Tag Archives: writing

On Arting

26 Saturday Feb 2022

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Art is inherently scary. What the sheep does it mean, all those countless people falling prey to what is really a neurological illness—being compelled to endlessly create, whether it be Moby Dick or a hand-knitted scarf? Art makes no sense, really. Never has; I think that’s part of what the resistance to abstract painting and sculpture was all about: It swept aside the screens and forced us to seriously consider the implications of the saying, “Art for art’s sake.”

Art is the result of the universe reaching out for eternal fruition; we artists are the very tiniest tips of the Creator’s fractal. Sounds great on your resume, but actually it’s kind of a pain in the sheep. Forget all the high-minded words over What Art Means and stop agonizing over the weight of your content, you precious flower, you. Instead, create—endlessly create. Let it flow out of the parts of your body which you use as your art tools—because if you don’t, you will get sick.

Let me repeat that: You. WILL. Get sick. Physically, spiritually, psychologically. You are already fragile—a receptor made from conception to tune into the highest frequencies—and you will spend a higher amount of time than Average Joe on bodily maintenance. Sorry about that. And that’s if you are a good bunny and create, create, create.

If you don’t, you get what I will call spiritually constipated. All that untold, unsung, and unbeaded Stuff just piles up on itself, like the chocolates in Lucy Ricardo’s assembly line. Moreover, your poor little Universe Antenna is straining itself to the utmost to reconnect. This results in all sorts of nonsense. For me, it worsens my mood, causing a spiral in which it becomes harder and harder to function. It also turns up my fibromyalgia, and my ADHD batters itself against its physical cage like a frantic bird. Yuck.

Don’t spend too much time erasing and editing—that’s all very well and necessary, but unless you have a slot open for an endless slew of new art, the revision process can devolve into a comforting nanny who shields you from the nasty Universe.

Create, create, create.

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Pandora Sheeps Up! Film at 11!

28 Thursday Oct 2021

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It is said that when the curious human warrior Pandora unleashed all the evils of the world, she found Hope remaining in the corner of the box. Nice souvenir; a good thing to bring back to the wife and kids, as they hastily pack and leave town to escape the waves of encroaching war, pestilence, and famine, not mention public opinion: No medals for Pandora.

I have to wonder what the hell Hope had done to be so entrapped—as Sesame Street has it, “One of these things is not like the other ones.” Perhaps the ancient storyteller had a vision of the modern trope of the innocent convicted?

But instead of the meek little Hope teaching her unsavory neighbors how to better plead their cases and helping them Google, I suspect she was there under entirely different circumstances: She was emplaced to be their prison guard, one single warden keeping all the evils of the world from fiddling with the latch. It’s not too hard to imagine that the evils want revenge after those countless millennia of golden humanity untouched, and thus the average morning newspaper, in which they crush and mangle the shreds of Hope remaining.

But she must have been very powerful indeed for the Universal Is to have given her that job, and thus we should similarly treasure her and invite her back into our hearts, fanning a welcoming flame with our leaden and diffident hands. She has the power to give us armor against her former internees, and help us forge weapons for the Good Fight.

“I’m sorry,” whispered Pandora. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Hope sniffed, brushing a slowly-moving shred of Guilt away from the close-cropped hair. “Nonsense. Let’s not waste any time mucking about here. We have a world to save, hero.”

And save it, they did.

(Oh, did you want the details of the story? Nope, you have to write them yourselves. We all do.)

On Authorial Perspective

09 Sunday Feb 2020

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I just realized how much I love the little boy I’m writing about in 1928. I feel like his mom or something. But there’s an unbearable poignancy to it. I’ve known this person for years, and some while ago I wrote about his death in the early 90s, when he was of a ripe old age and needed to be shuffled out of my master plot in favor of his successor.

I am holding his entire life between my hands. It’s an uneasy feeling.

I remember the first time I ever killed anybody. All I gave the reader–all Angie gave me–was a walk carrying groceries for a few blocks in Brooklyn. And yet her death–vital to the plot–hit me like a ton of bricks, and the majority of my beta readers got misdirected by my arty phrasing and didn’t realize the wench was DEAD, dead as a doornail not returning dead, because they didn’t want her to be.

