Wicked Ace Space

Writing++

2024-03-22T18:37:59Z

I've cracked it! Or, I've cracked something.

On my way home from the [place I go to sit and write on Fridays] this afternoon, I felt suddenly flooded with creativity in that way that translates to actually sitting down at the computer and typing at a furious pace - and now here I sit, 3500 words of prose and placeholder names later, in the glow of an idea that's working.

I've been kicking a novel idea around for a few years now, with plenty of worldbuilding and backstory but never enough in the way of plot or character. Well, since my retreat last weekend, I've been listening to writing podcasts (specifically Tim Clare's Death of 1000 Cuts, specifically specifically the sub-series Writing A Novel where he goes through the process of coming up with a novel from scratch, narrating out loud into the podcast as he goes), and I've been taking opportunities to write down little scribbles of exercise, like lists of character archetypes or city names, or expanding character archetypes into sketches of specific people.

And this intentional practise has finally paid off, because this afternoon one of those lists turned into an idea which may just have broken the dam on a particularly stagnant bit of plot. It was absolutely a case of letting go of some of the bits that have been fixtures of the idea since the early days, which clearly aren't serving me, and letting something new bubble up to take their place. The characters I'm dropping might get to come back in a different form later, but it's exciting to find a new angle on the setting that's got some more conflict and motivation going for it.

Really hoping I can keep this momentum up! I've got free afternoons all weekend this weekend, so I'm hoping to hammer out as many words as possible of this idea while it's fresh and exciting, before I have to go back to thinking about work on Monday!

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Writing Weekend: Debrief

2024-03-16T19:12:06Z

Tonight is the last night of my DIY writing retreat - I check out straight after breakfast and travel back to the "real world" via a series of trains.

Since Thursday, I have:

Typed up what I have so far of the novel outline, complete with big ALL CAPS TBD MARKERS where everything is still up in the air
(Then filled in a couple of TBD sections slightly - though the middle still has a lot in)
Written through the opening and a couple of key transitions with a low, low quality filter (important for getting the words out)
Written some lists to generate ideas for stuff to fill in the TBDs
Come up with a sketch of some secondary characters who might exist in the space of the TBDs
Been for several walks
Read a book from the shelf in the lounge (Colonel Barker's Monstrous Regiment by Rose Collis)
Listened to some Death of 1000 Cuts
Contributed about 6 pieces to the fiendish Rosetta Stone jigsaw that another resident is working on (he started it NINE DAYS AGO and has been working on it a few hours every day! it's so hard!)
Signed up for an in-person writing meetup next weekend
Not thought about work even once (except for writing this sentence)

So I'm calling this a success!

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Writing Weekend

2024-03-14T22:01:11Z

This weekend is all about writing.

At the start of the year, I decided I was determined not to repeat the mistakes of 2023 (forgetting to use any time off work for the first five months of the year and then realising I was super exhausted as a result), so I booked myself a long weekend in March for the sake of it. Then a friend posted about spending a few days at a rural venue as a kind of DIY writing retreat, and it sounded perfect. So here I am!

I've spent today on trains and filling time between them, which has been quite good as a kind of transition space: moving through scenery that's different from my everyday, and letting myself zone out and switch off from work (which is still just as, let's say, intense as it was in 2023). I arrived just after dinner, so I've spent the evening settling into my room and idly browsing writing inspiration sites, to get myself into the mood. I've also started to make a rough plan of what I want to get done in the next two days!

( The Plan... )

I'm here until Sunday morning. My meals are all pre-booked on-site, so all I need to do is sit down and write (and also stand up and walk about every so often, in the interests of not hurting!). Feeling good about it.

And let's face it, even if I don't write anything more than this post, at least I had some time out of the city and away from everyday life. I was feeling pretty miserable at work on Monday, so hopefully the break will do me good!

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wickedace @ 2023-10-21T18:57:00

2023-10-21T18:30:40Z

Autumn has officially arrived, in a grey and soggy way, unfortunately along with a massive dip in my mood. The latter sadly not helped by having to be a real adult about things like "mold in the shower" and "warning lights on the car" and "possible faulty appliance wiring" - like, what do you mean I'm responsible now, and I just have to keep being responsible for the whole rest of my life??

So, anyway, I'm going to try and boost my spirits by posting about some of the good stuff that's been going on!

Film
Last time I posted, I'd just bought tickets for some London Film Festival screenings; it's been long enough since then that LFF is over already! But I'm really glad I went for the tickets, because I got to see some good stuff. Here's what I watched...

Peeping Tom (1960) (new remaster, with introduction from Thelma Schoonmaker - who then watched the film from just across the aisle from me! *swoon*). This was a great start to my festival! One of those slow-paced older thrillers, with some absolutely fantastic colour, and also my first time in the big screen at the BFI.

Molli and Max in the Future. All I knew going into this one was the one-liner we got in the pre-film introduction: "if you like When Harry Met Sally, and you like lo-fi sci-fi, this film is for you"... and I do like both of those things, and this film was very much for me! I laughed throughout, and it sat really nicely at the intersection of my "two characters just talking" and "lower-budget sci-fi" interests.

Poolman. This is Chris Pine's directorial debut, and while I didn't hate it like so many people on Letterboxd seemed to, I didn't love it either. It was fine. A few fun character moments, some humour, but the main plotline didn't really get room to breathe.

Scala!!! A documentary about the Scala cinema in Kings Cross. I was sadly disappointed by this one, because I love cinema, I love London, and I love niche mid-late twentieth century history... but all of that love isn't enough to get past my serious dislike for documentaries which are just a bunch of random people talking to camera about how they remember stuff being great. Give me narrative, make me feel something!

Robot Dreams. This was my final film of the festival, and a late ticket purchase, and an absolutely wonderful way to end it. This film is a dialogue-free animation set in a 1980s New York full of anthropomorphised animals, and it's adorable and it's emotionally devastating. The director made himself cry onstage in the Q&A afterwards just by talking about the film, that's how good it is. I believe it gets a general release in February, and I highly recommend going to see it.

