maybe it's three cups of coffee, maybe its maybelline

Lately I keep coming back home in 40 minutes. 40 fucking minutes of me left alone with a mindfuck. I know it's not any first time kind of experience, blame damn Cracovian streets, but sometimes I think too much and it is hard trying to shut up all the ideas in my head. As Winona Ryder said, "If it fucking existed I'd thought of that."

I don't wanna sound like some freaking drama queen, though, being stuck in the last bus I thought, gosh, maybe I am actually a lucky person. I mean, usually Lady Irony of Life do not touch me, rather pokes me but it's not like a slap in a face. Usually not. So, in between of one kid in a baby carriage crying and a mother trying to make him wearing a hat, I thought, "Yeah, maybe I could be wrong with my ideas, but how is that even possible when they represent what I experienced at the moment of presenting them?" I already got tired of getting angry,so I shall sum up the talk I had lately with a meme.

Another 40 minutes, somehow almost always decorated with crying babies in the background, I've spent on the thing that I guess most of my friends experience in the buses, that is thinking about stories. Maybe it's a little bit like this quote I've found on tumblr lately that the mind is addicted to telling stories. If that's the case mine should get a detox long ago.

Anyway, I got rly involved in this one particular project I am working on and~ well, let's say, the problem is not the way I imagine the ending but the way I cannot think of a continuation. Of course, my pinata brain gives me a bunch of possibilities for the themes and problems, but what with the main charas? Should I change their background or what? It's not like I cannot start writing without a cont in my mind but I wish it could cover at least one more story. (I have three covers, they deserve at least some text :P).

Food! Yes that's what gets somewhere in between all those storm of ideas. That's interesting, now when I think of it, I never thought about my charas' fav food - I mean it's not the most important thing, but, ha!

Lately I have a good flow in the kitchen. Food planning gets quite important when you don't have much time for cooking during the day :P. Therefore, from time to time, my minds is traveling over the kitchen. Sometimes I think it's the only place when you cannot allow your thoughts getting you mindfucked, because it's too easy to screw sth up then. So, when I already get to the kitchen, magic happens, hoho. Sadly, mostly the vegetarian magic, but I'm proud of my latest invention. Just look at this awesome pepper-pumpkin soup with tamagoyaki and a bread roll with shallot-garlic butter! Perfection obtained makes the mind find its ease.

wake me up cont.

This note shall come as a kind of a follow up for the previous note that I wrote here. I made this statement that all in all when it comes to writing the most important is "not to stop". But I feel I haven't give it enough attention or explanation so here comes another piece on what does it mean "not to stop writing" and why it matters.

I don't remember when the idea for creative writing circle appeared in my and my listeners collective mind. Probably from the common need to break the back of an old uncle art-block. I guess every single one of us found himself or herself in this infamous state? So you basically know what I am talking about here: blank pages, wall-stares, a deep and confusing sea of absolutely nothing. The thing we've done was to bring some change in  most obvious ways, like writing a story that would contain this and that or write a scene that may happen in such and such place. Basically, the original goal was to start writing again.

The only problem with this approach is, do we really need to start over again or is it about not to allow yourself to stop? When one is stuck in an art-block, one of the pieces of advice they may hear is to re-read what they've already written.  Personally, I always had a little problem with this idea, because it usually makes me wandering around the same blind alley but on the opposite side of the writing town. First of all, it makes me question too many things that aren't really important, like "Why did I stop?" or "Where did I stop?"  and the king of such, "Who does it make me?"

In Polish we have this very pretty word for writers that is "pisarz" or "pisarka", if it's about women. I have to say, it sounds very professional and serious. Like, when I think about who is a "pisarz" I always see big names like King or Atwood, so generally well-known people with a lot of fans and place in literary critique lectures, giving speeches at pop-culture conventions etc. The point is, I seriously cannot get myself into telling my friends or family that what I am doing in most of my time is being a "pisarz," but I am 100% sure of being a writer*. It really grind my gears when I see my creative writing circle, getting really well, doing a good job on their first steps in fan fiction, or whatever they are working on, and still saying things like "I dream about being a writer someday", because, obviously if you write, you are a writer, since that's what writers do.

I think the problem is that it takes a lot to realize this fact. And here we are back to the basic question. If you are in art block, but still you are a writer, does it mean that you have ever stopped writing? In my house there's probably still a very profound set of papers to be found that is associated with my writing. When I was in high school my school published my own poetry book. When I was in middle school my poems got published in some popular magazine for teens, well, back when it was still about something more than celebrities and fashion. When I was in primary school I was writing my own stories and even reading them to other children when it was after the classes. Heck yeah, when I was even younger I was writing my own stage plays and staging short plays for my parents with my sis (they were really written down, with pictures). So the thing is, I guess if you are very much in it, you never stop. Call it a pause or some silent days between you and your keyboard, whatever. You do not stop, because you are not physically and mentally able to do so.

