Not the sequel, just more thoughts on the book.

I finished it up last night.  I’m a little surprised–after Sarah’s comment yesterday, I expected it to be more PTSD-y.  I have no idea what I mean by that.  I guess–and, duh, spoilers–that I expected the “bad guy” to be more of a mess and less of a planner.  There’s a lot of planning going into what he was doing.  It was less subtle than I expected, I suppose.  Or more subtle?  I guess because my exposure to PTSD is through the media, it would never occur to me that

In the end, the psychic stuff DID seem super-unnecessary and the gender gap in the time periods between when the book was written and now just drove me insane.  This one didn’t hold up.  I’m thinking of rereading Daughters of Eve to see what the what is.  It’s much more about its time period, so I think it will stand up better, but it also has an unnecessary psychic.

I am also rather appalled that Kevin Williamson made a slasher movie out of this book after the murder of Lois Duncan’s daughter, and that the murder has never been solved.

Now I’m rereading a Harlequin and it’s GREAT, but it’s set in Jamaica and 1) Jamaica is so homophobic it makes me sick and 2) I WANT TO BE WARM.

So the bf picked this up for his students at a library book sale and I couldn’t help but read it.  I made it to chapter 8 before I put it down–nothing against the book, really, but since I remember a lot of the details of the end, it’s not really drawing me in the way it used to.  Also, it’s getting way, way dated.  The girls are so wishy-washy (especially Helen) and the guys are so…guy-like.  This works out fine for a book like Daughters of Eve, which needs to be set when it is to be effective, but not so much here.

I never did see the movie because it seemed so different from the book, but I find it funny–Sarah Michelle Geller plays Helen, right, who’s called Heller.  This “funny” might also be because I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.  Looks like it’s on instant play on Netflix, so I’m thinking maybe I’ll finally watch it after all, and then hate myself for it.

But yeah, this book is…kinda dull, kinda annoying, and dated.  Also, why is Julie’s mother psychic?  What purpose does that serve?  I don’t even understand.  Can anyone explain it to me?

Alana: Okay, let’s start

Alana: It has been SEVEN MONTHS SINCE OUR LAST CONFES–RECAP.

Liss: OOOPS

Alana: In my defense, I’m doing REALLY well in grad school for someone who hates about half of it.

Alana: And I had surgery!

Liss: Exactly

Alana: But I am totally regretting not taking the time out to recap this book, because it is WONDERFUL.

Alana: I want to recap it every day.

Liss: Poppy! James!

Alana: It would’ve been such a nice break from the evils of The Vampire Diaries, which kept weighing on me like…I can’t even think of anything. I was Atlas, I tell you. ATLAS.

Alana: Poppy & James TLA

Alana: I love Poppy, I love James, I love Phil, I totally cried last night catching up on my reading, and I read way past where we were supposed to because I didn’t want to stop.

Liss: Awwww

Liss: It’s just so different from Vampire Diaries

Alana: You mean in that it’s good?

Liss: There’s that, and the tone of the story is so…I don’t know, hopeful?

Alana: There’s less ~*drama*~. It’s more real, too, despite the content. The human relationships make so much more sense.

Alana: If there isn’t a ghostwriter, I’m hoping that she’ll get back to this level of writing.

Liss: We can only pray.

Liss: Because Nightfall or whatever was the worst book of ‘09.

Alana: Are there Razzie-esque book awards? We could, like, nominate it.

Liss: There’s that worst sex scenes thing, but I don’t know if they have them for bad books overall.

Alana: We’re going to have to do some research. But for now: Poppy’s feeling the effects of the change. They pretty much make her feel brain-dead and weak, so far.

Liss: She’s eating a lot red things, Popsicles, juice, but they’re not what she really wants.

Alana: James and Phil come to her room and she’s still pissed at James. She has a “primitive, animal” reaction. I cannot help but think of The Forbidden Game and when Smith kept referring that way to the token black character, Dee.

