Archive for the ‘Creativity’ Category

This is an attempt at a weekly summary post. But since it’s the first one, it’ll be a “recently” summary post. In the spirit of play and exploration and wtf-is-this-new-thing-ness.

Recently!

Writing

Wrote a short story on Sept 1! It’s right here. I wanted/planned to take part in StoryADay September, but dayjob+freelance workload proved pretty crushing, so I let that particular goal go in lieu of keeping myself sane.

I’ve also been rereading the first draft of Everything To Lose, my current WIP, and taking notes per chapter on major events so I can start the uber-revisions of Draft Two. I’m excited and terrified.

Arting

I doodled! A couple times! Of my alien symbiotes! (More precisely, a symbiotic pair of arboreal parasitic sapient cephalopod and herding proto-saurian flightless bird.) See:

Yes, they have pets. =3 The story link above also has a doodle of them, since it’s about them. And you can see alien cuddles here, too.

Worldbuilding

Been thinking a lot of the above symbiotes, their culture and how it’s derived from their physiology. A particular tidbit that made me smile is realizing that their oral narratives are almost exclusively in second person. They’re remarkably self-aware and mindful as a culture, and since all marketing is completely transparent and consciously understood for its symbolism and subconscious/psychological effects, they use the second person when telling stories because they’re quite literally wanting you to be in the story as the main character, feeling what that person feels and experiencing what that person experiences. Unintentional projection (psychologically and verbally) doesn’t happen when everyone understands what using the second person means on all levels and how it can affect the speaker and the listener both.

Languages

I realized that the Kalash script needs actual number symbols. Since it’s such an old-to-me, immature conlang (I was in high school, don’t judge), it’s basically an English cypher, and while I think there’s a more true-to-life form that’s phonetic, it’s not the one I use regularly and have memorized. So I might as well just pop in some symbols for Arabic numbers.

I’m also still working on the symbiotes’ language and thus wtf their species names are. I know the avian hosts are dĩ (pronounced dee(nh) – I’ll eventually learn and use APA symbols…), mostly because that’s kind of the noise they make and the tree-octopi named them when they were all younger as species and thus less, er, linguistically complex. But I don’t know what the tree-octopi are called yet, so I don’t know what the symbiotes’ species name as a whole is (it’s a compound word that doesn’t look compound). Argh! MUST KNOW. MUST. KNOW.

Musicking

(I am still very nervous to be at all public/noisy about my music. It’s so heart-deep to me, and I’m still so new to the crafting thereof, that I am pretty much abjectly terrified that someone will critique what I’m doing and I’ll wither. But, well, trying to work past that.)

I finally added chords to my printed songbook, which had previously just contained lyrics. I also played through/sang through a few songs I haven’t touched in a while. Man, I want to play guitar more. (Read: I want to be better, dammit.)

I also thought of doing a Kemetic filk version of the murder ballad Edward involving Set, Aset (Isis), and Wesir (Osiris). Iii am such a geek. :D

Upcoming

• I will finish my note-taking on Everything To Lose and begin The Great Outline!
• I will do a sigil painting for Mama J’s birthday later this month!
• I will do a very special Kemetic painting for my sister before the end of the month!
• I will attend FenCon and possibly get up the balls to sing in the after-hours filk circle!
• I will figure out the symbiotes’ freaking name!