Wednesday, May 5, 2010
And again... KARL
In the last workshop I had with Karl I was a little off seeing as I had missed the last one because of a school trip and I was unable to really find anything that I wanted for making my book, although the day did not turn out to be a total disaster. Since I did not have a project Karl had me make a book (I forget what it was called) that opened up like an acordian. The entire time I thought he was just having me do busy work for him until he told me at the end that it was my book to use. In fact I felt really accomplished afterwords knowing that I had made a new kind of book that I had not done before and the fact that I got it all done in one day of STAC. I really do like actually getting things done. Karl and I though did get to talk about what I was actually going to do as a project and decided on an atlas, bound in some kind of red material and cornered in some kind of bronze looking metal. I'm excited to see how that one turns out.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Karl session 2
Although behind in the class from having been on a fieldtrip for the actual session two, I really feel like I got a lot out of the second session for me. I learned how to cover the book. We created the covers for our book and it wound up beig a valuable experience for me because I actualy got something done. I'm not often one to get thugs finished and finishing something has been a good feeling. It built my confidence and really inspired me to push to finish something else.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
This Week: What I'm doing
This week I am continuing working on the Novella I started.
What i want to tackle this week is the movement of the story towards moving out of the originating town or at the very least presenting the conflict about leaving the town and temple. I am juggling the idea of who the argument about leaving should be between. Whether it should be between my main character: Reave, and his friend Yyral or if it should be between Reave and Cyelle, or even Yyral and Cyelle. I am leaning towards the first with Cyelle supporting their leave from the town in order to forget what happened there. My goal is to cover this in less than 4000 words because I know i can be very word heavy. There may be some editing going on but for the most part I want to generate text so that I can go back and edit on a large scale with what I know about a larger majority of the story.
What i want to tackle this week is the movement of the story towards moving out of the originating town or at the very least presenting the conflict about leaving the town and temple. I am juggling the idea of who the argument about leaving should be between. Whether it should be between my main character: Reave, and his friend Yyral or if it should be between Reave and Cyelle, or even Yyral and Cyelle. I am leaning towards the first with Cyelle supporting their leave from the town in order to forget what happened there. My goal is to cover this in less than 4000 words because I know i can be very word heavy. There may be some editing going on but for the most part I want to generate text so that I can go back and edit on a large scale with what I know about a larger majority of the story.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Workshops: April 2010: Bookmaking
Initially when I heard I was in the bookmaking workshop I was disappointed. I had thought that I was going to be bored the entire time with the monotony of sewing paper together in order to make a concisely bound book. I had thought I was in the workshop down at the community center like Luke had said on Tuesday when he talked about the guy from the Gin Blossoms coming in. From what I understood the other guy was going to be more beneficial for me. I guess that idea got changed.
I went into the workshop lackluster. I didn't really want to do the work. I kind of wanted to just float by and half-ass it because I was not interested in learning to bind my own books. This was definitely a bad attitude towards this in hindsight. Once we started ripping the paper I guess I started kind of enjoying it. I was laughing with Keren about how terrible we both were at ripping the paper correctly and getting frustrated with how it would not rip on the line of the ruler.
Then we learned what signatures were, which I found to be a cool fact, and looking back. My favorite of the books I own are the ones with the hand made paper edges. I was becoming really into it when we began stitching our signatures together and was amused at how frustrated I got when I could not pull the needle through the paper. Lizy, Keren, Leah, and I had just wound up having a good laugh and enjoying ourselves. And now I feel like I have learned a little something cool that I could do in my spare time, like a crafty Hobby.
I cant wait until next time.
I went into the workshop lackluster. I didn't really want to do the work. I kind of wanted to just float by and half-ass it because I was not interested in learning to bind my own books. This was definitely a bad attitude towards this in hindsight. Once we started ripping the paper I guess I started kind of enjoying it. I was laughing with Keren about how terrible we both were at ripping the paper correctly and getting frustrated with how it would not rip on the line of the ruler.
Then we learned what signatures were, which I found to be a cool fact, and looking back. My favorite of the books I own are the ones with the hand made paper edges. I was becoming really into it when we began stitching our signatures together and was amused at how frustrated I got when I could not pull the needle through the paper. Lizy, Keren, Leah, and I had just wound up having a good laugh and enjoying ourselves. And now I feel like I have learned a little something cool that I could do in my spare time, like a crafty Hobby.
I cant wait until next time.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Fuel for the fire: What drives me?
Is it really that important to you that you get home everyday in time to play that hour of videogames before your dad walks in the door to enforce the policy of homework before leisure? How about having dessert every night? Is that important to you? Or is it valuable? I think that sometimes we hold things up that should not be put on a pedistal. We learned in STAC to analyse ourselves for three core values. As soon as I heard that this would be written down and shared, the gears began to turn in my head. I wanted to accurately represent myself. I wanted to dig deep down, past all of the matieral wants and aethetics. I wanted to wipe away the veil and layers in order to get to what really mattered to me. My values, as do everyones, represent who you are at the heart, who you are as a person, and they are, at least to me, something that had they not been in place I may not even be an artist or someone with ideas as much as I would be someone striving to find these missing components to my life.
The first one I came up with was the ability to choose. Choice is definately the mosty important value of mine. Without choice we are no different that the person sitting right next to you. If everything is set in stone and controlled, where would be the point in living. Free will is not a gift, or a privilage as is said in religious scriptures, it is not God's Devine gift, it is human nature to choose and to debate. It is the right of everyone to make choices and in fact to act upon them. Certainly there are those who do not make what would be considered to be the most sensible or right decision but none the less we are left with choice. Choice of what to wear, choice of where to go, choice of what to eat, choice of when to breathe, choice to be who we are. Without choice could I be Zach, the writer, the actor, the poet, the teenager, the ANYTHING? I could be no different without choice, and what drives me forward is that ability to chose and to be my own.
