Tuesday, 28 October 2008

What's Next?

As of this moment I have finished the evening and weekend work, the period otherwise known as 'how many hours can I put in within a week without sudden and inevitable death?' Not so much additional employment as some kind of twisted endurance challenge.

I should have been working tomorrow evening as well; instead I shall be in Manchester, returning to London first thing Thursday and heading straight into the office. Then I am out Thursday and Friday evenings until late.

This weekend I am doing nothing. If possible I will not even leave the house.

I am not yet convinced that I will manage to leave the bed.

Wednesday, 15 October 2008

Sleep - Coma - Death?

I am not a morning person at the best of times, but currently waking up is somewhat similar to a near death experience, in that it feels like I am very nearly experiencing death.

This is, admittedly, pretty much my own fault. For the entirety of October I am working evenings as well as daytimes, partly because the day job doesn't quite manage to suck all the soul from my life but mostly because - while I don't have any particular attachment to money in itself - I am rather fond of exchanging it for goods and services and I do have a rather all-consuming addiction to notebooks and also inks.

Yesterday I was in the office until 5pm, then I took the 17.46 train home. I got in at about 18.25, then left five minutes later for Workday Part II (The Monotonous Edition). I got back at 9pm, at which point I had food and then did evening-job-related paperwork. I did a lot of paperwork. I did paperwork until two in the morning.

Tonight I will likely be doing, roughly the same, but - hopefully - with significantly less paperwork and then, if at all possible, I will not be out on Thursday because I worry how near one must become before that 'near death experience' becomes simply a 'death experience'.

Which is, in all, a roundabout explanation for my lack of productivity in any fashion, making this a placeholder post to say: rumours of my death have been ... entirely understandable.

Monday, 6 October 2008

Fajitas in Fiji

I have been trying to write a gap-filler scene all weekend, initially because it needed to be written, now because it refuses to be written and I am taking a stand.

And that determination is, unfortunately, where things come crashing to a horrible end.

It's not a 'block' per se, I can force the words onto screen or paper, scrawling them out in the hope that something useful can be salvaged from the catastrophe of nouns, verbs, adjectives and other collateral damage, but it doesn't seem to be working. So I try slowing and hoping for some intervention of inspiration.

This mostly results in my staring at the screen, little finger pressing down the shift button to start my next sentence, while I tap lightly against F and J on the keyboard, in case sudden inspiration flashes past and I have to touch-type it down quickly before it escapes.

FJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJF

Twenty minutes later and I have a page of 'f' followed by 'j' which, whilst making a satisfying clatter at the time of typing, is somewhat disappointing to redraft.

BUT if inspiration does appear I am ready. my left pointer finger is on F and my right is on J and this actually does mean that, ergonomically, my fingers are ready for anything that can be thrown at them.

FJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJF

This is theory is, of course, total bollocks and mostly results in my trying to work out words with both 'f' and 'j' in. Spicy words mainly, like 'fajita' or 'jalfrezi'.

This is likely because it is coming up to lunch.

FJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJF

There's also 'jiffy' and 'jeff', and there's 'Jif' bathroom cleaner, but they've rebranded that as 'Cif' now and so it no longer meets the requirements.

Although 'Jif Lemon' juice still exists, so perhaps that counts instead?

FJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJF

To get back to food, there's FRijj milkshakes and Jaffa Cakes (should that be one word or two?), both of which are brand names and thus completely useless in Scrabble, as are Fujifilm and Fujitsu.

FJFJFJFJFJFJFJF

Fiji.

FJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJFJF

The problem I have, one of the many problems I have, is that the reason I skipped this scene, was that I couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t trite and/or uninspired, and I still have no idea how to bridge the written scenes. I just can’t get from 'A' to 'B'. (At least if I was going from 'A' to Z' I'd be two letters down already (namely 'f' and 'j') and only have 12/13ths remaining.)

As it is, all I can assume is that I am not starting with either F or J, mostly because if anything began with F or J I would have reached it already.

Maybe I’ll switch fingers and practice ‘d’ and ‘k’ a while. Perhaps that was where I was going wrong all along?

DKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKDKD...