50,000 reasons to write

I recently completed the NationalNovel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)challenge, setting yourself the task of wrting a 50,000 novel in the space of the 30 days of November. Wow, this was tough. The target averages out at 1,666 words a day, which doesn't sound a lot, but then the pressure is on day after day to constantly write, it pretty soon gets grinding. There's only so much inspiration that comes from lying on our bed and staring out the window.

The subject of my novel was depression; a modern man descending into an unstable mental state, bordering on insanity. It was a pretty bleak theme, and not always pleasing to write. I found my mood often mirrored the lead character, becoming shutt off, introspective and insecure. This did however help me understanding the character's motivations and give directon to the story.

My word count got over 50,000 on Friday 27th, three days earlier. It felt so damn good to have a first draft of a novel in my portfolio. The whole purpose of the NaNoWriMo is to push those people that say, 'one day, I will write a novel'. When does that one day come? Well, now it can be every year on the 1st November!

On the morning of the 28th, I woke up early, so happy that I didn't have to force myself to write about depression anymore. I purposedpy decide to write something happy, and got two great poems due to this. I thought after the novel I might not write again for a long time, as I had exhausred all my ideas and creativity. Now that's I've done it, I've got ideas for my second novel already.

Anyway, writing it was the easy part. Now to try and convince someone to publish it...

Pringles make my gut tingle

Why is it suddenly important to Procter & Gamble to mention that there is ninety Pringles in a can? The cans haven’t changed in size; surely there were always ninety crisps in there. Ninety calorie-drenched chips, each one 32% fat. Almost a third. Imagine, for every three Pringles you eat, one of them might as well be a slightly flavorsome curved slice of pure fat. Salubrious without a doubt.

Beaten to it

I thought I invented a new word today: crapitalism.
Unfortunately, Google shows 33,500 results for it. Dang.
It's even listed in Urban Dictionary: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=crapitalism

My other idea for a new word, 'sqooq', seems already to be a popular handle for webusers.
Easy to see why.

New website and blog

After a summer of semmingly inactive weeks passing by in a haze, I've managed to reemerge with a new website and blog. In Yahoo's infinite wisdom (i.e. desperate money-saving measure to stiff the pubic), they have decided to close down Geocities where my site 'Colony Ink' was hosted on. So I've designed a new one over at Weebly, intended to be a simpler version, which I'm sure I'll expand over time. Have a look at http://lowlightsforlowlifes.weebly.com/index.html

Also, I'm launched a new blog for my sketches and cartoons, called 'cartoon truffle', inspired as I was eating chocolate truffles while trying to think of a name for it. There's some new picutres up online now, and I hope to transfer the best of the old Colony Ink cartoons over to it soon.
http://cartoontruffle.blogspot.com/

We're all obsessed.

Apparently 1 in 25 people has some form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Now I know I can be a bit anally retentive when it comes to the order of things. All my CDs have, HAVE, to be in alphabetically, and then chronologically order. All the titles on the spines of the CDs must face the same direction as well. Neil Young’s ‘Harvest’ must come before ‘Living With War’. All the Elvis Costello CD’s are carefully arranged by date of release. Even soundtracks and compilations are neatly stacked under ‘V’ for various (Lord forbid you would place the Juno soundtrack under J). This compulsion is so bad, I’m considering putting the first Alice Cooper albums under A, as that was the name of the band, before Alice went solo.
All my books fall under the same system: poetry, drama and reference books are grouped separately, and everything else is stacked on my shelves by strict regiment.
But is this really OCD? Surely I’m just replicating what is already common in countless libraries, music shops and book stores. It’s ok to have a system, to create order. The human mind seeks to find patterns within chaos (which is perhaps why no one has formed an equation to proof prime number theorems).
In today’s culture, we are too eager to place a ready-fit neurosis onto our behaviours, a nation of hypochondriacs. With the event of the internet, this has progressed into cyberchondria. Interestingly, studies of OCD patients have reveal a high proportion of their immediate relatives have displayed symptoms of hypochondria or body-dysmorphic disorder.
So when I look in the mirror, and I don’t like what I see, I just tell myself I’m being dysmorphic, and that I’m actually quite a handsome chap; problem solved! And if you come to my house and flick through my CD collection, forgive me if I eye you closely to make sure you put it back correctly. It’s a test of our friendship, be warned.

A blossoming career

The Nauseated Reader

"Things have broken free from their names. They are there, grotesque, stubborn. gigantic, and it seems ridiculous to call them seats or say anything at all about them: I am in the midst of Things, which cannot be given names."

"Words have disappeared, and with them the meaning of things, the methods of using them, the feeble landmarks which men have traced on their surface."

-p 180 and 182, Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre.


Wow, I'm a writer quoting Sartre- how original. I'm been ploughing 'Nausea' for some time now; not for existential enlightenment, but it's one of those books you feel you need to check out. A literary classic, like 'Of Mice and Men', or 'To Kill A Mockingbird'. My bookcase groans with the increasing tide of books I tell myslef I must read, in order to be 'well-read'. That's rubbish really: there's so much out there, I'm sure it's capable of being well-read by going through many channels.

I've read 11 of the "100 novels everyone should read" (according to the Daily Telegraph), and a further six of them I own, waiting to be digested. I fare slightly better on the BBC's Big Read list of 100 novels, having consumed 12 of them: although three of these are Roald Dahl books I read when I was ten.

However, these lists only consider novels. Would they include 'A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius', 'Prozac Nation', or 'Round Ireland with a Fridge'?

I feel the need to read more, and perhaps, write less. I'm mot sure whether this is a good thing or not. Or maybe, like Sartre's character, I need to explore life and feelings a little more first of all.