So, I'm angry.

I'm VERY angry right now.

A friend of mine (who shall remain nameless) was looking for somebody to go to the bar with him and his girlfriend. I had just gotten home from Starbucks (dorm was being noisy so I took my study notes and left) and found him wandering around. I said I would be happy to go to the bar with him, as long as I didn't have to meet him there and/or go to the bar by myself.

I'm an eighteen year old girl. I know better than to go to a bar on a Saturday night by myself. I have a brain, I use said brain to keep myself safe.

He said that was fine, that we'd all be meeting at the dorm and going from there. I say okay, I go get ready.

Ten thirty, I text him to tell him I'm ready to go when he is, he just needs to text me to tell me where to meet him and his girlfriend and we'd all catch a cab together. He texts me back saying OKAY.

An hour and fifteen minutes pass, I'm still waiting for him. So I text him again at 11:45 to see what the deal is, when we're all heading to the bar. He texts me back and where is he?

He's at the fucking bar already.

The bastard fucking forgot me.

I'm an understanding person. I can forgive a lot, I can let a lot of things slide. When I am going out of my way, putting aside my personal interests (studying for my exams, in this instance) in order to do something for somebody else, and that gets thrown back in my face? Nuh-uh, not gonna fly.

He wanted somebody else there with him, aside from his girlfriend, because said girlfriend was open and honest about being a social butterfly and said, yes, I'm going to dance with my friends, most of which are guys, please don't get jealous sweetie. He wanted somebody else there he could hang out with - as a friend, somebody to lean on, somebody for support.

I offered to do that for him, setting aside the three exams I need to study for and all the boxes I still have to pack so I'm ready to move into my new house, and he forgot me.

He kept saying he was sorry over texts, but I, quite frankly, didn't care. I was - and still am - so angry, I couldn't see straight. I've ended friendships over far less. I've worked my butt off to help him, to give him advice, to be there for him whenever he needs me . . . and then he just forgets me.

I don't know if I'll be able to forgive him. I'm angry and I'm hurt and I know for a fact that he doesn't understand exactly what I'm angry and hurt about, because he's dense like that.

I've put down my ninja coffee cup for the night. Rye and Cokes, double shots, no ice. All alone in my dorm room, while I'm packing to move into my new house, and in between reading chapters of Intro to Socio-Cultural Anthropology.



Peace,
Emily Grace

Sitting in Starbucks

I'm writing this post from my Friendly Neighborhood Starbucks store (the ONLY Friendly Neighborhood Starbucks store in this town, actually) and I'm wondering things.

If you've seen it on Facebook and Twitter (its probably calmed down by now, but about two and a half weeks ago, it was viral all over the net) then you know about the Jacqueline Howett debacle. The Self-Published authoress threw a shit fit over a review posted about her book, The Greek Seaman. Big Al of Big Al's Books and Pals was wonderfully polite in dealing with her ranting and he was even polite when she - a woman who is in her 50's at the very least, according to her own blog - descended into expletives at anybody who commented on the blog supporting Big Al and his review of her book.

Compared to about 80% of the reviews I've looked at of self-published works, it was gloriously polite. I read the preview of The Greek Seaman on Amazon, and I was quite frankly shocked by the quality. But the plotline was solid, the characters were interesting, and if you ignored the mass of spelling and grammar mistakes, it was an engaging read. Big Al was honest, to-the-point, and very, very flattering towards Ms Howett, and she threw that back in his face within TWO DAYS of his posting of the review.

Talk about immature, huh? One thing an author should never do in regards to a review is flame the reviewer for writing it. ESPECIALLY when, for the most part, the review is flattering.

So, it got me thinking. She's damaged the reputation of Indie and self-published authors. I'm going to do something I never thought I'd want to do:

I'm starting my own book review blog, dedicated solely to reviewing the works of self-published and indie authors.

Why?

