I've been up for a little more than twelve hours, which is a bit bad, considering it's almost three in the morning. It's raining, and it's almost Christmas and everything's jolly and nice. I like this. It puts me in the mood for writing. That and Regina Spektor.

I've started another story. As I always say I'm going to actually finish this one. Probably. Maybe. Hopefully.

It's called Lullabies for the Sleep Deprived which I still can't decide whether or not it sounds good or not. I'm keeping it for now. It's going to be a series of short stories or something about people in this city, who are all sleep deprived and going to this bar and all have issues. It's jolly good fun. 

This segment here's called Things you just do because I can't think of anything else, and it sounds quite Neil Gaiman-y

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The band playing was fairly unknown, but their music was pleasant. Jay looked around him at the people in Woo’s. He could recognise most of them; not that he had ever met or seen them before, but because he knew their faces. The same sort of people went into Woo’s, all the time. He knew that. He sketched them all the time. Kept a small diary, more or less. That girl on his left, the one stirring her tall drink with the little plastic stirer that came with it, looking at the people around her suspiciously, avoiding their direct glances. Her hair was cut short, and given streaks the colour of rust. Her eyeliner wasn’t applied very well and he could see faded scars on her arm, where her long sleeves fell back. He flipped through his small book to the pages he had titled “going back to normal”, and tried to draw her, before she turned her back on him because of whatever it was that was happening elsewhere that she found more interesting. Jay hated it when people did that. At least give him time to finish an outline of the person.    He scribbled it out.    The band changed songs    There was the Man with the Past in front of him. He was alone, as well. Most of the people at Woo’s drank alone. The Man with the Past sat and drank a whiskey or a beer, while glancing around him, as if whatever it was from his Past would come back and bug him while he drank. The Man with the Past’s main characteristic was his inability to trust people and his eventual distancing from society’s norms. It didn’t matter what his Past was. It was his Present that was affected, and that was what he shaped himself as. Jay didn't draw people with Pasts much, mainly becuase he would get too carried away and end up making them look like Nick Nolte with scars over their eyes.   There was the the Couple. They were boring. It was the sort of shallow relationship start where both party members would show their love by making stupid kissy faces to one another, and talk in a way that would get them shunned out of everything else. Relationships made people act like idiots. No. It was love. It’s always the love, or rather, Jay corrected himself, the need for love. He smiled briefly at them and shifted in his seat to see the other people in the room. He couldn’t see anyone else very well, so he reached for his glass of vodka-pepsi.   It was empty.   Fuck it, Jay thought. He stood up, put on his coat, pocketed his sketchbook and pencil, and left the bar.

 ..

There were about twenty-three years’ worth of memories that Jay could have been erasing at Woo’s. There was nothing he particularly wanted to forget, but it seemed that drinking made things a lot easier. It was probably a good thing he couldn’t afford to do it very often; he probably would have become an alcoholic, which wasn't his style at all.     He decided to walk the long way, because the long way had better lights, and the lights helped him think. He wanted to think

-------------- That's it so far. I quite like it. It's going to involve him meeting up with this ltitle girl who's ran away from home or something, and they form this nice older-brother relationship or something. Then I'll move onto the story about the crazy man who yells things in his sleep.

I'm totally in a writing vendetta mood. I'm gonna hunt down all the unfinished stories, and I'm gonna finish them off. This time .... it's personal.

I hope I get the new Terry Pratchett book for Christmas. I've been putting off buying it for myself for just that reason. It looks absolutely awesome, because it's a Discworld book and I haven't read a new Discworld book in about two years. Am very excited.

CHRISTMAS IS SOON WOOOO

Coutdown: 3 weeks, 5 days