…) Every time writing sinks to critical mass for an extended period, my brain starts grappling for some other kind of creative outlet to latch onto. New websites that never see the light of day, new craft projects that won’t get finished, buying new books that won’t get read, filling wishlists on Amazon with things associated with stories that I will never buy.
I’ve been tweaking a lot of things behind the scenes with my domain here and there for the last…year? or so. I have a slightly more significant change that I want to work on, but it’s going to cause a big headache on the front end of things in the process. I want to move some directories around, which will break every single image link on this site. I’ve been experimenting on a subdomain that exists for just such purposes and I managed to get things fixed and functional, but it took some work. There are other more efficient methods to use than the one I went with in my experiments, but they will take some assistance from my programming husband to execute properly. I just need to figure out when I’m going to do it. If things around here look borked, I’m breaking things behind the screen.
…) We watched The Batman and Joker. The Batman was probably, by far, the darkest movie I have ever seen. And I don’t mean dark as in disturbing/violent/depressing/et al. I mean DARK as in TURN ON A FUCKING LIGHT. Robert Pattinson wasn’t a terrible Batman, but the EMO Bruce Wayne was…weird. On the other hand, Paul Dano plays unhinged a little too well. As for Joker…Joaquin Phoenix played the part well, but the whole thing made me feel…icky. I think it’s a realistic representation on how too much of society views mental illness as a personal [not real] problem that you should keep to yourself. And while using said mental illness as a weapon to get revenge on those who have wronged you is fucked up in all kinds of ways, it’s not really surprising that this shit happens because too many people don’t take it seriously. (I also have too much experience with real life people who use their mental illness as a means to hurt other people and it ain’t pretty.)
…) I read two books…recently. Two whole books, start to finish. I can’t remember the last time I finished a book. I read Red, White & Royal Blue which was cute and fluffy, but the political nonsense was…political nonsense…and I almost hucked my laptop across the room when it got to the BUT HER EMAILS bullshit. Amazon Prime made it into a movie that I might get around to watching at some point, but I need to be in the right headspace for that. I have little faith in how the smutty scenes will translate to screen (if they’re even in the movie) and I need to be mentally prepared to handle all of the head-desking that comes with that level of awkward.
I also read Little Disasters, in part because I was curious to read something with the then/now timeline jumping trope. The four main characters were all highly unlikable—a selfish ass, a sociopath, a doormat, and wallpaper. The book wasn’t bad but the ending was not satisfying and the more I thought about it after I finished it, the more I hated the characters. BUT I READ TWO BOOKS.
…) I was reading some Amazon reviews (regrets, I have them) on a book (Which book? I can’t remember.) and there was one in particular wherein the reviewer was pitching a royal bitch about how the author did nothing but tell instead of show. They spent several hundred words ranting about it all, with nothing to say about the actual story the book was about. (Which might be why I can’t remember what book was being reviewed.) This led me down a rabbit hole of looking into the cardinal rule of show don’t tell when it comes to writing. I hear this all the time, but nobody ever actually explains what it means. I read a (very short) ebook about this rule and the author acknowledged that so many editors tell writers they need to show and not tell but they never actually explain what that means. I have a marginally better understanding of it after reading that book, but much like anytime I look up web design information, it was another experience of everything you are doing is wrong.
THEN I started looking at other books-on-writing I have piled up in my unread arsenal and there was a book titled Tell Don’t Show and…WAT. I didn’t get into reading it yet, but the synopsis explains that in a first draft, just get the story told then worry about fixing it to show later. Spending too much time trying to get it perfect in the first go is a great hindrance to a great many writers. That’s definitely something I spend too much time banging my head against the wall over. A first draft is supposed to suck. That’s what revisions are for. But I get too hung up on getting parts right straight out of the gate that I lose a lot of other parts I wanted to write to the Etch-a-Sketch that is my brain.
…) I started writing a story after Basil started Frankenstein-ing a bunch of ideas together from other plans. I dumped a few thousand words onto the page within two or three days that felt like an actual beginning to the story and when I read through it, I actually kind of liked it, even if it was a hot mess. Then I started overthinking too many irrelevant details and derailed myself in spectacular fashion. I’ve written more in fits and starts, but a lot of it is really not good. I’m not talking this can be fixed later, I mean this needs to be deleted. I’m fumbling to find that groove I had those first couple of days. (That whole show don’t tell jaunt may or may not have played a role in helping derail the progress I was making.)
Jinx is just waiting for me to start building a soundtrack to that story so she has something to dance to while I’m trying to write.
—
 |
This River is Wild The Killers |