linagmills

Why I have seen 30 Oscar nominated films in the last 2 months

My Substack post about the Oscars:

An excerpt from my short story. 

An excerpt from my short story. 

There were always things that bothered me, some feelings or ideas, whether from books, movies, or something I hadexperienced. I kept a lot of journals in the hopes that at least some of the thoughts would be outside of my head. The notebooks always began somewhere in the middle; rarely was there an order. My thoughts were a mess in my head, so the same happened on paper.

The downfall was, of course, that I could never find an idea that I remembered writing down somewhere for a reference. But then it was fun to find it a year later and see how different the final piece turned out from the original idea. Some of the pages were usually ripped out, some even put on the walls as a reminder of something. I had one notebook that was completely soaked in rain because I left it near an open door to the balcony one summer night; many had coffee stains on them. Oh, coffee, yes, I drank a lot of it, I was addicted to it, and perhaps coffee influenced a lot of my erratic behaviour or falling asleep at all hours of the night, but I didn't mind any of it; I thrived in all of these thoughts, ideas, and creations of mine.

An excerpt from my short story. 

"I hated the idea of shelves. Why do we put away stuff we bought with our own lives? I constantly wanted to see everything I owned. Another reason for that was that I forgot what I had if I didn't see it for a couple of days. Though, to be honest, seeing it every day didn't always help either, because I just stopped noticing it after a while. 

I did put away the ugly stuff, the necessary stuff, the things that I used every day, but they did not bring me any feelings, just performed their function. For example, for a week every month I needed to use pads, but they were always hidden somewhere because I didn't want to look at them or be reminded of being a woman in this world with so much pain and discomfort every day, especially on your period."

An excerpt from my short story.

"Books, papers, notebooks, pens, and pencils were lying on all of the surfaces, including the floor. It was too much trouble for me to put anything in some kind of order, considering every night I became a bit of a maniac and turned everything into chaos again. The watercolours were always on the floor to the left of the table, with a pile of unread books next to the sofa. I rarely slept that deeply to notice that the sofa was actually uncomfortable. Only when my mother spent a couple of nights at my place and told me it was awful did I realise why my back hurt so much."

An excerpt from my short story.