There are 79 drafts in my drafts folder. That’s too many. Some of them are guest posts that I wrote here before posting elsewhere. Some are placeholder posts, .e.g. I have drafts with Q & A With My iTunes Library questions, bands for 10 Bands You’ve Probably Never Heard and one with Dear Goldfish questions.

Taking those into account, I still have about 50+ drafts. Eek. Let’s see what they are, shall we?

So Very Meta

Once upon a time, there was a pretty blue planet nestled inside a tiny solar system inside a large galaxy which was part of a much larger universe.

I think this was the start of a children’s story since it starts with “once upon a time,” but I have no idea where it was going from there.

WWP: Ode To A Fleeblox

I’m bored and unmotivated. What do I do when bored and unmotivated? Why, I create new series here on FOG. Today’s new series is called World’s Worst Poetry.

I am a bad poet, which is fine with me since I’m not all that fond of poetry anyway. Other than Haiku, in which I am capable of having entire conversations, I prefer expressing myself in full sentences. And sentence fragments.

I’ve tried my hand at poetry a few times on this blog with results ranging from disastrous to fatal.

I was going to write some bad poetry, but I decided to write about things I suck doing instead, including writing poetry. You can be thankful I didn’t actually get around to writing “Ode to a Fleeblox.”

You may notice that I stole the part about sentence fragments for the I suck post. Remember to recycle!

Burying A Body In The Desert For Dummies Version 2

It’s hard driving in the desert at night. You can’t tell where the road is. Maybe there isn’t even a road. It’s so dark that I can only see about ten feet.

There’s always a sense of desperation in the desert. I think it comes from knowing that if one of the million moving pieces in this car stopped working, I’d be stuck with no help. I keep expecting a flash of movement in the headlights, like a deer out of nowhere or something much worse.

How far into the desert does one need to drive to bury a body? When you see it in the movies, it always seems so easy; like there’s a GPS location “middle of nowhere body burying site.” Real life never works like the movies. Someone should write a “Burying A Body In The Desert For Dummies” book. I could use that now. This is far enough I think.

Chief, you’ve been my constant companion for more than a decade and I’m sorry to bury you here on your own. I feel like I’m letting you down by leaving you out here. It’s just that I couldn’t think of anywhere else to bury you since we don’t have a yard anymore. It’s pretty out here with all these stars. I hope you think so, too. Rest in peace. I’ll miss you very much, my friend.

I wrote a fictional story about burying a body in the desert. The original idea was that I would reveal the body in the trunk to be that of a dog who had died of old age, thereby putting a twist on the trope, but it just didn’t work as well that way, which is why it’s in the drafts folder.

Eff Pee Ain’t What It Used To Be

Hello there, this is your four-time Freshly Pressed author du jour speaking. I’m here to talk to y’all about Freshly Pressed.

You may have heard somewhere that I’ve been Freshly Pressed four times. The last time was just today. I’m that good. You can find my Freshly Pressed posts on this page.

The first time I was FP’d was in 2011. Damn, I’ve been doing this a long time. That time, my stats were impressive. Seriously, check this shit out. In one day, there were 1,051 views on one post.

I was FP’d again this morning and I’m about the fall off the front page, which means way less traffic. 123 views on a post four days after it was published is pretty nice, but that post still hasn’t even hit the total number of views it’s had before it was FP’d.

I’m complaining about how lame it is to be Freshly Pressed these days. It’s probably pretty obvious why this one never made it any farther. “I was just given an award but it’s not shiny enough, waaaaah.”

Dog People Vs. Cat People

I always thought of myself as an animal person, not a dog person or a cat person. My family always had cats and dogs. As an adult, there were periods when I didn’t have dogs, but I had cats, because they are just easier to own and don’t require as much attention. Since I got my latest dog though, it’s become increasingly apparent that I’m actually a dog person. While I don’t dislike cats and even currently have one hogging my bed, I like dogs better than cats.