Alana: So at least we don’t have racism here.

Alana: (AND MORE PROOF OF A GHOSTWRITER.)

Liss: Hey now, I love Forbidden Game.

Alana: (BECAUSE FORBIDDEN GAME IS CRAP.)

Alana: Crap Crap Crap Crap Labyrinth rip-off.

Liss: It was my first LJ series

Alana: I’d like to say “Aww, you always love your first,” but mine is TVD. Forget THAT.

Liss: Awwww

Alana: Anyway, James apologizes to Poppy, who is having issues understanding, so he tells her to use her new (OR ARE THEY???) telepathic powers.

Liss: Phil reacts weirdly to the mention of telepathy.

Liss: Hmmmmmmmmmm

Alana: Phil backs him up and James basically rolls his eyes at Phil being the one to cause all this damage they are fixing now

Alana: I want to be there just to grin at James.

Alana: “Alana grins at James.”

Alana: Obviously, my medications are getting to me.

Liss: No fanfic in the recap!

Alana: Or just that I’m recapping a book I enjoy for once.

Alana: NO FANFIC EVER.

Alana: Poppy does her telepathy mojo, which is not like sharing blood, but she’s still getting the truth from him. He “cares.” Well, then he’s like “There are two cardinal rules in the Night World. One is not to tell humans that it exists. The other is not to fall in love with a human. I’ve broken both of them.”

Alana: YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

Alana: Phil exits discreetly. Good for Phil.

Liss: Phil has some class, which is rare in teen fiction.

Liss: And unlike the books I generally recap, he has no interest in seeing his sister’s personal moments.

Alana: AHAHAHAHAHA.

Alana: That’s what you get for choosing V.C. Andrews.

Liss: It’s true.

Liss: James realizes that he’s been going on and on while Poppy is sick, and he gives her his blood.

Alana: I love the “Don’t you tell me what to worry about!”/”Don’t you tell me not to tell you–” exchange.

Alana: So cute!

Liss: They’re adorable.

Alana: Poppy realizes this is exactly what her body needs, and then they start having a telepathic conversation, as you do when you’re exchanging blood.

Alana: James tells her that vampires don’t exchange blood.

Liss: Poppy is upset that they won’t be able to share this way once she’s changed, but she’s sure that she’ll think of something.

Liss: I’d like to think she means sex, but this is an LJ Smith book.

Alana: Phil comes back in and James is there to be our King of Exposition. What I like here is how it clearly explains why vampires don’t exchange blood. You see, this pseudo-science states that vampire blood is great and all, but it can’t carry oxygen through the system, so that’s why they need human blood.

Alana: Er, that and some magic stuff too. But never you mind that! SCIENCE!

Liss: Science and magic work perfectly today in my mind. Let’s go with it!

Liss: Phil, of course, is all “So vampire blood is POISON!”.

Alana: Phil is all grossed out, but Poppy finds it all very natural, like symbiosis. James is then like “Enough science for us–we need to make some PLANS.” A man after my own heart. I love plans.

Liss: The next exchange is very important–Poppy might relapse again if they wait too long, but the next one will be the one that brings her over and they have to arrange for it.

Alana: Maybe it’s just because I’ve been away from the book for so long, but there’s such a sense here that we’ve gotten far, far from Poppy’s human death, that it’s been completely eclipsed by her “vampire” death. I almost forgot for a second about her cancer, and I think we were SUPPOSED to have. We’re focused on this “cure” but it certainly comes at a price, one the ghostwr–er, the author doesn’t want us to forget.

Alana: Poppy’s speech about her death is really, really effective.

Alana: And Phil’s response is a little cheesy, but effective as well. Kind of heartbreaking, if you love the characters (AND I DO).

Liss: I do too. And, Poppy is, for once (hee), being the practical one. Even if she dies and wakes up a vampire, she can’t do that with their mother and Cliff around. They have to talk about this, they have to deal with it.

