Gorgeous!

In that funny way that anyone who has googled a single specific fact and found themselves, hours later, in the most random and unexpected places can attest to, I have discovered this wonderful artist: Alberto Seveso.

Drops of ink in water, and the results are paint drops floating upwards, silk, fabric coiled about itself with a sensuousness that goes beyond... just beyond.

Go. Look. See.

Pocket Princesses

Because I don't want to forget, but these are so awesome I cannot not share them: Pocket Princesses by Amy Mebberson.

Really, all the art on her tumblr is so much fun. It has a cartoon, almost chibi, feel to it, and covers the spectrum of Disney, My Little Pony, Darkwing Duck, Muppets and more (do those all fit on one spectrum?).

I'm a strong believer in keeping art nearby when you are a writer. There are reference photos that can useful in a more concrete-y, research way, there are photos that inspire worlds and stories, and then there are just drawings and pieces that are so much fun, they make you want to create something, too. Sometimes, a piece can do more than one.

Amy's work definitely makes me want to create as well, I just need to channel that into the writing instead of yanking out the sketchbook, not that that doesn't have its own ways of inspiring.

Inspiration Wednesdays--belated

Still getting over a flu, so when I got home yesterday, I conked out and didn't touch my computer.

Today's inspiration is poetry.

The theme: death, or the romanticization of death, or, the moon

BRIGHT STAR, WOULD I WERE STEDFAST
By John Keats

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art---
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors---
No---yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever---or else swoon in death.

1819

THE WAY I MUST ENTER
By Izumi Shikibu

The way I must enter
leads through darkness to darkness ---
O moon above the mountain’s rim,
please shine a little farther
on my path.

And for an added bonus, because this came up as I was searching for the above (I wanted to double-check my phrasing), and it sounds lovely:

WATCHING THE MOON
By Izumi Shikibu

Watching the moon
at dawn
solitary, mid-sky,
I knew myself completely,
no part left out.

Inspiration Wednesdays

Although, this could just as easily be called "Let's Take a Few Moments to Look at Pretty/Neat/Awesome Things", but there is the goal of hoping what follows inspires you in some way.

May it spark an idea, or offer a twist in a story, or give you to urge to create something new.

That's what I hope for myself.

Theme for the Week: Steampunk

A steampunkified keyboard

A steamy version of Cinderella's carriage

Is that a steampunk Cheshire or are you just happy to see me?

A miniature steam-fairy. (I don't even care if this is completely Photoshopped, because it looks awesome.)



Note: If anyone has credits they'd like to me add to any photo, please just let a comment. I just do a lot of Google Image searches, and mean no harm other than to promote these wonderful visuals.

A Fluttering of Wings

I was thinking about...I don't actually know. I got up, had my coffee, sent a few emails, then picked about online for a while, visiting a few blogs. The last blog I looked at was about writing/editing and a few words snagged my attention. Not in the way you usually think of that phrase--they were so striking I will remember them forever, or at least long enough to write them down.

Instead, they were words that immediately, almost before their meaning sank in, sparked something else.

But spark is the wrong word.

Have you ever watched something, or been having a conversation, and go, "That reminds me," then switch to a seemingly unrelated topic? The commercial, show, or conversation before that point actually -did- remind you of something, but not in a way that you could have clearly drawn the lines from one to the other?

The connection is hard to grasp, hard to perceive sometimes. Like an invisible bird, taking flight beside you. You can't see it, but you can hear the fluttering of its wings, feel the wind kicked up, react to the brush of a wing tip against your chek, but when you look, you don't know where from it came.

It's inspiration, or something akin to it. You can't predict it, you can't always trace it back to its origins, but it does something for you, something that leads you down a new path, throws a few breadcrumbs for you to find. That fluttering draws your eye, your attention, and you look at a place you didn't notice before.


(Photos are by Russ Hansen, Allison Trentelman, and wikipedia, respectively)

If Only I Had the Time...

I try not to utter these words. I tend to think, at least for me, they're a bit of a cop out, so I catch myself whenever I start thinking them.

Instead, I will mention all the ideas I have had lately for editing one of my stories. I better beginning, a way to make the beginning first chapters more succinct and less rambling.

