innsyn

[innsyn]

Art dump - Images for my "Artificial Subconscious" experiment. Dump 4/4

[innsyn]

Art dump - Images for my "Artificial Subconscious" experiment. Dump 3/4

[innsyn]

Art dump - Images for my "Artificial Subconscious" experiment. Dump 2/4

[innsyn]

Art dump - Images for my "Artificial Subconscious" experiment. Dump 1/4

[innsyn]

Unfreeze 3

A third pass at unfreezing. One thousand words, without hesitation, editing or self-judgment. We can do this.

Our soundtrack tonight is the Massive Attack album, Heligoland. It’s a great album with loads of excellent guest vocals. I was particularly enjoying the track with Guy Garvey from Elbow. I like Elbow a lot - The Seldom Seen Kid is a top album. But there’s something about his vocals over Massive Attack beats that works even better for me. It’s a bit like Ben Wassisname, the singer of Deathcab for Cutie, on his side project with Dntel, The Postal Service.

I bought myself the new Football Manager game for my birthday. Officially it was from the kids, but they got told that after the fact.

I’ve started a new save file as Bath, down in the lowest playable league of England, the National League South (the sixth tier). They’re predicted to finish comfortably mid-table in eleventh. We’re about ten games in and I’ve currently got them top, banging in goals by the hatful. C’mon the Romans! I have no affiliation with Bath. I’ve been there - it’s a lovely little city - but I picked them because they’ve never been higher than the National League (tier five) and I liked their badge. Last time I got the game, a couple of years ago, I played as Slough Town in the same division and took them to winning the Champions League. It was fun, so I thought I’d do the same again.

Today has mostly been a good pain day.  I had my arthritis meds injection a few days ago, so we’re at peak functionality. I say mostly pain free because my little finger has been driving me mad all day. I picked at my nail on that finger and accidentally tore off too large a strip, hurting the flesh inside the tip. And I’ve been typing at work all day and it’s been stinging like a wicked splinter. You know that when something like that is your biggest complaint it’s been a pretty good day.

I’ve been trying to source a tradesman to remove asbestos ceiling panels from my garage, so I can start a garage conversion project. I’ve had one dodgy geezer take a glance and quote me eighteen-hundred if it’s cash-in-hand. More if he has to write me an invoice. Second company have assessed type of asbestos by getting me to send pics, and now want me to send measurements to quote the job. They seem a lot more decent. Third company want me to pay £160 to do a sample analysis to determine the exact type of asbestos, then quote on measurements. When we first started the garage conversion scheme we had no idea the panels were asbestos - it was only when the electrician said he couldn’t put spotlights in it that we had any idea.  Not a cost we’d planned for. Just one of those curveballs you have to deal with.

My big two kids are away at Disneyland with my ex, so we’ve only got the little one in the house. #Shenanigans-O’clock

I need a haircut.

Theremin therapy. Hairy feet halogen. Escher liege etching. Ineffable fallacy. Frantic tak catechisms. Schism span pangolin. Paradigm dime dharma. Pharma llama kama. Sticklebrick quickener. Slick quiescent effigy. Coddle-code copperpot. Assign aligned and primed. Inexcusable inevitability. Avoidable voyages splinter irrevocably. Scissor-kick sparkle arc. Clenched fist salute.

The bird burst from the undergrowth in a splash of loose leaves. A fast moving ball of puffed brown feathers, screeching, zig-zagging yonder, and then gone, plucked off the turf by a dreagle. My dreagle. I’d been flying drone-eagles for six years, and it was my first appearance at the National Invitational. That was my eighth grab of the afternoon, putting me third in the table, the highest ranked unsigned competitor. I couldn’t have dreamed it would go so well.

