When I found the image below on Queerest of them all, I had a feeling it would lead somewhere good. It did! Fyodor Pavlov’s art (check out the archive at the link) inhabits a palace of old-school aestheticism with a cock-shaped summerhouse.
(Pavlov’s comment: “Alright, time for some hurricane sketch pages! Have a penis with some pretty flowers.
This can count for Smut Sunday!”)
Today was a better day. There was just a whole lot I needed to cut. There is too much material in this for a novella, and I’m still convinced that it shouldn’t be a novel. A couple of unnecessary elaborations will have to go, and I have to stop pursuing some lines of thought of the “but what if” variety. First section is now 10,000 words. I’m up to the mushy bit in the middle. I’m tempted to jump straight to the solid section ahead, tighten some nuts and bolts there, and see if some of the material to cover in the mushy bit might fit in naturally there. I hope it’ll be easier to improve the first part in future drafts now that I’ve shortened it — I mean, I at least won’t have to worry about improving bits that are no longer there.
Going to a place in the country tomorrow. Early start!
Ugh. There’s writing when you don’t want to write, which is normal, and writing when you really want to do something else, which is another kettle of hagfish. I should’ve just gone into the studio today like I wanted to. Technically I’ve done 500 words in this draft; really I’ve pasted 400 and written 100. I’m trying again, pretending 7:15 pm is 7:15 am.
Now it’s 8:30 and I’ve gone over my 1000 word quota, but I can see where I want to jiggle a couple of things. There’s a lengthy bit that I’d like to compress, and a conversation that I want to knock into better shape before going on. Which means I have some kind of plan for tomorrow, rather than just a ‘fix this.’ And yep, I’m going back to earlier drafts with some of it.
Disliking my own work, second-guessing myself, overthinking things, obsessing over details — I do it all. I often hate my writing while I’m writing it, which makes it hard to sustain writing beyond short story length. It’s helpful to write about a character I love, since affection for the character can offset the discouraging thoughts about the work. One needs to be self-critical, but it would be helpful if the inner critic was able to give a thumbs up when things are basically working, rather than see every fault as a fatal flaw. I think the inner critic that looks at my writing is the same critic that looks at my thighs. She’s sucked a lot of fun out of my life one way and another. Yet maybe, to the extent that I write well, if at all, it might be because of her. I don’t know. Anyway, no one ever said life was meant to be easy. Gonna call it quits for the day and watch I Saw the Devil, a film apparently packed with the old ultraviolence, in which something very bad clearly happens to Byung-hun Lee’s hair. This might be in the rain, but this? I expect the film to also feature the Mona Lisa with a mullet.
Shortened the torso and arms, made the arse less feminine, started refining muscles and trying out leg hair texture. Still haven’t decided on an angle for the head. I brought some wax-clay home to make a couple of different heads. I think we’re getting a male model in next week to help those who are making male figures.
I’m thinking about the metal to cast him in. I don’t think dark bronze will be right this time. I had visions of stainless steel, with a combination of rough and smooth-shiny textures, but because of the pouring temperature of steel and the thinness of the ankle the metal will have to run through, he’d have to be done in two parts and welded together, which leaves the door open a bit wider for Mr Cockup, and I’m starting to get the impression that in metal casting that door is open wide enough already! So maybe green bronze — similar colour to the wax — or aluminium, which is light and cheap and pours easily and can still look pretty shiny. I want him to be an outdoor piece, so I think it’d be cool if he glittered a bit in the sun and reflected his surroundings.
ETA: Arse still too female. Looking at Robert Mapplethorpe pics for reference. No, no that one. I may also need to change the tilt of the pelvis. Though I should be writing, I’ve got a yen to go back in today and work on it some more.
I’ve made my word count already, so I get to blog.
Maybe writers aren’t meant to express a lot of frustration with or doubt in what they’re writing — I mean, all this blogging business is to create positive vibes around your work, right? — but I need to let it out. This story is kicking my arse so hard I need to wear a rubber tire for underwear. Parts of it are pleasing, I like them, they feel right — but damn near everything I’ve written for the purpose of shoving plot into what were, er, some elusively plotted scenes is bugging me. I feel like it’s not gripping the road. Maybe the plot is all wrong for the… the what? …the thingy? Maybe the plot is wrong for the thingy. Maybe the plot is wrong for the characters. Maybe I’ve tried to jam too much material (not so much plot as ideas, possibly) into a short(ish) work. I don’t know. This story has brought me to tears of frustration more than once. It’s hard to write when it feels as though no matter what words I put down, it’s all somehow going in the wrong direction.