Hanukkuah is over, Christmas and Kwanzaa are coming, and then there's the new year. To wrap up 2010 I am trying to finishing my grading today, then I am organizing my recipes (for next week when I'll be baking), reorganizing my room, as much as I can in this limited space, and trying to get a head start on next quarter. I'll have a week after January 5, but the more I can get done now, the better I think.

With all of that, I hope to rewrite those early chapters, maybe reach a point where I'm happy enough with the story to send it out again.

That is my hope and wish for 2011, to send out queries for a story I am absolutely proud of. May your ideas be fruitful and your writing come with the ease of inspiration.

Maybe there's a Reason I haven't been Productive

I don't like excuses. [I amend that, I think people do like excuses, generally, when they need to use one, but no one is much of a fan when given them by others.] I try not to use excuses to explain away my behavior or lack thereof.

That said, I wrote a post last night for my personal blog and it got me thinking this morning. see, I had another idea for a new story. Specifically a new story that could be combined with the idea from an old story to create something that I find really interesting. It plays with the idea of who is the villain when it comes to vampires versus vampire hunters. Many of the UFs that contain vamps have at least one who good and sexy if not always nice (or nice and sexy, if not always good...Aaaand now I'm having an "Into the Woods" moment--"You're not good, you're not bad, you're just nice. I'm not good, I'm not nice, I'm just right." Much love for Bernadette Peters.)

Many vamp-UFs have vampires that align themselves with the protagonist, with a lot of sexiness thrown in. At the same time, there are a good number of UFs out there with hunters as their protagonists (LKH's Anita Blake; Buffy to take it into other mediums), so there is a lot of space to play with who is the villain, who thinks who's the villain, and switch between my fairly young, but mature vampire and a seasoned hunter stuck with a new apprentice. But end up having to examine their own behaviors, and existence, and may end up working together (haven't decided the last bit yet).

Anyway, it's one more novel that has tightened its hold on my brain, which makes it about the fourth right now. But none of the other three has kept my attention long enough for me to reach the end of a complete first draft.

Excuses time: Is it just that I've been lazy in my self-control and scheduling, or was there some unconscious part that was waiting for the right story--not that the others are bad, but there's one just ready to be written and I just need to find it?

Honestly, put that way, it's probably just me not making better use of my time. Because in every story I reach a point where I get stuck (halfway to three-quarters in), and I don't use this sort of excuse for those times. Here, it's probably a matter of not knowing where some/most of these are going, so instead of plowing through and forcing a plot to take form, my mind skips on to the next shiny object



Of course, I am going to give this new story some of my attention. But I think making this realization--that I was trying to make excuses for myself and really just need to figure out the full arcs of the stories--has helped me, refocusing my attention. I need to make a trip into town today, which is an hour's bus ride each way. I think I'll take my notebook and use that time to jot down notes are all the major events of at least two of these novels.

Maybe in a few days I can return to tell you all that I've settled on one story to write to its end.

The Beginning of a Plot

Still doing the job hunt thing. Because of that, I've been turning on my phone during the day when I used to keep it on only when I was out of the house. My cell is the number on my resume, and even though I have a landline, this is the direct link to me. I don't want to miss a potential interview.

Well, today I didn't get around to turning my phone on right away. In fact, it's 1:30 and I only just did it a few minutes ago. ~sheepish grin~ But there was already a voicemail (apparently missed the actual phone call by just a few minutes). She sounded like someone's little Asian grandma--we have a lot of those here in Hawaii :)--looking for a guy [R]. She even left a phone number. I don't know if she is a relative or just older, but seriously, am I the only person tempted to call and say, "I got your message, unfortunately I have no idea who this person is and you have the wrong number?"

It makes sense to do that if you get the call directly, phone rings you pick it up and the conversation happens in real-time, but it seems weird to do so in response to a voicemail.

I posed the question to my facebook people, and as I hit post, I wondered what a story would be like if someone did that. You call this number left by someone's obasan--does the lady answer? Is she friendly, annoyed, does she go into a furious old lady rant ("why don't you ever call me? I have to call you all the time and you never pick up your phone. Your mother had to give me this number...") before you have a chance to say you aren't this guy? What if someone else answers, and doesn't know this woman (she also left her name, or a contact name) or R? What if it's a different person and they do know everyone involved, including you? How far down the rabbit hole could you fall just for trying to be polite and do a small good deed?

