Monday, October 1, 2012

Helpful, Meet Your Opposite



So, as I’ve mentioned, sometimes when I’m starting a story I like to use the people around me as sounding boards for my brainstorming.

Roomie’s not a fan of this choice (mostly because it's remarkably easy to creep her out). And as a result of the number of times I’ve annoyed her with my open ended questions, she's developed ways of thwarting me. One of her favorites is to list the names of books, movies, or characters that are tangentially related to what I’m talking about, while also totally irrelevant, and often nonsensical.

For instance, yesterday we had a conversation that went something like this:


Me: I’m trying to decide on a villain.

Roomie: I don’t want to be part of this conversation.

Me: Should it be the guy calling in all the money owed on the family home and threatening to throw them out into the street? Or maybe –

Roomie: What kind of fairy tale has tax evasion?

Me: No, it’s not tax evasion. It’s more like a balloon payment.

Roomie: What kind of fairy tale has a balloon payment?

Me: You’ve never read a story where the hero's journey starts to save the family home?

Roomie: That’s very Hansel & Gretel of you.

Me: That doesn’t even make sense.

Roomie: You know, breadcrumbs.

Me: Stop it.

Roomie: Ursula. Villian. Boomsa.

Me: You are the definition of unhelpful.


I'm going to leave it up to you to decide which one of us deserves the title of "poor, put-upon roommate."

9 comments:

  1. Having an author as a roommate can lead to, a very interesting life. I wonder if we should pity our roommates. I would, but I've too much fun doing similar things to mine.

    Allons-y

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    Replies
    1. It's absolutely more fun than it should be. =)

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    2. A single tear is rolling down my cheek right now.

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    3. Sorry, Roomie! If it would help I would totally promise not to creep you out anymore....but since we both know I'd be lying, it seems almost meaner to give you that sliver of hope.

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    4. You're not sorry. Not when it goes up in the middle like that.

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  2. Hey Kelly! Thanks for following me. I would love to follow you back, but I can't find your Google Friends Connect widget.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks, Alex! It's toward the bottom right. Sorry, it wasn't visible before.

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    2. I see it now! I clicked on it though and got this error message:
      The following errors were found:
      blogID: BLOG-ID-HERE
      I'll keep trying!

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    3. Please let me know if it keeps giving you problems!

      Delete