Random and Disturbing Thoughts Read online

Tried unsuccessfully to accurately display his cuteness, but I did snap a picture and it will be put above this piece of text if I can figure out how to do that so it will be on SmashWords. I’m not exactly the expert of Word, so formatting and such have not been my strong point thus far in my career.

  I’ve almost been off the internet for 12 hours now. I was rather lucky I slept late, though, so the next 12 will likely be insanely boring and hard to endure. But I must endure.

  I am writing this to protest SOPA. I am staying off of the internet for 24 hours to protest SOPA. This essay is my way of showing what happens when things are censored. I, in this experiment, have disconnected my router, turned off my wifi on both the laptop and my iPad, and removed Chrome, Safari, Twitter, App Store, Mail, uTorrent, Facetime, and the facebook app, from my doc. It’s as if the internet does not exist.

  It is a strange thing and it is not something I would like to pretend again anytime soon. But if SOPA passes, it will be just like this, this panic, this boredom, only it won’t be just pretend. Because all of the websites that most Americans frequent will have at least a few parts blacked out PERMANENTLY. By the US GOVERNMENT. “FOR OUR OWN GOOD.” Self publishing, such as through SmashWords, Amazon, and PubIt (Barnes and Noble), will likely become much more difficult.

  There are many scammers in the world who take other people’s work, their novels, their stories, and re-publish without authorization for money. Essentially pirating the books. For this reason, many of these fine e-book publishing sites will likely begin to experience extreme censorship.

  I, for one, do not welcome our new butthurt overlords.

  No matter how much they might want to do the right thing to slow and stop piracy or whatever their actual plan is, SOPA is wrong.

  Not to be ADD but MY FRIGGING WINDOW IS DRAFTY.

  Like really drafty.

  And it’s fucking cold out.

  Minnesota winter… Uck.

  Especially this winter. There’s been almost no snow, then it will snow all day, and melt the next day. It’s shorts weather one day, three jackets and a parka weather the next. It’s irritating because we don’t get a chance to get used to it. It keeps changing before we can even begin to adapt.

  This… thing that I am writing is now officially 1/10 the length of my novella “Paper Lanterns,” which is the longest thing I have written so far.

  My dad is late getting home.

  I’m watching Everybody Loves Raymond now. I really don’t like this show all that much.

  Closing in on 2000 words now. I wonder how many people are still reading this. I wonder if this will be available in the free sample. Hmm.

  I’m about to go and get in the shower so I can head out to dinner, which has suddenly ballooned to like seventeen hundred fucking people instead of just me, Daddy, and Gramma. Ugh.

  Well, I’m gonna bring my iPad so if nothing else I can draw and work on my Mommy Tales illustrations.

  Fourteen more words until I hit 2000. Seven. Six. Snickerdoodles are really odd tasting cookies.

  I only have 101.21 left in the bank right now. My, has that ever shrunk. Laaame.

  It’s 8:22 PM now, been back from dinner for about an hour. Watching Family Guy until nine, then gonna do the dishes and bring down the trash.

  I honestly will not be surprised if nobody buys this. Would be so surprised for even one person to buy it, read it through, and review it.

  Speaking of that, people who buy books, particularly by indie authors, should ALWAYS review. Even a “enjoyed it” or “godawful” is better than no review. It gets frustrating to put yourself on the line with every book you write and get nothing in return. Criticism is ALWAYS welcome, as long as it isn’t just destructive.

  Milano Melts Chocolate Dark Classic Crème are DELICIOUS. I love them so much. Perfect amount of chocolate overload.

  I bought some Wild Berry brand incense tonight. My favorite kind, too. Fizzy Pop. It smells SO good.

  Oh god. I am having what can only be described as an internet nic fit. I am so desperate to just turn the wifi back on and check my email, just once, and then turn it back off. But I can’t. I know I can’t. If I do that then I’ll check my facebook and my SmashWords, troll on 4chan, post gore on threechan… And then this will NEVER get done. Ever.

  Ok, Apple, I have a gripe with you. The macbook pro’s CAPS LOCK key does NOT have enough sensitivity. I find myself having to hit that key two or three times sometimes to capitalize a word. Not cool! Is this covered by my apple care plan?

  I just drew the cover for this little piece of obnoxiousness. I do hope that at least one person in the world finds it appealing. I drew it on my new iPad. I LOVE the iPad SO much. I can watch Netflix on it and play Farmville and Cityville and all that crap! But not right now because that requires the internet and I do not have the wifi turned on right now.

  It’s dishes time.

  Break time!

  Because you probably didn’t wait forty minutes between the previous two lines, I’ll tell you it was forty minutes.

  I miss the internet.

  Do you know what it is to miss the internet?

  If SOPA passes… Chances are, you will.

