channonyarrow

So it turns out that uploading at the college is blindingly fast.

Hence, I bring a playlist. A very long playlist. About fifty-six songs of long. I've linked them separately, since there is no possibility at all that no one has some of these songs, and because even breaking them into three or four files will still put total DL size at about 100 mb.

It all started back when I told jamethiel_bane that I would make a playlist of American artists in a less radio-popular genre, since - oddly - it turns out that she has never heard Gillian Welch, since she is, in fact, Australian. I felt that this was a lack that I could handle. However, over the course of putting the playlist together, it mutated and became not solely American, nor solely American bluegrass and folk. GO ME.

True purists will also note that this is the more glitzy side of bluegrass; I've left out huge categories of bluegrass artists (and even country artists like Doc Watson or William Elliot Whitmore) in favour of the artists that I sing along to, and however fine The Stony Mountain Boys' song "What's The Matter With The Mill?", "Tear My Stillhouse Down" makes me turn the volume WAY up.

And, sadly, about eight of these songs are already in my Mediafire, so clearly I've uploaded them before. WHOOPS.

Errata: All files are either mp3 or m4a. There are no m4ps, since I broke the DRM on the three tracks that were. If you need a converted version of an m4a file and cannot convert it yourself, let me know and I'll do it for you.

( Your ghost is gonna wear them rattlin' chains )

I want a vodka tonic. I do not, however, think that my throat will put up with this plan, so I'm settling for tea. I hate that lack-of-sleep generally-shitty feeling, and I also hate the feeling you get after a nap; I feel like I'm not so much thinking as herding cats into a pillowcase.

So have some self-indulgent thinking!

Writing: I'm stuck on everything. I really want to write that bandslash fic that I first-lined when I did that meme, and not least of all because both apiphile and cupiscent have an interest: I cannot think of two people I would more like to make happy, and frankly I'm incredibly flattered by their interest in this story. However, I'm concerned that if I don't have an outline, I'm going to get where I got with The Dead Letters, where it was, quite seriously, in the last 10,000 words of the 180,000 that I realised what, exactly, the point of that book was.

I think that's actually part of why I'm stalling on editing TDL, actually. I have all these words, man, have you ever looked at words? And when I go through and edit, I will have to take some out. Since, essentially, there are four chapters that just over what the previous four chapters went over because I was writing in a holding pattern, trying to figure out what happened next, I feel like "editing" is synonymous with "cutting", and not with "making better". And bear in mind, the last book I remember editing is The Book From Hell, which caused my semi-nervous-breakdown last spring. Even though I KNOW I edited other things before I was laid off, that book will always loom in my memory because of the sheer and utter work it took to get it done. It was so fucking hard that I can't even articulate that, even now. And it is fresh like yesterday, too.

So I feel like I need to have an outline because otherwise I get way off track, and not in some awesome "The plot should be this!" kind of way, but in some "now boarding the Tangent Train on platform two" kind of way. And I can't even cope with the thought of the editing process. I'm not seeing that as a chance to take raw words and make them into what they really need to be - adding the style to the substance, I suppose - so much as seeing it as a way of REALLY seeing what's wrong with anything I write and cutting hours and hours of work out and tossing it in the bin. And I can't cope with that for some reason.

In a note of irony, I don't even think it's the relative quality of the stories that are killing me - certainly when I was looking for a segment of TDL to meme, I flipped through the Word file and was actually pleasantly surprised that I could face looking at it again. It didn't instantly turn to crap the second I got some distance on it, so there's that.

The other part of it is, man, I love me some sociopaths. I play sociopaths when I rp, I write sociopaths, I love the idea. Probably I wouldn't love the reality, but then again, reality has very little to do with my literary kinks. But! I know I've essentially written exactly what the fuck I wrote in that segment of fic that I memed before. And I feel like if I'm going to write, it has to be different - obviously, it doesn't have to be completely different, but I should avoid using the same freaking lines over and over again. The fact that I remember using the "hands busy" line probably means I actually used it ten times over the last few years in an rp context and just don't remember all the instances.

