on the art of writing and eating haribo smurfes.

my friend julia told me on skype the other day that i was very funny after i made some sort of clever remark and she burst out laughing. that was nice to hear. i trust her judgment above most; definitely more than my own and lately i have not been feeling very funny. i have not been feeling very ... anything at all really. most days i would prefer to stay in bed and once i am out of bed i would prefer to be back inside or at least have a blanket with me that i can pull over my head. not that there is a good reason for it, because everything is just freakin' fine.

the past month has been rough. while my dad is recovering nicely and i managed to get from feeling freaked out and completely overwhelmed to pretty normal, i now struggle to get from feeling okay to feeling excited. excited about what? well, to tell you the truth i am not picky at the moment, i would like to feel excited about anything really.

yesterday was the first day i was getting somewhat excited about writing again. i didn't exactly have a writer's block, but i was definitely unenthusiastic about writing the last few weeks. but now i had to get down and dirty as i had some assignments long overdue for the travelettes. i found my excitement while writing about the khmer rouge and the killing fields and while that is undoubtedly a bit weird to get excited about, i was happy to have the mojo back. and though it may sound even weirder, i think i wrote one of my best stories yet.

now i feel like all i want to do is write. funny stories, sad stories, fragmented words, coherent dreams. okay, well i don't think i ever had a coherent dream in my life, but you know what i mean. i write right now after too much rosé, i think about sentence structure in the shower, and i felt happiest today when i wrote a little blog post for my company in german. yes, me, happy to write in german! i know it is unheard of, but seeing my fingers fly over a keyboard is the only thing that has brought me some level of positive emotion lately.

i never really told anyone but i was supposed to do nanowrimo in november. that is basically an online program with an online community that anybody can sign up for who has the plan to write a book.

i hate to admit it, but yes, i am one of these bloggers - i want to write a book. there is a handful of people who read all my stories and who keep on telling me that i should write a book. complain to them, but for some silly reason i eventually started to believe it. yeah...i'm a sucker. the only thing that has kept me so far is my own lack of discipline and nothing else. so i thought nanowrimo was the perfect outline to help me get organized and commit to writing 50.000 words in november come rain or shine. well my november came with my dad almost dying and that made me less productive than sunshine and no wind on a saturday afternoon.

i already had had a post planned about my workstation at home. then i adapted and prepared a post showing you my newfound workstation which was a fancy desk at my radisson hotel room. but i realized that all i could manage to do was to eat wiener schnitzel from room service and haribo smurfes and of course wash both down with copious amounts of wine while watching gute zeiten, schlechte zeiten. all i wrote in two weeks was text messages to my sister, my brother, and my three best friends and sometimes even these were copied and pasted.
i wasn't able to do anything else and i felt bad for it. i felt worse for it, because i had signed up and tried and realized i couldn't cope. maybe some people can find an input, an inspiration in absolute misery. i think it would actually be quite great. but that wasn't me. my book wants to be funny and witty and clever. it will need the right kind of light inspiration. seeing as my fingers are flying right now, maybe it needs to be wine fueled, maybe it needs cape town sunshine, and wind that drives me a bit mad.
i am actually not sure yet. but i know it will come when the time is right. till then i will enjoy eating smurfes and just be happy that my dad and i both coped, even when there is no funny story to prove it.

Starcrossed: A very proper book review.

I woke up with newly painted nails and a whole lot of energy which was probably due to the fact that I spent the entire weekend in bed with the Kindle eating Clafoutis (which I know sounds like an STD, but is in fact a warm cake with lots of cream, cream cheese, and a little fruit), doing little else thus re-energizing. This energy push lasted till now, till I realized again that it seems any ideas I come up with these days are being blocked left, right, and centre, and I am asking myself – why bother? I don’t like to do just the minimum to get by, but if everything else is being shut down, I decided to do what I please and write a book review of one of these books you love to hate.
Let me start with a question: Is it okay to completely copy the content, setting, and characters of a book and use them to write a ‘new’ book? If you are lazy and can’t come with anything original, okay maybe. But wouldn’t you at least rip off a really old book or one from an obscure author that no one knows so no one will notice? Why on earth would you copy a bestseller? A bestseller series made into movies? Box office hit movies? Box office hit movies whose the main actresses is a slut and cheated on her real life and onscreen boyfriend with their director, which we all know will only increase the numbers once the latest movie comes out?
Even if you are not a teenage girl you should by now have gathered that I am talking about Twilight. In this case the copee. The book in question copying from Twilight is called Starcrossed* and should be from now on called the copier.

