dianaschnuth

There’s only one work of writing that I’ve actually a.) finished and b.) felt was acceptable overall. I wrote it back in 2001, and I will admit that the first paragraph or two was loosely based on my own real life. After that, I let the story do its thing, and if elements of myself appear in the main character… well, it happens.

I’ve decided to post it here, under a Creative Commons license. I think it’s entirely too cliché to ever be published anywhere, but deserves to see the light of day somewhere. I did post it on my website years ago, and got some positive feedback about it, so here it is again.

I know my writing-related limitations. If you feel the need to critique, I’ll try not to take it too hard, but I’m not specifically calling for critique. I’m just sharing, for whatever fucked up reason. Remember, this is a sample of my writing from five years ago — not that my writing style has changed *that* much since then. Although I was hard-pressed to keep myself from making minor edits as I plugged in the HTML for italics and such.

[Update: I didn’t mean you shouldn’t leave any comments… If you read it and liked it, or even if you were ambivalent about it, feel free to leave your thoughts.]

Please be aware that this story contains sexual situations, occult hocus-pocus, and ending dialogue adapted from a chapter of one of my favorite Star Trek books. If you aren’t turned off yet, read on…
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dianaschnuth.net is never going to become an internet giant. It’s never going to earn revenue (or at least, not of job-quitting calibre). Hell, it’s probably never going to get even 100 hits a day on a regular basis.

It’s just an excuse for me to write almost-daily. Who knows if I’d still journal if I didn’t have my blog?

I have volumes of journals dating back to when I was seven years old. Most of my life is documented in journals of one form or another, be they bound volumes of lined paper in fuzzy bookcovers, stacks of notebook paper with single metal rings holding them together, or electronic text files. The years that aren’t documented seem almost lost to me. The important events that I skipped over sometimes seem hazy in my memory. Then there are memories that I’d completely managed to push into the farthest corner of my subconscious and had almost forgotten, but were documented at the time, and later read and remembered.

This is really just an open journal. For you, and for me. For you, so you can laugh at my funnies and muse with me about stupid shit. For me, so I can look back later and remember what it was like before [insert major life event here]. The only thing that differentiates this from what I would write for myself alone is that I can’t (or won’t) go off about any particular person for any particular reason. The internet’s a big place, and a potentially permanent one, and I don’t need people (or their friends or family or bodyguards) coming to me years later, after I no longer have a beef with them. Or while I still do.

I don’t make a concerted effort to always be witty, or to have a great punch line, or even to maintain coherent structure in my entries. I try to effectively get out what’s in my head. If you like it, that’s cool. If all I’ve got to say is, “Man, I’m really in a mood tonight,” then I’m just going to say it and not put some sort of interesting spin on it for my readers. I’m not Dooce or Wil. I’m just me.

My English teacher, Mr. Falls, wrote in my 8th grade yearbook something along the lines of, “Like a world-class athlete, a writer like you should write every day!” Well, Mr. Falls, here I am. Getting it out of my head. Trying to express myself. My fiction has gone by the wayside (dusty and neglected, but not forgotten), but my little essays about my life keep on keeping on.