I Made This...
Dec. 8th, 2003 11:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sisabetSo I was all yucky and planning on lolly-gagging or lazing or something nonfun or nonproductive or just really non-me tonight (but not notsisabet, nonme. She is pretty cool) and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sockkpuppett didn't let me and got me excited about something which was very cool so there was that.
Then there was the fact that I figured out how to end my Nightmare On Elmstreet/QaF fic. So I decided to post some of what I have tonight. Yay. This - this is a story. It qualifies as fiction. Therefore, I would call it fic. I am also writing it. It is self-indulgent and first person, which is icky, but I have no idea how to tell this story in third person and not have it come out really, really purple. Barney purple prose as far as the eye can see.
A Warning about Warnings: I hate warnings on fics. If a major character is going to die, don't tell me (unless it is actually on the show - a real spoiler - then tell me. Seriously, I have to prepare. Krycek's death scarred me). That being said - this is a Nightmare on Elm Street inspired story. Inspired is the operative word, but if I tell you right away who dies and who doesn't and where the line that I won't cross lies, well where is the fun in that? So the goal of this story is horror. I have never written anything like this before and actually, I've never really written much of anything at all before. Fake spoilers and LJ entries are pretty much my experience at public writing to date.
So here goes. Idea inspired (loosely) by the fic summary at bjfic.net: Brian and Justin meet Freddy Krueger
the sun breaks down 1/?
Maybe, if I had just listened to Daphne that first day things would have been different. Maybe I wouldn’t be sitting here, right now writing this and drinking oh, my. ..well I’ve lost track of what cup this is. I don’t think it matters. I can’t go to sleep, but eventually I will. Sleep, you can't stop sleeping forever, and thoughts like that – inevitability – the fact that I can acknowledge things like inevitability and mortality and consequences - this should protect me. That I don’t just acknowledge it – that I know, that I feel, that I believe, I should be, I don’t know, immune at the least. I mean – everything I’ve found out since then tells me that what happened , what is happening, could not have happened and even if you get to the point where you accept that the impossible is occurring, you have to know that it should not be happening to me.
It should not have happened to Daphne.
We are too old. We were too old.
And the only thing I can figure out, is that the rules are changing. What rules I could find. There weren’t many, but the biggie, the one that was the hallmark for every single incident I could track down, means that even if this is real, it should not have been able to get to me. Or to her. But I know that is wrong and I could fucking care less if anyone believes me now. You will.
*****************************************************************************
I think it all started the night I came home and Daphne and Tonya were camped out watching an old video. Since where they happened to be stationed was the couch/daybed/my bed, I grabbed a bowl of popcorn and joined them.
Tonya was in this anthropology class with Daphne, something about folklore and media and I really wasn’t listening because right then on the television this woman was cutting the head off of a chicken. The chicken kept running around even after it was beheaded and Daphne explained that apparently this was some infamous movie that came out years ago and was supposed to be a snuff film, even though most of its footage was staged. Well, the human stuff was staged, I was pretty certain the slaughterhouse stuff was real. Real and absolutely disgusting, and it sent Tonya on a rant about vegetarianism and natural living and apparently she’s off her meds, or something, because the American teenager is overdiagnosed and overmedicated, but by then I wasn’t really listening because that is when the monkey came on the television, and real or not, what they did to that monkey was sick.
In retrospect, I should have listened.
The next morning Daphne was trying to tell me about a dream she had the night before, something about a park and these kids singing, but you know how when someone is telling you about their dream, and you aren’t in it, and it is the most boring thing ever? Yeah, that is how it was. So I sat there, nodding at her occasionally and mentally estimating how much I could make in tips at my upcoming double at the diner and subtracting what I would need to put toward rent, and how much I would have to go out on that night. Since that amount was the difference between Woody’s and Babylon, I was fairly focused on the calculations.
“Justin?”
“Hmmm,” I was thinking that if we were really busy, I could have enough for Woody’s and Babylon and that would be the best possible outcome, really.
“You aren’t even listening,”
“Hey, yeah, what?” I had to be at work soon and I was busy rinsing out my coffee cup.
“Are you gonna be here tonight?”
