I am in the thick of it, making lists of characters and scenes I only have vague, fuzzy notions about.
I should have started this two weeks ago. And, I can't figure out how to edit my outline structure in Word 2007.
Will try to go go go and have something like complete at midnight...
j.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
The Kickoff - Write or Die!
Okay, must nudge myself back toward daily blogging. It's almost November!
Am very happy to say that I am motivated this year, and excited. Still working out my word and story goals for this month. I am resurrecting an outline that I started years ago. It's an enormous, sprawling story (Infinite Jest-inspired) that will require more than 50,000 words to get anything like a draft going.
The kickoff party last night was great, so many friends I haven't seen in ages. It was like Homecoming. I won a book light in the raffle!
The desktop version of Write or Die is out! You already know how much I love this program. And it just made itself about eight hundred times awesomer. There is some serious potential for word warring there.
I will look for a nemesis today with around the same word goal and tolerance for self punishment.
Yay!,
jules
Am very happy to say that I am motivated this year, and excited. Still working out my word and story goals for this month. I am resurrecting an outline that I started years ago. It's an enormous, sprawling story (Infinite Jest-inspired) that will require more than 50,000 words to get anything like a draft going.
The kickoff party last night was great, so many friends I haven't seen in ages. It was like Homecoming. I won a book light in the raffle!
The desktop version of Write or Die is out! You already know how much I love this program. And it just made itself about eight hundred times awesomer. There is some serious potential for word warring there.
I will look for a nemesis today with around the same word goal and tolerance for self punishment.
Yay!,
jules
Sunday, October 25, 2009
NaNoWriMo. Oh Nine.
Alright.
It's that time of the year again.
I went back and found the pages of outline for the 07 novel I didn't start. This thing is *huge*. I'm rubbing my hands together.
j.
It's that time of the year again.
I went back and found the pages of outline for the 07 novel I didn't start. This thing is *huge*. I'm rubbing my hands together.
j.
Saturday, October 03, 2009
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
MailART.
The idea is this: you create postcards for 25-30 others, they create postcards for you. Hmm.
I’ve never been any kind of visual artist; I don’t the faculty to draw what I see. But the MailART project intrigued me greatly. I spied a few of the cards done for the previous round, and I was struck by how different the artists’ cards were. I’ve dabbled in collage and scrapbooking. I thought I’d give it a try.
So, I got cards cut to size and bought way too many supplies. Spent hundreds of dollars on supplies. Bought paints, regular watercolors and metallic watercolors, acrylics, gouaches. Bought rubber stamps, ink pads, eyelets and a HUGE Crop-A-Dile, bought false coins and stencils and embossing materials that I have no idea how to use.
The theme this time around is “Human Being in Time.” I’m lucky that this theme kind-of jibes with the original idea that I got for the cards: to have each card feature a character, and a one-sentence story.
I spent a couple of days with the paints, layering on the watercolors and acrylics, mixing colors. I created about 50 mini-canvases total, and grouped them.
There are the dirty canvases and the dark canvases.
Dirty canvases.
The dirty canvases are layers of color that I eventually started smudging with a dry brush or paper towel. I have developed the utmost respect for people who know how to mix colors.
Brown. I need to learn how to make brown.
Dark canvases.
I really enjoy black paint.
It’s hard for me to not add too much black paint to other colors, which can easily make them muddy. But black paint on its own is majestic and beautiful. I painted a couple of intense, completely black canvases, and then started to smudge black on canvases, with dry brushes and paper towel.
So, the postcards are due in the next couple of days. I will take pictures and upload them here.
jul
I’ve never been any kind of visual artist; I don’t the faculty to draw what I see. But the MailART project intrigued me greatly. I spied a few of the cards done for the previous round, and I was struck by how different the artists’ cards were. I’ve dabbled in collage and scrapbooking. I thought I’d give it a try.
So, I got cards cut to size and bought way too many supplies. Spent hundreds of dollars on supplies. Bought paints, regular watercolors and metallic watercolors, acrylics, gouaches. Bought rubber stamps, ink pads, eyelets and a HUGE Crop-A-Dile, bought false coins and stencils and embossing materials that I have no idea how to use.
The theme this time around is “Human Being in Time.” I’m lucky that this theme kind-of jibes with the original idea that I got for the cards: to have each card feature a character, and a one-sentence story.
I spent a couple of days with the paints, layering on the watercolors and acrylics, mixing colors. I created about 50 mini-canvases total, and grouped them.
There are the dirty canvases and the dark canvases.
Dirty canvases.
The dirty canvases are layers of color that I eventually started smudging with a dry brush or paper towel. I have developed the utmost respect for people who know how to mix colors.
Brown. I need to learn how to make brown.
Dark canvases.
I really enjoy black paint.
It’s hard for me to not add too much black paint to other colors, which can easily make them muddy. But black paint on its own is majestic and beautiful. I painted a couple of intense, completely black canvases, and then started to smudge black on canvases, with dry brushes and paper towel.
So, the postcards are due in the next couple of days. I will take pictures and upload them here.
jul
Sunday, July 05, 2009
Fifty. Ninety.
I have been gathering song fragments.
These are the dregs, the pieces, the never-and-still-not-good-enough stuff. This is what I will work on for 50/90, lowering the quality bar, and then perhaps removing it altogether.
The good (?) news is that there's plenty of this material, more than enough to sustain 50+ songs.
Since the songs will be crap, I will set other challenges for myself to make this edifying. Here are a few I can think of off the top of my head:
To finally play the bass sitting forlornly in the corner
To pull out the harmonicas and the ebow that I've never used
To record a track live
This is all prelude to approaching the stuff I really want and need to work on, what may turn out to be the next album. There's so much going on.
Most of it is good.
j.
These are the dregs, the pieces, the never-and-still-not-good-enough stuff. This is what I will work on for 50/90, lowering the quality bar, and then perhaps removing it altogether.
The good (?) news is that there's plenty of this material, more than enough to sustain 50+ songs.
Since the songs will be crap, I will set other challenges for myself to make this edifying. Here are a few I can think of off the top of my head:
To finally play the bass sitting forlornly in the corner
To pull out the harmonicas and the ebow that I've never used
To record a track live
This is all prelude to approaching the stuff I really want and need to work on, what may turn out to be the next album. There's so much going on.
Most of it is good.
j.
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