Brain Frazzling

Lack of food, no appetite, serious caffeine dependency, exhaustion, inability to concentrate, and the coffee just keeps getting stronger with no effect. Welcome to Brain Frazzling.

I've been trying to be clever - re-writing the first few chapters of a new MS I'm working on, one of an old story, and thinking about really giving the protagonist a stronger voice and a much more prominent and clear character. I've pulled the entire piece apart, leaving - maybe - 30% of the basic original plot still in there (I imagine most of that will probably go too). Of what little plot is still there, a basic thread of the skeleton is the only thing that remains and I'm hoping in understanding the character, their personality and their past better so I will hopefully be able to create a more believable, "real" character and a plot that is more character-driven.

By that, I mean going forward with the story (i.e. the protagonist & friends' lives) by thinking about what that driving character would do, how she would move forward and live her life and react to different things that happen - and for that to work it clearly needs to be character-based. Which means both myself, and (hopefully) the reader, will need to understand her.

Unfortunately, trying to pull apart a ready-made character in a book in class is a lot easier to do than trying to do it yourself from scratch, and I'm not sure really how well I'm doing with that right now.

The thing is there's one big problem in all of this - my brain no longer works. My concentration is shot and I'm not making the best decisions or writing anything constructive in the least anymore. I have notes - lots of notes. But that's almost the entire extent of it, although at least that's something. I didn't have such great ideas before. I've been reading back on what I've done so far and my brain is barely processing it - although I did manage to recognise that I accidentally wrote that a character was "blow-drying her hand"... Instead of her hair.

It's hard to be motivated when the only thing you can think about is getting an IV of some serious full-bean and you just can't feel your brain anymore. It's even harder to string a thought together, let alone a sentence and then being able to write it, when you've got ADD - for the total opposite reason to the usual one. I'm even struggling with Twitter, and that's just 140 characters. Reading them is hard enough right now - and since writing them is involves actual thinking, there's not a lot coming from me anymore.

So I've come to the conclusion that to be a writer, and to write, you need to have all your faculties intact - and most importantly, have the ability to sleep. Or the superhuman ability to go for months of sleep-deprivation without wanting to resort to living on seriously hardcore coffee and chocolate cake chocolate penguins.

Oh, hey - that's an actual thought I managed.... Although it did involve chocolate, so maybe that got my attention a little more than usual.

Going to go now and enjoy the novelty of an almost-coherent thought - and maybe go back and stare blankly at the screen again whilst pretending to actually do some work.

Background Work

Funny how these were meant to be about music. Then they end up being about writing. Is that priorities changing, or finding another string to my creative bow?... I hope it's the second, I'd hate to accidentally give up on the music.

But recently I've been thinking hard about the stories, writing stories, and using my "story-writing" abilities from songwriting for writing book(s). Last night I spent, quite probably, nearly the entire night contemplating background support and how relevant it is to stories as well as songs.

With songs, the background is the backing - the cacophony of instruments that the voice (story) sits on - and I realised the obvious (I don't realise the obvious with music, it's just too obvious to consider consciously) - that clearly without that backing there is no song, no support, no music - the "story" is bland. Accapella rarely works well - and it doesn't work at all when you're pushing particular music genres... Imagine writing hard rock with raging guitars and banging drums! It just wouldn't be rock - it would be a weirdo screaming strange things, and they would quite probably be carted away to the padded cells.

When I write any, and all, songs, I always start building the entire backing from the beginning, and never move on to the next section until I've created the complete sound for that section. Starting at the intro, then the first verse, then chorus (etc, etc), the music is built section by section in its (near) complete form so I immediately have the whole picture of where I've been, and subsequently I have a clear idea of where I'm going.

Now in storytelling, surely it must be the same? Without character background and circumstance created at the very least in your head - if not actually mentioned and to be peppered through the book - you surely have little chance of creating anything of substance. Just like if you only put down piano and drums in a song, you're going to have a very thin story, and support for that story, with just that menial effort. And just like in our own lives, how can we know where we're going if we don't really understand where we've been?

