latest update

So I got the 50 k words required for nano, I'll post the winner thing on the blog shortly. Right now I’m going back and cleaning up my book while being pissed as a fart. I've found the writing thing to be really enjoyable. I'm going to try and make the best book possible out of the 50k I have so far. It's amazing how much of what i wrote was shit with jems buried in it. It's time to polish it and make it suitable for human consumption. My head is still messing with me though. The little voices are not helpful at all, except for the really, really faint one in the back ground. If only it was the loudest voice then everything would be good. The quietist voice has the most wisdom.
I'm feeling on the edge of a precipice at the moment. There is the potential for good or bad things to happen right now. It is time for me to sit still and see what happens.

nano update

This book is writing itself. I'm really happy with how it's going at the moment. 6700 words, about half of them pure gold... It's gold I tells ya.

The only draw back is I keep getting distracted by the eaiser ways to be entertained, videos, games and of course the internet itself. I have my target in sight and a week up my sleeve at the end of November. Got a nice little writers retreat planned to make up for any lost ground. Mornings in the surf, afternoons at the keyboard and no internet to distract me. Ideal conditions to create a magnificent work of fiction (well I did say half of it was gold).

My third blog post

Ideal Job #1 - successful novelist
This ranks as my all time number one job. You can work in coffee shops (with beret), cocktail lounges or even the beach and you have an excuse to ask anyone ANY question. People expect you to be eccentric and you get invited to parties.... now an unpublished novelist is a completely differnet kettle of fish

Start your engines

OK I'm just busting to start writing. I've been filling my note book with ideas and I just want to get scribbling before my enthusiasm wanes. I keep thinking I should wait until Nanowrimo starts. I just can't shake the feeling that this one might be publishable.

I was looking through the forums on the nanowrimo website and came across a great tip. When you end writing for the day, end on half a sentence. When you sit down to write the following day you will naturally just finish the sentence then keep going. I can't remember who posted the tip but my hats off to you.... this seems like a great idea.

I've installed mind manager so I can start to plan out the plot anyway. It's a fun time of year where I get to pretend that I'm going to complete a novel.

I found my blog post from last year and it still seems apt

Given my fetishisation of the writer’s life style I've joined Nanowrimo for this year. I have no idea how I’m going to fit it in with the rest of my life, but I'm going to give it a go anyway. I wanted to write a novel and I'm going to get it done (or at the very least make a big dint in the word count).

Tags: nanowrimo

Parties and Nanowrimo

Right... I'm back now. I was just in the other room for a while.
I've signed up for Nanowrimo for another year and even decided to get involved in the community. I'm excited about this year it should be fantastic! In the lead up to nonmo I'll put up a few posts then go off the air for a while during november.

Got back from Lennox Heads yesterday. Went to my mate Detta's b'day party. It was the best birthday eva. Amazing ocean views from the front deck, live band in the lounge room (they kicked ass) and it all got a bit messy (no sleep until 4:30am). As always a fantastic night was followed with a "why do I punish my body so much" sort of Sunday... but I'm feeling more human today.

Mojito time

It’s been quite a while since I have updated any posts here. Lots have happened but I won’t bore you with the details. What I did want to mention in my love for cocktails. I’ve made it my mission to learn how to make good cocktails (any idiot can make a crap one). Last week G and I went out and had a few cocktails and they rocked. They tasted nothing like the crap ones I normally make.

The best part is I now have a reason to go out and buy alcohol…. It’s my hobby to mix and drink beverages. I don’ know why I never thought of it before. I get to combine a whole lot of things that I enjoy into one hobby. I see it more as a useful skill. My goal is to have a list of 10 – 15 cocktails that I am skilled at making then getting little Tiki Lounge drinks menus made up. When friends drop in I can give ‘em the list and know that I can make al the items on there. To date my favorite is the Mojito. It is the ideal drink to welcome the warmer weather back to Brisbane.

