It's not a cry you can hear at night, it's not somebody who's seen the light...

It is almost time, once again, for the girls of the LFoD to gather together and share a night of terrifying movies and lots and lots of sugar. This is how we celebrate Halloween in NZ. Emphasis on WE since most people don't.

So today I pulled myself out of bed (at like 4 PM shhh) and went into Riccarton to fetch supplies. It's also my oldest original character's 23rd birthday today. She was 16 when I made her. I thought the situation called for cheesecake. Bailey's cheesecake. Cause, like...she's Irish. Anyway, then I went and purchased two bags of junk food that is necessary for Halloween.

I decided to catch a different bus home today simply because it got there before the normal Orbiter bus I get. We have a new central bus station and I haven't been in there yet. It's this temporary thing in the middle of town and seeing it made me burst with love for this city. It's trying so hard.

We turned out of the bus station and onto a street. We were tooling along and everyone went silent. I looked around at the gaping, empty spaces where buildings used to be and I had no idea where I was. I didn't recognise the street so I just figured it was one of the side-streets in town. And then I noticed the Dick Smith Ness used to work at and realised I was on Columbo Street. For non-locals, that's one of the main streets through town. And it's just...gone. When I realised where I was, I felt like I might vomit. This is real. It really happened. It's not going away. And it's happening other places and it's so much worse and blahblahblah yuck.

So I had burgers and Simpsons and then I ate cheesecake. Tomorrow there will be tea and then pumpkin soup and horror movies. Clinging to the nice things is better than vomiting in horror because the world seriously, absolutely sucks.

Happy birthday, Deirdre. No character has ever made me laugh and scream and cry and want to strangle and hug a fictional person at the same time as much as you have. Thank you for being part of my brain. You make it just that little bit nicer.

I just wrote 8,099 words in Darker London. I haven't written anything significant there since February at least. And today was 11 scenes (one backdated). And I feel more like myself than I have in months.

I forgot how good just writing by myself can feel, not that I am saying it's better than writing with someone else. It's just different because you have to create everything from start to finish and all of it in between. I opened windows and had no idea what I was going to wrote about and things flowed. It's been FOREVER since I was able to do that. Everything has to be planned and thought of beforehand recently and if it isn't planned it doesn't happen. But not today, this was just "I want to write for Deirdre" BAM. Scene.

It's like a weight lifted off my chest that I didn't even know was there. I love my creative outlets. But Darker London will always own my soul because those characters are mine and not borrowed from elsewhere. And it feels good to write something that is absolutely and completely yours and to write it yourself. I love writing with other people, but I did this all by myself and I am proud I finally could again.

Fuck, I feel awesome.