“Um, no, I’m going out and I’ll probably stay over at Brian’s.” I dried my hands on the dish towel and maybe if I hadn’t been so preoccupied with everything else, I would have noticed something different about Daphne. It wouldn’t have made a difference, but maybe I would have seen.
But I didn’t notice, she seemed the same old Daphne as always, just tired and I was tired, too. Hell, I hadn’t really slept much the night before, especially since Tonya and Daphne were on my bed until after three, laughing and talking about these urban myths they had discussed in class that day. I think either cockroach eggs have infested everything from beehive hairdos to chewing gum, or they haven’t. Maybe, it was spider eggs. I don’t remember exactly, since by then, we were all plenty stoned. Apparently, Tonya’s aversion to drugs only extends to those dispensed by a pharmacist, since she had no problem smoking my pot. Finally, I kind of just stretched out underneath both of them, and I think that they took the hint to leave my room. Which is also the den. Which is also, kind of, the hallway. I wondered, vaguely, if we should get a bigger place, but the rent is fucking cheap as hell, and I’m at Brian’s so much anyway, and then I started worrying about Brian, and what he is going to do, and then I started worrying about what I am going to do, and then I kept thinking about the monkey, and I don’t think I ever really stopped thinking long enough to sleep. I may have dozed, but I think now, that if I had slept, I would have known it.
So I make it through the day, and if I’m exhausted, I can’t really feel it, because then I am dancing and fucking, and then I’m going home with Brian and we are fucking in the elevator and I’m not worried about what he is gonna do, or about what I’m gonna do, and I’m only thinking about what we are doing until we collapse on the bed. And then I sleep.
I have nightmares. This is just something that I do, and yeah, I don’t have as many as I had right after I got out of the hospital when it was every fucking night, but they never really stopped, they just got further apart. And the dreams I don’t really remember anymore. They aren’t always the same. Usually it is just lame shit, like I’m running or falling or being chased. Sometimes, it’s about Brian and those are the only ones that’ll bother me the next day. Normally, I wake up, my heart is racing, and I am so fucking keyed up that it takes me a while to calm down, to relax. Back when I first moved into the loft, I’d wake up and be wound so tight that I would need to tear stuff up. I used to jump out of bed and just break stuff. It was insane, but it was like I couldn’t calm down until I saw something smash. Brian never said anything. This is the guy who acts like it is the end of the world if you break a plate in the kitchen, but he never said anything at all about my middle of the night demolition streaks. I’d wake up the next day and the mess would be gone and I started noticing that some of the stuff I hadn’t broken was gone. Brian was just starting to put certain things away into drawers, but I still found things to break. He still never said anything. Eventually, I was able to just breathe through the panic, not tear anything up, and then lay back down and later still I could just breathe, lay back down, and go to sleep.
So when Brian shook me awake later on that night it was really not unusual. When I jumped up still screaming and couldn’t catch my breath, it was not that strange, other than the fact that I had not done that in a long time. Brian knows what to do. He knows that I can’t stand to be touched when I’m like that. The first time I had a nightmare with Ethan, he reached out and tried to put his arms around me and I punched him in the gut. I felt horrible afterward, here I am, shaking in the bed and my boyfriend is only trying to comfort me and I hit him. I don’t feel that bad about it, anymore.
When I couldn’t calm down, that was unusual. When Brian noticed the blood on the sheets and then on me that was different.
And what could I tell him? I was terrified and wanting to convince myself that it was a dream and that I was awake now and doing my best to believe the cuts along my arm were scratches I did to myself in my sleep. I really wanted to believe that, and I gulped down the water Brian brought me, and I let him clean my arm, and I made myself breathe normally, and I told him I was fine.
But there was no way in hell I was going back to sleep that night.
The next morning was just shitty as it always is when you’ve gone a few days on little to no sleep. Michael was over, bright and early, to go to the gym with Brian. Brian didn’t really go back to sleep after my dream either, so he was an even bigger joy to be around.
“Geez,” Michael said when I walked out of the bedroom, “You look like shit.”
That Mikey. I don’t know why Debbie insists on calling me Sunshine with him around. He is just one fucking ray of light after the other. I think my grimace as I reached for coffee warned him about my mood.
