Aspirations
I read a fair few web comics. Some good, some bad, some awful. Here's a good one. It's from the ever awesome XKCD. I just keep coming back to it.
This is something I aspire to.
Living the Lines
As I write this the left side of my vision is gradually clearing. The ripple show is subsiding. The headache that replaces it is not going to be fun. But that's an aside...
This weekend I ate out three times. It's expensive but addictive. I saw a lot of friends, many of whom I don't get to see very often, on account of their living in the Northern and Southern Wastes. So yeah. Food inspires me. No. That's wrong. Good food inspires me. Bad food inflames me. Either way my brain juices were forced through a sieve. I was exposed to a dizzying array of dishes. The goodness was extracted and forced inward, again. For myself, I had a passable (if horribly expensive curry), the largest pub shepherd's pie that I've ever seen and a Golden Hog. I can tell that last one caught you. It's a wild boar burger with a slice of caramelised apple. Stupendous. It came with salad but I felt compelled to compliment it with a lime and banana milkshake (that actually came with a chunk of lime in it) and what is possibly the second densest brownie I've ever consumed.
So. Lots to think about. Lots to get the juices flowing (brain not stomach). So I spent the weekend living the lines. The opening lines to be exact. Everything I saw, everyone I spoke to became part of something. I'm not sure how, why or even if it was worthwhile. It was a sub-conscious thing...
- "Just as Henry was coming to think of Martha as being worthy of one off the wrist, Henrietta walked into his life."
- "I could have sworn you were twins five minutes ago."
- "Wormwood Hex didn't like his nose."
It goes on... None of them are good. But that doesn't matter. They're a start. A start is all that's really required.
Music as Memory
I've talked about music before. You know it's an essential tool in my writing process. You know that certain songs, even without lyrics, can evoke specific feelings. I was thinking about this and realised that this must have started somewhere. A single song and a single book must have formed the first connection. What follows is a vague list of music that reminds me of certain books...
- Queen (Innuendo) - X-Men: Age of Apocalypse
- Smashing Pumpkins - The Belgariad
- Nightwish - Game of Thrones
- Any pop punk - David Gemmell
- Cradle of Filth - The Necroscope series
- Soilwork - Altered Carbon
I go on... but you may just grow even more disappointed by my taste in music...
Talking About Movies
Okay so I think you know this by now. I love talking about movies. I mean I love movies but what's love if you don't talk about it? So for tonight (for the script class) we had to think about our favourite films and pick a scene to show to the class and discuss. I picked the final scenes from Leon, mainly because it's an awesome movie, but also because it's got a fantastic transition at the end and some really nice contrasts between Leon and Mathilda. I showed the clips, we talked a little about the scenes. What made it even better was the discovery that our tutors were really into the movie too. Add to that a discussion about famous last words has given me an idea for a thirty minute movie due near the end of term. Yay me.
Learning Spawns
Ever since the reading I've been tired. I mean it wasn't the reading as such. It was more the massive high point of my birthday party, followed by the stress of reading, combined with a bunch of really late nights and on top of that, work being a bit of a pig. I felt drained and as a result my writing practice was going nowhere. The ideas just weren't flowing. I needed something to dislodge them and restore the stream. I thought that was going to be a good nights sleep but that didn't help. The thing that ended up getting me going again was a textbook. What? Yeah. One those textbooks. One I've been struggling to read since October. The chapter was all about the three act structure and just looking at those various chunks (and trying to work out how my own work fit them) changed something. I guess it was like an association game. I ended up with a step outline for what could be a three to four thousand word short story.
So yeah. Onward once more!
Then There Was Fog
I can't believe I forgot to post about the fog. There was fog! Good fog! We've had a bit of a fog deficit this year. I like a good bit of fog. My mum lives out in the country a little way so I get to drive along dark roads not knowing what horrors lurk beyond the rolling grey that surrounds my car. Then there's that little twinge of terror every time I see the twin beams of the car hurtling towards me. Is this going the time they swerve at the last minute clipping my wing and sending me spiralling into the dike? It's only better if there's fog as well as snow, when turning on your beams actually reduces your range of vision and turns the air ahead into a solid wall of billowing yellow.
