That is the name of the comic book text book. It is also what I think I’ll be doing this year for NaNoWriMo. I seem to have let go of everything that keeps me from being happy with a coloring tool in my hand. Spent a while today coloring in a friend’s coloring book. Working out the shading for the princess’ dress. Getting the shadows on the faces right. Choosing the right colors. Checking out what the mark-making effects of crayons are when I use the drawing signature of DaVinci and Gorey.
What does this have to do with novel writing? Well, the main characters keep drawing journals as part of their work practice. A lot of my character creation has been through illustrations in old children’s story books. I’m just realizing how much keeping a journal figures in my novels.
In the first novel, the journal full of visual ideas, sparks the consequences, literally. In the second novel, it’s both journals (the ones belonging to the same person as in the first) and children’s books. In the third, hmmm. I don’t remember having journals but now that I think of it, why not? The fields of music and knitting both have journal keeping as their practice, if not exactly as we think of them. In the fourth book, its those journals again plus another person whose work requires them.
Whew! I thought the retrospective didn’t occur till after one was dead, and then not for a long time!
I don’t know if I will be making pictures while I’m writing. I will wait and see what happens. The one thing I’ve learned from my own renewed attraction to drawing is to not push it. Most of the re-acquaintance came from my conversations with Gretchen about her own relationship with drawing. I got to feel lonely for drawing. Mind you, I haven’t let it go completely. My journals are organized around making some kind of pictorial mark. I make a rectangle on the top right corner of each new page and put a nice border around it. Only after I write the date next to the frame do I start my entry for the day. There are still blank frames on some pages. I’m not committed to filling them up. I just acknowledge that there is a place for drawing in my writing life.
Between my Catrina figure and my desire to build a fabric design practice, I’m realizing the perhaps I have really only thought of drawing as a tool and not something to do just for the heck of it. I am not, even though I might like to be, someone who loves drawing. Just as I am not a musician. Or an electronic technician. I may not even be a writer, for all that I write. I am a person who can do all of these things toward some other end. Or because of some other inspiration. I don’t know how to talk about it any better than that. I am expecting things to come together though, as I age a little more.
Something about how the spirit moves or can be perceived to move through all my interests and endeavors, seems to bring me peace. There are people for whom all those activities are roads to spirit. For many practitioners, art, electronics, music and the like are their path to something much larger than themselves. This something gives them comfort when their Adventures take them deep into dungeons where they need to find their way past familiar and unfamiliar monsters. I think, for me, writing is the Way. The other activities seem to be just a way to see into the Mystery through eyes that are only partially focused through music, electronics, drawing and the like.
Fine. Now I’ve gone and got deep. Not to worry. It’s Day of the Dead eve and these are perfectly good thoughts to have tonight. The souls of those who know more about these things are about to be let loose to visit in our dreams and desires. Might as well get things properly lined up. Who knows what gifts of insight my Mae might bring me, what experiences of the other side I might receive from Ricky or Darryl. And mom and dad and all the others behind them might have stories I can use to clarify my purpose. Sam, dear Sam, might even bring me closer to the forge and show me how the center of the earth creates, what the Earth Dragon dreams about. I can use that in my story tomorrow night.
Yes, I said 33 days. I started in earnest today doing the prep work. The next few days will be dedicated to collecting notes from wherever and making sure I know where they are. Today, I collected all my “how to write” notes into a Freemind file on my laptop. Tomorrow, I’ll be putting them all on a second drive: backing up the novel early!
I’ve started wondering what the actual structure of this year’s story will be. I know what story I want to tell. I just don’t know all the twists and turns. One trick I play on myself got formalized today. It’s the word count building strategy. Generally, we have strategies to build our word count when we run out of steam. For example, instructions from one character to another is a good way to build word count. In one of my novels, I used my need to research geography by sumarizing the research as a presentation of several arguments in the field. Another time, I used my need to study for the FCC exam to fill out word count. I just put a lot of the elements I had to learn into a context. Which leads to how I formalized my strategy.