Ergo I was thinking that to create a decent - and efficient - story, I definitely need to do the equivalent of putting down all the instruments to make a full and complete (ish) backing - only in book-form. By this I mean create full, complete and clear lives, pasts, thoughts and personalities for the characters, and implement them clearly in dialogue, interaction, reaction and character thoughts - especially with the protagonist. And all this to be considered, really, before writing starts. Or shortly afterwards, at least. It's only in this way will they really come to life and start moving the story themselves.

The one main thing you study in English Lit is obviously character dynamics, character motivation, their reactions and behaviour to circumstances, and their interaction with each other. You're getting none of this if you don't bother putting the legwork in first. You'd think after putting the bother into studying it, I'd realise and remember that. Sometimes I'm too lazy to be that bright.

Now I've personally so far been very guilty of not quite grasping this concept and been very lazy about such important details - frankly hoping they would just turn up. Naively.

Now I'm going back to the drawing board, to create these characters so I know them as well as their fictitious parents do. I hope it's going to make my writing a little more coherent and a lot more interesting.

Hoping more that I'll do a good job and I'm going to get it right.

(Creative) Absence Just Makes The Brain Go "Meh"...

That's just great... My confidence has taken quite a beating now. I've tried reading through something that I once thought might actually make a little sense - and not only did it not make any sense, it was a rambling mess I just wanted to cry at. Unfortunately, the lazy part of me just cannot be bothered going back to the drawing board with the new ideas I have for this "story" (this would be the part of me that wishes these things would simply write themselves). On the other hand, if my creative side would inhale some of that waterfall of coffee that I consume every day and wake up again, I would actually really enjoy the challenge of taking characters I think I actually like and think may have potential and reinventing them and their lives. 

The idea of being organised with spreadsheets and cross-referenced bullet-points and notes would also cheer me up no end usually as well... However, the idea of being proactive at the moment just makes me want to go back to sleep. My Get Up And Go has Got Up And Gone and there seems to be little steam left in the little engine to get it back again, and with it goes my arse to actually want to do anything about writing something new. Which is a bit of an exasperation - if I could muster up the energy to care enough to feel such a thing as exasperation. Currently, it's more like a... "Meh..."

My favourite solution to this problem is generally a continuous slow-drip IV of Full-Bean Starbucks with extra espresso - it makes sure there's not too much blood clogging up the coffee in my veins. However, this doesn't seem to be quite working at the moment thanks to being whacked over the head (and run right through the lungs) with a horrible chest infection that's left me coughing like an eighty-a-minute chain-smoker with emphysema. It's not been the best way to start off a new year, I rather must admit - and it's been playing havoc with my ability to give a tiny rat's ass about anything, including whether the things that I write actually make any sense (and I really doubt they actually do). 

I have rather gathered so far that when actually writing something, you have to actually write it - being a passive spectator doesn't really cut the biscuit, it would seem, at all. So far I seem to have come up with gobbledygook with the writing, and I've not even bothered with the music (see I'm sensible in that regard with the one thing I'm experienced in - I've left the music well alone!) and I am getting royally frustrated by the fact that my brain has turned to mush, and finding out that the ability to breathe properly is rather a useful thing when trying to do something creative. I have also managed to gather that having tizzy-fits and getting hypnotized by iPlayer (I blame the Dickens Christmas Specials & new Sherlock Holmes series that have been shown... Oh, and Downton Abbey, of course... Yes, I know that's actually ITV, it's almost the same thing...) and Netflix is also not particularly helpful, and occasionally detrimental - especially when it makes you feel like curling up in a ball and giving up because you know you're never going to be as good as Dickens/ Conan Doyle/ Fellowes. Well, not outside of your imagination, anyway. 

Despite all this, I'm going to go and have a bash at reorganizing things for the characters and the story. I am. I will. I'll get round to it... I  have a notebook - does that count? I even have ideas... Despite the lack of detail and the fact I have no idea how to articulate them at the moment, or the current ability to untangle them from my yearning for more coffee because I'm so bloody knackered, I'm determined to really try. Perhaps if I get out my spreadsheets again and start organizing myself in a way that I'm familiar with, I might get some brain momentum in being geeky and having fun - colouring them all in, rearranging them in different orders, dividing them by chapters and characters and key details... And then probably forgetting that I'm actually trying to write a novel and instead getting carried away in creating pretty worksheets. 

Maybe I'll stick to my notebook... 

Losing The Plot...

I've been working on being aware of the artistic side of writing - finding a voice for the characters, working a story that actually moves, finding a style and voice for my own writing... But it's like everything I ever learned whilst studying English Literature somehow went in through one ear and out the other, as if I never even bothered with it and wasted two years trying to learn more about it. Right now I'm wondering how I actually managed to pass, because I clearly learned nothing!

I tried, I really did. But I got side-tracked again. I get caught up in circles of dialogue that (when I read it back) I realise don't really end up going anywhere, or adding to the characters/ story. It's annoying - I know better than that, in theory at least. Then I forget what I was trying to focus on and end up somewhere that I had no intention of going, and end up list in useless drivel that makes very little sense - in general and in relevance to the "story". And with what I'm coming up with, I use that term loosely.

I went back and thought I came up with an interesting way of structuring the plotline. Then it went out the window as "stuff" just got generated instead, and I got caught up in other ideas and the word-count. I'm definitely going to have to back and look at it again - instead of trying to stick to plot and structure, I end up ridiculously over-emotional about the characters and end up dumping them in situations that are pointless, rather boring, and based solely in their own misery and confusion. Then it turns into a disorganised mess that takes another week for me to simply work out where to even start sorting it out. It's not ideal.

I need to go back to the drawing-board and write up a new, more specific storyline structure that's far more focused than what I have now. Maybe if I get more organised with what I want to do with it, I might actually get somewhere and be a little more productive. It would also help if I actively remembered and implemented all the points from studying the great works in English Lit and used them constructively with my own writing.

So, as an IT geek, I'm thinking notes, cross-references bullet-points and a whole lot of interesting and coloured spreadsheets. And I have also worked out that forgetting everything I learned in studying English is not a good idea when trying to write something that should at least be vaguely coherent.

Grey Matter

One's hair is becoming the wrong colour, especially at this age. If hair should become wrong colour, let it be from buying wrong hair dye... NOT from going prematurely grey (I've barely turned 30 - it is not OK!).

It's very disconcerting when your once dark-brown roots come through streaked with silver - especially when silver starts to seriously outnumber the brown. And you're not 50. I start to look old, even though I'm really not - and it's irritating too, as roots need to be done more religiously. It's one thing to have brown roots, it's totally another thing to have grey ones. It's rather unacceptable, and frankly a little discouraging. At 30, hair dye should be still used for fun, not necessity.

I was reading that a deficiency in vitamin B and/ or high and continuous levels of stress hormones (adrenaline, cortisol, etc) ravaging your hair-colour (melanin?) stores so there's none left to use on the hair itself to colour it in. I have done, and probably still do suffer from both, so I suppose that's a no-brainer really... Apparently, the amount of under 30s with greying hair has doubled recently - something like 32% are such afflicted as I with this problem. Stress being the common cause. Obviously. It's probably from the vicious circle of finding one little grey hair, panicking, and then subsequently causing the other buggers to turn up, causing more to happen, causing more panic, etc, etc. It would just never end. Until you were totally grey, then you just might start pulling your hair out instead.

On the bright side though, I have realised this phenomenon will make the dye come out better and brighter (red - as in bright, real actual red - can be rather rubbish on brown hair, as they're rather incompatible). Truth be told, the fact my favourite hair dye actually states on the box that it is "unsuitable for grey hair" because the outcome will be "too vibrant" gives me some optimism about having more silver locks than the oppressive and annoying taint of brown. Once almost totally grey, I'll actually, for once, end up with the colour on the box, instead of the crappy barely-there colour on the back under "dark-brown/black" sample that is undistinguishable from the start colour and rather looks like they haven't really bothered.

Now, what I don't understand is that the people behind what is supposed to be a new-fangled miracle pill for preventing the annoying problem of grey hair is actually L'Oreal. And given that L'Oreal is probably the biggest hair dye company ever, isn't that just shooting yourself in the foot?

I say it'd make a better option make a hair-dye pill instead. Take it and it turns the melanin a different colour - whatever's on the box. That way is finally be able to have my hair fire-engine red without the 90% peroxide required to do so - it'd be win-win. Not only would you get rid of the grey, you could then turn it any colour, and - better still - never have to use that stinking, god-awful bottle of vile goop (that never looks like the colour you're trying to get), which leaves your bathroom looking like its been in a paint-balling war, with gloves that never fit, no matter what, and leaves your hands looking like you've taken part in a massacre (or it does if your colour of choice is red).

I'd really like one right now, in fact. Because I just really can't be buggered to going to all that trouble - again. After just a few short weeks since I did it last, I don't want to turn my bathroom into something that looks like a cheap alchemy lab where a horrific massacre took place, and then look like an alien took over my head for a good couple of hours afterwards - before I turn my shower dark pink, as usual, whilst it all washes out again. All in the name of pretty-coloured hair.

What a farce women have to go to, so we can have nice, coloured-in (and not grey) hair - it really is amazing what we put up with in the name of beauty, and in the 21st century this ritual still hasn't really changed. We can put a man on the moon and keep our entire life in a tiny square of plastic (BB/iPhone), but we still have to put messy goo on out hair every six weeks to make it look pretty. You can tell the world is ruled by men.

So now I really just have one other thing to say... I'll really like to just take the hair dye pill now, thanks.

Music & Words

Banging head against brick wall. Books should write themselves, and immediately be written perfectly. It's annoying when you get a new idea in the middle of an old one and then you have to and rewrite it because it's probably a better idea than the first...

And the worst thing is you don't even really know if it is at all until you've spent all that time writing it and you read it back. Or better still, someone else reads it back. Actually, that's not really better if they're just going to tell you it's actually rubbish and make you cry...

They're so much harder than songs - the only problem with songs is the music software you have to write it on. And they're shorter - you don't write a 120,000 word song. Unless you're writing what is the equivalent - which probably would be a symphony, or maybe an opera.

Maybe it's because I've spent most of my life writing songs, I've actually figured out how to do it and do it right (ish) though nearly two decades of practice - and a lot of mistakes. Although I've been writing stories since forever, it's never been continuous and I never worked on developing it in any real way or found my mojo in it before.

Recently I've been writing a lot, and editing, in the last few months and I've started to realise that I have not really previously developed a really definitive writing style/ mojo/ voice. Even listening back to really old songs of mine, I've been told - and I can clearly hear - the "DelphineMusic" style, even if it is it's infancy. Anyone who knows my voice and music [style] would recognise the songs as being mine.

When I read back over manuscripts it's clear (and I've been told) they're over-stuffed, clunky, run around pointlessly, and have little sense of direction, with not much characterisation. All the things I'm anal about with music, I leave lapsed and ignored in the stories, which I've realised is probably due to a combination of laziness and no practice. This lackadaisical attitude has left what (I think) may be good, sweet stories as nothing but rambling fluff with little substance, which is Bad. I would never do that to a song, I would have never done that in an essay, and I have decided to stop sodding doing it in manuscripts.

My problem is I get bogged down in detail (you may have managed to gather this by now having read this...!) - and unfortunately it's the details that don't matter I get bogged down in. If it was character detail it would probably work, but it's always the boring crap no one ever gives a shit about, even when it happens in your own lives.

I've been practicing writing, trying to find my voice, and then developing it - without resorting to writing rambling bull-crap when I get side-tracked by more rambling detail that would put the most avid insomniac into a coma. I'm hoping I'm going to get there, because I like writing. And I want to write books that I will be as happy with as my songs - where even if others don't like them, I have enough faith in them and happy enough with them to stand up for them myself, and have something that at least I like.

...All right - Rant over now!