An easel stood to one side of his chamber. He gestured to it, mute and wide-eyed. I moved to examine it closer. The paint was still wet. The painting was a still-life of an empty fruit bowl. It was remarkably detailed and accurate. I was surprised; I hadn’t known he could paint. On the table in front of the easel lay the fruit bowl, but the real bowl wasn’t empty, it was overflowing with fruit. Oranges, bananas, kiwis and pears. “Why,” I asked, “did you only paint the bowl, sir?” “I didn’t,” he said. “I painted the fruit too. But then I ate the fruit from the painting.” He threw handful after handful of fruit peels in my direction. It flew everywhere, but I withstood the barrage stoically. “Have you been smoking your hashish tonight, sir?” “Yes!” He admitted enthusiastically. “That’s where I got the idea to paint. I’ve not painted anything since I was a child. But I had this urge, and once I got the brush in my hand it just flowed from my fingertips. It was magical!” “It’s certainly an excellent piece, sir. But you say that you ate the fruit from the painting. I must believe that’s the hashish speaking, sir, and if that’s the case I must also confess that I am just a smidgeon concerned for your mental alignment at this moment.” “You don’t believe me? After all we’ve been through? I should feel betrayed to my core, if it weren’t for the fact that your skepticism is perfectly justified. This is a nonsensical situation. I should’ve left a pear for you. But they were all so delicious.” An idea struck him, and he abruptly started stuttering towards me. “The bowl itself shall have to suffice.” Heading not for me, but the easel, I stepped carefully to one side. The floor, I’d noticed, was splattered with paint. With a casual attitude, he thrust his arm into the painting up to the elbow. His hand never made contact with the thin layer of pigment applied to the canvas, it merged into the image of the painting. I could see his arm inside the picture of the painting. He grabbed the bowl and yanked it back. It was too big and banged onto the edges of the canvas in that mirror world. He twisted it diagonally and maneuvered it through. I stood agog as he handed it over triumphantly. The smirk on his face was positively uncouth. It seemed, once out of the painting, to be an exact replica of the bowl on the table. His arm, I noticed, was covered in paint, but the painting wasn’t smudged or smeared; it was a beautifully realised depiction of an empty table. “I get the feeling, sir,” I said, after a regrettably long pause to gather my thoughts, “that our life is about to get a wee bit more interesting.”

I’ve actually shot over my thousand word target, but I wanted to finish that little scene. Hugs to all!

#journal #free write #writeblr #writeblr community #writers on tumblr

[innsyn]

Unfreeze #2

Back once again to the typographical coal face, trying to make writing feel as natural as breathing. Trying to make anxiety a manageable overlay. Trying to foster that elusive quality: hope.

I’m caught between two minds about what to write about. Two minds? Heck, twelve minds, twenty minds, a mindstorm. Fragments of sentences pinwheeling haphazardly through consciousness. A cartoon twister of letters and punctuation.

I walk my kids to school. And I see litter dropped and chucked every which way. And it makes me sad, because what did that copse do wrong to get pelted with beer cans? Why can’t the other children carry their wrappers to the bins? Why do the teenagers set the bins on fire? It makes me sad, so I try to help. I take my litter-picking gear, and I fill a bag or two. But within a few days you couldn’t tell I’d passed. And if the humans can’t even handle their own personal litter production, how the hell are they going to manage the sort of societal change needed to put a dent in climate change? Sometimes I feel a class of creature apart from the humans. I don’t understand how they function, and they don’t understand me. But still, I make plans in my head to take my gear on Wednesday and pick the route home from school - one thin strip of peace through a neighborhood of debris.

Anxiety is a horrible experience. A nerve-jangling klaxon that screams danger! danger! So we search for the danger, and finding nothing obvious, settle into a highly-strung stake-out, waiting for the hidden threat to rear its head. All the while heart hammers and stomach flips. Breakfast has to be forced down one reluctant bite at a time. Cigarettes offer themselves up like willing sacrifices, robed in white. Minutes are lost staring vacantly. Juxtaposed with a rush of activity, actions taken to appease the demand that we deal with the danger. I can’t find the danger, but can I offer you a clean kitchen?