The second that I chose was Individual Expression. People need to be allowed to exemplify who they are to who they please to show it to. We all need to let the world know that we are all different and we are all unique and that uniqueness is what allows the world to progress and function. That expression that may come out in my writing or your painting or his acting or her singing, the list goes on and on. This individuality is something that I feel to be beyond necessary.
Third, I chose Strategic Application. Oddly enough everything I do has strategy, underling webs of circuits and wires that must be planned and placed before excecuted, like a tactision I go about my life, applying strategy to how I view the world. More often I enjoy a process more than I enjoy the finished product, for example, a play, I love working on the play, I love rehearsing, I even love getting yelled at for missing my cue for the tenth time. The plays are no where near as satisfying as all of the sweat, blood and tears put into creating that product. I feel that often the process is overlooked or underappriciated when someone gets to the final product, like even now, after STAC LIVE. I'm sure that the viewers loved the films, but have givin no consideration as to how they were made. They do not comprehend the vast amount of work that had gone into making those films. The strategy, and planning and excecution were all more important, at least to me, than the film, even though I did rather enjoy both films.
Issues for me was a little bit easier, Because I write alot, I often notice commonalities within my writing. Most specifically, a blurring of the lines of reality. I greatly dislike writing strictly within fact and will take any opportunity to slip in aspects of fantasty and fiction, to pepper them over the writing that I have presented. I am a fiction writer, and so I do have the constant urge to push facts past their factual limits. I also often have to deal with Pariah in my work. The main character is often exhile in some way or another from where they had originally come from, whether by their own doing or by the fiendish interests of another, each time the character seems to be forbidden to return to where he had started and whether or not he defies this unwritten law of pariah. Not only those, but there was the issue of losing a loved one, whether it be death, or a break up, or even just a parting of ways. Strong bonds are severed multiple times in my writing if not all throughout it. I guess it adds to tension, I'm not sure, but I always see these things coming up.
Being a fantasy writer I have a hard time seeing those lines of reality, and this was a huge thing for me when I was thinking about my Koan. The idea I came up with for my own was: Where do the lines between reality and the fantastic blurr? This to me was one of the strongest question I have always asked myself in my writing. I'm not too sure whether it is a suitable Koan or not, all I know is that this question comes up more than once per piece if not every time I set to work artistically or even just generally in life.
The first one I came up with was the ability to choose. Choice is definately the mosty important value of mine. Without choice we are no different that the person sitting right next to you. If everything is set in stone and controlled, where would be the point in living. Free will is not a gift, or a privilage as is said in religious scriptures, it is not God's Devine gift, it is human nature to choose and to debate. It is the right of everyone to make choices and in fact to act upon them. Certainly there are those who do not make what would be considered to be the most sensible or right decision but none the less we are left with choice. Choice of what to wear, choice of where to go, choice of what to eat, choice of when to breathe, choice to be who we are. Without choice could I be Zach, the writer, the actor, the poet, the teenager, the ANYTHING? I could be no different without choice, and what drives me forward is that ability to chose and to be my own.
The second that I chose was Individual Expression. People need to be allowed to exemplify who they are to who they please to show it to. We all need to let the world know that we are all different and we are all unique and that uniqueness is what allows the world to progress and function. That expression that may come out in my writing or your painting or his acting or her singing, the list goes on and on. This individuality is something that I feel to be beyond necessary.
Third, I chose Strategic Application. Oddly enough everything I do has strategy, underling webs of circuits and wires that must be planned and placed before excecuted, like a tactision I go about my life, applying strategy to how I view the world. More often I enjoy a process more than I enjoy the finished product, for example, a play, I love working on the play, I love rehearsing, I even love getting yelled at for missing my cue for the tenth time. The plays are no where near as satisfying as all of the sweat, blood and tears put into creating that product. I feel that often the process is overlooked or underappriciated when someone gets to the final product, like even now, after STAC LIVE. I'm sure that the viewers loved the films, but have givin no consideration as to how they were made. They do not comprehend the vast amount of work that had gone into making those films. The strategy, and planning and excecution were all more important, at least to me, than the film, even though I did rather enjoy both films.
Issues for me was a little bit easier, Because I write alot, I often notice commonalities within my writing. Most specifically, a blurring of the lines of reality. I greatly dislike writing strictly within fact and will take any opportunity to slip in aspects of fantasty and fiction, to pepper them over the writing that I have presented. I am a fiction writer, and so I do have the constant urge to push facts past their factual limits. I also often have to deal with Pariah in my work. The main character is often exhile in some way or another from where they had originally come from, whether by their own doing or by the fiendish interests of another, each time the character seems to be forbidden to return to where he had started and whether or not he defies this unwritten law of pariah. Not only those, but there was the issue of losing a loved one, whether it be death, or a break up, or even just a parting of ways. Strong bonds are severed multiple times in my writing if not all throughout it. I guess it adds to tension, I'm not sure, but I always see these things coming up.
Being a fantasy writer I have a hard time seeing those lines of reality, and this was a huge thing for me when I was thinking about my Koan. The idea I came up with for my own was: Where do the lines between reality and the fantastic blurr? This to me was one of the strongest question I have always asked myself in my writing. I'm not too sure whether it is a suitable Koan or not, all I know is that this question comes up more than once per piece if not every time I set to work artistically or even just generally in life.
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