In a file called “word count” I made a list of things I will need to pay attention to in my story. There is a wonderful short story called “The Things They Carried”. When in need of word count, show don’t tell, what is being carried in a ladies’ purse, for example. Far from being filler, it can become a way to show character, setting, culture. It happens that the world I’m building is based on the fabric trade so what is carried as a purse can be important to the story. Again, it’s also a way to fill the word count well when the story stream runs low.
I found a great book on drawing costumes and that helped me think about how to organize what they are wearing. What I like about doing these kinds of lists, the preparatory ones, is that I find myself asking when or why a list might be used in the story. It gives me material for a scene that builds character and culture. I now have a scene planned that has a young girl seeing a town in the throes of a market convention for the first time. I knew what her role in the story would be and it’s important. She is after all the title character. What I didn’t have was the lead up and revealing kind of story bits.
That’s what I use word count padding for: to help me fill in the necessary parts of the story.
In all the advice about worldbuilding, having a sketch of the important bits is more important than knowing all the details. My online writing “mentor” Holly Lisle has a method that she’s come up with after creating a couple of world bibles before writing the novel. I like my lists of things the story needs. Like weather, landscape, economics. Why? Because in this novel these things are important. That was the lesson Lisle learned: create only as much world as you need to tell the story effectively.
Remember, I said I wrote this out in Freemind. That means that there are lots of sublists. One of those sublists is from a special episode of the Shakespeare and Dragons podcast, Monsters. That episode, which was created to help raise support funds for the podcast, gave me an important concept for not just this novel but for the whole series. So, I used the monsters character sheet to make a list in my lists. In the process I discovered that role playing character sheets can be useful in making characters for novels.
I don’t take the categories literally sometimes. There is a category called “reach/space”. When my characters encounter the “monsters” how will I express “reach/space” for them. They are a couple of women who know little about the world. At this point I don’t really know. This is what makes it fun: the intrigue and the puzzle. Oh, and “saving throw”… How is that going to be expressed in the novel. While this kind of thing might not generate a lot of word count, it is such an intriguing question that I am sure it will keep me writing. It might turn out that I write it and don’t use it in the final novel. That’s what revision is for after all, isn’t it.
I’m yawning. Time for bed. Early start tomorrow.
Oh! Almost forgot. Got my Catrina fabric in the mail today. Slightly disappointed with it. Why? I didn’t get the measurements right. Didn’t notice that until last night when I was redoing it. I posted the pattern as 18″x24″ rather than 18″x21″, a proper “fat quarter” yard of fabric. It’s my first doll panel. My first contest. My first fat quarter.
There are a lot of good things though. I absolutely love the sound and feel of the fabric itself. I love the scale of the image. I bought a yard of the fabric: one panel for myself and one for Gretchen. I will figure out what to do with the leftovers another time. Did I say how much I love the fabric itself? The sound of the scissors cutting through it, the sound of it as I flap it to straighten it out, the texture. I didn’t get the same feeling with the samples. Too small to make that big sound. I think I’ll like the fat quarters though. Could really get to like them a lot. Enough to run my hand over.
Hmm… I know what I’ll do with the misprinted parts of the yard I bought. Will share later. Bed time now.
Just got notified that my Catrina fabric has been shipped. I’m looking forward to seeing how it turned out.
I realized today, after spending an exciting hour or so in the library finding stuff, that the fabric design is part of this year’s novel. Even though I have a story line, I don’t have a lot of details to work with. Usually this doesn’t bother me. Usually I don’t notice! Usually, also, I have had a lot of other elements that I’m trying to fit into the novel, elements I’ve had in mind for a while.
My composing strategy is to ask “how does this fit into the world?”. Then I make stuff up to fit. For example, I bought a sewing machine the other day. It’s a beautiful White Family Rotary machine from about 1909 or so. It’s electric, but I read that this model usually is set up as a treadle. Since I bought the machine during the time I am planning for Nanowrimo, I wondered how the machine might fit into a world without electricity.
I decided that the people who brought the machine into the world also brought the treadle base as well as the electric parts. It is possible to generate electricity manually (think bicycle light), and the people who brought the machine know how to do that as well as have the materials to do it with. So, what’s the big deal?