And here we are - if you need some words of encouragement, I cannot think of anything better to say. Do not stop. Do not think about beginning some writing, whatever it is, a fanfic, a first attempt to write a play or a comic script, do not see it as a "start," because every start needs an end. Place it somewhere close to a ring after and intermission in the theater. It makes the whole experience much easier, and one's head much lighter of any problems with right labels.






* At least my alter-ego is

* You know, this entry got really sponsored by Alexander Castle being glad he didn't die today and new coffee. 

i need coffee, now.

I found myself getting stressed when there is too little caffeine in my blood, you know. Initially I thought, well, maybe it's about studies/work/shithesis but, nah. I'm pretty sure the problem lies in lack of caffeine.Scientifically, the most caffeine one may find in tea, but even though I drink a sea of tea daily *IT RHYMES* I feel like I lack this one, very specific type of caffeine from coffee. Everything due to the intended detox caused by our coffee getting stale. I really need to buy a new pack soon.

Lately I read that when it comes to getting ideas, having a beer is actually much better than drinking coffee. What are the chances? Does it mean I should get some lager soon? I guess it does.

Anyway, at last I've challenged myself to write a sketch for a crime story. I am so proud of myself, there is everything I wanted to contain in a quite simple way. Now I need to divide the whole into chapters and start writing. I hope I will get myself in at least a few hours of pure writing weekly - my big goal is to find at least 7h a week - I know it's no good to keep writing that strict but I have a serious organization shit going on.

Yeah, yeah, one may ask, what the hell do I spend the day on when I have only two days of studies and working in the afternoon? Well, I still do the radio hosting, even though it goes on mornings it's rather engaging. Also homeworks need someone to check them etc. On the top of that I need time to get my hands into the shithesis (I really like this word) and sometimes I just want to get an hour or two to watch my TV show or play Bioshock Infinite. 

Btw, OMG I've seen the latest DLC trailer lately and it's AWESOME. Gosh, I adore this game so much, I've already miss it, even though I've still haven't finished the gameplay.

  I guess the truth is I'm gonna miss Booker's voice the most :P.

wake me up

I wonder if there will be any good of this entry, because I have a cold and I took my medicines, a bigger dose than usual, so I feel a little high :P. Though, call it a sudden urge to write driven by idk maybe an actual need to fill a lot of documents or to concentrate on serious writing (neh, thesis shemsis). Anyway, let me tell you one thing about writing that got stuck in my mind today.

The truth is that the most important factor, and probably the hardest one to maintain, is not to start writing. It's not to stop.

We all love life-experience examples (right~) so let me use one to help me illustrate the thing. Back in my days at teachers' college I was made to write a tone of dull stuff, like diaries, documents, lesson plans, essays and so on, and so forth. After some time of course, it got less intensive, but it doesn't mean that it got less meaningful. I'm pretty sure that you know what I mean if you do any daily writing, not only the creative kind.

So the truth is, if writing continues, whatever the form is, it's still pretty addictive. Hell knows, maybe by filling another set of documents I'm gonna get one more bright idea about it? (keeps fingers crossed for the exams time, always the most creative season LOL).

On the other news, how the hell did I got cold? Maybe it's the weather, probably under 0*C at night lately; maybe it's the stress of coming back to uni; most probably it's because of teaching job; also I guess it's since we went to FMF festival and it was very cold there (and a tone of people).

At least we celebrated it with this pretty very late dinner (as a proper fannibal I appriciate a good snack as a finishing touch even more). It's zucchini tempura served with eggs and a warm dark beer w/currant jam.

kinara

So I had my daily writing limit today (I guess so) but since it's a day of misogynist shit today I shall not go to bed yet.

Here's the list of things I'm tired of today: I am tired of some men still believing we are living in some kind of 18th C without women being able to go to space or being presidents. Today I've 'learnt' that the whole matter of our poor existence is look and still it's way too low in according to "high" standards of some people. I am tired of some men believing that it's them who have the right to tell things without a proper support for their words, but it's not appropriate for women to do the same.  I've also learnt that when you make something labeled "a girl thing" there are many more guys interested in this than girls and this is not even noisy, it's just weird.

I've also learnt that Moffat is a douche bag but let me introduce you to a post here for further reading.

Here I will pause my feminist rant, but only because I want to leave some for: a) my other blog and write about a movie I've watched with Otai and my personal Will last weekend, and b) writing some mysterious thesis. It's hard to write but it's still fun and brings me to the conclusion that I should finally start planning my MS paper...

Someday, someday. I still believe it's gonna be one of a few MS papers about feminism.

