The inherent glamor that is my life.

So something died under the house.

I do most of my writing/computer-ing on the couch.

Yes, I realize some of you probably do your computer-ing from other places. Maybe you have desk. Maybe an office. Maybe you write in the bathroom. Maybe you have a paying job, a rent-controlled apartment, no roommate and the self-esteem that comes with knowing that you look rad pantless, thus opening up a whole range of places you could do your typing. But me, I have a couch.

Anyway, said dead thing used to be a live thing, and I think I first became aware of it a few weeks back, when I realized I could hear what sounded like digging and scratching underneath the couch. Usually, this is nothing wrong, as the poodle my grandmother owns -- the one who refuses to let me pet her, even after 2 years here, and takes great pleasure in leaving messes for me on all the rugs in the house when she's bored -- likes to crawl under the sofa, so she's able to keep track of me without me being able to keep track of her. But after a certain time in the evening, the poodle is usually sectioned off to my grandmother's bedroom, to stem her like-clockwork barking cued by me going to the bathroom, the kitchen, or speaking out loud. So whatever was underneath me wasn't her.

Now, I'm a paranoid type. I used to live in a small, well over 100 year old house [more like an Evil Dead-style cabin in the woods] and had my share of creepy crawlies. Not for nothing, but now when I see a rat? The resulting squeal is far from earsplitting. So I was ready, and when I pulled the couch away from the wall, I did half-expect something to go darting across the room.

But no. Nothing.

Ear to the carpet, I figured whatever was under there was really under there, like past the duct work, probably on the ground, and probably not something that would hang around all winter. So I forgot about it. If it could get under there, certainly it could get out from under there.

A lesser man might see this a parable about the downfalls of a "wait-and-see" attitude.

So whatever it was, badger, possum, stray cat, mouse... it's dead now, and still under the house, and in the same place it used to spend its days scurrying about. Which is great for it, but since there's also a vent in that part of the house, from out of the best source of heat and cold for our major living area, billows the foul smell of death. Which, really, is just peachy, isn't it? Somewhere, out there in the universe, some great power looked at the glamor and prestige that is my existence, and decided that along with everything else, I should get the chance to smell like decay.

Scented candles and dryer sheets stretched over the vents do nothing.

That aside, I've kept my schedule from the previous post. Election drivel provided good background noise for writing, and I've finished a couple of new drafts for my so far untitled script. What I actually ended up doing was two different versions of the script, one with more from the female character, and one much closer to the original bit I wrote, which left her a little less fleshed out, but with touch more room for the reader to infer things about her character. I'm not sure which version I prefer yet. It's hard to let go of that magic and flow in the first draft, and there's something about the setting that makes knowing less about her feels like the more realistic way to go. But it's also set in a peep show booth, so short-changing my female protagonist is not something I want to do on purpose.

Another thing I did, today and this evening, was work out ways to make the piece more "filmable" -- just basically bring my setting down into the "affordable zone" if this were filmed. My original setting was based on a sort of "Walmart" of porn that I read about in Cody's book, a really interesting mental image that may have spurred on the writing of the piece in the first place [knowing where characters are going to interact can take you a long way]. I kept my old version of course, because I think, dynamically speaking, the larger and more sterile place I originally chose would look more interesting on a page [though comic script or screenplay, I tend to envision things in panels anyway]. But I like things grungier too, so maybe these changes are for the better.

Eventually, I'm going to have to shift to that Alan Moore part of my brain and decide just what medium I'd prefer this in -- possibly which it would work better in. But I kind of just want to work on something, get it out there, so I may have to go with how I can have it made, as opposed to how I want to have it made. Which is a blow, but let's face it -- if I can't find an interested artist, I can still send a script off to various short writing competitions, something I can't do all paneled-out.

So, staying open minded. Now, after five days on and off focused on this kind of unpleasant thing, I think I'm going to try and put some distance between me and it, maybe see if anyone wants to read it in the meantime.

Oh. Page count is 10, or 12 for the longer version.

God, it smells foul and sour in here.