Like dancing up all night

It seems I drank quite a lot of lead last night. The symptoms are there. My brain feels a lot heavier today than it did yesterday. There can be on other explanation.

Runaway bus

The definition of "moron". Someone that looks up bus times from Borås to Göteborg for Saturday but looks at Friday. Moron *points to self*

I'm trying to feel more well adjusted than I really am, which is, I guess, the human condition.

The definition of "geek".

I'm at some friends' place in Borås. Why, you may ask. Not getting into that now. Not vital to the definition.

They pull out three different movies from a well-stocked DVD shelf (vital to the definition of another kind of geek: they have a better version of Jaws than I do. Must...upgrade...), and ask, "Which movie should we watch?".

We can't decide. One friend says, "Let's roll the dice to decide". Excellent, geek-friendly idea. Applause all around.

One problem. No dice.

Hence: online dice.

Ladies and gentlemen, "geek" is hereby defined *points to self*

Runaway Train

Right. I have been known, on occasion, to vent my frustration at the inadequateness (it's a word) of SL, the company that runs the busses, subways and commuter trains of Stockholm. Every year they seem to express surprise at the snow, and they are completely worthless at letting their passengers know what's going on. One would think they are the worst at what they do. And I tend to live under that illusion. Today I am reminded that they still have a lot to learn when it comes to being inept. SJ, I salute you. Today's relatively simple journey from A to B has turned into a farce of near Basil Fawltian proportions. Fuck you. Fuck you very much.

The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will

Back in the real world after three days of writing exercises, workshopping and hanging around intensely creative people. In the real world, I'm battling a cold that sent me home early today, and trying to wrap my head around a lot of stuff going on at work. The next 12 months are going to be extremely interesting, work-wise. In a very positive, and positively exhausting, way.

Physically, I sure wasn't energized by the weekend, but my mind is in overdrive. All that creativity rubs off on me.

Here's some stuff I wrote this weekend.
- Three, four, sometimes five times a month, I spend the afternoon on top of the water tower, watching people through my telescopic sight.
(the above was the result of a writing exercise. And on some level inspired by a Strong Like Bear song)
- Dreams are the fragments of other worlds, trying to push through the veil of reality, to be born.
- For some reason, I always fantasized about dismantling that refrigerator.

I bring a lot of fragments and disjointed sentences back from Västerberg. Ideas, embryos, just words. The best stolen idea this time around was of a memory morgue (Livia's term), as in an actual morgue of memories, where they are dissected and autopsied. For what reason, I don't know. I might find out later. The other one was of a man that makes himself different people depending on who he meets (sort of Katti's idea). Both of them sound promising, at least to me.

Oh. I also learned that a crutch can look like it's been constructed by Heckler & Koch. Who knew?

About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment

We're a much depleted Creative Writing class at Västerberg Folkhögskola (check out the beard pic here!) this year. Yesterday we were 14 students and our teacher/mentor, as well as a guest lecturer. Some more people are expected in tomorrow. Two years back we were 30+, and considered splitting the class into two groups for workshopping. So maybe less than 20 is a good number.

As always, the atmosphere here inspires and energizes me, and I get lots of ideas for new stories, or parts of stories. We didn't workshop that much yesterday, so today and Sunday will probably bring more story seeds or at least the opportunity to steal more words and sentences.

Yes, I steal words and sentences. And ideas. See, if someone reads their text I might get caught on a single word or a turn of phrase, and all of a sudden an outline for a story or a character or a place or whatever springs to life in my mind. So I write it down. I always ask before using them though.

I find it interesting that such a wide variety of people are involved with the class. We have writing in common, but apart from that, we're quite a motley crew. The age of participants spans from twenties to I would guess eighties or at least seventies, and there is a scattering of Americans and Germans amongst us Swedes. Occupations vary wildly.

We come together around the act of worship that is writing. Because there is something near-religious about the way many of us approach the written word. For me, it's sometimes a very spiritual experience, when the words seem to have a life of their own, just pouring onto the page. I can't really describe it, that state of near-disconnect, when it's not so much me writing something as just being an outlet, a conduit, for words and worlds.

This approach to writing, the uncontrolled way, is something I can only give in to if I already have something written. I tend to be very structured about writing. If I get an idea I might jot down a phrase or a few words in my phone or on my laptop, and then I usually construct something, an embryo of a story or a short scene, in my head, over days. When I sit down to write, I have at least an idea of where I'm going. Later, once this is down on paper (or in most cases, hard drive), I can do “writing frenzies”, as they are termed within our class, which basically is all about just writing, no matter what comes out. My frenzies, however, are an extension of what I've already written.

So maybe it's not so much about totally relinquishing control as it is about writing uncontrollably but with direction. Sort of. Again, hard to describe.

In many ways I'm still immature as a writer. I think I know what works for me, but I still have a lot to learn. Too bad I didn't start writing seriously sooner...

An important question

I could survive for 57 seconds chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor

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