“Justin has decided to re-enact certain scenes from the Exorcist in the middle of the night. It’s doing wonders for his disposition.” Brian is just the sweetest boyfriend ever. At that moment I wanted to pull out every hair on his head. One at a time.
“I had a nightmare last night,” I explained to Michael, “He’s pissy ‘cause I woke him up.”
Michael nodded understandingly, and God, how I hate people nodding understandably, “Yeah…” and he just kind of trailed off and I hate that even more because you know what? I am allowed to have nightmares and bad dreams and it doesn’t all have to be about the bashing and my poor traumatized psyche, and actually, what was happening to me had absolutely nothing to do with the bashing. Yay. Fuck, I wish it had been about that, but that morning the automatic assumption just pissed me off. Which seems so fucking silly to me now. Everything I know will be collapsing around me soon, but I'm pissed off by a little head bob. Whatever, but I did feel the need to explain myself - that I can have bad dreams like anyone else.
“It was the damned monkey.” I started.
“You dreamed about a monkey,” Michael was giving me his amused-by-the-young-boy look, and I decided to magnanimously ignore him. Because I am very mature like that.
“It was this stupid old movie that Daphne watched for school – It was a bunch of stuff – slaughterhouses and this guy falling from an airplane, and an alligator attack that was so faked and there was this monkey and it was alive and they put it in the clamp table thing and started tapping into its skull with a hammer and it was screaming and then they eat the monkey's brains…”
“You watched Faces of Death?” Leave it to Michael to know exactly what I am talking about.
“I don’t know,” I go to rinse out my coffee cup, because even when extremely sleep-deprived and grouchy, I am still a considerate house guest, but it doesn’t matter because they are off:
“Remember when we watched that movie Brian? We were in Judy Murphy’s basement.”
“I don’t ever remember seeing a monkey clamped to a table.”
“Well, you wouldn’t remember that part, hell you were too stoned to even remember your own name. You told Judy’s dad your name was Ryan and…”
“I just didn’t want him knowing my real name.”
Normally, I’d probably find the Brian and Mikey Show cute. That morning I felt like gouging out my own eyes rather than listen to another moment.
“I’m going to work, I’ll see you later, “ I called out, only to be stopped by Brian.
“It’s your day off.”
It is? It is? I suddenly felt very confused.
“What day is it?” I asked warily and yeah – wrong thing to ask since Brian now had that look on his face.
to be continued
sockkpuppett didn't let me and got me excited about something which was very cool so there was that. Then there was the fact that I figured out how to end my Nightmare On Elmstreet/QaF fic. So I decided to post some of what I have tonight. Yay. This - this is a story. It qualifies as fiction. Therefore, I would call it fic. I am also writing it. It is self-indulgent and first person, which is icky, but I have no idea how to tell this story in third person and not have it come out really, really purple. Barney purple prose as far as the eye can see.
A Warning about Warnings: I hate warnings on fics. If a major character is going to die, don't tell me (unless it is actually on the show - a real spoiler - then tell me. Seriously, I have to prepare. Krycek's death scarred me). That being said - this is a Nightmare on Elm Street inspired story. Inspired is the operative word, but if I tell you right away who dies and who doesn't and where the line that I won't cross lies, well where is the fun in that? So the goal of this story is horror. I have never written anything like this before and actually, I've never really written much of anything at all before. Fake spoilers and LJ entries are pretty much my experience at public writing to date.
So here goes. Idea inspired (loosely) by the fic summary at bjfic.net: Brian and Justin meet Freddy Krueger
the sun breaks down 1/?
Maybe, if I had just listened to Daphne that first day things would have been different. Maybe I wouldn’t be sitting here, right now writing this and drinking oh, my. ..well I’ve lost track of what cup this is. I don’t think it matters. I can’t go to sleep, but eventually I will. Sleep, you can't stop sleeping forever, and thoughts like that – inevitability – the fact that I can acknowledge things like inevitability and mortality and consequences - this should protect me. That I don’t just acknowledge it – that I know, that I feel, that I believe, I should be, I don’t know, immune at the least. I mean – everything I’ve found out since then tells me that what happened , what is happening, could not have happened and even if you get to the point where you accept that the impossible is occurring, you have to know that it should not be happening to me.
