I lost my voice

This blog still exists. I forgot about it and then I found it the other day. And I was like oh cool, I remember this. 

There are no updates about any cool projects. I was just thinking about starting a new blog. Then I was thinking about all the blogs I've had. 10 of them. I've had 10 blogs. So then I was like... do I need to start another one? Can I just use one that already exists?

I mean why not? I can do whatever I want, it's my blog. 

This used to be a place that was kind of an outlet for me when I was working on projects. I wish that's what I was using it for today, but I'm kind of repurposing it for the time being. Because the thing is, the last project was... well, my last one. 5 years ago. Kind of on purpose, because the disappointment that followed it was enough to make me decide that I was kind of just done.

The disappointment is my own fault, because it just is. The tug of war between a need to put something out into the world and the absolute HORROR at putting something out into the world... is kind of unbearable and it felt like it might just be better to not put myself into that tug of war place anymore. Like, give myself some peace by just NOT CREATING.

That sounds terrible, doesn't it? It kind of worked though, to relieve myself of the agony of that self-inflicted pressure. I never really had any intention of coming back. Of trying again. But here I am, because there is something bubbling up inside me that is making me MISERABLE.

I wish I knew what that something was. Like I know what it is, okay, it's the NOT CREATING. But I don't yet know it's face, its identity. I've been trying to figure that out. I've been trying to put a face on it, but it's not fitting. Rationally, I know where inspiration comes from. It comes from actually working. You have to work to get it. You have to create to unlock it. So sitting around and waiting for that spark is a waste of time - it won't happen.

So I decided to try and start doing SOMETHING. I've tried to do some writing lately, and it's NOT WORKING. It's the worst. So flat. Barely even sentences. It feels like an untrained baby AI has taken over my brain. I guess that I'm out of practice and I'm rusty and I've lost my voice, it's croaky and not all the words are coming out. So I have to keep trying. But it, like, HURTS. I can't bear it.

This blog though... it's familiar enough that maybe this is where I need to be. The sentences are definitely forming more fluidly here, as I type this, than when I'm sitting down TO WRITE FOR REAL. I'm definitely putting too much pressure on myself. 

I'm not sure why at this point. I've already proven that what will happen when I finish whatever the next thing is, is NOTHING. NOTHING will come of it, I'll hide it, I'll stuff it into the place where I put everything else. And then I'll cry into my pillow because no one will ever see it.

Those things are all cringe by the way. The Marlo book, the Lifesicle book, the Sixty-Six book. Oh my god. In a way, I'm thankful that they fell into the ether so immediately after they were finished. I'm so totally embarrassed.

And yet here I am, consciously deciding to end this break from creating (it wasn't only a break when I decided to stop - it was forever). Chomping at the bit to try and write another thing, knowing exactly what will happen to it. What the actual fuck is wrong with me.

I'm not going to talk about that so-called project here. I'm not even sure it IS a project. Yeah, it has a name. Yeah, it has a concept that I enjoy. That's about it. I can't even settle on character names. That's a major stumbling block for me, like I can't move forward until I have their names right. Every time I sit down to work on it, I change everyone's names. They have to fit together too, so if I get one name that feels right, it suddenly doesn't fit with the other character's names. It is bonafide crazy that I get hung up on that.

It's not a new thing though, that always happens. It's just happening WORSE this time. Sit down at computer. Okay, Ivy is now Lainey. Ugh. Lainey is a girl from highschool that kind of ruined everything for me, so no, she's not Lainey. She's now Jade. Great, Jade feels good. But that name does not have enough syllables to sound good with her monosyllabled co-lead character. I don't want to rename him... so is she gonna be Jade then?

And that's where I've left it. I literally can't write anything else until I settle on her name, and it works with the other names.

I don't know if this blog is going to help me at all, to get through this. Maybe this is the last time I'll ever be here, AGAIN. Who knows. I have these thoughts and I need to put them somewhere so I don't DIE.

Note to self: Don't forget about TT and VVG. There is something there, you just have to find it. 

That book I wrote...

It won't leave me alone. No matter how much I try and leave it behind, it keeps stalking me. So I decided to publish it on Wattpad.

Here it is. You can read it for free.



