Still exploring in a more hostile world. Even though I work in D.C., it’s been a long time since Luis and I have visited the city for fun. Now that it’s spring, I’ve started to want to plan things out-of-doors or at least out-of-our-doors. There are still quite a few places in D.C. that we haven’t visited yet, so maybe this year will be the year! Just have to get our friends’ schedules to line up with ours. There are only so many weekends in a month.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how things have become more hostile in my town. There’s amped up “security” everywhere, people aren’t as friendly, we have National Guard people on our streets for no reason, etcetera. It makes the idea of coming to visit the city a not entirely fun one, and I think that’s part of why I long to spend time having fun there again. I miss the way things used to be. And who’s to say they can’t still be silly and educational and special even amidst all of the everything bad that’s going on? It’s not like I’m suggesting we go to the Kennedy Center or anything; it just might be fun to window shop in Georgetown or play hoity-toity minigolf again.
Living and working amongst newsworthy things. Last week, there were a lot of people and traffic and police around a few fiancial buildings near my office, because of a big event that was held there. It was even in the news. I found out it was in the news when I looked at the little local events screen in my office’s elevator. It both explained why things were so busy around my job and made me feel a little weird.
There was a big “cancel the debt” protest when I came into work on Friday. It’s a strange feeling to be around things that are being talked about on a global scale. I guess this is something that comes from working in D.C. And whenever people complain about the federal government, I have to stop myself from saying, “You think it’s bad? Try living around it all the time.” I really like living in the D.C. area, but it can be stressful and frustrating at times. I prefer when things aren’t so dire and argue-y. (That doesn’t mean I don’t agree with the protestors.)
Have things in the federal government always been dire and argue-y?
Immortality is such a cool game. Luis and I started playing this PC* mystery game called Immortality. It’s basically a bunch of footage from this actress’s movies or appearances or rehearsals, and you’re supposed to pause and click objects or fast forward/rewind to find hidden video features. It’s very cool, and very creepy. It’s also very ambitious, because the team really did film a bunch of footage and hire a crew of actors, costume designers, etc. We’ve semi-solved it already (it even ran credits) but we’re still playing it because we haven’t unlocked a lot of the stuff yet. I’m wondering if there’s an easy, “Good job, you solved it!” mode we reached and then there’s going to be a more advanced version as we keep going.
We’ve also made sure to actually watch each clip, to figure out what each movie is about. There are three movies the main character actress worked on. I highly recommend the game. I love mystery games, and ones with footage are even cooler, though this one involves one of my least favorite things with recordings: slowed down voices. And you have to rewind slowly sometimes, to find the important pieces of the puzzle. There aren’t really any jump-scares, but it is definitely creepy and surprising in places. Things appearing where they shouldn’t, that sort of thing. It’s ghostly without really being a ghost game.
Actually reading comps. One thing I do that most definitely slows me down is I completely read any novels I think could be good comps for my stories. I’ve read that all I really need to do is read a synopsis or whatever, but I prefer reading the full stories to truly get a sense of how they could fit with mine. This is largely because I enjoy reading new books. But I have stacks of books to read that could be considered comps for my stories, and I’ve still got to get to a bunch of them before they’re too old to work anymore.
I’ve also read that it’s a good idea to go for debut novels, because they’re not the big mega-hits that everyone’s already heard of yet. But it’s hard to stay ahead of that. It can be frustrating, thinking about the query letter because it’s so important for finding a literary agent, but sometimes agents don’t even value it as much as the first five pages. Every agent is different.
This is why I’m trying to just focus on writing for now, and finding good books that mesh well with my stories because they help get my creative juices flowing. And I’m sorry for saying “creative juices.”
Writing update. I’m enjoying writing my novel. It’s getting toward the final 20k words now, which feels crazy. Writing in the 500-word bursts has been the best way for me to get the story done, because it still feels fun and sometimes I even go a little longer because I want to, rather than like in the past where I was trying to cram too much into each writing session.
I’m looking forward to the finished draft, and then I can eventually edit it, which hopefully won’t be too much of a headache this time.
* PC as in personal computer.
Sara Mazariegos 