Desire

Things can never be anything other than what they are…. Everything only ever happens in the way it happens

Nothing can live up to the fantasies that I have created in my mind. Life can never be as good as what my imagination believes possible. Then I start thinking… wait… but what if I’m wrong and it is actually possible to live in ideal circumstances. Is there anyone that doesn’t feel like their life could be better if they could just ….. ? At the end of the day it is my mind chasing its tail and wondering why it can never catch it. The weird thing is that I am happy. You heard right, I am happy, but I just want a little more. The world is full of people wanting more and just as many sources trying to tell you CAN have more. I’m going to draw a line in the sand and say this is what I want and I don’t want more…… but the line moves (bugga, I should have nailed it down). My level of unhappiness is the difference between my ideal view of the world and the actual world I live in. If I can accept reality as it is and not spend time wondering why it isn’t ideal then, theoretically, my happiness should increase.

This is not to say that I won’t continue to set goals for myself. It’s the doing of the goals I’ll focus on, not the outcome. I will still do things to satisfy my wants and needs, it’s the thoughts around those desires I can’t fill that I don’t want to dwell on.

The short version, I’m going to take it easy and enjoy what I have right now.

If this sounds a bit like Buddhist thought you’re right… I feel a great affinity with this line of living… putting it into practice is a little harder.

All this typing is somewhere in my past, the reading is in your present and the future is … well I’ve got no friggin idea where it is.

Have Fun

dump and run

It's been a long time between innings (well blogging). I've been writing in my Molskin notebook rather than blogging. It's easier to just throw out crap when noone is there to see it hit the ground. The plan was always to get the information out of the notebook and onto the web but that never really happened. Mostly the moleskin consisted of scraps of ideas for short stories or ideas for a potential nanomo epic for November. I've got a friend who wants to get together to read what each other has written over the last little while... the idea appeals to me but also makes me nervous... basically because I like writing crap... i hate going back and revising what i've written. I just dump it and run.

I have become increasingly convinced that my salvation is to work as little as possible. I've come to the conclusion that even in large organisations a really productive worker makes everyone nervous and guilty. You need to be seen to be doing your job but not getting too swept up in the whole workiness of it all. No one is going to die if you stuff up your job.

Gripping blog entries

This page is great. It talks about how to come up with gripping blog entries. Over the next few weeks I'm going to try and follow some of their advice. If you like to blog it's worth a read.

http://performancing.com/node/169

Doo's big weekend

I had a monster weekend. It’s a bit unusual for me as most weekends are relatively tame by comparison. The weekend started on Thursday with a few Blue Grass bands at the Broadway Hotel in South Brisbane. There were banjos a plenty and everyone got into the spirit of the night with lots of thigh slapping. The night was a prequel for the Redlands shire blue grass festival.

Friday was dinner, art show and a movie. We saw Pirates of the Caribbean, Dead Mans Chest. It was a great watch, but the cliff hanger ending was really annoying. At least the Lord of the rings trilogy ended the chapters with only a few loose ends. This one ended with everything up in the air. After the movie we moved on to an art show at the Power House gallery. The powerhouse is a converted power station. It was a great night with some old friends turning up. There was one guy I once shared a house with about 9 years ago. The art was cool all of the work was done on skateboard decks. My friend Gaz was spinning tunes there. The turn out was huge.

Then Saturday night was the night of the Tiki Terrors. I basically got slaughtered. I worked out I drank the equivalent to a carton of beer over the night. The music was amazing. I spent the whole night on the dance floor (probably dancing like an idiot). Wiseacre just got me jumping. The other cool part about the night was the hula dancers that came out between the sets. I missed out on a tiki mug but scored a great lay (the kind you hang around your neck). The other cool part of the evening was the fact I was flying completely solo…. and lots of strange women came up to talk to me throughout the evening. I had my mojo on (and a very cool hat).

I've been thinking about the nature of excess. Over the last few days I’ve drunk and smoked constantly and noticed a bad feeling about it. Don't get me wrong I had a great time. Sundays news paper told me I was a bad person. I know I’m not that bad, but the constant meme bombardment is starting to have an effect on my psyche.

