there was a young woman from boobville ...

-- Oh, my God, writing is hard. *whimpers*

ALL MY FUCKING SYMPATHY. *Stares at blank page*

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I can't decide what's worse, staring at a blank page or staring at a file that already has fifty thousand words in it. On the bright side, either way I have something less painful to work on. On the depressing side ... ugh, now I have a headache.

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All the words in my file already look like someone else wrote them! *gets drunk instead*

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I know, right? I'm tempted to go read the novel I actually finished just to prove I am capable of finishing a novel but I have a feeling I'll just read it and think, "Oh, God, I don't remember writing that!" and be depressed. *gets drunk with you*

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Ever get that thing where you look at it and think, "Okay, but I've gotten so much WORSE since then!" as though backsliding is the natural way for writing to progress? Man.

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OMG YES. I reach this peak when I hit the middle of a book where I'm like, "Yes, THIS," and then I stall for a while and when I go back and start writing again it's like I'm throwing words at the wall and hoping that what sticks isn't utter shite.

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God I miss "YES!", when everything fits together and it's all you can do to hang onto the sides of the story as it barrels along, expanding like an origami lotus blossom or something. Now it's like pulling out mental fingernails, and the words "the" and "and" are giving me hives.

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I'm at the point where I tossed my Fly pen, my notebook and my MP3 player into a bag and I'm about to head off to my parents's house or Panera or something to see if a change of scenery will help. I seriously have to get something written this weekend or I'll explode. I can't do another six-day stretch of twelve-hour work days if I don't or I'll go nuts.

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Aaaaah the Circus Fire! I traveled to Prague last year with a theatre company and put up a dramatization of that event, called, unsurprisingly, Circus Fire.

It was one of the most emotional things I have ever been involved with. Some people came over & over, and there would be people crying afterwards wanting to thank us for putting on something so beautiful and touching.

I still haven't read the book though, I really should get on that!

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The book's one of the better disaster books I've read, I'll give it that. O'Nan obviously did a lot of research. He managed to mine a lot of really intense anecdotes from God only knows where.

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Oh, did you ever see this clip from Charles Nelson Reilly's one-man show about his life where he talks about escaping the fire? It's terrifying just watching that. I can't imagine what it must have been like living through it.

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Yeah, I've read a lot of accounts online, and they are all so intense and really the epitome of the phrase "tear-jerker"

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Sweet, thanks for the link, I hadn't seen that!

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There's a line in the book that goes, "Several survivors said the one thing they will never forget about the circus fire as long as they live is the sound of the animals as they burned alive. But there were no animals." And every time I read that I kinda have to put the book down and go do something else for a while because, Jesus.

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