Oblivion

I got about 2 hours sleep last night.

Tired Labrador 3 by superburg.

No, no clue why – just wasn’t ready for sleep until 4am, give or take.  The good news is that I managed to swallow down the extended director’s cut of Total Recall.  When I saw the cinematic release I was like, “Meh.  It’s ok.  Nice special effects.”  The director’s cut is quite a different experience: I loved it, and firmly believe it must be in any science fiction lover’s library.  It boggles the mind that the cinematic release was the one that went out the door; it’s not the same damn movie.  I finished watching it with more respect for all the actors parts in it; Farrell has more personality.  The co-stars shine more: Beil’s original character was a paper cardboard cutout, and the DC does her far more justice.

The bad news is that my head is deeply, badly broken.  I keep forgetting words – as an idle example, I had to stare at that paragraph above for a while before I remembered the words I was looking for were director’s cut.

To whit: no writing today.  And since I’m on a movie train, I’m going to treat myself to the new Cruise movie.  I’ll be toddling off to that after lunch, and trying not to fall asleep in a warm and dark movie theatre.

There haven’t been too many piece of feedback from my beta readers yet, which is fine, right?  It’s been days, not weeks.  It’s hard not to think, though: what if they’ve got it, and are tapping the red pen by the manuscript, and wondering just how to tell me the whole thing is shit?

It’s this kind of morbidity that shows a) that I need more sleep and b) suggests why I can’t sleep.  Maybe I’ll snare some Jack on the way home to self-medicate.

EDIT: Christ, this is why I need more sleep.  I totally forgot to put what I wanted to put here.  So, the actual “work” I’ve done today is to investigate self-publishing, and how to market a book.  I’ve made some vestigial efforts in this direction already with the blog here, which has been fun in and of itself.  A friend of mine suggested Kawasaki‘s excellent self-publishing guide, which is backed up by the Social Media Examiner.

Many of the articles on this online are full of self-aggrandisement: a lot of wordsy shit without substantive content.  I’ve not read this much filler since reviewing papers for my G-man employer.  I find simple approaches better!  Sensible advice is always, well, sensible.

One of the things I’ve been wondering about is the efficacy of this blog: I know from the stats that a shitload of people visit it on a daily basis.  Hardly anyone comments though (…but I get quite a few emails).  A common thread from Kawasaki and Tucker is to consider using a social media platform (such as Google+) as the hub.  I reckon I’d get more interaction if people could use an existing account or connection to post comments here.  I’ll need to think more on this: The Scourge is the obvious choice from a popularity perspective, but how they monetise posts looks a lot like a steel wool enema for my wallet.  Changing to WordPress might be all it needs, or it may need that interaction of full hive mind integration.

I’d welcome comments – a ha – on this.