The trouble is I know the health risks that accompany some of my behavior but if you followed all the advice that the media gives out you would end up doing nothing. Everything is dangerous according to TV and print media. There was a time when you could go out and get drunk without thinking was a diseased liver looks like. A time when a man or woman) had a slight gut and that was ok.

The only thing for it is to stop watching tv and reading crap newspapers and magazines. You need to get a bit wild now and then. You need to follow your own lead even if there is some risk involved. Or I could just be trying to justify my desire to drink and dance like an idiot.

Nude Sculpture

Right now I want to get naked and build some huge outdoor sculpture. I want to play the go team or Machine Gun Felatio as loud as I can. I want to drink beer while creating this sculpture/art piece. I want to weld plate metal while nude and drunk. I would prefer to do this in a public place…. Does anyone have any problems with this as a life goal? If you can’t tell I have a lot of energy to dissipate and I need to do it in a crazy sort of way. In reality I will most likely go home put some music on and have a few beers… I would hate to shock Doreen (the 85 year old next door neighbor with some nude sculpting). Actually it wouldn’t take much to start sculpting stuff in the nude….. hmmm what sort of stuff do I have lying around the house….I just need to get through the next 2 hours at work first. They don't appreciate sculpture or nudity very much here.

Blank Page again

Blank page again. You see I’ve tried to go straight to the truth,. To tell you how I feel. The weird thing is I now realize that I was wrong. I should have lied to you. It sounds a little crazy but if I make things up and tell you, you will learn more about me than if I told the truth. Let me get warmed up on some little lies before I graduate to some really big lies. I hit up on this idea, the interesting lies, out of desperation really. You see I ran out of things to write about. I got sick of telling the same stories. Really there is truth in my stories, just not in the words. The words are lies but the intent is pure, pure as the driven snow. Of course I could have started lying already. I said that I would and I think that I have, already started that is. I don’t really want you to know the truth. That would be a little confronting, wouldn’t it. Imagine if I told you that I wanted to kiss you. Right here and now. Just push you up against a wall and passionately kiss you. You might feel a little weird about it, but I’m lying so it is OK. What is the goal of all this, entertainment, yours and mine. Mine in the act of writing, yours in the act of reading. The lying just makes it easier to write, to get it out. Even the lying is getting hard.

doodling with words

Did I mention that I have given up smoking again…Everyone who knows me is probably really sick of me quitting all the time then going back to smoking. This time is a little different though. Around here you can no longer smoke in pubs, clubs or coffee shops. The other change is my brand is no longer available (they changed the flavour).

As I mentioned I had a big day on Saturday and the smoking content was right up there. It is Tuesday today, day three of no smoking. I’m thinking of getting out a jar and putting $10 a day in it just to see the money savings grow. It is pretty cool to think that in 7 days there will be $100 in the jar. Already I have had huge spikes of good feelings and energy, to date it hasn’t pushed me over the edge. In the past the surges of energy I experience make me get all jittery and on edge and I slide back into smoking.

The Zombie thing was one of the bits that I turned out yesterday….. it’s like doodling except with words instead of pictures. I’ve started getting into the habit of opening up a word document and just typing into it during the day. It is a place to collect any old shit pops into my head.

Zombies

It had been a while since the zombies had taken over. There was some fighting against it but in the end they just replicated far too easily. No one was really sure what made someone become a zombie, it just sort of happened. It wasn’t transferred by zombie bites like the movies. It had crept up on us really. First a few people just seemed to be acting a little weird, dropping out of work, getting really anti social and there was a minor spike in violent crimes at night. Originally the zombies kept a low profile at least until they reached a critical mass that let them take over. Then they came out in force. Everywhere that use to feel like home to me has now become theirs. For the most part they leave me alone. The great zombie plague hadn’t taken the form of running gun battles by desperate survivors although there had been a few of those. Most of the take over was all one sided. More and more zombies just turned up on the streets and noone did anything about it. There was no un-deadness, the zombies could be killed, although it took a bit to stop them once they got started. During the day the zombies shuffled around the streets in a relatively placid way. You could almost feel sorry for them the way they mindlessly walked the streets looking at objects they couldn’t fully understand. I could see that they recognized objects but a crucial part of their cognitive process was missing. They would pick up things they found on the street and make piles. Eventually they would get frustrated and smash the piles they had made. It made me think of small children smashing their toys on the ground.

