Memories Only Ever Lead To Trouble: 30 Songs, 30 Works, 30 Days

As you might be able to tell, I’m not very good at remembering to update things.  Well, no, that’s not exactly true: I’ve been thinking up blog posts now and again, but between work and life (and, yes I’ll admit it, some 30 hours in Tales of the Abyss) I’ve not got around to doing it.

It’s probably for the best; you’re all about this far from being introduced to my car.  Even if he is a remarkably handsome CityRover, I’m pretty sure that I’m the only one actually interested in him.

After scraping over the finish line of my last ridiculous challenge, I’ve been recuperating (this is why I’m not a professional author--well, that and the fact I’m a terrible writer), taking time to recharge my writing batteries and play with the Copics I was tempted into buying (you know who you are).  For most of the month my characters have been depressingly silent, but lately they’ve been waking up again.  It usually consists of Milos throwing things at Alex while yelling, and uncharacteristic tenderness from Alex that makes me think he’s itching to return to the real-world setting where he and Milos are coming up to a year of whatever kind of relationship they’re in, but I’m not complaining even if Milos is.

Which clearly means it’s time for another challenge that I will likely fail at!

Only this time, I thought I’d try to bring others along with me (who hopefully won't fail).

I’ve been reminiscing about an old LiveJournal group/challenge called ArtGrind I was once a member of.  The premise was that you took one of your characters and drew them every day for six months, then you’d compare your art at the beginning with your last pieces and hopefully see improvement.  I’d never managed to actually complete it--the closest I came was with Arkadiy, a sci-fi soldier with fun facial hair who returned to the military after a short period of retirement in search of revenge--and, to add insult to injury, I actually think I got worse over time than better, but reviewing the old artworks made me feel nostalgic.

It also made me realise there was a whole subsection of pictures that had been inspired by whatever I’d been listening to at the time.  Some of them were literal--Arkadiy pointing a gun at the camera, inspired by The Hoosiers’ Cops & Robbers, or sprinting forwards across a background of crosses sunk into the ground, inspired by Coldplay’s Violet Hill--and others were obscure, such as leaning against a stone archway because every time I listened to Cemetaries of London I saw the same (as far as I can tell nonexistent--certainly not London) city time and again, but they all reminded me that music can give us the ability to ‘see’ things and none of us will see exactly the same thing.

And it also reminded me that I don’t draw very often any more.

I’d been planning to call it “Pax’s Ridiculously Stupid Challenge Part II” until a couple of friends expressed an interest in taking part too.  Calling something ‘stupid’ doesn’t work so well when you’re trying to encourage others to join, does it?

So in the end I settled on the ever-literal 30 Songs, 30 Works, 30 Days which begins on the stroke of midnight of the 1st June 2013.  It’s not limited to starting then, of course: if someone wants to join halfway through the month, or in two months time, that’s up to them.  If they want to go longer than 30 days because they’re having fun, again that’s up to them.  If they want to write, draw, take photos, render in 3D... it’s all up to them.  The point is only to challenge yourself to create something once a day based on a unique song a day, and hopefully have fun doing it.  Nothing more, nothing less.

I managed to time it so that I’m in Nottingham meeting up with other writers when it starts!  Never let it be said that I am talented at planning.

If anyone feels like taking part, please look over the link and I hope we’ll see you soon.  ♪

Meet My Desk: Lydia

Apologies for missing last week's Meet My Desk. Work and my stupid writing project were both chewing on me, but never fear, I'm back now!

Okay, maybe it's time to fear.

It's taken less than a month for it to look like a bomb hit my desk:-

It's a little tidier now since I took the picture, but... not really by much. But everything important is still in arm's reach so I'm still happy--if feeling a little penned-in. I suspect it's time to tidy again.

Today, I'm introducing a very special lady: Lydia, my Nexus 7.

Her existence is owed in large part to, of all people, Lucy, my Kindle. I take Lucy everywhere with me because you never know when you need an eBook and when I discovered her experimental browser I was hooked. But browsing on a Kindle is a slow and fiddly process.

I'd been wanting a touchscreen system for a while but spent ages agonising over which kind to get. In the end I settled on the Nexus 7. Ordering it was surprisingly stressful (big purchases make me nervous) and while I waited for her to arrive, I turned my mind to the knotty issue of naming. Well, for maybe half an hour until I concluded that since she'd be sworn to carry my burdens, then clearly the only name suitable for her was Lydia.

I may have spent a lot of time playing Skyrim.

She's lived up to her name ever since, not least by being so awkward to get out the packaging when she arrived that I had to loosen it with a metal ruler. Ever since then we've been inseparable--she comes to bed with me and carries my burdens in the form of random notes and snippets of stories, eBooks that don't work on Lucy and is always on hand for those moments when someone says "that person in this film looks familiar, what else were they in?" She's very much the workhorse of my technological items. (She's also quite handy for Temple Run 2. What do you mean "that's procrastination"?)

She's also very useful for my friends when I'm in Nottingham--usually so some of them can update my Tumblr with questionable content and so I can inflict creepy comics on them (that was my achievement last Saturday).

She also is happy to help as a light when I'm wandering around in the dark. That's not a metaphor, by the way: I'm one of those people who never turns on the damn lights. I'd be useless in a slasher movie

Not least 'cause there's no way I'd damage Lydia by bludgeoning the killer with her.

Next week: still no idea. I'm running out of things with personalities. If you're not careful it might end up being my car.

Final Status Update, with Unexpected Artwork and Revised To-Read Pile

In the end I didn't manage to write and post a chapter every day.  There were reasons for this that I won't go into to spare everyone else's sanity, but on the whole when I sat down and actually thought about it, I felt less disappointed in myself than I expected.

I finished the month with a total of 22 chapters that came in at a grand total of 54,366 words.  Considering that this means I missed eight days' worth of chapters I think it's not too bad!  I stumbled over the finish line on 1st May with a mammoth chapter of 5,124 words which contained some awkward scenes to write (not quite what I'd envisioned ending on) and now I'm taking a--well, I'd say 'well-deserved' but I don't know if I'd go that far--break before I carry on.

This means I actually have time to read for a while, yay!  In slightly less yay news, my to-read pile grew yesterday with another trip to Waterstones in Nottingham with friends.

I'm looking forward to actually playing Bioshock finally too.

The weirdest part of the whole writing experience was the sudden realisation of what happens to Alex and Milos nine years in the future in this alternate fantasy world.  Considering that in all of the 64 stories of the regular universe I've been preoccupied enough with keeping them in line and figuring out their past, I'd not had time to consider the future beyond a couple of months.  Realising what happens not just in the future of the current stories, but nearly a whole decade beyond has come as a bit of a surprise.

Unfortunately for everyone, there is also artwork.

I'm intrigued enough that once I've managed to finish these chapters I might start on this new development and see where it goes; half the fun of this AU is mirroring certain events from my main storyline (because I'm easily amused like that) so this would be hurtling into all-new territory for these boys.  Maybe by then I'll even have come up with a better title than the one it's already got (honestly, anything would be an improvement).

Maybe this time, however, I won't try to write it all in a month.  I'm not sure I could take this kind of experience more than once or twice a year.

As always, if you're curious about this ridiculous project and how far I've got, the links to the chapters can be found here, or at the top of the page under "Radial: Unravel - AU".  I did say it needed a better title...!