Inspirational Song Of The Day

The combination of having a cold and having schoolwork to do for Monday when it is currently Sunday is apparently not a good one. I have seriously broken my New Year's Resolution today (and I was doing so well!), but I also found a really cool song by Within Temptation (my favourite band). It's called Sounds Of Freedom and it was written for a game called The Chronicles Of Spellborn, which personally I have never heard of - but my God is the song inspiring!

Unfortunately it has not yet inspired me to stop contemplating sleep yet, but there is still time. :P

A Happy Dragon

I reread Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus recently, and it's just as beautiful second time around as the first time around. This led me to Ms Morgenstern's website, which is also really cool. Ms Morgenstern posts ten-sentence stories on her blog periodically (weekly? I can't remember), and I found one I particularly liked. I thought you'd like to know. :)

http://erinmorgenstern.com/2014/02/flax-golden-tales-happily/

Essential Songs For Existence 12: The Man Who Can't Be Moved

I first discovered Irish band The Script (comprising of lead vocalist/pianist/guitarist Danny O'Donoghue, guitarist Mark Sheehan and drummer Glen Power) when they supported a Take That concert I went to when I was about thirteen with my parents, my aunt, and a couple of my mum's friends (I know, I was such a cool kid). They clearly made a good impression on my mum, because she later bought their second album Science & Faith. I'm sure it won't take much to work out from there what occurred to that album.

The song that I am recommending is not from Science & Faith, however, it is from The Script's self-titled debut album. The Man Who Can't Be Moved is an amazingly beautiful song, so full of feeling that it sometimes makes me want to cry slightly. It reached Number 2 in the UK charts - I'd say deservedly so, but really it probably should have reached number 1 - and you can find proof of it being one of my favourite songs by checking its play count on my iPod (167, the fourth most played song out of a little over a thousand on my iPod).

I'll then continue by saying that the top three most played songs on my iPod are also by The Script, the title song of Science & Faith being top. From that same album I also recommend (apart from, you know, all of them) Dead Man Walking, If You Ever Come Back, and Nothing. From The Script (their debut album), I recommend The End Where I Begin, If You See Kay and We Cry.

Science & Faith and its lead single For The First Time was unfortunately not as successful as The Script was with The Man Who Can't Be Moved and We Cry, but the band found more commercial success with their third album #3 and the single Hall Of Fame, which featured will.i.am. #3 is certainly not my favourite of The Script's albums, but I am particularly fond of the songs Millionaires, Six Degrees Of Separation and If You Could See Me Now (I dare you not to have your heart broken by this song, written about the deaths of Danny O'Donoghue's father and Mark Sheehan's parents).

(I'll make this one the last paragraph, I promise) What I love about The Script, as you may have noticed, is the emotion they put into their songs, and my God do they write some good songs with fantastic lyrics, too. I went to see them live last year, and they were absolutely phenomenal. Also, The Voice UK is just not the same without Danny O'Donoghue. I just thought I'd put that out there.

Essential Songs For Existence 11: Misery Business

Released from their second album Riot!, Paramore's Misery Business was certainly a favourite among my friends when we all raved about this band. I don't really rate their latest album - the self-titled fourth - and I know my friends agree with me, but that doesn't mean we can't reminisce about Paramore's golden age.

The third album Brand New Eyes was always the favourite for me, stand-out tracks being Careful, Brick By Boring Brick, and Ignorance. Second favourite was the previously mentioned second album Riot!, of which I very much liked Born For This, Let The Flames Begin and When It Rains. I don't recall having any particular favourites from the first album All We Know Is Falling, but I know that it was the favourite of some of my friends. There were also a couple of songs which weren't on any of these albums; the single Monster being one that I was especially fond of, and Stop This Song (Lovesick Melody) which I believe was technically unreleased, but it somehow ended up on the Internet anyway.

So, in conclusion: this is a pretty cool song, good for a sing-along, and if you don't know who Paramore are, then now you do, which is a good thing if we're going by the first three albums.

Essential Songs For Existence 10: Bring Me To Life

Somebody at school once started singing this song one lunchtime a couple of years ago, and everyone joined in. It went swimmingly, until someone sang the wrong words about three lines in, and it all fell apart.

Evanescence's Bring Me To Life is taken from their debut album Fallen (2004), which sold over 18 million copies. One of those copies belonged to my mum, which is how I came to hear of Evanescence, whose music has since influenced me to listen to genres I never thought I'd listen to, much less like (genres I hadn't, in fact, ever heard of before - who knew there are so many different types of metal?) Bring Me To Life is probably their most famous song, having reached the top ten in the charts in a number of countries, and it deserves the recognition it gets - in my opinion, it is one of Evanescence's best songs.