If you require "buzz" in order to get into something, here's this:

What people are saying about Sixty-Six (and by people, I mean Me)...

In Sixty-Six, the author attempts to bridge the gap between younger and older generations, thereby reconciling her own identity as a music fan approaching middle age who is horrified at the notion of leaving behind a world where the things she loves in this life have faded away after she's gone.

 – Me, the Author

Set in a mildly dystopian, not-too-distant future and woven with bits of light fantasy, Sixty-Six aims for the heart with humour and hope.

 – Also Me 

Sixty-Six is not only a heartfelt love letter to the author's favourite bands, but also an apologetic act of acceptance of her teenage self in the past and her elderly self the future.

 – Me, Again

This is me in 2018, baby.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to be coming back to this blog. I have some stuff on my mind though, and it’s related to writing and creativity and inspiration, and it’s keeping me up at night. So that’s a sign that I need to get it out, and this is the place where I do that, so here I am.

There’s this book called Big Magic. It’s by Elizabeth Gilbert, who wrote Eat, Pray, Love. Maybe I’ve mentioned it before. I think it’s pretty well known, but I don’t know anyone else in real life who has read it, though I’ve recommended it to a lot of people.

I read it a couple of years ago, and it’s one of those books that really stayed with me, I think about it often. So basically, the main point of the book is that inspiration and creativity owe us nothing; it’s about creating for the sake of creating, and Gilbert proposes that inspiration is almost a conscious entity itself – that what ideas WANT is to get OUT, and they are constantly in search of the right vessel to make that happen.

I don’t think she means this literally. I don’t think she means that inspiration is an angel or something. I certainly don’t think so. I’m not even sure I can suspend my disbelief at the idea of inspiration being “conscious”. I like it, to be fair. I like the idea that ideas are searching for the right person to get them into the physical world. I like it because even though I don’t consider myself to be a spiritual person, I concede that there is a lot I don’t understand about the universe, and magic is just science we haven’t figured out yet.

(Ugh, I’m so disappointed in myself. I sound like a 4^th grader.)

I also like it because I have experienced what I can only assume was inspiration, and it was a truly indescribable kind of bliss. It was like dipping my toe into a fast moving stream, which then pulled me in and carried me along with it.

This was the experience I had when creating Becoming Marlo. The idea arrived, and it burned hot and bright, and consumed me to the point where I literally couldn’t wait to write it. And after I wrote it, I couldn’t wait to draw it. And after I finished drawing it, I couldn’t wait to publish it. I had to get it out. You couldn’t stop me. And the whole time I felt like there was some benevolent force along with me, sometimes even taking the wheel, when I did have my doubts. There was never any doubt that I would finish it though.

That makes it sound like it was easy. It wasn’t. But I was compelled, and that meant I crushed the hard parts to bits when I encountered them. Nothing was going to stand in my way. And I had never felt like that before about anything I wrote, or drew, or whatever. It was exhilarating. Looking back on it, I don’t even think Marlo was that good of a thing. It was the first thing I ever finished, and I’m proud of it for that. Other people seem to have liked it, or they just can’t tell me they don’t – it doesn’t matter.

The point is, something made me do it. I mean, I DID it. I take the credit (for better or for worse). But I did feel something that came from outside myself, and it stayed with me for the duration, and it left me as soon as I held the printed book in my hands.

And then it happened again, about a year later. It was similar, in the way the idea came to me, and the external presence that was with me. But the vibe of it was totally different. With Marlo, the force that was with me (groan, sorry) was confident, kind, bold, optimistic, disciplined, and future-focused. The whole time it was with me, I couldn’t believe how those traits infused me and the work I was doing. I felt like… it was on my side. It held my hand and guided me all the way through and as a result, I worked with zeal, determination, and intensity, for hours and hours, until it was complete.

With Lifesicle, it was like the force had a different personality. It was moody. Sometimes it would get me totally swept up in the writing or the painting, while other times, it would will me to drink a bunch of wine and lay on the floor while the paint dried, staring at the ceiling, listening to music in my art room – but this was not procrastination. It was part of the process.

