Getting here.

It’s hard, isn’t it? Trying to fit everything together, laying out your unfinished jigsaw, your life’s works, thinking:

“How did I get here?”

You try to put back the pieces, but some won’t fit. Take a hammer to them. The fragments still don’t quite match up, and wait! The colours are all wrong there.

Stop. Take stock. Hunt for clues.

Photos are flat, steam-rolled with the life squashed out of them. They never show you what you want to know, anyway. Can you even trust your memories?

They’re alive, you know.

They wander around inside your skull. They grow and they die. They eat each other, sometimes, which is just confusing if you let it go on for too long.

You can go on for too long if you don’t catch yourself.

The past twists, knots behind you.
It happened, sure. But what is ‘it’?

The present is but a single knot in your tapestry.
Not much, I know.

Ahead? In the future lies:
_____     ___ _____  ____ _______ _  ___ _    _    _          _

Christmas Eve.

This is my attempt to warm up my writing skills on a cold Christmas night. Merry Christmas everyone, wherever you may be!

Qc.

***

The night before Christmas was like any other night.

Quite a bit chillier than the darkshines of summer, and brisker than autumn’s ruffled hair, but it was dark and coccooning, as night should be.

Right.

I’m not going to lie. I’m quite hit-and-miss when it comes to this blog. As soon as anything in my life starts to slip, this blog goes sailing out the window faster than a liberal canary. But yes, I’m back again, and hopefully will be sticking around for the foreseeable future.

And this time, I have a question for you all.

What do you think about writers and social networking? I’m curious, because a lot of creative people seem to use services like Twitter (the main example). I’m just posting out the odd thing here and there on these other services, but how do the rest of you use it (or not)? Are they a distraction, a menace to the imagination? Or a haven for like-minded wordsmiths and artists?

Qc

NaNoWriMo: Let the Games begin!

Oh gosh. I must be out of my mind.

At midnight last night I started NaNoWriMo 2011.

Consider my posts over the next month as a chronicle of my descent into insanity. For those of you who are as crazy as I am, my Nano ID is AngelWithDirtyHands – you’ll be able to find me once the search function is fixed!

My story at present started out from a joke with my friend, when we were planning a collaborative piece together. It’s working title is: “The Thrilling Adventures of Dr FredBob and Machete Jane” and it will most likely be the craziest piece of drivel you ever did see.

I expect it’ll be fun, though!

Q, signing out.

Death by hedonism.

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind for me. I’ve come back to Uni and everything has kicked off all at once. Everything is happening so fast, at the same time, it’s difficult to keep up with everything… but I wouldn’t miss it for the world!

For the few nights I’ve been staying in, I’ve begun to read Murakami’s works. He’s a writer I’ve known about for several years, but have never quite got as far as reading.

He’s odd.

In a good way, you understand. His writing catches the essence of the everyday, but there is a slight haunting quality to his stories, something I can’t quite put my finger on. I’ve been reading South of the Border, West of the Sun and After the Quake. Both share this elusive feeling of something that could be a wrongness, but I’m never quite sure. It makes his stories very interesting to read, whatever it is he’s doing.

Amazingly, these last few weeks I’ve been able to cram in all kinds of things I enjoy, despite the odds. I don’t think I can keep it up for much longer to be honest, it really takes it out of you over time. Some reading, a bit of writing, a dash of guitar, a hint of circus skills, and a whole lot of partying with friends.

So that’s me, living in the moment. A car-crash lifestyle of all of the best sorts of fun.

Scouring my mental alleyways.

I’ve been keeping a writer’s notebook for a little while. Or, as I sometimes call it, my ‘Little Black Book’. And now feels like a good time to look through it, for some blogging inspiration. I invented a word, and now feels like a good time for something organic and freeflow:

Pynter Bender.

That is the name of the boy whose life I have just been reading about. He may not be real, but as I heard recently:

“Everything we say is true. Just not all of it happens” – The Liars, Orpheus and Eurydice as performed by the National Youth Theatre.

The book is by Jacob Ross, an inspirational writer who I have had the pleasure of meeting – his site can be found here. I am writing this immediately after finishing the book, so please excuse any slips of grammar or style as it is gone 1am.

4am haikus.

 The dark hours.

Dawn lies shattered, slow
darkness bleeds ‘neath blue clockwork.
Time tends to our scars.

Call of the Muse.

Filigree of thought,
webs of dreams. Night calls,
I answer, pen in hand.

Coffee.

Bitter precision.
Backbiting tongues, sky-black as
snakes absent of stars.

Long live the Quintconsequential.

And I’m sitting here, curled up at a laptop, letting the day curl up and die. The night turns like a tide of stars, the swash the smears of scintillated light from the heavens.

But this is London. So there isn’t much of it. And the ground is soaked from today’s thunderstorm, so going outside to watch the sky doesn’t feature high on my agenda.

I am writing, though. Which is nice, considering the amount of time I’ve been spending on the mundane of late. My hands across the keys, of my notebook, aren’t as fluid as they were before, but I’m getting there. One thing at a time.

If you’ve been following from the beginning, then you may have noticed the departure from the original theme of the blog. At that time, this was to be a tool, to recover myself. And for a while, it worked. I was able to pick out the little moments of grace which we experience from day to day. For quite a while though, it has been more difficult. I am hoping that, by kickstarting my writing and this blog, I might be able to regain a little of the paradise found in the act of creation.

And sitting here, at almost 1am, listening to Regina Spektor, thinking of the last few weeks and getting back into something I love… I have to say, I have a good feeling about the future.

Long live the Quintconsequential!

Too true.

“The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n”

– Milton, Paradise Lost