Threats are a wonderful thing, aren’t they? The words chosen have to be exact, or things could get out of hand. I’ve been threatened and issued threats. I think it’s an art form that too many people are terrible at, but that if it’s done right you’ll be able to do one of a few things, including: 1. make someone laugh, 2. frighten the life of someone and 3. make yourself appear threatening. Which is kind of the idea.
One of the best threats that’s ever been issued towards me went something along the lines of You’re lucky you’re so good with words or I’d beat the shite out of you. This was proceeded by You! You little bastard! I have great friends, obviously. They do love to look out for me and make sure I don’t do silly things like talk about cigarettes and alcohol and Facebook. Those are out of bounds with some people. Or I’d be beaten. I don’t particularly want to be beaten. However, this means the threat worked on levels – it made me laugh, but I can’t help but laugh when someone says that, and it made him appear threatening.
I still did something similar the next day, though.
Out of the all the things I’ve said to threaten someone – which admittedly isn’t very much – my favourite was If you ever say anything to diss Jim Morrison again, I’ll shove your man bag so far up your own ego you won’t know what country you’re in. I still love that one. I’m quite pleased with myself for it. It didn’t make me appear threatening, though. And I don’t think the lad was frightened out of his life. But we both laughed, all thanks to my careful use of the English language.
Carefully observing the Facebook, I do notice a few things. And I say carefully observing, which translates roughly to creeping. But anyway, I carefully observed a threat issued to a drug dealer – I know, dodgy. Basically, the guy was threatened that if he ever offered someone drugs again, he’d be beaten. The lad was told to apologise to this drug dealer because he’s dangerous. He went back up and threatened to kill his whole family if he ever offered drugs to any of his friends.
Pleasant.
The threats were effective, though. It made everyone who read it on Facebook laugh, it frightened the life out of the drug dealer and it made the lad appear threatening.
Threats are wonderful.
Other such things that I’ve seen have been along the lines of threatening people that if they ever caused trouble for someone, they’d – you guessed it – have the shite kicked out of them. It: 1. made me laugh, 2. frightened the asses that were threatened and 3. made the lad who threatened them appear threatening.
I am a firm believer that these threats have all been done in either 1. good humour or 2. good will. They were very particular threats, aimed at very particular people, for very particular reasons. Don’t mess about on Facebook, don’t poke fun at a rock legend, don’t deal drugs and don’t mess with people just because you think you can. The words were chosen well, I think. It was all very important that these things were said, because the messages sent out really did shut a few people up. Myself included. It’s hard to get me to shut up, I might add. I’m not very good at staying quiet once I get going. I tend to go on and on and on about things, unless I’m on the phone to someone who’s very good at telling stories. My love of talking is bested only by my love of stories.
Use threats carefully, though. I mean, you can’t go around issuing threats to people left, right and centre. You might get stabbed, or worse. I mean, I didn’t threaten someone who I thought would be offended. The other threats were issued to people who really couldn’t do very much about it. No matter how good your wording, if you in any way threaten the wrong person, you’re going to get in trouble. There’s the right use of words, and there’s common sense. Sometimes we lack in common sense, but for your own sake, don’t be a fool – if you think you might offend someone, make sure you can deal with the trouble that arises from it.
And, importantly, don’t issue empty threats. I once threatened to plot against someone. I him so. And I did plot against him. I plotted, and I told him what I’d plotted. Well, I was smart about what I said – I didn’t actually have to go through with the threat. If you threaten to kill yourself... well, I’m not going to say You bloody well better kill yourself. I’m actually going to advise against it entirely. No matter how hopeless things look, that shouldn’t be an option.
This has gotten all depressing... I think it’s time for a threat. Okay, you ever bring up the S word, and I’ll have to get someone to hit you. Hard. And it will only hurt, it won’t kill you. Sorry. But that’s how it’s going to be. I’m threatening you, right here and right now, to have you hit, hard and possibly with a hurl, if you ever threaten anything like that. (If I ever threaten anything like that, I give any friend reading this who has a hurl permission to use it.)
Let me see... oh, there are some horribly common threats. The worst one that was ever said to me was Give you that or I’ll stick something in your head. It was a badminton racket. I think my brother told him to Fuck off. He deserved it. Nobody threatens me and That Guy I Am like that and gets away with just being ignored. He was a fool an a strange one at that. He didn’t even ask for our phones. And he was on a bike that we could have pushed over.
This society is a bunch of idiots.
I especially dislike that threat because 1. it wasn’t funny, 2. it didn’t frighten me and 3. it didn’t make the guy seem threatening. It actually just made him seem like an idiot. He didn’t have anything to actually threaten me with, so it was just a vague conglomeration of words he uses in his day to day life that formed a hollow expression of fruitless aggression. What a fool he was!