Outside of the festival, I've been bouncing around my usual mix: The Last Starfighter (1984), What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), Dracula (1931), The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). Plus, I introduced some friends to Clue (1985), and I'm hoping to get an informal sort of "let's introduce people to all those fun 80s/90s films that are great to rewatch" thing going, maybe monthly?

Drawing
To save myself from being at a loss last weekend, I found a nearby drop-in life drawing class and went along for a couple of hours. It was good to remember how to approach it, and the tutor (although busy) had some good things to say about my work. This has reminded me that drawing is a good thing to occupy me when I'm too down in the dumps for writing - it has a lower "actively thinking" requirement, and I can get a little boost from achieving something that looks good. I need to get better at drawing people who aren't sitting still for me, though - outside of life drawing classes, all my attempted subjects move around all the time!

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wickedace @ 2023-09-08T17:27:00

2023-09-08T16:40:22Z

After a long, not-so-summery summer, the weather has brought the heat all in one week. It's absolutely sweltering today, and it's making me long for the autumn cool that started to show its face at the end of August.

September is looking busy so far, with new hires at work, my volunteering gig ramping back up for the new term, some fun films and some exciting heritage events that friends have put me onto. But the good kind of busy: the kind of busy that's a mix of things.

Film
In exciting news, I was on the ball enough to pick up tickets for some screenings at the London Film Festival this year (unlike previous years, where I've seen the queues on the door in October and thought, oh, that would have been nice). This is a continuation of 2023: The Year of Contemporary Film, I suppose! (2020-2022 were much more about archive-diving, after all.)

I also splashed out on a Letterboxd Pro account for the year, so that I can nerd out about extended statistics.

Writing
That's right - there's actually something to report on the writing front!

I recently found a new local "get together and write stuff" social group, which I'm hoping will help me in my goal of recultivating a writing habit. So far I've been to one session, and while I didn't get anything written, I regard it as a significant first step. There's another one this weekend; but even more excitingly, today I did a fun little writing exercise in my Friday afternoon "go to the pub with a notebook" spot.

(The exercise was: write a list of things that could be in someone's bag. Then pick 10 or so things from the list and write a short paragraph about a character who keeps that thing in their bag. It's short, simple and gentle, and I had fun with it.)

Sewing
I don't remember whether I reported here about the bomber jacket I made last month - I made a bomber jacket! I'm excited for the weather to be cool enough to wear it! - but I've now got a follow-up project: I'm going to make a sort of cross-body rucksack to replace my battered Mountain Warehouse day bag. The last of the materials arrived today, and I have persuaded my printer to produce a pattern at scale, so now all I need is a free weekend.

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wickedace @ 2023-08-17T11:06:00

2023-08-17T10:17:58Z

What's better than overwork? Being on holiday! I'm writing today from a converted barn in the middle of nowhere in the Netherlands (or, as close to the middle of nowhere as is possible to get in the Netherlands, which isn't very close). It's been a hot and sunny week, but today is bright-cloudy with a breeze, a cooling relief.

Film
Of course, I couldn't not get in on the films of the moment. I got a gang of friends together to watch Oppenheimer (2023) and Barbie (2023) in a day (leaving time for a late lunch at the cinema burger bar in between). I laughed a lot at Barbie; Oppenheimer was fine, once you got past the first hour of "rapid cuts between men saying bland sentences as though they are something profound".

When I get home, there's unlikely to be much of interest in the cinema for a few weeks, except perhaps the new TMNT. I'm considering trying to double-feature it with the 1990 one - although I have just now discovered there were also adaptations in 2007 and 2014, and I'm not certain I have the stamina to get through all four (ever, let alone in a row!).

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The Consequences of Overwork

2023-07-28T13:29:07Z

The last three months seem to have passed in a flash.

I've been working too hard. A project that I've been responsible for since it began in 2020 recently hit a "lots to do, not enough time to do it in" phase for the first time, and I've been struggling with maintaining a reasonable balance between work and the rest of my life as a result. I've got a lot of personal investment in this project's long-term success, and it's leading me to work "just a little bit longer" and sneak glances at my email & IM out of hours. The blurring of lines caused by hybrid working probably hasn't been helping me here, either, which is a shame, because it's got a host of other benefits as a paradigm.

The result, of course, is that I've been totally exhausted for weeks, and feeling disconnected from my social life to boot! I haven't touched any of my creative projects, and it feels like I'll never get back to the headspace where I'm capable of doing so (although, intellectually, I know it will be possible eventually). I've also had a flare-up of RSI in my hands and wrists, although not yet as bad as it was at its worst in 2014.

In good news, though: I've noticed that I'm doing this. That's the first step in doing something about it. I'll admit that the RSI symptoms were a bit of an alarm bell in this respect - the one upside of them! I've started taking some active steps to fixing the situation, including:

Finally started looking for a more ergonomic desk setup for my home office (since I'm in there 2 days a week as standard!)
Made sure, while I was out of town Fri-Tue, not to look at my work phone at all
Took a bit of my workday attention away from the project to focus on process improvements & training which will make it easier for members of my team to take over things I currently do, and do them effectively
Reminded myself that I can trust my team do the things I'm delegating to them - they are competent & smart!
Invited friends out for a drink yesterday (just to hang out, no film or show or board game, which we don't do so much these days)
On catching myself looking at work messages this morning, turned the work phone off and shut it in the office room
Today, dragged myself back out to the Pub Where I Write on Fridays: even though there's no way I'm going to get any actual writing (except this blog, I suppose) done today, physically going to the location is an important part of making space for it
Bought tickets to see some more great films at the cinema, where I can't get distracted by my phone

And on that last note, I have still been managing to get to the cinema a fair bit in between all the overwork, so here are some highlights...

