The Few, the Far and the In Between

In a couple of ways, I miss the very first few days of this blog. It was a wild, frontier-time when I was writing for writing's sake; when I was a mere amateur, not ever published, so my only writing pressures were my own; when I suffered from just one mental illness; when I somehow managed to write once every three days & - although I do not regret having work to look forward to - when I had less "projects" going on, so that I could more readily focus on this blog and my readership.

I honestly don't know how I managed three blog posts a day. I think I cared a little less, or maybe nowadays I care a little too much. One of the reasons I'm writing this is because, despite not feeling confident enough to write an entire blog post about some of the ideas I have, I do want to keep writing this. I love having a blog, my little foot in the door between me and the great world at large. I have an awful lot of pride in this blog, such that even though I don't like change, several times I found myself changing this blog to better suit the style that I wished it to evoke. And I am in fact honoured that people come here to read it, and occasionally leave comments.

This is entirely my own, and I do hope - one day - to become a published author, and on that day I still hope to have this blog, and update it. Even if someone insists that I have a "proper website", I still want to have this one handy. It is entirely mine, entirely self-motivated and entirely for fun. I like the atmosphere it has, and wouldn't trade that for anything.

So, please, do not take it the wrong way when I say that I am too busy to update. But, the fact of the matter is that I consider this blog part of my "writing work", and lately I have been working on some other writing projects.
There is one collaborative writing project that I was accepted into almost a month ago, called ODIN. I've been working on a serialized story for the project in the time I would usually spend working on personal writing projects and/or blogging. It's a lot of fun, lots of folks are taking part and I'm enjoying the challenge, but it means this blog has fallen to the wayside. I'm working to write more blog posts, but you definitely can't expect them as frequently as I once wrote them.

Although, on that note, ODIN is looking for more writers. There's a bit of a screening process, but if you are a writer and are keen to take on a significant writing challenge (although enjoyable and rather fast and loose, this will be relatively labour intensive), and if you like science fiction and adventure let me know that you're interested, and provide me with a link to an example of some of your writing. If I'm impressed, I will bring you to the attention of the Head Writer.

There are some other ideas I've been toying with lately as well. As you can tell, I did my Halloween Countdown recently (it was actually the last thing I did on this blog, oh my how time flies), but that also means it was my birthday.
The present I got for my birthday (alongside some lovely chocolates) was, in fact, a mobile phone. For the last 8 years, I have had one phone, it was a great phone. In fact it still is a great phone, a Nokia X1-01 and I would still be using it today, except . . . Vodafone happened. My provider decided that, because I hadn't made a call in 6 months (I had no disposable income and was looking for work, so I was receiving calls but could not afford to make them from my mobile phone), they put my number in something called "quarantine", as the phone number would eventually transfer from my SIM to be recycled into the network.
Which is a fancy way of saying: "Well, you're not giving us money, so fuck you we're taking your phone number away."
And since I needed a new SIM card, and they don't sell 2G cards anymore, I was forced to upgrade my phone.

So, I got a new phone. This one another Nokia, since I love that brand, and since I was upgrading I figured I'd try for a smartphone so I got a Nokia Lumia 532. In my eternal quest to stay just behind the cutting edge of technology, I bought a phone that they don't make anymore, the "Lumia" series goes all the way up to the 900s now which meant my phone was very cheap despite coming with a pre-packed SIM card. Also, because Vodafone was such a dick, I switched to Telstra.
Anyway, my point is, I have a phone, a Microsoft Phone (because I do not like iPhones) which means it came prepackaged with Microsoft Word.

And all of that was a long way of me saying that I've been looking into cell phone novels lately. Or, since I am not an American , I would prefer to call them phone novels. They are meant to be written on a phone, so I thought it would be interesting to see if I could actually accomplish that.
Don't get all excited, I haven't planned anything, I just think it's a cool idea, with a fascinating medium and style, so I might see if I can actually do something like that. In short, if you're interested, it's a style of writing whereby each chapter is the size of a text message. It forces the writer to resort to greater poetry and use of whitespace to express the story, and a lot of the plot is concealed (due to writing limitations) which adds to the theme and style of the genre.

And thirdly, there are several blog post ideas that I am interested in writing, but I keep forgetting or getting side-tracked. So, I figured, rather than keep getting all flustered, I'll do what I often do to organize my brain . . . lists. I can't give you a deadline, since with Christmas coming up, family responsibilities, job-hunting & ODIN work to do, I will be quite busy; but, I can give you a checklist. So, here are seven blog posts that I am going to attempt to write for this blog in the near future:

1. Healing Diary: A Tribute to Dr Mona
• (Where I talk about my psychologist, because she was nice)
2. WotD: "Speech"
• (Where I talk about Freedom of Speech)
3. Blogfiction: "Creature Fluff"
• (I promised my girlfriend I would write some light, cute fiction for her)
4. WotD: "Selfie"
• (I want to talk about selfie culture, photography and self-portraiture)
5. WotD: "Doxxing"
• (Apparently, this happens a lot. I want to look at the word and the phenomenon)
6. Duke Forever - Chapter 12: Party Crashers
• (I want to continue this story, I'm getting to a really good bit)
7. WotD: "Special"
• (I want to discuss what does and does not make us special)

So, you see, I haven't been out of ideas . . . just busy. I will, in time, write about all of these things. Of course, I may occasionally write a few more posts like this in between. And I may do a special Christmas and/or New Years post around these as well. It's going to be pretty fast and loose. But, I will get around to them all, in time. All I ask is that you be patient.

I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and until next time, feel free to leave comments, keep in touch, I'll be around . . . I just have a few stories to write first.