Well . . . why not? I'm an avid reader, and this will give me a good chance to not only express my opinions, but to maybe read the next Edgar Allen Poe or Charles Dickens of the 21st Century before they get famous. To assist with this, I'm working seriously on my own self-published project to get into the mindset of what's what and where's where, and at the moment, I'm working on my submission guidelines.

If you have looked at my own story-posting blog which, I'm ashamed to say, I haven't updated in awhile because Life's kicked me in the teeth (see my previous post) then you'll see I write things all across the board. I want to read all across the board as well.

I'm currently working on submission guidelines, I made a Gmail account specifically for this so I'm not getting my submissions lost in the abyss that is my yahoo account, and I'm advertising in my Gaia signature that I'm looking for self-published works to review.

We'll see where this goes.

Wish me luck!


Peace,

Emily Grace

Ninja Coffee Cup Strikes Again!

I've decided that my ninja coffee cup is becoming a much better ninja.

Ninja Cup was forgotten approximately 800 kilometers north of where I'm currently living. I took it home for Christmas so I could have my traditional cup of Christmas Ogn (yes, that's spelled right. I'll post the recipe for my Christmas Ogn when the season rolls around again) right before opening the first present on Christmas Morning. Because I had to go to work on New Year's Eve, I was in a rush to pack my things and I left my oh-so-amazing ninja coffee cup in the dishwasher at my parents' place.

Well, about two weeks after it happened, I called my mother in a panic, who reassured me that my mug was safe and sound, tucked away up high and hidden behind some old cups in the cupboard where my dumbass brother couldn't find it, and that it would be waiting for me when I moved back home for the summer.

That was a laugh in and of itself. Never, not once in any of the time since I started my first year of university, did I ever indicate that I would ever be moving back to the ass-end of nowhere on the corner of Nothing Way to live with my parents, a brother I despise, and be stuck in a very isolated Northern community. And when my mother was telling me this over the phone, I had been sitting at my computer responding to "Roommate Wanted" ads.

That was the end of that, and I got myself a new mug. It was . . . nice, but it wasn't my ninja mug.

Fast forward to about three days ago. I had a massive kick-to-the teeth from Life. I lost the apartment that I was all set to move into for (of all reasons) my would-be Roommate's parents were giving him shit for letting a girl move in with him. My age had nothing to do with it, my sexuality had nothing to do with it, it was just the sheer fact that I was a girl that made him tell me I wasn't allowed to move in anymore. The day before that, my ex-girlfriend attempted suicide and I was a nervous wreck. And to top it all off, living in residence at university was very quickly becoming intolerable.

(Read: My neighbors enjoyed noisy, raucous, bed-hitting-the-wall, flesh-hitting-flesh, unnecessarily-loud-and-unconvincing moaner sex every night for two weeks straight, for long, long, long hours that stretched from midnight to just past 5 AM every single fucking night.)

So I was having a rough time of it. I ended up taking my Replacement Kung-Fu mug (it wasn't cool enough to be a ninja, it just knew kung-fu) coffee cup and throwing it against the side of the building while I was outside having a cigarette. It shattered, leaving me without a carry-along mug once again.

Anger, sadness, and a whole rainbow of emotions just punched me in the chest and I doubled over sobbing and screaming and ranting at God for letting things get this bad.

And that's when I sobered up. I was drunk on emotions, not a substance, although I went back to my room and drank half a 24 of Vodka straight from the bottle about ten minutes after that. Anyways . . . I knew it wasn't God's fault that this shit was happening. God created us, he doesn't need to sit around and babysit us like we're perpetually two. He gave us free will for a reason.

After I finished chugging the vodka, I started digging through my boxes in order to find my regular old coffee cups. I needed something caffeinated to wash down the booze.

Guess what I found?