Film
In contemporary releases: Rye Lane (2023) was delightfully charming, Polite Society (2023) was fun, I didn't love Leonor Will Never Die (2022) as much as I'd hoped, and I had a good time with both Medusa Deluxe (2022) and Asteroid City (2023). I did catch Across the Spiderverse (2023) before it left cinemas, and while it was as beautiful and funny and emotional as the first one, I don't love two-parters, and I think it would have been stronger if they'd hit the edit a bit harder and made it something that could stand alone with a completed arc. I also made it to a hard-to-find screening of Lactopalypse, the movie of an Estonian web series, and that provided perhaps the most "wtf" 90 minutes of my life this year.

But of course the bulk of my film consumption is what could be termed "a doomed attempt to catch up with all the cinema of the past hundred years", so I've seen a lot more in the way of older films, both at the repertory cinema and on streaming or DVD at home. The top highlight here is that I went into Jeanne Dielmann, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) knowing very little about it, and was absolutely blown away; I've always thought Citizen Kane to be wildly overrated, and I don't think Vertigo is the best Hitchcock or the best James Stewart film, but if good art is about eliciting a reaction in the audience, then their successor at the top of the Sight & Sound poll is among the very best of it.

Elsewhere, I attended a screening of Girl/Boy (1972), which has an unexpectedly modern feel in its treatment of its central queer couple. I watched both Gaslight (1940) and Gaslight (1944) in quick succession (1944 rounds out its characters better, but over-explains the plot in the back half, and has a somewhat defanged final scene, likely due to censor influence). I was lucky enough to find the better of the two most famous 40s movies starring Orson Welles, The Third Man (1949), playing in actual Vienna; a rewatch, but always worth it. I finally watched my first Hammer horror, Horror Express (1972), and my first Mission Impossible, Mission Impossible (1996). And I had a whale of a time watching Auntie Mame (1958) just last weekend, having heard of it for the first time earlier that day.

Reading
I find non-fiction easier to handle than fiction when I'm overwhelmed in other areas of life, so I've been carrying on my non-fiction-only streak. Despite the overworking, I've had enough travel in the last couple of months to pack some more books in. They've basically been on two themes: film stuff and queer stuff.

The real highlight of my recent reading was How to Survive a Plague by David France, a really well-written narrative of the AIDS crisis (from a primarily New York based perspective). It took me on an emotional journey, and taught me a lot in the process. I also enjoyed Camp! The Story of the Attitude that Conquered the World by Paul Baker, which isn't 100% a queer narrative, but obviously talks a lot about the queer community's relationship with camp. I've started Queer Footprints by Dan Glass, but I'm finding the "walking-tour guide" style a bit tough going in print.

On the film side, I slogged through The Great British Picture Show by George Perry, which was a £2 find in a collection of old cinema books. It's the first thing I've found giving a history of British cinema (amongst the overwhelming abundance of books about the history of Hollywood), but it's a) outdated (printed in the 70s) and b) very dry, being more of a straightforward factual account than you would find in more modern "pop history" books. It did however lead me to an interesting conversation with my dad about what it was like going to the cinema in the 60s and 70s (one feature film a week! one screening a day, except on Saturdays! this child of the multiplex era struggles to imagine...). I've also discovered the BFI Film Classics series, and devoured Alien by Roger Luckhurst and Silent Running by Mark Kermode, both of which were nice, light trips through the behind-the-scenes of excellent films.

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wickedace @ 2023-04-21T12:22:00

2023-04-21T11:35:55Z

Feeling a little down this morning, but hoping I can turn that around by the end of the day. I've got a party this evening, and tomorrow I'm going to have a wander around a town I'm considering moving to in a couple of years(!). In the meantime, I've been knocking things off my to-do list in a whirl of efficiency.

Writing
April is NaPoWriMo! I have been writing some little bits and pieces and sharing them with people on an old writing forum I used to hang out on. (I mostly only go back there for NaPo these days...) I was going to try and do exactly one poem a day, but I've already slipped twice, which makes me a little sad. But I've got a couple of poems that I'm quite proud of, so that's nice.

Film
I've watched a lot since I last posted, but most recently and most unusually I've racked up another three 2023 releases: Dungeons and Dragons, Suzume and Renfield. All three were great! The D&D film was exactly what I expected: not quite grabbing me with the emotional beats but hilarious and beautiful with some incredible set-pieces. Suzume was another solid Shinkai film, although I felt that some of the plot beats happened without quite enough setup for me to believe that they were the natural next step. And Renfield was just incredible, although I did have to look away at moments despite the violence being on the comically exaggerated side rather than the realistic one.

Reading
I've been on a non-fiction kick this month: three books about cinema to fill the time in between going to the cinema. I finally got my hands on a copy of The Celluloid Closet (although it was the 1981 edition, not the 1987 revision), and a friend gave me The Good, the Bad and the Multiplex and Women vs Hollywood as a belated birthday present. All three were interesting reads, if depressing at times, and of course all three provided new additions to my film watchlist!

TV
Finished Derry Girls this week! Now, what other light comedy TV have I missed out on in the last decade? My bar for whether I will enjoy TV shows based on marketing material is sometimes a little too high...

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Update 17/03

2023-03-17T13:10:02Z

I've been working too hard! A big project kicked off at work this month, and I'm having to remind myself how to work effectively & well on something complex & important without dragging out my office hours too late and wiping out all the energy I need for the rest of my life. Right now, I'm just too tired.

I've bought a few things that I hope will last me a good long while: a new holdall, and a couple of merino tops that can work as base layers or just on their own. I also cleared out my wardrobe (and actually took the bag of discarded things out, rather than leaving it to gather dust in the hallway!), so it feels a bit less overstuffed (although there are still a looot of T-shirts I suspect I don't wear; I've done the "turn the hangers around" thing to see what actually gets use this year).

Film
As is the theme for 2023, I've been watching films in fits and starts: three in a day, nothing for two weeks, two in a day, and so on. Very much as the mood takes me! Since the start of February, I've been through:

Victim (1961) - a key film in British queer history, notable in its time for portraying gay people in a sympathetic light. It holds up pretty well to a modern viewing, and I'm willing to forgive it tilting a little into lecture mode at times.