This is odd since most people tend to associate the traits of dogs or cats to the people who prefer them. Dogs are friendly pack animals, loyal, easygoing, eager to lease and almost needy. Cats are independent, solitary hunters, fastidious, they hate change and are not what one would consider friendly to strangers.

If you use this criteria, I am definitely much more catlike than doglike, but I don’t think it’s really quite that simple. In my experience, things involving human beings are rarely ever that cut and dry. My personality shares traits typically associated with both dogs and cats. While I am easygoing and loyal, I am not friendly and needy like dogs tend to be. Yet, I am also independent, not very friendly and don’t like change much, even though I’ve done a lot of it.

A post idea that’s lame, yet controversial at the same time.

Important Nonfiction

I’ve talked a lot about fiction on this blog, but I haven’t written much about nonfiction. This is a list of nonfiction books from biographies to essays to journalistic reporting. I call these books out for their importance to culture, for the quality of the writing or for the absolute importance of the story they tell. Some books have all three qualities. These are not necessarily the best nonfiction books, but they are books I think need to be read for the reason stated.

That said, I am biased by my opinion and I haven’t read every nonfiction book out there, so I’m sure there are some books that you’re likely to yell at me for not including. This is strictly an editorial list, i.e. my opinion.

I list them here in no particular order other than that in which I thought of them.

I should probably finish this one someday.

Five And One

What is it about NaBloPoMo that has turned me into such a prompt stealer? Sigh. I’ve seen this five truths, one lie thing floating around all over my personal blogosphere, so I thought I’d take a stab at it myself because I do so love stabbing things.

Your job is to pick which one of these statements is a big fat lie and I’ll tell you the correct answer tomorrow.

1. I’ve only met a handful of family members.

2. I’ve been outside of America seven times to visit Canada, Mexico, The Bahamas, England, Scotland, Ireland and France.

3. I’ve lived in 14 different neighborhoods in 3 different states.

4. Over the course of my life, I’ve had 12 dogs, 6 lizards, 4 cats, 3 rats and 2 fish.

5. I’ve had a professional manicure and massage.

6. I’ve had 10 different job titles.

Which one isn’t true?

Answers tomorrow!

This was one of my extra posts for NaBloPoMo that I just never got around to using. I can see why.

Weekly Writing Challenge: Character

He glanced at the clock on the wall behind the bar as one of the ice cubes settled in the glass in his hand. It startled him since he wasn’t expecting inanimate objects to move of their own accord, but he had forgotten about gravity and the thermodynamics of melting. He stamped the base of the glass on the bar just in case any other cubes had any ideas on sentience. He looked at the clock again. The meaning of the numbers took a minute to sink in. 8:47.

I really have no idea which writing challenge this was for or where it was going, but it was a good start to something.

The Sum Of Parts

I don’t look much like the rest of my family. I am tall, even a smidgen taller than my dad. I am pale as a sparkly vampire. I have fine, blonde hair that turned white in the summertime as a child. I have green eyes that used to waver between green and blue depending on what I was wearing. One day, they just stayed green. I have the same nose as my dad–the prototypical Finnish ski-slope nose that curves slightly up at the end. My sister and I have his mouth and cheekbones. I have my mom’s wide Fred Flintstone feet. We are difficult to knock over and have excellent balance because of them.

I have no idea what this is or where it was going. I’m a mystery to myself.

Dear Body,

We’ve been through some shit, eh?

To be fair, you started it by contracting pneumococcal meningitis right after we were born. We nearly didn’t make it through that one. It did a lot of damage to our brain and hearing.

Perhaps I shouldn’t blame you for that. We weren’t exactly simpatico yet. I couldn’t control you at all. We couldn’t even talk to each other.

Anyway, I’m getting off point. This is not a letter of blame; this is a letter of apology. Bear with me; I’m pretty bad at this.

The start of yet another open letter, but this one is to my body. No wonder it never went anywhere.

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Well, that’s about all the time we have for today. Of the ones that are actually finishable, which of these drafts do you think I should finish? If you say so, I might just finish writing it. Or not.

Go ahead an answer the Five And One poll if you want and I’ll tell you which is one is untrue tomorrow. Maybe.