Playlists for days!

Nothing like a writer friend mentioning you in her blog to remind you "omg seriously bitch update your blog what is WRONG with you?"

In my defense, I haven't completely neglected blogging; I've just been doing it elsewhere.

Also on literally the last day of Nanowrimo, my laptop committed seppuku, juuust as I was less than 1k or so from finishing.  So that was fun. (I mean, I totally copypasta'd a bunch of stuff I already had. I knew I was going to win, so I dont feel bad about using a different 50k to win than the 50k I'd actually written than month. Fite me.)

Anyway, back to the whole being-blog-shamed-into-posting by my friend Becky. She's an author and a member of my local writer's group, and in her most recent post, (along with admitting I was right about Spotify) she talked about the glory that is my personal favorite form of "I'm totally writing even though I'm not actually typing any words, sssshhhh.:" The playlist.

I freakin' love playlists. Some of mine include:

• Dancing Around the House in My Underwear
• Dramatic Curtains
• Singing to My Steering Wheel
• The Soundtrack to My Existential Crisis
• WannaBeInNerdfighterLikeWithMe?
• WhatTheFolk?
• Wrock, Trock, and Barrel

Music is a huuuge component in my Major WIP, and I'm even beginning to build a playlist for my vampire/lawyer WIP. It's also a huge part of my writing process in general.

Sometimes it's a pretty obvious connection, like "Heroin" by The Velvet Underground or "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane, or "Semi-Charmed Life" by Third Eye Blind, since one of my MC's is a drug addict. Or "More Than a Feeling" by Boston because I have a character named Boston.

Other times, I can't tell you exactly why the song fits, other than it just does, man.  Like "Teenage Anarchist" by Against Me!: I don't know which character that applies to, but I know it's one of them! Or "Mr. Brightside" by The Killers, it doesn't really have anything to do with the story other than the story starts in 2004 and Mr. Brightside was all the hell over the place in '03 and '04.

Sometimes when I'm stuck in a rut, I put on the playlist for my WIP and it gets the creative juices flowing. Other times, what I need is *new* music and then I hop over to one of Spotify's curated lists like Discover Weekly, or I check out the US or Worldwide Top 50 charts.

I also love other people's playlists.  Musician George Ezra has a great ongoing playlist called "Sunday Sessions". Sarah J. Maas has a playlist she made for her Court of Thorns and Roses series, and there's a second playlist with fan recommendations. Also, Cracked keeps an ongoing playlist of songs that have been featured in their podcast.

Are you a playlist fiend?

Twenty-Eight.

So, my birthday happened recently, on the 11th. As far as weekday birthdays go, it was pretty darn delightful. Seeing Fight Club with my friends at Film Club, then immediately running to see Captain America: Civil War made for an excellent night.

My age, however... I'm feeling much less excellent about that. I'm 28 now. I'm staring down the barrel at 30 and my life doesn't look even a little bit like I wanted to by now. Still broke, still single, college drop-out, and I still havent managed to write anything with a goddamn ending.

I'm not saying everything sucks, I'm just being forced to deal with the fact that all my plans for my life went up in flames and I'm faced with a blank chalkboard, and it's just a little terrifying.

On the bright side, of course, I've been much happier in the last year or so. I cut a lot of really toxic people out of my life, which left me pretty heartbroken. It was really hard for a really long time, but eventually the sucky feelings of losing them were replaced by the blissful realization that I was actually much better off without all the drama and headache and heartache they were causing me.

ProTip: If some one (or a group of someones) makes you feel like shit more often than they don't, they're probaby not your friends. 

So, while I'm not where I want to be, I'm still in a pretty good place.

In other news, for the three of you still reading this, you may or may not notice that about half my posts have been deleted or hidden. I don't know what exactly it was but there was something in the air around here that I needed to get rid of. Some of these posts, I'll rewrite and post, and some are just gone forever now.

Not that things are going to be much different around here; I still don't have any real direction for this thing, and that's fine with me. My life has no focus, why should my blog?

So. No focus, but some goals:
1. Consistency. I am, once again, making a post frequency goal. I've always failed at that before, because I've never felt like I really had anything to say that was worth reading, but fuck it, I'm going to post once a week even if it's just a round-up of that week's instagramming.

2. Prettyfication. If I manage to post consistently for three months, the I'm allowed to buy myself a pretty layout for my blog. That's only 12 posts; if i can't do that, I just suck.

That's it. That's the goal for now. Baby steps and shit.

The Things I'll Do for Free Booze: A review-ish thing of Name of the Wind

So one day on Facebook, this happened:

And I'll do a lot of things for free booze, so I bought the book on Sunday and finished somewhere between Thursday night and Friday morning.

I drafted this review about 15 times and it just kept devolving into a crappy play-by-play plot synopsis.

So here's the blurb, as found on Goodreads:

Told in Kvothe's own voice, this is the tale of the magically gifted young man who grows to be the most notorious wizard his world has ever seen. The intimate narrative of his childhood in a troupe of traveling players, his years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-ridden city, his daringly brazen yet successful bid to enter a legendary school of magic, and his life as a fugitive after the murder of a king form a gripping coming-of-age story unrivaled in recent literature. A high-action story written with a poet's hand, The Name of the Wind is a masterpiece that will transport readers into the body and mind of a wizard.

Sounds cool, right? 

