Another journal

Want some more noodling about the writing process of The Audacity Gambit? Like you have a choice. Let’s talk themes. I’ll outline them even.

Trailer parks

I grew up in a double-wide trailer on the outskirts of, what was at the time, a 13,000-ish population town. I lived between there and what could politely be called a township—there was a payphone box, even—of a couple hundred-ish. A good percentage of people I knew lived in trailer parks, which was rather different than the acre of land our mobile home was on. I was jealous of the kids who lived there, with their built-in neighbours and plenty of friends their own age.

There is something wonderful about the old mobile homes from the 1970-1980. The layouts of each are nearly identical, regardless of manufacturer, with only the slightest of add-on variations, depending on what the original owners sprung for (I’ve only known two people who bought brand-new mobile homes and one of them was a lotto winner). So somebody might have a fireplace, or a panelled “feature wall”, or a raised area in the living room to separate it more clearly from the kitchen—but the bedrooms were always at the same end, everybody had a sliding glass door and the bathroom was probably across from the dining room.

It was so noticeably different than actual houses. I mean, you often still pay DMV fees on your home, even if it is never going anywhere. There’s a culture there and though it wasn’t a huge part of the story I was dealing with, it informed the characters’ relationships quite a bit.

The teens of small towns

I’ve found a pervasive misconception about those shitty little towns that line highways, forcing you into one-way grids for a mile or two before spitting cars back out into runways through the fields and forests. You know these towns. They struggle to become a respectable bedroom community after the mill closes.

They’re not backwaters, devoid of culture. The people are not idiots. There’s just less people, so what idiots they have stand out more. Teens tend to suffer under similar pre-judgement—they are, for all their youth, actual people. They feel and think and reason, only with less years to pull their reasoning from. A lot of them still retain hope and impossible dreams, tatters that haven’t been beat out of them by life quite yet. They’re in the process of trying to learn the social dances that make society accept you as an adult who’s opinion is worthy of listening to and possibly respecting.

There’s not much to do as a teen in a small town. The people I grew up with would go on aimless drives, create intricate master plans that could never come to fruition and play videogames in a group—half the people watching the other half play. We were pretty good and boring kids. The other end of the spectrum is Over the Edge. You have to make your own fun and sometimes it isn’t very.

The chosen one trope

In the 80′s and 90′s I think there was a sort of barrage of this trope. I love it, and have looked at it before. What kid doesn’t hope that for realsies they’ll find the creepy shop with the magical whatsit, or meet the goblin king (and stay with him, because seriously), or whatever. Your trials would all have been preparation for your life as a hero. You were chosen.

I’m sure modern YA still carries the banner for this theme, it’s a great trope. But my interest was in a group’s attempt to manipulate it. Fairies like rules, it’s my favourite thing about them. And rules that exist because that’s how things have always been done and told are just as legit as any rule in the book.

From here on out, it might be kind of spoilery, not outright so much, but in feeling

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.

Folks, you’re gong to need to indulge me. Having finished the edits of The Audacity Gambit, I need to decompress and talk some process.

At the start of this year, when I started this focus thing, my focus was writing—specifically, getting some significant headway into a book. The longest finished piece I think I’ve ever written was a little over 4,000 words long and itself a product of that focus month. One of the standard definitions of a novel is 40,000 words—ten times that.

But I had an idea that I wanted to mangle out that long. Your regular idea, born of several obsessions and personal themes. It wasn’t like I hadn’t written things of total length. There was that weekly webcomic I had for what? Two and a half years? I could finish a story (let’s ignore Anise and Slow Build here), I wasn’t going to let word count stop me.

A dear friend of mine had recently finished her first book and another has been serialising theirs for a while, so there was encouragement that it could be done. I could so do this, however daunting. In the three-ish years since I finished that comic, my outlining process had changed significantly. Back then it was constantly evolving outlines, sub-outlines, plotted timelines and so forth, each more detailed down to the script. For this story I made the loosest outline possible. I barely knew how it’d end (and don’t worry, spoiler-fearers, what you see below is an old version, not the outline I ended up using for the end).

But I got a big chunk of it written in January, enough to put in the can and start updating once my lovely first reader had edited it. And once I had a title.

It was the title that really pushed back the first update. I hate naming things, because there is a stupid amount of weight involved in a name. Since I was focusing on tropes, I rabbit-holed TVTropes, looking for some one thing to click in my head. I couldn’t tell you how exactly I decided on “The Audacity Gambit”, but I do know that I love the idea of audaciousness. There’s a sense of foolhardiness to it when applied to bravery.

So, it was named and began updating and I started again that weird cycle I’d set aside years before—of building up and depleting an update queue, then building it back up—a flurry of behind the scenes attempts to not fail an invisible audience who in theory expected a regular schedule. I serialised it as I wrote because I’ve learned over the years that promising the internet regular updates is enough to shame me into keeping up a working pace. It also meant I’d get intermittent feedback from folks who have opinions I value. It’s encouraging for me to have that while I’m writing.

