Twenty Thousand

Last night I finally broke twenty thousand words on the first draft of that novella I'm working on. I say it's a novella, because I expect to get about thirty-five to forty thousand words out of it. So, 20k is about half way.

It has been a month since I regained my enthusiasm for writing this thing. The past month I have, by my standards, been racing ahead. In that month, I have gotten down roughly eighty-five hundred words.

Eighty-five hundred words. Of first draft. In a month. At this rate, finishing the first draft will take nearly three months more, and then I have to let it sit for a month or two, and then revise it, so, let's say five months. It's going to be October before I can even show this to anyone else.

Of course, right now it's not even in a state where I want to show it to anyone. I'm worried that there's not enough meat. It seems to be rushing, and I'm not sure the set-pieces are working. Right now I'm coming up on writing a scene I've wanted to write for months, but now I'm scared. I'm scared that I'm driving the story to this scene just because I like the scene. I'm scared that what I see in my mind's eye doesn't actually translate to words. I'm scared that the scene isn't going to work.

Mid-novella crisis. I should buy a sports car or something.

Linda ran off the edge of the building, carrying us, out into the hollow air. I looked down at the street four stories down, and felt every inch of that distance slap me in the face. We seemed to hang there for eternity. I heard somebody whimper. I think maybe it was me.

Stupid Excel™ Tricks

Why does Excel make it impossible to know what cell is selected when the window is not active? I can understand feedback so that users don't get confused about where input is going, but I'd like to be able to select a cell in a sheet and then do something in another window, using the selected cell as a convenient place holder. Convenient, that is, if it wasn't invisible.

What I Like (Art Version)

I think, maybe, if I show you what it is I really like as far as art goes you will have a better idea of what I'm reaching for, and how really terribly far away it seems sometimes. And if you're not interested, you can always come back later for more pictures of hotties.

First, I like realism. I like representative art. That is, art which attempts to create the visual impression of a real object or scene. I enjoy abstract art from time to time, as well as stylized art, but the stuff that I really love always seems to be that which looks real, or close to real. And yet, photographs are not nearly as appealing to me as paintings, in general. I like good photographs, and I understand the skill involved (having tried, halfheartedly, to take pictures myself from time to time), but paintings give me more. This is probably related to the next thing I'm going to talk about.

That next thing is... well, I don't know a good word for it. Looseness? Performance? Economy? In spite of loving to see a work that looks real at one level, I also love to see the brush strokes. In digital works this translates into things like Craig Mullins' pictures, which when inspected closely seem to be wild blobs of color, but when you pull back resolve themselves into wonderful, dramatically real images. I like painters who combine realism with this abandon, this apparent love of the brush stroke, painters like Gregory Manchess or Carol Marine.

I like dramatic compositions that play with splashes of color and light. But then again, who doesn't?

You may wonder, now, about the comic book artists that fill my list of bookmarks. Well, there are connections. Many of my favorites are realistic artists, in one way or another. Joshua Middleton gets me with his fine understanding of the human figure, among other things. Adam Hughes and Alex Ross both bring an almost photographic quality to some of their work. Even Phil Hale treats his often surreal subjects with an attention to realism. You'll also notice Alphonse Mucha and J. C. Leyendecker in my list, artists who stylized quite dramatically at times, but still maintained some essential connection to realism. This stylized realism, or in some way perfected realism, is another aspect of many of my favorite artists, and what I think attracts me to certain comic book artists as well as past art-deco masters and even certain illustrators from the middle of the 20th, like Rockwell or James R. Bingham (profiled (again) last week on Today's Inspiration).

Sometimes my likes pull me in seemingly opposite directions. One part of me wants to paint and render with rich colors in blobs and chunks, while another part longs for smooth clean lines, dramatic blacks, and smooth flats of the comics. Of course, all of this might seem moot when I really can't manage any aspect of that to my satisfaction. Still, it does seem to me sometimes that my internal debates may have made it even harder.

Anyway, we'll get back to the hotties shortly, or some pictures of tangerines or something.

Standards

I quote:

The point is, you must hold yourself up to the highest measure and accept the harshest criticism and you must always come back for more. And you better come back with something new every time.

Yes.

This is why I keep going back to my stuff and saying, while it might not be really, really awful, it is nowhere near what I would call good. High standards. Middleton level standards. If I could draw half as well as that ... guy, then maybe I would have reason to be happy. Until then, I am sticking to the position that I suck.

That's kind of the reason why I hesitate to comment on artists' blogs sometimes. The blogs I visit are generally good, but, you know, sometimes I find myself thinking how they could be better. It's not my place to tell these people what I don't like on their blogs, especially since I suck so much more badly than any of them, but I still end up thinking it. A lot of these blogs end up with a lot of compliments. Deserved compliments, yes, but I often can't join in. I don't want to sound like a goddamn wet rag and pretentious twit criticizing his betters, and I'm sure these people get lots of frank criticism elsewhere (most of them do art for a living, after all).