Alana: They make a plan: Get the adults out of the house. There’s some good foreshadowing here where James points out that being resistant to his mind control might be genetic, so getting Poppy’s mom out of the house is imperative.

Liss: Poppy and James will finish the change, and then he and Phil will watch TV and wait. It’s important for James to be around for the entire event, particularly when the people from the funeral home arrive.

Alana: Poor Phil. He’s struggling with this reality.

Alana: What’s upsetting is that James and Phil have to become buddies in front of Cliff and their mom, and WE DON’T GET TO SEE IT. It’s totally off-screen!

Alana: er, page

Liss: I was just writing that!

Alana: Hee!

Alana: Cuz it’s important to us! The Phil/James interactions are hilarious!

Liss: I bet it was awkward, and there was one of those man hugs that start as a handshake.

Alana: Hee, manhugs!  Poor Poppy too: “Tomorrow is that day I die.”

Alana: I love Poppy saying good-bye to her life.

Alana: It’s so sad

Alana: I think this is where I started getting all choked up, although I didn’t start crying till the next chapter.

Liss: It reminds me of Our Town.

Alana: Well, it’s supposed to, I guess, since she references it. I think I read Our Town, but I also read so much about it in other books beforehand that it was almost surreal. I should read it again. It would probably feel like the firs time, at this point, because I don’t have all the references in my head. There’s a YA book where they do it, and then there’s a book–maybe a Pike?–where it gets referenced a lot? I don’t even think it’s Remember Me?

Alana: I could be getting my Pikes confused

Alana: Because I feel like I’m confusing Remember Me with Last Act plus something else.

Liss: I’m not sure, though I know what you’re talking about.

Liss: I got it because I did Emily

Liss: *Emily’s monologue*

Liss: lol

Alana: Our readers are going to have to let us know. YA book, they put on Our Town. Help us out, guys. [Also, '80s TV shows that did it?]

Alana: Uh-huh.

Alana: MOVING ON

Liss: Hey, I was a great Emily. I’m just a bad typist.

Alana: Poppy basically lists the little things. You know which one I love the best?

Alana: The desk.

Alana: Because it talks about how she was putting sealing wax on her letters. That is SO Poppy.

Liss: It really, really is.

Liss: I wonder if she had a stamp?

Alana: Also, if I were Phil, I’d make sure that James “inherited” Poppy’s stereo and CDs. I guess it wouldn’t be TOO difficult to get a lot of her stuff to her later?

Alana: Oh, she totally had SOME stamp.

Liss: Aw, it was probably a poppy.

Alana: Wouldn’t you?

Liss: I do, actually.

Liss: It’s an M.

Alana: I meant a poppy, but yeah.

Alana: I was thinking “M for Melissa–no wait, that’s not your name.” I am so bad at this.

Liss: Oh! haha

Liss: Well, the hardest part is saying goodbye to people.

Liss: Namely, Poppy’s mother.

Alana: She can’t REALLY do it, because it would seem suspicious.

Alana: Except that not, because she IS dying.

Alana: So she’s gotta be subtle about it; saying good-bye without saying good-bye.

Liss: She calls her friends, thanks them for flowers and cards, tries to catch up a little.

Alana: She can’t find her dad, which is so sad.

Alana: She also thinks about how she wasted her time at school. I think about that a lot now too, now that I’m older. Of course, I’m kind of wasting my time in grad school, in a way, because I’m starting with doing the bare minimum and trying to shove the rest in IF IT FITS INTO MY LIFE, but I don’t have the sort of open lives that teenagers have. All that free time, God. Remember?

Liss: Oh, I do.

Liss: And I did nothing with it, seriously.

Alana: But there is a funny line jammed in there, which I appreciate, where she thinks Phil may have gotten it right–by playing the game, really, but because of playing the game, he got more out of life–and she shivers as she thinks about how much she must’ve changed to believe that Phil’s the right one for once. Hee.

