Lots of words have fallen out of my brain, and onto the keyboard …
On the 20-November-2019, I had an idea; writing. I mean, to write. I actually mean to write regularly. I wondered if I could consistently write something on a weekly basis. I didn't want it to be of a dear-diary nature, I'm rubbish at those. I wanted it to be something that others could read, if they wanted to.
Six days later, my first article Debate, was released. I guess I'm more of a burst-writer. By that I mean, I can sit down with intent and write a whole piece in a single sitting. I'm doing that now. I'm not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing, but it is my thing and I've begun to own it.
Titles have always been a problem for me, or rather they haven't really. I sit down, and the working title always presents itself immediately. I then get down to actually writing it. After writing that first article, with the working title of Debate, I knew that I should come up with a catchy click-bait title, but to be brutally honest, I just couldn't be bothered. It wasn't really that I couldn't be bothered, it was actually that I would rather spend my creative output on the contents rather than the marketing-friendly title. Yes, I know that I shouldn't see it like that, but there we have it. After a few articles, I kind of liked the anti-marketing nature of the titles, and so they stuck.
In terms of topics, I have never planned them. I have just assumed that they would appear to me, when I needed to write them. That seems to have worked out ok, so far.
This will be the 34th in the line of articles that I have written, weekly. In writing them, over 35,000 words have fallen out of my head and I've managed to catch most of them on this keyboard.
My approach to the Photos and the Music, was to first write the article, then scroll through my photo library of 55,000 photos, and pick one that I seemed to like. Usually it wasn't directly related to the article topic, but it was the internal creative-reaction to the writing itself. The music had a similar approach, but with additional self-imposed rules. For reasons that I can't grasp, I decided that I would not choose a particular band more than once. The first choice was Moloko; I've wanted to choose more of their content since, but using my rules I can't. Again, the music wasn't directly related to the topic, but was always chosen after writing the article and after selecting the photo. I'm not sure this approach actually added anything at all, but there you go.
I've never been a word counter either, but had the vague notion that each article should be around the 1,000 word mark. I wouldn't stress about it, just see what fell out of my head.
All of which retrospective musing, gets us to here.
The creative inspiration for the last two articles hasn't arrived until late in the week, which got me thinking.
The result of that thinking event, is that I am going on a metaphysical vacation.
I've written a few times, about the importance of travel. Not so much the end points, but the bits in between. I've recently spoken about steering my metaphorical boat through the philosophical world.
On the 17-March-2019, I wrote a short piece titled, Destination: Unknown. It expressed the notion of journey, and the importance of removing the stress of destination.
That is my intent.
What will my journey entail? Well, I'm editing a non-fiction book I've written. I'm about to started writing a new novel. I'm thinking about recording a podcast. I've always got the notion of a short film in my head. Perhaps none of those, perhaps some of those. Then again, I might just amble through the field of humanity, and see what flowers I bump into.
So about here, the here and now of this series. I've determined that there will be an interlude. Not a stop, or a conclusion. Some may call it a creative pause. Others may call it an opportunity for you to read all 34 articles again; nigelderbyshire.substack.com/archive
Think of it as an intermission. One where you can pop out, get some over priced ice-cream, and perhaps a gin & tonic.
Random Visual
Why select one, when you can select all?
Check out all the previous photos here
Music Requirement
PSY - Gangnam Style. I’ve wanted to add this one for such a long time. It’s iconic, it’s fun, it’s silly, it’s happy. This is the video that broke YouTube. Released in July 2012, it was the first video to get more than 1 Billon views, which YouTube never thought would happen - they had to make changes to allow for more than 1 Billion views. Today, it has 3,692,385,230 views. This particular version is from the Seoul Plaza Live Concert, on 4-October-2012 (even this video has almost 33 Million views). I love this version; the total involvement of the crowd makes you feel happy inside. As someone said in the comments of the video, “Battery charge before this song, 2%. Battery charge after this song: 4%”. I think that says it all.
Check out all the previous music here
Footnotes
Remember to hit the cute like-heart; wondering what all this is about? Find out here.