Snakes & Ladders, The Phalanx, A Stenographer's Ennui

Snakes & Ladders

Entirely too many of my dreams lately have involved ladders. I don't like ladders. They aren't built for fat people. It's not that I can't climb a ladder, it's that persistent fear that the ladder won't hold me, but that it won't realize this until I'm almost all the way up.

When I worked for the carnival we used to have to climb up these three story high ladders to pull stuffed animals from the different platforms in the warehouse. I was pretty good at it, but getting off and on the ladder at the top always freaked me out. That's sort of the feeling I have in these dreams the entire time.

The other night I found myself in some sort of gigantic boarding house. There were hundred of people there, but I seemed to know most of them. It was nighttime, and there were occasional flashes of lightning even though there wasn't any rain. It was humid out though. And everyone was awfully sweaty. There were few staircases in this boarding house, and those that there were could be difficult to move on because of the great number of people. So those of us who were in a rush stuck to the roofs and ladders.

When the small group I found myself moving with reached a room near the top of one of the towers we found ourselves in the middle of a meeting of sorts. I was surprised to find that the topic of the meeting was sending people to throw my friend and I out of the house. The people I was with didn't realize I was one of the ones they were talking about so I was able to sit and listen without being bothered. As soon as I'd heard enough slipped out one of the windows, ran across the roof and climbed down one of the ladders into a locker room of sorts. I was desperately searching for my friends (another frequent theme as of late, either I'm separated for my friends and I have to find them, or we're missing one of my friends and the whole group is looking for them).

I get in an argument with several construction workers building a new stairway, but manage to fight past them and leap off the unfinished stairs down to the next level. But I'm too late, my friends are all by the door with their bags packed. They've already been thrown out.

We find ourselves standing on the edge of a great lake. Nowhere to go, nowhere to stay. And we know we're in trouble because these giant worms (Snakes & Ladders just sounded like a better title...) are coming out of this cave near the waters edge. Now I know what you're thinking, but don't get all Freudian on me. The giant man-eating worms were just giant man-eating worms and the cave was just a cave. Although the worms did sort of look like giant penises, and the cave may have had pubes. I don't recall. Anyway, so these giant man-eating penis looking worms are about to attack us and we're trying to fight them off with rocks and broken beer bottles when one of the worms gets too close to the water and is sucked into a drainage pipe where it screams horribly as the water causes it to shrink into a normal size not-man-eating still sort of penisy looking worm. The rest of the dream involves us recruiting the people living in the boarding house to fight off the wormy things by driving them off into the water so that we can all live peacefully ever after.

Yes folks, I have issues. Tell me something I don't know.

The Phalanx

It's pretty simple. I know the whole world isn't out to get me...just a very small very determined segment of it is. Like always I put up a hell of a fight. Some shit is happening though that I don't know if I can beat. In fact as I write this I'm suddenly overcome with that feeling you get when something dreadful has happened. But I can't quite figure out what that dreadful thing can be. Sort of hope it's not something that's going to happen. Maybe this is the feeling you get when you've just narrowly dodged a bullet. I don't know. I'm wondering if this is just my Spidey sense tingling.

Who knows.

I do however have an idea on how to handle this one. Like I said, it's pretty simple.

Lock shields.

Ready spears.

Advance.

A Stenographer's Ennui

So I was rolling along on this story I'm writing and then I sort of hit a stumbling block. No surprise there, it always happens, on the stories worth telling I get over it. I seriously think this is one of those stories.

But I'm sort of not feeling the way I've been working on it. I laid out a great deal of the ideas beforehand and now I'm sort of feeling like I'm just filling in the blanks or taking dictation from some voice I created when I drew up the outline. So I need to bust that up a little to get around that. It shouldn't be that big of a deal.

There's another problem. I'm writing a story with characters who are loosely based on people I know. It's easy for me to care about the characters because I care so much about the people they started out being losely based on. But that doesn't mean anyone reading the story would feel the same way. I have to create a reason for people to care about the characters within the story. The best way to do that in this story is to make the main character care about the other characters. Problem is I can't seem to make anyone care about the main character. Simply because I don't care about the main character. I can't relate to this guy. He's sharp, good-looking, even though his plan is totally fucked he's got a plan. He's the guy who gets the girl at the end of the story. How the hell am I supposed to relate to that? I never get the girl. How do I write a realistic character that people will care about if I can't relate to the guy enough that I can care about him? Frig.

Gotta get that square.

The guy has to get the girl in the end. It's the only way people give a shit.