The Pattern Of These Dead Days
"I haven't slept a single night in over a month, and not even once did you start to make sense to me. Well, maybe I'm a little bit slow, or just consistently inconsistent."
I'm trying not to be the one-post-a-week guy, but Blogger's been an absolute whore to me these last few days, and I haven't the patience to keep trying for hours. I did get a lot more in the way of archives up in the early part of the week, so that little project should hopefully be finished soon, giving anybody that feels like reading it a slightly revisionist version of my little blog's history. Unfortunately, I didn't keep the posts from the short-lived Souljacker Diaries, so there will forever be a gap between July and December '05.
On the subject, NFADR will be two years old on the 20th of this month, just six short days after I turn twenty-fucking-seven. No-one's saying you should send presents or anything, but...okay, they are. Send presents. I like presents, and I get really maudlin on my birthday. That said, I really have no right this year, and I may actually be able to guilt myself out of it. Yes, I'm bored as fuck at the moment, and yes, every day my employment authorisation is not in the mailbox leads to further frustration. But on the other hand, I'm in California, I'm with the woman I love, and I'm actually writing.
That's another reason the blog posts have become a little infrequent. This last week or so, I've finally graduated from writing hundreds of words a day to writing thousands. It's not every day, and I'm still getting that feeling of frustration that makes me edit while I'm writing (a habit I'm slowly training myself out of), but there has been a very large leap towards being somebody who doesn't sit there thinking about how much easier this whole business was when I had cigarettes and alcohol and dark thoughts to see me through to sunrise. So I've stopped thinking about how I'm writing a really bad novel and started concentrating on getting it out and seeing what it looks like when I'm done.
Boredom and this sudden return to creativity have changed the pattern of these dead days in pleasing fashion. The new routine is getting up at around seven and surfing the interweb for new music before I go to the gym. I'm doing six hours a week between bike and treadmill (and weighing 202lbs. Woo!), and even with six-hundred and fifty songs on my iPod, it gets old. This has had the interesting result of turning me into an absolute master at finding free mp3s and even entire albums without resorting to BitTorrent or any peer-to-peer stuff, which is great. So I hit the gym, come home and shower, then settle down to write. I rest when Jenn comes home for lunch, but the plan from here on in is to make that the little break in a daily session that runs from 10:30 to 3:30. That time will be dedicated entirely to writing, focussing mainly but not entirely on the novel (I want to hammer out some longer posts here and continue working on The Curve Ball Conspiracy). Jenn's arrival home makes it dinner time, and from then on the rest of the night is ours.
If the visa people are going to continue being evil, then chances are I have a month before my EAD turns up. I've decided I really need to use it. I'd started taking this dead time for granted when what I should have been doing was using it like a luxury. No matter. There is time to make amends.
I'm trying not to be the one-post-a-week guy, but Blogger's been an absolute whore to me these last few days, and I haven't the patience to keep trying for hours. I did get a lot more in the way of archives up in the early part of the week, so that little project should hopefully be finished soon, giving anybody that feels like reading it a slightly revisionist version of my little blog's history. Unfortunately, I didn't keep the posts from the short-lived Souljacker Diaries, so there will forever be a gap between July and December '05.
On the subject, NFADR will be two years old on the 20th of this month, just six short days after I turn twenty-fucking-seven. No-one's saying you should send presents or anything, but...okay, they are. Send presents. I like presents, and I get really maudlin on my birthday. That said, I really have no right this year, and I may actually be able to guilt myself out of it. Yes, I'm bored as fuck at the moment, and yes, every day my employment authorisation is not in the mailbox leads to further frustration. But on the other hand, I'm in California, I'm with the woman I love, and I'm actually writing.
That's another reason the blog posts have become a little infrequent. This last week or so, I've finally graduated from writing hundreds of words a day to writing thousands. It's not every day, and I'm still getting that feeling of frustration that makes me edit while I'm writing (a habit I'm slowly training myself out of), but there has been a very large leap towards being somebody who doesn't sit there thinking about how much easier this whole business was when I had cigarettes and alcohol and dark thoughts to see me through to sunrise. So I've stopped thinking about how I'm writing a really bad novel and started concentrating on getting it out and seeing what it looks like when I'm done.
Boredom and this sudden return to creativity have changed the pattern of these dead days in pleasing fashion. The new routine is getting up at around seven and surfing the interweb for new music before I go to the gym. I'm doing six hours a week between bike and treadmill (and weighing 202lbs. Woo!), and even with six-hundred and fifty songs on my iPod, it gets old. This has had the interesting result of turning me into an absolute master at finding free mp3s and even entire albums without resorting to BitTorrent or any peer-to-peer stuff, which is great. So I hit the gym, come home and shower, then settle down to write. I rest when Jenn comes home for lunch, but the plan from here on in is to make that the little break in a daily session that runs from 10:30 to 3:30. That time will be dedicated entirely to writing, focussing mainly but not entirely on the novel (I want to hammer out some longer posts here and continue working on The Curve Ball Conspiracy). Jenn's arrival home makes it dinner time, and from then on the rest of the night is ours.
If the visa people are going to continue being evil, then chances are I have a month before my EAD turns up. I've decided I really need to use it. I'd started taking this dead time for granted when what I should have been doing was using it like a luxury. No matter. There is time to make amends.
posted by Michael at 1:45 PM
4 Comments:
Happy birthday! Savor 27 . . . and the other ones beginning with 2
Have you discovered IDLING WILDLY or TREES LOUNGE (both are linked off my blog)?
It appears that you are adjusting yourself - it was a pretty big move that you made and on top of that have all that INS red-tape to deal with...it's all gonna work out great.
Hey, Blogger's been a bitch to me too! Glad to know I'm not alone.
Thousands of words a day! Impressive. Keep it up, that novel will be done in no time. I'm really excited for you...
www.myspace.com/time4planb Most original new act I've seen for ages. The album is genius and the wanky british media are going to be kissing his arse something chronic over the next month or so.
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