Loitering
Unfortunately, I am not ready to go to bed yet. Hopefully the next 13 minutes of typing will wear me out enough that I will be able to leave my computer satisfied.
Another day without drawing. Getting up late didn't help, and going out with friends probably didn't help. Although I don't believe in it, I feel as though the feng shui of my monitor being gone is throwing me off. Pieces of my workspace are in different places, and the voids have been filled with office odds and ends (primarily paper related). The new piles of books, notebooks and scratch paper, previously confined to temporary (since moving) luggage, do an utterly poor job of being the dimension of construct I am used to seeing in my peripheral vision.
Despite that persistent discomfort, I've made strides in solving my other problems. A new decree is posted in my brain: NO NEW BOOKMARKS (and work on dismantling the old ones!). My new system is kin to that I conceived in Georgia, the one that put hundreds of post it notes on my wall. The new system, however, has a lower threshold for note-taking. I'm still doing post its, especially for quotations, but they are reserved for more fully formed story ideas. "Fully" meaning the note contains plot points instead of thematic gestures.
The new system involves me jotting down extremely short thematic synopses from web pages I would otherwise bookmark. Even if I'm not exactly "in the mood", I read as much as I can and answer to myself the lesson to be gained from the text. It's crude, to say the least, but in my crisis of information overload I learned the questions I should be asking each time I want to save a page: What do I want to get out of this? What can I learn from this?
I take my notes on these things in a scratchbook; years ago I bound a dozen four-sheet signatures together with blue thread, the papers ranging from cardstock to misprints to leftover specialty paper. It has no cover, the binding is exposed, and many pages are soiled by toner and text. I made it to sketch full of drawings, but now I sketch there with words (but leave open spaces for doodles).
posted by annie @ 2:47 AM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
Annie, don't try to be less than you are, don't let yourself be swallowed by the things you are trying to swallow.
People will come and will go; I don't know if this is harder to accept when one is younger or older.
You have gifts I can only marvel at: one is your art, another is your marriage, another is your burning, indomitable intelligence and desire to know. Company, friendship, contact and conversation are all good and necessary, but don't ever try to be ordinary, and don't let any of those things take more from you than they give you.
I'm not sure what I'm trying to say, I am simply filled with wonder that you are!
(and don't fuss about trying to get round to mine either, the world will go on turning if you don't!)
Hello Ket-
Moon.
followthepath@hotmail.com
p.s. Don't worry, I'm not going to try and suck you back into Dofus.
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