The Birdcage (1996) - I didn't get on with this as well as I hoped to! I couldn't hang with the characters spending so much of the film asking Albert to, well, "not", and then never really properly apologising for it.

Rope (1948) - enjoyed this one. One of those where you can tell it's adapted from a play because the action never really leaves one room; but I have a soft spot for that sort of adaptation, because they show that films can be really gripping even with just the very basics of the format.

All About Eve (1950) - I enjoyed this! But I can't remember much more of what I thought about it when I saw it (a month ago), so I suppose it may have been just okay (and that's fine!).

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) - I've seen this before, of course! This was my first time seeing it in a cinema at an audience-participation-encouraged screening, and it was a lot of fun.

Niagara (1953) - an early Marilyn Monroe film, but not an amazing one. It can't decide whether it's Monroe's story or Peters', and it suffers as a result.

The Celluloid Closet (1995) - thoroughly interesting, and I'll be mining this for more films to watch in the future. I'm also doing my best to get hold of a copy of the book it's based on, which is sadly out of print and not available as an eBook. I think I've found one on eBay that won't have to ship from the US, though!

The Manchurian Candidate (1962) - not as good as I was expecting, from a "classic thriller"! It kept setting things up and forgetting to pick them up again later, and some key characters were lacking in plausible motivation. That said...

The Manchurian Candidate (2004) - made me wonder if I was too hard on the original! Somehow in the remake they managed to tie up half the problems I had with the original, and then invent a whole new set of their own. Truly a film that Just Kept Going (and I could definitely have done without quite so much mid-00s-style "wooaaah creepy images and paranoia and madness" filler).

65 (2023) - a film from this decade, nay, this year! It's rare that I catch films when they come out, but at the start of this year I looked up expected 2023 releases and made a note of ones that sounded interesting. This was billed as "Alien meets Jurassic Park", but in reality it was just a fine-but-unmemorable action thriller. Much less intense than the "Alien" part of "Alien meets Jurassic Park" makes it sound - it's a 12A - but Adam Driver sure did shoot some dinosaurs I guess. Clocks in at a nice tight 90 minutes at least, thanks to some incredibly, uh, "efficient" plot beats.

Reading
In an attempt to make a bit of a dent in my gargantuan TBR pile, I decided to tackle the Ancillary series. I read Ancillary Justice a couple of summers ago, and it blew me away; I reread it to remind myself of the detail, and it's still incredible! But sadly when I went on to Ancillary Sword, I found a bunch of the same issues I had with another of Leckie's books, Provenance - and as a result, didn't enjoy it very much. I still want to read Ancillary Mercy, for completeness' sake, and because it's apparently slightly better than the middle book, but I'm sadly concluding that Justice may have been a bit of an exception to the rule, which is a shame.

In my bag to go away this weekend: Ancillary Mercy, and Fair Play by Tove Jansson, which I picked up on a whim in a bookshop the other week (which is how the TBR pile keeps growing...).

TV
I'm not normally much of a TV person. I'm quite resistant to starting series of things, whether from my horrible knee-jerk reaction to people gushing over something ("well I am not watching it then!" - I'm trying to be less of This Person...) or from a dislike of being dragged along by emotional cliffhangers for 6+ hours. But I have been watching some TV recently!

I caught up with the most recent series of The Great Pottery Throwdown just in time to watch the final as it aired. I love the magic in transforming a pile of special mud into creative ceramics! And this programme always feels like everyone on it is having a fantastic time.

The best news in TV is: I finally got around to watching Ghosts (the BBC original)! A friend put on a few episodes from the start of Series 2 when we went away together a couple of years ago, and that made me realise that I would actually like it, but it took me until a few weeks ago to actually start watching it myself. I was planning to pace myself, since there are not many episodes, but of course I ended up running through them at high speed, because they are amazing! They're awesomely funny (thanks I'm sure to the chemistry of a well-established creative team - the writers and actors behind Horrible Histories, which was sadly just slightly too late for me), and they also make me cry (in a good way, here and there). Series 5 is due this year - I can't wait!

After running out of Ghosts, I picked up Derry Girls, another sitcom from the last 5 years that I just never really got around to. I'm not quite as hooked as I was with Ghosts, but it's very funny (and not too cringeworthy, which I was worried it would be); plus, the soundtrack is packed with bangers from the 90s.

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Update 01/02

2023-02-01T18:48:43Z

February, already! Time is racing past, but it's not so bad, because I like February - lots of people I know and like were born in February.

Last time I wrote here I was feeling worn out and fed up with the inevitable side effects of not moving my body around enough for a prolonged period. I'm pleased to report that I've found a way out of that quagmire, and I am really feeling the change. I am capable of so much more movement than I thought I was! Here's to keeping it up!

I'm feeling a different sort of weird today, because I've just had a phone call with a teenager from my old school who got in touch through the alumni network to ask me a bunch of questions about university applications and so on. It was nice to be able to help, but I feel very "no! I am not an adult who gives wise life advice! I am just three teenagers in a trenchcoat! what is happening!".

In general, though, I am feeling Good this week. Yesterday I went to a private screening of a film that an acquaintance is in, which was fun! This weekend, I might be going to a ceilidh, which is a thing I haven't done in years (and I even believe I'll be able to dance!). I've also been making plans to take my parents on a fun day out in the summer this year. Lots of good things!

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Update 20/01

2023-01-20T12:00:46Z

Something that never seems to change is that, no matter how smoothly life in general is ticking along, every so often there will come a day where it feels like everything is falling over. Today is that day this month! Some late nights / early mornings and the switch back to working after the holiday has caught up with me, and I'm having some minor-but-unpleasant health issues, which are in turn highlighting how much I need to find a sustainable way to move my body around a bit more, and it's all just a big, tumbling pile of exactly the things that stress me out at exactly a moment where I need to be getting rid of tension, not adding more!

But! I did say, life in general is going well, and I want to remind myself of that fact, as well as the positives on this stressful day. It's my day off. It's a sunny day. I am on top of the dishes. I'm going to go out and write after lunch. I had writing ideas unplanned the other night. It's not so bad.

Film
The Decoy Bride (2011) has been on iPlayer for months and months; I finally watched it and it was a lot of fun - and exactly the level I needed on a sleepy evening. I also watched a bunch of short films by female filmmakers via BBC Introducing, which was a bit different from my usual fare. I've been having a look at lists of films that are coming out in 2023 to see if there are any worth getting excited about: I will probably watch Dune: Part Two and the Spiderverse sequel, because I really enjoyed both first installments; I'm kind of intrigued to see what they do with Barbie; and there's an Adam Driver sci-fi thing called 65 which looks interesting, if scary! I'm also considering breaking my soft "no Nicolas Cage" rule for Renfield!

Writing
I'm continuing to sound out a plot for my main project. I like to picture it as one of those timelapse videos of a sculptor at work: lots of roughing out vague shapes, and then coming back to them later and refining or moving them. I'm a bit wary of my tendency to over-refine the beginning before I have an idea of what will come later - need to get those rough shapes in place!

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Update 13/01

2023-01-13T16:31:27Z

Back at work this week, and as expected I promptly broke my writing streak, BUT I went out to my writing place this afternoon and poured out a good six pages or so. All is not lost!

I think the real key is to allow myself time where I'm not working, or scrolling my phone, or watching or reading something. That is, time where I can let my mind wander and sort of turn over parts of the writing project in my head. That way, when I come to sit down with a notebook, I've got these ideas that have been marinating over the previous hours or days, and it's much easier than starting from blank.

This week, I thought I was going to write the next scene in my main narrative, a chance encounter for the viewpoint character which would get me out of the dead end I wrote into last week. But instead, I had a lot more luck writing out some backstory for the other main character - and in doing so, spun out some threads relating to her sister which I think I can pick back up in the main narrative later.

I'm trying to practise not letting everything resolve too easily. That is to say, if the character and her sister are going somewhere to do something, there's a temptation to have an Event occur to them on the way home, once they've done it. But if I resist that temptation, and have the Event on the way to the thing, they never get around to doing the thing... and that leaves me more options for bringing it back up for dramatic conflict later. (This is not exactly an original realisation - I remember reading a Story Hospital post several years ago which included an example of leaving tension unresolved at the end of a scene - but I think this might be the first time I've noticed myself really applying that advice as I work. Does that mean I'm learning and growing?!)

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New Year, New Writing

2023-01-04T16:57:54Z

I have remembered the trick to getting really into writing: it's to have two or three days of doing nothing at all, so that by the end of the third day I am bored / unwound enough to sit down and splurge ten pages by hand. A little tough to replicate regularly, but I'm glad it still works!

I'm not back at work until Monday, I only have a few life-admin things to get done this week, and all my friends are back at work, meaning that now I've started to wake up again after not enough sleep on NYE, I'm free to really devote the remainder of the week to gently making the most of writing time.

I kicked it off yesterday evening by showing up to the first weekly write-together group of the year, even though I didn't expect to get anything done, and after a half hour of haltingly writing down random shit about my day, I jumped into a couple of pages from a key character's backstory, which was more fun than the alleged "present timeline" I had in mind for the story.

This afternoon, I went out to my usual Friday pub (on a Wednesday!) and spent an hour writing out something totally unrelated as a warm up - a sort of short story / scene starting from my walk to the pub and winding up in a sort of urban fantasy place. I think it's more of a scene from something larger than a short in its own right, but I actually wrapped up the scene where normally I tend to get into the middle and give up, so that was nice. After that, I circled back to the character from last night and wrote a bit of follow-on, and, my god, this is the first time with this story that I've felt like one of the alleged protagonists actually wants to go somewhere and do something. What a feeling! (I'm a classic worldbuilder: I have reams of notes about the history of this place, and I could write you a hundred go-nowhere lyrical descriptions of settings, but getting characters to move around in my little playdoh world is where I have to work harder.)

I'm calling that a successful afternoon, and am going to just chill out this evening. I'm definitely having another session (my "usual") on Friday; tomorrow, I need to be in for a delivery, but perhaps if I get some tidying done in the morning I will be able to sit down and write in the afternoon.

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Update 30/12

2022-12-30T16:39:20Z

Well, here we are: the end of another year! I'm just home after a week away with family, and I've got another whole week before I go back to work, so I'm sitting happily in that gentle place of having all the free time you want. The week just gone was one of sitting still (and reading more books that I have read in three months!). The week ahead I think will have a little more of that New Year's "improvements" spirit: on getting home just now, I have given my kitchen a thorough clean, and made a little pile of things to get rid of after looking at the room with fresh eyes. I have never done resolutions, and I don't plan to start now, but last year we used January to tackle some of the Stuff that builds up when you live in one place for a long time, and I think it will be good to have another (maybe slightly less intense) round of that.

Reading
Over my week away, I have torn through Provenance by Ann Leckie, The Wounded Sky by Diane Duane and Taste by Stanley Tucci. Reading Provenance reminded me that I enjoyed Ancillary Justice and have been meaning to read the sequels, so I ordered Sword while I was away, since someone gave me Mercy a couple of birthdays ago not realising it was the third one! I didn't think Provenance was quite as good as Justice, but it reminded me of the things I loved about Justice enough to whet my appetite for getting back into the trilogy!

Writing
This is going to be much more of a focus in the coming week! While I was away, I had one afternoon of sort of doodling words and ideas, a bit like the equivalent of tidying off one small corner of a room to make it feel like you did some cleaning. Since I'm back at home now, and will have far fewer social distractions once everyone else gets back to work on Tuesday, I want to go out somewhere and have a dedicated writing session at least two or three times in the week. I don't have to work on my main project; this is just about making time and space for creativity to happen, whatever it looks like.

In exciting news on the other-people's-writing front, I found out this week that someone from a writing website I used to hang out on when I was younger has a book deal for a project I remember them working on, and will be getting published in April! I can't wait to get my hands on a copy and see how the final version turned out!