It should not have happened to Daphne.
We are too old. We were too old.
And the only thing I can figure out, is that the rules are changing. What rules I could find. There weren’t many, but the biggie, the one that was the hallmark for every single incident I could track down, means that even if this is real, it should not have been able to get to me. Or to her. But I know that is wrong and I could fucking care less if anyone believes me now. You will.
*****************************************************************************
I think it all started the night I came home and Daphne and Tonya were camped out watching an old video. Since where they happened to be stationed was the couch/daybed/my bed, I grabbed a bowl of popcorn and joined them.
Tonya was in this anthropology class with Daphne, something about folklore and media and I really wasn’t listening because right then on the television this woman was cutting the head off of a chicken. The chicken kept running around even after it was beheaded and Daphne explained that apparently this was some infamous movie that came out years ago and was supposed to be a snuff film, even though most of its footage was staged. Well, the human stuff was staged, I was pretty certain the slaughterhouse stuff was real. Real and absolutely disgusting, and it sent Tonya on a rant about vegetarianism and natural living and apparently she’s off her meds, or something, because the American teenager is overdiagnosed and overmedicated, but by then I wasn’t really listening because that is when the monkey came on the television, and real or not, what they did to that monkey was sick.
In retrospect, I should have listened.
The next morning Daphne was trying to tell me about a dream she had the night before, something about a park and these kids singing, but you know how when someone is telling you about their dream, and you aren’t in it, and it is the most boring thing ever? Yeah, that is how it was. So I sat there, nodding at her occasionally and mentally estimating how much I could make in tips at my upcoming double at the diner and subtracting what I would need to put toward rent, and how much I would have to go out on that night. Since that amount was the difference between Woody’s and Babylon, I was fairly focused on the calculations.
“Justin?”
“Hmmm,” I was thinking that if we were really busy, I could have enough for Woody’s and Babylon and that would be the best possible outcome, really.
“You aren’t even listening,”
“Hey, yeah, what?” I had to be at work soon and I was busy rinsing out my coffee cup.
“Are you gonna be here tonight?”
“Um, no, I’m going out and I’ll probably stay over at Brian’s.” I dried my hands on the dish towel and maybe if I hadn’t been so preoccupied with everything else, I would have noticed something different about Daphne. It wouldn’t have made a difference, but maybe I would have seen.
But I didn’t notice, she seemed the same old Daphne as always, just tired and I was tired, too. Hell, I hadn’t really slept much the night before, especially since Tonya and Daphne were on my bed until after three, laughing and talking about these urban myths they had discussed in class that day. I think either cockroach eggs have infested everything from beehive hairdos to chewing gum, or they haven’t. Maybe, it was spider eggs. I don’t remember exactly, since by then, we were all plenty stoned. Apparently, Tonya’s aversion to drugs only extends to those dispensed by a pharmacist, since she had no problem smoking my pot. Finally, I kind of just stretched out underneath both of them, and I think that they took the hint to leave my room. Which is also the den. Which is also, kind of, the hallway. I wondered, vaguely, if we should get a bigger place, but the rent is fucking cheap as hell, and I’m at Brian’s so much anyway, and then I started worrying about Brian, and what he is going to do, and then I started worrying about what I am going to do, and then I kept thinking about the monkey, and I don’t think I ever really stopped thinking long enough to sleep. I may have dozed, but I think now, that if I had slept, I would have known it.
So I make it through the day, and if I’m exhausted, I can’t really feel it, because then I am dancing and fucking, and then I’m going home with Brian and we are fucking in the elevator and I’m not worried about what he is gonna do, or about what I’m gonna do, and I’m only thinking about what we are doing until we collapse on the bed. And then I sleep.
