Livelihood

I’ve been working on a short story lately titled “Golden”. If you’ve heard the song on the new Fall Out Boy CD, Infinity on High, you may understand how it inspired me to write a story about it.

My Confession

This is my confession: I hate you.

I hate you violently.  I hate you with passion.  I hate you, at this moment, with every fiber of my personal being.  I wish you would disappear.  I wish you never existed.  I wish everything between you and I had never existed.  Every phone call, lunch, everything we did, every word that was said, I want it gone, trashed, burned.

I wish your memories would just be blown away.

I hate all that you stand for in my mind: the backstabbing, the fact that trust is fragile as glass and can never be put back to its original perfection.  I hate that you destroyed my trust.  I hate that you lied to me.  In fact, I hate every word you said to me until the end, because everything you said to me in every conversation was a living lie.

You said you loved me.  You said “you are my only one”.  You said you wanted to marry me.  You said eleven more years, only eleven years, eleven years to be happy before the rest of our lives.  You told me I was the most important thing in your life.  You said you could never bring yourself to break up with me.  You LIED and you knew you were lying when you did it.

And you know what?  I hate you for lying.

It’s taken me forever to finally see that you are NOT worth more than me.  I’m a person, just the same as you!  Why couldn’t you recognize that?  Why didn’t you treat me like I was worthy of you?  Why didn’t you act like I was worth your friendship?

Why did you lie to me?

I don’t care about you.  I love you and I always will, but I just don’t care.  I hate your lies and I hate that you hurt me.

Do you know what you did to me?  Do you understand how much you hurt me?  Trevor told me tonight that he would never trade me for someone else.  He said that he loved me.  He said “you are my one and only”.  And you know what I did?  I couldn’t say anything.  But then I could.  And I said “Trevor?  You’re scaring me.”

I am so afraid now.  Afraid that if I trust him, he’ll turn on me just like you did.  I don’t want to be hurt again.  Do you know what the hell kind of therapy I’m going to need?  I mean, it’s not like I can just up and cut myself like rest of the nation!  I won’t chop off all my hair like some people do when they’re depressed.  I won’t beat anybody up.  I won’t go scream angry songs in front of raving, drug-ravaged crowds.  I can’t take boxing or martial arts or even go to a freaking therapist!  All I can do is write and try to figure out how the HELL I’m going to start trusting somebody I should because he is worth a hundred times what you are.

An Update on Tediousness

Editing is tedious.

I spent a good amount of yesterday editing various parts of The TECH Project. It’s just kind of… you know… ugh. Right? Very boring, a lot of reading and reading and reading and – oh, change a letter – and reading and reading and reading. I know it’s necessary for the common good and all that… but it’s boring as hell.

Added a new scene into Teenage Drama. That’s about File 17 or something like that in the second half of the novel. Did you know that The TECH Project is around two hundred pages long typed?? Well, you probably didn’t, but it is!

Today’s post is dedicated to things that are inspiring. I’m going to make a list.

• Music

Music is my numero-uno inspiration. I listen to all sorts of music, everything from Jimmy Eat World to My Chemical Romance, Il Divo to Dragon Force, and even the occasional Michelle Branch and Justin Timberlake.

Music definitely keeps me inspired when I feel like writing. All the time. There’s the fun stuff, like MCR’s “Dead!” and “Teenagers” that get my blood pumping and the rest of me dancing around the room, and then there’s the sad stuff, like The All-American Rejects’ “The Last Song” and Il Divo’s “Regresa A Mi” that bring me down and help me work on the sad, depressing parts that all novels have to have at some point.

When you feel writer’s block coming on, definitely listen to some music. May I recommend Riot Like Words, Fly Phoenix, or TheNewsCanWait if you’re bored with your old stuff? All three can be found on MySpace.

• The World

Yes. Sad but true. I sometimes have to resort to the “real world” for my inspiration. I draw from everything: my own experiences, stories my family members have told me, even school gossip. Sometimes, when I hear something, I just latch on and end up with a brand-new story.

For example: last night, I wrote a short story about Zoe Lee, the lead protagonist of The TECH Project. Although she is DEFINITELY based on a certain person in my life, most of what I was writing about when describing her relationship with her father came from my mother’s experiences with her father. (My grandfather suffered a stroke, which left him in a debilitating state.) So, if you use the real world as inspiration, draw from many different sources, your own and that of others.