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I slept late, and spent the day cleaning out a portion of my hall closet. It was a mess. Such a mess - that every time I opened the door - it threatened to come tumbling out into the hallway. And I was afraid a dead mouse was in there (it wasn't - thank god, just dusty). I'd been procrastinating cleaning it out for years.
Did it from 12 pm to approximately 3 pm. Prior to that, breakfast, shower, making bed, watching a television show. Writing the morning pages - and completing the exercises.
The Artist Way and it's exercises lead to cleaning out the closet - when I'd intended on working on revising my novel today. Or rather reading the latest chapter in The Artist Way did.
( Read more... )
The exercise that lead me down this path isn't what you might think. It did not tell me to clean out a closet.
It told me to revisit an Artistic U-Turn - or a traumatic abandonment of a work that I felt had promise and shut me down. I didn't have to think too hard about what it was. And it suggested that I find that work of art, revisit it, and see if I could salvage it and do something with it now.
They gave an example of a man who had shot a film, had it criticized and it shut him down. So he aborted it. ( Read more... )
Last night, while talking to my mother about having hit the wall again on my writing - she asked me about my first book, the first one that I attempted to get published, and even for the space of maybe ten seconds, had a literary agent for. Not the one that I actually did independently publish, the one before it. The one that I even had a couple of people on fanboards read, and CW had liked. It's also the one - that I had people tell me that they liked my writing, but the story wasn't working for them or they didn't like the genre and wanted a cozy mystery instead.
The problem with being an artist (whether it's painting, drawing, writing, acting, music, what have you) - is you are often at the whim of others fickle and discriminating tastes. ( Read more... )
At any rate - you may or may not be wondering if I found that first novel?
Well, I thought about it after my mother mentioned it to me. Then the Artist Way asked me about it. And I thought - okay, did I throw it out? I don't think I did. If I can't throw out humidifiers, it's unlikely I can throw out something I created and worked hard on. So I opened my closet, and sure enough - two plastic containers, buried under heaps of junk stared back at me.
I wonder if it's in there? But I'm going to have to clean out this closet to get to it. Dammit. I wasn't planning on doing that today. (Best Laid Plans and all that.) So, I rolled up my sleeves (so to speak - I was wearing a t-shirt) and sweated profusely (I had to change pants at one point) to get it cleared out. ( Read more... )
It took two hours. ( Read more... )
Finally, I opened the two plastic containers. And there it was, ( Read more... )
Mother: Whatever happened to your first book - the one before Doing Time? Heir Apparent?
Me: I don't know, it's somewhere or I threw it out...it wasn't that good.
Mother: I liked that book.
So now, that book is sitting in a sack on the bottom shelf of my television stand staring at me with an accusatory grin. Come look at me again please.
**
While cleaning out the closet, I finished an audio book, whose title I forget. It's a chick-lit by Kristin Higgins, about a woman returning to her childhood home on an island in Maine. It's kind of cliche-ridden, and very tropey, also predictable, with a couple of twists, but nothing major. It took me two years to listen or read it. I took a six-ten month break, yet was able to pick up where I left off without any issues. It's that kind of book - not hard to follow at all, and you can half-pay attention to it, and still know what's going on. (See, there's a lot of mediocre novels published. I shouldn't worry about people criticizing mine. Which is actually my fear of putting it out there - having it picked apart by the peanut gallery.)
Then started another one, which I'm a quarter of the way through. Killing John Wayne, The Making of Genghis Khan, the Worst Film in History - which requires it's own post. It's basically the history of what lead to making the film, all the people involved, and includes a history of the atomic bomb testing in the area in which the film was made.
This is the film that resulted in half the cast dying of cancer several years later - as a direct result of being in that film. The description of the atomic bomb testing, and the government's incompetence at protecting the public from the results of the testing, and radiation is harrowing. Dear god, no wonder so many people in Arizona, Nevada, California and New Mexico have cancer. It's also rather harrowing in regards to how early Hollywood worked, and how it was run. Howard Hughes was a piece of work.
I also started a watercolor, made a spinach and green onion quiche, and watched episodes of Ted Lasso (S2) and Schimagoon (S1) on Apple TV, while robot vacuuming my apartment. And, finished the latest chapter of The Artist Way. And replaced my filter in my air purifier, and took down the garbage, recyclables, and junk from closet cleanup, plus two ratty old shoes to the basement. (Someone took the chickpea macronic and Polish chocolates I'd left last week - I was pleased to notice that.) The basement has turned out to be a rather convenient junk, dried packaged food, book and DVD depository.
Did it from 12 pm to approximately 3 pm. Prior to that, breakfast, shower, making bed, watching a television show. Writing the morning pages - and completing the exercises.
The Artist Way and it's exercises lead to cleaning out the closet - when I'd intended on working on revising my novel today. Or rather reading the latest chapter in The Artist Way did.
( Read more... )
The exercise that lead me down this path isn't what you might think. It did not tell me to clean out a closet.
It told me to revisit an Artistic U-Turn - or a traumatic abandonment of a work that I felt had promise and shut me down. I didn't have to think too hard about what it was. And it suggested that I find that work of art, revisit it, and see if I could salvage it and do something with it now.
They gave an example of a man who had shot a film, had it criticized and it shut him down. So he aborted it. ( Read more... )
Last night, while talking to my mother about having hit the wall again on my writing - she asked me about my first book, the first one that I attempted to get published, and even for the space of maybe ten seconds, had a literary agent for. Not the one that I actually did independently publish, the one before it. The one that I even had a couple of people on fanboards read, and CW had liked. It's also the one - that I had people tell me that they liked my writing, but the story wasn't working for them or they didn't like the genre and wanted a cozy mystery instead.
The problem with being an artist (whether it's painting, drawing, writing, acting, music, what have you) - is you are often at the whim of others fickle and discriminating tastes. ( Read more... )
At any rate - you may or may not be wondering if I found that first novel?
Well, I thought about it after my mother mentioned it to me. Then the Artist Way asked me about it. And I thought - okay, did I throw it out? I don't think I did. If I can't throw out humidifiers, it's unlikely I can throw out something I created and worked hard on. So I opened my closet, and sure enough - two plastic containers, buried under heaps of junk stared back at me.
I wonder if it's in there? But I'm going to have to clean out this closet to get to it. Dammit. I wasn't planning on doing that today. (Best Laid Plans and all that.) So, I rolled up my sleeves (so to speak - I was wearing a t-shirt) and sweated profusely (I had to change pants at one point) to get it cleared out. ( Read more... )
It took two hours. ( Read more... )
Finally, I opened the two plastic containers. And there it was, ( Read more... )
Mother: Whatever happened to your first book - the one before Doing Time? Heir Apparent?
Me: I don't know, it's somewhere or I threw it out...it wasn't that good.
Mother: I liked that book.
So now, that book is sitting in a sack on the bottom shelf of my television stand staring at me with an accusatory grin. Come look at me again please.
**
While cleaning out the closet, I finished an audio book, whose title I forget. It's a chick-lit by Kristin Higgins, about a woman returning to her childhood home on an island in Maine. It's kind of cliche-ridden, and very tropey, also predictable, with a couple of twists, but nothing major. It took me two years to listen or read it. I took a six-ten month break, yet was able to pick up where I left off without any issues. It's that kind of book - not hard to follow at all, and you can half-pay attention to it, and still know what's going on. (See, there's a lot of mediocre novels published. I shouldn't worry about people criticizing mine. Which is actually my fear of putting it out there - having it picked apart by the peanut gallery.)
Then started another one, which I'm a quarter of the way through. Killing John Wayne, The Making of Genghis Khan, the Worst Film in History - which requires it's own post. It's basically the history of what lead to making the film, all the people involved, and includes a history of the atomic bomb testing in the area in which the film was made.
This is the film that resulted in half the cast dying of cancer several years later - as a direct result of being in that film. The description of the atomic bomb testing, and the government's incompetence at protecting the public from the results of the testing, and radiation is harrowing. Dear god, no wonder so many people in Arizona, Nevada, California and New Mexico have cancer. It's also rather harrowing in regards to how early Hollywood worked, and how it was run. Howard Hughes was a piece of work.
I also started a watercolor, made a spinach and green onion quiche, and watched episodes of Ted Lasso (S2) and Schimagoon (S1) on Apple TV, while robot vacuuming my apartment. And, finished the latest chapter of The Artist Way. And replaced my filter in my air purifier, and took down the garbage, recyclables, and junk from closet cleanup, plus two ratty old shoes to the basement. (Someone took the chickpea macronic and Polish chocolates I'd left last week - I was pleased to notice that.) The basement has turned out to be a rather convenient junk, dried packaged food, book and DVD depository.