Oh, the month of January. It's approximately one half over, thank GOD. I hate the month so much. Nothing but cold fog and rain at least every 48 hours, usually whenever I leave work, nothing to look forward to than one day off, nothing interesting happens (my weblog hardly has anything on it compared to the rest of the year), it's bleak and depressing. No wonder I keep looking for classes to go to. I keep wanting to write an entry and then get nowhere.

Tuesday night I went out again with Jess and I actually managed to get a little writing done. I so need to work on that. I think the problem with NaNo is that December follows November, and if you want to continue working on your novel, you end up being interrupted by holiday crap. And then, well, it's hard to get back in the swing. Once I'm writing I'm fine, it's just GETTING myself to write if I'm not trapped somewhere in public. Jess asked if something else was up with it, if I was having plot problems or something. She suggested that I could have everything climax all together at the end, then pick up the pieces. Which could work... at the moment I'm fairly sure I know how the romantic end of the plot will work out, but don't have something really satisfying for the work part of the plot. I know I don't want her to have the fantasy gets-her-dream-job ending, because in real life given her situation that just wouldn't happen in this day and age, but Jess wasn't too hot for the wacky twist solution I did come up with. So I'm not totally sure what to do there.

Another thing that's been giving me the willies is eventually having to revise the damn thing, which means I'll have to put in more description. And, you see, I hate descriptions. I don't even read them most of the time in books, but everyone else in the world just luuurves them. Meanwhile, they bore me to tears. If anyone remembers Squirrel Bait, once upon a time she had a deleted entry where she was talking about how she hated description too. She said after reading a long lavish description, she would get, "She's inside, and she's a redhead" out of it. That's what I get too. Really, what does stuff like "the moon on the breast of the new fallen snow gave the luster of midday to objects below" MEAN? The moon's so bright it looks like it's daylight- yeah, RIGHT, that'll happen.

It finally occurred to me the other day exactly why I hate description: it doesn't do anything for me. What I mean is, reading a description in words doesn't give me any real kind of mental picture. Whatever's being described, the more specific it gets, the more I don't see the image in my head. The best I ever do is, well, like a Monet. ("From far away, it's OK, but up close, it's a big old mess.") I remember reading one of those books based on Myst, The Book Of Atrus, and desperately wanting to see what the world of D'ni looked like (it's in an underground cavern), but the descriptions and the vague sketches included just...didn't do it for me. I couldn't see it enough. I wanted to see an actual painting or photograph or something real and visual. I wouldn't know what it was really like without a picture.

Yes, I realize it's ironic because I'm supposed to be this artist and I should be able to describe everything. (Or at least, that's what Mom says.) And yet, it's never worked that way. I only see nitpicky details as long as they're right in front of me, and God knows I can't put them into words. And reading stuff like this, that's supposed to help? Only manages to intimidate the fuck out of me. Reading this just boggles my mind, and I don't think that way at all.

I did, however, like one suggestion Jess had for this: copy what Jack London did. Apparently he wasn't much for description himself, and she said that he'd just find a description by a writer he liked and redid it. That could work... at the very least, since my imagination isn't so much imaginary.

The other week, Heather and I went out to dinner. While we were in her car, which is a good old-fashioned POS, we were making jokes about how nobody would ever want to break into the thing. Well, surprise surprise, someone did this week. Broke her passenger front window and then removed her backpack. Fortunately for her the backpack contained nothing but about a day's worth of class notes, so hah there, but the thief totally ruined that door. It's now taped up and glass is all over the car until she can get it repaired on Friday.

It was just too funny really that she got robbed, but in the meantime it's ahem, a bit difficult to get into her car. Interesting gymnastics there...and we're postponing our trip to the grocery store for a bit.

Yet another bomb got dropped on me today: apparently Granddaddy has pneumonia again and his kidneys are failing... well.... I suppose I can figure it out from there.

I don't know how I feel about it. At last I don't hate him any more, so that's good, but I don't love and adore him, and I don't think that's gonna happen anyway. I suppose I feel numb about it. Hard to believe he could ever die (I have always subscribed to "only the good die young") and I figured he'd easily make it to 90 or 100.

Of course, I couldn't think of fuckall to say to this when Mom e-mailed it to me. All I could think of to say was something like "that's hard to believe." To which she promptly responded, "What does THAT mean? Couldn't you have said you were sorry to hear that?" and the war went on from there.

If he dies, I am dead meat with my mother. I have no idea how to not tick her off on the subject of him. Anything I could ever say is not sincere enough and not enough, period. That's the problem already.

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