So, there we go. Threats and the proper use of them, and the words that are used in them. And I didn’t make any of this up. I swear, people actually said these things, because they are 1. funny, 2. mad or 3. stupid.
Now I’d like you to rate this as being 1. something that made you laugh, 2. something that made you feel entertained and/or 3. something that made me seem like an entertaining individual.
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Written as part of Challenge 5 of Literary Den's Summer of Writing 2010, Words.
Showing posts with label summer of writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label summer of writing. Show all posts
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Thursday, July 29, 2010
A Day in the Life...
Morning. Dreadful, painful morning and the unnecessarily early alarm tone from the attic as my brother gets ready for work, waking me up in the process. Half five. I can only groan, and I do. He doesn't stir for a while. There's no need for him to set his alarm that early if he's not going to get out of bed. I could forgive him, if he actually got out of bed.
A couple of hours later I finally get up myself, following a session of Morning Madness that I won't forgive myself for. Ever. Paranoia, self-inflicted nightmares, over-thinking everything in my life. It gets too much for me, and I can't seem to stop. So I get breakfast, instead.
This isn't entirely typical of my days, I'll admit. This is my summer, on the days when I have nothing to do but get up, get dressed and see if I can write. Or I'll read. Or, of late, I'll waste a couple of hours on the Wii. That doesn't make me happy. At least when I'm on my laptop I can do something that's relatively productive, and I can listen to music, which makes me feel better about the world, because it lets my emotions open up into the creations of other human beings, and I can experience this wonderful phenomenon of life, our ability to create beauty where before there is only silence.
I get my lunch around one. Or, if I'm feeling adventurous and I've gone into the city, I'll have my lunch whenever my companion - because there's rarely not a companion - wants to eat. If I'm in the city, there's no cleaning up to be done, just a few hours of exploring and going camera happy, most days. If I'm at home, I have to clean up the kitchen, scrubbing away the messes my family left the night before from dinner and from spilling tea on the work top, and the stains may lift, but I know they'll be back again in a few hours.
I waste my hours online, most days, doing nothing. Literally nothing. I'll leave links to reviews on Twitter, and there aren't enough reviews here to keep that up for much longer without getting repetitive. I'll read, play music through the laptop, keep an eye on Facebook.
And there's the texting. If Miley Cyrus isn't busy, we could be texting each other for the entire day. From five until half eleven, we text almost non-stop. She's the only one I seem to be texting these days, though Ferris Bueller gets a few texts every now and then, and sometimes a phone call. Miley never gets a phone call, because 1. her reception is bad and 2. Ferris is the one to talk to on the phone, because there's rarely a silent moment - he always has a story to tell.
Dinner is always around the same time. Always in the evening. Sometimes it's alone. Less than sometimes. That's a rare experience.
There are half a dozen cups of tea in my day.
There is always silence. Even with the music playing; the music is but the soundtrack to my life, and like in movies, the characters don't always hear it.
I worry too much about everything. Every. Single. Day.
I attempt to make plans. Adventureland trips to the city with friends from the countryside. Cinema trips with friends from the suburbs that are too far away from me.
Every day is waiting for September, when college starts back up.
Midnight, and I'm usually asleep. Sometimes I get lucky. Sometimes I get a phone call from Ferris. Even if he's drunk and it's late and I'm tired, it makes my day. He's a funny drunk, I rarely need to be up the next morning at a particular time and when I talk to him on the phone he usually wakes me up a bit. That used to happen a lot more than it does now.
Five thirty in the morning, and I curse my brother for waking me up at a ridiculously early hour...
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This was written as part of Challenge 4 of the Literary Den's Summer of Writing 2010.
A couple of hours later I finally get up myself, following a session of Morning Madness that I won't forgive myself for. Ever. Paranoia, self-inflicted nightmares, over-thinking everything in my life. It gets too much for me, and I can't seem to stop. So I get breakfast, instead.
This isn't entirely typical of my days, I'll admit. This is my summer, on the days when I have nothing to do but get up, get dressed and see if I can write. Or I'll read. Or, of late, I'll waste a couple of hours on the Wii. That doesn't make me happy. At least when I'm on my laptop I can do something that's relatively productive, and I can listen to music, which makes me feel better about the world, because it lets my emotions open up into the creations of other human beings, and I can experience this wonderful phenomenon of life, our ability to create beauty where before there is only silence.
I get my lunch around one. Or, if I'm feeling adventurous and I've gone into the city, I'll have my lunch whenever my companion - because there's rarely not a companion - wants to eat. If I'm in the city, there's no cleaning up to be done, just a few hours of exploring and going camera happy, most days. If I'm at home, I have to clean up the kitchen, scrubbing away the messes my family left the night before from dinner and from spilling tea on the work top, and the stains may lift, but I know they'll be back again in a few hours.