I have nightmares. This is just something that I do, and yeah, I don’t have as many as I had right after I got out of the hospital when it was every fucking night, but they never really stopped, they just got further apart. And the dreams I don’t really remember anymore. They aren’t always the same. Usually it is just lame shit, like I’m running or falling or being chased. Sometimes, it’s about Brian and those are the only ones that’ll bother me the next day. Normally, I wake up, my heart is racing, and I am so fucking keyed up that it takes me a while to calm down, to relax. Back when I first moved into the loft, I’d wake up and be wound so tight that I would need to tear stuff up. I used to jump out of bed and just break stuff. It was insane, but it was like I couldn’t calm down until I saw something smash. Brian never said anything. This is the guy who acts like it is the end of the world if you break a plate in the kitchen, but he never said anything at all about my middle of the night demolition streaks. I’d wake up the next day and the mess would be gone and I started noticing that some of the stuff I hadn’t broken was gone. Brian was just starting to put certain things away into drawers, but I still found things to break. He still never said anything. Eventually, I was able to just breathe through the panic, not tear anything up, and then lay back down and later still I could just breathe, lay back down, and go to sleep.
So when Brian shook me awake later on that night it was really not unusual. When I jumped up still screaming and couldn’t catch my breath, it was not that strange, other than the fact that I had not done that in a long time. Brian knows what to do. He knows that I can’t stand to be touched when I’m like that. The first time I had a nightmare with Ethan, he reached out and tried to put his arms around me and I punched him in the gut. I felt horrible afterward, here I am, shaking in the bed and my boyfriend is only trying to comfort me and I hit him. I don’t feel that bad about it, anymore.
When I couldn’t calm down, that was unusual. When Brian noticed the blood on the sheets and then on me that was different.
And what could I tell him? I was terrified and wanting to convince myself that it was a dream and that I was awake now and doing my best to believe the cuts along my arm were scratches I did to myself in my sleep. I really wanted to believe that, and I gulped down the water Brian brought me, and I let him clean my arm, and I made myself breathe normally, and I told him I was fine.
But there was no way in hell I was going back to sleep that night.
The next morning was just shitty as it always is when you’ve gone a few days on little to no sleep. Michael was over, bright and early, to go to the gym with Brian. Brian didn’t really go back to sleep after my dream either, so he was an even bigger joy to be around.
“Geez,” Michael said when I walked out of the bedroom, “You look like shit.”
That Mikey. I don’t know why Debbie insists on calling me Sunshine with him around. He is just one fucking ray of light after the other. I think my grimace as I reached for coffee warned him about my mood.
“Justin has decided to re-enact certain scenes from the Exorcist in the middle of the night. It’s doing wonders for his disposition.” Brian is just the sweetest boyfriend ever. At that moment I wanted to pull out every hair on his head. One at a time.
“I had a nightmare last night,” I explained to Michael, “He’s pissy ‘cause I woke him up.”
Michael nodded understandingly, and God, how I hate people nodding understandably, “Yeah…” and he just kind of trailed off and I hate that even more because you know what? I am allowed to have nightmares and bad dreams and it doesn’t all have to be about the bashing and my poor traumatized psyche, and actually, what was happening to me had absolutely nothing to do with the bashing. Yay. Fuck, I wish it had been about that, but that morning the automatic assumption just pissed me off. Which seems so fucking silly to me now. Everything I know will be collapsing around me soon, but I'm pissed off by a little head bob. Whatever, but I did feel the need to explain myself - that I can have bad dreams like anyone else.
“It was the damned monkey.” I started.
“You dreamed about a monkey,” Michael was giving me his amused-by-the-young-boy look, and I decided to magnanimously ignore him. Because I am very mature like that.
“It was this stupid old movie that Daphne watched for school – It was a bunch of stuff – slaughterhouses and this guy falling from an airplane, and an alligator attack that was so faked and there was this monkey and it was alive and they put it in the clamp table thing and started tapping into its skull with a hammer and it was screaming and then they eat the monkey's brains…”
“You watched Faces of Death?” Leave it to Michael to know exactly what I am talking about.
“I don’t know,” I go to rinse out my coffee cup, because even when extremely sleep-deprived and grouchy, I am still a considerate house guest, but it doesn’t matter because they are off:
“Remember when we watched that movie Brian? We were in Judy Murphy’s basement.”
“I don’t ever remember seeing a monkey clamped to a table.”
