That Other “Thing”

May for me was a month of inconsistent blogging, which kinda of snowballed from April being a month of just barely consistent blogging. I think I have a good reason for that. My brain had been slowly shifting from one gear to another, and this leads me to a question I want to ask you all.

Fellow writers, I know writing is your “thing,” but do any of you have another “thing?” A “thing” that you can be just as passionate about as writing, and maybe even sorta good at if you committed to it as much you did writing?

My other “thing” is art. I like to draw and stuff. Sometimes the things I draw and stuff doesn’t suck. But I’ve never consistently focused on drawing and stuff enough to be consistently good. (At least that’s the reason for it I like to tell myself.) The art thing has always been the thing I’ve pushed to the side. Writing was my main thing. Drawing and stuff was the other thing.

The exact opposite of my relationship to writing, part of why I’ve been inconsistent with the drawing and stuff stems from the fact that I’ve never had much confidence in my artistic skills.

Like any deeply rooted issue worth its salt, I’ve traced this problem back to my childhood. Specifically to Cyclops.

When I was about 12, I attempted to draw Cyclops from X-Men: The Animated Series. Looking at that drawing today, I’m like, “Hey, not bad for kid,” but my junior high self was SO COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY TRAUMATIZED that my Cyclops didn’t look exactly like the Cyclops on my TV screen that from that day forth I NEVER attempted do draw someone else’s character for the rest of my adolescence, and most of my adult life. (And he was my least favorite X-Men. Imagine if I’d tried to draw Gambit! I would have never picked up a pencil ever again!)

There’s the culprit. The rat bastard.

Basically, I’ve had a restricting, I’m-going-to-fail-and-fail-miserably type of fear when it comes to drawing ever since. It has kept me from practicing as much as I should have because instead of taking the (minimal) risk and going for the gusto, I’ve often given up on it on the first indication that I wasn’t going to be any good at it. More often, that mentality has kept me from even starting a project, or even a sketch.

It’s a habit I’m trying to break. As Fran from Strictly Ballroom would say, “A life lived in fear is a life half lived.” I think the best way to break that mentality is to actively work on the mechanics and basic skills that I’m lacking so that I don't have lack of skills" as an excuse to suck and therefore an excuse to give up.

The other best way is to stop thinking about it and just do it.

So I’m making this my summer of art. Starting last month, I’ve enrolled myself in drawing boot camp, a summer intensive if you will. (Of course, I don’t actually have any money for such a thing so it’s just me at the kitchen table with a sketchbook and a selection of books about drawing). I feel I owe it to my other thing to let it have a turn at being the main thing.

Summer goals:

· Draw everyday (Well, every weekday. The weekend is reserved for writing.)

· Improve at drawing the head, face, and expressions

· Ditto hands and feet

· Finally learn perspective beyond 1-point, now that I seem to have found a book on the topic that doesn’t make my eyes cross.

Hopefully by the end of summer my level of suck will have significantly decreased. And perhaps more importantly, I hope to have made such a habit of drawing from doing it every day that the thought of a blank canvas doesn’t make me want to run in the opposite direction as fast as humanly possible.

The result of my decision to do this, though, is that my blogging may continue to be erratic these next couple of months. For once, I’m putting my other thing on the front burner, but if all goes well, by the end of it I’ll have learned out how to let my two things co-exists equally.

And because my pride won’t allow me to have Cyclops up there as the only representation of my drawing, here’s something a little more recent:

Still much room for improvement, but - le sigh - isn’t there always?

OMG! OMG! OMG! It’s Almost Time!

It’s the biggest thing happening this weekend! I’m sure you’ve been hearing about it for weeks, months by now but you never tired of the coverage. In fact, you got more and more excited about it as you eagerly waited, wondering if the day would ever come.

That’s right.

Animorphs re-hits shelves this Sunday, May 1!

(What else would I be talking about?)

Animorphs means so much to me that I am officially declaring next week, starting Sunday, Animorphs Week! Well, officially on my blog because that’s the only place I’m authorized to declare any week an official anything.

As a precursor to Animorphs Week, I’m reposting an entry from last December:

Dear Ms. Or Mr. Appleagete (originally posted 12/20/10)

A couple of weeks ago, someone extremely awesome sent me some very exciting news. Animorphs is making a comeback! The series will be once again seen in bookstores starting May 2011. I can’t possibly express how exciting this news is for me.