But Angie is dead, except when I go back and re-read the first few pages of her story. Little Yin is dead now in 2020, and has been for a while. It just bothers me that when I killed him I didn’t even know his name.

My Brain is a Border Collie

27 Sunday Oct 2019

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I have this freakish thing going on: Although I can be miserably incompetent at many things (like housework and math), I’m wicked good at decoding my native language–I can read really hard stuff (and really bad stuff), think about it, and then spit it back out in writing. I also write at least tolerably well myself, and I write a lot. (No, not here; I’m sorry, followers! I just don’t want to have a whineblog, so I try to post only when I have something to say.) But I’ve written a doctoral dissertation and ten novels, seven of which are finished. (My first book, which needed to be split into a trilogy, is currently up on a mechanic’s lift being taken apart. In my copious spare time.)

I can also write non-fiction, and I’m an excellent editor. If I didn’t enjoy my day job, I could probably manage as a free-lancer. (I’m on disability, thank God and my fellow taxpayers, which limits my income. So I’m not fantasizing about limitless wealth here.)

Putting it a different way, my brain is one of those amazing little Welsh border collies who can herd sheep into marching-band patterns: Neither of us is close to the unified field theory, but man, are we good at what we do! It took skilled training and the sort of hyperfocused attention that only dogs and ADHDers have. (All dogs have ADH–squirrel!)

I’ve spent twenty hours this month working on a huge grant which is vitally important to a bunch of people I love dearly. They have a spectrum of writing skills, and the first draft was sorting out their various snapshots of the same subject, so we wouldn’t make the nice folks at DHCD tear their hair out. It was sort of like the Hebrew Bible, where important stories in different versions are all just plopped in next to each other, leading bored children to try to figure out just how many animals Noah took with him anyway. Only I don’t just have the J and P authors, I have three social workers, an accountant, a grantwriter, an IT guy, and the entrepreneur heading the organization. Kind of crazy–and I love it!

Taking paragraphs apart, fixing sentences, and moving things around is fun for me. I am more than happy spending my prime creative time (3 a.m. to 8 a.m.) doing this. I would probably do this for free, but I crave an iPhone. (Hey, only a 6, and I found a good deal. I’m not that crazy.)

My border collie gets bored a lot. NaNoWriMo is sort of me buying a flock of sheep to keep it occupied. But that’s only once a year. Major grants like this one only happen once every decade or so. What to do?

So the answer occurred to me this morning at about 5 a.m.: Maybe I should try writing poetry. Truth impels me to say that I can change things up most by attempting to write good poetry. It will be interesting to see if the mutt can make the sheep tap dance. (I promise not to overwhelm you with the results of this cockamamie idea.)

Confession: I loathe most modern poetry (the sort you wrote in high school with lots of emotion on each line) so will probably pick some random classic format for structure. An extra lap or two around the flock, and a nice huddle of well-behaved words as a result. Sounds like–squirrel!

Please Nominate Tribe of Tiger!

28 Wednesday Feb 2018

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If you like me, my writing, or even the abstract cause of Good Writing in general, please consider this!

Because I won NaNoWriMo last year, I got the chance to have an actual human being at Kindle look at my book and give me editorial feedback. To get this, I had to enter Tribe of Tiger (the most recent kitty book) in their Kindle Scout reader nomination program, and that’s why I’m pestering you today: PLEASE, go to this link and nominate my book. It’s just a few clicks. All told, it took my sister less than three minutes, and that was with me on the phone as she did it, which slowed things down.

Here’s the link. It includes the first two and a half chapters of the story–enjoy! (Story reading optional; you can download it onto your Kindle.)

There is a chance that this may actually get me professionally e-published, with an advance ($$$!) and everything. I’m crossing my crossable digits.

 

Looking for a Word

03 Saturday Feb 2018

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(Just skim the two paragraphs of techie art neep if you’re not interested in paint. The essay proper begins below them.)