There were nights when I stayed up late, painting, lamenting over whether what I had done was good enough, leading to drinking a bunch of wine, leading to painting on the wine bottle, and then going to bed, only to get up half an hour later after incessant looping thoughts prevented me from sleeping, just to start the process all over again.

Lifesicle was a swirling, messy, emotional, often enthusiastic but sometimes sluggish, controlled stumble that somehow came together, not in spite of the process, but because of it. In the “alignment chart of inspiration”, if the force that was with me for Marlo was Lawful Good, then the force that was with me for Lifesicle was Chaotic Neutral. I’m not convinced it always had my best interests at heart, but it wanted the thing done, and it got what it wanted. It was fun, and I felt like a real artist.

And just like with Marlo, as soon as I held the printed book in my hands, the force was gone.

It’s pretty common, from what I’ve seen and heard, for creators to go through a bit of post-creation depression. Simon and Garfunkel said it best in the song “Cecilia”.  After Marlo and Lifesicle were finished, and inspiration was done with me, my heart was kind of broken. If you believe a lot of what professional writers and artists say, that makes me an amateur. They’re not wrong, I suppose.

 I don’t make these things for a living. I’ve done a lot of uninspired writing and arting that didn’t go anywhere, and that’s fine. Am I disappointed that more didn’t come out of the finished products of Marlo and Lifesicle? Maybe sometimes. But ultimately, it doesn’t bother me that much. In both cases, I felt like I was compelled, and once they were done, they were done. And now that some time has passed, I feel somewhat detached from them.

I should probably go back to Big Magic for a minute here. In it, Elizabeth Gilbert proposes that ideas are looking for the vessel that will get them from an intangible state to a tangible state. And that means that sometimes an idea will leave you for someone else. This can happen because you didn’t act on it quick enough, or because the approach you took isn’t satisfactory, or because, quite simply, someone else who can do it better becomes available, LOL. St. Cecilia is a fickle, unfaithful biatch.

A few months after Lifesicle was finished, another idea came to me. As soon as it came, I was overwhelmed by it. It was big. It was too big for me. I work pretty small scale. I’m happy being small scale.

I thought of Big Magic. And I’m not even kidding, I spoke to the idea (in my mind, not out loud, because I’m not crazy) and I told it that I was the wrong person. It needed to go find someone else. Not only did I not think I could handle it, I didn’t want to. I gave it back to the universe.

It left me for a few weeks, but then it came back, and I thought, okay, let me think about this. I wrote out a few lines, just possibilities for directions this idea could go. I wasn’t happy with any of them. But it kept bugging me, so I picked the one that I hated the least and wrote a couple of paragraphs, kind of a plot summary. It was… just barely okay, and I still felt totally overwhelmed by the size of it. I considered bringing in a collaborator, someone who knows more about the subject than I do.

But it didn’t feel right and I basically spoke to the idea again, this time telling it unequivocally to leave me alone. I didn’t want it, I’m not the right vessel, go find the right one and leave me in peace. And it left again, this time for several months.

It came back to me again early this year… with a vengeance. This time, it came back to me with characters and a plot – and completely different from the “just barely okay” direction I had come up with previously. I’m not even kidding. You’d think I’d be ecstatic. This is what every writer wants, right? I gotta tell ya, I was actually annoyed. Here I was actively rejecting this monster, and yet it was relentless in its pursuit of me. But now I felt like I had no choice.

So I basically agreed to write the most basic outline of the thing, just to get the idea OUT THERE, like it wanted. Write a few pages, draw a few pictures, and if that wasn’t enough, publish it on my blog. Boom. Out there. And I could get on with the rest of my life.

It hasn’t happened like that.

It is now 263 pages long (just under 65,000 words). I am on page 153 of the rewrite. And every word since the first one has been a living hell. Utter agony. Finding each word has been like pulling teeth out of a mouth with endless rows of teeth, or excavating a dig site for fossils with my bare hands. And the words are not good words. They are basic, clumsy, dumpster fire words.

I can’t even count the number of times I have tried to quit on this thing. I have flat out refused to work on it, for weeks, a few months even. But it always comes back, and I don’t want it. I don’t know why it has chosen me. I am not the right person for it, and I am messing it up big time. I’m embarrassed by it. It is self-indulgent, completely subjective and impossible for anyone but me to relate to. I would be mortified if anyone read it.

