Illin' and Chillin'

I had actually intended on making a second post on Sunday evening, but never got around to it. After taking a nap Sunday morning in hopes of gaining enough enthusiasm to write my 650 words, I decided to walk to the grocery store. It was mid 80s at that time of the day and I wanted to get the shopping done before it got hot out.

Once I got home, I gave Dad a call. (It was Father's Day after all.)

After that, I was still uninspired with writing and so I watched "Stranger Things". A videocast that can be downloaded at StrangerThings.tv. I mention the show before as it has gotten so popular that it is going to be appearing on cable TV at some point, though I am not sure how that is going to work. Each show is of a different length (12 to 30 minutes) and the episodes aren't done on a regular schedule like a normal TV show. Don't forget, these guys are putting these together for fun and aren't doing this for any sort of profit. Anyway, I finally watched it. Basically, it is a modern day "Twilight Zone", so if you enjoy that sort of thing, you would likely enjoy this show. I found it entertaining. My only complaint is that the download is in the Quicktime format, i.e. the files are .m4v's and for technical reasons that I won't go into here, it's just a lousy format to deal with.

A couple of hours later, I came down with a migraine headache which laid me out for the rest of the day. Feel free to make the fallacious "post hoc, ergo propter hoc" conclusion that watching "Stranger Things" makes one sick. It was annoying, because it kept me from going to the Hilton to watch game 5 of the NBA finals. Instead I listened to it on my computer and slept through half of it.

The migraine never went away and so all day Monday, I did nothing but watch season 4 of M*A*S*H. Again, thanks go out to Cullen and Matt for that little treat. I didn't like losing the whole day, but my head was pounding too hard for me to do much else. I'm still not sure what the trigger was but by Monday evening it had subsided. Maybe my body just needed a day where it didn't have to think.

I slept last night from 9:30pm to 5:30am. Maybe it was my subconscious putting me back on a night sleeping schedule once again. Regardless, I woke up with the ideas I needed to write what I had wanted to write on Sunday. I ripped off 1172 words before eating breakfast and then I gave Moose a call. I told him about the idea I used to continue the story. Basically, I ripped off Charles Dickens' patented technique of having a mysterious stranger that appeared earlier in the story, come back and fix things in the precise way I needed things to be fixed. I suppose that is one of the benefits of having a character driven story with a whole lot of ancillary characters running around. I had always written this character with the intention of him having a deeper connection to the rest of the story, I just didn't know what that was until this morning.

Anyway, after Moose and I talked things out for a couple of hours, I was so inspired by the ideas we came up with, that I wrote another 831 words. It's the first time I've written over 2000 words in a day since last summer. It's funny, I have only written seven days out of the last twelve, but I have managed 8900 words on those seven days. It's a great pace. I'd love for it to continue for the entirety of the second novel. I'll keep at it.