I just participated in a month-long journal challenge with a group of women artists, and Got Religion–I discovered a new medium! It’s Japanese watercolor, often called “gansai tambi” as that’s the ad blurb used by the manufacturer to describe them.  (It literally means something like “vibrant aesthetic.”) I majored in what I suppose I must now call Western watercolor in college, making full sheet (22×30″) color field paintings (think Rothko, only busier) and thinking I was having the time of my life. Then fast forward thirty years and here’s this stuff that made me squee when I unpacked it. (Disclosure: I had a $50 gift card from doing a survey, and went on Amazon. The 36 pan set, three water brushes, and another six-pan set of metallics left a buck and change on the card; YMMV.)

Part of my honeymoon joy is being forced once again to learn what stuff does–the great thing about the big abstracts I did as a kid is that it showed me pretty much every trick Western watercolor and its French cousin, gouache have up their sleeves. It’s a little like gouache, a little like either sort of tempera in consistency, and behaves on paper like nothing else I’ve found. The pigment is crazy thick and you need a lot of water to make it behave like . . . watercolor. Sigh . . .

Anyway, I whacked out a basic image to use as the Tribe of Tiger cover and came back to the computer because the sun was in my eyes. I noticed, almost as a by-the-way, that I was ecstatic. It was very much a body feeling–a combination of terrific sex, a filling breakfast, and a satisfactory trip to the loo. Oh, and the best coffee. I feel this way every time I make art I’m pleased with, and even when I’m depressed, it makes me feel at least some better, at the very least while I’m making something.

I thought to myself, “Weird. I guess sex is the closest many people get to ecstasy.” Maybe joy too. I don’t know how that makes me feel. Am I right? If so, am I being kind of snobby to feel a bit sorry for them? Or is this more about me being abnormally unimpressed with sex?

Don’t get me wrong–I’ve had some great sex. It just doesn’t hit the same spots as, say, the smell of oil paint, which makes me tremble and moan. I have similar reactions to music I like, which is to say, much of it, but maybe particularly early music (think Byrd and Tallis).

As for writing, the feeling is more subdued, possibly because I’m not getting as much sensory input, and it’s more draining. But I still come away from good sessions feeling like this is why I’ve been put on earth.

So what do y’all think? Especially other creatives–is it better than sex? Is it ecstasy? Or do we need a new word?

Journalish Entry

27 Saturday Jan 2018

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inky hand

Who’s procrastinating? I am! I am!

My still foggy brain figured out how to add the photo and still have text next to it; faithful readers with sharp memories will notice this as a new skill. Yay me!

I’ve been depressed for most of the past two months–Christmas cheered me up, which makes me feel shallow and trite, but there it is. (Can a person be trite? Sure they can. We’ve all been trapped at that business dinner.) It’s not that I spend hours gloomily musing on Being and Nothingness, it’s more that I don’t know what to do. (As in, read a book or play a game. As far as Being and Nothingness goes . . . ) Worse, once I figure it out (if I do), I spend seemingly hours getting it done because I am far more easily distracted than usual. This is a common symptom of depression, but I have ADHD, so who can tell?

I am open to suggestions. I can’t take meds, because I either have a weird reaction to them, or they might make me manic. (Trust me–or trust those who’ve been close to me–you don’t want to see me manic. I don’t do anything amusing like start new religious movements, but I do end up in the hospital. Pity. Being manic feels great! Which is why it’s so hard to treat.) I am working my WRAP plan. But here’s the hell of it: If I am trying my best, if I am doing something borderline productive (like blogging), it means I’m having a good day. If I’m having a bad day, I can’t even focus on a video game. Arrghh.

In other news: Although I have been faithful to my protein shake breakfast, to the point where it now feels normal, I’ve only lost about five pounds. I had it pushed a little lower, but the holidays snuck two pounds back on. Sigh. (This matters because I am due for bariatric surgery this spring, and I must lose 16 pounds so they can maneuver around my massive fatty liver, cuddled around my stomach like a protective bloat of tick.) However, I have dropped my application off at the Y, and the guy who Does That will come back from vacation any day now. Sigh. Seeing as I don’t get a surgery date until I see their shrink (March) I have some time. It’s only 11 pounds, right?