And it’s not even that I hate the idea – I don’t. I like it. I like… gulp… I love the characters. They are dear to me. In a way, I want this out there as much as the force that is driving me to create it. I would read this book, if it was written properly by someone else. I’d see the movie. I’d watch the TV series. If it was done right by someone who knows what the hell they are doing.

In the inspiration alignment chart, this force is CHAOTIC EVIL. It is a psychopath. It does not care about me. It cares only about using me to get “OUT THERE”. To the point where it clearly doesn’t even care how well I execute it. It’s like it’s trying to hurt me, show me how puny and insignificant and terrible of a writer I am. It is doing this to me for sport.

At this stage, I have agreed to only finish this rewrite. I’m hoping that will satisfy this monster. Because I’m not willing to go further than that. I am not willing to suffer and toil over a third draft. I am not willing to self-publish this mess, or attempt traditional publishing for that matter. And I am 100% not drawing pictures.

Having said that, it made me draw the front cover art. Ridiculous.

Cool news!

I'm pleased to announced that both Lifesicle and Becoming Marlo are now available in the Art Gallery of Algoma's Gallery Shop!

I couldn't be more proud and excited. The AGA is one of the coolest places in Sault Ste. Marie!

10 East Street, Sault Ste. Marie, ON, Canada, P6A 3C3

www.artgalleryofalgoma.com

If you're in the Sault or going to be in the Sault, I highly recommend checking out the spectacular works of art by local artists at the AGA. 

Official Announcement.... Lifesicle is LIVE!

Hellooooooooooooooooo! I know the proverbial tumbleweeds have been blowing through this blog the last couple weeks. I've been busy waiting to pick up the book from the printer and, in the meantime, putting together my promotional book trailer video.

Well, the book is done, the copies are in my possession (they look amazing!), the song for the video soundtrack is finished and so is the video! I've been a busy little bee!

And I'm pretty darned excited, I have to tell you!

Lifesicle is officially available for purchase in my Etsy shop: Plaidstar Publishing. And now I finally feel like I can take the lid off the top secret box and reveal what this project has been all about! Without further adieu....

 

Now, I worked very hard on the promo video, and I'm happy with the results. It features stop motion animation that I made myself, and if you've been following my adventures, the song on the soundtrack was also created by me. So this is also the official release of my first song that I've ever written: Patio Furniture! The video credits it to "The Puddlesurfers". Don't be fooled, that's me, that's my one-woman-band, LOL! 

I've been chomping at the bit to get the video out onto the interwebs, so here it is!

Thank you so much to anyone who has been following me throughout this project! And thanks to you for visiting now and checking out the trailer. Please feel free to share it around!

The Patio Furniture Sessions

So… I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’m doing it anyway.

That stuff about me making a song for my book trailer? Yeah, I’m crotch deep in it.

As of right now, I have a 10-track composition on the audacity timeline. I tried to learn how to use ACID but I know so little about music recording that even the tutorials made no sense to me. Same with SoundForge. But Audacity, that shit’s easy. I use it at work to edit narration sometimes, so it wasn’t a big leap to actually learn how to use it for music recording.

It’s going… okay. Did I mention I have no idea what I’m doing? LOL. I mean, what I have right now is 2 minutes of something that actually kind of sounds like a song. Very song-ish. It is basic. And it does the same thing all the way through. So I’m working on changing it up a little, making some things only happen here and there, you know, like a real song. But the chords all work together, and the beats and chord changes all mostly line up, haha. Hey, this shit’s kind of hard, eh?

With every track I’ve “laid down” (ooooh dat lingo), I’ve practiced the next one along with it and then recorded it while the previous one plays in my headphones, so that I can match up the little idiosyncracies. That’s how you’re supposed to do it, right? You can’t assume you got your timing exactly right in each layer… I’m a one-chick band, so I have to play along with each layer to make sure I’m lining up.

I’ve got a ukulele layer (recorded in STUDIO B, aka, the bathroom – it gave the chords a lovely echoing sound that makes me smile every time I listen to it).