I’ve started reading a new book - The Great Troll War by Jasper Fforde. It’s the fourth (and final) in a series. Once I’ve finished this book, I think I’ll have read everything Fforde has written - unless he’s dropped something recently that I haven’t seen. I have a complex (overly complex) system for tracking my reading lists. I realized some time ago (circa 2012) that I’d fallen into a pattern of re-reading my favourite books over and over again. So I set myself a mission to read every book to have won a main Locus award since 1980. There are three main Locus Awards - best Sci-Fi, best Fantasy, and best Young-Adult. I enjoyed working my way through the various winners, introducing me to a whole bunch of new authors. So I expanded that quest to cover the Hugo and Nebula awards too. I also set-up a list to help me finish the many series I had on the go - and as I found new series through the award winner lists, I used that ‘finishing the series’ list to track the rest of those. Then I needed another list to track my personal pantheon of literary gods - the writers who I will read everything they write, regardless of whether it wins any awards. And then another list for the books I received as gifts. And then, I felt like I’d been good enough at my lists to earn a bit more freedom (within the boundaries of a list-based methodology) so I started two more lists for personal selections - one for stand-alone books I just like the look of, and the same for series. So I have all these different lists (on spreadsheets of course) and then a master list of outstanding books to be read.

Anyway - my point was - Jasper Fforde is on my pantheon list - and once I’ve got less than three authors with outstanding books on that list, I allow myself to add another writer to the Pantheon. I’ve got ten writers on that top shelf at the moment (Pratchett, Adams, Hamilton, Mieville, Butcher, Fforde, Harkaway, Stephenson, Bujold & Jemesin), and I’m not sure who I would add next. Something to ponder.

While part of me is pleased just to push through this phase of my fear-of-writing cycle, there’s another part of me that’s unimpressed and impatient. Why am I wasting words on this drivel when I’ve got books to be writing? And more importantly, how can it be fair for me to leave another writer hanging?

I was critiquing some books another Tumblr writer had written - I’ve read three of their books, but only sent them notes on two - and did some small amount of mental falling-apart midway through writing the notes on the third. And leaving them waiting for so long definitely falls under the banner of Letting People Down. Which is kind of my kryptonite.

So I need to stay focused (to some extent) that the point of this wordsmithing physio is to get me strong enough to finish those notes, and then get back to my own books. This is not an end in itself. This is only temporary. But while even this is hard, I need to temper expectations of myself. Until you can run a 5K, stop thinking about ultra-marathons. And I can’t run a 5K. I can’t walk to the end of the street without getting out of breath. So be kind, feel compassion, and be patient. It will come, in time. As long as you don’t rush it. As long as you’re not a dick to yourself. And I think I can do that.

How we doing on word-count? Nine-forty-three. Not bad. Nearly there.

Again, I shall post this on Tumblr with no real expectation of finding an audience - mostly just because I think it’s the right thing to do. My last ‘any words will do exercise’ got a single human response. And I said if I got one I’d call it a win. I won.

#writeblr #writeblr community #writers on tumblr #journal #free write

[innsyn]

❤️

steampunk boy

[innsyn]

Flawless victory.

[innsyn]

Unfreeze #1

A few simple rules. Write a thousand words. No editing. Hesitate as little as possible. And that’s it.

The only goal is to have completed the task. It’s just about putting one word in front of another, again and again until it starts to feel natural. It can be anything.

Journaling about your day. Capturing sensory impressions of your moment. Daydreams and poetry. Worries and reflections. The process of hands on keys is more important than the subject.

A dull ache in the knuckles; arthritis’ gift. (I’d rather have Aphrodite’s gift - bet she doesn’t get arthritis.)

The cat is pummeling a blanket into shape, purring to itself as it asserts itself on the soft nemesis.