Tribe of Tiger (this year’s NaNo and the third in the kitty series–Eureka, published here, is in the same world but is not strictly canon) is SO close to being finished it’s a bit scary. I’m at the point where the next two or three paragraphs will wrap up the main action. There must be a name for this feeling that I should kill somebody off for it to be good art!

I’ve been doing more visual art lately–got involved with an art journal challenge. Seeing as I wimped out on Inktober, I would have been more reluctant, but, golly mo, my daughter makes those blank books! So I begged one that had some invisible flaw, and have been having a great time. Sure, I’m behind, but it’s an improvement over Inktober’s 12-day performance. (To be fair, what slowed me down then was lack of scanner access; I learned from this mistake and have been doing just fine snapping pix from my phone.)

OKCupid (deliberately not linked because drive-bys) used to do this thing where they made you pick three words to describe yourself. So I guess right now they’re fat, depressed, and creative. I could do worse.

Woo-Woo Scale for New Age Books

04 Monday Sep 2017

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1—My Journey

2—Crystals  are Our Friends

3—My Trek Through Holistic Healing: Drugs You Have to Google

4—Karma: Love It or Hate It?

5—All You Need to Do is Breathe. Or Cleanse. Whatever.

6—Whaddya Mean, You Don’t Have the Money to go to X and Experience Y?

7—Our Upcoming Evolution

8—Jesus Helped Me Write This

9—My Dog Helped Me Write This

10—(must bring in saucer people in a meaningful way)

Turning the Pages

26 Wednesday Jul 2017

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I think it was my “year off” getting my knees replaced that did it. The tiny Kindle was a sanity-saver (and a hats-off to Project Gutenberg, while we’re on the topic) and I got disconnected from paper books. But then, I haven’t been a big consumer of even paper books since the dissertation. My recovery from that segued into a depressive episode, and when I emerged, I was in a life where I’d read/reread most of my books. (I view libraries as evil guilt-producing crackmasters, and have been known to brag about my current immaculate relationship with Cambridge Public the way people in recovery show off their five-year chips.)

By then, I’d started writing, and I had this idea from some quote somewhere that the more I’d read, then the less I’d write–and I’d risk sounding derivative of the writer. So for quite a while, the most complex prose I had was my daughter’s subscription to Cosmopolitan. (Don’t knock it. It ‘splained how to keep my eye shadow out of the creases. I’m a little sad that my daughter traded up to National Geographic.)

I gradually began to read Victorians and mysteries (and have now discovered Victorian mysteries). But then I got a gig of reading and commenting on other people’s novels, so all of a sudden I was reading for a living. Very weird. Sometimes I get a manuscript that is slick clean classy content–and then I don’t, and have to force myself to sit my ass in the chair for five, ten, fifteen minutes as a whack. Mercifully, I read fast. And eventually, I got used to being a writer too. The whole thing made me pickier about what I’d read for fun.

However, my daughter and I always stop by our favorite bookstore when we’re out, and I pick something out with the best of intentions. It is added to the stack, but every so often one jumps into my purse if the Kindle is charging, or if it’s Neil Gaiman, apparently.

So, there I am with  Neverwhere in the waiting room. My shrink emerges and gushes over *book* reading, claiming that studies have shown there to be superior cognitive benefit from the physicality of the book. I must admit I recall little of the Kindle-corn I’ve been consuming all year, but had put that down to the quality of writing.

My books (Long Leggedy Beasties, Things that Go Bump in the Night, their forthcoming cousins) are non-physical. I’ve been trying not to feel bad about that. This doesn’t help. Sigh.

You’re reading from a screen right now–what do you think?

Cats and Mages 2 (Things that Go Bump in the Night) is born!

21 Wednesday Jun 2017

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This is the sequel to Long Leggedy Beasties. Go check it out–check ’em both out–and PLEASE, please: I don’t have a GoFundMe or a Patreon, but I do have two really cool, reasonably priced books that need reviews on Amazon. Thanks for following–I appreciate the energy!

 

https://books.pronoun.com/things-that-go-bump-in-the-night/