The line up of the band has changed over the years and, having finally released their third album in 2011 (self-titled Evanescence, because, according to lead singer Amy Lee, it is the album they felt they identify most with, or something along those lines), are currently on hiatus again, but that does not change their backlog of good songs. Every song on Fallen is worth a listen, but if you pushed me to pick out favourites apart from Bring Me To Life, I'd go for Taking Over Me, Everybody's Fool, and My Last Breath. Personally, I don't think their second album The Open Door (2007) quite lives up to their first, but nevertheless, from this album I recommend Call Me When You're Sober, Sweet Sacrifice, and All That I'm Living For. The third album Evanescence is certainly heavier than its predecessors, and on first listen I didn't think I'd like it, but after I got used to the new sound I found that this wasn't the case. My favourite songs from Evanescence are The Change, Lost In Paradise, Oceans, and Never Go Back, which was written about the tsunami and earthquake in Japan.

Bring Me To Life is certainly always going to be somewhere on my list of favourite songs, because it's just so awesome. It has the drama of a powerful metal band behind it, it has the beauty of Amy Lee's voice and piano playing, and it has a catchy tune and sing-a-long-able lyrics. Apart from any difficulty in mastering said beautiful piano introduction when you're used to playing keyboard chords not piano bass clef melodies, what's not to love? :)

Essential Songs For Existence 9: I Believe In A Thing Called Love

I'm starting to run out of things to say about each song. The songs I pick for this playlist I pick because they just have a certain timeless something; they're famous, popular and often anthemic, and I Believe In A Thing Called Love is no different. Again, like all the other songs, it's just one that, when you sing it, you expect everyone else to sing it too. We can't reach those high notes very well, but who really cares? Not me. :)

Despite never actually reaching the dizzy heights of number one in the charts (instead peaking at two), I Believe In A Thing Called Love is undoubtedly The Darkness' most famous song; released from their 2003 album Permission To Land (which sold over a million copies in the UK), it is the most well known song of the four singles taken from the album, which was followed up in 2005 with a second album, One Way Ticket To Hell... And Back. Shortly after, the band split up, but staged reunion shows in 2011, and then continued to release a third album (Hot Cakes) in 2012. According to Wikipedia, they're still together. How nice.

Going back to the song I have chosen for this week's Essential Songs For Existence, I Believe In A Thing Called Love is actually the only song by The Darkness which I have heard, but nevertheless it's a good one. I imagine it would be amazing performed live, as even sitting at home, I can't help but clap along to the chorus as if at a concert. I do not understand how it can't make absolutely everyone want to dance.

Songs On Repeat

Occasionally, there is a song that I like so much I play it on repeat. This evening, there has been not one song that I have played on repeat, but two, and both by INCREDIBLY talented singers. :) Much love for these songs already.

Essential Songs For Existence 8: Paradise City

I'll admit that I'm not in any way a Guns 'N' Roses fan, but that doesn't mean that they're not famous and that they haven't written some good songs. I would assume that Sweet Child O' Mine is their most famous, so I almost wrote my recommendation on that - but then I remembered Paradise City, and decided there was no point in my writing about a song that I like less than another song by the same band that's pretty much just as famous. I don't think I really need to explain myself on this one, all the explanation you need is in that video up there, in the extremely chant-able lyrics, awesome guitar and  bad-ass beat. Hint: the louder you turn it up, the better.

The others that stand out in my mind (and are indeed the among the top five of their most popular songs of the list that comes up when you Google them) are November Rain, Welcome To The Jungle, Don't Cry and Knockin' On Heaven's Door - even though I'm led to believe it isn't actually their song. 

Anyway, no matter my personal preferences, this is still nevertheless an absolutely fantastic song, and certainly one famous enough that everybody should be able to sing karaoke to it - or at least hum along with it. I don't know the all the words unless they're in front of me either, I won't judge you. :)

New Years Resolutions Update

Last week, I said that there were two things I was going to do to stop myself procrastinating, but it is actually a third thing which I didn't mention that I have found most helpful. It's a bit like a clock-in, clock-out system. I write the date on a piece of paper, and I write the current time. Then I start my school work. When I finish that piece of school work, I write down the time again, and write down what what I did. Depending on how long the school work took to finish, I might at this point write down the time again, on the line underneath, as a starting time, and do some more work, or else I might have a break.

Like this:

On a school night, the minimum I try to do is two hours, and I generally manage it, although admittedly I have rarely done more than about ten minutes extra. But two hours a night is an improvement; I feel like I'm getting things done, and I'm not leaving work till the night before anymore and having to rush it and panic.