I can’t change the plot or the ideas around it now. I’ve got to bite the pillow, persevere with the story I worked out, just do the best I can with it, then look for feedback. Maybe it’s fine, maybe the good will outweigh or at least balance the bad, if I can’t get rid of the bad. Maybe I’ll have to completely strip and rebuild it. But I really mustn’t think about that.
I’m going to cook some of those quail eggs. I always thought those little eggs were quail eggs, and they are, despite being labelled partridge. Apparently a partridge is the same bird as a quail. (ETA: Ok, they’re not the same. Partridge, quail, I don’t know, they’re little eggs!)
ETA 2: I bit the pillow. I moved a long plotty/expository conversation to what I think is a less awkward place and will look for ways to break it up a bit across other scenes, but honestly I’m not sure that I can; I don’t think it breaks naturally, so it might have to stay as it is. I’m now past 8000 words. Tomorrow’s my art class, so I’ll be at the studio, probably all day, since once I start I tend to want to keep going. Big Pan’s torso and legs are coming along. Tomorrow I want to get the arms right and do whatever else I can.
Made up the word shortfall, but didn’t go to the studio — did some errands instead. Serious ham sandwich craving in the evening — I was full on hungry, and hungry very specifically for a ham sandwich! Lucky the supermarket is just around the corner. I bought some partridge eggs while I was there. Deep fried partridge eggs on skewers with chilli sauce are a popular street food here. I think I’ll just try boiling them and making tiny little fried eggs.
So: flying dragons are real! Just tiny. Draco volans, native to the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia and around 20 cm long, glides with the wings attached to its long, movable ribs — so it has wings and four limbs. How far it can glide ranges from 8 metres to a wind-assisted 50 metres depending on which website you read. It can’t sustain powered flight, but give evolution some time and who knows? D. volans in flight.
700 words. 300 short — so I’ll try to make those up tomorrow, which is otherwise going to be a day off at the studio.
I cut a whole scene. However I played it I couldn’t get it to work. It wasn’t bad in itself; it just never felt right in the general flow. I find that more often than not, when a scene or a paragraph or a sentence isn’t working after I’ve fiddled and fiddled with it, it needs to be cut. Dumped, moved or redistributed — but taken out of where it is.
So now I have a few hundred words of plot material to be managed later, in conversation or flashback or mentioned in passing. Or not mentioned, if its absence won’t be noticed.
Holy shit, Gaston Bachelard, author of the sublime The Poetics of Space, wrote a book about Isidore Ducasse?
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1777153.Lautreamont
It doesn’t seem to be available as an e-book. But I might have to buy it anyway.
Well, I’ve nearly reached the end of a whole month of fairly healthy eating. My ankle’s good enough that I think I can get back to tai chi again, if I go easy on that foot. And I seem to have lost that kilo a second time — maybe a couple of its friends will follow it!
Anyway, making a daily report seemed to work so well that I think I’ll do it for Gunpowder Tea as well. The first 13,000 words are sitting there, still not where I want them to be. And they need to be where I want them to be, or I can’t finalise the bridging part that joins them to the second half, which was the first part that I wrote, before the plot came along, and with which I’m generally happy. It needs work, but I think I can see what kind of work, which is often not the case with the first half.
I’ve done a bit of liposuction and minor jiggling on the first part that I posted as a WIP. A couple of things I took out might get mentioned later, but it doesn’t really matter if there’s no room. I’m now looking at 11,000 words to work on. I want to panel beat 1000 words a day, with two days off or mostly off each week, which doesn’t sound like much, but I’m having enough trouble with this section that I doubt I can go more quickly. The point of a daily report will be to help me not get discouraged and skive off, as I’ve been tempted to do lately. It might also — this I really hope — galvanise my brain into working out some pace and sequence stuff. I need to look at some earlier drafts, from before I got deep into second guessing myself, and possibly use material from them.
Monday start, because it’s too weird to start a work thing on a Sunday, though I’ll probably do some work tomorrow anyway.
