Here I am at the end of the last week of the Big Project which has consumed so much of my time outside of the normal boundaries of the work/life balance. I still have the Small Project, which is manageable now that the Big Project is in the rearview mirror. And I could use a little down time before the inevitable Next Big Project.
The first snowfall of the season hit West Michigan this past week, and made a beautiful mess of everything. Our property sits on the side of a gentle hill, and the placement of upwind houses and fences causes an eddy which pulls all of the neighborhood leaves into our back yard. These leaves will provide some much-needed nutrition for my yard, as most of the soil in this part of town is a very thin skin of soil on top of a huge pile of sand.
Reading
I have finally found enough consecutive quiet minutes to dive back into Invisible Work: Borges and Translation by Efrain Kristal. I can feel my brain humming in a way it seldom has since the heady days at the bookstore or, before that, college. Before college my brain didn’t so much hum as buzz, which is an entirely different, much less pleasant state of being.
Writing
I am writing! For the first time in months, maybe even in a year, I am consistently putting words to paper. Not enough words to “win” That November Thing, but enough that I feel as if I am accomplishing something. And most of those words are coming together in an order which I find satisfying.
As stated previously, this year I am doing what I did two years ago in the penultimate year of NaNoWriMo: Generating prompts using my custom-built Prompt Generator, then writing something which uses all of the parts of the prompts.
Previously overarching goal had been to write a minimum of 50,000 words, which I did easily by only working on a prompt until I ran out of steam and then immediately generating another prompt and immediately diving into it.
This year, when I generate a prompt, I let the prompt sit for a little while as I think through all of the possibilities until I come up with something which will be interesting to write and also (I hope) to read.
Weekly Writing Prompt
Subject: Kaiju, Super Powers
Setting: Lost City
Genre: Cyberpunk
Listening
Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, “Stop Dragging My Heart Around,” from Nicks’ 1981 debut album Bella Donna.
Interesting Links
- “Coffee Break: Armed Madhouse – The Future of Elite Forces” (Haig Hovaness, Naked Capitalism)
- “Why Trump’s 50 Year Mortgage Scheme Is an Even Worse Idea Than You Imagined” (Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism)
- “Prison Labor Cars” (Erik Loomis, Lawyers, Guns & Money)
- “Criminal Records and Reentry Toolkit” – Since approximately a third of adult Americans have a criminal record, and conservatives are determined to complete the resurrection of the Confederacy with prisons in place of chattel slavery, this is a good resource to have.