Cruise on over to Joshua Middleton's site and see some real skill. Jaw dropping skill. I want those clear lines and smooth colors, dammit. I don't want to be messy all the time! (But I know that right now, if I tried, I would take three thousand years to produce a boring, stiff picture, and the colors would still suck.)

Oh yeah, I also want to be able to paint like J. C. Leyendecker. Is that asking a lot?

The point is, I suck now, so that means I can keep getting better, right?

Bloody optimists.

Nanowrimo Extract 1

I would put this up on the Nanowrimo site, but I think it's on fire at the moment. I already expect to revise this heavily... in December.

White light, the color of innocence, the light of the dawn. White skin not yet darkened by the sun. She ran between the tree trunks, her feet leaving blue pools of shadow cut in the snow, her coat sweeping a wake behind her. She twirled and jumped, sticking out her tongue to catch the glittering dust falling from the branches overhead.

“We can’t stay long. You’ll catch a chill.” The nurse moved at a more sedate pace, picking her way carefully along the path. Her long coat of deep blue drank in the light. The gold threads on the cuffs and collar glowed with it.

The girl made a defiant face and bent to dip her hands, safely encased in mittens, into a smooth hill of white. She began to gather and press, but the air was too cold. Her sculptures collapsed into formless heaps before she could complete them. The nurse smiled indulgence. No harm done yet, and no need to assert her authority. She glanced behind, to the trail of their footsteps leading back to the gate, and the tower rising behind that. Her eyes were drawn inevitably to one certain window.

In the room lit by that window, the nurse knew, lay a woman. The woman was the girl’s mother, and she did not look out over the field to see her daughter play in the winter snow. She had not risen from the bed for many days. She lay there, on her bed, and waited for the black wings to come and take her.

The girl did not know. It was better that she did not know. A child should not be burdened so, not so young. That was the Lady’s will.

The nurse returned to watching her charge, and so she saw the visitor’s carriage emerge from the wood.

Nanowrimo

So, in a bout of foolish optimism I signed up for Nanowrimo, the "National Novel Writing Month". I'm not certain which nation, exactly, it is national of. I am, however, fairly certain of one thing: I'm not going to be able to participate in anything but a feeble parody of novel writing. But hey, it's really easy to sign up.

Blue and Yellow Make...

Yesterday, or was it the day before? Anyway, recently I lamented that all the colors in my pictures look washed out. Well, it turns out this is not a unique problem. Take a look at this page, and this one, particularly this quote:

Even if you hand pick and paint every color in your image, if you rely only on the luminosity slider, you'll have the same problems. You see this luminosity slider reliance a lot, especially in the skin tones of the work of beginning painters.

Bam! Hit the nail on the head there, friend. I'm not using the luminosity slider, but I am using opacity mixing a lot, and I'm getting dull grays when I mix. The solution, then, is to pick the correct color between the two I'm trying to mix and add that in, instead of over-mixing everything. Looks like I'm going to be experimenting with the color picker for a while...

Something to be proud of

The Dead Channel

Visit and see if you like it. There's more than just my stuff there, and more to come. I'm proud to be a part of it.

Slow Progress

Today, so far, I have written one word in a story. One word. And I didn't even increase the word count of that story. I changed a word.

I changed "quietly" to "suspiciously."

It's an adverb for God's sake! Adverbs are second-rate words in the first place. Who the hell needs adverbs anyway, especially dumb, pulpy adverbs like "suspiciously!?"

I'm already thinking of going and deleting it. At least that would double today's progress-- sort of.

What to Write, What to Write

Ah, yes, nothing is probably the correct answer. If I just write whatever crap comes into my head when I have a free moment you will just get a rambling stream of crap.

Deciding what to write seems to be the hardest thing for me. Make that second hardest. The hardest thing is dealing with the ongoing doubt that whatever I finally decide to write is a worthy topic to write about. This wouldn't be much of a problem if I was in the swift tribe, but I am not. It takes me a month or two, maybe three, to write a few thousand words. During those long weeks, every time I sit down to try and write, the nagging doubts come to visit: Is this really worth writing? Do I really want to keep writing this? Maybe if I did something else it would be easier.

Luckily, although I pretend to be morose, I am a terrible optimist. I can usually convince myself that I want to keep writing. Which is what I am doing now (not with this post, but with a story I'm trying to write).

In other news, I believe I have discovered a use for blogs: They can be used to keep writers from writing books about writers who can't think of something to write. Instead, the writers can write about not writing in their blogs, and save us all the trouble of reading about how writers can't write. Unless you read writers' blogs, but then it's your own damn fault now isn't it?