So yes. We had fog. It was a nice change from the normal wet stuff.
Albums of the Year
Since I don't tend to listen to much new music I'm going to list albums that I discovered this year. I won't try to describe them because I'd suck at that. I'll simply list them. Here... the ten albums that have made the biggest impact on me this year... (in no particular order)
Papa Roach: The Paramour Sessions
Within Temptation: The Silent Force
Avenged Sevenfold: Waking the Fallen
Terry Pratchett
It was on the BBC news today. Terry Pratchett has Alzheimer's disease. He says he'll be able to finish his current commitments (two books) and there should be time for a few more. This has hit me hard. When David Gemmell, the author of my favourite book, died it was more of a fact of life. It may be the idea of a mind as amazing as Pratchett's being eroded slowly but surely. Maybe it's the fact he's seems like such a nice bloke. His books have been a massive, huge, gigantic influence on me as a reader and as a writer. I'm not sure what else to write or if I should even be writing anything at all.
I salute the man. That is all.
Permission to (Day)dream
I mentioned in an earlier post that ideas tend to come at the least convenient times. I'm coming to think it's more than that. My ideas refuse to be called on demand. I can't place two fingers on each temple and will forth an image that will fit into the structure I've been working on. The process works more like this...
- I start doing something utterly unrelated to writing which requires my full attention e.g. driving, programming or sleeping.
- The images fly unbidden into my mind at a rate quite unsuited to my lack of a pen or paper, or even a free piece of attention to dedicate to them.
I spent twenty minutes in the car tonight trying to hold two separate ideas in memory. When I got home I scrawled them on the first piece of paper I could get hold of and the ideas became static. I think my subconscious is better at developing story ideas than I am.
As a child I had the same over-active imagination and was often told I spent too much time day dreaming. I used to think this was a bad thing. Now I realise that it's an utterly critical tool. So if find yourself drifting away in the middle of a boring task, don't reel yourself in. Let the images flow and, when you see one you can use, grab hold of it, write it down, use it. Give yourself permission to day dream.
Just... you know... don't crash your car in the meantime.
Subscribe
Tweets
- No public Twitter messages.
Now Reading
}
Music
Photos
Links
- Bookworm Blues
- Dark Fiction Magazine
- Floor to Ceiling Books
- GavReads
- Gentle, Parochial Horror
- Mulholland Books
- NanoWriMo
- NextRead
- Only the Best Sci Fi
- Schizopolitan
- Scrivener
- The Eloquent Page
- Walker of Worlds
- Words and Pictures
Bluster
Categories
Archive
- November 2011 (3)
- October 2011 (1)
- May 2011 (2)
- April 2011 (2)
- January 2011 (1)
- August 2010 (1)
- July 2010 (1)
- June 2010 (1)
- May 2010 (1)
- April 2010 (2)
- March 2010 (2)
- January 2010 (2)
- December 2009 (1)
- November 2009 (2)
- October 2009 (3)
- September 2009 (8)
- July 2009 (2)
- June 2009 (1)
- May 2009 (5)
- October 2008 (2)
- September 2008 (2)
- August 2008 (2)
- June 2008 (4)
- May 2008 (6)
- April 2008 (4)
- March 2008 (12)
- February 2008 (12)
- January 2008 (16)
- December 2007 (16)
- November 2007 (17)
- October 2007 (42)
- September 2007 (36)
- August 2007 (21)
The Deluge
So I've been dry for the last week or so. I was thinking about script so much that my prose had kind of dried up. Then today there was a story on the BBC. And just like that they were there. I'm very bad when it comes to writing practice but today was different. Today was easy. I don't know what it is about mystical creature type things that get me...