I walked four miles yesterday, in a sudden fit of “I am going to be fucked when I go on vacation and have to walk all day.” I brought my old iPod and left my phone and wallet at home, so I would not lose them in a mugging (I’d just lose my own life when I got shot for being cheap enough to only have an iPod that’s 17 generations old, which is like two steps better than walking around with an old Victrola that only plays 78s.) Anyway, the iPod had a Henry Rollins spoken word album I’d forgotten I had, his first, called Short Walk Off a Long Pier, which Rollins himself says “It’s just awful.” I would agree, but it was entertaining to hear, because at the very start of my writing career, I spent so much of my waking time walking, and listening to early Rollins spoken word, and it was interesting to revisit that, twenty years later.
I have been writing. I don’t like to talk about works in progress, but maybe if I mention it, I will keep going. I am writing something completely different, and it is very plotted, and is more or less a genre book. I spent a few weeks on a complete start-to-finish outline of this incredibly linear and non-Konrathian plot, and a week and a half ago started the actual writing. I just crossed the 20,000 word mark, and am past Act I, so that’s the good news. The bad news is that I’m certain the writing is very wooden and passive and scary. But I need to get a framework down, then I will go back and weird it up. It’s very different writing this genre stuff, and it’s in third person, which I have little experience with, so it’s working a very different set of muscles. But it’s getting there.
Still have not planned much in Germany yet. I was at Barnes and Noble the other day and looked to see what Germany books they had, and other than those “learn German in 12 seconds” CD sets, they had either books on Berlin, or books on all of Germany, of which like 12 pages of a 500-page book covered the towns I would be in. There’s more online, but I am lazy and have not gotten to that point yet. I did briefly fall down the k-hole of thinking I needed a new computer bag, and then needed all of this various travel tactical gear. It’s too easy for me to spend all day on Amazon, thinking “hey, this alcohol stove only weighs 8.2 ounces” when of course I’m going to eat all of my meals at KFC and it’s not like there will be a sudden snowstorm and I’ll have to produce my own fold-up titanium cot and deep-sea fishing kit including shark knife and wind-up emergency weather band radio. All I really need to bring is cash, and lots of it. And headphones, I guess.
Do not download the game 2048. Do. Not. Do. It.