Extra credit to everyone who understood that sentence on the first read.
Digressing, I often wonder wether my habit of doing horrible run on sentences has to do with subconsious rebellion against the awful task of sentence diagramming in grade school, or wether it's simply because I'm a real slacker and can't stay focussed on presenting one concept in short, precise form. Sentence diagramming. Outside of a math class, there's no more horrid thing than to sit there and reduce a beautifully constructed sentence to lots of little arrows and wossnames and lines going all over, with the occasional word sprouting out like a sprouting thing. I suppose there's some benefit to it, otherwise they wouldn't do it, but really, what's the point? I know how to make people understand me, generally speaking, and in situations where they don't, it's not because I've put a sentence together badly, but because I don't have the faintest idea what I'm talking about. Sentence diagramming is an evil, evil thing.
Anyway, cat-girls. What is it about cat-girls that so fascinates people, or, rather, the type of people who write and purchase things related to gaming systems with names that sound like a good belch. Perhaps it's their embodyment of the whole "Bad Girl" concept, the powerful aloofness, the cute perkiness, the mood swings which typically involve killing things for no good reason. Perhaps it's because they're soft and fluffy, and the fact that they've got all that fur means artists can get away with drawing them "naked". Or perhaps it's just the embodyment of mankind's sublimated Captain Kirk urge to explore strange new places, meet extremely exotic things of the female persuasion, and seduce them.
Or maybe we should just blame 'em on Canada. I'm not sure why, but there it is.
In other philosophizing, writing. Yes, writing, curse its' surly evil hide. Namely, the thing I probably should be doing more of. It's difficult, I must admit. You see, when you get right down to it, serious though I may be at times, I'm a humorist. I can't not put funny bits in. Writing deadly serious stuff or dry researchbabble just doesn't do much for me. Granted, I don't normally go full-tilt wacky, but I've found that dry sarcasm is the tone that tends to inject itself into everything I do. When I try to be full-out wacky, it generally comes off as insipid and stupid, but when I'm merely extremely sarcastic, people seem to like it. Possibly they're merely insane. More likely I just don't like slapstick particularly much, except when it involves people getting hit over the head with mallets. Which is not to say I haven't written stuff that's not devoid of humor, but it generally comes out as just sort of "enh". Well-constructed, people generally admit, but not more grabby than your average, say, phone book. Either that or extremely depressing and involving death, which is generally the only thing I've found that I can write about other than humor and actually get people's attention. Probably because I'm disturbing them greatly. So it's a good thing I'm out of high school. Doing that sort of thing these days could get your brain gently coated with a thick layer of soap. Or possibly happy blue pills.
Of course, they knew I was odd back then anyway. The class was asked to read a poem, and each of us had to come up with a unique take on it. Heh, heh, heh. That's the last time that teacher suggested that, I think. "To Helen", a wondrous poem about the Trojan war or Greek vases or something, horribly rendered in an intentionally utterly wretched British accent. Ah, the looks of stunned horror on the faces of the people after me in the order, as they realized they'd have to somehow try and top this, this trascendantly bad rendition.
Nowadays that level of sarcasm generally isn't tolerated. Ah, the halcyon days of my youth...
Regardless, I hate being told to write fiction. Not just because I'm bad at it, but because I'm enough of a writer to realize precisely how bad I am at it. Which is not to say I haven't written things that don't suck. It's just that none of those things are produced in a classroom or planned setting. They blast forth from my forehead, fully conceived, or, more appropriately, congealed, like the random Greek goddess of your choice or, alternately, cheese. They don't flow on demand. A technically perfect work might emerge from such an endeavour, but it would be a mere pastiche of whatever ideas might happen to be at the forefront of my mind at the time, and not anything genuinely original or thoughtful, and thus without the element of humour to give it life, it would be a mere transparent rip-off.
From this, I have learned the 'Jesse Method' of writing, which is, in short, "Shut up and write, you fool". This is similar to the 'Jesse Method' for self-help, which is "Shut up and get over it, you fool". But then, I'm a surly bastard, what did you expect? I've read the occasional "How to Write whatever" things, because, hey, it's hard to avoid them. And I've nodded at the deeply insightful thoughts within, set the book down, and returned to what I normally do, which is complaining bitterly about not writing.
Of course, what do I really have to complain about? I have a journal that I keep relatively up to date, and attracts a modest number of readers. I have a column in one of the local papers that allows me to surl regularly about anime (and soon I may have one that allows me to surl regularly about comics as well). I mean, getting paid to write. What a concept. But I doubt I'll ever produce any books, and that irks me. There are several reasons why I doubt I'll ever produce any books.
I'm not pretentious. This is a definite problem. Now, granted, I'm a silly green duck with plans for total global domination, but there's a limit to my pretentions, and the concept that I'm an all-powerful writerly person who can do no wrong is not one of them. I can certainly do wrong when writing, and often do, at great length.
The second problem is beginnings. I suck at beginnings. I really need to get the hang of the whole "in media res" thing one of these days. Except that my plots are generally so complicated that starting in media res would put the reader into seizures.
The third problem is endings. Endings are always troublesome. Generally I don't so much end things as allow them to quietly peeter out and hope no one notices, or, more often, storm off in a rage. The good thing is since I'm not writing books I can just keep gleefully tossing in more subplots to create a story that couldn't possibly be resolved any time before the turn of the millenium. The NEXT one, that is. This would be more difficult with a book, although certain authors seem to get away with just babbling endlessly, while their editors occasionally shovel loose book-sized portions of the stuff to slap between covers and put on the store shelves. It's not a problem of finding enough material to put in a book. It's a problem of finding *just* enough material to fill a decent sized book without either boring me or dragging on. One of these days I might manage it.
There's also the difficulty that I never seem to have the time. I suppose I just don't get the same enjoyment out of it that I used to. And that's a problem, because I'm not self-sacrificing enough to create something to entertain other people if I'm not having fun with it. I am, after all, not merely surly, but actively selfish. Occasionally, however, something will click. This happens rarely enough to be a media event. I mean, we're talking once a year, here, max. Depressing, ain't it. Well, okay, not to you, but it's certainly depressing to me.
In the end, though, I guess we can still blame it all on Canada.
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