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?

Anon, Good Thing-I’m-Supposed-To-Do, I Come!

My Five Favorite Ways to Procrastinate:

(In no particular order)

Cleaning up: Now, this is a tricky one because sometimes one procrastinates cleaning up, but cleaning up itself is an activity that lends itself well towards the goal of putting a time-consuming activity between you and the thing that needs to be done. In my last few years of college, you could always tell by my room’s level of organization when I was putting off writing a dreaded essay.

Looking for stuff on Craigslist: Jobs, art, furniture, apartments for rent, random free stuff… you can find anything on Craigslist! Even if you’re not currently looking for a job, art, furniture, a place to live, or random free stuff, it’s good to know what’s out there. And hey, sometimes you can even find things you actually need. For instance, that's where my former roommate, a sculptor who was working on an instillation piece, got the truckload of dirt she needed for her senior project. For free! (If you can believe it.)

Visiting Goodreads: I’m pretty neglectful of my own Goodreads account, but I like to read the negative reviews other people post. This will accomplish one of two things: A) Commiserate my own feelings toward a book I don’t like so I can be all, “Yeah, that’s exactly how that book sucked!” I may not absolutely love everything I come across but for the most part I'm pretty easy to please. I like or, at the very least, am entertained by most books I pick up. Even the generally-thought-of-as bad ones! So discovering a book I hate is an extremely frustrating event for me. A book has to be actively working especially hard to make me to hate it because as soon as I realize I'm hating a book I actively work especially hard not to hate it. Seriously, it takes me 100 pages to give up on a book I’m not enjoying! So when this happens it irrationally makes me a little mad that the book was working against me and my good intentions, and therefore I find myself in need of catharsis through someone else’s rant. Or, B) Give me some much-needed perspective. No matter how much you love your favorite book, someone out there hates it with a deep-seeded passion. Even the great writers couldn't please everyone. Something to keep in mind when your own work receives a negative response.

Walking around the house in circles: Sometimes intentional. Sometimes not. Sometimes I bounce from one room to another because I’ve forgotten why I was going into Room A until I’ve returned to Room B, then I go back into Room A where I get distracted by something shiny, then when the shiny thing and I are back in Room B, I remember what I needed from Room A, and round and round we go. Tis a vicious,vicious cycle, my friends.

Thinking about how to most effectively get stuff done via to-do lists, scheduling tables, and imaginings of various possible plans-of-attack: This one is probably my favorite because I feel a sense of accomplishment for having come up with a plan. In fact, coming up with a plan is such a big accomplishment that I deserve a break before really digging into the task at hand. Heck, I deserve the whole rest of the day off! It doesn’t matter that I will most likely throw the entire plan out the window by the next morning. Getting the thing done isn’t really what it’s about anyway…

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...)