Things and Stuff #3

Things and Stuff is a grab-bag of things that've been on my mind this week. In this edition: LARP, Karen, edits, belt, Trenzalore

Thing 1: Empire
Not the magazine, this time - the roleplaying game. Jessie is, right now, in a field pretending to be a lizard-person and I hope having a marvellous time. It's been on my mind this week because I've been making some props for her, part of which I wrote about on Tuesday.

My favourite one - also the most complicated one and the last one, which meant I finished it around 2am on Wednesday. I still feel sleep deprived. But kind of proud. (C) me

I love making props for LARP, and I enjoy talking about LARP and hearing other people talk about it and watching Jessie write plots for Odyssey. It all seems really fun. But when I actually think about carrying heavy rucksacks out into a muddy field, to put on complicated costumes that I then have to store somewhere in my house when it's already full of Jessie's kit, and then sleeping in a tent for the weekend in between attempting to stay in character and remembering the rules and actually talking to people... I feel a bit like this:

Neil Gaiman being truthy as usual, (C) Craig Ferguson and the internet

Thing 2: Karen from WP has her own Guardian fashion blog!
Karen's run an amazing sewing blog, Did You Make That, for ages, and now she's going to be giving out awesome stitching wisdom on the Guardian site as well. Hooray Karen!

Thing 3: Edits.
The edits are here. I am equal parts excited and scared out of my wits. As with most actual writing work there's not a lot else I can say about it right now but I'll keep you posted.

Me (C) the internet

Thing 4: my new white belt, although I mostly ended up talking about being fat - if you don't want to read about that, you can skip to thing 5, it's got a brilliant Doctor Who joke in it
As someone who's been fat for the majority of my life I am distinctly leery of ever talking about food or anything I may do with my body, up to and including things like going for a walk or buying clothes, because people feel entitled to judge people like me, no matter what we're doing. Eating a burger? Fatso. Eating a salad? Thank god she's on a diet, she's such a fatso. Lying on the sofa? You will die alone and have to be winched out of your house. Doing some exercise? Haha look at that delusional sweaty face, she thinks she's Jessica Ennis or something.

Nobody actually says those things to me - except me, all the time, every day forever. But nobody has to say them for me to want to minimise people's opportunity to think them. The culture I live in reinforces these things, and even if it didn't I learned it at school and it's stuck with me just like quadratic equations haven't. I wish I could say that in the decade since leaving school nobody has said mean things to me at all, but unfortunately that's not true - I still get mocked in the street, not regularly, but not never. And let's not forget this is the internet: for every body positive blog there are fifty Youtube comments and a hundred adverts for 'simple tricks' to turn your disgusting flabby body into something more socially acceptable.

I swear, if I could reach through the screen and punch the person who invented those adverts in the mouth, I absolutely would.

And I'd try to keep my wrist straight, push from my back foot so the power comes from my torso, and keep my elbow up. Because I've joined a local martial arts school. Because... I thought I would. They had to specially order me a uniform big enough, but I've got a belt. It's white. I love it. I've been to two classes and I really enjoyed them, so there.

Thing 5: We've gone to Trenzalore by mistake!

Perfect observation is perfect (C) ThetaSigma8

The Doctor Who finale was brilliant. I was so relieved.

My Creative Process

This weekend I learned that my creative process goes through a couple of identifiable stages, no matter what it is I'm creating.

For the first time in ages I sat down to do some drawings for other people to actually see. I've been making an in-character reference book for Jessie to take LARPing (live action roleplaying). And I decided - for some reason I'm still not 100% clear on - that it would be a good idea to fill it with illustrations, like a set of Tarot cards.

Symbolism! (C) The Rider Tarot

So, I'd decided to create something and had come up with a concept that was probably beyond my actual abilities. I was excited about it, but it was a bit of a leap of faith.

I am definitely not the worst artist who has ever lived. I'm definitely a better artist than I was when I was four, or ten, or fourteen. I think I've done something I can be proud of... but I'm also nervous about showing off and making a big noise about it, because I'm not exactly Rembrandt or Charles Vess or Julie Dillon or anything. I don't want anyone to think that I think that they're actually good. They're just... pleasantly OK! As an amateur, I'm proud of their not-terribleness!

This all sounds very familiar.

Oh my god, a person drew this. We are all not worthy to look upon the glory (C) Julie Dillon

I'd managed to do all but seven of the drawings in time for the first event at Easter. I'd done my level best, but only been able to submit the first two thirds on time. Unlike missing a publishing deadline, nobody was particularly annoyed about this apart from me. But like missing a publishing deadline, the world did not actually end. An unfinished product went out onto the field, and I felt simultaneously proud and worried people would judge it badly because I hadn't got it all done.

I got a new deadline: finish the last seven pictures in time to add them in before the next event. That was great. I'd done the first 19 in less time than that. I had loads and loads of time.

And then I procrastinated. In my spare time I watched three series of 30 Rock, cross-stitched Game of Thrones bookmarks, played Plants vs Zombies, stared out of the window, and even did a little bit of writing. Every so often Jessie would remind me that I needed to do it, and I'd feel ashamed for not doing it, and then I'd get resentful, and that would make me not want to work on it.

It was around this point that I realised I was not drawing in the exact same way as I don't write.

Eventually, enough time passed that I started to wonder if I even could do it any more. What if I'd only been able to draw as well as I had last time because I spent ages working up to it? What if I now had a week to do seven pictures - still plenty of time - but I'd completely lost the ability?

Finally, this weekend rolled round and I couldn't put it off any more. I had to put pencil to paper. I discovered I'd left myself seven of the hardest pictures to get right. I had a mini crisis over what clothes do and how to hands, but eventually it all came down to doing it: nothing was going to solve my problems until I actually put something down on paper.

And here's one of the results. See? I told you they were pleasantly, almost aggressively OK. (C) me

It's really interesting, identifying your own creative process - with all its hang-ups and flaws and staring out the window - through the medium of a different medium.

In order for there to be a drawing, I had to draw it. And that's the same advice writers have been giving each other since the dawn of time: if you want there to be writing, you have to do writing. Everything else comes later.