Alone and Unobserved

I’ve been wretchedly bad at updating this blog lately. We’re coming to the end of the semester, and the amount of final projects I’m putting off is poisoning everything I do. Whether I’m reading a book or soaking in the tub or helping library patrons at work or watching TV or getting drunk at a party, there’s that niggling little itch in the back of my mind that says, “You should be doing homework! Stop having fun and work on your assignments!” It’s really cramping my style.

One of the first things that goes when I’m stressed, overtired or out of sorts is my creativity. Not only can I no longer write, I no long even feel the urge to, which is such a bizarre loss that it always catches me completely unprepared. Even worse, I become utterly uncreative and inflexible in my day-to-day life as well, which means I find it harder simply to deal with things. You might not realize how much creativity you use in making mundane decisions, but believe me, you’d miss it if it were gone. Suddenly my mind can only recognize a single way of doing things. In my head, every problem only has one solution, every interaction only one acceptable path to success, which makes dealing with library patrons—who are endlessly creative in thinking up ways to baffle and bemuse me when I’m at my best—almost impossible.

Well, hopefully the end of the semester will herald a brief period of peace, tranquility and (fingers crossed) creativity, before the summer term arrives to crush all my dreams again.

In the meantime, go have fun reading the archives of Mis/adventures in Bookland, where Suffering Silently blogs about dealing with bookstore customers in a small-town bookshop in Canada. I could swear some of her customers also visit my library.

Martin Millar is writing a sequel (tentatively named Queen Vex) to Lonely Werewolf Girl, a book whose awesomeness I have written about in the past. You should find Lonely Werewolf Girl and read it, and then you and I can both wait breathlessly for its sequel to be written and eventually released in the U.S. and wherever you live. (Which will hopefully be within both of our lifetimes.) And then we can squeal about how awesome/what a disappointment the sequel is and praise/abuse the name of Martin Millar together. I can’t wait! Can you?

In other news, I am reading H. P. Lovecraft for a class assignment. I am not finding his writing particularly scary or horrifying, but it is giving me lots of scary/horrifying story ideas. Is this normal?

Once again I’m a day and a half late posting my Flashfic Friday update, but I have something special for you: a fantastic Guide to Golems, including discussions of their creation, education and care. It’s filed under Essays because it’s 100% true.

New Essay!
Check it out: A Guide to Golems

The new short-short-short flash fiction piece is up now. Sorry about the late update!

Check it out: Abducted

Today’s flash fiction piece is actually a photocomic, which started out as a hand-made zine created at a Valentine’s Day Zine-Making Workshop at the library. Click on the image below to read the whole thing!

Extemporaneous Valentine

It’s time for the new and improved Flashfic Friday, where I post something short and sweet (and, knowing me, probably gory and disturbing) every Friday, and you let me know what you think.

So here’s the first installment!

Flashfic Friday: Mom and Dad will save us

It is about being at home alone, or something.

Things have changed a bit around Alone and Unobserved.

First: As you can see if you are viewing this at aloneandunobserved.com on a regular computer, Alone and Unobserved has a new theme. I was tired of wrestling with the Sandbox theme, which was crippled in several respects and—I am convinced—was coded by drunk insane people. (Sorry to the Sandbox dev team, but… yeah.)

Second: If you view this blog on an iPhone or iPod Touch, you’ll notice yet another theme, this one optimized for viewing on one of those devices.

Third: Because of the change in themes, comments are now showing up where they are supposed to. So if you commented on my recent ten-minute fiction piece, your comment should now be visible! Yayz!

Fourth: Google has verified my ownership of this blog and I now have a blog-specific email address, sean@aloneandunobserved.com, which you can always find on the About Me page. You can use it to send me feedback, but please do not sell it to spammers.

Fifth, and finally: I’m going to try and start writing more, and to motivate me in that direction I am resurrecting the Flash Fiction of the Week feature. Expect the next installment this Friday.

Er, that is all for now.

Twitter seems to be bringing me a lot of good things lately, and today it brought me the link to Write or Die, an online writing motivation tool designed by a truly evil-minded person who goes by the name of Dr. Wicked.

