Just Get It Written

Those are the words that are constantly repeated at me by my parents. They seem to think that writing a novel is easy and that once I do I will be immediately snapped up by a publishing house and suddenly become rich and famous. All of my efforts to correct them on this matter seem to fade into nothingness in their brains.

Of course, this usually stems from discussions wherein I’m told I don’t have a job because they don’t consider it a job or well paid enough. And that discussion usually stems from being asked to clean up a mess that either Master Berserker or Blindy McBlindBlind have made. And why doesn’t Master Berserker have to help around the house or clean up?

Apparently it’s because he has a real job and is out at work.

In case you hadn’t guessed, this is going to be a bit of a rant because there are, obviously, some things I need to get off my chest.

The real reason why Master Berserker gets away with anything and everything is because he scares everybody around him, not that my mum will admit this nor will she tell my dad about the time he hit her. And I’m not allowed to say anything (which is great) because he’d get chucked out.

Isn’t it nice to know that I live in a house where the truth is a caged bird?

It’s funny how my mum says she’ll kill him if he ever starts on his girlfriend and yet he’s allowed to start on me. Is that some backwards notion that because we’re siblings it’s okay for him to be threatening and verbally abusive towards me? ‘Cause, y’know, I really didn’t think it was.

I know. I should move out, right? I don’t have the money to. If I could I’d be gone by now. Me, my cat and one of the dogs because I paid for half of him and I wouldn’t dream of leaving the poor thing alone with my brother or my dad who just doesn’t seem to give a damn. I’d take the second dog too if I could. Of course, even if I could afford a place of my own there’d be no guarantee I could get somewhere that would allow me to keep animals.

That’s something else that irritates me. Our dogs get constipated (nice subject I know) which probably happens so much because my dad has no concept of feeding them properly. He puts out bowls of dried dog food constantly and then wonders why they don’t eat their tinned sloppier food. Well why do you think, you moron?

Not only this, but one of the dogs was so constipated today that it wouldn’t come out and was stuck to him. So the poor sod was trying to wipe his arse on the floor. I told my dad we needed to bath him and help him with it obviously. So I got the towels ready to dry him and toed back my hair.

But what does Blindy McBlindBlind do?

Oh yeah… He goes outside to feed his damn fish! And when I asked if that was really more urgent than the dog he said it was.

[insert growl of frustrated anger here]

Eventually, we got the dog upstairs and my dad starts acting like a complete and utter child. He’s getting angry because Master Berserker has broken the shower (it’s one of those that connects to the bath so we can use it to shower the dogs as well as use it as an actual shower). Then he discovers how the plug is clogged with all of Master Berserker’s disgusting hair. And after that he threw a plastic cup across the room because he’d dropped it and was frustrated.

So yeah… I told him to get out of the damn bathroom because he was making things worse. The dog was starting to whimper (it hurts him anyway when we have to clean him up like that not to mention that until recently he and his brother had been pretty nervous and scared of bath time). Just for good measure I bathed the other dog afterwards too (on my own).

And what’s Blindy McBlindBlind doing now?

Oh yeah. He’s refusing to talk to me. He’s acting more like a child and cleared away half the pots into the dishwasher. He does that everytime he’s trying to make some kind of point that I don’t do anything in the house and he does everything. That would be fine if he ever did anything. He spends most of the day asleep or on his DS and when he does attempt to clean up it’s so half-arsed there’s just no point. As I mentioned, he’s turned the dishwasher on but only cleared up half the pots into it and not wiped the worktops down to clear the counter of the disgusting tea and coffee marks that he leaves everywhere!

And yes I’m still angry and fired up, but I won’t continue with this rant any further. I’ll leave it until another post when I need to let off some more steam. That’s why I started this blog originally. It was a place to get things off my chest when things got tough and hard to handle.

Every now and again I still need to do that. I don’t do it as often as I used to, but in the past few years I’ve changed a lot. My outlook on the world has been renewed after a few years where I was just lost. Everything was dark to me and nothing felt right. I didn’t know who I was or what I was doing. I was just milling around trying to please everybody but pleasing nobody and certainly not pleasing myself.

I feel happier with myself and who I am than I have been since I can remember.

And when you feel like that it gets so utterly frustrating when other people try to bring you down with stupid things like ‘get it written’. I’m sure other writers know that a novel can’t be done just like that. It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of effort. And it takes a lot of people to be interested in what you’re doing in the first place.

Anyway, if you made it this far down the post – thanks. I really appreciate you reading my garbled thoughts even though you probably have much more interesting internet stuff to be getting on with.

Hopefully it won’t be such an intense post next time.

-PS

Also, I keep meaning to dedicate one of my pieces of flash fiction to the lovely Bex Aaron, but as she’s just made a facebook author page I thought I would mention that briefly instead.

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4 thoughts on “Just Get It Written”

  1. I totally understand where you're coming from. Being the only girl in a family that is boy-oriented totally sucks from time to time. You just go ahead and rant away. Its good for the soul.

    I like your idea about using the blog to do so. I tend to bottle my frustration, eat junk and then cry.

    I'm sending you a hug and I hope your day gets better *huggies*

  2. A character is The Last King's Amulet is called Jocasta, which is what brought me here from twitter – idle curiosity. I hope you do find a way to get a place of your own – that situation sounds pretty grim. And, most of all, good luck with the book, both in developing and finishing the work, and after it goes to print.

  3. Thanks Ren. Yeah, I used to bottle things all the time but in the end it gets you nowhere fast. Instead it just drags you down. I was on a forum where they introduced a sort of journal thing. At first it seemed a bit silly to me, but I started one and it helped, which is why I carried on with it here as a blog.

    When I've needed to get a weight off my chest it's really helped.

    Thanks Chris. It is pretty grim, but I've been sticking it out for years so I'll be okay in the meantime. I just need to release the stress here for a while. The book is going really well. I'm hoping that if I keep at it, the first draft will be done in a few short months time.

    As for Jocasta, it's the name of a character in a story that I have tucked away, but I first heard it in the story of Oedipus and fell in love with it. Plus, the original meaning of the name is 'shining moon'.

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