“Well, you wouldn’t remember that part, hell you were too stoned to even remember your own name. You told Judy’s dad your name was Ryan and…”
“I just didn’t want him knowing my real name.”
Normally, I’d probably find the Brian and Mikey Show cute. That morning I felt like gouging out my own eyes rather than listen to another moment.
“I’m going to work, I’ll see you later, “ I called out, only to be stopped by Brian.
“It’s your day off.”
It is? It is? I suddenly felt very confused.
“What day is it?” I asked warily and yeah – wrong thing to ask since Brian now had that look on his face.
to be continued
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-12-08 08:39 pm (UTC):-)
no subject
Date: 2003-12-09 09:18 am (UTC)::honored and a bit freaked::
Thank you.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-08 08:40 pm (UTC)Oh I am scared. And intrigued. This is the kind of scary fic I can get into. And the snark! I am much with the Justin love.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-09 09:21 am (UTC)It's not really scary yet - I'm hoping to get to that in the next section, right now there is just so much set-up that has to be done. But, truth be told - that is actually my favorite part of a horror movie, the set up bits where everything is still all normal and lovely and Jamie Lee Curtis and her friends all walk home from school in the sunlight, giggling. Tension is cool. I think I need to up the tension.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-08 08:45 pm (UTC)Bliss, I say!
Gowritemorenow kthxbi.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-09 09:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-09 08:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-08 08:49 pm (UTC)But damn if this doesn't work. I think this could go two ways. One, you could do a spoof which I would have smiled politely at and moved on or you could commit to the story and blow it out of the water.
You committed. I'm intrigued and wait with bated breath for another installment.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-09 07:37 am (UTC)You and me both. After my initial little fangirl/horror squee at the idea, I realized due to the eventual parody nature of the series, it would be hard to pull of something so unreal in a universe that is fairly realistic (as realistic as a Brian Kinney-inhabited verse can be). But the first few movies - Freddy was scary. The idea that sleep is not safe is pretty terrifying. I'm kind of going for that. I am committed. I just don't know if that is a good thing.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-08 09:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-09 07:29 am (UTC)*whistles*
no subject
Date: 2003-12-08 09:31 pm (UTC)All that given, I have no freakin' idea what's gonna happen, but I'm reading because THIS IS REALLY GOOD FIRST PERSON POV. No shit, really, very close in, and consistent characterization, tough to do. I got the whole 'cusp of adulthood' not quite a teenager, not quite an adult tone, the use of dialect and slang was good, very season 1-2 Justin. I totally got into the character's head, it was cool. ::pet:: Hee. Welcome to fic. I hope you have a generous liquor budget. Hee.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-09 07:19 am (UTC)Thank you. I know all about drinking cause of the vidding.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-08 09:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-09 07:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-08 10:11 pm (UTC)i like this story. i want more. lots more. and soon, k?
no subject
Date: 2003-12-09 09:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-09 04:23 pm (UTC)She also flipped right the hell out during the monkey scene, turned off the TV and I think was fighting off a fit of hysterics when she told us all to just go home :(
no subject
Date: 2003-12-09 01:00 am (UTC)*settles in with popcorn*
(Don't make me wait too long, please??? The popcorn will get cold)
PS. The first time I had a nightmare with Ethan, he reached out and tried to put his arms around me and I punched him in the gut. I felt horrible afterward, here I am, shaking in the bed and my boyfriend is only trying to comfort me and I hit him. I don’t feel that bad about it, anymore.
Nice. Tee hee...
no subject
Date: 2003-12-09 09:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-09 03:25 am (UTC)So, anyway, I'm looking forward to hearing more :)
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Date: 2003-12-09 07:13 am (UTC)And wow - thanks for reading something you're not in either fandom for! ::hugs you::
no subject
Date: 2003-12-09 07:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-09 09:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-09 12:12 pm (UTC)But I'm not sure it'd be that helpful :D
*still loves you for this*
no subject
Date: 2003-12-09 06:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-09 06:30 pm (UTC)Anyway. I've read it about five times already, and I'll be sitting here dying until you write more, just so you know. And congratulations on admitting/realizing that you're a writer.