Aurora Dimitre's Books and Rambling

I broke my Walkman on Tuesday. I just kept accidentally chucking it at the ground. You may be asking, "Aurora, who the fuck listens to cassettes anymore?" to which I answer "Shut up", and something about method writing, but the major consequence of this is that I can't just listen to Master of Puppets, the Black Album, and Ride the Lightning on repeat, because those are albums I only have on cassette. So I'm back to CDs. This is just like that episode of Degrassi where Spinner breaks his Discman and is like "Man, I'm back to cassettes!" which really spurs on his jealousy of Drake's new digital music player (was it an early iPod? I think it was an early iPod), except not, because it's the opposite, and also Spinner had an excuse, because it was like 2003 in that episode. Side note, the dude who played Spinner also played a drug addict who killed himself in juvie in a movie called Dog Pound, which I think is kinda fun. Anyway. Since I...

I mean, this isn't like, I'm in a writing slump or anything cause I straight-up just don't believe in writing slumps. There's been times where I really haven't been feeling my project and I sat down and pumped out three pages anyway. Believe me, I'd love to be writing right now. It's just that I'm in research mode--I've got two and a half more books to read. And when I'm done with that, it's not even writing time yet. After that it's 'somehow smash these two first drafts into one first draft' time. And then it's... retyping? I don't even know. I did a weird thing with this project, and for some reason, I've decided that instead of letting it rest like I normally do and like is normally recommended for writing projects, I need to go straight back in. This is a need. I've noticed, though, in not actually writing or working on anything where I actually put words on the page that aren't scribbled notes in margins...

Almost Home was hard. Devil's Knot was hard (and infuriating, the amount of times I had to just. put the book down and stare at the ceiling for a while was actually astounding, as were the amount of times I just wrote 'bitch' or 'AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA' in the margins). But somehow, Dark Spell has been the hardest to get through. I'm not saying it's bad because it's not, when I mean the worst one I mean it gives me anxiety. At this point I'm about fifty pages in, and it is rough. I'm finding myself skimming, a little. But it's not like a 'I want this to be over' skim, unless it sort of is--what I mean is, it's more of a 'I don't think my heart can take reading every word' kind of skim. I'm not even in the really bad part yet, this is still pre-trial. This case is kind of emotionally ruining me, to be completely honest, but the prospect of caring about something so much keeps me solidly in. And like, if it starts...

A couple days ago I was watching the second Paradise Lost documentary, 'cause I'd just got the collector's edition and the second one was the only one that's not on Amazon Prime so I haven't seen it before, and even though I've heard it's by far the worst of the three I was pumped. My disc drive's been acting up for the past year or so, because I, admittedly, am not too gentle with my laptop and he is falling apart physically (sorry howard ilu), but I've found that if I either a) slam it shut really hard or b) smack it, it will acknowledge there's something in there. So it broke that night, and then I got to spend a good half hour prying it open. I used my knife for a while, but that wasn't doing anything except getting the outer shell off, because it's too big to get into all the little cracks. Then I did find a sewing kit and used a seam-ripper and I did get my DVD back, but it's safe to say that disc drive is never working again....

WM3, all I've been thinking about, did my NaNo on it, mandatory disclaimer on how I think they're innocent, etc etc etc But I started reading the books yesterday. Before this I'd been watching interviews, I listened to the LPOTL episodes (that's what started it all, thanks a lot Marcus Parks), I watched two of the Paradise Lost documentaries. But I started in on the books yesterday. I've got five of them. Almost Home by Damien Echols, Devil's Knot by Mara Leveritt, Dark Spell by Mara Leveritt, Life After Death by Damien Echols, and, just for fun, High Magck by Damien Echols. That's a whole lotta Damien. When it comes to this case, I have never felt as emotionally connected to Damien as I have the other two. I connected to and felt immense respect for Jason Baldwin, and I felt so hard for Jessie Misskelley. But Damien had always been... Damien. I felt terrible about what he'd been through but it was--well, it was Damien. I saw him as almost a ridicu...

So, I finished NaNoWriMo last night. My project was a little weird, to be honest; I mean, it was really two first drafts of the same project? I mean, the first one was an incoherent mess of feelings, and the second one was more structured but had less soul, and it's not a first and a second draft, so I'm calling it version one and version two. And I know it's something that both needs research and needs to be spliced together. But I decided I'd take a day off, because I  needed to rewrite the first chapter of what used to be my favorite project I've ever done, because I feel like the first chapter was the absolute weakest point of that project. So I did that today. It was a day of pop-punk (at least until my Metallica cassettes came in the mail and I did listen to the entirety of Master of Puppets and most of the black album), it was a day back in that main character's head. And even though the two main characters are pretty different, it wasn't difficul...

So I watched Devil's Knot tonight. If you've been around the past couple weeks you'll know that I've been deep in WM3 territory lately. Just fucking obsessed with the case. And I've been waiting for this movie. I mean, apart from the fact that It's supremely stupid that I watched it tonight, given that I, at this point, 11:15 PM, still have an essay to write and a long video to watch, among other things, I am. I am glad I watched it. I will say, I only cried once. I mean, tears only came out once. It was at the scene where Reese Witherspoon's character, Pam Hicks, goes to have the teacher correct Stevie's homework and then all the kids go up and hug her. I thought for sure I would cry more than that. But I didn't. Did not mean I did not spend most of the movie hunched over on a desk chair, my knees flat against my chest, bent all fuckin weird, shaking. I mean, there were no tears. Except that one part. So. But I will say. Even as someone who i...

So, I didn't think that I didn't like Metallica. I knew the songs when they came on the radio--by the songs, I mean "Enter Sandman",  I knew "Enter Sandman" when it came on the radio--and I didn't mind it. When the idea of a half-sort-of method writing my NaNovel this year popped up in my head, and part of that being listening to a fuckton of Metallica, I was like, sure. I wasn't not looking forward to listening to Metallica (+other bands similar) for a month. I mean, "Enter Sandman" is a pretty sick song. So I'm really liking Metallica. In addition to a weird regression to a lot of things that haunted me during my freshman year grunge phase (thankfully, the full on Cobain obsession is not one of those things), I've been listening to the two Metallica CDs I checked out from my library on repeat. By the two CDs, I mean "Sanitarium", "Orion (Instrumental)", "The Unforgiven", and "Nothing Else Mat...

Normally, when I post on here, it's in the morning. It's the first thing on my to-do list of the day. It's what I do before my first class of the day. But NaNoWriMo started today.  I have done none of my work for the day. None of it. And I've got a lot. The only thing that's crossed off is 'writing', because holy hell have I reached the 1667 for the day, I'm almost at 5k already. I'm pumped for this year's project, because I had the luck to fall in love with an idea two weeks before NaNo started and so now that's my life. I'm almost method-writing it.  See, me, wandering around a college campus in a black band t-shirt, listening to "Master of Puppets" on my Discman.  So I'm getting no sleep this month. I can tell I'm going to get no sleep this month. Everything is going to be this project. Is this healthy? No. Probably not. Okay, the sleep-deprivation is definitely unhealthy. My life being this one project...