I wanted to finish the damn thing by the end of the year. And I handwrote the last line in early December (the majority of the first draft has been written by hand since the summer). Not too long later I typed up the last chapter and passed it on to my first reader. It’s all queued up and will run until March 11, 2012. Less than a year of weekly updates, but not a bad little run.

I look forward to not thinking about Audacity Gambit for a couple of months. Then I can read the thing from start to finish and run another series of edits. I don’t know what all I’m doing with it once it’s all done, but something written and edited in pieces like this needs another inspection as a whole.

Here’s where The Audacity gambit was written:

• On the MAX light rail, when I commuted from the suburbs into the city for work.
• During the second half of C.O.P.S. classes, since I didn’t always want to attend a critique class.
• In two coffee shops, Tiny’s SE and Press Club. I finished the thing at Press Club (and drafted this post there, even).
• During my smoke breaks at work.
• At the laundromat (which is where I am typing up this post). I actually don’t know what I’ll do while I wait for my laundry now.

This is probably boring, as most introspective looks at process are, but I’m still coming down. I wrote a book guys! At 38,000+ words it isn’t technically a novel, but who cares. I am warning you, expect a nerdy, meandering look at themes and junk that I had to look up in the future.

Anyway, why don’t you (if you haven’t yet) try reading The Audacity Gambit? It updates Sundays at 9pm and all the entries are linked to here.

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.

Whew. This has already been quite a month, with moving and everything. But I am still doing my focus month thing, it’s just sort of morphed this month. March’s focus is setting up the new place and Sewing For The Home.

It’s cheating a bit, allowing “setting up new place” to be part of the focus, but sewing for the home involves figuring out some furniture things, getting curtain rods and all that awesome interior design stuff I get hot for. Primarily it’s “sewing for the home”, but there’s auxiliary stuff that is going to be done as well.

I collect housewife books, hitting most eras from the late 1800′s onward—ones about the best way to clean things (vinegar, bicarbonate of soda and lemon juice, through the ages), first aid, how to arrange one’s day to fit in all the housekeeping, how to entertain, etc. A side effect of that are sewing books and new bride books. They’re full of what you need for the home, from flatware to curtains. My particular favourite (besides my 1960s new bride book, with ads from Sears in it) is a Singer Sewing for the Home edition from the sixties. The two colour illustrations are amazing, though their glory is dwarfed by the full colour plates.  When I have more things set up at home I’ll get pictures or scans, so worth sharing.

I pulled it out when we moved to the last apartment, using it to guide the few curtains and shower curtain I made for that place. Now that we’re in our first “real” apartment, with a living room that can be just a living room, that sort of thing, like houses in films. It’s getting not only curtains to coordinate with the walls, but some actual furniture pieces, handmade kitchen and bath towels, that sort of thing. Home sewing is the most satisfying thing, because it is mostly straight seams and hems that transform yards of whatever into useful things in about an afternoon.

I made quite the fabric purchase online last night, at Fabric.com, thanks to a generous tax return. Other than a bit of shirting that was less than $2 a yard I couldn’t resist, everything is for this month’s focus. You can skip over this bit if you don’t care about fabric.

Kitchen towels! Gorgeous red (which is kind of daring, with the green kitchen, but there’s dark wood-look stuff in there too, so it will go) towelling that’s 90/10 cotton/linen.

Hand towels and washcloths for the bath! We have plenty of bath towels, but our washcloths have served double duty for the kitchen for some time and are hella gross. Which means I get to try my hand sewing terry (blue to go with the insane blue of the bathroom walls) and binding with twill tape.

Our living room is big enough that when we have formal(er) dinners we’ll be eating in there, so the yellow walls were kept in mind (along with personal preference) in choosing orange linen for napkins. Cloth napkins guys!! It’s like I’m a princess.

Choosing a curtain pattern was difficult, as we’ve yellow and white walls in the living room (which is the only room that doesn’t have those stupid Venetian blinds) and the furniture is more or less white and blonde wood, but the loveseat is a sage and there are other pops of colour going on. I ended up going for green and ivory ticking striped cotton. I had to get loads of it, as there are three windows. AND I got curtain weights, because they’ve simply got to hang right. I bought the liner curtains pre-made, because who can resist the scalloped edges of these damn Ikea net things?

There are other projects that I already have fabric for, because I am a supplies hoarder and love deals. The other household sewing I hope to do this month are:

• Potholders (I’ve fabric for the outside and the heat-resistant stuff for the inside)
• Refinishing the cushions of some wooden chairs (this is going to be so fun)
• Maybe a new pillow, if I can find down (I also picked up down-proof ticking at Fabric.com)
• A couple other things that will totally show up as I go along

Whew! It looks like a lot of sewing, but it’s all measuring and straight lines. And ironing. And pre-washing. Crazy excited for this month, I’ve been waiting since January for it.

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.

There is this guy I know. Dogs cross the street to get pets from him, and even the most hateful cats love him, because he exudes some sort of “nah, I just want to romp too” vibe.  He will spend literally hours learning about a breed of animal and is now full of more facts about bizarre wildlife than most public television.

