The Blog In Yellow

I can't put an exact finger on it but Stephen King's The Jaunt has stuck a finger in my conscious and has stuck in there for the past week. I've read the story a couple of times and something about it doesn't sit right with me. Set in the twenty fourth century, a man named Mark Oates explains how the Jaunt came to be to his two kids. As they wait for the next trip to Mars, Mark details how the Jaunt was discovered and selectively skips the horrible experiments that were done to perfect the travel system. The Jaunt is a teleport system, like a jump from point A to point B through a doorway. The jump is preformed by sedating the passengers so they don't experience the long jump through eternity from one door to another. Of course, it wouldn't be Stephen King without a horrifying ending. After the tale, the family takes the jump only for Mark to discover that his son has held his breath causing him to experience the full Jaunt.  It's not a bad story, in fact it...

I've spoken with my writing friend and she assures me that I no longer have a short story, this Cain story is a novella. I'm cursed with Stephen King's disease where everything I write turns into a novel. I suppose that's not too bad, novels make the money. But I wanted to hone my skills with Cain as a short story. Cain has taken a lot out of me and for now, I'm focusing on a story about stairs that kill people (based on the death of H.R.Giger). I also want to finish my Annihilation book. I'm not writing it but reading. It's...ok, I suppose. Not what I expected out of a Cosmic "horror" book. Jeff VanderMeer's work on the Southern Reach happening is facinating and boring at the same time. He writes about plants and natural enviroments, things I couldn't give a crap about. And he doesn't go out of his way to make you care about these things as if it's a metaphor for the protagonist. Throughout the book, the biologist, our protagonist,...

Today was a rough day. My back was hurting as soon as I woke up. Not a good start to the day when your body knows it's going to be in pain. So I spent the day angry and confused while keeping it to myself hoping that I wouldn't explode onto someone. I kept some of the madness down by handing out a humorous fairwell card for my supervisor. I seemed to be one of the only two people who got the joke. I thought it would be more funny but people don't seem to have a sense of humor. I'm at work and I feel the anger taking me on more and more. I pray, I plead, I give up and throw an internal tantrum. When am I going to grow up? I guess I got to the point that I marked my maturity with my job position. What would I be happy with, a desk job at an office? Is that what my mind is expecting? I always thought I would change once I became an adult but that never happened. I'm still me, still the same kid, just taller. I went home cursing God because I knew that he wouldn't h...

I wish I could enjoy this game more. I get distracted so easily and it ruins the game for others. It's just that it's difficult to focus on stuff for long time, especially when it's a little boring at times. It's especially hard for me because I want to like it. Just like writing. 

I don't think the classes I plan on attending will address my issues. I'm in my late thirties, is it too late for me to learn? I realize something though, when I was rereading some quotes by an author who said she wrote without hope or without despair. I think it was Isak Dinesen. I didn't understand why she said that, now I understand a little. The despair part is already hard to do but so is the hope. Hope can kill your writing, you start to hope that your work will be discovered. Hope that you will create something amazing. Hope that your writing won't suck. Hope can kill you as well as your writing. Hope is dangerous. So, I'll try to write without having any expectations. 

I'm tilted right now. It's been a long day. I'm hungry, I'm angry, and I'm frustrated by my lack of skill. I remember reading this writing tip list by Dan Simmons. He sounded miserable as he listed why it was so hard to be a writer. I thought he was full of it, I was wrong. Writing is a miserable waste of time. I know because tomorrow, I'm going to try again. I'll spend maybe an hour writing while Brandon Sanderson churns out another book. I'll be burnt out, angry, and unable to read or calm myself down because my autism gives me a short fuse. I can't turn to anyone either. My therapist has left for the weekend and my writing friend is moving. This week, I'm on my own. It doesn't matter anyway, they couldn't have helped me. I finished the first draft of my Cain story and it was like pulling out a tooth with pliars. Is this what King does every day? Four pages of this stuff would kill me, let alone writing one page. I desperately want to b...

One of the pillars of horror is actually mystery. Who's going to believe that a vampire is real or that a ghost is haunting the mansion? It's all malarky. Made up stuff in the your head or the delusions of a mad man. Or better still, the concoction of a drunkard or addict because no sane person would conjure up such insanities. It's one of the great mysterys in horror when you come down to it, why didn't the victims call the police? A notable cliche in the horror movies that there's no cellphone signal or the cops just don't believe you. There is no help coming, you're on your own. Lovecraft does something similar in his own stories to add to the confusion and disbelief of the populace. In The Whisperer in Darkness, a literature teacher named Albert Wilmarth discusses the strange alien sightings seen during a local flood with collegue Henry Akeley. To shrink a long story, Albert is convinced to bring all of his findings to Henry who is a puppet under the con...

I think I wasted today. I'm not too hurt about it but I feel like I should be. I wasted time that I don't have. I played games instead of tricking myself to sit down and write about Cain for a few minutes. I think I'm almost done with Cain. It's not a great story but I'll finish it and go on. I want to write about killer stairs next. Other than that, I had a good day. People were thankful to me, especially the local pastor who thanked me and hugged me when I gave him an ice cold ginger ale. I had plans for today, I was going to listen to more audio logs about the King in Yellow and the game Signalis. At least I organized my notes from those two sets into folders. I think I'll work on Cain tomorrow even if I'm not up to it. I have to write stuff even if I don't feel like it'll be great or I'll never write at all.

