I hate it when I love a book and I enthuse about it to someone else - then find the person just doesn't feel the same way.
I hate when I love a movie and people complain that it did nothing for them. The English Patient, for example. People always complain about the length. To me, every moment was exquisite. Pavilion of Women was another. None of my cyber-pals liked it. My mother and sister did, and a couple friends here, but none of my distant friends. Must be a cultural thing.
I hate when all my plans to follow good advice come to naught. Write every day, they say. So I sit there with the edits and nothing clicks. My mind is a blank. I go to another project. Same thing. I give up and surf the net, or play Solitaire and Freecell. Then another day when I have no intention of doing any writing or edits I open the files and the work just flows. Going with my feelings seems to work for me, but I've read time and again that I'll never be a writer that way. Maybe I need to try harder.
I hate my habit of beating myself up for past mistakes.
I hate not having money to do the things I want to do RIGHT NOW. But then, no one told me to give up my day job... Not that I had the money to do whatever I wanted on a teacher's salary.
I hate the shrill peeping of the frogs around here sometimes. They just sound inane and too damned close for comfort. They're driving me nuts tonight.
I hate that I've been waiting four months for the contract from the publisher to arrive. Is this !@#$% normal?
I hate struggling with my weight. It's gone on too damn long.
I hate the vulgarity that passes for popular entertainment.
I hate looking back and remembering all the times I let the men in my life get away with a lot of crap because it never even entered my stupid, naive head that they would or could do the things they did.
I hate that people still throw garbage out of their cars here. Our normally quiet street has become a thoroughfare because of work on the main road. I just went outside and the grass verge is littered with beer bottles, plastic wrappers, juice boxes etc. To add insult to injury, some !@#$% dumped three bags of stinking garbage right at the end of our wall. A couple itinerant dogs materialized and they're having a field day. Who gets to clean up the mess? Moi!
I hate the way so many drivers here behave like maniacs on the road, exhibiting total disregard for other people's lives or their own.
I hate politicians. Hard to understand how these smug !@#$%s end up running the world.
Okay. My childish tantrum is over. Hope I got it all out of my system.
11 comments:
If you learn to love the things you hate, does it mean you will learn to hate the things you love?
That is not a valid question so can we move on?
I just wrote and sent a letter to my favorite cable company, and a more colorful version to keep at home. Thankfully, I won’t get arrested for the former this time and as much as I hate Flow, they gave me the perfect occasion to be myself in words.
Someone once told me that writing was therapeutic and the more that disturbs us, the more we have to write about. I never read a good book that didn't have unhappiness and it is those damn frogs which might be the storyline for your next novel. The person who threw the garbage out the window may have an interesting past that led him to become an international litterbug by age twenty. He may have started out with a couple Dinner Mint wrappers and ended up with KFC barrels and mattresses. The novel might even make Oprah's Book Club. It is the authors who understand unhappiness are the ones who write the best.
The Chinese probably didn't write crisis and opportunity with the same character but it does appear to have a ring of truth to it.
Now I've gone from red-zone pissed off to laughter. Ah, the power of words.
Damn, you should have sent the colorful letter - it's Flow, so I know they deserved it. You're right about writing as therapy. Believe me, I know.
Annoying frogs as a storyline? It's a thought. I'm beyond caring about the interesting past of the litterbugs, though. I have this fantasy where I sit in the plum tree with a Glock automatic, just waiting for some !@#$% to fling garbage on to our verge so I can practise my markmanship....
I don't know if I understand unhappiness. But writing helps me to try to make some sense of it.
I understand unhappiness and also happiness. It's better not to fully understand unhappiness. Just get pissed off once in a while and let it out. Life is to good to hang on to the small crap.
I agree, anti-wife. I have to blow off some steam every now and then, but when the negatives seem to be piling up I start counting my blessings. It works.
yes you must write about the frogs. LOL.
*peeks in*
Okay, do you have all of that stuff out of your system?
Well, I'd have to say I'm one of the people you'd probably hate. I have friend who reads really different stuff than me. Bestseller stuff, "supermarket fiction" as I call it. I don't put his stuff down, I just have no response to it. After all, I've never read it. So I say, "Oh, how nice." And he gets all upset.
Ah well.
So then we go out to dinner and everything is ok.
Only four months on the contract? A rule of publishing is contracts can only be transported on arthritic camels. No doubt with you being on an island this involves a lot of drowned dromedaries. My personal record is seven months, but I've heard longer. The rule of thumb is it takes their lawyers twice as long to write a contract and their accountants three times as long to write a cheque as it took you to write the novel.
As for procrastinating when you should be writing.... Well, I'm here aren't I?
What else is on you list?
Having once lived on a popular shortcut, I agree with everything you said about drivers. Best thing about living on a cul-de-dac is nobody drives by.
There's no accounting for taste -- whether in movies, books, music, or leaders.
Agree on politics.
Won't speak for other men.
And weight?
............ Weren't you the one who wanted to hear zaftig more often?
nyc/caribbean, it's night and those !@#$% frogs are at it again. :) Actually I did write about them - or rather, about a particular one. It came into the house a few years ago and tried to assassinate me. Honest. A Terminator-type frog.
Kanani, yes I do. Writing it out tends to restore my sense of humour and my balance - or what passes for balance around these parts. And I wouldn't hate you - I too have a horrible bias against the supermarket bestsellers. I'd like my friends to like the books I like, but it's okay that they don't. Even my sister and I who get transported by many of the same books have others that we disagree on.
Ahh, Kevin. Now I get it. Geriatric camels. I really appreciate that info because I have no frame of reference re this contract business. I've been dying to hear from someone who's been there, so I'm glad you took some procrastinating time out to give me the heads-up. Now that I know this is normal, I can hold on to my sanity (assuming, of course, that I had any to begin with).
SEVEN MONTHS? **tears hair out** Aarrggh!
I used to live on a cul-de-sac. Bliss. Our house was the second-to-last on the street and no one ever came in there but the residents and the postman (mailman to you, heh heh).
I know there are good men out there - I raised one. My brother is one. Others are friends. My experiences haven't been stellar, however, and they tend to colour my perception.
The reason I'd like to hear zaftig more often is that it's less pejorative than, y'know, that f-word that's applied to anyone who's not a size 8 or smaller.
A while back someone on my live journal friends list -- I forget who -- posted a link to a You Tube video as the definition of zaftig. It's a bit racy, so I'm not going to put a link you might not want on your blog. Go to You Tube and search for a song entitled "Skinny" by a group called LoRider.
OMG, Kevin. That video is hilarious! WILD!
(Somehow when I read You Tube my brain saw My Space - but I found it there too.)
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