Since I seem wired for the fantasical, my mind spun off on a Matrix-like thread. Some Morpheus character answers and directs you to go somewhere, gives you a piece of information that compels you to comply. And from that meeting/errand, the world you knew is no more or you're somehow separated from it, and the rest of the story is you trying to find your way home, or pushing deeper and deeper through the forest to see what's on the other side.

Just wanted to share that.

Happy writing everyone,

Sabrina

Making the Spontaneous Inevitable

It's a cool day today, if I open the back door and let the breeze in, otherwise my room gets stuffy and stays that way. It's a hassle to open the door, though. Years of not being used, and the screen and parts of the sliding glass door had rusted, plus there isn't much floor space to get any good leverage. But the breeze is nice when I put in the effort, and outside, a tree that had looked dead for weeks, is in bloom, seemingly dried out twigs suddenly sprouting delicate lavender blooms.

[You can see the branches as a background, like a tangle of graying yarn.

I took this photo just before typing this post.]

I like to stare out the glass door and seeing the flowers open and close over the day, waxbills and doves and bulbuls flitting in and out of frame. Before I got a digital camera, some of those moments might warrant a quick line or two of description scribbled on the nearest Post-it or note pad, now it's a click away.

I memorialize these moments, thinking one day this line or that might make it into a story. It's such a striking image to me, I want to share it with others.

I couldn't tell you how many such scribbled lines fill notepads and journals, still catching my eye as I flip through to a clean page, but never finding their way into a story. For one thing, I never remember to look for these written down moments of setting and mood.

For another, I don't know whether the moments would be the same. Partly because I'm still growing as a writer, one of my "always trying to improve" issues is the balance between description and action, and when it comes to setting, right now I tend to err on the side of "keep it in my head." I get caught up trying to keep the flow of action, I don't naturally slip in these sorts of lines. I worry that doing so might sound forced, or come across as purple prose. I'm working on it.

I guess, then, this post is just a reminder to myself not to forget these moments in a story and to share a little of my world with you readers.

Enjoy. Happy writing.

Muse musings

When I was younger, about 13 or so, I believed in a muse. It wasn't a serious belief, but the day-dreaming belief of a burgeoning writer. He had a name, and when I was keeping a hand-written journal (years before I joined LJ, and at a time when I couldn't maintain a journal for more than a few weeks) consistently for months, I trailed off from writing about my day-to-day life, to writing a story. I'd decided to write it as if my muse were telling the story.

Nowadays, a muse seems almost synonymous (in my own mind) with some of the other topics I've been writing about lately: inspiration and ideas. It's a motivating force; it helps when you get stuck in one scene, so you can move forward or jump ahead; it's there to offer ideas; it has some unquantifiable quality that helps you write.

It's a nice thought. Maybe I'm just in a cynical mood, but I don't quite see how the concept of a muse helps a writer, other than to say 'I couldn't write because my muse abandoned me.' I visit Sherwood Smith's LJ fairly regularly, and she linked to a great post about one's muse, and its fickle nature. I really enjoyed the post, but instead of equaling "Godfrey" with muse, I filled in the name with Writing. Writing was sometimes hard to come by, when I'd open a new Word doc but the words wouldn't come. It was an idea, or inspiration that slipped by me, or it was just that I failed myself and wasn't trying hard enough, perhaps.

I'm not saying the idea of a muse is wrong or useless, far be it, it's not my place to comment on others' beliefs, but I don't know that it works for me anymore. I think even at 13, my muse was more a character, a wizard, mature but young, sitting in a well-made, but old robe and telling this story about a princess and a unicorn with attitude. I like the thought that my writing comes from me, it's my accomplishment. My failures, yes, but also my successes.

~shrugs~ I suppose this is just one of those meandering, thinking out loud posts. I still need to make up a post, and I do have some topics simmering. We'll see how tomorrow goes.

In random writing news: I finally found a Halloween story idea that's staying with me. I've started writing and I mostly know where it's going. (I just need to decide how I want it to end, I'm thinking more mysterious than gruesome. We'll see.)

Happy writing everyone,

Sabrina

*Painting of the Greek Muses with Apollo on Mt. Helio, by Claude Lorrain