Animorphs was my first love. Sure, I had books I thought I loved before Animorphs came around and I’ve since said that I loved many a book, but I’m talking true love. Such a deep love that it can’t be contained in only one post, especially since just yesterday I found a letter I wrote to K.A. Applegate when I was in the 7^th grade. (It was tucked away for safe keeping in a copy of that other childhood sweetheart of mine, Ella Enchanted). Apparently it’s the second letter I ever wrote Ms. Applegate, but this one didn’t make it out.

Of course, that’s because I was meant to share it with you thirteen years later.

September 6, 1997

Dear K.A. Applegate,

I Love Your

Books!!!!!!!!!

I just got finished reading Animporhs #11. And girl (or Boy) [Yes, I do now know that the “K” is for Katherine], you are tal-en-ted. I mean, usually [I] can read book after book, but after reading Animorphs I just have to take a break and say hmmmm… I honestly need time to recover. I can’t wait for #12 and The Andalite chronicles. I’ll be at the bookstore with a grin on my face and money in hand (hopefully) read[y] to buy the book. Yesterday, (more this morning) I read the whole book. I started at about 11:00pm and finished at about 1:00am. [I remember that night and that exact book! That was the weekend my family took our annual trip to Palm Springs.] I literally could NOT put the book down. I wrote a letter to you before, you probably get thousands and might not remember but I said stuff about I have ideas for future books and we should get together [on] starting a t.v. show or movie and my volanteering[sic] to play Cassie

because I [have] so much in common with her (even our names have somethings[sic] in common {I’m Cacy}), and I (he he) asked for an autographed picture of you and book (I’d still like to see those three things happen.) [Still waiting to hear back, K.]. I [know] right now you’re thinking, Gee, what a description, sarcastically.

Oh, I just remembered I sent three pictures, a half way finished Hork Bajir, a pretty good Taxxon and a retarded looking Andalite. And speaking of drawing, I drew those pictures for the art contest [I didn’t win– sad face]. Today my family and I ate at a chinesse[sic] food resturant [sic – geez, twelve-year-old me really needed to invest in a dictionary and/or learn to spell] and the fortune I got after dinner said,

WHEN IN DOUBT LET YOUR INSTINCTS GUIDE YOU

PEKING NOODLE CO.

I couldn’t helping thinking Animorphs [Oh, I get it. Like the animal instincts the characters had to contend with! Ha, clever twelve-year-old me!] And my dad’s been telling my sister to get a job all summer and her cookie said something about being a hard worker, so we had our he-he’s.

Maybe you can put the instinct fortune in one [of] you[r] book[s].

Marco and his dad (or Jake) can be eating chinesse[sic] food and after morphing into something then letting it take over he reads over the fortune cookie then he says, “Sometimes these things scare the cuteness outta’ me.” [I still think that totally could have been something Marco said!]

And I think that they should try acquiring, the Aliens (espielly[sic] the Visser) they can get Ax easily (if he lets them).

If they can morph into a yeerk, when Vissie[sic] Three gets out of the Andalite’s head for Kandra Rays one of them can sneak in and get into his head and run or morph into something big and V.T. is out of a Andalite host. Woohoo. [Wow! I was a violent-minded child, wasn’t I!]

The letter is obviously unfinished, which would explain why it was never sent. I can’t imagine what other awesome randomness twelve-year-old me would have had to say.

(And back to the present)

Oh yeah, and about that other thing happening like today or something. Seeing the same story on every channel and every show and every time I sign out of my yahoo account got old real quick, but sometimes even when you’re over an event’s constant coverage (Can we please stop calling it a once in a lifetime event? I’m pretty sure my parents and grandparents and lot of other people in the world were alive the last time something like this happened. Anyway, I digress…) Sometimes, even when we’re tired of hearing about the same thing for weeks on end, a little spark of awesome noses it’s way through the sea of sameness (I think I stole that last bit from a Disney Original Movie.)

Thank you, Neill Cameron, for existing.

