Mel the Redcap

It's certainly not realism. I doubt it's art, either. But it's amusing me, and I'll take that. :D

http://melredcap.deviantart.com/art/Old-Cats-158581753

I have been reading Ursula Vernon's blog, as you may have noticed recently. She makes me snarf, and her art is gorgeous, often in a whoa-that's-odd-and-possibly-creepy-but-whoa sort of way that I love. Soooo anyway, she has the sort of blog where you decide you don't want to miss any of this attractively crazy stuff, and you go back in her archives and start reading from the beginning. At least, I do. And she talks about her art, and writing (the woman is a hilarious and frequently moving writer dammit!), and... well... she talks about the techniques she uses, and her philosophy seems to be roughly "Try stuff that sounds interesting, know you'll probably fail to start with, and you'll still fail sometimes even after lots of practice, but every attempt will teach you something!" She posted a little tutorial or two even, and...

I used to sketch. A little. A long time ago. I have an oil in storage somewhere that my aunt held my hand through painting, and I really wish I knew what happened to a frog I painted once when I was staying with her, because that was a damn good frog, y'know?

Plus, she writes. I write, heck, if you're reading my blog and you don't know that I'll be very surprised. She, however, is actually published multiple times over, and she made another point... people who say "I'd love to be (an artist / a published author) but (I don't have the time / I'm not good enough / I don't have the creative spark / I wouldn't know where to start / I don't have [insert fashionable mental quirk here])" need to stop making excuses, and either say "I don't want to put in the effort to GET good enough" or damn well sit down and start working on it.

I have all these half-finished things that I want to work on. And, hell, I'm still not employed, it's not like I don't have time...

And then Da Handsome Hubby sent me this link:

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/the-ebook-revolution-is-coming-to-a-screen-near-you-20100323-qtrh.html

...with the note, "You've got a little stockpile of stories and fanfics you've written that people have hassled you to keep churning out. What about self-publishing?"

Mel's brain: "Huh."

Lots of people have suggested similar things, though not normally backed up with helpful articles... but hey, when your husband who does not even read the sort of stuff you write genuinely thinks you have a shot at making something like that work, that is an opinion with weight.

And THEN, Scholastic, for no reason I could really work out, sent me this little flyer in the mail that basically said "Hey, buy any of these cool shiny tech toys using your student discount and we'll send you some extra shiny stuff!" I couldn't really care less about the extra shiny stuff, but some of the things on that flyer...

So. Add all this stuff up and what do you get? You get Mel going shopping. I have ordered MacSpeech Dictate (speech-to-text software) so that I can get my multiple notebooks of The Thing I Did For NaNoWriMo transcribed into an electronic file without my hands killing me. (I'm getting early-onset arthritis, dammit, curse my genetics.) I have bought a Wacom Bamboo tablet, which is simultaneously good and cheap (how the heck did they manage THAT?) and comes bundled with the baby-steps version of Corel Painter.

I am going to damn well sit down and start working on this.

I make no guarantees about productivity, or about producing anything I will be happy to let anyone else see/read. I only guarantee that I am going to try. 'Cause if I don't, reading Ursula Vernon's blog is going to forevermore make me wonder if I could've done something good.