On the subject of New Year's Resolutions, one of my other resolutions was to finish a novel this year. The past couple of years, I have attempted NaNoWriMo (the online write-a-50,000-word-novel-in-a-month challenge, which takes place in November) and not finished my novel, but I do find NaNoWriMo a good way to write, and the stats page is very good for tracking your progress. But what I figured I needed, especially this year when I have important exams which will decide whether or not I go to uni, is more time, so I made a spreadsheet on Microsoft Excel. It's not a very good spreadsheet, because I don't use Excel very often so I can't remember how to use it properly, and I don't think they taught us in school what I would need to know in order to accomplish a NaNoWriMo-style word count tracker thing and graph anyway, but I did my best.

Basically, I worked out the daily word counts that would be necessary to reach to 50,000 word goal in two months instead of one (834 words per day). Of course, you don't have the feeling of knowing that while you're typing your heart out trying to write a novel in a month, thousands of others all over the world are doing exactly the same thing, but you do have to write less each day, which is helpful.

I didn't intend to start using my spreadsheet until the summer, after my exams, but alas inspiration and imagination stopped listening to sense, and two days ago I started my novel. Another new novel. That's just what I really needed, wasn't it? Another one.

However, technically, it's not a new one. My currently unnamed novel (the document on which it is saved is titled "Just Keep Writing") is to be a rewrite of what was probably my first attempt at a novel. I remember when I was about thirteen being at my grandma's house and having the urge to write but having no paper, so my Grandma found me a little black and red notebook with squared paper that nobody had used, and said I could keep it. So I opened it to the first page and started writing. I never finished it, in fact I never got to the end of that little notebook, but looking back, it's just as well, because it was terrible.

But I loved it, and upon rediscovering it, and rediscovering some later attempts at rethinking and rewriting it which are saved on my computer, I decided that this was what I wanted to be the novel I write this year, despite having not much of an idea of where my plot is going (I have a sort-of beginning point, I have an end point, but I have no middle except the vague idea from my first draft that my characters go on some sort of journey - which is why I named the document "Just Keep Writing", because then I'll just see where it takes me, and hopefully eventually end up in the right place). This is slightly annoying, because I already had three ideas for novels (two of them rewrites) that I wanted to write this year.

So far, I have written almost two and a half thousand words (and not very much has really happened yet), and my word count for today is 2,502. Wish me luck. This may well be a long two months.

Essential Songs For Existence 7: Mr Blue Sky

What can I say? Who hasn't heard of this song? And it's brilliant for a sing-a-long. Uplifting and optimistic, it celebrates the sunny, happy days in life and reminds you of them when it's a bit grey and cloudy.

Most definitely ELO's most famous song - certainly off the album Out Of The Blue, which my mum tells me was the first album she ever bought - Mr Blue Sky is yet another undoubted classic. I love it. If you're looking to listen to more ELO classics, though, I recommend Sweet Talking Woman, Turn To Stone, Evil Woman, Telephone Line, and Livin' Thing. As you can probably tell, I only really know the most famous ones - either those on their Greatest Hits album, or Out Of The Blue - but at least we can all see why they're the famous ones.

A Bear Of Very Little Brain (and an update on how not procrastinating is going)

I have included here a picture of Winnie The Pooh because he is, famously, a bear of very little brain, and that, I feel, is what I am. Not that I'm stupid, although I know for a fact that I can be. I wouldn't be applying to university if I were stupid.

However, I just had the personal revelation that the reason I like writing fiction is because it isn't grounded in reality. I have just been writing the second draft of an article for my English Language coursework, and I came to the conclusion that I had no idea what my point actually was. I was just writing about things - and the same happened with my language investigation, which is also part of the English Language coursework. I had no idea what I was doing, so I'd just annotate what I could in my transcripts, then write about them in my analysis without actually knowing what I was talking about until my almost last draft, when I finally linked all the bits under the theme named in my investigation's title and introduction.

Of course, it could be because I, stupidly, picked a difficult topic and then proceeded to pick transcripts that weren't actually very helpful to my results. Hence, I don't know what to analyse, and have no idea how to relate it to my 'media piece' - the bit of the coursework I'm doing now.

In the end I figured I'd give it to my teacher and hope she can make some sense of it. When she discussed my first draft with me earlier today, I got confused about what I was trying to mean, and she got confused about what she thought I meant. Hopefully my second draft is clearer.

And here we are again - I'm writing things, but I have no idea what my point actually is.

Oh well.