He is a ridiculously good photographer with an even pickier sense of self-confidence than I have, which is saying a lot.  He has a job in a dying industry and gets into godlike rages at the pitiful excuses for first aid his superiors half-heartedly attempt. I can’t understand how he is such a good photographer, every time I see a snippet of a new project of his I am floored.

For various reasons he has stopped eating grains and feels about a million times better.  For breakfast he has “bear cereal”, which is berries and nuts with cream poured over.  He yells at crows out of the car window.  He has the prettiest hair and likes to have his toenails done.

When I want to buy something particularly ridiculous and glam I just need to ask him if I should and he says yes.  He always goes for the sparkliest thing.

I’ve known him since he was nineteen, but I don’t want to think about that too much because we’re both twenty-seven now and that is kind of a long time.

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.

(Project Runway Play Along)

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.

In attempt to justify starting what will turn out to be a stupidly ridiculous project, I am first trying to finish as many things as I can that fall into that awful “just a step away from being finished” phase.  This includes all that unstretched/framed embroidery I’ve done over the past year or so.  Starting easy (because I really hate building stretchers, even when it is balsa wood), I pieced and quilted together the panels of the Regulars, those people I see nearly every day on my commute. I made one last panel of the folks who have faces I recognise as familiar, but who I do not see that often.

If I was still doing arty things and thinky thesis doodles I would say something about the fabric’s printed nature theme hinting at the similarities of spotting animals in the wild and birding lifer lists and holy crap would a transit commute lifer list not be so hilarious and probably offensive with its labels?

Or I would say that it was lap blanket size, just the right size to take with me on the commute, so that these people who have helped shape the visual tone of the trip can always be with me even when they’re not.  And they can be made uncomfortable by seeing grotesque parodies of their likeness painstakingly embroidered into a blanket that I constantly touch with my hands.

But I am not.  I do, however, reflexively process ideas like that since its what I was trained to do.  And I am just enough of a jackass to put myself out in taking a picture to illustrate it.

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.

Seriously, guy.

Better comics than this about history and things are always found at Kate Beaton’s place, gosh she is great.

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.

I’ve always been fond of my birthdate, it pleased me as a nerdy kid to have a birthday right after Earth day (rhyme!) and when I later found out that Shakespeare was born and died on the day¹ it added some class. Two years ago I learned that the day is also St. George’s day, but it wasn’t until very recently I even looked at what he was patron of. Turns out, totally appropriate birth-day saint, since he was also Palestinian. Rock.

Anyhow, as of late I’ve been all embroidery-y and trying to use stitching as just another media, something to draw with and be just another “graphic mark“.  I am not a single media person at all, and I’ve been trying to better integrate my stitching into the other work I do and have done.  So. I figured, birthdays?  Totally a good push to do something about it and what better than a haiographic saint icon to work with as a subject?

There was a lot of image searching to get the brain churning.  What bothered me about a lot of the traditional icons was that a) the dragon came from a lake, not a cave guys; 2) always the dragon is being stabbed in the image, which is false advertising as St. George doesn’t kill the dragon right there— he puts this princess’ girdle on it and takes it back to the village to bully them all into being baptised; 3) he was a Roman soldier and part Palestinian, something not often reflected in his face or clothing (which is just how religious arts work traditionally, but still²).  So I did a drawing, transferred it to my fabric and got to work.

Overall, it worked out to eight days of stitching on the MAX (I tend to read on the bus legs of the trip, as it is jouncy and hard to work precisely) and a lovely afternoon of painting, 12-15 hours total.  Which isn’t bad, especially considering that a chunk of that was technical dead time anyhow.

The end result I’m super happy with, its a step in a good direction, I think.  I love stitching and embroidery because it is like painting and sculpting and sewing all together.

All in all, a nice way to ring out my 25th year and bring in the next.

1.  According to the Julian calendar.
2.  I think this is partially why the knight/dragon thing is so medival and England, because it was painted that way so often, despite the whole thing going down in the late third century.

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.

While slumming around Portland with awesome folks on Sunday after Stumptown we hit Powells, like you do.  Resting tired feet in the Pearl room, I found that we were in a section of utter awesomeness, being lots of art history.  I am a magpie, easily attracted to certain book spines and while poking through little plate books of Persian miniatures I found a book of Russian icons from the 12th to 15th centuries.  I have a fondness for icons, the combination of bold imagery with complex symbolism is fascinating.  However, I’m not that up on all the meanings, so some plates, like this one:

make me think of  Aarne-Thompson type 312 (Bluebeard).  Like, people look in this hole they weren’t supposed to and BAM, head off.  Really though, it’s St. John the Baptist and what we’re seeing here is sequential story telling.  The head in the hole is his.  Snap.

What decided me buying the book was that there is a plate of the best horse drawn ever in it.

Look at this horse. Is it not the best ever? Holy crap you have never seen a better horse.

Anyhow, turns out this wizard is Elijah (still a wizard, frankly), and Jesus is not stealing a baby, that’s his mom’s soul and she’s being escorted in style to heaven.  The plate listing was an uncut page so I didn’t even see it till way after I had it home.

Icons, guys.  The raddest.

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.