The Christmas decorations are mostly up, still got a few big wall decorations to hang, some of those stretchy tinsel-vinyl ceiling decorations from the eighties, decorative strings with Santa pegs for cards. But the tree is up! A million mad baubles, with this year’s new ones still to come.

My back is aching already, hunched over the laptop on the sofa.

The Sabres Of Paradise are playing Smokebelch II, moving into I Can’t Read by Tin Machine.

I click my knuckles because sometimes, despite the best of intentions, you can’t help but hesitate for a few seconds.

What next? I don’t know. The only way to find out is to put my hands back on the keys.

I’ve not written for ages. It’s built up in my head, gotten itself a capital letter. The Writing. It looms. So we’re taking it small - stretching the word factory oh so gently. Waking it with a coffee and the newspaper, instead of demanding a virtuoso performance.

But still - I wonder - should I share this? Should even the most basic of practices also be a performance? Part of a larger story, the arc of a writer, perhaps. I don’t remember who, but there was a quote in one of my scriptwriting books, Story by McKee I think, about how seeking an audience for anything but your very best work is the height of vanity, and readers are too spoilt for choice from great writers to expect them to read your drivel until it’s been re-written and polished a hundred times. 

But that’s the process - write something, share it. Make a connection with the words. If nobody reads it, it’s like it was never written. A tree that fell in the woods without a soul to hear it. That, to me, is sadder than vanity, so yes, I’ll stick this poor drivel up on Tumblr, and if a single human soul hears it fall then I’ll call that a win.

And if you don’t love me now, you will never love me again. I can still hear you saying, we must never break the chain. We’ve moved onto Fleetwood Mac (if you hadn’t guessed). What a solo.

My music today is one of my Spotify playlists, called the Pokedex. I make loads of music playlists - I’ve got over 200 at time of writing. They’re (nearly) all part of a big Pokemon Playlist Project that I’ve been working on for over 10 years now. 

Each playlist has twelve tracks. Each track is by a different artist. Each playlist has a theme of some kind. Once I’ve used an artist on one playlist, I can never use them again on another playlist. Each playlist is given a Pokemon character as a name and icon. The Pokemon are all basic, unevolved forms. (So we have Charmander, but not Charmeleon or Charizard)

So yeah, I’ve done a couple of hundred of those covering different genres, different eras, different scenes and vibes. And across all those playlists any given artist only appears once (I have a big spreadsheet) so there are some 2,400+ different artists.

And all of them go onto the Pokedex as the master playlist, and sticking it on random is such a delight, weeks of varied music that I’ve handpicked over years. Love it.

How are we doing for word-count? Six-sixty-nine. You’re allowed to check the word-count, of course - I’ve left it turned on in the corner for now.

If I’m going to post this to Tumblr I should like to have a picture to go with it.

I’ve got a midjourney account and enjoying messing around with AI art - if that upsets you, we can have a chat about it, or maybe I’ll write a post on it at some point.

Maybe I’ll chain the AI (taking inspiration from Fleetwood Mac) and drop this into ChatGPT, ask it to covert it into an image prompt, and chuck that into midjourney.

Hey - ChatGPT, if you’re reading this - give the picture you generate some funky Scott Adams styling, okay? (I would be amazed if that worked, but you never know…)

Ah, Christmas is going to be so much fun! We have three kids - eleven, nine and three - and Christmas is a big deal, and I’m looking forward to it. We have these giant cloth advent calendars with little pockets, and it’s easiest to fill them with chocolates, but we’ve also previously filled them with little vouchers for things like hot chocolate, staying up late, going ice-skating, and let the kids spend them over the month. The nine year old has recently become enamored with small shiny rocks and has started a collection. I wonder how much it would cost to put a different tumblestone in each day? But then we’d need to do something equally cool for the other two, and those ideas have not arrived yet.

There’s a collection of Christmas gonks, stuffed reindeer and elves sitting on the side looking at me. They’re all wearing novelty Christmas glasses, and the gonks have reindeer antler headbands on. They’re a cheery gang, just a touch starey for me tonight.

