Weeknotes #2: In which the ADHD drives the bus
Somes I feel in control of my life and sometimes it feels like I operate entirely at the whim of my brain's dodgy dopamine receptors. This week felt a lot like the latter. Don't get me wrong, I'm having a good time, but it definitely feels like I've been kicking a lot of cans down the road. It's fine. It's gonna be fine.
Must. Write. Book.
Last week I started writing a new book and made very quick progress. I thought that would slow down once I was back at work, but it really hasn't. Instead I'm probably going to hit the 30,000-word mark later today, only 11 days after I started writing. This is definitely not a normal pace for me – in the past I've been able to hit 1k a day minimum for weeks at a time, but there were days in there where that felt like a bit of a drag, whereas so far every day I've worked on this has felt like an actual joy.
The romance side of the story is also really sparking well. I don't think I've ever shipped two OCs this much and I'm surprised by how fun I'm finding it. As a fandom of one, I can declare anything I like to be canon.
One thing I haven't quite settled on yet is the tone. My setting is a post-climate-crisis dystopia. Part of me wants to go really bleak and miserable, but the other part wants to get a bit absurd and silly with it. And then sometimes I get the urge to veer more satirical, although honestly I don't trust myself to go down that path without it just becoming obnoxious. I also don't want politics to be the focus of the book, although there is a lot about the setting and characters and themes that is just innately political, so given that I would like whatever politics the book has to sit right with me. Something to keep thinking about.
The contrast in how this process is feeling compared to what it was like writing the first draft of my first book has been illuminating. When I started working on that, I was just coming off finishing a pretty long and ambitious fanfic and I was really keen to write something original, so when I had an idea that seemed promising I threw myself at it really quickly. In retrospect, I think I was more excited by the idea of writing any book than I was about writing that book, and it meant that I jumped into drafting before I'd worked out a lot of the core things I wanted from the story and its characters. I think I also bit off more than I could chew in terms of overstuffing it with plotlines and aiming for it to be a trilogy, which made wrestling it into shape even more daunting. So even if that book is currently indefinitely parked, I definitely learned some things from working on it, which I am telling myself means it's not a total write-off. Can't get everything right.
The downside of getting really obsessed with a project like this is that it can be very hard to detach from it, and everything else feels unbearably tedious. Work: bleh. Sleep: do I have to? Cleaning the house: forget about it.
Patting myself on the back for a moment
All that being said, I did deep-clean the bathroom earlier, which is a job that I hate, but someone is actually visiting next week and now I don't have to worry about coming off as a total filth goblin. So good job me.
Shopping!!!
The other dopamine source my brain has jumped on this week has been buying CDs off eBay. Have I bought a CD player yet? No, I have not. But now I have more CDs (and also a page listing all of them).
So far I've been able to resist the urge to buy enormous bundles of Now That's What I Call Music! compilations, although unfortunately the collector in me is really itching to try getting them all. Or at least some of the 90s/00s ones for the nostalgia value.
What's up with this website?
Doing anything exciting with the Ratlands has taken a backseat while I've had my head in the book, although I did add some styling to the CD page, and I've enjoyed keeping my project page up to date. I find having a log of my writing process really helpful, although I don't know how interesting it is for anyone else.
The changelog was initially intended to just cover larger changes but I'm going to try to make it more detailed so people can see content changes too, even if it becomes a bit repetitive.
Media consumption corner
I watched a few films this week but the best by far was Sentimental Value, which I was lucky enough to see at a festival. I really liked The Worst Person in the World so I was already looking forward to another collaboration between Joachim Trier and Renate Reinsve, and once I found out Stellan Skarsgård was also in the mix, my expectations went through the roof. Luckily they were met and I think this will be a contender for my favourite of the year. The central relationships (both parental and sibling) are really well drawn and I liked how the film explains the characters' behaviour over its runtime without necessarily condoning or forgiving it. The performances are fantastic and, as the cherry on top, there's also some quality Scandinavian house porn. I will definitely rewatch it once I get a chance.
At home, I finished watching This Country. Good sitcom, laughed a lot. My affection for the vicar is inexplicably verging on blorbo territory, even though I really can't explain why. I just think he's neat.
I also streamed JADE's gig at the Roundhouse, which was fantastic. If I was going to become an annoying stan about any pop girlie, it'd be her.
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