I waste my hours online, most days, doing nothing. Literally nothing. I'll leave links to reviews on Twitter, and there aren't enough reviews here to keep that up for much longer without getting repetitive. I'll read, play music through the laptop, keep an eye on Facebook.
And there's the texting. If Miley Cyrus isn't busy, we could be texting each other for the entire day. From five until half eleven, we text almost non-stop. She's the only one I seem to be texting these days, though Ferris Bueller gets a few texts every now and then, and sometimes a phone call. Miley never gets a phone call, because 1. her reception is bad and 2. Ferris is the one to talk to on the phone, because there's rarely a silent moment - he always has a story to tell.
Dinner is always around the same time. Always in the evening. Sometimes it's alone. Less than sometimes. That's a rare experience.
There are half a dozen cups of tea in my day.
There is always silence. Even with the music playing; the music is but the soundtrack to my life, and like in movies, the characters don't always hear it.
I worry too much about everything. Every. Single. Day.
I attempt to make plans. Adventureland trips to the city with friends from the countryside. Cinema trips with friends from the suburbs that are too far away from me.
Every day is waiting for September, when college starts back up.
Midnight, and I'm usually asleep. Sometimes I get lucky. Sometimes I get a phone call from Ferris. Even if he's drunk and it's late and I'm tired, it makes my day. He's a funny drunk, I rarely need to be up the next morning at a particular time and when I talk to him on the phone he usually wakes me up a bit. That used to happen a lot more than it does now.
Five thirty in the morning, and I curse my brother for waking me up at a ridiculously early hour...
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This was written as part of Challenge 4 of the Literary Den's Summer of Writing 2010.
Friday, July 9, 2010
That's WEIRD!
Until I was about seventeen, I wasn't myself. I mean, I was who everyone kind of expected me to be, but I kind of failed at that. I wasn't interested in: (a) generic rap, (b) sports or (c) devilment. I kept my head down and did my work, and if I got an idea I didn't tell anyone about it. I strived to fit in, doing crazy, stupid things like listening to a band because people liked them, or buying a DS because I thought then I could be included in a group of people who had an "exclusive" club.
As I came to the end of my time in secondary school, I wasn't afraid to let people see some of the real me. I was asked a few times by first years (I was a Prefect - first years knew who I was), "Aren't you cool?" What do you say to that? I wasn't going to lie, and I wasn't going to lecture them on the meaning of the word cool. I said to them, "No, I'm not cool." They laughed, I kind of laughed, and we went our seperate ways. They asked again the next week.
See, cool by my definition is what people decide they like. Okay, someone can look cool without actually being cool (they can look cool and be cool, too, obviously). But cool implies that everyone likes what I do, that a majority of people think that what I do is what they'd like to do. I wasn't cool. I was weird.
Summer - boring. I won't bore you with the details of those few months. The most exciting thing was getting my place in college. That's it. That was my summer of 2009. It was in September that I made a few changes, though. I stopped giving a damn about what people thought of me. I didn't hide the fact that I was a writer, that I was loud and hyperactive and that I disliked sports. Actually, that's not even entirely true. I dislike soccer, and I can't watch a lot of sports because they bore me, but I like GAA. I'm just no good at it, and when I was younger, Gaelic seemed too much like soccer. In short, it was bawring.
So, I started college. I let people know I was a nerd. "I listen to music from the Internet and I watch lots of Sci-Fi. Also, every morning for the next four years that we're here, you're going to hear me say hi to some of my friends, because I'm that loud. And you'll wonder how someone can be so happy on a Monday morning."
Monday mornings... there's a fun one. Most people are severely depressed on Mondays. Not me. I go through most weekends without seeing my friends, so when Monday comes along, I'm more than happy to see them. I'm bouncing-off-the-walls, ready-to-explode giddy! This does different things for different people. Most keep a certain distance from me for the first half hour, until I've calmed down a bit. One friend and I had a thing where we'd high-five once a day instead of saying too much. I think I hurt his hand with explosive amounts of enthusiasm.
This all comes down to one thing: by general consensus, I wasn't normal. General consensus is wrong. I was normal, but I wasn't the same. A friend, the same high-five-till-you-hurt friend, has me talking about any problems I have. That's normal. It's not generally accepted - guys talking about feelings? That. Is. Ridiculous! Right? Nope. It's different, though.
Of course, I still get asked a few of the same questions in college as I did in secondary school: Why don't you drink? Did you write a book? What's it about? The answers are this: I choose not to drink. Yes, I wrote three (that was the old response; now it's Yes, I wrote four, but I haven't had a chance to use that that). It's complicated. Very complicated.