Anyway, an update on my New Year's resolution to stop procrastinating - it's not going very well. But my parents had a 'talk' with me earlier - yes, one of those - and we've devised a Plan Of Action. I'll share it in case it helps anyone in a similar situation.

Firstly, I'm to write all of the homework that is to be done up on what's supposed to be a whiteboard. What it actually is, is a laminated piece of blank paper taped to some cardboard, which is in turn taped to my shelf, and which I write on in wax crayon because the whiteboard marker I used to use ran out. This way, I can see what I've got to do, and have the satisfaction of erasing something off the list when I finish it, and visibly see the list shrinking.

Secondly, I'm to do my homework in a room other than my bedroom. It apparently confuses my subconscious to associate one room with more than one function, hence my brain thinks: "bedroom, comfy, relaxing, ooh look books, warm, sleep" etc and I get distracted, whereas I'm a lot less likely to do this in, say, the school library, because it's a place that my brain associates more with work than with relaxing.

I have also given myself another two resolutions. One is the get AAB/ABB and therefore get into uni (I have had two offers by now, and AAB is the requirement for one of them - which is absolutely terrifying), and this is basically there to remind me that this won't happen if I procrastinate (I wrote out my resolutions on a piece of paper, in big letters and in bright colours, and I stuck them on my wardrobe door). My third resolution is written in pencil and in small letters on that piece of paper on my wardrobe door, because it is definitely not a priority, however it is most certainly something I'd like to do this year. It is to finish a novel. By this, I mean a first draft. A full first draft. After all, I figure that I have a bit of a gap between finishing my exams and starting uni (or school again, if I fail and decide to retake the year), so I should have time to, hopefully, finally finish one of the ideas I've been slowly working on - sometimes on paper/on the screen, sometimes just in my head and in occasional notes that end up scattered everywhere so that I don't forget things, except that I still forget things anyway, because I forget what I did with the notes (see? no idea what my point is) - for the past year or more.

Wish me luck.

And, in conclusion, I still don't really know what I'm talking about. :)

Essential Songs For Existence 6: Poison

I know two songs by Alice Cooper: School's Out and Poison. Of the two, I prefer Poison. And I would say that there is absolutely no way that it isn't a classic. Full of emotion - the loud, heavy kind - personally I find it difficult not to find catchy - there's that deep guitar sound paired with the strong drumbeat that to me always just sounds so satisfying, like I feel sure of myself and the world around me, because it just gets to my head in that way. I knew I would like this song from the first time I heard it (on Strictly Come Dancing a few years ago, I believe).

Happy New Year!

I think my New Year's Resolution this year will have to be to stop procrastinating. I'm very good at procrastinating. When I'm not blogging, I'm on Facebook, or YouTube, or Tumblr, or I'm writing, or drawing fanart or listening to music or playing Sims (that game is far too oddly addictive) or even just daydreaming - and all instead of doing schoolwork.

It doesn't help that I've become busier than normal lately: I think I can say that 2013 is the year where I grew up the most. I got a part-time job, I started driving lessons, I got a boyfriend (and therefore a social life, which has thrown me a bit; I'm not used to spending time with people outside of school on a regular basis), and I sent off my university applications and even received an offer. I simply do not have time for procrastination anymore and I really, really need to stop. Not only does it hamper my ability to do schoolwork, but it gives me less free time too - sometimes I do not allow myself to, say, write, because I know I should be working, but does that necessarily mean that I am writing? No, and neither does it necessarily mean I'm doing any of the other things listed above, because I'm staring into space and occasionally remembering that I should be working. This is even more of a waste of time (in German, a Zeitverschwendung. It does so vex me that I'm forced to use three words to describe what the Germans can describe in one).

I'm sure you won't be surprised to find out that I'm actually procrastinating right now while I'm writing this; the style model for my English media piece for my coursework is sitting next to my laptop, watching me, patiently waiting to be annotated. Earlier I did watch a video to help with stopping procrastinating, and it sort of helped. It made me feel motivated... and then I went back to checking Facebook...

As for another resolution, I'd quite like to finish a novel this year; it's not something I do very often. But I really think it would be wise to stop procrastinating first. That might just be slightly helpful. Yeah. Just slightly.

So anyway - here's to 2014! Have a very happy New Year, and try not to break those resolutions too quickly! :)

Essential Songs For Existence 5: Bohemian Rhapsody

Even if you hate this song, you simply have to sing along to it. And of course no playlist entitled Essential Songs For Existence could possibly be complete without the legendary Queen. A truly amazing song - and I believe it was voted the nation's all-time favourite music single a year or two ago. A deserving winner, too! There is nothing more awesome than Bohemian Rhapsody.