Liss: Aww, Poppy.

Alana: And then she refers to her death as “the play” when James arrives.

Liss: Oh, Cliff scene…

Alana: Oh oh wait, here’s where I started to lose it, when Poppy “finally forgave [Cliff] for not being her dad.” WAHHHHHHH

Liss: She realizes that he is a good guy, he takes care of her mom, and he’ll be the one that her mother needs…after. WAAAHHH

Alana: They smile at her as they head out to dinner. Okay, I’m crying again.

Alana: Ugh, all that “Mom, I’m fine, go out, you need a night out, I’m not going to die TONIGHT” stuff…heart-freakin-breaking.

Alana: It’s better that it’s related in a paragraph than in dialog.

Alana: MS SMITH, ARE YOU READING THIS? YOU WERE A GENIUS ONCE. LET’S GET BACK TO THAT, OKAY? AND IF YOU HAD A GHOSTWRITER, COULD YOU TELL ME WHO THAT PERSON IS SO I CAN SEND THEM A FAN LETTER?

Liss: The guilt that caregivers feel is really well done, too. Poppy’s mom doesn’t feel like she *deserves* to go out, since, after all, her daughter is sick.

Alana: Ugh, I don’t even wanna do the next chapter now. I’m so wrecked.

Alana: I love this book so much.

Liss: These are the sentences that I seldom get to type, but I like vampire stories that address the fact that (most) vampires were once people with lives and homes and families.

Liss: Things that can’t just be swept under the rug now that someone is a fabulous vampire.

Alana: Yeah, it’s not all orphans. Sometimes it’s families.

Liss: Even when someone dies and it’s expected (like Poppy’s death is), things have to happen. Doctors and coroners and funerals happen.

Alana: Like, if Bill Compton had been made into a vampire in another time, maybe his family wouldn’t have had to live without him–although I guess with Jessica, they sort of showed that it didn’t work. But that’s rather unfair, and also I’m way behind.

Liss: Now I want James to declare that “He. Is. Vampahr.”

Alana: Did you see that comment in Andy’s journal about Halloween costumes, where someone said they wanted their husband to paint himself sparkly to be Edward Cullen, but he said no, so she asked instead if he’d just glare at her a lot so they could be Sookie and Bill?

Alana: God, I cracked up.

Liss: Oh Beel.

Liss: He’s both better and worse in the books.

Alana: I don’t even know how that’s possible.

Alana: But I will find out!

Liss:

Liss: They’re good fun, if not great lit.

Liss: Ohhh…you are gonna have issues with Book Sookie, I can’t wait.

Alana: Okay okay, let’s wrap this up. I have papers to write, unfortunately. Um, so, yeah, Poppy’s going to die and Alana’s a big weepy mess. That’s all folks! Tune in next time when Poppy kicks the bucket, Alana cries EVEN MORE, and Smith actually mentions real world music bands, which I appreciate.

Liss: Even if they are all bands from Pure Moods compilation albums.

Alana: Hee, true enuff.

So, remember that time Sarah couldn’t find her recapping book and her kid stole it?

YEAH GUESS WHAT I AM DOING TODAY???

If you answered “Looking for my copy of Secret Vampire,” you’re right!

My daughter LOVES Night World, so she either took the book off the recapping shelf when I wasn’t looking, or she took the book off the recapping shelf when I wasn’t looking AGES AGO and I hid it from her…somewhere…

So that’s one of my goals this afternoon; to find it.  I’m only home for another couple of hours, so I really really hope I find it soon, cuz I gotta write a big chunk of a paper soon too, AND go pick up my meds (I now know why I’ve been sick!) and grab some fake mac n cheese at the local vegan takeout place to test it out…I <3 the new owners of Amani’s Veggie Garden.

ETA: Hey, I found it!  It was BEHIND the others–either pushed back or hidden, I don’t even know anymore.