That's. Not. Normal. People want answers. They want to know what's going on. Someone not drinking is weird. If you saw me on a night out, you might not guess that I'm sober, though, because I tend to be a bit... can you guess the word? HYPERACTIVE. Wonderful stuff. But it still confuses people when they see me with a Sprite and wonder if there's Vodka in there, too. Bartenders probably get confused when I order drinks for other people, too. Like buying a mate's Guinness for him, or giving a girl a Jager Bomb to help make her night better, because she's lost her bag. Actually, I order three Jager Bombs once. That must have confused the girl behind the bar!
The book thing is more difficult to deal with. People will ask, because they'll have heard from somebody. It's a small college, so word gets around. Generally my reponse is, Did you not know that? Oh... Then they ask what the books are about. I literally cannot summarise four books in a short enough amount of time. I tried before. Someone then asked, Where do you get your ideas from? I suppose the best way to deal with that question the next time I'm asked it is to just say, In general, from the people I know here, and wave my arm around the building a bit.
I suppose it's my own fault. I could try fit in and not let anyone know the real me, but that's no fun. I'd be a carbon copy of the society I hate. I'd be drinking to satisfy other people, trying to play soccer despite the fact that I suck at it, and listening to music I can't stand. That's no way to live. I'd prefer be an enigma to people. I'd prefer be weird than be the same. That's probably because I'm a twin and look the same as someone else.
I suppose I have a new response to Aren't you cool? I probably won't ever get asked that again, but I have a response to it. What do you think? Yeah, that'd really mess with someone's head.
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Written as part of Challenge 2, Normality of Summer of Writing 2010. Full details here.
As I came to the end of my time in secondary school, I wasn't afraid to let people see some of the real me. I was asked a few times by first years (I was a Prefect - first years knew who I was), "Aren't you cool?" What do you say to that? I wasn't going to lie, and I wasn't going to lecture them on the meaning of the word cool. I said to them, "No, I'm not cool." They laughed, I kind of laughed, and we went our seperate ways. They asked again the next week.
See, cool by my definition is what people decide they like. Okay, someone can look cool without actually being cool (they can look cool and be cool, too, obviously). But cool implies that everyone likes what I do, that a majority of people think that what I do is what they'd like to do. I wasn't cool. I was weird.
Summer - boring. I won't bore you with the details of those few months. The most exciting thing was getting my place in college. That's it. That was my summer of 2009. It was in September that I made a few changes, though. I stopped giving a damn about what people thought of me. I didn't hide the fact that I was a writer, that I was loud and hyperactive and that I disliked sports. Actually, that's not even entirely true. I dislike soccer, and I can't watch a lot of sports because they bore me, but I like GAA. I'm just no good at it, and when I was younger, Gaelic seemed too much like soccer. In short, it was bawring.
So, I started college. I let people know I was a nerd. "I listen to music from the Internet and I watch lots of Sci-Fi. Also, every morning for the next four years that we're here, you're going to hear me say hi to some of my friends, because I'm that loud. And you'll wonder how someone can be so happy on a Monday morning."
Monday mornings... there's a fun one. Most people are severely depressed on Mondays. Not me. I go through most weekends without seeing my friends, so when Monday comes along, I'm more than happy to see them. I'm bouncing-off-the-walls, ready-to-explode giddy! This does different things for different people. Most keep a certain distance from me for the first half hour, until I've calmed down a bit. One friend and I had a thing where we'd high-five once a day instead of saying too much. I think I hurt his hand with explosive amounts of enthusiasm.
This all comes down to one thing: by general consensus, I wasn't normal. General consensus is wrong. I was normal, but I wasn't the same. A friend, the same high-five-till-you-hurt friend, has me talking about any problems I have. That's normal. It's not generally accepted - guys talking about feelings? That. Is. Ridiculous! Right? Nope. It's different, though.
Of course, I still get asked a few of the same questions in college as I did in secondary school: Why don't you drink? Did you write a book? What's it about? The answers are this: I choose not to drink. Yes, I wrote three (that was the old response; now it's Yes, I wrote four, but I haven't had a chance to use that that). It's complicated. Very complicated.
That's. Not. Normal. People want answers. They want to know what's going on. Someone not drinking is weird. If you saw me on a night out, you might not guess that I'm sober, though, because I tend to be a bit... can you guess the word? HYPERACTIVE. Wonderful stuff. But it still confuses people when they see me with a Sprite and wonder if there's Vodka in there, too. Bartenders probably get confused when I order drinks for other people, too. Like buying a mate's Guinness for him, or giving a girl a Jager Bomb to help make her night better, because she's lost her bag. Actually, I order three Jager Bombs once. That must have confused the girl behind the bar!
The book thing is more difficult to deal with. People will ask, because they'll have heard from somebody. It's a small college, so word gets around. Generally my reponse is, Did you not know that? Oh... Then they ask what the books are about. I literally cannot summarise four books in a short enough amount of time. I tried before. Someone then asked, Where do you get your ideas from? I suppose the best way to deal with that question the next time I'm asked it is to just say, In general, from the people I know here, and wave my arm around the building a bit.
