blah, blah, blah

Daily Stats
Words: 500
Caffeine: morning cup + midday cappuccino
Evil Calories: half bag of Cheetos
Reality TV: Last Comic Standing, Top Chef

I love writing. I really think everyone should do it. You create a whole world with characters, heroes and villains, plotlines, love-triangles, and best of all, you control everything. You are, for lack of a better word, a God.

That being said…I really hate writing. Because at some point, you’ll invite someone into that world, and they just won’t get it. And then you feel like a failure, God-wise. You suddenly stand accused of creating people who do things that don’t make any sense.

But what I think is interesting is that we, the characters in this blockbuster, NY Times bestseller called life, constantly do things that don’t make sense, yet we seek strict, formulaic plot-lines in our escapisms. Maybe its because we’re so ridiculous that we need order and normalcy to feel some semblance of hope.

Whatever…

Ok, as a total side bar, having nothing to do with my book…. I came down with a slight ear infection over the weekend, and had to go on antibiotics. Fine. Cool. Whatever. I’ve taken them a million times before. Cake walk.

Umm…yeah…lemme tell ya a little something about Cipro.

Yes, Cipro…as in, what they use to treat Anthrax.

Holy friggen crap. First of all, I didn’t find out until two days into dosing that you shouldn’t drink coffee when you take it, because it enhances the effects of caffeine. So that explains the palpitations and the fact that every bathroom in my house is clean and all the deli meats in my fridge are filed appropriately.

It also causes dizziness, and you’re not supposed to drive or operate heavy machinery. (WTF? What the hell is this stuff doing to the poor little bacteria infecting my ear?)

Insomnia. I woke up at 2:00am last night and lay awake for three hours wondering how Chewbacca went to the bathroom.

Loss of appetite. (Ok, this one wasn't so bad. See Cheetos confession above.)

So, in my jittery, dizzy, sleep deprived state, I Googled Cipro, and here’s what I learned Cipro is a broad-spectrum antibiotic that is active against both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. It functions by inhibiting DNA gyrase, a type II topoisomerase, which is an enzyme necessary to separate replicated DNA, thereby inhibiting cell division. Wha…??

Ok, I kinda get it. So…if it does that to the bacteria’s DNA…then…what about my DNA…

I will only be cool with this if I get some really awesome super-powers out of it.

Welcome to My Brain

Do you ever feel like tearing your own arm off and beating yourself to death with it?

Allow me to explain. I'm just on the tail end of my writing class and my very last assignment is to write my query letter. (For those who have decided not to subject themselves to the tortures of being writer, a query letter is basically the "look at my stuff, it's neat" letter you send to an agent in hopes that they'll represent your book.)

This is were they say you need to "sell the sizzle, not the steak". You need to be able to catch the agent's attention within the first line of the letter. So, here are a few openers I'm toying with:

• I just ate my cat! (gross, yes, but catchy)
• I was having lunch with Clive Owen...(ok, obviously directed more at female agents)
• My uncle, John Gotti, said... (a little fear of severed horse heads never hurt anyone)
• Brown! And speckled curly, the sun says, "ding-ding." (makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, and the agent is sure to read it numerous times trying to figure out what the hell I'm talking about)
  
• Forward this letter on to ten of your favorite editors, and within three minutes you will win the lottery.
  

Eh...none of them are really working for me. Granted I'm only on the seventh chapter of my book, so maybe when I reach the end, something amazing will come to me.