On the other news, I've finished my painting last week!

best way to spend the heat ever

It took me a whole afternoon to paint such a small thing but it was worth it! It looks amazing! I hope I could find a right frame for this :P. Still, ppl find it pretty so I may even did fine with this one, yay! Now I was asked to paint a nightmare stag but I still have some things to write left, so it will have to wait till at least next weekend.

On the other news, since Otai got her comic book published I bought one and I'm still excited about this.

even got an autograph, fufufu

It's pretty and I am so proud of her. I told my beautiful parents that it's some kind of romance but I don't think they found it that interesting to actually read the thing. Or maybe they did but I haven't noticed hmm. That's also a possibility.

Actually I am getting well on social interaction lately, hahah. My inner introvert still takes pleasure in spending afternoons on sole reading but I even got friendly with some fellow fannibal lately and look what she did when I told her about my cats (btw, her cat is super cute though he's like 15). Need to invite her for dinner someday.

to empower is to write

I want to say, I'm not the most artistic-crafty type of person, but every year comes the time at which I just feel a burning need to get myself dirty with paint, gum crumbs and lead. This time has come, and I have no idea what I'm doing. 

At first I thought, hey, I really like peacock feathers. We even have one in the living room (original, got from some Indonesian guys). I should draw it. I grabbed a pencil and drew it. I looked at my drawing and got an idea to make it a painting, but hell, I have no idea how to color such a feather. 

I took a photo of my drawing, put it in Fresh Paint, opened some photos of feathers and tried to full my sketch with colors.

And now I'm left with this "almost a reasonable piece of art" and that - I found some hard paper, cut it and sketched the feather:

I'm pretty sure it will be nothing like the digital idea, but do I look like I care?

I guess I will finish it off tomorrow. I need to find my water colors, and maybe change the place, since there's hardly any fresh air in this room, especially when the time of the heat wave came.

Yes, it got hot, at last! I mean, srsly, it's July, how could it even get under 10*C at night?! I know the weather tends to be a whimsical thing but for Thor's sake - I want to get tanned and a little dehydrated, dreaming of an evening gentle wind. 

Summer yeah!

Yeah! With this weather I can do whatever for the whole day. Like watching Comic Con Nerd HQ Panels. So far I've seen the one with Fillion&Tudyk team - they are both amazingly hilarious and keep getting weird funny ideas all the time. I've also started watching the one with Hiddleston (haven't finished yet) and I'm planning to watch the panel with Sherlock staff and of course Hannibal producers. I love 21. C - I can just click play and see what happened only few hours ago (or rather few days, since I guess all the vids were uploaded on 21st?). I still would appreciate some live streaming, like it was with E3, but maybe they had one and I didn't know about it. Anyway, Thor bless Nerd HQ.

The other thing that I do daily is reading, of course. Since I feel deeply involved in HeAteUs, I've started reading the Hannibal series so far and omg you don't even want to know what Harris does to my imagination! A lot, needles to say, a lot! Red Dragon was awesome, absolutely astonishing - I loved all about that book, the tempo, the characters, perspective, plot twists and playing on my feelings. Then I took a dive into Silence of The Lambs and even though I heard my friend saying that this book is rather different than the previous one I still have so much feelings about Silence than I could imagine. So far I may say, the main plot was so intense and I've enjoyed seeing Dr. Lecter as a more active character. Also, it touched me so bad I still can't process my feelings steadily :P.

This is me reading Tomas Harris

 On the other news, seems I will have to go to Cracow for some time next week but I got an offer of giving a panel about food for the nearest anime con there so I guess I will have to go there some more often soon. I liked this panel so it should be fine, though I wanted to make the text public on my radio blog, but owh well, it will wait. Still I wonder if I'm still on the flow with taking anime cons etc Whatever that means - it sounded better in my head.

So far, going back to writing and stuff.

all you need

An inviting sound of wooden beams cracking under my feet and astonishing lights of the stars above me when I lay my tired head on a linden-smelling pillow may mean only one thing - I am finally home! On Monday I've finally got all my signs in the index book, so I could pack up and go home. Fuck yeah.

Now, it all sounds very poetic - even the linden, but the truth is there are still bills to pay, roommates to find, things to do etc. and the fuckin' linden imprecates an uncountable mass of bees and other little buzzing shit right in front of my room and inside. That means, during a day I practically do not have a room and in the evening I need to transform into a mosquito hunter.

Therefore, I began with implementing my holy mission of reading everything I want daily. Yesterday we've visited my auntie and I kind of got fused with lit. Just look at it.

books + ice coffee = otp

And I don't even mention all those ebooks I still keep on my hard drive :P. Also, the weather is just perfect. The only thing I need to do is finding a shady place like living room, sit and get sunk for a few hours. I feel like I've really needed it.

Of course, reading is not my only entertainment now. I've recently started playing some games. I especially liked Remember Me, because it's all about omg so much fancy technology and I don't even mind that it's quite linear. The plot is fine, gameplay is very intuitive, bosses are all badass and NeoParis looks interesting. Also, the OST - OMG, the soundtrack is simply amazing! All the tracks are so cool.