I suppose it's my own fault. I could try fit in and not let anyone know the real me, but that's no fun. I'd be a carbon copy of the society I hate. I'd be drinking to satisfy other people, trying to play soccer despite the fact that I suck at it, and listening to music I can't stand. That's no way to live. I'd prefer be an enigma to people. I'd prefer be weird than be the same. That's probably because I'm a twin and look the same as someone else.
I suppose I have a new response to Aren't you cool? I probably won't ever get asked that again, but I have a response to it. What do you think? Yeah, that'd really mess with someone's head.
----------------------
Written as part of Challenge 2, Normality of Summer of Writing 2010. Full details here.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Writing Days
I have a very particular writing day; I've gotten myself into a habit, based on how tired I am at particular times of the day. I can't write too much at night, anymore, unless I'm still in the swing of things. I usually wake between seven and eight in the morning, so I'll shower by nine or shortly afterwards and get going for the day. I got over three thousand words done today. That's not my best, but I'd be more than happy to get that done every day.
Every day I write is the same, assuming I wasn't out the day before, and therefore extra tired. Admittedly, the tiredness can carry on for a few days. I've noticed two day gaps developing in my writing. Anyway, every day is the same if I'm not tired; I write after my shower (and my breakfast) until about one in the afternoon. At that point, I'll have lunch. I'll also have had about two or three cups of tea. I'm an addict at this stage. I'll get a cup at lunch, too, and one at hour later; by five or six, I'll have to stop to get dinner, and afterwards I'll be to tired to write anymore, as the day will have stretched on.
My writing day is also filled with music. I know some people can't write with music playing - I can't write poetry with music playing, for instance - but when it comes to fiction, I have to have music playing. I like my little writing montages. Many days it's the same songs, over and over again, a playlist on YouTube of songs recommended by Liam (he has the best and most varied taste in music out of anyone I know); unfortunately, the playlist is twelve songs long. So I switch between that, Alex Day's album on his website, and The Doors. Today, I did something special. I wrote along to The Beatles. I never listen to The Beatles. Ever. But I loved it. (It was Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts' Club) I also played Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon; I'm familiar with a few of the songs, but played as a whole... wow! The next step is to get my hands on a Bruce Springsteen album, more of The Beatles, a Bob Dylan album or two and something by Simon and Garfunkel. Apparently they're all awesome.
Writing along to music like this, I can get through a story in no time. It's my job, though I don't get paid. I just work throughout the day, getting lots written on my current work in progress, Love is a Remarkably Destructive Bitch. If I'm forgetting all about modesty, it's a pretty good book. I need to finish it within the next couple of weeks, though, because I have three more books I want to write before the summer's over, and I'd also like to get the second draft for Meet Sam written. I think that'll be next, so that when I've written the next of my books, The Great Leap, and probably Dignity, too, I'll be coming back to it nice and fresh. Once the edits on the second draft are done, I'll be working on a new idea, fresh off the press last night: The Masked Expellator. It's a parody superhero novel. I blame Fiona for it.
As you can tell, I'm a little bit busy, and still working weekends. Miley Cyrus might be getting a job soon, so my Adventureland days with her may soon be coming to an end... scratch that, they'll be coming to a pause. Adventureland doesn't end, it only takes a short break. We'll make sure to get more stuff done during the college year. It'll be awesome. The only upside for me (upside for her being money) is that I'll have lots of time to write in between the less frequent plans with other friends, so I should be able to get at least Love is a Remarkably Destructive Bitch written. Hopefully by the end of the month. I'd like to write The Great Leap and Dignity before I go back, but I'd have to have many days like today, or like June 25th - 9385 words that day! I'd be writing a novel a week if I wrote like that all the time!
But there you have it: my routine and my goals. My writing will slow down considerably once I go back to college, so I want to get as much done as possible within the next couple of months. The upside, of course, is that I have breaks of this length every year. For the rest of my life. (assuming I finish college and get a job as a teacher, and that I don't end up working as a writer full time, in which case I have a "break" like this for the rest of my life, during which I can write a dozen first drafts a year if I wanted to.)
Actually, I like that idea in the brackets. See, I don't just write novels. I write novellas too, now. They're shorter, but I still manage to get some depth into them. My trick is to limit the number of characters in them, so that there's not too much to have to do. I had two main characters in one I wrote recently called Stepping Forward, with a grand total of seven side characters, with only two of them having any narrative focus at all. And it's quite awesome, if I do say so myself. The only printed copy of it is in the possession of a friend for him to read before I can show anyone else.