There have been two main issues I’ve had with Drexel since I started there in the spring:

1) Advisers

2) Financial aid

Actually, 1 has been more clear-cut than 2, but I feel seriously dicked around by 2.  The first issue, advisers, is that I’ve had THREE since I began at Drexel three terms ago.  That’s one per term.  That’s a little crazy.  However, this one has gotten back to me promptly so…I guess it’s time to stop complaining about that?  Still, it wasn’t the best introduction into the advising process at Drexel.  If I end up with another adviser before my time at Drexel ends (about six months from now), I will probably pitch a royal freakin’ fit.

As for 2, I can’t even tell you.  I have no idea what’s going on, ever.  I appear to have been turned down for my loans outta nowhere, and I don’t even know which term those loans are for–if they’re for this term, I’ve ALREADY gotten money for that, so what the heck?  If they’re for NEXT term, well…wait, what?  SO CONFUSING.  I know I need to call them, but I swear I’ve spent so much time on hold with everything I just want to sit down and cry.  Not to mention that Drexel doesn’t even have accurate financial aid information on me, which admittedly is my own fault because I don’t have a landline from which to fax this paperwork I need to do to get them the right info, but…uh…yeah, no excuses there.

So I guess I have to make this a priority today and hope that I don’t lose the ability to pay rent anytime soon.  I knew there’d be a time when paying month-to-month rather than having a year-long lease would come in handy!

UGH

Okay, I got off the phone with Sallie Mae.  Turns out THERE WERE DUPLICATE APPLICATIONS SENT and…what?  Drexel, maybe you did this, or maybe I did, or maybe Sallie Mae did–BUT SHOULDN’T I KNOW?

I was going to tell you all about how the latest version of A Christmas Carol sucked to high heaven, but I’m so damn tired.  So this is to warn you not to go, unless you’ve never seen 3D and/or the Muppet Christmas Carol.

Also, I finished rereading The Cat Ate My Gymsuit and it’s probably one of the best books EVER so I’ma write that paper tomorrow.

So tired.

HOW DO YOU MAKE COLIN FIRTH NOT ATTRACTIVE, YOU STUPID MOVIE?!?!?!?!

I have been mood-swinging all over the place the past couple days, and it did NOT help that I’m wrapping up my term and therefore have to read something nostalgic as heck for my Children’s Resources class.  I chose The Cat Ate My Gymsuit, which is probably one of my all-time favorite books, even more so now that I’m older and can read more of what’s going on with the book (most of which I’ll save for my paper).  But let me tell you, it was NOT the book for me to read after the first two volumes of One-Pound Gospel.  Let me explain.

First off, SCREW that cover.  Marcy looks flat-out THIN.  The whole point of The Cat Ate My Gymsuit isn’t that Marcy thinks she’s fat, but THAT SHE ACTUALLY IS FAT.  It’s not just about perception.  Marcy’s mother wants her to be thin, and yet feeds her ice cream when things get bad–something, by the way, I didn’t notice when I was a kid.

But yeah, back-to-back these books are painful.  One-Pound Gospel is a manga series by the same person who did Ranma 1/2 and InuYasha.  It’s the story of a young boxer who likes to eat, and everyone gets on his case and forces him to starve himself.  Oh, and he’s in love with a novice nun.  Either Catholicism is REALLY different in Japan, or else the author doesn’t know anything about it, because I’ve never known nuns to take confession, but especially NOVICE nuns?  There’s so much wrong in this series I don’t even know where to start.  I don’t know anything about boxing, but I did once lose 50 pounds nice and slowly and the whole way they were trying to crash the main character to get him to lose enough to make his weight for his bouts was horrifying me.  Everything struck me as off.

And then to read all this stuff with Marcy’s struggles with her weight, especially when I myself am dealing with a medication-related weight gain.  UGH.  On the other hand, I have an adult viewpoint going into this, so that’s giving me a little bit of perspective but oh, poor Marcy.  And poor young, and not so young, overweight me.

