Kei's Thoughts on Life

I wonder what it is about exam time that brings out the best in my procrastination skills - or perhaps I should say the worst in those skills. It's currently 11pm in the evening before my exam at 9:45am Thursday morning, and I've done about an hours study of a class whose lectures I barely even attended. I'm expected to write three beautiful essays tomorrow in merely two hours, and somehow manage to include quotes and references to the numerous books and articles we were supposed to have read throughout the semester.

And yet, here I am, drinking tea, typing on my laptop, watching episodes of Supernatural one after the other, without a care in the world. I've also, miraculously, over the past few days, managed to write close to 30,000 words of a brand new story.

Last year, around the same time, I managed to bang out 50,000 words over the course of the exam period.

So, really, what is it about exams that get the creative juices flowing? Why can't I just sit down and study and stop changing windows every five minutes to write another 1000 words of pure drivel?

Speaking of said drivel, why is it that when I get the urge to write during exam time it's either a 'joke' story - one that's insanely cliche and never meant to be taken seriously - or fanfiction? Last year it was fanfiction. This year it's so cliched I can barely go a page without writing something so overused and overdone it's enough to make you cry.

But damn, it's good stress relief. And let's not mention good procrastination.

Nevertheless, something good has come out of this I suppose. I've begun to write (albeit cliched) my very first completely normal, non-supernatural or fantasy (or even sci-fi) oriented story. No, this time it's...wait for it....romance.

Yeah, like I really know what I'm talking about. But hey, I've seen enough films and read enough books to know how it usually goes. So here I am, typing out flirty conversation after flirty conversation and cliched action after cliched action. It's fun. It's useless. And it sure isn't getting me a good grade on that exam, but I'm doing it anyway.

Remind me again why I'm taking a course in contemporary Japanese culture (which never seems to stray beyond the year 1995, so not very contemporary, is it?) when I should be taking creative writing? Why am I trying to read PDF files on Japanese consumerism and techno-orientalism, when I could be reading about how to write a good dialogue and how to create the best setting.

Oh, right, that's what all those writer's newsletters I subscribed to are for.

But still, I have a feeling I'm screwed up my degree here. Not that I care. Is that bad, I wonder? Probably.

Well, if I'm going to screw up my life, I might as well do it properly. Next time I'll write a proper book, one that could potentially be published and not just stuck up on some website where people will read it and go "wow, cool story, I like it". Yeah, thanks, that was informative. Or, even better, sometimes I get: "omg wow! you're amazing, i love ur story plz write more!"

Thanks for the flattery, but obviously you wouldn't be reading it if you didn't like it, so why the hell are you telling me that instead of something useful like, oh, say, what you like about my characterization - even better, how about what you don't like? Or maybe I'd appreciate you pointing out some grammar mistakes. Idioms I used wrongly. Vocabulary I'm abusing.

You know, reasons why my story is sitting here on this stupid (yet addictive) site instead of on a book shelf - ya know, if it's so amazing and all that.

So, cheers. Back to the drawing board. NaNo2009 here I come!

xKei

Time for some self-assessment. Over the past two years, from 2007 to 2009...have I improved?

I started painting portraits and figures in Photoshop around late 2007. Well, I tried some serious attempts at least. These I didn't just give up half way through as I'm often wont to do. No, these I really tried.

Looking back I honestly cringe. Dear god what was I thinking? 

When trying to improve one's painting you generally use reference images. As it's always so much easier to create a decent piece of art using something to work off of, instead of have it come purely from the imagination, the pieces I did using myself or someone else as a reference image actually turned out pretty decent.

Keyword there: pretty decent. Not completely decent. Oh well.

But then I tried to do a painting completely on my own, without using any sort of reference or stock image. Oh dear lord. Just thinking about those first attempts makes me want to cry. But you have to start somewhere I suppose.

So, this is where I started in Late 2007. Brace yourself:
Yeah. it's enough to make you want to run away screaming, is it not? I know looking at it now I wonder how I ever possibly thought this could look even remotely human. Oh, yes. I see. Two eyes. A mouth. Two holes in the middle of her face which I suppose could pass for a nose. Maybe.

As you can see, I despaired so much that early 2008, I found a good reference image, went back, and completely remodelled.
Behold:

Well, the next one I tried. I really tried. But in the end I gave up, gave in, and took a picture of myself to help out. Thus, this badly posed and completely useless image was born:
I must say, even now I'm quite fond of the eyes. The rest? Well, at least using a reference I was able to get a decent skin tone.

Let's see what happened to my next attempt at trying a portrait without reference. This one went a little better. I gave up in the end and abandoned it completely, but...

Could have been worse. Right?
Yeah, let's not go there. Excuse me while I go bash my skull in against this conveniently placed wall right next to me.

We're well into 2008 by now. Summer of 2008 I should think. That's when I, much to my amazement at the time, produced this:
Yes I realise it looks like Arwen. It wasn't my intention, it just happened. Scary, actually.

Well. That's good, right? It's beautiful? *beats self with a stick* What is WITH that skin tone? Okay, so I'll just pretend she's under cover of night, but...seriously, she looks anemic. And could her lips get any bigger? What is she, a fish? And is she bruised in the corner of her mouth or something?

