Getting back into it
Posted by MrG | Filed under Editorial
Those who live there say that it isn't flat
I just got home from a week-long trip in the midwest visiting family. I feel very fortunate to have such great family. Both my own family and my wife’s family all were warm and generous and we had a great time visiting everyone.
I threw up a Moodle site last night on short order. I am really starting to feel comfortable with server installs. I can’t wait to redesign this site and work my new skills into the mix. But first I need to put together a portfolio and a résumé page.
I Finally slept!
Posted by MrG | Filed under Editorial
So I’ve been working hard the past few days. I completed a stage test for the upcoming animated short. You can see some of the rough assets in the video below. Trust me there are a lot more telephone poles where those came from!
I’m really excited about hanging out with my brother and sister next week. My brother and I have talked about what we’re cooking and drinking for a months now, so afterward, I think I’m gonna have to fast. I don’t get to see them often and it’s a real treat. I’m also really excited to get the cousins together! My son is going to have a great time!
Anyways check out my two new things over at my deviantArt account:
WIP Clearcut Test by ~MrGonz on deviant
WIP HIF Banner Animation Test by ~MrGonz on deviant
Oh, yeah. I just touched base with an old friend on Facebook. He was sorely missed in my life so I’m happy to know he’s alive. It’s tough since I barely look at my Facebook or MySpace or YouTube. I rely on my wife to let me know what’s happening in the world of social media. I guess I should know that stuff a little better–I’m sure there’s good easy money for Facebook apps. On second thought, I’ll get to that in my next life.
Let me know you came by and read this my friends. Comment below.
Workin’
Posted by MrG | Filed under Editorial
This is a design blog and as such, I should probably talk a little about what I’m designing.
Here’s a quick list:
- I had a constructive meeting with Mike from Hell I Feel yesterday. I think we got a little closer to a final design. I worked on that project from 12pm to 3am yesterday and got 75% done on the new design. Old design can be seen here: Hell I Feel Test Site
- Also for HIF, I have sketched out a demon similar to their logo. I am thinking it will be a hyper realistic model. We’ll see. Mike said I need to remove the “chicken legs” because it looks like it’s taking a dump. I have a rigged skeleton already on my board–removing the legs is an out-patient procedure.
- I am quasi-consulting on a logo redesign. This won’t be a design of my own. Rather, I am just indirectly providing the project designer some direction. (What I’m working on today)
- I have finished up concept sketches for an animated short. In the next few days I’ll be working out the script and getting a working storyboard and production schedule.
- I have a meeting tonight with Happy Valley Software. HVS has a few pokers in the fire at the moment. I hope to walk out tonight full of beer and confirmed direction. Steve demonstrated a spec app this week for a media player I’m working on and it looks great.
- A few weeks down the road shows some machines coming in for some work and I’m hoping to out together a External HD to work on Final Cut Pro next semester. I think I’m going to partition the drive so that I can have a mobile Ubuntu work space.
- Somewhere in there I’ll be updating this site with a more full design.
Finally, here’s a joke told by an old jew:
Oops!
Posted by MrG | Filed under Random Act of Smarty-Pants
This is a must watch:
Posted by MrG | Filed under Random Act of Art
Writers Block
Posted by MrG | Filed under Editorial
“I get this writer’s block, it comes as quite a shock,
And now I’m stuck between a hard place and the biggest rock,
In my own head consumed. I sit back in my room,
Its like the tapestries of life get tangled in the loom,
I’m like a butterfly, caught in a hurricane,
My heart is quickening as my heart plays a new refrain”
–Just Jack, Writer’s Block
Staring at the glass in front of me, my mind wanders through all manner of things that have nothing to do with my present task. Maybe the trip to pub to “clear my mind” isn’t working. My second glass of Guinness is nearly gone and the night crowd is pulling up to stools at the bar.
This used to work didn’t it? I remember sitting right in this same spot, honing my prose to a sharp tip–didn’t I? It can’t be this hard. I like writing. But, not this shit again. Why can’t I write? It’s easy! I could write a whole story about some other weird topic–pick one. Just not the topic at hand.
The last slug of golden-black liquid slides down my throat. Dejected, I leave the pub and head home to my blank computer screen with an equally empty mind. I’m the idiot in a room full of genius. I have come to be a moai man, my ashen face frozen, a hostage to my own lack of imagination.
Most people have experienced writer’s block, it is common in every creative discipline. There are enough books, music and movies that explore the depths of this bothersome condition to stock a library. From movies such as Barton Fink to the never published works of writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, when you experience writers block, count yourself among very good company. Playwright Kent Brown observes, “It’s a fact. As storytellers, you sometimes get stuck, run out of steam.” But what is writer’s block? What causes otherwise creative people to be without words, without inspiration? How bad can it get? And ultimately, what are strategies one can employ to break it’s grip?
What is writer’s block? Dictionary.com reports the term “writer’s block” first surfaced in the late 1940’s; and defines the word as “–noun. :a usually temporary condition in which a writer finds it impossible to proceed with the writing of a novel, play, or other work.” A definition that sounds a lot like gallstones. Both being unrivaled in potential to bring grown men to their knees.