Novellas are a wonderful thing, though. I mean, less publishers are likely to print them, but they're still fun to write, and if I actually become a successful, popular author, a publisher might take a chance with something like Stepping Forward, or it'd be published as a serial novella, or with two or three other books in one volume. Something cool like that.
Now I'm getting myself all caught up in hypothetics, again. As you can see, writing days leave me with lots of time to think too much. I've been told I do that too much, anyway. I'll leave this blog post here, before I write all about my plans for WORLD DOMINATION.
Every day I write is the same, assuming I wasn't out the day before, and therefore extra tired. Admittedly, the tiredness can carry on for a few days. I've noticed two day gaps developing in my writing. Anyway, every day is the same if I'm not tired; I write after my shower (and my breakfast) until about one in the afternoon. At that point, I'll have lunch. I'll also have had about two or three cups of tea. I'm an addict at this stage. I'll get a cup at lunch, too, and one at hour later; by five or six, I'll have to stop to get dinner, and afterwards I'll be to tired to write anymore, as the day will have stretched on.
My writing day is also filled with music. I know some people can't write with music playing - I can't write poetry with music playing, for instance - but when it comes to fiction, I have to have music playing. I like my little writing montages. Many days it's the same songs, over and over again, a playlist on YouTube of songs recommended by Liam (he has the best and most varied taste in music out of anyone I know); unfortunately, the playlist is twelve songs long. So I switch between that, Alex Day's album on his website, and The Doors. Today, I did something special. I wrote along to The Beatles. I never listen to The Beatles. Ever. But I loved it. (It was Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts' Club) I also played Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon; I'm familiar with a few of the songs, but played as a whole... wow! The next step is to get my hands on a Bruce Springsteen album, more of The Beatles, a Bob Dylan album or two and something by Simon and Garfunkel. Apparently they're all awesome.
Writing along to music like this, I can get through a story in no time. It's my job, though I don't get paid. I just work throughout the day, getting lots written on my current work in progress, Love is a Remarkably Destructive Bitch. If I'm forgetting all about modesty, it's a pretty good book. I need to finish it within the next couple of weeks, though, because I have three more books I want to write before the summer's over, and I'd also like to get the second draft for Meet Sam written. I think that'll be next, so that when I've written the next of my books, The Great Leap, and probably Dignity, too, I'll be coming back to it nice and fresh. Once the edits on the second draft are done, I'll be working on a new idea, fresh off the press last night: The Masked Expellator. It's a parody superhero novel. I blame Fiona for it.
As you can tell, I'm a little bit busy, and still working weekends. Miley Cyrus might be getting a job soon, so my Adventureland days with her may soon be coming to an end... scratch that, they'll be coming to a pause. Adventureland doesn't end, it only takes a short break. We'll make sure to get more stuff done during the college year. It'll be awesome. The only upside for me (upside for her being money) is that I'll have lots of time to write in between the less frequent plans with other friends, so I should be able to get at least Love is a Remarkably Destructive Bitch written. Hopefully by the end of the month. I'd like to write The Great Leap and Dignity before I go back, but I'd have to have many days like today, or like June 25th - 9385 words that day! I'd be writing a novel a week if I wrote like that all the time!
But there you have it: my routine and my goals. My writing will slow down considerably once I go back to college, so I want to get as much done as possible within the next couple of months. The upside, of course, is that I have breaks of this length every year. For the rest of my life. (assuming I finish college and get a job as a teacher, and that I don't end up working as a writer full time, in which case I have a "break" like this for the rest of my life, during which I can write a dozen first drafts a year if I wanted to.)
Actually, I like that idea in the brackets. See, I don't just write novels. I write novellas too, now. They're shorter, but I still manage to get some depth into them. My trick is to limit the number of characters in them, so that there's not too much to have to do. I had two main characters in one I wrote recently called Stepping Forward, with a grand total of seven side characters, with only two of them having any narrative focus at all. And it's quite awesome, if I do say so myself. The only printed copy of it is in the possession of a friend for him to read before I can show anyone else.
Novellas are a wonderful thing, though. I mean, less publishers are likely to print them, but they're still fun to write, and if I actually become a successful, popular author, a publisher might take a chance with something like Stepping Forward, or it'd be published as a serial novella, or with two or three other books in one volume. Something cool like that.
Now I'm getting myself all caught up in hypothetics, again. As you can see, writing days leave me with lots of time to think too much. I've been told I do that too much, anyway. I'll leave this blog post here, before I write all about my plans for WORLD DOMINATION.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Can I Be Happy?
I set the target – write a piece on happiness. On discovery. On freedom. And I thought, “I’m going through a good period. I can do this. Easy.” Not so. I have an unfortunate way of slipping into moments of darkness, spiralling down into a pit of insecurities. It drives me mad, and most of the time I’m not happy. Not alone, anyway. I’m rarely happy when I’m alone anymore, not if I think I’ve done something to deserve being alone.
