notebooks & ideas

So, I’ve created a blog – which seems like a very outdated term now seeing as my first blog started on Typepad back in 2003. Let’s call it a journal.

What’s the difference between the Journal and the Behind the Scenes pages? The Behind the Scenes are more specific to my process, these entries will just be the random stream of daily thoughts - although not posted every day.

I am currently looking at a pile of A4 notebooks. One of them has very recently migrated from my car into the work area. When I say work area, I actually mean a chair next to the bed which currently has four A4 notebooks on it. It wasn’t meant to end up there – the notebook, not the chair. It was meant to stay in the car for when I am out and have sudden light bulb moments. It probably won’t find it’s way back into the car even though only a few pages have been written on. I will inevitably buy another notebook for the car the next time I pop into the supermarket and the piles of notebooks will increase.

Actually, (yes, this is a tangent) - the chair isn’t meant to be there either. It has just ‘become’ a resident thing. It is a basic grey desk swivel chair. I brought it in one day to sit on rather than sitting on the bed while I was typing as I am now – but sadly not right now as it is full of notebooks and pens. There is a table there also. The table is full of notebooks, pens, a midi keyboard and other detritus, and when I am not using it the writing laptop. This is why the chair remains – I need somewhere to put my reading glasses, headphones and occasionally the odd sock. Oh, and notepads.

This particular notebook has a potential opening written down, corrected, entirely crossed out, rewritten, corrected, crossed out and then rewritten. Another notebook somewhere in the pile has the beginnings of a script idea related to that opening, and somewhere on the writing laptop is another draft of that script. It’s all pretty messy. The thing is between the three it is I think seventy percent completed. All it needs is a few hours concentration.

I had fully intended on my one day off this week to finish the writing for this specific idea and to possibly start recording. This also explains the notebook migration. The two notebooks and the word version on the computer were to become one. They didn’t.

What did happen was that I opened my audio editing and music production software and noodled around until I had created a very short piece of music. This unplanned endeavour also sent me off on internet searches for some ‘sounds’ and resulted in a couple more ‘unusual’ sounding instruments joining the production armoury. To be a little more specific an instrument created from different types of metal being struck and bowed, another created from the same processes being applied to glass and finally a heavily processed stone glockenspiel. Aways good to have and more useful than you might think. There was also a ‘summer sale’ on these instrument patches and who can ‘t resist a bargain…

Obviously after doing this I pushed on with consolidating those ideas in the notebooks. No, I didn’t. What I did do then was continue to revamp the website – something I started to do a few days ago and left unfinished. I also toyed with the idea of a new ‘me’ photo for the website. The thought however was too frightening and the less photographs of me there are in the world the better.

So, the idea which was so important to progress over my day off is still spread between two notebooks and the laptop word document. There are also a good number of other ideas in those notebooks along with some also partially snoozing away on the laptop waiting for their creator to get his ass into gear. And this is the issue – too many ideas and not enough organisation.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’d rather be whinging about too many ideas than not having any – however I will whinge just a little at myself for not being organised enough to actually do what I intend to do. The piece of music I created instead of finishing the script isn’t a waste of time by any means. I enjoyed creating it, it was something new using different instruments, and it is up on Soundcloud so that someone might find it useful. It’s just that I think the other idea (the one in the notebook that should still be in the car) is - I think a good one.

It’s just getting round to doing it and not being distracted along the way. Distracted like say - starting a blog, sorry journal.

(I quite like the colour of the background for the journal. I am not quite so sure about the layout - although it does feel nice and informal. Anyway, that’s another distraction for another day.)