  If, by the time you’re reading this, SOPA already HAS passed, you do.

  If, by the time you’re reading this, SOPA died, WOO HOO!

  There should be a reality show “INTERNET INTERVENTION” because the internet is just as addictive as heroin.

  As I type, I am periodically pausing and scrolling through my dock, looking for Google Chrome so I can check my facebook. This is what my life has become. Instead of writing more and more Young Adult fiction, I type upwards of two thousand five hundred words on facebook, twitter, and my blog, but I rarely set aside any time to actually write. It takes me months to write even a novella because the internet is right. Fucking. There. It’s impossible to ignore. It makes you anxious if you can’t connect to it.

  This is my experiment. If I can actually write a fair amount of words, it doesn’t matter about what, obviously, I will do this every week. I need to get better about this. I need to get better at writing. I need to get better at editing. I need to take a few classes in formatting. And maybe, just maybe, I might make it big.

  I have four hours and twenty one minutes before I can turn my wifi back on and resume my normal life. My first action in resuming normalcy will be to upload this to SmashWords, where it will sell for 99 cents. It’s up to you if you want to buy it, I won’t force this on anyone. I just figured it would be neat to let people see into my brain.

  And if it makes people more interested in my work, well then, here’s a list of what I currently have out:

  Fatima

  Paper Dolls

  Paper Lanterns

  Martyr

  Dollie

  So you should definitely check them out.

  Other things you should definitely check out are Swan Song by Robert R. McCammon. Yes, I know I said that already. See how much I mean it?

  Hollowland/Hollowmen by Amanda Hocking. Those two are both very good books.

  Jenny Pox by JL Bryan is a pretty swell read, too. Read it in less than a week, which is rare for me. Highly recommend.

  This is my year. I just know it.

  Just a little over two hours to go now.

  I can do this!

  I just need to finish doing some dishes, and then I watch both Futurama and South park, maybe take a shower, and by the time I’m done with all that I can turn my wifi back on, publish this, and check my facebook and all of that stuff that I have been missing so, so desperately the past 22 hours.

  This is the most I have written in one day since I wrote the first draft of Elizabeth Hayes.

  If I had to give other writers advice, I wouldn’t. Because I am far from perfect, far from well loved, and THOUSANDS OF MILES from being a bestseller. But the one thing I can say that I really believe is helpful to any writer: Practice makes perfect. And read more than you write. A
t least two pages read for every one written. And read a variety of books by different authors. Don’t get all held up on one author. Variety is the spice of life.

  One of my favorite things is buying books from indie authors. It feels good to help out my fellow writers who don’t have publishing deals. Every penny feels like a huge accomplishment. To me, at least.

  The very idea that someone, somewhere out in the world is reading something I wrote is a very big deal to me. The idea that I can share ideas and random thoughts with some person I’ve never met and likely never will meet, maybe someone in Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Great Britain, or Australia. All places I would LOVE to visit someday. I would need to get really, really rich first though.

  Jimmy’s back, giving me some cuddles and wuvs. He is a sweetie, unless he’s in a bad mood. Then he’s a rotten little shit who will chase you and attack you until he feels he is the Alpha Male.

  He’s not even three years old. It’s only because we never neutered him because my Mom was too attached to his “cute little fuzzy balls” as she said. I still want to get him neutered eventually, but have to wait until I can afford it.

  Someday I want to own a nice big house on the hill in Grand Marais, with a great view of Lake Superior, so that every morning I can wake up and look out on that beautiful gray water. I have always loved Lake Superior. We will be spreading my Mom’s ashes up there sometime soon.

  Thirty two hundred words already. And to think that it would have all been wasted on facebook statuses, twitter updates, and a pointless blog about nothing.

  An hour and a half to go, and I am about to take a shower to waste some time, then make my Dad’s lunch for tomorrow, and by the time I’m done with all of that, I’ll be back online.

  I have enjoyed writing this, I truly have. It’s really made me realize how much text I waste every day on things that don’t matter. If I could just curb all that energy into writing my books, I would probably be reasonably well known by now, instead of still whoring out my stories in forums and such.

  I will write some sort of bitchin ending to this beast once I’m done doing the last couple things of my night.

  I managed to stay off of the internet until 3:30 AM on January 19th, 2012. I checked my facebook on my iPad before going to sleep.

  I learned, in a little over 24 hours, that every day I waste at least 3000 words on facebook and twitter. If I could just tune out from the internet for a few hours each night, I could be that much more prolific with my writing.

  Thank you, reader, assuming there is a reader out there. I hope you’ve enjoyed this taste of madness.

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  Meet The Author:

  Emmaline is a 20 something from Fridley, Minnesota. She moonlights as a disgruntled retail employee. She has three cats and 10 fish.