I’ve been called a “little self conscious bastard” by someone. It’s not entirely false, either. I’m self conscious, a lot of the time. Other times I don’t care. People can hate me if they want, once they understand that whatever they hate me for is in their own head. I don’t do things to intentionally get on people’s nerves to that extend. I intentionally aim not to offend people.
So I thought – happiness. I can write about that. This is it, I suppose. This is me writing about happiness. I lack it. It’s not in enough quantity. My insecurities get in the way of that. They drive me absolutely mad. Can’t be happy like that. I know that, you know that, and one of my very best friends knows that. He’s the “someone” from before.
I deserved what he said, of course. I was being a strange little cretin, and I deserved it. And once everything had been sorted out, for the umpteenth time, musical education. “Seriously? Just like that? Musical education?” Yes. Music has a profound effect on me, and this friend, he has a wonderful way of knowing exactly what song to have me listen to. It started with Bob Marley, Don’t Worry Be Happy. He was taking the piss, a bit. But he knew what he was doing.
It moved on from there. He showed me music I’d never heard before, or showed me songs I’d heard before but never knew who performed it. Donovan, Sunshine Superman. Ben Folds, There’s Always Someone Cooler Than You. Ennio Morricone, The Mission Main Theme. Those are just a selection of the songs. Admittedly, there weren’t very many songs during this time, but there will likely be more in the future.
So why did I just tell you the songs I was told to listen to? Music, I’ve told you, has a profound effect on me. It lifts me up inside. I get lost in songs. The lyrics, the story of the song, the beat, the rhythm, the sounds of the instruments. Each and every one of these songs pulls me into them, into the happiness they’re capable of creating.
And in all this? Discovery. I hadn’t heard of a few of the people I was asked to listen to, and most of the songs. Music, I’ve decided, is happiness and discovery. And freedom? I suppose. I mean, I never feel more free than when the world slips away around me. Only darkness. Not the bad, soul eating type of darkness, but the type that’s there because nothing else needs to be. The world just leaves, goes away. The traffic and the mayhem around me as I walk down the road? Gone. Not important. If I was brave enough, I’d completely forget about them and just spin around in circles as I listen to The Doors. They make me want to do it, as my head gets filled with a strange euphoria, as I feel let loose, allowed to wander about inside my own head.
Musical education: my path towards freedom, towards happiness. I know it sounds absolutely bonkers, unless you really, really understand music, but that’s how it’s happened for me. Just last night, literally. And, I suppose, into the early hours of the morning. Earphones in, volume on just loud enough to hear, or I’d be deafened, Facebook chat open.
So I still ask myself, Can I be happy? I mean, all the time, can I be happy? I don’t know for sure. But I have these songs, now. I have the things that made a difference, and I’m listening to them all again and again in whatever order suits me. I’m letting myself fall back into that same mood as I was in last night, after all the worry that I was making a huge mistake, after all the doubt I placed in my head about whether or not a friendship was what I thought it was. I won’t lie – I do worry. A lot. I try not to, but I can’t help it. I worry, and it kills me on the inside.
And then... then the music plays. All sorts of music does the job, but new songs, new to my ears, at least, they do it better than anything else. While I don’t consider Glee to be an education in good music, the very fact that’s it’s new is all I need. Something new, something fresh, something lively, most of the time. It does the job, just like Ben Folds, just like Donovan, just like James Tiberius Kirk – William Shatner – doing his version of Common People.
Can I be happy? That’s the whole point of this, isn’t it? To see if I can be happy? I write, and I can be happy. I listen to music, and let it take me away on a strange new journey, and I can be happy. I go to a movie, and even when I’m feeling upset, like when I lost my job back in February, whenever I worried whether or not Jonny Havron, rest his soul, was safe or not, and for a while, at least, I can be happy. Senseless violence, I think it was. That was all it took. Feel good movies from explosions and banter. But, that’s different. The writing, that’s in solitude. The music, that’s a shared experience sometimes. Especially when it’s music someone’s shared with me, or something I can share with someone else, like Sorcha and my entire back collection of DFTBA’s finest. The movie, that’s with friends. I never go alone, and I mainly go with the same group of three or four people, and every time it’s over, every single time we get out of the movie, we walk to the end of the road while I wait for my dad or brother to come to pick me up, and we just talk and laugh, and make fun of the movie we just saw.
So can I be happy? I think so. I mean, if the past couple of months are anything to go by, I can be an annoying, self conscious, somewhat depressed little git, but I can be happy, too. I can most definitely be happy, when I have my friends there, the words, the music and the movies, the light-hearted entertainment and the escape from the world. And if I can be happy, with all my worries, and fears and doubts, there’s nothing stopping you from being happy, too
I’ve been called a “little self conscious bastard” by someone. It’s not entirely false, either. I’m self conscious, a lot of the time. Other times I don’t care. People can hate me if they want, once they understand that whatever they hate me for is in their own head. I don’t do things to intentionally get on people’s nerves to that extend. I intentionally aim not to offend people.
