I'm always overly aware of how little opportunity I get to write on this blog of late. With college back in motion, I don't find myself with the most time in the world, which only leads me on to think more about how little I keep up with my extra writing. Finding the time to unwind and to write and to get my college work done while having to take on extra hours in work and manage increasingly busy schedules is difficult. Doing it while playing Final Fantasy 7 again is nigh-impossible.
I disgress. I am still here, even if I am not appearing to write very much, or say very much, or do very much at all. I have been trying to keep up with certain "obligations" regarding social networking, setting up a Paper.li, and using Instagram to enter the world of Hipster-ism and attempt to capture some banality to show that everything doesn't have to be interesting, but we can certainly pretend it is, and anyway: look there's a picture.
As for writing, I've gotten myself a keyboard for my tablet - and yes, gotten myself a tablet, in case I forgot to mention that - that now enables me to write more freely without having to turn my laptop on my midnight and wait for it to groan itself into consciousness. I will use it, obviously, because there will always be a need for it, but my tablet is much more convenient to set up for writing at the time being. I cannot see myself writing a whole novel like this, with certainly problems arising from the use of quotation marks (par example: "o" actually comes out ö") and the general lack of a spell checker that would make writing a novel easier.
Yes, I am a fan of the red squiggly line, even if it does sometimes highlight terms I want to keep in the book.
Most of my time, lately, has been spent writing my research paper. It's not qute so arduous a task that I don't get to see people, but it does mean I don't get to justify much time to myself. I have to finish reading a book for it, and soon, and have to actually write the secong chapter. However, I think I can manage it. The Seven Deadly Sins have provided for me a treasure-trove of entertainment, and reading up on them has proven itself to be a lot more interesting than I anticipated, even in picking them specifically for that reason.
When I complete my paper, I'll be left with more time to myself, in theory. I have been asked already, repeatedly, if I'll be taking part in NaNoWriMo this year. My laboured and wary response to that is this: I'm thinking about it.
I don't yet know what I would write. Part of me wishes to monopolise the time and write three novellas instead of one novel. Either way it's possibly insane. The other option is to work on a Young Adult novel I've been mulling over for a wee while, but I have a lot of reading to do for that one before I sit down and write it, because it's one of those books that requires things to be tasteful and accurate within current literature and social contexts.
Isn't that a fun thing to think about? Imagine me having to be politically correct all the time. I wouldn't be much fun when drunk, that's for sure!
Again, I digress. NaNoWriMo is such a succinctly terrifying but thrilling prospect that dwelling on it for long periods of time after midnight is bound to lead to utter sleeplessness. With work every Sunday, doing that isn't advisable. So, I'll be quick about this.
My workload in college is set to decrease after Halloween. I will have two essays and a journal to write (on Comedy, that great beast of English Literature left unattended in many cases due to its sometimes-slapstick nature, which no one likes to critique academically, but everyone claims to know something about in general, less frightening terms than a whole module riding on it.) Anyway, with that decrease due, I could, technically, take on more work. Technically. In saying that, I do also have the less-than-small manner of organising something within two separate societies, possibly, maybe, and having to actually research for my work, and prepare for teaching placement in January. (We'll butcher that dragon and sell its scales when the time comes, but for now...)
So, I might do NaNoWriMo. I definitely have books to write in it, anyway. We shall see what actually becomes of it in due time. Probably I'll start then realise I'm a mad man with too much to do and too little time to do it, and struggle on anyway until I give up, a failure and have to reconcile my lack of words with brownies. Homemade, with rich chocolate.
Again, I digress, but I do wish I had a brownie at the moment.
The point of this post, then, if there ever was one, was to say that I am still here, still alive, and still writing - even if I don't put out every week.* I'm hoping I get to actually write something, at least every week, that will end up on this blog, while getting a flash story on my site almost every week. I need to edit one I wrote on Thursday before it goes public. For that, I'll need the laptop.
Anyway, there we have it: I'm not dead, I'm still writing, and I've tried to make my excuses sound in some way like I know what I'm talking about in various fields. Not a bad night's writing, if I do say so myself. What I can proudly say** is that I had little trouble in actually writing this post, and am therefore more likely to write through my tablet again when the time comes. And who knows, maybe I'll actually get back into a routine of it! Well, a man can dream.
*Sounds like my ex-wife. (Did I mention I tell ex-wife jokes? All the time? I'm told it gets annoying, and it's never funny. But like I said, everyone claims to know something about comedy. I just didn't say if they were right.)
**Oh, there's a Deadly Sin. My soul go bye-bye!
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