The psychological inability to produce a creative work doesn’t exclusively apply to writers, any creative person can suffer a block. History is filled with anecdotes of artist like Jackson Pollack being waylaid by alcoholism or Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous procrastination of Fallingwater. It should not be surprising to find that for many artists their “periods” are frequently flanked by periodic blocks. This is not unlike the period between books for authors. As avant-garde filmmaker Martin Arnold observed in the New York Times, “Often for a writer, it’s the book after the last one that seems impossible to start because the very notion of what that next book should be seems beyond the grasp.”
According to the Online Writing Lab at Purdue, there are a variety of causes for writer’s block including: poor preparation, lack of interest in the topic and general writing anxieties. Physical, mental and emotional stress can often result in a serious–and in many cases–long term block. The effects experienced by the sufferer go beyond merely the inability to write, in severe circumstances, the block can lead to stress induced insomnia, depression, substance abuse and even death. Ignore your block at your own peril. The list of victims of addiction and suicide reads like a who’s who of the arts; Poe, Hemmingway, Van Gogh, Cobain and recently Hunter S. Thompson and David Foster Wallace. Creative people are a somber bunch. It’s remarkable to think that a lazy college student just may end up drunk, depressed and on the edge of suicide.
Egads! This is serious stuff. Does this apply to me? I started this paper off drinking and blocked! Am I a few bad comma splices from the abyss? I don’t want to die!
“Don’t procrastinate.” From the very beginning of your assignment, at the very least, be making small steps toward completion along the way. There is no solution for not having a clue about the subject and not having even the smallest bit of the work done. If you need to research, do the research. No amount of advice contained here or anywhere can cure you of laziness. Note that you need not have the whole thing written to get something of value accomplished with your time. Outlining can be very helpful and one doesn’t need to have done much more than assembling a piece of paper and a writing utensil. Consider that if you have a month to write something like say, a 2000 word essay, you would merely have to write seventy words a day you’d be done by the due date. 70 words is about Post-It sized–which happens to be the medium on which some of my best stuff is composed.
It may seem oversimplified, but just write. Anything. Scribble, diagram, compose a musical, whatever–just get some ideas down on paper. Think about some things you want to say. Start in the middle, start at the end. Write quips. Tell a joke. Focus on what interests you and leave the boring or hard parts until you have a rhythm going. And if you are so lucky and do get your rhythm, don’t stop until you have a rough draft or have collapsed, quivering on the floor. There is no sense in wasting a moment of valuable inspiration.
“If you have some ‘rituals’ for writing success (chewing gum, listening to jazz etc.), use them.” Don’t let the gum or jazz thing get in your way, this is where you can have some fun and you may actually get something accomplished. There are exceedingly few times in one’s life where you can can act so brash; during the act of child birth, walking to the execution chamber (if you are so disposed) and during a creative block. Don’t let the opportunity pass! Feel free to howl, pace, speak in tongues, take up knitting, whatever. This is your time and you have something important to accomplish. You will be happy to know that most of your loved ones will give you a wide berth and at least attempt to allow this capricious behavior. I consider this technique compulsory when I am creating and appropriately, my family steers clear of my rage until I emerge from my office and announce that it is time for me to listen to some NPR and lie down.
In her book, The Artist’s Way, author Julia Cameron suggests to those suffering from a block what she calls “Morning Pages”. The idea here is similar to a journal, but while a journal (useful in itself) can be used at anytime, a “Morning Page” is a notebook that you write in first thing in the morning–hence the name. Except for the “page” part, she stipulates that one needs to write three pages, everyday. What you put down in your notebook is not to be shared and can be in any form. This is not a dream journal or a diary, the goal here is a messy and ugly lump of creativity, a sort of mental diarrhea. Mrs. Cameron also instructs that these pages should not be read back immediately, so this technique maybe of little use for a student or other author under a deadline.
I am skeptical of recommendations by self-satisfied foofie, new-agey types propagating their techniques for success. I would never read their dribble. They only achieve success with books about how they achieved success writing books about achieving success. For suggestions by actual authors and their techniques, the book Writers Dreaming by Naomi Epel offers up some real world advice. The author leveraged her position as a literary escort to interview well known writers about their dreams and writing process. Crime novelist Elmore Leonard, legendary children’s author Maurice Sendak, and Oprah-show winner Gloria Naylor all use dreams as a ticket out of a block. Comic writer Art Spiegelman frequently relies on inspiration from his dreams to solve his blocks. He describes his difficulties during the writing of his Pulitzer prize-winning graphic novel, Maus, “There would just be the daily snag and the daily snag would have to wait overnight for me to come up with an answer.” (qtd. in Epel 245) But beware, chase the dragon’s tail too long and you can yet again find yourself in mortal danger. HBO filler and all around miserable loon, Spalding Grey admits to the frequent abuse of dreams in Naomi Epel’s Writers Dreaming and he recently added his name to the aforementioned list of the victims of creativity. Just another of the pitfalls.
I can’t rely on something as random as sleep to work for me in a pinch. This tactic assumes that one sleeps and dreams. For this reason, many artists cannot use dreaming to relieve the affliction of blockage. I am an insomniac and when I do sleep, I’m not doing much of anything outside of drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes during my half-day recovery, much less revisiting a dream that is surely some horrific Army flash back. Finally, I offer my own strategy to defeat writer’s block: Accept it as part of the creative process. Make yourself comfortable with it. Creativity is rarely perpetual. Don’t pump the well when the well is dry. Watch a movie, take a nap and if you’re still blocked, head for the pub.
Cheers!