Come back next week for the awesomeness of Animorphs, Adolescent Me: A Child Obsessed, a list of other favorite (mostly) alien stories of my younger years, and more

Liquid Diary: Thoughts After Seeing a Borders’ Store Liquidation Through to the End - Pt. 1

Just this past Sunday, I worked the closing shift at a Borders that is now no longer there. It was strange to walk around the empty store. Books gone, of course, as well as all the tables, the signs, a bunch of fixtures, the café, and the customers – which made the place feel even more empty because on the last day of business, we closed at 4 o’ clock in the afternoon.

The emptiness reminded me of the end of last day of high school, senior year – lockers cleared, classrooms empty, knowing you’re never going to return, or if you do it won’t be the same. Except in the case of a closing store, it’s final. There’s not going to be a fall semester after summer break, no returning students, no freshman class.

As I meandered the desolate front-of-store, I couldn’t help place things where my memory knew they should have been. The tall “major new” table with its waterfall of latest releases; the new hardcover table with 20%-off stickers on half the titles; the BOGO (buy one get one 50% off) table stacked with paperbacks; the bestsellers, staff picks, New York Times Editors’ Picks, Children’s, YA, and various genre bays. So much prime real estate gone completely.

I thought of what I would have been doing that night. If that hadn’t been the store’s last day, I would have had pages of lists, instructions for what needed to change around the store. We’d prep as much as possible and switch out what titles we could ahead of the time-specific lay downs that happened every Monday after closing since new books are released Tuesdays (unless you’re James Patterson).

I really liked doing the change-outs. You can’t help but absorb information while switching out titles displayed all around the store and I got pretty good at guessing what book a customer was looking for when they didn’t know the title. If someone created a game show called Name That Book, I’d feel pretty good about my chances if I were a contestant.

During my last look around the store, it was seeing the children’s section barren that made me saddest. The children’s section that I hated because it was always in completely and utter disarray at the end of the night. Always. The children’s section that I hated because no matter how well I straightened it up through the day or the night before, it always looked so bad that the end of the night that I wondered if parents just watched their kids pull every book from the shelf and throw them to the floor, or if they actively participated. The children’s section I hated because that was where teenagers always seemed to migrate to make out (or look at sex books and adult magazines) and I didn’t want to have to be the one to come through with a hose.

The children’s section I loved because kids books are just a whole bushel of pure awesome. The children’s section that I loved because so often a parent would be more than happy to buy their kid a stack of books even if they only rarely bought a single book for themselves. The children’s section that I loved because parents would bring their young reluctant readers there and ask the staff for a book that makes reading exciting. The children’s section where the love of reading is cultivated more actively than probably any other section of the store.

The children’s section that I loved because it was as a child that I fell in love with books, and am a writer today. The children’s section where I could come across one of my favorite childhood books or authors and be filled with the same feeling from my childhood when I’d read late into the night because I couldn’t put a good book down (and okay, I do still that now, but it was especially magical when I was a kid). The children's section where I could try to pass that feeling on to a kid who might be a reluctant reader now but just might become a lifetime lover of books, if I could only help him find a book to ignite the spark that was ignited in me.

I wish there was still a children's section for me to straighten up.

Next Time: What matters more than the fact that I’m out of a job and a thing or two I learned, including why bookstore customers are beyond awesome.

Random Tandem Wednesdays: VHS Cassettes and Other Things of My Youth

Going into this blogging thing, I told myself, “Cacy, don’t be random. Embrace focus.” Alas and alack, to be focused is not my nature. It was only a matter of time before my randomness broke through and I diverged from topics relating to writing and books. I can try to say, hey, this random thing relates to writing-slash-books because of XYZ, but I decided not to lie to myself, or you. Sometimes, you just gotta let yourself be random—I’ll at least try to relegate it to Wednesdays.

So this weekend, I was reading my six-year-old niece the story of Beauty and the Beast from this big book of fairy tales. I had to explain to her that there are a lot of different versions of the story because she kept comparing it to the Disney movie. She went further to say, “We used to watch it on…What do you call it? The black thing.”

“Black thing?” I said.

“You know, it’s black and it has the white circles.” She traced shapes in the air.

“Oh. A video tape.”

“Yeah. We used to watch the video tape, but the thing you put it in broke.”

“You mean a VCR.”

“Yeah, a VCR.”

As an experiment, just to double check, I pointed to the entertainment center across from us and asked, “What do you call that thing?”

She looked at me like I was weird. “A DVD player.”

“And what do you put inside one of those.”

“A DVD.”