Well, in the first novel major havoc is wreaked by someone creating electricity. Ok, so it was done on the scale of a major lightning storm, but it shouldn’t have been done in the first place. Electricity is prohibited in the world. So, how is it possible that an electric sewing machine is ok? Ah! That’s what makes the story interesting this time around. Answering that question helped me create a little more depth about the world, help me to define this particular aspect of the landscape. It also helps bridge between the world of this novel and the next one.
This novel is the last of this series. This series has been a way for me to create the world and get a bunch of ideas out of my head and onto paper in a proper context.
Ooo… Watching a kid’s show, Zula Patrol, about clouds. Today I found a book about drawing clouds. Weather is an interest of one of my major characters and part of the conflict in the novel. Love me some synchronicity!
I’m off to visit Ravelry to check up on the gang intending to write next month. I get to go to the local kick-off party, here in Sacramento. I’ve been working for the previous ones. Looking forward to hanging out with other people writing furiously.
I just finished my first doll panel for Spoonflower. It combines fabric, dolls, and an attraction to bones as a spiritual practice. Or something like that. I heard a poem and only remember bones as flutes. I remember it was a man writing about his lover, a dead wife I think. I remember where I was and that I took myself deeper into the image of bones. I thought of them like flutes, like reeds or bamboo. I thought of bones as being a perfect metaphor for our concrete essence. Structure. Support. Our core.
Yeah, core. For all the muscle workout, without the bones for the muscles to attach to, none of the “core work” would make any difference.
All that came up when I was thinking about why doing the Catrina Calavera felt so resonant.
I love the nakedness of her in her big ostrich-plumed hat. Naked yet not. And I like that, unless you are someone who investigates bones, you can’t tell the Catrina’s race. She is every woman. She is not thin or fat. Not muscular or flabby. Not old or young. She is always elegant, poised, serene.
She is the perfect dress-up doll. I imagine dressing her ribs in crystals, her heart a chandelier. Wrapping her limbs in ribbons. She masks herself as all beings, crowning herself with leaves, flowers, feathers, horns. Her nakedness, her spareness, inspires.
She is the ultimate santos to me. An abundance of relics held together by the spirit of her life. I would compose lush gowns for her, be her dresser on and off-stage. I have already become her old maid, her a vestir santos. In having no children of my own, I am her child, bound to take care of her for all the rest of my life.
I didn’t know that until now. I knew I had a crush on her cousin, Death. Didn’t know it was a family commitment. Good! I’ve been lonely.
Believe it or not those two things are quite connected. The business in the world I’ve created to write about is all things fiber related. Think Silk Road. And, the fiber business is also my real life RPG goal.
Quick review: I like the order that playing Dungeons and Dragons imposes on keeping track of lots of different personal (in the form of the characters) material. The only place I can think that would have such useful tools as a skills sheet would be a school counselor’s office. Unfortunately, the school counselor’s office wouldn’t have a place on that sheet for magic spells or equipment.
Funny. I’ve never made that connection before. The connection between school and RPGs. OK, I have, but not in the way of what kinds of information I might actually get from school. From a counselor or good teacher. For me, the structure of the RPG fills in blanks I didn’t really recognize till now. Mostly, I think, because I have a friend with some of the same blanks that I feel. Like how to have so many ideas and not get overwhelmed by them.
I think this is what life coaches are supposed to be good for. Me, I’d rather make up my own character sheet and do a personal inventory of all the skills I have to see if I have enough to level up. I also need to find other Adventurers who want to take this –what would you call it? No one has aksed us (me) to slay a dragon or search for something or rescue someone. Ooo. That’s what I need to figure out? Not what the task is, but who is asking it to be done! Cool.
Meanwhile, I have my project completed for the next Spoonflower contest. It’s a doll panel. Nice combination of what they are asking for and what I like. It helps that I also want to give it as a gift. Or, that the actual image has sparked a few more ideas. I don’t know what goes into the Etsy shop, now. Have to take the Spoonflower market into account for fabric. Final products? I still have a few of those ideas to develop.