Tucked at the very bottom of the box my coffee cups were in, was my ninja coffee cup. It was a bit beaten up and dirty, but it was there. I called up my mom and she went and checked the cupboard and, sure enough, where she'd tucked my ninja coffee cup was empty of said ninja coffee cup. She hadn't touched it, my brother swore on his bong that he hadn't touched it, and Dad was at work so we couldn't ask him and . . .

Well, ninja coffee cups are ninja and sometimes there just aren't explanations for what's happened with them. I made myself a cup of tea after giving my ninja cup about fourteen different baths of dish soap and scrubbing it really well, then puked my guts up because I drank twelve ounces of vodka in the span of twenty minutes. Drinking to excess in a short amount of time has never been a strong suit with me, but give me a glass of water and peanuts on the table and I can drink heavyweights under the table . . .

I've seen my ninja coffee cup show up at work twice since it got home, neither times when it was anywhere near where my work stuff is usually kept.

Its a NINJA. And its getting BETTER because I no longer have ANY explanation for what the fuck's going on.

And once I get a camera, I will post PICTURES of the NINJA.


Peace,

Emily Grace

New Stuff, and "New Writer's Shroud"

If you'll check out my profile, you'll see that I've got a new blog. I'm sure that any of you who read The Happy Notes know that it's no longer a daily blog (and I'm very sad that I've had to do that, but y'know, my girlfriend and my life are more of a priority than the internet is) and now . . . you all get to see why I post up the most random-ass nonsense I can cobble together and call it "inspiration".

Because I write the most random-ass nonsense from all those little pieces of bits and bobbles from here, there, and over and yon. And you can now view it all on there.

I'm still trying for publication, but I think I need to work on my separation a bit first. See, I'm still in the "New Writer's Shroud" as I call it. I've posted up my work for human consumption, advertised that I've done so in a few public forums, and pimped myself out to my friends, under the assumption that this is the best shit the world has ever seen or ever will see again.

This is a common flaw of all new writers. Well . . . not necessarily a flaw, but definitely a common trait. When we all first start out, we think that what we've written down is the best thing in the world and we hold it so near and dear to our hearts that it causes us physical and mental distress when somebody comes along and points out the flaws and mistakes in our word babies. We haven't yet learned to treat our works of fiction as separate entities from ourselves. I know that my writing isn't a piece of my soul, and I still have a wee bit of trouble accepting a lot of criticism about my writing.

I've come a long way, though, from when I wrote my first novel when I was fourteen. Back then, if somebody had pointed out something as small as a misplaced comma (let alone all of the bullshit characterization errors, continuity errors, and generally crappiness of the plotline) I would've burst into tears, cursed them with vitrol, and demanded that they take back their hateful, hurtful words all because they were jealous that I was so young and had already written more than they had in their entire lives.

Yeah . . . I wasn't a very smart fourteen year old.

Anyways, I've gotten better. I accept that most of the time, the people who are offering me criticism know what they're talking about. Sometimes they don't, but sometimes they do. And I've accepted that because I'm not some speshul leetle ritter grl, people won't offer me candy to go along with their critiques. Not everybody is sunshine and rainbows, especially not in the world of the Critic.

In that "New Writer's Shroud" though, there's more than just our assumption that our work is perfect and pure and untouchable by all because it's perfect and pure. There are the people who are critical just to be mean. The Critic is a person who will go out of their way to state what is wrong, why it is wrong, and why you're a moron for fucking up in so many epic ways. These people, while they may have valid points, are dicks. Mature writers know to look into the spooge of insults and find the points that they actually need to look at, those under the "New Writer's Shroud" will more often than not become discouraged and delete the piece / abandon the piece / break down and behave like a temper tantrum toddler for a good long while.

The Critic is a dick, but that doesn't mean The Critic should be ignored entirely. The way to beat The Critic is to give a polite "Thank you for your critiques and for the time you took to give them." Following that, The Critic's comment should be looked over carefully for any nuggets of wisdom that might be hidden behind the snark, dickiness, and/or bitchiness.