After that I pianoed over top of it. I bought this little Casio keyboard that makes all kinds of sounds. I bought it mostly for compositional purposes but I’m loving all the sounds it can make and I’m using it tons. Piano was recorded in Studio A (my art/writing room).

Also recorded in Studio A:

3 separate bass tracks! They all kind of do something just slightly different. Two are bass guitarish sounding, one deeper than the other (yay Casio electronic keyboard thinger!) and one is kind of like a deep baritone trombone or tuba sound (let me be clear, the keyboard doesn’t name each sound, they just have groups and numbers. So I don’t know exactly what instrument each number refers to, I just know if they’re string bass, piano, organ, wind instruments or brass).

I have to say that the baritone trombone/tuba sound is probably my favourite thing about the song. There’s this one little part that just kills me every time. I’m amazed I made a part of a song that makes me feel the way some parts of actual real songs make me feel. How did I do that? I dunno.

Anyway, I added a drum track which I like tons, but it’s a bit repetitive so I think I’m gonna redo it to change it up a little, make it do some different things at different times.

I had a “wind” instrument in the mix (oooh more lingo) that kind of sounded like hollow voices, but I had to chuck it. It was nice, but ultimately it didn’t add anything, and I need to be a bit discerning about all this layering I’m doing. I think it’s a fine line between a nice full sound and a freight train of sound.

That wind track also taught me something about “gain” and how to use it properly so that all these pops and crackles don’t overtake the mix. I had a bit of a problem with that happening, but now I’ve reduced the gain on just about everything, and killing the wind track was a step in the right direction for that problem as well.

Back to Studio B.

Near the top of the mix, I’ve got a neat little cowbell-sounding instrument that adds a bit of a tropical vibe, and my other favourite bit, the bell. It’s actually the vibraphone on the casio, but the way I’m using it, it sounds like a bell, dinging throughout the song. I love that bell sound. You often hear it in things like Christmas songs, you know that bell sound I mean? A lot of Beach Boys songs have it too. Mona, for instance. And some others but that’s the one that comes to mind, because I’m pretty obsessed with that song at the moment. 

 

Mona - The Beach Boys (from Love You, 1977)

And at the very top, I’ve got a 5-part harmony of “aaaahhhhs” that is all me – my voice recorded 5 times doing different parts and then layered all together on top of the mix. I have a high voice so even the low parts are high, and it sounds a bit like a children’s choir, LOL. But whatever, that’s how I sound, so I’m keeping it.

And that’s where things currently sit.

I have an idea for an intro, I just have to do some playing around to nail it down.

But the hardest part, I find, is the melody. I spent quite a bit of time working on that last night, and I came up with two different melodic lines, but really, they don’t do what I want them to do. They’re both so locked down to the song’s structure, and I really want something that floats above everything rather than marching along to it. My brain seems to want to keep the structure so I’m struggling with that. Gotta find a way to loosen it up.

And then lyrics. I’m a writer, you’d think that would make it easy, but damn! I know what the song is about, but everything I’ve written sounds just kind of lame and stupid, LOL. Maybe I should just melodically list names of colours or something. Go full abstract. Pair up colour names with types of fruit or something, I dunno. I’m way worse at writing lyrics than I thought I would be.

Having said all of this… sometimes I cringe at what I’m hearing when I play it back, and I feel like there is no way I should ever make it public, let alone put it in my book trailer. But then sometimes, those little things about it that I do like just kind of shine through and make me smile, and I feel proud. Maybe not proud of the song exactly, but proud of myself for doing it. And happy about those little things that tell me at least I’m enjoying myself.

It remains to be seen if this will ever actually become something I put into the book trailer. But I’m not giving up on it. There are still a few weeks left until I pick Lifesicle up from the printer. I have to keep myself busy with something, right?

Because I love lists, here are the things I need to do to finish the song:

• Redo that drum track.
• The melody. JUST COME ON.
• Do something with the structured melody ideas? Make them dum bee doo background vocals?
• Intro. Maybe outro. But mostly intro.
• Little instrumental embellishments where the key changes, before and after the bridge.
• Sleighbells! Another type of bell that's not just for Christmas anymore!
• Dial back anything that’s getting in the way. Cowbell, that could be you.
• Lyrics. Hopefully not of the “red kiwi, purple grapefruit, blue orange, orange apple, green lemon” variety.

