic studio apartment. Minimum wage wouldn’t have been able to support him with anything else.

So now he worked at a record store. Or, well, CD and iTunes-gift-card store. No one sold records any more. Not that he could blame them, the playback quality and storage capacity was far superior on modern technology, but there was something nostalgic about an old vinyl.

After getting ready Alex still had a few minutes to spare before he had to start his walk down to the bus stop, and he stopped for a second to stare at himself in the mirror.

“I’m not indy enough.” He told himself with a groan, and proceeded to rap his forehead against the sink, “God. I look like a poser. An emo poser. And my indie cred is five years out of date. Fuck. Maybe I am a poser.”

He took a deep breath. No one was going to eat him alive for not being indy enough, of all things. The worst he would get would be a scowl from suitably indy customers who were wondering why the hell such a mainstream bitch was working at an indie record store. And if they scowled, Alex could always scowl back and curse their grandmother in Japanese.

There was a silver lining to every cloud.

Alex forced down a deep breath, and then another, and continued to remind himself to keep breathing. There was no reason to be this nervous about going to work as a cashier and merchandise stocker for minimum wage. Except, maybe, this was his first real, law-abiding, tax-paying job. Ever.

He did his best to shrug off the anxiety and grabbed his coat, heading out the door to report for duty.

I Write Like An Artist

Let's talk about sensory description.

You know the basics, there are five senses: touch, sight, taste, smell, and hearing. Each of these senses is unique and important on it's own, but they work in tandem with each other. The age old example: Scientists say that roughly 80-90% of what we taste is actually derived from smell.

As a writer it is extremely important to pay attention to all of the senses in order to envelope the reader in the world you have created. For living in a world where no one ever feels what it's like to touch something feels surreal, just sort of 'off'.

Now lets back up a little bit and talk about how artists (of the visual sort) create sensory experiences.

An artist uses images, and thus they get one sense: Sight. That cuts them down to 30% efficiency right off the bat. They learn how to bend and play with sight to create illusions of other senses, and even more powerfully, they learn how to connect images with emotion. Thats the big one: Creating an emotional cognitive response from the viewer, that's what an artist does.

They get very good at this, and essentially are attempting to master the sense of sight.

Now, hand that artist a word processor and a keyboard. Tell them to describe something. I guarantee you that they will primarily focus on the visuals, they will try to explain every intricate detail of what this item or place looks like. They will likely forget about the other senses, or at least pay far less attention to them. It's in their nature, it's how they experience the world.

What happens when this artist decides to write a book?

You can see the problem. An artist who is arting is all just fine and dandy, but an artist who is writing is at a disadvantage. It takes extra attention to remember to describe things in their whole, combining the senses takes more work.

I write like an artist.

Damn.

Angel of Death

Oh man, I need to blog more. I really do. I love to write, I love to talk. Why on earth did I stop? I'll try to pick it back up. Y'know, that whole daily thing? Yeah.

Anyways. On to today's topic.

I got dragged into JulNo. I decided, "Hey, writing is good for the soul! I might as well give it my best shot!", and it started really well. I had a fantastic idea.

Plot Summary:
Our main character is Chelsea. Chelsea Dies. When Chelsea dies she becomes an Angel of Death. So now she follows people around until they die. She decides to bend the rules a bit and tell people their going to die before they actually do. The book deals with a lot of death-related-issues.

That sounds kind of bland, but when I was explaining it earlier it sounded better. I was really excited to write this book. Then I started, and there was one teeeensy little problem:

I couldn't hear Chelsea. She didn't have a voice.

Writing her just wasn't fun. She wasn't a person I knew or could get to know, she wasn't a person at all. Chelsea did things because the plot needed her to, she didn't do them because that's what she wanted to do personally. Now, anyone who knows me knows I am heavily character driven. Whatever I write, the people are the most important prospect. Plot? Screw plot. If I have awesome characters they'll do something interesting eventually.

And because of my dependence on my characters, I couldn't write this book. I've been screwing around with writing some other stuff, y'know, nothing big. Some terrible, OOC, slashy, sex-filled Snape/Draco fanfic, a bit of extra stuff with the characters from Delinquent, some role play. And because of my screwing around I've got a new character running around my head, his name is Murk.

Murk is awesome. I love Murk. He's my little wizard kid. I'm still figuring this guy out, but I'll post more about him in a later Blog.

Peace out.