It is the end of an era, people. Goodbye, VHS and VCR. I knew you well. Yeah, okay, so they’ve been out of the picture for a while, but there’s nothing like a conversation with the generation who are going to forget that the technology of your youth ever existed to really drive the point home.

Although I do need to find myself a functioning VCR. Cleaning out the garage a few months ago, I found a video tape labeled “Cacy’s Cartoons.” Pull it out of its cardboard case, and there’s a second label (written on in pink marker) that reads, “Don’t record over! This means you!!! Cartoons only!!! With Cacy’s permission!!! So stop if you’re thinking about it!!!”

I meant business. You could tell by all the exclamation points. I need to find out what’s on it. It could be the Spiderman series from the 90s (which was my favorite) or some of the shows from ABC’s One Saturday Morning Block (Pepper Anne, Bump in the Night maybe even - dare I think it - REBOOT!). Though I’m hoping it will contain some of the really random and obscure cartoons that I’m sure no one but me remembers even though I can still sing their theme songs (Ned’s Newt, Stickin’ Around, Science Court).

Gosh, I love cartoons.

Speaking of which, are Saturday morning cartoons a thing of the past? On cable there’s Cartoon Network, Nick Toons, Toon Disney, Boomerang, and what seems to be a plethora of channels that allow 24/7 access to cartoons. I was a dedicated Saturday-morning-cartooner. I was up before the sun to catch those cartoons no one else watched because they only aired at 5am on Saturday (Sky Dancers, Dragon Ball – that’s Dragon Ball, not Dragon Ball Z, Pokemon before it got all popular and moved to a later time that conflicted with my other shows so I had to be like, sorry Pokemon, I choose Spiderman.)

I even watched the lesser Sunday morning cartoons that came on the one channel that thought they could carve a niche for themselves by putting their kid’s programming on Sundays instead of Saturdays. (I remember something about teens who turned into cars to fight evil. It wasn’t very good, but I watched it.)

My cartoon watching wasn’t just a weekend hobby. Oh no, I had my before school cartoons (The Mask, Sailor Moon, Mummies Alive <--AWESOMENESS!). I had my after school cartoons (Gummy Bears, Darkwing Duck – look out! – TaleSpin, Gargoyles), even though I wasn’t allowed to watch TV after school because I was supposed to be doing my homework. But when you have a passion you do what you have to.

When I got to high school, and none of my friends watched cartoons anymore, I was still committed and the cartoons were still awesome (Recess, Powerpuff Girls, Invader Zim, Batman Beyond, Invasion America – where’s book two, Spielberg!?! Where is book two!?!).

I didn’t realize what to call my love affair with cartoons until I was in college and a creative writing teacher wanted the class to do presentations on what we were obsessed with. The night before my turn to present, I honestly and truly thought I had nothing to call an obsession. Until, well after midnight, I looked around my room. I had stuff like this taped to my headboard:

(I can’t believe I still have that, by the way.)

And stuff like this on my wall:

(Click here to make your own Powerpuff Girl! or Guy–which would technically be a Rowdyruff Boy, I guess.)

And my bed looked like this:

(Boy, sometimes I forget what a big dork I am until I dig up a picture like this.)

And on my TV was Cartoon Network/Adult Swim, which was the station my TV was on about 50% of the time. (It was on Nickelodeon and Disney Channel, another 30%). Needless to say, I realized what I should do my presentation on.

I miss the days when network television offered a wide variety of cartoons (in the allotted time spots). These days, if you don't have cable it's like cartoons don't exist anymore. I don't have cable. I'm not so up-to-date on the latest in animated television, but I still love cartoons. I was so excited to hear that Genndy Tartakovsky (almost spelled it right without having to look it up!) had a new series that I got the season pass on itunes. I cannot wait for Nick's new Avatar series (and my family and friends had to endure a two-year tirade from me on how bad the movie was going to be--it started the moment I found out Shyamalan was writing, directing and producing it). I think a Venture Bros movie would be too much awesome for one screen and I'll be first in line to see it. And look what my sister got me for Christmas:

I’m starting to think I’ll never grow up.

Quote of the Week:

“It’s pink, and it stinks like cake!” – My six-year-old niece.

Why is this the Quote of the Week? Because it sounds like something Invader Zim would say. (In case you couldn't tell, I'm something of a fan...)