EG:

Are you fucking kidding me? Why the fuck would you have that many commas in a sentence? Are you some sort of moron? Is English even your first language? That first paragraph isn't even a paragraph! Are you fucking NEW?

That is an example that comes straight from my File O' Failures. I've got a rule to never throw anything pertaining to my writing away, and that includes the critiques I get from others. This gem was given to me one cold, blustery December evening after I'd gotten a short story assignment back from the classmate it had been handed to for critiques. (We'd all traded assignments so we could be impartial about what we were commenting on.) Needless to say the teacher was less than impressed with the comments, and there were dozens more along the same vein as the one above, but can YOU spot the helpful comments hidden amongst the mocking vulgarity?

He pointed out that I had a lot of commas. I took it back to my editing board after the guidance counselor calmed me down and got me to stop ripping up the printed copy of my story and, sure enough, I had used WAY too many commas. I've still got a problem with commas, oddly enough . . . you can probably see that.

He also pointed out that my first paragraph wasn't actually a paragraph. And sure enough, I looked at it, and it was just one massive run-on sentence.

Not all criticism is this harsh, but you always need to be able to answer politely and take into account what is said. The separation part of "New Writer's Shroud" is something I still have yet to master, so I'll only say this:

The first draft will always suck. That's what the editing board is for. Chop it up, hack it into little pieces, and only do it in front of people who care about you enough not to point and laugh as you're sobbing over words on a page, or an overly apathetic cat. The "New Writer's Shroud" doesn't last forever, so constantly try to remember that your work is not your physical body and that you won't die if somebody doesn't like it.

Man, this is gonna suck when I actually get a decent chunk of people READING those things . . . Oh well.


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Um, hey, did you notice the name change? No? Well, good. DNBDT was a better title for my story-posting blog, so I put it there and returned this one to my original title for it, Table In The Corner, because I'm kind of perpetually sitting at the table in the corner, no matter where I go or what I do.

Soyah . . . my pitiful attempt at a philosphical-like titles and . . . and stuff.


Peace.

Soo . . . yeah.

Yeah . . . so, I've got a new job. I'm working at Starbucks (again) only this time, I'm guaranteed to never be alone, and to never have to deal with irate/abusive customers alone/without support of management/coworkers. Yeah. Big plus. Money coming in. Woohoo.

I've also been thinking pretty seriously about publishing things. I'm a writer - see that poem in the header? Yeah, I wrote that.

I've taken a look at Lulu.com (a popular self-publishing site) and I've started submitting my work to a podcast-in-the-process founded by my addiction hobby site, Gaia Online. Here's the link to the thread in the Writer's Forum that's calling for submissions/explaining the whole deal: Everyday Madness -- Gaia Audio Fiction Podcast

I'm not sure when the podcast goes up, but I will be submitting regularly (my Gaia Username is Isacean) or as often as my work isn't declined for being above the PG-13 rating that the site maintains.

Oh well.

Back to Lulu.

I've been doing a LOT of research - and by a lot, I mean a LOT - about self-publishing. I have to honestly say . . . putting together a book on Lulu doesn't seem like the satanic burnt-offering I always believed it to be. With enough hard work, dedication, and planning . . . I figure I can easily make a nice chunk of pocket change doing it.

My friends are probably going to give me flack for this, but I don't think I care. When I wave my book in their faces, they'll bow down before my awesome talent and skills.

Now . . . what the fuck am I gonna publish?

God help me, I'm going to Hell.

I'm a miserable human being who deserves to be shot. Seriously, I'm a bad person. And I have proof.

I'm a member of an online anime-based forum site called Gaia Online. This forum site has a bunch of cool features, but I've been particularly interested in the Writer's Forum because of the nice big fact that, well, I b writter an all that jazz.

Forgive me, it's 4:30 AM and I am uncaffeinated.

Anyways, back on track: Why I'm going to hell.

