Christmas on the Titanic.

I did another short this morning, and this one seems kind of noteworthy.

You can download it here.

"Noteworthy" might be pushing it. But this does have the much celebrated beginning, middle, and end, not to mention it's self-contained at around 15 pages. The flaws in the scripting seem like they're manageable if not fixable with some time too. It's also slightly closer to "Trendsetter" in spirit, which might help loosen up some new ideas.

This story was mostly inspired by the Team Dresch song "Don't Try Suicide," with two or three lines of dialogue lifted straight from the song. In another draft, these would probably be removed -- it doesn't quite fit in the places I put it, but I kind of liked that jarring effect it created. The song itself interests me because it tells a story that I felt like I was trying to put together myself a long time ago, and gave up on.

With the rest of the dialogue I just played it by ear, and went for realism by my standards. There's a lot of parroting for only 15 pages. I greatly over use "BEAT" [no surprise there], and I do a couple of things which strike me as kind of masturbatory; the spirit of the conversation about Cobain is pulled from my "Walks with Angels" short, and I hated putting in a character who was a writer because that almost always reeks a little of Mary Sue-ism. My only defense is that I really wanted to get the "Christmas on the Titanic" thing into the story, and this was the only way that sprung to mind.

Just thought I'd share. Unlike "Nova"[ which I might actually try and finish], under normal circumstances this would have probably gotten deleted, or at least gutted for use in something else. But with my mood lately, I think I let the miserableness of it charm me a little bit.

If you can't impress yourself, I guess.

God, I want to get out of my head and do something.