The premise: writers often find it hard to motivate themselves to write unless there is a pressing, immediate consequence theatening. Write or Die provides that consequence! Just enter the desired word count and time limit, choose how diabolically evil you want the program to be, and then start writing in the text box provided!

You WILL write—or face the consequences!

Well, I did write, for ten whole minutes, and this bit of silliness is what came of it:

And so there I was — 309 words in 9 minutes, 55 seconds

As usual, feel free to let me know how much you love it/how much it sucks in the comments.

I wasn’t tagged, but I’m doing this anyway. I am aware that this is cheating.

20 years ago I:

1. Was seven.
2. Lived with my family in Hemet, California, in my grandma’s house.
3. Read all the time.
4. Had just finished my first year of homeschool.
5. Was the second of four siblings.

10 years ago I:

1. Was seventeen years old.
2. Had just started my third year of college and my first year at BYU.
3. Had just moved into the French House at BYU’s Foreign Language Student Residence (FLSR).
4. Was a senior in mathematics.
5. Was taking piano lessons and voice lessons, and the next semester would take my first ballroom dance class and sing with the BYU Men’s Chorus for the first time.
6. Was the second of nine siblings (a situation which continues, unabated, to this day).

5 years ago I:

1. Was 22 years old.
2. Had just gotten back from a Mormon mission to Southern Italy.
3. Was living once again in the French House, trying to get my French back.
4. Was a super-senior in mathematics.

3 years ago I:

1. Was 24 years old.
2. Had gone through my first three relationships—a girlfriend and two boyfriends—in rapid succession. (Two of those relationships were so short they probably don’t count, but they’re on my list anyway.)
3. Was living at my sister’s house in American Fork for the summer.
4. Was about to come out publicly (and briefly) for the first time.
5. Was a super-super senior in mathematics.

So far this year I:

1. Attended my graduation for my first master’s degree and finished the second semester in my second master’s degree (without actually failing any classes!).
2. Have started swimming with QUAC at least once a week.
3. According to Goodreads, have read 74 books this year.
4. Have been working at the S— Public Library for 2-1/2 years.
5. Have been out as gay and an atheist, and out of the Mormon church, for almost three years.
6. Have hit the 3-year mark on this blog.

Yesterday I:

1. (See yesterday’s blog post.)

Today I will:

1. Finish downloading the first episode of the Doctor Who second series and the 2005 Doctor Who Christmas special.
2. Watch more Doctor Who.
3. Lie awake, sleepless, wishing I hadn’t finished off the pizza that was left over from last night.

Tomorrow I will:

1. Drink coffee.
2. Eat breakfast.
3. Work out.
4. Go to work.
5. Watch more Doctor Who.

In the next year I will:

1. Get down to 13% body fat.
2. Go on vacation (this summer) with my family for the first time in over ten years.
3. Go on vacation (next summer) outside of the country.
4. Start a story idea notebook.
5. Start actually writing again.

I tag Craig, David, Daisy, chosha, Nick and WHOEVER ELSE FEELS LIKE IT GOD I’M NOT YOUR MOTHER.

I have good news for all the commenters on this blog. Well, bad news first—anonymous comments are no longer allowed. Sorry, but I’ve just had too many problems with people dropping in and mouthing off under the cloak of anonymity. Commenters are now required to own their words, just like I own mine.

The good news is, you can now use your LiveJournal identity, WordPress account, AIM account, TypeKey identity or any other OpenID login to comment on Blogger, instead of having to go through the hassle of signing up for a Google account. If this intrigues/angers/puzzles you, you can read more about it on the official Blogger Buzz blog. You can also try it out by leaving a comment on this post. Guaranteed to be far too much fun.

Other news: In an attempt to camouflage my increasing uncoolness with utter nerdosity, I attended a recent library-sponsored “Make Your Own Zine” event, at which I made these two beauties:

A Brief Red Book

and

Pretty Pony

Whether this news is good or bad will probably depend on your ability to search out the deep, hidden meanings I encoded into the pictures and text, in my imitable post-modern fashion.