But I was beginning to get the hang of things. I mean, comparing this with just a few months earlier (see: not-quite-sure-if-it's-even-human image above) and I'm pretty sure I wept for joy. Or something. And I kept at it. I have various incarnations of digital paintings, all attempting to find that perfect way of rendering a realistic human face completely from the imagination.

And then I decided to see if all this practice without using reference images had improved my ability to paint from a stock image. Imagine my shock, when, in a scant 5 hours, I came out with this for my sister's birthday:
Even now I weep when I see this. I'm sure to some it's horrific, but...look at those skin tones! The pinks! The purples! The subtle bags under his eyes! The slight shine on his cheeks and nose! The shadow of his jaw! The gold of his eyes! (Which, I do believe I did myself, since the reference image had his eyes very, very black). And the apple...the smidgen of green around the stem. The dark shadow with the shiny highlights encircling it.

*sighs*

So, keeping all these things in mind, I re-attempted painting a fictional character (and since I have a fetish for elves...well...) completely from my imagination without using a single reference image.

As of right now, my ability is thus:
Hm. About 3 hours.

Self-Assessment over.

Conclusion: Too obsessed with faces. Attempt full body poses more (like the one above, which is just a crop fyi) and focus a bit more on hair. I mean, does that look natural blonde to you? Hell no. And also, what's up with the necks? Serious neck issues, people. Also, she's pretty well endowed, wouldn't you say? A bit too much maybe. And that was after I'd scaled it down. Cut off some boobage. Oh dear. I swear I'm hetero, but I nevertheless seem to have a penchant for big breasts.

Compensating for something, maybe?

*coughs*

Well. I'll be back with a new update in...say...a years time. If I remember. Maybe by then I will have mastered more expressive facial expressions. Although, for portraits, what else can you do but gaze off forlornly into the distance? Smile? ...Wait, you mean people actually do that? Really? Wow. You learn something new every day.

Kei signing out.

Writing a book is like pulling teeth. It's painful, it's hard and when you've finally plucked up the courage to just do it, you chicken out at the last minute. Or, once you've pulled the first metaphorical tooth, you don't want to do the rest. But you have to. You have to keep going till the end.

Of course, I was never very fond of pulling teeth anyway, so it's really no wonder I never succeeded in completing a full novel until this November. Let's just count for a second there, shall we? My first attempt started in...2001. It's taken me seven years. Oh ye Lord.

Seven years to write a simple 30 chapter, 160 page, 100,000+ word book.

It makes me want to cry, really.

Which is why I now bow down before the almighty God that is NaNoWriMo.

Now, if you don't know what NaNoWriMo is, please kindly dig yourself out from under that rock you've been living beneath and go look it up. Shame on you, you really should have heard of it by now.

NaNoWriMo is quite frankly a godsend, and without it I'd be lost. Without it I wouldn't have written that 100,000+ word, above-mentioned novel of epic proportions. And it really is epic. Epic in the sense that the plot clearly has no meaning other than to look pretty and sparkle nicely, and that the characters scream at each other a lot but never really get anywhere in life. Or they're angsty - very, very angsty.

It's horribly predictable, fully of cheese, and predictable to the max, but you know what? It's complete. It's a novel. My very own.

Besides, I like cheese; always have, always will. Cheese is good for the soul. And anyone that says otherwise can stick it where the sun don't shine. Along with a copy of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, because if any book out there needs a life, it's that one. 300 pages too much, my friend. 200 would have been enough, really. That book is 500 pages of Death-by-Boredom waiting to happen.

But back to the cheese. Cheese goes well with Branston and crackers. Or on pizza. It makes a wonderful addition to any salad (grated Parmesan anyone?) and goes nicely with pastas of all kinds. Mmmm, fondue...

So, armed with my cheese, about four bags of clementines, and roughly a tonne of chocolate, I waged war upon my keyboard.

...Let's just say the keyboard lost, poor thing. I don't think it will ever be the same. R.I.P.

But it was like pulling teeth every step of the way. I'd get to a point and think "What crap have I written now? I've got to go back and change it al!" and then give myself a slap on the wrist, shut down my computer, sit, and breathe. Because that's a big no-no. Never re-read. If you re-read, you fail, simple as that. You write and you don't look back, and when you get stuck, you pull something out of your ass and keep typing. Now, if that means your characters suddenly jump on a bus and go to Mexico, then so be it. At least you're typing something. And eventually the words will flow out naturally, full of cheesy promise, and before you know it, 30 days is up and in a single month you wrote a novel.

Thanks to NaNo. All hail the land of WriMo!

So thanks NaNoWriMo. Even if I have no clean clothes because I didn't have time to do washing, and even if I've got an empty cupboard and have survived off of next to nothing for the past week because I ran out of food and couldn't be bothered to get more, and even if I neglected my studies and have fallen behind in my courses (and maybe even missed a few)...and finally, even if I am now currently so sleep deprived I think I might really be a zombie, well, that's okay, because I wrote a novel.

Huzzah.

I decided to start off my blogging experience with a kick. So I've taken my note I wrote on Facebook and posted it here with some addendums. It reads thus: