Category: #Soundtracking2019

#Narrating2019/#Soundtracking2019/General Writing Post/Internet of Words/Short Stories/Writing Projects

Intro

It’s December on Sunday. Probably time to get organised, then.

What to Expect in December

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Yes, there will be GIFs, don’t worry, all of that is in hand. It’s taken a while to work out the scheduling, as is inevitably the case in these situations, but we are now READY. There will be content in December on the @InternetofWords Twitter account as follows:

9am: The December Short Story is STARDUST. There’s no snow, just rain, a Diner in the middle of forever and a fry cook called Joseph. That’s all you get for now…

Stardust

1pm: It’s Christmas haiku / Seasoned accompaniment / With added pictures.

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5pm: And then, yes, IT’S HAPPENING.

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THE GIFT OF GIF-MAS IS COMING PEOPLE PREPARE YOURSELVES (and maybe wrap it better.)

#Narrating2019 will be along at its scheduled spot of 9.30pm 😀

A Pile of Balls

That seems like a decent amount of content to elicit some festive cheer, WHAT SAY YOU?

#Narrating2019/#Soundtracking2019/Art/Poetry Projects/Internet of Words/Short Stories/Writing Projects

Let it Snow

December is not far away, and on it’s arrival, I’ve decided to try and be as thematic as it is possible to be without blowing the look and feel of the rest of the website. Therefore, we have a graphic which combines the three elements you’ll see in the #Soundtracking2019 and #Narrating2019 playlists, plus a return to the monthly short story after we have caught up from August.

There is also going to be some Instagram haiku, because why the hell not?

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I also do a 24 Days of GIF-mas thing on the other Twitter account, this year we’ll be having a bit of fun with it rather than it being the serious, poetic part of proceedings. I’ll be honest with you, this is the first Christmas for many years that I’m really looking forward to, which is odd considering that I’ll not be able to eat or drink as is normally the case… but it doesn’t matter. There’s so much else to look forward to.

I have a tea advent calendar, the excitement for which really is off the charts. Today was the planning session for this year’s ‘Make your Own Gifts’ operation, which I hope is going to be as much fun as it was when this was done a couple of years ago. The tree will be going up next weekend, and after that you can expect me to be as festive as possible… because it means I can ignore the political chaos going on in the UK.

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The short story is planned, and I’ll be beginning the process of picking out tracks for the playlists next week. Hopefully this organisational head start that’s been granted by the success of NaNo (update on Monday) is going to spill over into lots of other areas going forward. I’ve also done a lot this week to rationalise my own virtual spaces, which makes me feel a great deal more comfortable working within them.

Sometimes, all you need to feel happy is the space in which to do so.

#Narrating2019/#Soundtracking2019/Here is the News/NaNoWriMo 2019/Poetry/Writing Projects

Back to Life

As my birthday has come and gone this means there’s a week left until we’re into November. It would be useful, I think, to try and make a return to what used to be considered as Normal Service around these parts, but the loss of my PC yesterday (and the fact I’m typing this on a keyboard on my knees on the sofa) has rather put a crimp in proceedings. NO MATTER.

It is time to get this ramshackle shebang back on track.

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What that means is POETRY EVERY DAY (as has been successfully happening with my #FaithIoW prompts) but with perhaps a little more interactivity than was previously the case. It’s nice to have work every day on Instagram too, and 2020 will be when I try and make that platform work a bit harder for me than is previously the case. It is also high time we had some YouTube content back.

Then there’s the short stories: the last one from August was left hanging. What will happen in November is that will be reposted and completed, before we go into NEW WORK in December. Also, yes, I PROMISE. EX/WHI will be back once the NaNo gubbins is all done and dusted. I know only too well what happens when my brain becomes overloaded with narrative, it all goes horribly Pete Tong and nobody has time for that.

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However, the overriding priority right now is to get this keyboard off my knees and onto a desk. That’s being delivered tomorrow (reclaimed from a dusty industrial unit) and once the front room’s organised, the sky will indeed be the limit. My new wall awaits, ready for a wipe clean perpetual planner and a fucktonne of Post It Notes.

I am ready.

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Beautiful Dreamer

Seven days into the October #FaithIoW project, things are going pretty well.

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The biggest single challenge currently remains the photography side of things, especially as there’s a phenomenal amount of Real Life still going on post my husband’s operation. However, content is planned for the whole of this week, which is a distinct improvement on where things were when this journey began. Therefore, I’ll take this as a success, even if the speed of other organisation isn’t going as I’d wish.

This week will see a couple of abortive projects resurrected, and some important groundwork for the beginning of November.

ternary

The NaNoWriMo site has finally undergone an upgrade: although not technically perfect, I can now organise my work for next month already. We’ll talk more about Ternary in the coming weeks, but I have high hopes for this project. It also provides a much-needed alternative to poetry, which is going to get a lot of love to meet some important late October deadlines.

There’s also going to be a return to the normal business of daily poetry, short stories and YouTube playlists: I have a story to finish from August too, and am working out the best way to do this along with the abortive playlists that were never finished when I got sick. The most sensible idea, it occurs to me, is to just carry on where I left off… I wonder, is that feasible…?

Only one way to find out, I suppose…

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Here Comes the Summer

It’s taken a while, but FINALLY I’m ready to get back to the coalface of daily content. It won’t happen straight away on Monday either: we have June’s short story to edit and post before anything else of note takes place. However, there’s a plan in place to get everything back on track. However, July’s full of some other rather lovely experiences…

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For three days next week, I’m in LeedsLeedsLeedsLeedsLeedsLeeds doing summat so totally far out of my comfort zones it should probably carry a health warning. NO MATTER I’ll be talking about Mslexicon in more detail on Wednesday, and why if I’m ever going to make some headway with the career of writing, there have to be things that bother and perturb me. It’s all part of therapy.

Then we have new hashtag YouTube lists, a new short story… but no poetry because I’m trying summat new. We’ve already established the working order in our previous blog post. I have an idea that has been knocking around for a few weeks now, plus a running order of titles looking for poems to accompany them. Once there’s some meat on the bones of this direction, you’ll hear about it.

Festivals

In effect, July’s just more of the same with an occasional stop and look about, the odd poetry submission and some faffing about in other parts of the world. I’m off to Belgium at the weekend, where a small cycle race kicks off for another year and I get to meet an old friend of my husband I’ve probably not seen in person for over twenty years. It’s odd how life throws up random stuff like this, but that’s what makes everything so interesting…

Now, I suppose I’d better start archiving the last month’s stuff…

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I am What I Am

It was bound to happen eventually after a month of fairly heavy-duty counselling and the loss of my husband’s mum. This whole project only exists because I’m lucky enough to be able to do so in time that’s not taken up with being a carer and a mother. For the last week, poetry had to take a back seat, because other stuff became more important.

Now, however, there’s space to breathe again, so it’s high time we worked out June’s content.

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Starting in June, we’re using two media buzzwords, fused together as an overall theme for proceedings. Until the ‘Places of Poetry’ project is completed (which will hopefully be mid month) the weekly verse continues to take a back seat. There’ll be two new playlists (plus I promise faithfully all the old ones will make it to the website) plus a short story based on an offhand comment someone made last month on my Twitter feed.

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What has happened in the last six weeks or so is a subtle shift in how new work is created and edited, based in part on continued and very useful feedback. Hopefully this will show not only in the blog posts, but across the full spectrum of written output. There’s a lot to be learnt, and it is only two years ago that all of this began in earnest. Some days, it feels like a whole lot longer.

I look forward to seeing you for this new stuff in the usual places starting next Friday.

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Drink the Elixir

Right, back to the grind starting Monday, with ALL NEW OUTPUT because there’s no excuse after (effectively) a month off. Sure, there’s a ton of things that could be done too but for now, time to sharpen the existing skill set. Go with what you know, right?

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You already know therefore that April’s short story is one of the set that I started this month for another project… so, a little teaser might be in order, to give an idea of what’s coming. A terrorist with cold feet and a policewoman in the midst of a crisis of conscience walk into a place of worship… 

Starting April 1st for 30 days: 9am (@MoveablePress) and 4pm (@InternetofWords)

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Sometimes, simple is best. There’s millions of songs out there, but all I’m interested in are the ones with a single word title. The 30 best, in my opinion, will begin appearing in the @MoveablePress Twitter feed at 9.30pm every night from April 1st. Hooray for having scheduling back and working again!

drink the elixir

ALSO #Narrating2019 is BACK after a brief hiatus: having struggled for a few months when it came to content, a rethink took place and now, all told, things are a lot less stressful. Every night from 9.30pm on the @InternetofWords Twitter feed, it’s time to talk drinking: what you want, how you take it, and more importantly what that stuff does to your body…

GREEN

Poetry’s been produced a bit differently as well this month: both haiku and micro-poems, for the entire four week period, are presented under the same banner. I had thought about maybe 30 verses of both as an overall, arching theme but that would need a little more organisational groundwork than currently exists, but is likely to happen later in the year. For now, eight words have been picked as titles, all relevant to the changing season.

Micropoetry @ 9am and Haiku @ 5pm both on the @InternetofWords Twitter account, before poems are archived to the blog on Saturday and Sunday.

There will be other stuff too, but for now, this is enough. See you bright and early on Monday morning 😀

#Narrating2019/#Soundtracking2019/Art/Poetry Projects/Short Stories/Writing Projects

Love What You Do

I’ve made it to 2pm on a Wednesday afternoon and am still going strong. This is a largely unusual phenomena: normally at this point in the day there’s be flagging, copious amounts of caffeine and that uncomfortable pit-of-the-stomach feel it was all going a bit off course. There’s been a hiccup (next time, save your CV somewhere you’re not likely to delete it) but apart from that, it is all going surprisingly well. The reason for this may come as something of a shock.

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A month’s worth of reconstituting old work has been a wake up call: amazingly, not everything that’s been written for the website is awful. In fact, some of the weekly output turned out to be surprisingly thoughtful with far more depth than previously recalled. It has ignited within me the desire to keep plugging away at the old stuff, polishing and tightening as I go.

As a result, next month is going to continue the trend. This has also provided inspiration to start a new collection of poems (graphic above) which have been written in the three month period since I was first published. There are enough fragments and pieces of work from January to March to put together a twelve poem collection. What I do with it once done is now up for discussion…

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I’ll be borrowing one of the (many) short story ideas we came up with this month as the one to run with via Twitter in April, plus we’ll see both #Soundtracking2019 and #Narrating2019 back in their daily 9.30pm slots. After a period where it was impossible to schedule anything via Twitter’s own Tweetdeck platform, harmony is now restored, and I have the rest of this month’s content already lined up and ready to go. It makes life so much easier…

The much-discussed residency proposal needs to be in for Friday. Then, over the weekend, it’s time to bring down the calendars and begin April’s planning cycle. There’s already a ton of stuff on the To Do list…

 

 

 

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Ballroom Blitz

This weekend, for the first time for a while, I willingly wrote some poems.

All around me, almost constantly, is the reminder of ‘it’s not what you know but who you know’ that makes the difference. I could try and pretend it isn’t that way but like it or not, this is part of your rite of passage, in whatever new fandom you find yourself working within. Call it a community, commune, movement or any number of other adjectives to describe a bunch if people with a similar interest. Needless to say, you’re in fandom.

Entering the Poetry Fandom in my early 50’s is quite intimidating, but this is not unusual. There are lots of women doing this, I even read an article about some of them. The key to escaping mediocrity’s gravity is to get published or lucky on Social media. Both need a phenomenal amount of work. I’ve only really been at this for a shade under two years. That’s no time at all, and there’s this continuous reminder, day in and day out, that I’m not doing enough.

Fuck me, woman, you only just got started.

I’m ready to work again: there’s a personal project being tinkered with starting this week (once I have a residency proposal sent off to the local art collective) plus the normal run of creative outputs, but let’s be honest, none of this is keeping me in chocolate and new trousers, so it is time to see if the Dial a Rhyme service might have some merit. Honestly, what’s the worse that could happen?

On top of this, there’s a bunch of other things happening, at least one of which is deeply personal. I gotta hope that doesn’t derail everything else, but it’s always a chance. That’s the thing with life, you never know what’s going to happen next. So, do you sit and wait for opportunities to come drop into your lap, or do you get yourself out there, waving your wares to the World, in the vain hope that something might stick?

This new career isn’t going to fashion itself. Down to the business of shameless self-promotion.

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28 Days Later

A surprising amount of organisation took place at the weekend, balanced by a solid amount of Gaming in PJ’s. Getting the balance right between work and relaxation can often be a tough ask, especially in periods such as this when there are a lot of domestic, familial responsibilities on top of everything else. However, there’s planning in progress: even though this might so far be a day behind schedule, it’s far from disastrous.

#hellolist

It will help matters greatly that the month starts and ends on a Friday, however. The reminder that we’re less than two weeks from my poetry reading debut looms large (must send that e-mail to the organisers tomorrow about expenses, add that to the list) plus there’s a ton of stuff for March already jostling for attention. How did everything suddenly get so important, all at once? More importantly, how is there able to be thought at least a month ahead of time…

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I’m particularly proud of January’s short story, and February will be continuing the more eclectic direction. Here’s a reminder that all of the stories are available to view in one place: if you feel like leaving feedback, I’d love to hear it. I know the stories are popular (the joys of website and Twitter metrics confirm that) but the personal touch really does make my day.

Time to go back to the groundwork…

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