Drawing doesn’t seem to hurt my hand (it’s getting better, but I still can’t type much, play piano or lift heavy things), and since I’m into unicorns right now, here’s this soulful fellow standing in a misty field of scribblegrass and scrawlweed:
“BANGKOK: It is the pink armband of shame for wayward police officers, as cute as can be with a Hello Kitty face and a pair of linked hearts…”
Went to the doc, who says I need to rest the hand for a couple of weeks (as you said, Andrew). So I probably won’t be blogging much, and email replies are likely to be slow(er than ever), though I’ll still be answering business and urgent mail. I need to save my left hand for writing book #2 and bathing and feeding myself, etc. Sorry in advance for the email. And tomorrow I’m buying an ergonomic chair, or ball - whatever it takes to get my elbows above the keyboard.
Someone has sent spam from the bishopnet domain, so my mailbox is flooding with automated “not in office” responses and the like. Among which was one from a literary magazine called Contrary. It looks quite interesting - possibly a place to send short pieces of personal and tricky-to-pigeonhole writing. Submission guidelines here. Payment is a flat $20 an item, so not a place to send your 10,000 word story - and they’re after short pieces anyway.
In other news, I’ve obviously been leaning my right wrist too hard on the laptop (using the navi-button, probably) because it hurts too much for me to type with my right hand. I’m sitting with my hand in a sling improvised from a pair of stockings and a handkerchief, because if I don’t tie it up like this I can’t resist using it. I’m about to go write some more of the unicorn book. I wonder if my thought processes will adjust to the speed of left handed typing. If I have to slow down and think more carefully as I type, that might be a good thing. I know Zoran Zivkovic types with just the forefinger of his right hand and he writes very lucid prose, and a lot of it, too.
And as I was lying in bed this afternoon kind of dreaming, kind of meditating about the collaborative piece I’m working on, I heard this deep, echoey, metallic voice in my head. It might have been the voice of the character I’m writing, but I’m not sure. I unfortunately can’t remember what it said except for the last part, which was about the Ten Commandments. It said, “Let’s go over them again, shall we?” Then it started talking in a language I didn’t know. And no, I don’t think it was God, unless God sounds like a kid in a basement with a mike and a distortion pedal. I just wish I could remember what it said before that.
This might be of interest to some readers of this blog. Publisher Fantasist Enterprises is open to submissions for an anthology of Far East themed or influenced fantasy, Paper Blossoms, Sharpened Steel. 5c a word, submissions deadline 15 December 2007. Thanks to Geoff Maloney for the link.
Following on from the comments to Sketchbook Drawings, some rhyming silliness:
A king in black, a queen in red, a dog in all but name,
Went walking down a cherry road to see a silver dame.
A piece of autumn’s lovely moon cried out to leave the game,
For fighting with the bombardier had left it very lame.
The Empress of the Antelopes was all for having dinner,
Since the marmosets were sunning on the lawn of laces in a
manner like delphiniums; and the smiling old Berliner
with the manual looked like carrying off the prizes for the winner.
Throwing new-born skulls to the cattle of the clay king,
Pierrot and Columbine were always overtaking
– on the track that levitates between dreaming and waking –
Nataraja on his round of making and unmaking.
I usually find advice on writing unhelpful and sometimes even anxiety-producing. But this article by Paul Saevig, The Curse of the Most Recent: How to Turn it Into a Blessing, says a few things that I think I need to hear.
The gist of it is that we can become bogged down trying to write like our favourite authors, though we can still take a few things from them. After I finished The Etched City I read a lot of good books, trying to stuff myself with techniques. And I’m glad I did. I enjoyed the books, for one thing, and I think I got an idea of what really excellent writing can be - in a lot of different ways. But I’m a style sponge; I can pastiche other writers’ styles rather too easily, and the temptation to do so is enormous when the style is a great one. It has recently occurred to me that for the last few years I might have been mismatching style to material - trying to apply, say, some mixture of Virginia Woolf and Jean Genet to material that will suffer rather than benefit from such a treatment - and that could be why nothing seems to be working.
Am I afraid to stand on my own two feel and write like Kirsten Bishop? Absolutely - because Kirsten Bishop isn’t one tenth of the writer Woolf was, or Genet. You can hope, though, that through practice you will level up and become a better writer in your own way, whatever that is. Of course, your own way is still going to be influenced by others, but just because a singer is influenced by Elvis doesn’t mean he ought to become an Elvis impersonator.
I’m just thinking out aloud here, really. I don’t remember angsting like this about art. When I was a kid I tried to copy Brian Froud, but I soon found my own way of drawing stuff . And my way is not very remarkable, and not even always very accurate, but I feel so happy when I draw something, if it just has that little zing - even if only in my eyes - of liveliness. I don’t mind if no one else likes it (though it’s very nice when they do). But I was there, I held the pencil, my chattering mind went quiet, I moved the pencil, I smiled; I was connected with what I was drawing; I wasn’t really there, or was only there faintly: awareness without selfconsciousness - which is a delicious, addictive feeling.
Selconsciousness used to vanish for me when I wrote, too. Now I can’t get rid of it even if I boot it in the bum. I am conscious of myself as a writer and that makes the whole business painful. However, I’m working on a collaborative piece with another writer and so far it has been a wonderful experience. My feeling of selfconsciousness is greatly decreased and I feel secure having someone else there to make sure I don’t just waffle on. Especially enjoyable is the experience of writing characters in tandem, since you get the pleasure of being audience as well as storyteller. It’s not unlike roleplaying.
Looking at the in-progress book about the unicorn, tentatively titled “Horn”, I know I have to find a style that works for the book and that serves the characters well. I see my characters as my clients, and different clients have very different needs. But more than that I need to work on the substance.
And stop procrastinating with blog posts.
While looking for pictures of guns, I found via The Alpha Environmentalist this great picture of Russian schoolgirls stripping AKs:
From the same blog, a sniper joke.
Googling Kalashnikov images I came across images of Afghan war rugs. More about Afghanistan and war rugs here (where at the time of the last update - years ago! -you could also order a quite nice Mujihadeen hat).
P.S. Thanks to Colin for pointing out that “field strip” technically means disassembling and assembling a gun outdoors, when on the move etc., though a lot of people seem to use it for gun disassembly anywhere, and I’ve read different definitions. Anyone out there know for sure?
Couple of recent pages from my sketchbook. Crappy paper and HB mechanical pencil, darkened in Photoshop. Some are copied or half-copied from photos of Hungarian singer Szilveszter Szabo. I think my favourite thing here is the bull at the bottom of the second page.
this r serious class.
Yesterday I had an extra lesson with my semi-private kids - two delightful little Japanese girls. I mean that not at all sarcastically, they really are a delight to teach. However, they rarely use English unless I ask them to - which is pretty normal. Sometimes they’ll say a word or two, but I’ve never heard one of them put more than two words together until yesterday, when Girl 1, in the middle of a game, exclaimed at a frustrating moment and with just the right intonation to express exasperation, “Oh my God”. With a nearly English accent, too. After I stopped blinked stupidly I asked her, in Japanese, where she’d learned the phrase. She waited a moment, then smiled and pointed at me.
Mea culpa.
I wonder what else I have inadvertently been saying in class (lovely though they are, they still give me moments of panic, like yesterday, when I found them at break time making tea using the very very hot water urn) and whether they are repeating it at home in front of their mothers.