I've even bought myself a gaming pad, since I was getting crazy while trying to play Tomb Raider - at last, after a few days of playing AC I've fully learnt how to use it. Though, I have a feeling it misses some kind of a joystick or sth since it's not that easy to operate a camera without the mouse and, on addition to that, when you cannot make the camera automatic. (to my surprise, in AC there's no such option!)

I also started writing, right, though I find it hard to concentrate when there is always something to do around the house :P. I just keep telling myself to stop procrastinating and "Why do you care, you are not Shakespeare anyway so it won't hurt to write".

As for now: me-0 procrastination-1.   (even though I've almost finished writing my presentation for next week anime con: still, haven't finished=doesn't count)

always do what you're afraid to do

While keeping this beautiful sentence in mind I decided to write a script. Yes, I know it's hard. Yes, I know I haven't had any creative writing classes in screenplay writing. And you know what? I-don't-care. Also, I am fully aware of a fact that I already have a great and lovely draft made by me&pućka just by my hand and it should probably be taken into consideration if I want to write anything. Though, I just have this strong feeling that my idea has to be written down. Also, there are so many lame ideas in this one that I rly should not be afraid that much. It is no serious deal anyway, just writing for fun.

Anyway, I do not want to spoil it much, but I am glad that I managed to create some nice characters for this - and I'm pretty impressed that I constructed the whole story while 2h long bus drive. Actually the more I think about a fabulous talk I had w/one of my friends lately about building heroines the more happy I am (that I did not screw it. At least I believe so). So, since this idea of a script came to me I am having hard days reading all the possible sources about script-writing - I also found some page w/popular scripts and drafts (and it is even more fun then reading about writing).

 At this particular moment I am working on dividing the whole story into scenes - it is very tricky but I read that a good way in which one may cope with that is to write them on small stick notes. That's a lot of work and it started to remain a police whiteboard, I mean like one of those they have on Castle.

Speaking about Castle:

I am SO happy that I found this book in a bookstore! And it's even in Polish! Now I can give it to my mom and auntie to read~. I have to write the translator a nice letter and boast her ego a little bit, so the rest of the series will soon come to the store's shelves. I did read this one already, but I enjoyed it so much I will definitely read it now, since I have some spare time.

Yup, I'm home for the long weekend already. Though it's not all doing nothing of course. I have some plans and I try to stick to them, like cleaning, helping around the house and cooking (omg today I made some chicken w/carrots and it was SO GOOD. I could have write the recipe down. Damn it.) Although, it did not bring any obstacles to sweet wasting my whole afternoon on walks around the house and playing with cats. I can't help it, they are so cute.

And for a fabulous closing, a song that can't go off my mind lately

za dużo pomysłów, za mało rąk do pisania

Muszę powiedzieć jedną rzecz o pisaniu - jest strasznie wredną formą sztuki, bo tak jak pisałam w poprzedniej notce, jednocześnie pozwala się odprężyć, ale też zabiera nam cenne produktywne godziny, zasypując toną roszczeń wobec tego co już powstało, albo zupełnie bez ostrzeżeń rzucając pod palce najfajniejsze pomysły do spisania. Tak też było tym razem. 

Przyjechałam sobie do domu na weekend, spokój, ciepło, fryzjer. Słowem, utopia i warunki idealne do skończenia referatu. Bum! Nie ma pisania konstruktywnych rzeczy, bo przecież mam taką fajną historię do spisania, której dwa inicjatory leżą w pudełku pod  stertą papierów. Przez to wywróciła mi się: a) koncepcja pisania referatu (w skrócie: napiszę go w dwa dni, bo tak, wena ważniejsza) b) koncepcja napisania czegoś na Nanowrimo. 

Naprawdę cieszy mnie to pisanie dla pisania przez cały miesiąc, zostałam więc z dwiema świetnymi fabułami, z których jedna kwitnie mi jak kaktus w środku listopada, a druga... musi doczekać się chociaż krótkiego opowiadania, bo za bardzo polubiłam stworzone postaci.. albo inaczej, za bardzo polubiłam koncept tego, że i tak muszą zginąć. To znaczy, nie zginą tak od razu, ale będzie ciekawie. 

Szkoda, że już muszę wracać do Krk, bo kto mi będzie grzał kolana teraz? Panda zrobił się w tym mistrzem. Na zdjęciu udając chleb...

A tak go znalazłam wieczorem...

Podsumowując, pisanie wciągnęło mnie bardzo, bardzo, więc mam nadzieję, że jednak uda mi się od niego odciągnąć na najbliższych parę dni, a tym czasem idę załamywać moim bohaterom systemy wartości. Co za zabawa!