I finally saw the movie Julie & Julia. I know! My Netflix account is as neglected as the moon in daylight (~Jonathan Swift). The tag line of the movie said something about how Julie Powell embarked on this 365 day/524 recipes challenge to "enliven her uneventful life." Mostly, I'm thinking she feared her blog well would runneth dry.
When I started this blog almost four years and seventy-some followers ago, I worried my well would runneth dry, too. So I did what any self-respecting organizational freak would do: I made a list. A list filled with nuggets of inspiration. A list brimming with narrow, exclusively time-travel-themed post ideas. A serious list filled with serious topics and serious philosophical explorations of time travel. Nowhere on this list, I assure you, would you find Fabio, Elvis or appropriate homage to The Hoff.
And then one day, my head hurt. Wasn't physics the one thing I hated, really hated, about high school? Sure, the teacher was a Michael Vartan-esque hottie, but the stupid jumping-up-and-down-on-an-elevator essay question single-handedly bludgeoned my GPA. Why was I trying to explain wormholes? If blog readers want wormholes, they'll go to forevergeek or discovery. I only had to know enough to be a dangerously awesome force in time travel romantic fiction. So things like quantum holograms became quavering Holloway and alpha brain rhythms became alpha male-isms. I had pop culture fish to fry.
Did I lose direction? Not really. Did I loosen up? Holy hell to the yes. But there are still days when I come to the keyboard without a plan. And that is where five hundred and twenty four of anything is tempting.
So in the spirit of Julie & Julia, I give you a list of what 524 might look like at The Vortex:
524 Elvis songs, complete with annotations on the lyrics where his barely-contained studio gyrations caused a hiccup in his voice.
524 WTH moments in LOST, the series
524 absurd fictional methods of time travel
524 romantic faces of Fabio
524 Macgyverisms to Win a Girl's Heart
524 Pretentious Coffee shop Patron Profiles
524 Lines of Dialogue I Would Have Written Had I Not Been Writing a Daily Blog
524 Writing Rules I Stopped Following
524 Plot Notes Mined from My Vacuum Bag
524 Inventions to Torture the Nub Who Unleashed the Bamital Virus on My Hard Drive
524 Sentences in Fiction That Make Me Realize I Have Much Left to Learn
524 Never-Before-Used Physiological Character Responses To Convey Emotion. Okay, that well would dry up in, oh, a week. These are my biggest hurdle when writing.
524 Things a Romance Novel Hero Would Never Say
524 Ways to Romance a Physicist
Speaking of Physicists, time is running out to nominate your favorite hottie in ZapperZ's Most Attractive Physicist Contest. I, for one, am hoping for a photo gallery at voting time. It's just the kind of superficial-meets-science we love here at The Vortex.
What would your 524 look like?
I'm with you on the writing rules I've stopped following.!
I could never top your 524's! You are a blogger genius to me, and I love everything you post. But I'm trying to think back, have you ever posted a recipe? Maybe something a physicist needs to stay uh, mentally up? 😉
Are there 524 Elvis songs? 🙂
524 is a whole lot of anything. Maybe consecutive days writing?
Read an article by a journalist who poked fun at the extreme journey genre, in which he was going to spend some number of days reading all the books like Julie & Julia, No Impact Man, etc.
@Charles-I suppose it's true-you have to know them and respect them in order to "break" them properly. And, be a student of those who break the rules well.
@Robin-flattery will get you everywhere, girl 😉 I don't think I've gone the recipe route yet. I think the time travel recipe blog I highlighted this week would do WAY better at that.
@Vesper-actually, there are 400-sumpthin songs. I may have to fill the rest of my days with his movies and concerts.
@Todd-I've never heard it called the "extreme journey genre" but that is so perfect. So true. That's when you know it's made it as a genre: people poke fun at it 🙂