So, okay, I will admit, this is not really a book review, I’m just bitching a tiny bit…

Copee aka Twilight vs. Copier aka Starcrossed

Copee: Set in a small town with crap weather.
Copier: Set in a small town with crap weather.
What’s the appeal with the small town and crap weather? Are we so over New York City and sunshine?

Copee: Heroine is a shy, annoying, geeky teenage girl, who has felt out of place her whole life.   
Copier: Heroine is a shy, annoying, geeky teenage girl with superpowers, who has felt out of place her whole life.
Oh, what I would give for a story’s heroine to actually be a heroine i.e. not whiney, annoying, and boyfriend dependant. I’m sorry, but all girls (teenage or other) I know want to be like Bella because of Edward not because Bella herself is so awesome.

Copee: She lives alone with her Dad and always has transportation issues.                                         
Copier: She lives alone with her Dad and always has transportation issues.
That would be fair enough if it didn’t lead to her controlling boyfriend constantly insisting on driving her around. In both stories.

Copee: Family of vampires moves to town. Yawn. Old news.                                                   
Copier: Family of demigods moves to town. Somewhat more exciting. Greek mythology has been a little underrepresented in recent prose.

Copee: All family members are ridiculously good-looking and have some sort superpowers.
Copier: All are ridiculously good-looking and have some sort of superpowers.
I guess good looks just sell. So do superpowers, but that is nothing new either. 

Copee: The family is rich and lives in a beautiful house in the woods.                                                
Copier: The family is rich and lives in a beautiful house in the woods.
Again, that’s fine. Don’t we all want to be rich and live in a beautiful house in the woods? Which is also much less depressing than living on a beautiful house on the beach in town with constant crap weather. There is nothing sadder than a rainy beach. 

Copee: Boy meets girl and girl doesn’t like boy.                                                        
Copier: Boy meets girl and girl wants to kill boy.
The old story of pulling pigtails. To different degrees I will admit that.

Copee: Boy saves girls life and she falls in love with him.                                       
Copier: Boy saves girls life and she falls in love with him.        
Does that ever happen in real life? Are girl just a lot less clumsy in reality? Or is it the (apparent) lack of vampires and demigods that make for more safety and less opportunity for boys to save us these days?

Copee: Boy’s family is sceptical at first, but girl wins them all over.       
Copier: Boy’s family is sceptical at first, but girl wins them all over.
Argh, cute. I wish I could be a complete idiot and klutz and still win potential father-in-laws over with my non-existent charms.

Copee: Evil vampire starts hunting the girl.                                                
Copier: Evil demigod starts hunting the girl.
Finally some action.

Copee: No sex though boy and girl are crazy about each other, because he might smash her to bits because of his strength. I can only imagine the hormones sighing in frustration and the parents sighing in relief. This could have easily turned into a teenage 50 Shades of Grey. 
Copier: No sex though boy and girl are crazy about each other, because that would start a war. Ja, don’t ask me to explain that one, but again no sex, no fun. 

Copee: No sex, but girl really wants to badly and keeps tempting boy and boy has to put up all his strength to resist her.        
Copier: No sex, but girl really wants to badly and keeps tempting boy and boy has to put up all his strength to resist her.
Yes, yes, evil Evas all around…

Copee: Evil vampire family clan in Italy.                                                                       
Copier: Evil demigod family clan in Spain.
Are Americans really just mortally afraid of anything European?

Copee: Girl is constantly pouting and boy is constantly frowning.          
Copier: Girl is constantly pouting and boy is constantly frowning.
Not a pretty picture and very annoying to read about as well.

Copee: Girl keeps saying she doesn’t need rescuing, but then does something really stupid and thus boy needs to come to the rescue.
Copier: Girl keeps saying she doesn’t need rescuing, but then does something really stupid and thus boy needs to come to the rescue.
Jeez, are women really that stupid or do we really need to feel rescued for our egos? 

I will stop here. Are you bored yet? Yup, so was I and the similarities don’t even stop there. Surely substituting vampires with demigods is not enough to call it a-story-never-told?! I think the only thing worse than a story with bad prose, boring characters, and lots of clichés is a 1:1 copy of such a story. Are the teenage girls of the world at least with me on that?!

*In case you still want to read Starcrossed after my smashing review, make sure you get the one by Josephine Angelini. Apparently there is another book out there also called Starcrossed, but that's about Aliens & Co and not Demigods. Wouldn't want you to be disappointed!