Jousting the air

There are some things I would like to write about, but I can't get my head completely around them yet.

Instead, I am going to try to do one of the most insufferable things in the world and write about writing. Sit back and enjoy! Or leave. I'll never know who you are...(that was for Charlotte and Rachel. Anyone listening?)

So it has been established that I am a total geek. Seriously, I love it all--I stayed home on Friday nights and watched Battlestar Galactica, I will marathon LOTR or Star Wars any day of the week, and yes, I sat through and enjoyed that lovely eight-hour epic The Tenth Kingdom (cheers, Nina and Kirsten and that bottle of cheap whiskey that got us through).

It all traces back to a childhood spent with Bruce Coville, Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett and most importantly, Tamora Pierce. That was my shit. It still is. Those fantastical plots, the slightly off characters, the dramatic and implausible twists--they rock my world.

So because I am naive and impressionable, most of the things that I've written have followed this pattern: reluctant character in an odd situation/world must deal with strange events. Of course, that might be the formula for every single book, but whatever. The first novella-length thing that I ever wrote (embarrassingly titled "Princess of Thieves," god help me) was pretty much exactly stolen from Tamora Pierce. Then again, I wrote it--all 50 pages of it--when I was in 6th grade, so maybe I can be excused? But then the second thing that I wrote, about aliens who landed on Earth during the Middle Ages, cribbed liberally from Douglas Adams, so maybe things don't change much.

There's probably some psychological analysis to be done here, most likely by a very, very bored psychologist with nothing else to do. I'm someone who very frequently feels stuck in neutral, so I write about dramatic events full of exciting people doing exciting things and working towards exciting goals. I like to envision myself in the center of some conflict, Sir Caitlin, Lady Knight, swinging a sword and casting spells and shooting the shit out of things with a bow and arrow. It's my fucking DREAM. I would kick ass SO HARD.

So yeah, despite the fact that I am a mature 20 years old, I still have romantic visions of myself on a large horse, jousting or some shit (have I ever been on a horse? No. No, I have not). I don't think there's anything wrong with that, though. I wrote about life-threatening peril because, up until a couple weeks ago, it wasn't really a part of my life. And it's not really anymore, but for one horrible moment those couple of weeks ago, it was. And it wasn't something that my delusional image of myself could fight off with a sword or a crossbow or even magic. It was nasty and evil and dirty and intangible.

I'm sorry if this seems disjointed. My mind only seems to work one way these days, and it's a way that even I'm having trouble keeping up with. I don't know what my point is--I'm just trying to sort through some thoughts, some of which have been chasing each other in my head for a year now, and some of which are really recent additions to this tangled game of thought-tag. Give it a moment, it'll all sort itself out?