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Update 16/12

2022-12-16T14:07:48Z

The weather has entered into the festive spirit; last Sunday night we had more snow than I remember seeing in this bit of the country in a good decade or so. If you'd looked outside at 10pm, you would have found me building the biggest snowman I've ever built, and generally skipping around in the cold like a six-year-old. So exciting!

Of course, morning brought a bit of reality back home, with chaos on the Tubes and all but the main roads slick and slippery with compacted snow and ice. But I can't help a little thrill of wonder at the realisation that almost a week later, there are still bits of white snow clinging onto roofs and pavement corners (and my car!). Snow! It's real!

Writing
This week, I'm exploring my point-of-view character's motivations and the stakes/urgency involved in those. This is always something I find quite tough, so I'm just having a bit of a noodle around, listing possibilities and thinking about what would be implied / where we could go with each one.

Film
Project Christmas Movies continues apace: I have clocked up Arthur Christmas, Die Hard and Gremlins over the past week. Having never seen Gremlins before... I wasn't expecting so much blood and mortal injury! But Gizmo was adorable, and I'm sure I'm not alone in being totally charmed by him. Monday will be Scrooged, and I haven't decided when/whether to cram in Home Alone or Muppets.

Archery
Sad news on this front - my shoulder is hurting in a way I'm pretty sure it shouldn't, so I think I must have been doing something wrong on the draw when I was let loose for the general member shooting sessions. Luckily Christmas makes a good excuse for a good long break; I've been resting and icing it this week, and I'm going to look up some physio exercises to strengthen it. I've also looked up the private club the instructor recommended, and I'm planning to get some individual lessons focusing on form before I go back to general shooting - I don't want to start out poorly and end up doing myself a real injury down the line!

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Update 09/12

2022-12-09T12:57:27Z

I swear there were more weeks between now and Christmas last time I looked... What is it about this set of holidays which makes time feel so compressed all of a sudden? Perhaps it's just having a concrete marker to bookend a period of time - whereas when three weeks rushes by in July, I just keep going into August without much to show it. Next weekend will contain three Christmas parties, and the Wednesday after that will be my last day of work until 2023!

December feels like it's flying by more than usual this year, because I'm in the application process for a new job for the first time in eight years, which is that weird mix of exciting and terrifying that always comes with major change. I sort of wish I could apply but have it all go at a quarter of the pace, because omg if I get it I will be in the new role by February?! and giving notice before Christmas?! Changing jobs will also probably mean giving up my work-free Fridays where I sit in the pub and write novel and Dreamwidth posts, which I'm not quite reconciled to yet - so there's some hard decision-making to do if I do get the offer. But at the moment I'm thinking, even if I can't have a 4-day week deal at this place, I could stick that out for a couple of years and then revisit the question / move jobs again with that as a dealbreaker criteria. More and more companies are coming around to this concept all the time. It also sort of sucks to think of leaving all the lovely people at my current job - but I can't really base career decisions on that - it just, you know, sucks.

This week, the weather has really caught up to the fact that it's meant to be winter now. I have a weekly breakfast outside at a local café with friends who live nearby (instituted April 2021, when we were allowed to see people again!), and this morning we were eating in 1°C, brrrrrr! I broke out my snowboots, so my feet are nice and toasty, and I'm trusting to layers of clothing to stop me shivering all my energy away in the pub this afternoon. We turned the heating on at home, which has flipped the flat back into sauna mode (it has two options: freezing or baking, regardless of how we fiddle with the controls), so at least I stay warm when I'm working from home.

Writing
I'll be honest, I'm feeling stuck in my current project again. D'oh! This is almost definitely a side effect of not making time for writing for so many weeks - I keep cycling back to this place every fortnight. But last Friday I drafted a bit of the "meet-cute" (it's not meant to be a romance but that's the best term) for my main characters, and this week I'm going to just write a whole bunch of words about whatever and call that a win. I'd say December is always a bad month for writing... but I could say that about so many months.

Sometimes when I write these updates, I realise how many times I just post "oh I haven't done anything" "oh I'm stuck again", and I'm like... Cadi, are you really prioritising this writing thing like you ought to be? But then I think, hey, what's "ought"? I write sometimes, and I have fun when I do, and that's sort of all it needs, right? As much as I desperately want to bring this story to a finish eventually, it's no good if I make it into a stick to beat myself with. Especially in December, a month notorious for containing no free time.

Drawing
I had the final session of my drawing class! We'd been doing a two-session sustained pose, so for this second half of that exercise, I decided I wanted to come out of it with something like a "final piece", and I also wanted to try out different kinds of mark making rather than just focusing on trying to replicate what I was looking at. I ended up with a still life of the model's lower leg and a basket of flowers; I'm really pleased with the effect of the mark making techniques I tried on the basket and the fabric on the floor; the leg itself is fine, and the fabric on the model's chair is also fine - I didn't have as much time left for those as I could have used. But, I finished a piece, and I'm happy with that! even if I am just going to throw it in the bin probably. I'm pretty sad that I don't have any more sessions with this teacher (and, to an extent, this group) - it's been a fun way to spend Monday evenings!

Film
It's December, so I'm watching Christmas films! As I mentioned last week, I don't have a huge amount of nostalgia factor built into the genre (except for the 1964 Rudolph film, which we taped off the TV onto VHS, and perhaps The Snowman and some Wallace & Gromit), but I've decided I want to cram in my favourites (and a few new ones*) this year, and put my membership at the repertory cinema to good use. So far, I've watched It's a Wonderful Life* (1946), Christmas in Connecticut* (1945) and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964); on the cards for the rest of the month I am planning to catch Die Hard (1988), Gremlins* (1984), Scrooged* (1988) and perhaps Home Alone (1990) in the cinema, and I reckon I can find space for The Muppets Christmas Carol (1992) and Arthur Christmas (2011) at home before I go away to family for the holiday.

(It amuses me to realise that this lineup almost reflects the release-year distribution of my "acceptable" Christmas songs list, too: mostly the 80s/early 90s, with a couple of 40s things thrown in, and one from the current century. We're just missing the 70s - what's the movie equivalent of Slade and Wizzard?)

