June, 2010:

I’ve finally let myself get hooked on podcasts, and now I may never leave the house again.

Except for that whole pesky having to go to that shitty day job that I hate. Oh, always that. Too bad I can’t listen to podcasts while I’m there. Or any music. Oh, the fascism!

Right now I am listening to one that is for people who word lovers. Sadly, it’s wicked boring, and shall now be deleted. Wow, way to make being a word nerd boring, jackhole!

And now, one of my favorite examples of amazing storytelling on the radio: This American Life.

Anyway, distractions from writing aside, here’s what I’ve been writing this week: Scurvytown and nothing else. Seems like a bit of a theme lately, but the fact that I am seven weeks into a writing project with no end in sight is really rather lovely.

Today’s episode of Scurvytown was one of those that sort of just wrote itself, which is always a delight. I don’t think it was as infused with humor as I would have liked, but that is something I plan on working on in the future. Also troublesome to me are the giant gaps between one episode and another. In trying to keep the stories under 2000 words, and being all excited to tell each character’s story, I fear I get a little jump-starty, when I might do better as a storyteller to fill the gaps now as opposed to simply patching the holes with paragraphs made of hole-pluggin’ putty later on.

Thoughts, questions, suggestions? Comments/criticisms are always welcome, not necessarily taken, but never taken for granted or taken lightly, as long as the end result is an improvement, which honestly, so far it has been. (Thanks to all who’ve helped so far!)

So yesterday, I did something silly. I changed my fictionarium twitter account to one for Scurvytown. Figured I wasn’t really using it anyway, might as well do something funny with it.

Right now, you’ll see an ongoing saga between Captain Tullis and whoever stole his monkey, Hopewell. Today, at some point, they hacked his twitter account and started posting disparaging remarks about him, which leads me to finally figuring out who stole the monkey in the first place. Haha, writing off the cuff.

People ask me questions like “Where is Scurvytown anyway?” and “Who kidnapped Hopewell?” And I can’t even appease them with the spoilers they desire because I don’t even know. I have ideas, glimmers of thoughts, and assumptions, but those are all crap until I write the answers, and sometimes, I don’t even see it coming until the words are jumping off the surface of my brain.

Anyway, back to the twitter account. Why am I doing this?

1. for fun
2. to relieve some monotony and stress from work

At the risk of showing my mother my twitter account, here is the one for Scurvytown. Of course, this is the one that is filtered into this website anyway, so it can simply be read there (and by there I mean here).

So, questions:

1. is this twitter account funny, and should I keep doing this? (or should I change frequency of tweets/ kinds of tweets?)
2. does this enhance the story experience?
3. should other characters have twitter accounts (or has the town council decreed that there will only be one- after the hacking of Captain Tullis’s account)- no idea how they’d regulate that other than magic or some shit like that, but sheesh, Scurvitans don’t believe in magic. duh. my thought, because of sheer laziness on my part, was to have a single account for the town, and then various townsfolk use it, signing their name after each tweet, BUT this could get very confusing. it seems to me that if I was unemployed (cough, don’t tempt that fate, sweetie- channeling my mom there), I’d have plenty of time to keep up multiple fake twitter accounts. it’s kind of a fun project anyway, might do it for awhile, and then possibly let it die like fads do everywhere. um, so, HI BLOG READERS, welcome to me thinking out loud.

Haha, going go sleep soon! Cheers!

This week’s writing soundtrack has heavily consisted of the new album by Stars (The Five Ghosts), which drops on June 21st, according to their website.

You can listen here: The Five Ghosts

My introduction to this band was in 2006, when I saw them play at ACL Fest. They were delightfully poppy, which I love, and had a great energy. It was really freaking hot outside, and they, like so many of the other performers, just kind of rolled with it and put on an amazing show.

I have recently been listening to them a lot, and was so excited when I saw the NPR link about their upcoming album.  It’s been a lot of fun writing to it, and I really hope they tour somewhere nearby so I can see them live again soon.

*****

Tried the incentive writing ploy for awhile as well. I tried ice cream, but that wasn’t a good incentive, as food rarely is unless I am really hungry. And this was GOOD ice cream, too. It was Graeter’s Blueberry Pie and wow is it delicious!

Then, I downloaded the new Doctor Who, like I normally do on Saturdays, and refused to let myself watch it until I finished writing. That didn’t work, I was still stuck in the evil throes of procrastination. I still haven’t watched the episode, but really, really want to!

Then Devo’s “Whip It” came up on iTunes. CRACK THAT WHIP! At this point, I initiated the rules of torture. Basically, I couldn’t listen to any other song until I finished this week’s episode. Funny how that seemed to work. 31 listens later and, feeling a bit crazier for it, the episode was finished.

Doctor Who viewing to follow! YAY!

Oh, the things we nutty writers do to get words on the page!