So I feel like I'm not doing anything new, at least for me, and I'm not sure how to MAKE it new for me. I'm sure people into bondage get really tired of it the fifty seventh time they tie someone up in kinbaku. I think that's a lot of where I'm stuck, even beyond the outline/editing issue: if I want to rehash things, I can just toss Phantosmia back up here and let y'all read that and send me emails explaining that I'm a terrible person. *g*

The OTHER part of it is intimidation, I think. I mean, there are three words of dialogue in the scene I have written, and I feel like at least one of them is out of character. Since I am happy to critique other people, both fic authors and professional ones, for being out of character, I feel like I really, really, really have to have that character voice in my head from jump street; otherwise, there's no point in writing what will eventually be horrifically ooc if I'm allowed to continue. I mean, there are plenty of other people writing stuff that's ooc, but a) I'm able to recognise that I am not, thus far, IN character, and b) I'm a damn fine writer much of the time. I hate the process, I hate everything that goes into it, I hate the part where you actually have to either write or type up what you're thinking, I'm looking forward to the day we get to Neuromancer and I can just dictate stories in my head, but I do, actually, think I can write. Today.

Part of this is because if I refuse to prove it, no one can argue with me, but the instances I've had feedback, it's been in acceptable ranges for quality writing. (Which is more than a touch like saying "For criteria I choose, I'm an excellent lawyer, doctor, and Indian chief despite having no formal qualifications.")

Bear in mind that in the case of the fic, I'm setting up an au-universe wherein two people who are only marginally crazy in the real world are really crazy and violent and generally awful; I'm not entirely sure why I'm worried about ooc voice.

Okay, no, I'm totally sure why I'm worried about that, but it doesn't sound good to say "I'm fine with setting them up as killers as long as they sound right, because I ignore what is in character and what is out of character for the purposes of making unf noises!"

And then there's Slot Machine Prophet. Wow, yeah, there's a clusterfuck rolling. I still have no outline, despite having some vague idea that I wanted to have one before I started editing TDL (not that I've done that, but I'm officially into nanoedmo and I owe so many chapters) so that I could not get caught up in what happened with 19 Seconds, where I spent so much time polishing the first ten chapters that I ultimately was unable to continue the story because what I was writing new was not nearly as good as the stuff I spent weeks polishing up. (We're ignoring the fact that 19 Seconds was, overall, an incredibly juvenile work and the easiest summation of why I should never, ever, ever be allowed to write female main characters. Also, it was in first person. FEAR ME!)

I'm still not sure what SMP is about, frankly. I have the characters, I have the idea of a nation at war, I have a strong sense of the world, and I know that there's magic and spiritualism about in the world - current theory: magic has disappeared, which is a problem since one of the main chars is fundamentally magical - but that doesn't add up to a book, at least not for me. I need more parameters before I can just let the chars go be themselves all over the place, and I also get stuck into the dread of "oh god I will have to cut, cut, cut like I'm shilling for Ginsu!"

I am so fundamentally lazy that I don't want to write things that are going to have to go away in huge quantities.

So other than the fact that I am stuck like a turtle in peanut butter on everything - I don't think I'd call it writer's block, because I refuse to believe I ever get writer's block - everything is going well. Unfortunately, that first clause is kind of more important. *g*

I think that some of it is the fact that I have a finished book. I mean, I know that's not the end of the line, that was just where I broke down the goals. Step 1, write book. Step 2, edit book. Step 3, agent book. Step 4, sell book. Step 5, buy book in print. If I had just gone from Command-N to Step 5, I would not even have the book that I have. I broke the achievements down into smaller, more realistic sections. But the point remains: I have a book. Even if no one else EVER sees that book, I still have one. But I'm not motivated to work on Step 2, and all I can think when I look at the other two projects I have on the desk is, essentially, "Wow, this is starting over."

I'm not trying to whinge here, btw. I'm trying to work through the process in my head, which may come off as whinging, but that's not my intent.

And there are enough things keeping me from making serious headway on SMP and Omerta that I don't even have the push to get past "I have a book" to "I'm going to write another one."

I will never write again! I'm going to go cut my hands off and join a nunnery!

Or, you know, smack my head on the wall for a while and hope that something happens that clears up some of this confusion about what I'm writing when and how it sounds. Or else that I fall asleep and have another lovely dream that I'm President and Rahm is my crazy ex-IDF bodyguard.

In conversation with graeae, who listens to music more indie than anything I will ever see - she listens to, you know, that guy, the one with the head. Has arms - I had to explain why I was mortally offended that she pretty much thinks that TAI... and Panic(!) at the Disco are the same band.

Me: The lyrics are STUPID. "'Cause it's nine in the afternoon/and your eyes are the size of the moon."
Me: "Dear Ryan Ross, your pretension, let me show you it, no love, me."
Graeae: No, I mean the closing the fucking door song. That's different. I KNOW the nine in the afternoon song is stupid.
Me: Not by MUCH.

Helpfully, I decided to provide an example of this by finding the lyrics.