Archery
I've had my first session as a member, rather than a beginner-in-a-class! It was very strange to have so much time shooting (with all the slowest archers no longer present, as they haven't carried it on, and no time out for bits of explanation), but also to have so little guidance/reminder-ing about how to do it properly. I think I was starting to get a good grouping in the middle of the session (lost it again when I got tired towards the end). I need to buy my own equipment soon - perhaps at the start of the new year - and that's a whole awesome, scary world!

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Update 02/12 + Delicious Food of Gent

2022-12-02T12:25:27Z

December already, and the end of the year accelerating towards us! I don't think I will ever stop being surprised by the continuing passage of time.

It's been a couple of weeks since I wrote here: one week of holiday, and one week of a horrible cold picked up from a friend I travelled with. (I'm still shaking off the tail end of the latter, booo.) We went to Ghent(/Gent/Gand), in Belgium, and had a fantastic few days ambling around and eating delicious food.

( Notes on what's great in Ghent under the cut... )

Writing
For perhaps obvious reasons I haven't thought much on writing for the last fortnight, but before I went away I was having fun playing with the revelation that maybe I need the main character to be more of an asshole. Playing with this parallel version of the story I've had in my head has been a lot of fun, and is opening up some new routes through the idea. I still need to find a reason for the two main characters to keep interacting, but I'm trying out some side characters and chance encounters at the moment which I think will help me out there. Heading out to my writing spot as soon as I've posted this!

Drawing
It was the penultimate session of my drawing class on Monday! These last two sessions are a single sustained pose with a life model, which is super interesting. I'm not sure whether I plan to get a finished drawing out of the final session (might be nice to have something "to show"?), but regardless, I'm going to have a good time with it.

Film
Today I'm going to watch It's a Wonderful Life for the first time! I know a lot of people consider this a Christmas classic, but I only heard of it as an adult (and then refused to watch it for a while because so many people were telling me I had to see it... I get stuck on my own stubbornness sometimes, it must be really annoying to be around). This year I actually saw a couple of clips from it (thanks to the trailer at the repertory cinema), and realised I would probably actually enjoy it! So here we go - I'm going to join in with the sincere Christmas joy at last.

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Update 18/11

2022-11-18T13:02:12Z

A weird sort of week. Some long-awaited good news for some of my family! Some awkwardness at work. Some life-crisis feelings as I make decisions about some opportunities that came up. Some small pleasures of the "buying new kinds of squash I've never tried before" and "playing a game about trains" variety.

Writing
Have accidentally delayed my regular Friday writing session to later in the afternoon by means of some ill-timed laundry (writing this as I wait for the cycle to finish so I can leave the house...) Haven't been thinking about my main project much this week, but hopefully I will get something out of this afternoon.

Film
Two films this week: Decision to Leave (2022) and The World to Come (2020). Both good, both a bit different from the films I normally go to see, both using the editing cleverly to unsettle. I hadn't seen any Park Chan-Wook before, but I see now why people are fans!

Drawing
This week's class was a guided exercise on different types of mark making and their use in creating simulated or invented texture. Lots of fun, and included some nice group work where we discussed the textures various marks implied to each of us. I also wanted to have a go at some self-portrait (which is what I missed last week), but haven't found the time. Perhaps next week, when I have time off work!

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Update 12/11

2022-11-12T15:07:21Z

November continues unseasonably warm: although I've started breaking out the long-sleeved underlayer tactic, my winter coat has still only been out once or twice this autumn. It has been depressingly grey, though, so the blue skies and sunshine of the last two days is very welcome. There's some illness in my household, although I seem to have escaped thus far, so we're all a little tired and subdued (to match the weather!).

Writing
Due to some life admin tasks, I didn't manage my usual Friday writing session this week, but I did have a great get-together with a writing acquaintance on Tuesday, and I got some good stuff down that evening. Feeling a little more optimistic about the project since I last wrote; I think my little rubber-duck session on here helped unblock some tubes.

Film
Some friends and I went to see Bros (2022) at the cinema on Sunday. We hadn't seen much advertising, and from the one-line summary, the title and the poster, we had really low expectations, but a couple of us have been on a quest for gay rom-coms recently so we were determined to go. I'm pleased to say that the film cleared the bar with miles to spare! I laughed out loud throughout, and there were some really adorable moments, too.

Archery
I don't think I've mentioned here before, but I've been taking a beginner's archery course (target archery) for the last several weeks, and I'm loving it. I'm a little anxious about the transition from "beginner on a taught course" to "just a new member of the club!" which is coming up soon, especially as I'm going to be away for the first two weeks immediately post-course; but once I get past that I hope this is going to be something I keep up and keep enjoying. It's sort of meditative, and it fills a good "being in touch with my body" gap in my life.

(Oh, and speaking of bodies: my knee twist from a few weeks ago healed up nicely. Hooray! I'm trying to remember to do knee strengthening exercises whenever I get a chance, with middling success.)

Drawing
No drawing class this week :( I had other commitments that took priority. Looking forward to getting back to it next week; there are only a few weeks left now!

The recent furore over AI on deviantArt reminded me that I've got a couple of accounts over there, and it's so strange to look back at my teenage art, and even more so my teenage internet presence! I think I want to clear those accounts out and deactivate them at some point, but I couldn't quite bring myself to do it today. Isn't it weird, how all these old versions of ourselves build up online?

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The First of Autumn

2022-10-07T12:18:03Z

Summer seemed to go on and on this year, hot and sunny right through September. Then I left the country on a Thursday, and when I came back on the Sunday I needed a jumper. The seasons changed all at once; now the trees are turning, now the winds are blowing, and it's rained more in the last fortnight than in the whole four months preceding.

I always feel surprised by spring and autumn. In spring it's the colours - surely leaves were never that green before, I think, as I look on leaves just as green as they are every year. In autumn it's the light - the change from endless blue and bright to something more contained, a dappling mix of gold and grey, bookended by encroaching night. It reminds me, all of a sudden, that time has been passing while I wasn't looking.

