I still thinking semi-seriously of opening a Writing Dominatrix Muse service.

"Hands on the keyboard! SNAP! Don't edit -- just type, dammit. Oh, you like that, do you? Harder! Faster! Less adverbs! DO IT!"

I keep eyeballing Scrivener. Hmm.

bonny, bitching at people is pretty easy. Tact is (just not saying true stuff) hard.

Written?Kitten! is open-source; should be a simple enough matter to throw in some other photo feed...

Harder! Faster! Less adverbs! DO IT!"

...fewer!

Less adverbs!

Noooooo! I love my adverbs!

Okay, here's the deal I just made with myself. Tomorrow I record TWO shows. Tonight, I finish writing the notes for them. Part of this is due to stage fright, part of this is due to still feeling like crap, and I know that will affect my performance.

(If I show up in thread tomorrow, everyone feel free to poke me about doing the recording.)

Truth be told, I'm having a very frustrating block. I've been writing and rewriting the same first paragraph on this novel for five months now. I have this paragraph, one other scene, and a one sentence log line of the story. But I can't get past this paragraph. I don't know what comes next. I don't really know the full shape of the story.

Then today I come up with the opening paragraph of a new story, but beyond this paragraph, I have no idea what happens next.

It's like I keep having these "In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit," moments, but I can't get the rest to come.

With the first story, I try to write an outline, but that just ends up with me staring at a new blank document until I get tired of it and close it. I've been writing other things, like these monologues, but now I want to get back to these other story ideas.

Speaking of writing, Erin, I'm sending you a ton of raw material in a few minutes.

Sean, one thing that I do when I get that stuck (and Amy was the one who suggested this, so a HUGE thank-you to her) is to write story summaries like they're chapter descriptions for a penny dreadful serial or the dialog cards for a silent movie.

I thought to myself "Oh, a laptop, I'll be able to write anywhere!"

Nope.

I thought to myself "Oh, a room of my own, with my own desk, that will let me write!"

Nope.

If I'm not careful I'm going to think to myself "A whole continent, with just me and my computer! That'll help me write." I should probably find more effective writing motivators, because we don't have space travel yet to get me my own planet.

Sean, one thing that I do when I get that stuck (and Amy was the one who suggested this, so a HUGE thank-you to her) is to write story summaries like they're chapter descriptions for a penny dreadful serial or the dialog cards for a silent movie.

OMG that's perfect! I'll make a penny dreadful chapter list. I think that's just what I need to do.

Sometimes, this city (Jerusalem) is a bit too much to take.

Last night, I was sitting with a friend in her car. She dropped me home after we met (Hollaback things, she's a potential future volunteer. It's not like I have the luxury to actually meet friends just to hang out these months). We were talking, as we realized that something's going on in the car parking next to us. There was a man in the front sit, who was talking to a woman, who yelled at him, in the back seat. The windows of the back seat were darkened, so we had no idea what went on there, but it looked dodgy. We got out of the car to show our presence, in hope that will help (he did stop and looked at us when we were standing half a meter from him). The yelling was in Arabic, so we only understood 30% of it, and we hesitated to call the police, as we didn't know how the police will handle this and if they won't make the situation only worse. When we heard something that could have been a struggle, we snapped and called them - we couldn't interfere because we were too scared for our own skin, but whatever went on there, someone had to step in. We have no idea if the police ever arrived, or what happened to that woman - we had to leave the place. It's incredibly hard to choose in these situations, when calling the police isn't the best idea because usually their attitude towards minorities is fucking awful, but we really didn't know what else to do.

This morning, on the bus to the central bus station, I saw a graffiti on the back of one of the seats in the front of the bus: "if it's possible, women - in the back of the bus", and a reply - "no, it's not possible. (singed)- the women". Made my blood boil. 12 minutes later, in the central bus stop itself, border police were holding an African man for questioning and asked him for his identifications in the great tradition of racial profiling.

So many wrongs in this world to fix.

As they say in Pirkei Avot [link] "it is not incumbent upon you to finish the task, but neither are you free to absolve yourself from it". It is a very small consolation this morning, but it is one. I just wish there was more I could do, or that this world wouldn't been that broken.