This paper is going to be fun.  I’m just glad I’m on the other side of the pendulum of this mood swing right now, because otherwise this post would’ve gotten longer and whinier.

So the one side of my snapped-in-half glasses were feeling a little loose in the duct tape, so I said “Hey boyfriend, can you fix this?” since he did the original wrapping.  OF COURSE, the second wrapping did not go as well, and my glasses fell off like a half-dozen times while I was driving down the highway tonight.

SO UNSAFE.

Also, this post will be short because I can’t take my glasses falling off again and again.  On the other hand, I got an eye appointment for tomorrow morning, so hopefully something good will happen tomorrow, like I’ll have enough of a change in my prescription to get some sexy/geeky new frames!

In book news, I went…ugh…antiquing with the bf and his parents on Friday, and I discovered something AMAZING.  Did you know that not only are there stores full of UTTER CRAP, but these stores sometimes contain NOT SO VERY OLD BOOKS?  In fact, BOOKS THAT ARE EXACTLY THE RIGHT AGE TO, SAY, BE HARLEQUINS FROM THE LATE EIGHTIES AND EARLY NINETIES?

I found two or three books on my Harlequin list, but I already had all of them.  HOWEVER, I ALSO found a book that was one of mine that I had never remembered!  The title looked familiar but once glance at the cover and I KNEW.

Now if only I knew where the bf put it…

Seriously, though, another book!  It’s weird to think that this one’s quite random, not in a set like the rest.  (Harlequins came out then, and probably come out now, in batches per month.)  So I wonder where I got it, and why I barely remember it at all.  Even skimming the cover just made me think, “Yes, I’ve read this but…but…I can’t remember ANYTHING.”  Maybe it just wasn’t that interesting?

We’ll soon find out!

I’m feeling bad about the lack of content here.  I mean, for some reason, I feel like anything but a recap isn’t much content at all.

So maybe tomorrow morning, after I get some schoolwork done, I’ll start putting together my first Harlequin recap.  But which book to start with??

I mentioned before briefly that I was reading Claudia and Mean Janine for one of my classes.  I didn’t actually get to say this outside the class’s discussion board, I think, but I was actually really impressed with the book during the reread!  There’s a lot going on, and even if some of the characters never get rounded out, there’s the sense that they are or will be in other books, and all of them are distinctive.  Now, I don’t know if part of that is my memory, filling in the blanks for each child, but that doesn’t really matter, I think.  The point is that I didn’t really have much to snark!  I’ve heard that other books in the series are pretty racist, pretty dim, pretty annoying, but this one is not.  Claudia is smart, that totally comes through, but she thinks she’s lazier than she is.  (Anyone who balances baby-sitting, grandmother-sitting, art classes, and housework isn’t as lazy as she thinks she is.)  Also, as an adult it was much easier for me to see how lonely Janine is and how she’s really trying to connect with Claudia.  I also find the title fascinating: there was so much less Janine than I expected!

It didn’t make me wanna pull out the entire series, but it was nice to go back and not get a horrible surprise like with The Vampire Diaries.

The other thing I mentioned I was reading for school that I didn’t follow up on is Julia Child’s My Life in France.  As I said before, vegan and a fiction reader–so out of my comfort zone, but I also forgot to mention my idea of cooking is pouring boiling water on ramen noodles.  That said, despite what I expected, I pretty much was only grossed out by two things, both of which had to do with more French cuisine than cooking animals.  (It’s preparing them to look like what they are, something we’re not really crazy about in American cooking; we prefer nuggets and strips and such to keeping the beak on.)  The rest of the book I was totally fine with–although keep in mind, I’ve been vegan for a few years now and I have a pretty good disconnect to animal products at this point.  Also, the chapter on bread: OM NOM NOMMITY NOM NOM NOM.  But it’s not really about food.  It’s about France, and Julia Child’s marriage, and politics, and family…it’s about LIFE, really.

