First off, it's February now, and things are looking up, at least relative to January. One week with no major disaster, at least... My car had a coolant leak and the heater died for the coldest snap of the season, but it got fixed without major engine or budget damage. The stitches came out of my foot - at no charge, which I found surprising, as they usually charge you through the nose if a doctor so much as deigns to glance in your direction - and the cut's pretty much healed. And, despite inexplicably sucking burnt toast in the speed department this year, we finally finished throwing a load at work in a day again; we impressed the tourists mightily that day. (We get tours through now and again, from other library systems. This time it was Las Vegas. We really need to get a souvenir shack up and running for these people...) I finally got my tax stuff, so I can get started on filling out forms and getting all that fun stuff over with ASAP. And I told the person who inquired that I'd take a stab at doing art for them. Thus, then, I get to the title (and theoretical topic) of this entry.
In preparation for this matter, I hit the internet and found many reference images of big cats (mostly lions) and raptors, as I anticipate a griffin-heavy workload here. (Not that I don't have plenty of refs already, but, hey, I can always use more.) I love griffins. I've drawn them before. The avatar I use here and on most message boards these days is one of my doodles, inked in Pitt brush pens and colored in Paint Shop Pro. So, I sat myself down and told myself I ought to warm up the ol' brain and draw up a few practice griffins... and nothing. I've filled many sketchbook pages. I've worked on thumbnails. I've doodled studies of wings and talons and paws and tails. But nothing, not one solitary thing, has resulted in a sketch worth finishing up.
It's not just the inked art that's suffering from my temporary inspirational drought. I still have yet to sit down at my workbench and rebuild my painted drum inventory after Xmas. The best I can manage is to dust and rearrange and gather more potential templates, but somehow touching brush to paint and canvas never occurs.
My stories are sinking into stagnation, too. Not for lack of ideas necessarily - I still have about four or five major stories lurking in my head, chattering away at various inopportune times when I'm slinging books or making dinner or operating a motorized vehicle (not something you want to hear from someone with a driver's license, I'm sure.) I just don't seem to actually be writing any of it down. My brain finds ways of stopping me from continuing, from even beginning.
Then, of course, there's Skyhaven. Shamefully, it hasn't seen an update since August. Further shame, I haven't managed to complete a single, solitary template to add, either to the main site or the Hunt. And, once again, I know what species I most want to revise or add to the lineup, but once again I can't seem to get past thumbnails, if I manage that much. I was also going to finally do some original graphics to spruce up Brightdreamer Books this year... none of which have moved beyond rough doodles.
I think it boils down to a fear of finishing. I think I've forgotten how to finish things. Maybe I never really knew. Maybe the stuff I've done and thought I finished wasn't really finished, but was somehow merely fluked into a state of done-ness that resembled finishing. Maybe those drums I sold and those ornaments I did and the pictures I've drawn previously really weren't fit to see the light of day. Or maybe I'm still gunshy about the potential destruction of everything I attempt by 2008, which, you have to admit, didn't exactly arrive on an auspicious note. Whatever the cause, I'm reasonably certain that there's only one solution: sit down, shut up, and - regardless of whether or not it was worth starting to begin with, regardless of whether or not completely starting over from scratch seems preferrable to slogging ahead, regardless of whatever heck or high water the year hurls at me - just finish something.
I think I'll start with this blog entry...
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2 comments:
Woo! You finished the blog entry!
And hey... you did finish plenty of drums, and sold them too! before Christmas.... so it's not that you haven't finished, it's just an ongoing process.
You might want to get one of those little recorders to talk into with the story ideas that bounce around, just to get them recorded until you have time to write them down.... (though it would look kind of funny to stop slinging books and talk into a mic, hu?)
Jade - Actually, a fair bit of my story visualizing is not so much in strings of words as in snatches of images and fragments of feelings. Also, while my MP3 player technically has a voice recording option, my speaking voice is about as clear as my handwriting, which is marginally less legible than the scratchings of a drunken, headless chicken. (Not to mention the background noise, of course - if you ever watched the YouTube vid of the Great Machine, you have a rough idea how loud it gets out there on the floor.) Hence, me doing better getting my thoughts down in front of a keyboard than with pen and paper in a journal.
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