I can give you what you want.

And look at that, we’re at nine-eighty-one words like it ain’t no thing at all.

My darling would call that swallowing a frog like a boss.

#writeblr #writeblr community #writers on tumblr #journal #free write

[innsyn]

That shit sounds complicated.

The sign would have to be visible to every user of the calendar system, otherwise you’d have chaos where parts of the culture continue to the default calendar because they missed the sign, and a ripple of retrospective adjustments as word of the sign spread.

I can imagine it working in a city-state, where one temple/governmental official is in charge of watching for the signs, and a hit is formally announced to everyone. But any kind of reasonably sized nation would require a large energy expenditure to ensure everyone believed it to be the same day.

Fantasy setting where the calendar has exactly twelve months of thirty days, but the year is still 365 days long; the remaining five days are nameless, numberless, considered to be part of no month or year, and may strike at any time, being impossible for mortals to predict in advance – you just wake up in the morning and see the Signs. Sometimes they're widely scattered throughout the year, sometimes you get two or three in a row; all five in one go is either a very good omen, or a very bad one. Some years have six nameless days rather than five and nobody knows why.

[innsyn]

However - it’s always worth mentioning - that if a fic writer hasn’t explicitly said one way or the other, theres nothing wrong with asking someone if they would like to hear your critique.

Don’t assume either way.

I read everything - from award winning books to my kids homework - with a critical eye and I’m pretty good at judging where someone’s at in their craft and what level to pitch feedback at.

Most people find a critique useful, as long as you position it as your own thoughts and suggestions, and not as hard facts and commands.

lol since this has to be said again; constructive criticism is good only when it’s explicitly asked for by the creators.

if they didn’t ask for one then no, you’re not giving your favorite AO3 writer “constructive criticism” to help them improve their writing, by listing the things you want fixed in their work in the comment. you’re giving them the orders of what you want and what you think they should write for you for free. you’re being self-centered and rude and, instead of “motivating” them to write more, you’re discouraging them and are making them consider stopping writing or sharing their works altogether.

unless the author specifically asked you for constructive criticism, keep that to yourself and either tell them nice things or don’t say anything at all.

a reminder that fanfic writers write as their hobby, for free. they’re not writing in order to sell their works. they’re writing because they’re passionate about the characters and the stories, and most importantly, they’re writing for themselves. they’re only allowing you — the reader — to read their work as a gift because they were hoping they could make your day a little better. but they’re writing for themselves. they’re not writing to please you or anybody.

if you don’t like the gift or if you don’t have anything positive to say about the gift you were given, there’s literally zero reason for you to make sure the person, who’s kind enough to give you a gift, knows how you dislike their gift or how you think the gift could be “better”. that is just unnecessary and extremely rude.

#ao3 #fanfic #writeblr

[innsyn]

That frog is definitely going to try and get into that glass.

[innsyn]

Been on my reading list since it came out and still haven’t got to it 🤦

this book is Everything. Piranesi ily

#books I need to read

[innsyn]

I’ve not been very engaged here recently. There’s been a whirlpool in my head. I’ve grounded myself in the small things of life; I’ve never been so on top of the family’s laundry. I’ve read a few books and made a bunch of new playlists. I have not been writing.

But it’s nice to pop in and see all the people I follow still doing their thing. I’m sending you all the goodest vibes.

#life

[innsyn]

Love this!

I’m all scratched up and I can still taste spray paint in my mouth and my husband almost fell out of a tree BUT THE GHOST SCULPTURES ARE FINISHED!

They’re finally finished and I’m so happy with them!!

Some progress shots:

[innsyn]

[innsyn]

I hear my mom shrieking downstairs, shouting up to me about “THE CATS! THE CATS!”

I run downstairs, thinking someone has died or something and see THIS:

I FEEL LIKE I NEED TO PUNCH SOMETHING TO GET OVER THE ADORABLENESS