Trapped the wonderful land of editing and synopsizing, but I know where my towel is.
Since I am busy being a hoopy frood and trying to condense a non-linear narrative into a cohesive synopsis, here, watch Maru with the Big Box, because it is possibly the best thing ever:
I know, I fail at updating. I have been a busy bee. Well, really, a combination of being sort of busy and also having nothing in particular to say, which seems to be the formula for lack of blog updating. Remind me not to make rash promises about updating every day anymore.
It decided to be summer all of a sudden, which is interesting and results in terribly flopsy kittens. Tessa is melting into the file box as I type.
Spent the week working on a new painting, hanging out with a friend from Smith I hadn’t seen in five years, and flouncing around in sundresses. And submerging myself in the new Tori Amos album, Abnormally Attracted to Sin.
I’ve loved Tori since I was 13 years old and first heard Little Earthquakes. I’ve grown up with her in a lot of ways, and each subsequent album seems to accompany me into my future, if that makes any sense. AAtS is interesting. It’s very mellow, that’s the first thing I noticed. It seems more like one long musical progression than a bunch of different songs, while certain tracks are standouts (I’m particularly fond of “Give” and “Lady in Blue” at the moment,) it blends very well. And I’m sure this sounds vaguely insulting, but it makes for very good background music. Maybe it’s just more atmospheric than some of her previous albums. I wasn’t sure what I thought about it at first but having listened to it pretty much non-stop for several days I really like it. You can hear the sound progression from American Doll Posse, but it’s, I don’t know, smoother and softer. Very much looking forward to seeing how it sounds live in August.
In other news, I am finishing up the latest round of edits on the novel. The boy and I are planning on sitting down with it this weekend and polishing it up, and by the end of the month it should be query-ready. So when I’m not questioning the clarity of character motivation and adding bits of dialogue to scenes I’m compiling my list of literary agents and worrying over synopsizing something that’s non-linear and 33% second person narration. My query letter is good, though, so that’s one less thing to worry about. I’ll be ready, I feel like I’m working at a good pace.
And I’m having a professional tarot reading on Wednesday, so that should help, too.
I totally fail at the whole Blog Every Day In May concept. That’s what I get for picking the month Mercury is Retrograde, I suppose. Am still going to endeavor to post more than usual, to not be a quitter.
Expect this post to have little to no coherence. I am staying up until 3am when the boy is getting up to go golfing. Haven’t done this since last August or so. It’s quiet, I have 24 hours worth of Tori Amos on iTunes shuffle. I’m following Amanda Palmer’s Losers of Friday Night on Their Computers (#LOFNOTC) on Twitter. The surreality started early this evening, apparently.
The LOST season 5 finale was head-hurting and surprising and wonderful. I cried, because I couldn’t not at a certain point. I was left exhilarated and confused, which I think is the mark of a good LOST season finale. I’m excited for season 6, and I have lots to re-watch before next year. Also, I will never not be in love with Michael Emerson.
Going through files and notes and working on bits and pieces of my work-in-progress novel before I go back to editing the almost-query-ready novel on Monday or so. I am getting better at juggling multiple writing projects, moving my brain from one to another. Writing is turning into brain yoga, an analogy I had more to expand on moments ago and now whatever meaning it had has flitted away. I told you this was going to be incoherent.
I’m not an outlining girl, per se, but I’m trying to shape the draft I have into something more story-shaped. The draft is my 50something thousand words from NaNoWriMo ’08. I just re-read all of it and I like it, but the story hasn’t found its way into the pages yet. It’s almost like I spend each November digging for things and I have to wash everything off and shine it up to see what I’m finding, and now it’s a matter of seeing how it fits together and digging more to fill in the gaps.
I can see the shape of this one, now. There’s a lot to fill in but the shape is there.
Ok, it’s late and I’m sort of trying to work and I fear I stopped making sense before I started typing this. We planted flowers around the deck this afternoon. Pepsi Throwback is kind of awesome. My hair smells like peaches. I’m going to attempt to be productive now, or as close to productive as possible.
I forgot to update yesterday. So much for blogging every day in May. Almost every day in May, then? Every day I remember to? Mercury is going retrograde any minute now, so I was bound to get distracted or have technical difficulties anyway. We’ll see how the rest of the month goes.
I am henna-ing my hair today, which kind of impedes doing much else since my hair is wrapped in plastic wrap and towels and I can’t wear my glasses. And I think I mixed it a bit too watery, the henna is a bit on the drippy side so I have to keep an eye on it.
Photopaintings are sitting on the workbench while I figure out how best to detail them, there’s a kind of inlay on each one and I’m not sure what the best way to fill it in is. I can try different things, though, and see what works. But not today, since leaning over the table with my hair in its current state is not the best of ideas.
I was expecting to have a lazy, tea-filled afternoon but I unexpectedly had an idea for a new novel and I want to play in it for awhile and see if it has enough potential to work on seriously. I’m taking some notes and seeing where it wants to go, it might end up being this November’s NaNoWriMo novel, which gives me plenty of time to let it sit and simmer.
Speaking of writing, I am thinking of adopting a pen name. I like this idea a lot, for a multitude of reasons including that my current name is only a typo away from a pop singer, but I’m not sure how to best transition over to it. We’ll see, I guess. Am still pondering.
I have been absurdly productive today. Like, giddy-making productive. Being productive apparently makes me a happy puppy, I should do it more often.
Spent most of the morning working on this set of panoramic photo-based paintings. Got all the photos mounted on their respective boards and I’m leaving them to dry overnight before I start adding more layers. They’re likely going to have a lot of layers when they’re finished. But I am on schedule to finish them this week, so that’s happy. Here’s a peek at what my table looks like, with all the seasons piled on it:
And my brain did that weird thing it does sometimes when painting (or rather, pasting prints of photos) unlocks the writing bit of my brain and I figured out how to fix one of the scenes in the novel that I’d been working on, so I wrote about 600 words that can be edited and added, and I’m absurdly pleased about that.
I also took a shower, drank a lot of tea, exercised and read another 50 pages of Then We Came to the End, which I started and abandoned sometime last year and picked up again yesterday. Nearly halfway through and liking it better this time around.
I’ve set myself up for a busy week but I think it will be an enjoyable one.
It’s May! It’s warm and blossomy and rainy and happy Springy goodness. I baked cookies today, which wasn’t terribly Springy but still fun.
I won Jenny Rappaport’s blogiversary microfiction contest over on Lit Soup. I was totally surprised, I entered on a whim mostly because the challenge of a 140 character story appealed to my OCD tendencies and I liked the result I came up with too much not to enter. I’m still giddily happy about winning. It makes me feel better about the writer part of artist/writer, since I still lean heavily to the art side. Excited about getting new books. One can never have too many books.
I started a dreamwidth account, mostly because I could. I’m erinism over there. Have yet to decide what to do with that journal, exactly, but I’m oddly glad to have it. Art content may migrate over there, or maybe not. We’ll see how it goes. It’s shiny and new and I do have a penchant for shiny things.
Anyway. Have wine & cookies. Am going to try updating this blog every day in May and see how that goes. Topics & suggestions welcome. There will likely be lots of pictures of kittens