Long live Excel spreadsheets

I wish I'd discovered them sooner.
In addition to using them for my rewrites, I've planned what I think is a pretty damn good script treatment and am using them for another script and a short story.

To say I used to hate Excel.

Queen of the nation called Procrasti

I just counted and - un-fleshed out stories aside - I have 22 projects at the moment that I'm working on or have on the backburner.

One of them includes a plan to bring new content of my own to this blog, rather than have a mish-mash of randomness.

Omali Yeshitela Wolves — Dead Prez

“I’m not a hunter but i am told,
that, uh, in places like in the arctic,
where indiginous people sometimes might, might, hunt a wolf,
they’ll take a double edged blade,
and they’ll put blood on the blade,
and they’ll melt the ice and stick the handle in the ice,
so that only the blade is protruding,
and that a wolf will smell the blood and wants to eat,
and it will come and lick the blade trying to eat,
and what happens is when the wolf licks the blade,
of course, he cuts his tongue, and he bleeds,
and he thinks he’s really having a good thing,
and he drinks and he licks and he licks,
and of course he is drinking his own blood and he kills himself,
that’s what the Imperialists did with us with crack cocaine,
you have these young brothers out there who think they are getting something
they gonna make a living with,
they is getting something they can buy a car,
like the white people have cars, why can’t i have a car?
they getting something they can get a piece of gold,
white people have gold, why can’t i have gold?
they getting something to get a house,
white people have a house, why can’t i have a house?
and they actually think that there’s something that’s bringing resources to them,
but they’re killing themsleves just like the wolf was licking the blade,
and they’re slowly dying without knowing it.
that’s what’s happening to the community, you with me on that?
that’s exactly, precisely what happens to the community,
and instead of blaming the hunter who put the damn handle and blade in the ice
for the wolf,
that what happens is the wolf gets the blame, gets the blame for trying to live,
that’s what happens in our community,
you don’t blame the person, the victim,
you blame the oppressor, Imperialism, white power is the enemy,
was the enemy when it first came to Africa,
and snatched up the first African brothers here against our will,
isss the enemy today,
and that’s the thing that we have to understand.”

Bits of genius

Because I don't have a night light, if I get some flash of inspiration at night when I'm in bed, I'll grab my phone and write a note to look at the next morning.
I recently looked at my phone to go through my ‘flashes of genius’ and…

Note 1 - Bridge of broken bananas

Note 2 - Replace sex toy

…

I know it must have been genius at the time but what the…I don't even know how sex toy relates to my current story.

Final Draft - 8/26

There's nothing more unglamorous than working on an endless rewrite in your pyjamas that you haven't left for two days.

It's been a year since I worked on the book while I focused on school and re-reading it, it blows my mind how often I use the phrases "she saw", "she heard", "she looked at him", clunky adverbs like "angrily", "testily", "mockingly" etc., or endless internal monologues that I'd literally just wrote in different form in the previous chapter. I feel a little like Ayn Rand minus the talent to pull it off.

Thankfully (shit - there goes another adverb) there are some other, quite good parts, and while it hurts to cut entire paragraphs (my word count! my word count!), I do feel like this rewrite is a good one. A yearlong break is not something I recommend but I've definitely come back with a fresh perspective and new ideas (is that redundant? oh my god, does this count as a monologue?).

Then, the fact that this is what I hope to be the final rewrite before I query again in September makes it kind of magical after all.

And listening to Pryda on repeat while I write makes it even better.

Daniel Beatty on "Duality Duel"

at Def Poetry -

I hate the use of the n-word. Maybe that made this poem that much more powerful to me.
Either way I was wide-eyed and transfixed by the end.

Deep.

Neil Gaiman on your coming year

“May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.”

—	Neil Gaiman I like this guy

Rabbit, rabbit

Finally went to the bank to cash my glorious 25-pound winnings

only to be told that I would have to pay 16 euros to process the check and 14 euros to convert the money from pounds

meaning I'd pay 30 euros to cash an approx. 28-euro check.

Har dee har har -

I think I'll do what I'd originally planned and just keep it as a memento of my first-ever winnings and maybe frame it later on.

If the Rapture really is tomorrow -

my terribly unglamorous death will occur as I struggle through the last of my exams.

I won't even get my - long overdue - Masters before I die. Talk about ironic.

Also I probably won't be taken anyway. Not that I wanted to, but as a huge Bioshock fan/(convert?), you'd think I'd get in on that fact alone. More irony.

the real Rapture

Of course the end of days could also take place next year on December 21st.

Two days before my birthday. My only consolation is that the man who goes by the initials J.C., and whose birthday outshines mine every damn year, won't get to party either. suck it.

Still...

can't harbingers of doom stop picking on me and select a less inconvenient date for the end of times?*

*if such a time exists (maybe after I die?)

* also how am I supposed to be reincarnated if there's no world to be reincarnated back to?