This is the perfect song for one of the characters exactly at this point in the story. Short POV, gotta do another I guess lol.
make believe it’s hyperreal
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I cannot for the life of me figure out why this song sounds so familiar. Fantastic piece and performance though.
It’s past 4am and I’ve yet to put words to cursor. I will do it though before sleeping, scout’s honour.
Some days the ghost isnt with you. And some days it is.
Almost didnt want to do anything today. Instead I got the most productive session in terms of word-count in about 2 weeks. Also it was dialogue-heavy and I suck at dialogue.
What else can I say? Here’s a nice lazy song to celebrate.
Been on an immense Bon Iver binge in recent weeks, what with it being that cold autumn/winter point of the year. Great stuff for writing too. Doesnt draw attention to itself in a distracting way yet paints a very moody picture that cant help but inspire something. Now that I’ve absolutely exhausted the two albums, I’ve gone back to root around for more Justin Vernon stuff. Volcano Choir, Justin Vernon, DeYarmond Edison, the Hadestown album by Anais Mitchell he featured so heavily on.. everything.
So here’s a random gem from the gemstack:
For anyone paying attention, the above banner is the standard banner and not the winner variant. I never realistically was going to hit 50k in a month with the pace I was setting but that was fine by me. I was trying to learnt to write off-the-cuff and, more importantly, the discipline to maintain my writing as a daily thing. Which was hard. And is hard. I’ve kept it going. I only missed I think 3 days maximum in November and made up for those with additional sittings/words on other days. I just missed my self-set 30k. I sat down too late that night and ended up breaking it a few hours later (at midnight I was 29k+ from the previous day so I was basically on-target). Ah well, was still proud.
Now November is done. The pep talks are all read. The regional Facebook group is essentially disbanded. All the music that was previously appropriately inspiring-yet-not-distracting-to-write-to feels old and uninspiring. I’m starting the feel the sluggishness because I’ve ran out of all external motivating factors. I didnt mention, but I gave myself the added goal to break 50k with this novel regardless AND to complete the first draft on top of maintaining the daily writing habit. In fact the habit may be the only thing keeping me going at this point. I’ve dropped my daily word target to 500-800 words so it seems feasible and I cant go to bed without feeling like an ass if I miss it.
It’s 3am and I have yet to write my tenth word for today before bed. I’m at about 34k. I hope I have enough content to break 50k, man. 40k is looking reasonable but I’m going to need to discover another ‘event’ to propel the word count beyond that, if I’m being entirely honest with myself.
Sucks.
Going beyond Yugen. Ignore the excessively dramatic music.
Didnt write anything yesterday or the day before, which sucked. Especially lame because I’d planned to go to the Nanowrimo group meeting at Madlab. Instead spent the entire evening failing to fix a faulty laptop which needs returning today. Laame! Also especially lame because yesterday was the halfway point when people should be on 25k if they’re on target. I of course, am working at half-speed so was expecting to hit 12.5k yesterday. And yes, that should’ve been in the bag what with me being at 12.3k two days earlier but life’s weird like that I guess. Came home and collapsed in bed within probably 45 minutes.
To atone for that though, I’ve just did my very first early morning sitting. Got a 666 word character POV done. Shortest one yet, but I’ve got the entire day to think of and do a second and third to make up for my shortfall. Hopefully I can turn this into a new routine and get double/triple sittings into a day. Who knows, maybe I can still realistically hit 50k. I’m gonna start going gym again so time management is going to get a little bit hairy. Yolo.
Bonus song: Die by This Condition (from Sessions EP)
Madlab site: Madlab.org.uk
This Condition bandcamp: ThisCondition.bandcamp.com
You know I’ve lived in Manchester since before I was two years old. And honestly, I’ve always been a proud Manc through and through. In more recent years, I’ve made a half-assed attempt to get to know my city more. All the cultural sneaky things it has to offer that I’ve embarrassingly not made the most of, having grown up here spoilt to it all. I want to see the world. I think I’m one of those wanderlust souls deep down (Myspace Tom is my hero: he retired with the sale and now spends his life travelling the world and taking awesome photographs) but I’m not in any financial situation whereby I could just disappear into the sunset like that as if I were some cowboy in a Western. So why not root around in my back yard and explore the hometown that I love so much? I mean I cant tell you how much it used to annoy me when I was at uni and students living away from home would talk about places I’d never been..
Anyway, as of now, I’ve actually yet to do much, but I’m very more so aware of what Manchester has to offer me, and everyone else that lives here. But it just hit me like a bag of bricks this morning how much I really care about this city.
Today’s agenda:
– Longsight library to collect Bell Jar and sort some banking
– Manchester Uni JRUL library to get some work done (they still let in alumni, right?)
– Town errands
– Maybe get more work and writing done in the Triangle or something
– Apply for a school governorship
– Go check out a DSLR videomaking get together if I’m still alive
To finish on a totally unrelated note, here’s some Jimi:
One love,
Abdul J
—
Tom’s twitter: @myspacetom
Tom’s instagram: instagram.com/myspacetom
I remember getting this out from the local library some time before the movie came out and enjoying what little I read. Generally speaking, I’m not one for romance books but I am for whatever reason a sucker for time travel stories. I blame Terminator 2 and Back To The Future 2. I’m also a big fan of wormholes and portals (anybody remember the Spot in the old Spiderman cartoon? I blame either him or Sliders) but it’s not like I go out of my way to find stories involving those although I dont doubt I could easily find a list thanks to the internet (rule 1 of the internet: you have no original thoughts and there are always people more dedicated than you who have done whatever you want to, thereby making life too easy).
Anyway, I noted down that I got upto page 50 last time before I ran out of time and couldnt renew thanks to the film’s popularity. Finally got it back and I’m about 100+ pages in. Have to say, it’s not a perfect book at all but it’s pretty well done. I’ve read better books and more impactful books and classic books, but this book is the first one where as I’m reading it I keep telling myself ‘I wish I’d written this.. even if it wouldn’t have turned out as great’.
Anyway, Bell Jar has decided to also skip queue and become available too so now I gotta try and burn through this (it’s easy reading though anyway) whilst also Nano-ing. I’ll probs get started on the movie adaptation too straight after. I put together a list of time-travel related movies (thank you based internet) too for good measure. Fun.
abdulj. 