Don't expect much today, the day was busy. I thought I'd have time to write but instead I was running around all day doing chores. I had to get an eye exam, first one in five years, to tell if I needed new glasses or not. One thing that didn't change was the optomitrist's iron-like handshake. How is a man that bony so strong that you have to squeeze back to avoid breaking your bones? My eyes are fine despite the new drugs and I'm getting a new pair for the price of twenty dollars thanks to my medicade stuff. After that, they dialated my eyes which made driving home a nightmare. I put my clothes in the wash and went to bed. After that I woke up two hours later and went to dinner with my folks. Then I went home after my laundry was done. See? I don't have much in the tank today.  In other news, the ICS, which is a collection of games, is being shut down. It seems that no one is interested in preserving my favorite hobby. The hands of money are too strong as no one...

I believe Obsidian's new Fallout game will suck. I'm just putting that out there. Obsidian is a game design company behind the famous Fallout New Vegas, which is considered to be one, if not the best, Fallout game in the series. My favorite is still Fallout 3 but I understand that New Vegas is the best in the series, even if it doesn't do everything that 3 did. Xbox has announced that they are laying off hundreds of employees. At least two studios, Double Fine and Compulsion Games, are going back to being indie developers. And what did Xbox expect? In the time since these studios have been purchased, they've come out with a total of less than five games over a near decade. That's not a lot of games from studios that thrive on making smaller games. It's a real bloodbath at Xbox. I've seen posts about people sad that they or their friends have been let off. The worst was perhaps Id who is behind the Doom series. The studio is less than half of what it used to ...

Today I went to the Columbus Book Fair downtown. It's a two day event where authors come to present their work while the famous authors, like Paul Tremblay, get to galvanize their career by showing up while the rest of us normal folk struggle to get published. I shouldn't be so bitter. I've read some of Tremblay's work and it isn't bad, just not my cup of tea. I prefer my tea with a lot of bitter tears in it like Stephen King's tea. My dad and I went there early, around ten before the real event began. I went to find a room where other small time authors would give me their input on writing. There was a line for Tremblay before I got there and it tripled by the time my group was done. I did get some things out of the group. I was lucky to get a seat near the front. The authors there described what their process was like and how they got to be where they are. At first, I thought that only the guy would hold answers for me but there was this woman there who had wr...

It's only Twelve and the day has been full of events. I went to my dentist to get a tooth put in. After half a year of having a gap in my smile, the implant feels alien. Like there's a wad of something foreign in my mouth. It doesn't feel like the opposite premolar. Like someone shoved a ceramic weight into my gums. It doesn't hurt but it will take some time to get used to.  I've had strange dreams as well. Last night, I dreamed I was in Eddy's house from the hit cartoon. We were looking for food for some reason. This new medicine I'm taking has made me sleepy during the night time. Thankfully, there isn't an after effect so I'm not drowsy in the morning. I wake up feeling refreshed and ready to tackle the day. But the medicine has not removed my fear of writing. I suppose that will be something I will always have to face. I'm worried that my work won't add up to something. I know a lot of writers talk about writing from a place of love. Can ...

I've been asked by my therapist to look inside myself and ask what is causing that competitive side of me to come out. I've been of the mindset that if I didn't win, I lost. I think I compared it to someone who runs the Boston Marathon. There are those that run for the exercise, the ones that try to beat their own record and the people who try to win the race. I've seen the Boston Marathon on TV before and they rarely focus on the winner, rather the TV crews show the groups of people passing the line. I've never done a lot of research on the marathon but I know that it's a gauntlet to get through. But, when I think about the people who've won awards like King and Ellison, I feel like there is a game to win. Case in point, I'm watching a video about a competitive video game: Tokon Fighting Souls. Just like the marathon, there are three groups of people who play, and I can't help but feel like I'm in a race to the top. My therapist has advised me t...

I've been on Lithium for two days now and I don't feel better. I know that this is to get my body adjusted to the stuff but I'm impatient. I'm used to my drugs taking effect in a couple of minutes, not days. I noticed that as you get older the more people around you suffer. They age, or the things they did as a kid catch up with them. Like bad eating habbits or drinking problems. One way or another, we all pay. It makes me wonder what I'll have to pay for when I'm older. I'm almost thirty eight, still young, but getting up there in the years. You start to wonder what you're friends from highschool and college are doing. Are they ok? Did they make their dreams come true? You think about a lot of that stuff. I'm too young for self reflection. Lately, I've been upset with myself. I'm not enjoying things like I used to. Movied, games, books, they hold no interest for me. I've become disinterested in games and I don't have the stamina for ...

Ive had this disturbing thought, in fact, I've had it multiple times in my life. Sometimes I think a person would be better off dead. Im religious so I believe that eternal paradise awaits us. Even if it doesnt, surely death, an end to the pain, is better than the suffering. Recently, I saw a friend suffer. She's got liver disease from drinking since she was twenty. She looked so sad that I was willing to do anything to relieve her, even if it meant it would end her. If I could just stop her pain. Something similar happened today. My aunt is suffering from blood clots and bowel issues. The doctors can do little and she sounds depressed. Is there more that I cam do than pray?