I'm Still Here

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!

Sinner

I hope you'll forgive the silence last week; my blog was officially on tour, with seven posts on seven blogs in seven days. You know, how I've been organising blog tours with Literary+ from the beginning.

Anyway, I'm here now. You can all stop panicking. (You cared, right? You missed me here?)

I won't get into my adventures last week. You know, going to the most haunted castle in Europe and staying overnight. That's boring, right? (This is me jesting, but I am not going to be writing about it for a bit, until I can get the photos developed. Yes, developed. I went old-school, with disposables!)

Today, instead, I'm going to talk to you about the fun matter of the Seven Deadly Sins. They're fascinating. I mean it, really. I've finally applied myself to reading the books I bought specifically for my research paper, and it's actually interesting. Thank God for that.

The books on the seven sins are, I was pleased to find, separated by sin in each chapter. I'm only writing about Pride, so I don't need to go near the other six sins until I actually want to. For fun. Don't judge me and my weird interests!

I've one book down, as a result of that, but I do have to attend to one other important matter: the ten texts I'm supposed to be writing about a la my plan. So, that'll take some time. Most of the reading is already done, though I'm not entirely sure I remember most of it. So that's fun.

I'm sure it'll be fine.

What I've come to realise about the sins so far, and this is far from what I need to write about in my paper, is that while many consider them of theological significance, they're also of psychological importance. One of the books I bought is actually, I discovered, a self-help book, aiming at helping people get to the balance between the sin, or vice, and the corresponding virtue. Or something like that. I'm not so much paying attention to the book's purpose as the psychological and theological study contained in the pages. It draws from Jewish, Christian and Greco-Roman sources, allowing for a fuller study on the topic.

The second book I'm using focuses on how we see the sins today. It's a slimmer tome than the first, and offers insights from a layman's point of view. Given my focus is on literature, this will be of some benefit to me in understanding where the various authors were coming from in their writing.

I have a third book, simply titled Sin, which will give me an overall view on sin. I'm yet to read it, though it's bound to offer some support in understanding what it is, exactly, that I'm writing about.

All of this is giving me some help in formulating ideas for the play I'm working on, so I'm not getting entirely bored with the paper. Mind you, I'm way behind on where I need to be. I guess there's only one thing to do: stop talking about it, and just get back to work.

This Thing Called Sin

A little while ago, we received the first details of our Research Papers in college. This began with the systematic choosing of subjects, approaching moderators nervously and trying to get our heads around what to do in the space of a week.

Except for me. I've been thinking about this since about October or November. I've known for a long time what I wanted to do my Research Paper on: the Seven Deadly Sins. For the actual paper, it's boiled down to a single sin: Pride. And so, the theological, psychological and literary examinations of Pride began, with a bibliography of over thirty titles to get through. Of these, many are meant directly for the actual discussion of Pride in literature and popular media, but there are also articles and books about Sin, Pride, the Capital/Deadly Sins, Demons, Lucifer, the Devil... the list goes on.

What it has essentially done is make me look at certain things in the world in terms of Sin. It's a weird experience. I don't consider myself to be overtly religious. Yes, I have faith, but I never really thought I would look at people or their actions and consider the Sin they were committing. Don't ask me how it happened or what I think about, because if I ever knew (about the former), I've long since forgotten (in both cases).

I plan on using this research, of course. I'm getting an understanding of some of the basic principles the Church has been against for centuries, and the psychological sources and implications of the sins as I do my research. Essentially, I'm reading about what makes a person "bad".

It's the ultimate villain research.

The Research Paper will be examining a number of texts, from Doctor Faustus to Lord Sunday to Like a Rolling Stone. Yes, Marlowe, Nix and Dylan. I don't do subtlety, do I?

It will be fun, though. I love reading about this stuff. I've had ideas about how to use it all beforehand, and now I'll actually have some proper understanding of it. God, I'm turning into an adult, aren't I?