Like all properly-run forum sites, there are Report Thread/Report Post/Submit Report buttons that allow the non-moderator members to submit reports to the moderators about threads that are clearly against the rules of the site, or the rules of the specific forum, or have been clearly posted in the wrong place.

How does this make me a person who deserves to go to hell and stay there for a very long time? Well, I'll tell you, Bob! See, this person posted this up:

K LET ME BREAK IT DOWN FO YA....
A BOY NAMED THOMAS AND HIS FREND MERIBELLE GO TO THE NORTH POLE AND THEY BOTH GET HURT THEY BOTH CAN'T MOVE THOMAS SAVES MERIBELLE BUT DIES FROM SAVING HER...OH HE TELLS HER HE L.O.V.E.S HER....
WAT YA THINK I ROTE IT MY SELF? .

I've quoted it directly. It hasn't been altered in any way. The people who don't read the posting guidelines of the Writer's Forum are just this stupid. The worst ones are the ones who post threads in the wrong forum and then claim that they're in the right forum because it's the writer's forum and they're writers.

Let me break down the writer's forum of Gaia for you. There are two commonly-forgotten subforums called the Original Stories/Prose subforum (used for posting original fiction/essays up for critiques) and the Original Poetry/Lyrics subforum (used for posting original poetry and lyrics up for critiques.) Now, why are these subforums forgotten when they permanently float at the top of the page whenever somebody clicks on the Writer's Forum link from the main Forums navigation page?

Because people are retards. They can't take two minutes out of their day to read the posting guidelines, and they can't take two seconds of their precious time looking at the top of the page in order to see if there's a better place to get critiques on their crappy work - and yes, all of the poetry and stories I report as "Misplaced Threads" are pieces of shit that should've never been created - in fact, the people who created them probably should've never been born in the first place - in fact, I should create a time machine, go back three hundred years, kill their ancestors, and rid the world of them altogether!

No, that's not fair. Everybody deserves a chance to improve. It's just that I hate the stupid people who ignore that chance, even when a bunch of people who know what they're talking about are offering it more than once. Thankfully, I've never encountered this type of person outside the n00bs of the Writer's Forum of Gaia Online.

There's another, special kind of person who manages to slip through the infintessimal cracks of when I'm asleep and when I'm awake and hammering out short stories and mini-porn novels and post bullshit in a forum I genuinely care about.

Yes, I care about a message board on teh internetz. Try not to faint.

If you got that reference, you deserve to be my new best friend.

ANYWAYS! These people post the single-line topics along the lines of "i m aa ritter!"

I'm not joking. That's the sad part. And, thank God, this is where my "I'm going to Hell" bit comes into play.

For the last three days, I've wanted to do nothing but report these topics a Misplaced Threads instead of Spam just so I can put in the "Additional Information About Reported Topic" box:

User has posted original fiction in the main writer's forum by claiming to be a writer. Thread belongs in the Original Stories/Prose subforum.

Soyah. I'm going to hell.

But first, I'm going to bed

Peace.

Back in the Saddle

Gah, life's been kicking my ASS for the last few months. I'm not used to this yet . . . but I'll get there. University is treating me well, the socials and the alcohol are treating me even better.

I've started smoking seriously now. It takes me a week or so to finish a pack of cigarettes, so I'm not getting into a really bad habit yet, but it just helps me so much - getting out of the dorm room (I lucked out - I dont have a roomie, even though I'm in a double occupancy room) in order to go socialize with the smokers, hear their stories and get inspiration for mine.

My new drink of choice: Rye and coke. Omnomnomnomnom. <3

Going left from the building my dorm is in is the pretty, pretty Starbucks I hope to work at soon. Going directly right is the pretty, pretty, pretty PRETTY coffee shop that it is my dream to work at. Also going right from my dorm room - closer than the coffee shop - is a beautiful little tea store that sells looseleaf tea. It is my new favorite place.



Peace out.