frozen octopus

Ten years ago macbooks were perfect for winter because they heated up. Summer was kinda rough. Tokyo apartments have no central heat.

Now this laptop is like resting my hands on an icey piece of metal in winter. Summer is nice.

Me vs. resisting the urge to search for writing prompts again today. It is so tempting to go to them. Searching online for "writing prompts" is the surest way to get so far away from actually getting any free writing done.

Took a moment to think about what I would do if I had to free write on drums. I'd start with a simple beat, loop it, and let it naturally morph into something.

So I tried that with the free writing and it worked so well. Took a simple phrase with a blank in it, repeated it, and filled in the blank. I looped...

"Let my mind _________"

I got 750 words of free writing done the quickest I have ever done it. It felt more like free writing too.

Sidenote

I venture to guess people have been doing this exercise forever. Getting to it myself is part of the mental training though.

I just got my music list filtering so music from this decade is popping up for me. I have date filters setup in the MusicBox app for each decade now.

The goal is to listen to at least one album from this decade more.  If I listen to an album from the past, there is an easy list to pull from.

Sidenote...I have no problem with current music per se. The way I find stuff to listen tends to surface stuff from before more than now.

Started back into writing 750 words a day when I wake up. The tasks I do after writing are noticably different. Better commenting, less on my mind, and hands are warmed up.

BUT I have used a writing prompt two days in a row and I've fallen into the same pattern both days.

1. A large chunk of junk that sounds like I am writing ad copy that doesn't sound like me.
2. A section of me complaining that I used a writing prompt.
3. A section of gibberish free writing that makes no sense.
4. Then out of  the gibberish some idea I like crawls out of the slime and I start getting stoked to keep writing.

I need to make a writing prompt that tells me to stop using a writing prompt and just write some noise.