It wasn’t until the sun went down that they became dangerous. At night they would form up into packs and run through the streets looking for people like me or even other zombies that were in groups too small to defend themselves. If you have ever seen a documentary where the chimpanzees that kill other monkeys it was a lot like that. Lots of screaming, running after some terrified creature. Chimpanzees start coming from all directions. Eventually they capture their quarry and then there is blood, tearing and more screaming. Then it all goes relatively quiet while they sit around in a group eating what they have caught in the messiest and nosiest way possible.

Beard begone

The beard is gone. Being clean shaven is an interesting experience. The strangest part is the physical sensation of having a cool breeze blow across my face and feeling it on parts of my face that haven’t seen the sun for a few years. It was time for a change and change I did. Some say it makes me look younger but my lady love feels that I look better with a beard.

Yesterday I made a few blog entries that didn’t make it to posting. I suppose I felt like they didn’t accurately represent how I feel about the universe. I was still experiencing some seediness from the weekend’s fun. I had a friend come up from Ballina (hi Detta) and another from work (hi Qwickie) and we all stayed up until the early morning. It was a cool night, but by Monday I was asking all sorts of questions about life and my place in the Universe. I just need to remember… don’t think……. I should take a leaf out of qwick’s book

Tiki night in Brisbane

A Tiki night ... in Brisbane... wohooo

Steam toys

This man makes the best toys... it's worth checking out http://www.crabfu.com/steamtoys/

brother steve

brother steve, do you read this blog... I noticed an exetel ip address and started to wonder if it is you... I know you use exetel...

People are strange

I’m having trouble deciding what to put in this particular blog entry. On one hand I’m tempted to talk about my friend who has depression. She has been losing the plot a bit of late and I’m finding it difficult to know how to react. It’s easy enough to say I understand and that everything is going to turn out OK, but on the other hand I don’t feel right when she starts to blow the smallest thing out of all proportion and I moderate my reaction on the grounds she is depressed. There are times when I feel like I’m Dr Phil. Really she needs to try and relax a bit and put things into perspective. It’s easy for me to say, pretty much impossible for her to do. The trouble is I end up drawn into the over analysis when I talk to her about things that are happening in her life. Then I feel as though I’m encouraging the convoluted trains of thought she finds herself trapped in.

The other topic I’m tempted to discuss is the nature of relationships and how men can survive them. I really, really need to learn to keep my mouth shut. I have this tendency to try and be open and honest. When she tells me, ”I really want to know, it’s ok you can tell me”, I should take that as a sign to keep my mouth shut. At the moment I’m in the doghouse with my lady love for talking about the ways she sometimes pisses me off. I also failed in the critical task of supporting her 100% (even though I think she is 90% right I mentioned the other 10%). I guess it is just my time to be in the dog house. My goal is to not let it stress me. I’ve just got to remember to relax and roll with the punches. Sometimes I feel like a character in a Haruki Murikami novel. Things just seem to happen and all I can really do is watch it all unfold.

Kari Byron is it!

23 out of the last 25 hits for the last 24 hours have been Kari Byron hits. My blog has gone from a tiny 3 actual hits a day (not counting all the automatic crap that hits it) to 18 in a day..... with everyone checking out the same page. It makes sense though... as I mentioned in my previous post she is the hottest girl on TV. I agree with the general internet consensus... she looks way sexier in real life than in the FHM shoot.... which backs up my theory that you can't act sexy, you can only let the sexy out.

BTW this is not going to become a Kari Byron fan blog.