Green lemon. That’s a lime.

But in the meantime...

Owie. Typing hurts...

While I wait for the proof to come back from the printer, I've stumbled upon a bit of an interim project. Well... "a bit" is kind of an understatement.

It started out small enough. I decided that I want to make a book trailer for Lifesicle. If you've been reading this blog since the Becoming Marlo days, you'll know that I'm shit at the whole promotional, marketing aspect of being an author. I love making the thing. But the getting it out there part? I abhor it. It makes me feel dirty, and guilty, and ashamed of myself for asking people to buy my book. Hell, asking people to join the Facebook page, or even read this blog is super uncomfortable for me.

I had some neat ideas for ways I could market Marlo. I was going to make these bookmarks that had a lock of colourful clown hair dangling from them! I was going to start a Twitter account as if I was Marlo, making cute clown jokes and generally just being cheerful and whatnot. But the only thing I ever got the moxie to do was make some postcards that I left out in a little pile on a little table at the back of the TCAF bookstore. Hardly even anything at all.

So now that I'm a holding pattern on Lifesicle, I've got the same kinds of things going through my head about what I can do to get it out there. The book trailer idea seemed like a thing I could do, so that's where I'm focusing my attention.

Except it's getting a tad more ambitious than I had originally intended...

There are some pretty neat book trailers out there. Check out this post by Brainpickings to see some super cool ones. Obviously I don't have the budget to pay royalties on a real song made by an actual musical artist, nor to hire professional actors or anything like that. But in the spirit of Lifesicle, the idea of making it all myself using the tools at my disposal is exactly the right kind of thing to do. It matches the story. 

So what started out as a little one-minute movie with some basic images, the back cover blurb for the book, and a cheap-as-possible soundtrack has become kind of a production.

I keep dancing around it, so here it is: I'm writing my own song for the soundtrack. 

It feels weird saying that. For one, I don't like to announce that I'm "going" to do something. I make my announcements late in the game, after I've already gotten crotch-deep into it, or even after I'm near the finish line. Announcing I'm doing something right at the beginning makes me assume everyone is rolling their eyes going "sure, right, uh-huh".

The other reason it feels weird to say I'm writing a song, is because I'm not a musician and I've never written a song before, LOL!

I mean, look. I took piano lessons for a few years as a kid. I took vocal lessons in highschool for four years, and I've been singing for fun my whole life. I have a ukulele that I play occasionally, like every 6 months or so. "Play" is a generous word for it... I basically relearn the same 5 chords every 6 months, haha.    

But the thing is... I need a song. I don't want to pay for one. And I guess when I'm in need of something, I'm always like "How can I do it myself?". 

And I thought it might work, you know, in the spirit of Lifesicle. It might be kind of charming. Suit the story. So the plan was to string together the 5 chords that I know and hum along to it, and record it on my iphone, and call that the soundtrack.

But it's gotten to be much more than that. The chords and the rhythm? Achieved. I'm still practicing to get it down as smooth as I can, practicing every night after work. Hence the sore fingertips and difficulty with typing.

Next step is to work out the melody. That's going to be the hardest part, I think. But lyrically, I know what the song will be about, and after I've nailed down the melody, I'll draft the lyrics. Then the recording will begin.

The bathroom upstairs has amazing acoustics. The recording will happen in there, lol. And not on my iphone, either. Using real recording software. There's a pair of applications that came pre-installed on my laptop, called ACID and SoundForge. I'm going to record it on ACID (groan, I'm sure they called it that on purpose for that reason, lol) and then edit it on SoundForge. 

It's going to be a multi-track recording, with strings, keyboards, and drums, bass, lead and backing vocals, and all kinds of cool sound effects. How am I doing all of this in my bathroom? How am I doing this at all? Well, I don't want to give it away, before I get crotch-deep into it. I already feel like I've said too much.


 

 
Let me just say, this is all the just the soundtrack for the trailer. I have a whole plan for the visual part too. My expectations may be a little high, LOL. But I'm not going to worry about that right now. I've got to go learn how to use ACID.