I haven't stopped moving for the last three weeks: a weekend out of the country, a weekend in a field, a weekend at my parents'. That exacerbates the feeling of the year running away - I've been all out of routine, and September's slipped into October without me noticing. This weekend, I'm regrouping, reminding myself of all the anchors that keep me grounded. I'm okay.

Drawing
I'm two weeks into a twelve-week drawing class, which is so far exactly what I wanted it to be: an amusement for a Monday night and a chance to focus on something different for a change. I don't particularly mind whether I come out of this with mad drawing skillz, or with just twelve weeks' of fun experience, and that's part of what makes it great. The class comes with a single nod to the concept of "homework", which is "get a sketchbook and draw in it sometimes", and that's a nice addition to my little bag of books that I carry around the city with me for a slack moment.

Writing
Three weekends out of town in a row has had the predictable effect on my writing habits. I have two days of my Couch-to-80K relisten still waiting. I've been writing lists and doing weird metaphor exercises to keep my hand in (and I love that I can just do that and give myself a metaphorical gold star for it). I've written this post! This afternoon, I'm hoping to pick up a little of my fiction project, but if I just write more lists, that still counts.

Reading
I've been back through a couple of favourite Discworlds (because my partner has made 2022 the year he reads them all, and keeps reminding me of the good bits). I'm still following Dracula Daily, which is a fun way to read a classic I would never have got through on my own (as evidenced by the fact it's been unread in my eBook library ever since I bought my Kindle, most of a decade ago).

Film
I continue to fritter away my spare time and cash watching an eclectic mix of films at the cult cinema (recently: Belle (2021) and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)), but in recent weeks I've also caught two new releases: Three Thousand Years of Longing and See How They Run. Both a lot of fun, neither likely to stick long in the memory.

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Update 20/09

2022-09-20T10:57:40Z

Writing
I suppose it was inevitable that after posting last time about what a good job I was doing of keeping up the writing habit, I would have a week of letting it slip. I've had a busy weekend of travel, and I'm feeling pretty wiped out from it - but I've got today slated as the day I get back into writing (and I have a writing group meetup this evening which will help me stick to that). Trying to be nice to myself about this - even the most dedicated of writers have off weeks, and sometimes you need to prioritise "sleep" and so on.

Reading
Actually read two new things over the weekend: The Turn of the Screw by Henry James and The Clocks by Agatha Christie. This is my first post-WWII Poirot book, and it feels very strange to read Christie in a 60s setting!

Craft
The jacket decorating continues, slowly. I decided to embroider a design on the back, using metallic thread and a patented "make it up as you go along, having never embroidered before" method. (I'm a bit nervous about the longevity of said design, given the technique or lack thereof, but hopefully it will work out.) This is an exercise in patience, which I do not typically have a lot of, but so far so good.

Life
Busy travel weekend may have been bad for writing habits, but it was good for taking a break from the various things over which I've been fretting. I'm off again for the latter half of this week, so I anticipate a couple of fretful days while I get my energy back, a few fret-free ones while I'm away again, and then hopefully next week I can start to find my equilibrium properly again.

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Update 09/09

2022-09-09T14:13:56Z

Writing
Into the final week of Couch-to-80K, which is basically just scheduled blocks of writing whatever the hell you want. A stepping stone into self-managed writing, I suppose. Today I made sure to do a list-based warm-up first, and then settled down to my actual project. I'm starting to get the shape of a plot outline, and although I've had a couple of off days this week, when I make the time for it (like today) I am still feeling really positive about both writing in general and this project in specific. So that's good.

Film
Caught a Wrath of Khan (1982) cinema rerun last weekend, which was as excellent as expected. This week I'm excited about new releases for a change: Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022) and See How They Run (2022). Hoping to see them both a.s.a.p.!

Craft
I've had the sewing kit out this week. First repairing my jeans (after watching a lot of much more romantic repairs on The Repair Shop), currently tidying up my Guide camp blanket, and then planning to jazz up a second-hand denim jacket. I find this kind of hand-sewing much easier to fit into my life than full-on dressmaking with the machine.

Life
Still feeling a tad existential this week. I suppose it's good that I've kept up the writing despite it!

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Writing Update 02/09

2022-09-02T15:11:56Z

It's a cliché to say that a lot can change in a week, but a lot can change in a week. I'm feeling a lot more stable than last Friday, and also a lot more creative.

Week 6 of Couch-to-80K is about metaphor and simile, and involves a lot of fun exercises for mucking around with them, which has been a welcome relief. Today I did the first episode of Week 7, which is also a great exercise: writing about what's going to go in your novel (characters, scenes, themes, whatever), but as possibilities ("it might") rather than certainties ("it will").

I always enjoy this exercise, and today was no exception. Doing it for an existing novel idea, it takes me a few minutes of the ten to get out of thinking rigidly about the things I already thought were going to happen in the story, but by halfway through today I had started to pull out new ideas, and I've spent the rest of the day elaborating on a few of those. I continue to feel optimistic about this project.

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Writing++

2022-08-26T14:37:53Z

Skipped over the last two Couch-to-80Ks in the week I don't like (the two days I missed earlier this week). Knocked out the first day of the next week this afternoon (playing with metaphors! hell yeah!) and went on to write some fun snippets for my main project. What a mood booster!

The mild life crisis continues, but I feel better for sticking to my writing plan.

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A Break, But A Short One

2022-08-25T18:02:20Z

Not much in the way of reading or writing recently. I was out of the country last week, and while I managed to keep a bit of reading and my Couch-to-80K going while I was away, it was the kind of holiday that wears you out, so I've left the daily writing slide a little since I got back. Not helped by coincidentally hitting my least favourite week of C280K while I was away!

Also having one of those things where you question your entire life, so that's not helping.

But tomorrow is Friday, which is writing day, so I am going to go to my writing pub and do a writing session, even if I don't feel like it and even if I don't end up writing anything good. Because that is what we do on Fridays.

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