Me: Wow, this so exemplifies them that I am falling over laughing. I clicked on this one and I thought "Wait, this is a newspaper article about them," and then I read it and realised that the lyrics are just that goddamn dense. Fucking Door Song
Me: Actually, you know what their lyrics remind me of? A spambot.
Graeae: *falls over and dies*
Graeae: Dude, everyone in my house was sleeping. Let's repeat that. WAS.

And then she dared me to post it to LJ. And I did because a) I hate Panic at the Nuclear Waste Dump a lot, and b) their lyrics really do remind me of a spambot.

For graeae:



The bears made me think of you. Except for how they're not dead bears (even if the one does make me think it's been hung) or bleeding milk or anything. I couldn't find a file of that song from Akira so I couldn't embed it in the background, which kind of sucks, but believe me, I'm thinking it.

I think of you when I think of cuddly bears and happy glittery text. *g* Happy birthday, I made authors miserable, and today I did it in YOUR NAME.

I can tell it's the last week of their terms because faithinthejudas, thisdaywefight, czardonic and amphisbaena ALL JUST POSTED. Like, seriously. Last five entries on ye flist? THOSE FOUR ARE THERE.

So congrats to the four of you for making it this far (sometimes to the end, sometimes just to the end of this year). I sort of wish I was still on that journey.

Oh god, I think this week is going to kill me. I need to start smiting and I need to get ye smiting gear to start smiting. And the first person I'm going to smite is myself.

I have my reasons. I may go into them later when I am not completely insane.

Also: work is making me want to SCREAM right now. Oh my god, I want to go out by the airport, where all the condemned houses are, and SCREAM. Only problem? I CAN'T. Because those houses are BLOCKED OFF NOW for the third runway that we do not need and that I personally DO NOT FUCKING WANT.

OH MY GOOD SWEET CHRIST ON A CRACKER.

I think the only mood option for this is "quixotic". I WANT A FUCKING VACATION.

And a tattoo. I'm seriously starting to think that I'm going to bite the bullet (har!) and get the ginormous dragon backpiece that McArcus drew for me years ago started. I don't know what I'll do with it, exactly, in terms of colour and size (I think it needs to be reduced a LITTLE) but fuck it if I can never wear a fucking strapless evening gown again, do I look like fucking presidential/ambassadorial material ANYWAY?

NO. NO I DO NOT.

Tonight is a reckless night. I can tell. Perhaps it's the sort of night where one goes out and gets drunk in a cheap tavern and punches a biker in the face and grins like a fucking maniac and goes down swinging, but with my luck and general state of health/size, I'd be hospitalised. I probably should just stay in and harness this bizarre and manic energy into drinking, dying my hair, and starting a piece of writing that I STARTED yesterday but have not finished. Since I'm only two sentences in, I'm not STARTED, really.

Also: MUST MAKE SCHEDULE. OH MY FUCKING GOD. I need a schedule for the completion of TDL (currently stuck in a fucking quagmire) and for the finishing/shopping of some other stuff that's been waiting around FORFUCKINGEVER and for the start of, um, I can't even remember the current name, I think it might well be The Crow Road. Because I really really like Iain Banks.

What am I doing with my life? WHAT?

Nothing, that's what. Not yet. And I refuse to fucking do nothing with my fucking life. It's my life, and it's the only one I get, and I AM NOT GOING TO DIE NOBODY.

Fuck everything that ever says otherwise. WITH A TWO BY FOUR.

*catches the energy*

*grins like a monster*

Yeeeaaahh. That's what I've been missing.


ETA: Note to self: Work emails sent while manic make no fucking sense.

Bear this in mind. OH MY GOD.

I sort of live. OH GOD SO BUSY.

I would like, someday, to get an explanation for WHY I dreamt that safti had taken up modelling in Japan, and WHY mcmayhem was roadtripping in a Porsche with some friends from England, but I don't think explanations are forthcoming.

Yes, it's true. By friending me, you drop your name into the magical melting pot of Things I Might Dream About, even if I don't know you at all.

I feel guilty about everything at the moment, so this is par for the course. Maybe I can catch up with some shit this weekend.

And guess what, I've got no idea what the hell anyone's said, so if for some reason you think it's worth the labour to link it to me, I'll read it.

...I don't even know what my icons look like, any more.

I'd just like to say, quickly, thank you to Darumaseye and Melpamene for the fabulous icons! They're great, thanks to you both!

*glomps Melpamene*

*glomps Darumaseye*

*squees off to look at icons*