And that’s odd for a fiction reader: it’s not till someone who reads fiction almost exclusively picks up a non-fiction book that they realize how structured fiction is–how unlike real life, no matter how realistic the fiction.  Real life is anecdotes, stories told around a dinnertime; there’s no plotline.

The book was very easy to set down, but just as easy to pick up.  I guess that’s the mark of good non-fiction, for me.

I’m not a very good blogger today; my glasses snapped at the bridge yesterday when I was drying them–they are only about three years old; I thought they were much older.  (I figured out their age based off my Photobucket account.  So clever.)  But anyway, not the point.  They are broken, which is funny cuz I was going to call the eye doctor tomorrow morning to set up an appointment anyway.  The bf tried to superglue them back together but it didn’t work, so he taped them instead.  I am big nerd.  Er, I am a bigger nerd than before.  Wait wait, THAT wasn’t the point either.  The point is, they’re not taped PERFECTLY so they’re a bit…off.  This makes me a big headachey.  So…no big post.

This morning I woke and thought, “Oh, busy day, I guess I should get my NaBlo post done early” (well, in truth, this morning I woke up and thought, “I could fall back asleep,” then there was a competition to see who could push whom off the bed, with the loser having to go get the laptops, which is when I ACTUALLY thought this–and it’s not REALLY losing if you fall off the bed first but you take your opponent with you, right?) and then I thought, “I have nothing to say.”

Really.  I’m so, so very slowly getting through the book I’m reading because I’ve been spending more time writing and doing schoolwork this week, and also the bf’s been off for the NJEA convention, so I feel…like I have not much to say.  Except then I realized that’s how I felt yesterday about NaNo.

Yes, just one day after I posted about my NaNoWriMo excitement, I hit a wall.  I hadn’t exactly written myself into a corner so much as I didn’t know where I was going, so what do I do?  All the energy drained out of me–not even DRAINED, more like when Alex Mack would turn into a puddle and everything would go SPLOOSH downward.  I started to feel that sort of emotionless shell that you know is hiding all the real emotions underneath–disappointment, maybe, and fear–and then the boyfriend stepped in like a goddamn superhero and listened to me babble about my story and then said the one thing that made everything better.

“You could change perspective–write from [the other character]’s point of view.”

GENIUS!  I immediately started turning stuff over in my head and getting excited about writing again.  Then I finished where I was with my main character and switched over to knock out another 600 or 700 words.

Then we had stuff to do, and then I fell asleep watching a movie, and okay, now I’m behind a couple hundred words from where I wanted to be (I want to keep up with the little statistics bar) BUT!  I’m BACK!  All in, like, the course of a day.

That’s pretty neat.  And I think there’s a lesson in it: just because there’s a bit of a stumbling block, that doesn’t mean you should give up.  Sure, it’s “only” writing, but look at how simply things were resolved!  He only really needed to say two words –”change perspective”–and everything rocked again!  I was happy again!

So if anyone else is hitting an end-of-the-week block, change perspective.  Maybe not literally, but somehow.  Write the end instead of the beginning?  Jump to the middle.  Write a sex scene, for those inclined.  (I find them ridiculously easy, for some reason, probably because I don’t hit a lot of detail so I don’t have to worry about cliches.)  Do some backstory, go back to your prewriting, or fill in some sort of writing tool, like a plot diagram or a conflict box.  If you have an outline, go in and fill in some details.  None of these tricks are tried and true–all I can say is “Change perspective” worked for me–but do ANYTHING and see where it takes you.  Remember that the number of words isn’t the full goal; if you’re down a few hundred from the little bar graph, you can make it up when you’ve found your spark again.  But give yourself a chance to look for that spark.  Sometimes you’ve dropped it right by your foot–it hasn’t gone far, but you haven’t looked in the right direction yet.  START LOOKING.

Man, I’m cheesy.