Loose Ends 7: TFHC Chapter One! Plus Teen Scribblings!
Hello everybode!
Now, I know I said that this entry was going to be ‘Songs About Success’, but there have been two exciting developments! Firstly, I have re-drafted the first chapter of Tales from Honeyskull Cottage! You can read it HNYAH:
Tales from Honeyskull Cottage Chapter 1: Alexis
“In which an ancient and dangerous spell is performed”
I shall be releasing maybe two or three more chapters for free so people can get into the story, and see if they like where it is going before it is finally SELF PUBLISHED.
On that score, does anyone know any good places to self publish apart from Evil Amazon?
Second point, I found one of my old notebooks back from when I was an ambitious teenager. I remember distinctly writing this page:
In which I list, with somewhat arbitrary numbers, what I would like to achieve in my lifetime. If you can’t read my weird printed writing, or the picture is too small, or didn’t load, the full list is here. Witness the amazing ambition and towering hubris of the 13-15 year old me…
Loose Ends 6: 10 Songs About Faliure
Hey lovelies, I’ve been a bit busy of late and so here is a slightly left field post – a list of songs about failure! Music is an absolutely fantastic way of spurring on creativity and also a great way of working through emotions (as I’ve discussed earlier on this thread, that is often the same thing) – it is also a way of reassuring yourself that you are not the only one feeling the way you do.
Even if the songs are so sad they reduce you to tears or so angry they make you punch the plaster of your wall in in a fit of teenage rage, you will be better for listening to them.
So I present to you my positive list of songs about not getting what you want…
Loose Ends 5: ‘Potential Crisis’ aka ‘Nothing Is Good When It’s Finished’
Working hard is great, being lazy sometimes is great, but failed potential is the worst.
– Campbell Scott
(with thanks to www.brainyquote.com)
These little fluffs have nothing whatsoever to do with my post, but the are adorable and I thought we needed a few more pictures round here!
Ahoy-hoy everybode!
I am writing this in both on a tight timescale and a rather conflicted mood, there is LOT going on under the surface at the moment -all is quiet in the Spekti Home (apart from rabbits nibbling, so above) but I feel there are things I should definitely be doing and am maybe not doing, which is annoying. Also I felt like there is a more serious blog I want to write but screw that, it can wait until tomorrow or something.
Time to waffle on a little more about creative stuff and that, and I promise these blogs will grow more substantial as time goes on.
Loose Ends 4: Working It Out
Hey kids!
Woah, onto number 4 in this ongoing series. So, I’m running short of time so it will be quite a short one.
So, creative people are broken.
In fact, all people are broken so this is somewhat of a tautology, but I think creatives are generally more broken that others. Don’t get me wrong, it is brokenness in a good way, but the essence of being creative is perceiving the world as somehow incomplete and in need of ‘fixing’ by bringing something new into life. Something is inside us that needs to be given some kind of tangible existence in order for us to feel that the world, and ourselves, are right. Of course this never works as when one project is done, another is always waiting on the horizon.
In fact, I believe this is why we have the oddly dissociative relationship with our art that I went into last week- these things were part of our subconscious which needed to be worked out – sometimes they are trivial, sometimes important. Once that has happened they are no longer part of us, but part of everything else- part of a world that STILL needs fixing.
We are what needs fixing.
Loose Ends 3: “Oh So Over”
Hello everybode!
So last post I announced my wish to go back and re-draft my first novel ‘Tales From Honeyskull Cottage’, a piece of Young Adult Fantasy (ooh-er missus), with a view to self-publishing.
Well, that process has started albeit slowly, and it seems to have assuaaged my initial fears that a) it was terrible and b) the equally terrifying prospect that there would be literally nothing I could do to improve it and in fact the best writing I had ever done in my life was over 10 years ago and I hadn’t got any better since then.
No, it appears that it is perfectly saveable, and there is lots to do to make it better.
Loose Ends 2: Project One and the Horror of Re-drafting
“A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.”
– B.F Skinner
(with thanks to BrainyQuote.com)
Hey kids!
Thanks to the eminent writer, psychologist, inventor and pigeon-hater B.F. Skinner for reinforcing the point- the worst thing to do is give up, not mess up. In case you didn’t catch post number 1, the ‘loose ends’ thread is about two things, neither of which is wallowing in self-pity because I’m not a bestselling author or famous film director yet.
It is in order to…
-
Chronicle me trying to complete some of my old ideas, and actually promote them this time
-
Collaborate with and support my friends in doing the same
With that in mind, I’d like to start by giving a shout out to the lovely folks who got back to me about the first blog post, either in comments or in discussion:
Comic artist Sally Jane Thompson:
http://www.sallyjanethompson.co.uk/
@SallyThompson
Illustrator and all-round awesome artist Emily King:
http://emilialys.deviantart.com/
@emilyk6d6
Loose Ends 1: A Litany of Failure
Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
– Thomas Edison
(with thanks to BrainyQuote)
Hello everybode! I am now 30 – no age at all, really, as I plan to live to 110, but it is an age which give you cause for reflection.
And I realise, without wishing to be too dramatic or depressing, that I have failed quite spectacularly as a creative.
As the quote above puts quite neatly (even it it was from terrible idea-stealer Thomas Edison), the essence of failure is not to do badly at something, but to fail to persist, to give up and go elsewhere.
When I was 15 I had so many ideas, and so many ambitions. I have continued to have ideas- in fact I think if I wrote a bullet point list of every workable idea I’d ever had it would fill a dictionary-sized book. And some of those ideas I worked really hard at, they filled my life night and day for weeks until I just…gave up.
I’m sure most creative people feel very similarly about their own practice. After all, you can only maintain fever-pitch on an idea so long before the original sheen wears off and you want to go elsewhere. But it seemed always to be a particular foible on my part that as soon as it required me to put the idea out there, to face the world, to deal actively with criticism, to get other people involved, I folded and started something else that I could work on quietly without relying on anyone else.
This crippling combination of misplaced pride and irrational fear of self-promotion has led to many potentially interesting things just falling down and dying, like a prehistoric creature washed up on a beach without having evolved a decent pair of lungs.
SpektiJim 