So I thought – happiness. I can write about that. This is it, I suppose. This is me writing about happiness. I lack it. It’s not in enough quantity. My insecurities get in the way of that. They drive me absolutely mad. Can’t be happy like that. I know that, you know that, and one of my very best friends knows that. He’s the “someone” from before.
I deserved what he said, of course. I was being a strange little cretin, and I deserved it. And once everything had been sorted out, for the umpteenth time, musical education. “Seriously? Just like that? Musical education?” Yes. Music has a profound effect on me, and this friend, he has a wonderful way of knowing exactly what song to have me listen to. It started with Bob Marley, Don’t Worry Be Happy. He was taking the piss, a bit. But he knew what he was doing.
It moved on from there. He showed me music I’d never heard before, or showed me songs I’d heard before but never knew who performed it. Donovan, Sunshine Superman. Ben Folds, There’s Always Someone Cooler Than You. Ennio Morricone, The Mission Main Theme. Those are just a selection of the songs. Admittedly, there weren’t very many songs during this time, but there will likely be more in the future.
So why did I just tell you the songs I was told to listen to? Music, I’ve told you, has a profound effect on me. It lifts me up inside. I get lost in songs. The lyrics, the story of the song, the beat, the rhythm, the sounds of the instruments. Each and every one of these songs pulls me into them, into the happiness they’re capable of creating.
And in all this? Discovery. I hadn’t heard of a few of the people I was asked to listen to, and most of the songs. Music, I’ve decided, is happiness and discovery. And freedom? I suppose. I mean, I never feel more free than when the world slips away around me. Only darkness. Not the bad, soul eating type of darkness, but the type that’s there because nothing else needs to be. The world just leaves, goes away. The traffic and the mayhem around me as I walk down the road? Gone. Not important. If I was brave enough, I’d completely forget about them and just spin around in circles as I listen to The Doors. They make me want to do it, as my head gets filled with a strange euphoria, as I feel let loose, allowed to wander about inside my own head.
Musical education: my path towards freedom, towards happiness. I know it sounds absolutely bonkers, unless you really, really understand music, but that’s how it’s happened for me. Just last night, literally. And, I suppose, into the early hours of the morning. Earphones in, volume on just loud enough to hear, or I’d be deafened, Facebook chat open.
So I still ask myself, Can I be happy? I mean, all the time, can I be happy? I don’t know for sure. But I have these songs, now. I have the things that made a difference, and I’m listening to them all again and again in whatever order suits me. I’m letting myself fall back into that same mood as I was in last night, after all the worry that I was making a huge mistake, after all the doubt I placed in my head about whether or not a friendship was what I thought it was. I won’t lie – I do worry. A lot. I try not to, but I can’t help it. I worry, and it kills me on the inside.
And then... then the music plays. All sorts of music does the job, but new songs, new to my ears, at least, they do it better than anything else. While I don’t consider Glee to be an education in good music, the very fact that’s it’s new is all I need. Something new, something fresh, something lively, most of the time. It does the job, just like Ben Folds, just like Donovan, just like James Tiberius Kirk – William Shatner – doing his version of Common People.
Can I be happy? That’s the whole point of this, isn’t it? To see if I can be happy? I write, and I can be happy. I listen to music, and let it take me away on a strange new journey, and I can be happy. I go to a movie, and even when I’m feeling upset, like when I lost my job back in February, whenever I worried whether or not Jonny Havron, rest his soul, was safe or not, and for a while, at least, I can be happy. Senseless violence, I think it was. That was all it took. Feel good movies from explosions and banter. But, that’s different. The writing, that’s in solitude. The music, that’s a shared experience sometimes. Especially when it’s music someone’s shared with me, or something I can share with someone else, like Sorcha and my entire back collection of DFTBA’s finest. The movie, that’s with friends. I never go alone, and I mainly go with the same group of three or four people, and every time it’s over, every single time we get out of the movie, we walk to the end of the road while I wait for my dad or brother to come to pick me up, and we just talk and laugh, and make fun of the movie we just saw.
So can I be happy? I think so. I mean, if the past couple of months are anything to go by, I can be an annoying, self conscious, somewhat depressed little git, but I can be happy, too. I can most definitely be happy, when I have my friends there, the words, the music and the movies, the light-hearted entertainment and the escape from the world. And if I can be happy, with all my worries, and fears and doubts, there’s nothing stopping you from being happy, too
-----
Written as part of Summer of Writing 2010, Challenge 1 - I Can Be Happy. Deadline: June 26th 2010, 18:30 BST.
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