What am I working on? It’s been a busy two weeks, and my brain is still buzzing from all the activity. Mostly, when I get into the office, I plug away on Dirty Bone and try to get a scene or two done. I’m doing a full retype of this draft, so I’m about 42k into it at this point, though I wish I were further. I’m semi-optimistic that I can get it wrapped up by Christmas, in the hopes of getting it out to my second round readers by January, but it’s taking its time, and I have to let it for now. Still, it’s inching forward, which is something! I’m also reading a friend’s novel-in-progress, doing slushing, and we’re getting our bathroom remodeled this week, so there’s a lot afoot. I did get a notice a few weeks ago from the lovely folks at Redivider (who published “The Showerlier” found here) to let me know that they’d nominated “The Showerlier” for a Best of the Net award! Now, there’s no guarantee of winning that award, but I’m chuffed that they thought of me. They’ve been great to work with, and I highly recommend you check them out if you haven’t yet. I’m also playing around with a new mini-zine I’m hoping to have done by the end of October, but we’ll see about that!
What’s inspiring me? I finally finished A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth a few weeks ago, and absolutely adored it. The sheer scope and massive cast of characters blows my mind, even as I feel like I’ve really LIVED the novel, you know? I wrote about it a bit in this Substack post (I’ve been playing around with it). In contrast, I’ve started reading The Mezzanine which is making me laugh–it’s an entire novel (edit: novella) about a man buying a pair of replacement shoelaces during his lunch break, and it’s as absurdly detailed as you can imagine that story would be. Still, his description of him and his father’s bonding over ties almost had me in tears one night because it was so sweet.
Andy and I have fallen a bit off our movie wagon as of late, mainly because we’ve been gone or hosting every Friday night when we’d typically watch a film. Still, we did recently watch Caveat (from the same director as Oddity–a recent favorite of ours), and we enjoyed it thoroughly. We also watched Cuckoo when it came out for streaming, and I gotta say, that was a tight film. I enjoyed that one in part because I had no idea what to expect, and it made me think some thinks and feel some feels, and it took some time to process it. But it was fun, almost dab-smack in the middle of thriller and horror: horrifying, but tamer than I expected. It’s a good odd watch if you haven’t seen it yet.
On the art side of things, I’ve been obsessed with Danny Gregory’s Sketchbook Skool on YouTube–it’s got a bit of a Bob Ross vibe (which Thing 1 has been getting into lately), but in an encouragement angle, less a step-by-step angle. I’ve been working on doodling and sketching in my planner more, and I’ve really been enjoying it. I got his first book, Artistic License, to check out, and am looking forward to it. Also, he’s one of those people with a stupid amount of hobbies, which I adore! I’ve thought about featuring little roundups on artists who play in multiple areas, just because it sometimes seems like in modern society that you’re frowned upon if you do “too many things” rather than just one thing extremely well. But I like dabbling! I like playing with new things! And I think, as an artist, that’s a super important life skill to maintain, to fight against the ever-flowing pressure to monetize your skills and only do what’s “worth it” (whatever that is). Kids do tons of things. Kids want to BE tons of things!
Kids play with anything and everything, and eventually they settle in on some specific things they keep coming back to again and again (like writing and painting for me), but why not try new things, too? Even if you’ll never be perfect at it? If you’ll never “make a living” at it? Isn’t it worth enriching your life just to try? To play? To remember what it’s like to be a beginner at something?
Anyway, *I* think it’s worth it. I certainly think it’s more fun!
What am I working on next week? Phew, good question. I’ve got yet more scenes to get through, one by one. I’m trying to hash out the next scene for tomorrow, but with the remodel, meetings, field trips, and dentist appointments, this week is going to be $&%^!*. Honestly, if I touch the novel once a day for the next four days, and keep up with submissions, I’ll be happy. It may be something of a “just open the document” kind of week! But we’ll see where it goes!