That's cause it totally is.

When I was standing in the Wife's kitchen browning hamburger for tacos, our friend Aaron said: "You know how they say there are boy movies and girl movies? I kinda feel like this is a boy book." And really, the only people I'd ever heard talk about it have been dudes. So far, I know two other girls that have read it, compared to at least a dozen dudes.. but that's kind of typical of the fantasy genre for me anyway. 

I mean, it's a book by a man, and about a man being all manly and awesome and shit, so if that's your criteria, then yeah, it's kind of a boy book.

But it's a boy book that my delicate feminine sensibilities thought was pretty awesome. It took a bit of a chunk for things to really get rolling, so the beginning was just a bit of a chore to get through.  - But like, a laundry type chore, not a cleaning the grout of the shower tiles with a toothbrush type of chore.  - And while the prose occasionally got a shade purple, the writing was generally pretty fantastic, which was a pleasant deviation from the "great writing but terrible story / great story but awful writing" problem I've run into with a few other fantasy novels. No I'm going to name them right now, fuck off.

Incomplete Thoughts: That girl you wish you hadn't started a conversation with and other things from the bar.

I know that on the Facebook Page (GO LIKE IT GO GO GO) I said my newest post was inspired by a cracked article, but I got some news this week that ruined my whole day, and the next several days after, so I just do not have the mental or emotional capacity to finish that post right now,  which more or less means that post may never actually see the light of day.

So instead, I'm gonna talk about one of my favorite things: getting white girl wasted at the bar. Specifically, some thoughts I had while visiting said establishment.

- - - 

You know what I'm a fan of? Stupid people.  And by that I mean I'm a fan of being reminded that I am in fact not one of them. And the bar is an excellent place to be reminded of such. On Friday, I gave my friend a ride to campus so he could do his radio show, and went to kill time at the bar while I waited for him. This was something of an experiment, because as I may or may not have mentioned before, I kinda really hate doing things by myself. (Like, so much, that I am officially marking "going to the bar alone" as the first of the five things that scare me for the 101 things list.) But, I had some cigarettes (I know, I know, go on and yell at me) and I had my phone. I wielded these things like a damn sword and shield as I alternated between awkwardly standing there, leaning against the wall (it was busy so all the tables were taken) and hanging out in the back where only the smokers go this time of year.

"Now the problem is, when you can't smoke, if you stand and stare out of the window on your own, you're an antisocial, friendless idiot. If you stand and stare out of the window on your own with a cigarette, you're a fucking philosopher." - Rory Sutherland

And a fucking philosopher I was, as I just kind of.. watched people. When regular people do that, it's creepy. When writers do it... okay it's still creepy, but we're researching, man! So there I was, sitting on a bench with a cigarette and catching up on my bloglovin' feed when I happened to overhear a group of friends (that all seemed to hate each other) talking.

If you don't know what the water situation is click here. 

It just amazes me that people can, apparently, have such strong opinions about a subject without knowing a damn thing about it. or without actually saying anything about it either. That's even more amazing.I swear, in the whole 5 or so minutes I was listening to these uninformed hipster chicks, none of them actually said anything, I'm assuming, and hoping, that they were bothered by the whole chemicals-fucking-shit-up thing, but if you'd read a transcript, you'd be damn confused, too.  Like Seth here:

Also, I had one of those "you know it's a small town" moments when one of the funniest things that happened that night was when I realized how long it had been since I'd noticed someone surprised by the fact that there was a cat just hangin' out in the bar. This group of bros freaked out when they saw him and I about died laughing. And you know, there's nothing weird about someone laughing hysterically. Alone.

His name is BK and he's basically a local celebrity. 

The most belated reveal everrr.

I am nothing if not well-timed. 

...I'm sorry I can't even type that with a straight face. 

First thing's first: let's talk about Secret Santa, and how I'm the worst one ever because I got so wrapped up in nonsense this holiday season (more on that later, maybe) that I totally missed the reveal, and then my "Oops I missed the reveal" post got lost in the mire of more nonsense, so here we are, well on our way into friggin January, and here I am finally getting around to showing off my Secret Santa gift. 

The gift I sent,  went to Jamie of The Growing Up Diaries.  I'm sorry that your gift didn't show up until after the reveal. There was some stupid post office nonsense that got in the way.  I was so glad to hear you liked it though, and I'm glad you got it in time to check out of adulthood for a minute after your own stack of nonsense happened. 

Snagged from Jamie's reveal post. 

The gift I received came from Emily of Be Blessed Y'all. (Most precious blog name ever? Yes.) And I freaking love it. You can't quite tell in the picture, but there's two pair of amazing fuzzy socks there - the others are white with red toes and heels. I've been trying really hard to keep from straight devouring that box of Swiss Miss, and the candy canes were all fashioned into perfect minty death spikes as they should be. I still haven't tried on that nail polish yet; gonna have to do that soon! 

And yes, Emily, I love the journal!

Now that that's done, I can tell you guys how freaking excited I am for a project I've just started. It's not an original idea or anything, but I'm doing the 101 things in 1001 days project. You can view the list breakdown here in my previous post. That's all I'm really gonna say about it for now. It's a long-term project, so I'll explain bits of it further as I get to them.

And now that all THAT is done, I can't wait to write a real, actual friggin blog post.
...which theoretically will be up this weekend. I hope.