And this last novel will give me ideas and help focus my plans. It’s about the business of the world and how it collapses. We also get to hear more about goblins and dragons. Drawing, too. It’s all in there. Isn’t that what Nano is about? Getting it all in and editing later?
Oooo! Less than 30 days till NaNoWriMo begins and I can start writing for real. I’ve got lots of notes and ideas for the last of the five novels in this set. The first one is The Tailor’s Tale, the one that started it all. I’ve already told some of the story behind the story, though, so I’ll spare us the retelling.
I had a revelation this morning. Not just another idea, but the kind of revelation that I feel with my whole body, a feeling of living the idea rather than just having it wriggling about inside my skull.
I was thinking about some of the ideas I had for Spoonflower fabric and Etsy. With Spoonflower working on a marketplace, I need to rethink what I want to use Etsy for. This is where the RPG meets Real Life. I’ve been talking about role playing a little mystically, invoking the world of magic that is usually associated with gaming while trying to keep it on this side of fantasy. There’s more to my idea of what a role-playing game can be, though.
It’s no coincidence that the world I built is made from the fabric trade. It’s a medium I have a lot of lust for. I can practically hear and feel the rustle of embroidered silks and velvets when watching The Tudors for example. The weight of the swirling cape in the opening credits is very nearly fabric-pron. You wouldn’t know this about me if we met however. All I talk about is the magic-leaning stuff. I am, on a day to day basis, an advocate of empowerment, a fool for personal transformation, a getting-to-good type geek. In another life, I used to tell myself (too keep myself sane), I would probably be a shaman. Now, though, with the chasm of retirement looming before me, I’m thinking that I should consider myself a shaman with a fabric shop!
The RPG part? Well, I don’t know nothin’ ’bout birthin’ no business, to misquote another nurse/nanny type. For me the format of the role-playing game is perfect for organizing what I know and what I need to find out, while keeping the whole process on the higher side of fun. NPC’s are in place as the creators of Ravelry, Etsy and Spoonflower, for example. My Adventuring party? So far there is only one other person, I think. We’re friends and kind of on the same path. Whether we are on the same Adventure…? I don’t know yet. Only the encounters and the traveling through the landscape will tell.
The first part of my journey will be finishing the novel. Part of finishing the novel, I discovered, is finding out more about money and economics. The other part, a continuing part, is taking the magic part seriously. I have always taken it seriously as a study. I’ve just not practiced it in any formal way, with any kind of focus. Now it’s time to turn information into knowledge and knowledge into skill.
Talking to Gretchen about all of this, we came to the conclusion that this is one way to change a life, to become someone different. With that in mind, and since documentation is also part of the RPG, I’ll be keeping track of my process. One reason is that it’s fun. Another, more important reason, is that some of what I am planning to do is inspired by questions from many non-RPG places. Some of the questions are those Gretchen and I have asked each other and together of systems we’ve both investigated.
My plan is to show how I move from the system, through the questions, and into some kind of tool to be used in my Game. The name of my game? I guess it’s Retirement. Retirement, the Game. Ok… Maybe that’s just the working title. I have an idea that there is another title waiting to be revealed, but that’s another post.
Meanwhile, consider this the first of the pre-NaNoWriMo posts.
Spoonflower did a really cool thing recently. They invited the community to get something for nothing. They invited us to get free samples of our designs one day and, if we wished, we could send the usual fee for the samples, anyway. What happened to the money and why is “not quite free” good? They sent the money we paid to The Heifer Project! I love that idea. It’s how I want to do business also.
Since this was my first real sample experience, I decided to get images printed that would do two things. First, I would get 8-inch square panels of single images to use for a project. Second, I would find out how the images I wanted to use printed. Unlike many other people using the service, I just want the prints however they come out. That’s pretty much how I work. I’m so perfectionist that I deliberately just letting things go and working with what I get. That’s the artist in my saving me from myself.
So, what did I get?
On the left is the text of a post card my grandmother wrote to Langston Hughes. On the right is an experiment using Inkscape to create a portrait of my niece, Morgana. I don’t know what I’m going to do with either of them, yet.
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