Tumblr, and creativity
Aug. 15th, 2018 07:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
missroseroseAfter years of assiduously avoiding it (not out of any prejudice, just, I already felt like I spent enough time on social media), I've finally started using Tumblr. I'm still figuring out the interface (hot tips welcome!), and I'm kind of amused that I've apparently started using it just in time for a good chunk of the userbase to get fed up and start actively looking for other options, but so it goes.
I don't know if anyone here's on Tumblr, but if you want to follow me, I'd love to have you. Fair warning, though, I'm basically using it as an idea board for various creative endeavors, so you can expect to see a lot of The Lost Boys content on there for the foreseeable future. Though possibly also some more general writing- and music-related stuff, too...
As for my many and varied creative endeavors, they're continuing. I've been keeping up guitar practice more consistently than I have at any time since coming to Chicago. I'm about 25K words into the Giant Fanfic Project of Doom, which feels like Not Very Much given how long I've been plugging away at it (life has a tendency to get in the way), but at the same time it's more than I've ever done on any non-NaNo project and it feels more coherent than any of my NaNo projects, so I'm pleased overall. I'm also, now, revising a 4K word side story that might also be a birthday/thank-you/I-really-like-you present for Sky, my writer-friend. It takes place in the same universe as the main story and informs some of the events, so I'm calling it background development and totally not a distraction, heh. Plus, it's given me the opportunity to play around with a more lyrical voice; I went to see a couple of truly amazing author friends read at a fiction salon when they were in town and came away inspired, even if I'm light-years away from their level. I also have an invite from the folks running the salon to come back each month, which I may well do—they have open mic slots after their featured readers, and more than one person there told me how helpful it was with motivation to have that community expecting something new. Which sounds very much like what I need to keep going consistently...though regular attendance may need to wait for after teacher training.
Related, I've been coming to terms with the fact that my spare time in my current life is much more limited than it used to be. In a lot of ways, that's a net positive—I find I'm much more focused when I have something I want to accomplish in a small amount of time, rather than finding the days stretching before me with plenty of time to faff about on Facebook or what have you. But it also means that the number of plates I can spin at once is...limited. Last week Brian was out of town, and after several days on a creative binge doing very little but working and writing and playing guitar, I was beginning to feel a little depressed. I spent some time folding laundry and listening to a Billy Joel record, and when I flipped it over, "Vienna" came on, and man, I swear it was like Billy was singing straight to my soul. "Dream on, but don't imagine they'll all come true..." I was legit crying.
There's something about creativity that's more than a bit druglike. From the outside, it's more than a little puzzling, but the more you do it, the more you want to do, and the more frustrated you get with your limitations. (Or I do, anyway.) As I was saying to Sky, it's a good thing I have a partner who's willing to say "hey, I need you to clean the kitchen and run these errands that're piling up"...otherwise I'd probably turn into one of those Parisian expatriate authors who lives in a garret and spends weeks subsisting on absinthe and cocaine and the occasional croissant from the coffeeshop downstairs, heh. (Which would probably have me in a blood sugar coma within a couple of days, so, best that I don't!) So I'm working on life balance, too...which is probably going to be a lifetime's work.
I don't know if anyone here's on Tumblr, but if you want to follow me, I'd love to have you. Fair warning, though, I'm basically using it as an idea board for various creative endeavors, so you can expect to see a lot of The Lost Boys content on there for the foreseeable future. Though possibly also some more general writing- and music-related stuff, too...
As for my many and varied creative endeavors, they're continuing. I've been keeping up guitar practice more consistently than I have at any time since coming to Chicago. I'm about 25K words into the Giant Fanfic Project of Doom, which feels like Not Very Much given how long I've been plugging away at it (life has a tendency to get in the way), but at the same time it's more than I've ever done on any non-NaNo project and it feels more coherent than any of my NaNo projects, so I'm pleased overall. I'm also, now, revising a 4K word side story that might also be a birthday/thank-you/I-really-like-you present for Sky, my writer-friend. It takes place in the same universe as the main story and informs some of the events, so I'm calling it background development and totally not a distraction, heh. Plus, it's given me the opportunity to play around with a more lyrical voice; I went to see a couple of truly amazing author friends read at a fiction salon when they were in town and came away inspired, even if I'm light-years away from their level. I also have an invite from the folks running the salon to come back each month, which I may well do—they have open mic slots after their featured readers, and more than one person there told me how helpful it was with motivation to have that community expecting something new. Which sounds very much like what I need to keep going consistently...though regular attendance may need to wait for after teacher training.
Related, I've been coming to terms with the fact that my spare time in my current life is much more limited than it used to be. In a lot of ways, that's a net positive—I find I'm much more focused when I have something I want to accomplish in a small amount of time, rather than finding the days stretching before me with plenty of time to faff about on Facebook or what have you. But it also means that the number of plates I can spin at once is...limited. Last week Brian was out of town, and after several days on a creative binge doing very little but working and writing and playing guitar, I was beginning to feel a little depressed. I spent some time folding laundry and listening to a Billy Joel record, and when I flipped it over, "Vienna" came on, and man, I swear it was like Billy was singing straight to my soul. "Dream on, but don't imagine they'll all come true..." I was legit crying.
There's something about creativity that's more than a bit druglike. From the outside, it's more than a little puzzling, but the more you do it, the more you want to do, and the more frustrated you get with your limitations. (Or I do, anyway.) As I was saying to Sky, it's a good thing I have a partner who's willing to say "hey, I need you to clean the kitchen and run these errands that're piling up"...otherwise I'd probably turn into one of those Parisian expatriate authors who lives in a garret and spends weeks subsisting on absinthe and cocaine and the occasional croissant from the coffeeshop downstairs, heh. (Which would probably have me in a blood sugar coma within a couple of days, so, best that I don't!) So I'm working on life balance, too...which is probably going to be a lifetime's work.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-15 02:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-08-16 01:59 am (UTC)That's good advice, thanks!
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Date: 2018-08-15 06:01 pm (UTC)Yeah; I find that I prefer having to slide creativity into spare blocks of time than having it be the primary thing I'm trying to do. Sometimes I feel like my whole adult life has been arranged to keep people off my back, and nothing keeps people off your back like having work you have to do. Whereas, people feel quite free to make demands on your time if you're doing something creative. But if I only have a few hours to do the creative thing, I feel justified in guarding it against demands....
no subject
Date: 2018-08-16 02:03 am (UTC)