second day in the time loop and in the moment before waking i have a dream about something i have to do tomorrow. i do not realise i will never get to do it.

third day in the time loop i get hit with a wave of deja vu sitting in traffic. i am bored of the songs on the radio.

fourth day in the time loop i realise i am mouthing along to my lecturer even though i do not know anything about the sampling of early electronic music.

sixth day in the time loop my friend says hello to me and i say 'yes i know'. she looks at me funny and i apologise. she starts telling me about her girlfriend and i simply do not care. i feel mean for not caring. when i get home i accidentally walk into a doorframe which does not improve my mood. i realise i already have a bruise on my elbow.

seventh day in the time loop i realise there has been a cloud shaped like a weasel outside my bedroom window for the last week. i think 'what are the chances of that' and then i realise the chances are very very low.

eighth day in the time loop i skip everything i had planned to sit by the river and read. i know all about the sampling of early electronic music now and if i have to listen to the radio play summertime or my friend talk about her girlfriend and her stupid cat one more time i am going to scream.

ninth day in the time loop the irony of hearing summertime every day becomes apparent. i am trapped in an endless summer day. i remember the saying about not being able to stand in the same river twice so i make a point of standing in the same river for half an hour on the off chance i'm doing it at the same time as i dipped my feet in yesterday just so i could be the exception.

tenth day in the time loop it is very obvious that no one else know they are in a loop. i wonder if the whole world is looped and i'm just the only one who knows it or if i'm the only one who is looped and the world is seeing endless double exposures of me. i wonder which loop is the real one.

eleventh day in the time loop i wonder if i'm aging at all.

twelfth day in the time loop i start to think about video games. playing the same level over and over and over again. you die on the same point of the level every time but you re appear the start to have another go. i wonder what part of the day i am stuck on. which obstacle i have to beat to get to move on to tomorrow.

thirteenth day in the time loop i am remembering everything now. i do not think i did at the start but i can definitely remember what i had for breakfast yesterday morning because that was today. my friend calls me in the middle of the night asking why i wasn't at the lecture. i start telling her that i've already been to that lecture six times when it hits midnight and the loop resets.

fourteenth day in the time loop i drive as far away as possible to see if i still wake up in my bed when the loop resets. i get a cheese and pickle sandwich from a gas station but it sucks so i leave without paying. i do buy a packet of gum though. just not the sandwich. i wonder how food works in a time loop and suppose food consumed gets um-consumed. the radio stills play summertime and as i drive i think about the inherent time loop of a song. the exact same four and a half minutes over and over and over again. i wonder if we have a god complex about our favourite songs. i wonder if i am getting to wound up in the themes of the time loop and if there is an easier way to solve this than getting philosophical. it is a long car ride and i have a lot of time to think. but still only twenty four hours.

fifteenth day in the time loop i get up early wash my hair and sit outside on the porch. a woman walks past with her dog. they were not there on the fourteen day and i think this is a good sign.

sixteenth day in the time loop i open my diary and see that i have been writing on the same page over and over and over. i turn the page and write 'today is tomorrow' in big letters.

on the seventeenth day i the loop breaks. i still don't know what i did. i don't think it was the diary page because that reset but the world didn't. or i didn't. or something. i go to the scheduled lecture and i'm so relieved its not about early electronic samples i get lost in the lecturer's voice and forget to take notes. i order a piece of lemon cake from the cafe because they didn't have it yesterday but they do today. i hang out with my friend and she tells me about some endearing silly thing her girlfriend did and i laugh. it's a nice day. i find myself thinking 'i wish more days were like this' but i don't think i do, actually.

Official Time Loop Post

like oh yeah man i have these 60 OCs and a whole plot about the ethical and moral implications of meeting your alternate timeline self and if it's worth sacrificing a whole artificial timeline to get back to your own time. no you cannot see them

I've been mulling this post over since I reblogged it this morning, and if Malcolm doesn't mind, I'm going to clarify for a few people who might be wondering: If these people aren't playing the same game as us other indie authors, what game are they playing?

The answer is that they're playing the algorithm.

It'd be so easy to drop this at Amazon's door, but quite frankly, all book retailers reward this behavior. If you are pumping out work regularly, the sales algorithm will reward you because it keeps you relevant. I'm not talking about authors who produce one book a year or even two or the few people who are genuinely that prolific.

I'm talking about the above people, who, let's face it, treat indie publishing as a form of content farming.

I have zero issues with authors who use ghostwriters, especially when they're honest about it. (James Patterson is a notable example.)

But the people who hide it or attribute it to their "hustle game" while claiming we're all in competition with each other are not competing with writers; they're competing with other Algorithm Gamers because they've realized that no matter the quality of their work, as long as they have something in the New Release category, they're making money.

They're competing to stay relevant in terms of quantity, not quality because they don't actually have anything to say.

It's all just clicks to them -- and I'm willing to bet they make more money from getting people to click their (usually undisclosed) affiliate links than they do their actual books.

So take heart, dear writer. You are not competing with these people.

The vast majority of us don't view the rest of our community as competition. We're just trying to get our own work out the door while also supporting our friends as best we can.

Work at your own pace. Make the art you want. Support other writers. It'll be worth it. I promise.

April Commissions are open to help me fund my driver's license🎉🚙 You can reserve a spot now by DMing me

EDIT: I haven't received any commissions so far, so I took the liberty to tweak the prices a little to be closer to where they were before my hiatus. Any reblogs would be greatly appreciated to get the updated version out there<3

I don’t work today, BUT I left something at work on Thursday and said I’d go get it this morning so I really need to be able to drive in the next 20 minutes