Thursday Thinking

Today was less weepy than yesterday which is a good thing but it was also a thinking day. A fairly busy day. I took Lucky Luke to an appointment and entered the lair of the age challenged youth workers, visited two government departments, dropped the darling daughter off at her band practice, saxophone practice and an appointment. I was bitterly disappointed to have ti confirmed that the housing people are going to remove the perfectly healthy trees in my front yard because they MAY drop limbs at some stage and the neighbour doesn't own a tin foil hat to protect him from twigs. I am going to lose the shade, the sound of the wind in the leaves, the birds and the bats and saddest of all, the cicadas hibernating beneath the bark of both trees.

I also managed to do paint another piece of art for the 52 week challenge (Eyes)

 

There must be some weird stuff going on inside my head. I like the art of Guilliamo del Toro and the costumes of the cirque de soliel and of course I am a SF fan from way back so I expect they all had an influence on where this piece came from but I don't know exactly why it evolved today. I painted it with water colour and touched it up with gel pens and a little bit of copic marker.

It was a very beautiful day here in Warrnambool. Mostly sunny and a lovely temperature. The neighbour wants to put some sheep in my back yard to eat the grass. I told him he was welcome to do so as my lawn mowers wont be coming for three weeks. I am off to Kyabram for a funeral on Saturday and that has had me in a very thoughtful mood for several days and of course weepy yesterday. Leaves me thinking about how many times we don't say things we should until it is too late.

I wrote a small piece for the mid week blues buster and completed another chapter on my novel. I managed to burn the sausages for dinner though. I should never cook and create at the same time really.

here is my MWBB 2:11 which means it is the prompt for the second year it has been running and the 11th week. The prompt music is

Gary Numan - Here In The Black

302

Absence of light.

In the beginning the absence of light seems the most cruel of punishments.

Some die quickly, some cry out to earless Gods and some more hardy souls survive. For a while. They are unmade and all their hopes are lost, they fade, here in the black.

Up at the top of this city world the verdant foliage of the lungs of the world decorate the skyline and act as the alveoli of the planet, pumping oxygen into the stratosphere, glistening wet in the warmth of the sun, messing with the equilibrium but down here in the foetid bowels deep beneath the lowest layers of infrastructure there is only the black bleak darkness.

Down here is where the human detritus is sent to die. Down here other things lie, in wait.

A blind man would have more time to contemplate his crime and perhaps avoid the bleak future that awaits the fools and criminals sent below but no blindness now exists in the gleaming world above and those who end up here live out their short span of days or hours in perfect fear as what their eyes cannot perceive presses hard against the ear.

Breathe soft lest the things below hear your breath and come for you.

Here in the black.

What is out there who knows but it comes for me.

I hear the whispers, the slithers and groans.

I feel the chill seep into my bones. I want to hide but where could I go?

Here in the black there is nowhere.

I stumble

I kneel

For one stupid moment I pray to the earless heedless gods

Something brushes against my will, against my skin and stillness fills my very being seeping into every pore. The blackness oozes inside me, outside me and it comes and I am no more.

I don't regret That I was Thursday's child

Thursday's Child - David Bowie

 

 Thursday it is...

Today I manages a little art work with oil pastels and some playing with the digital paint program. It is week 19 - Fish in the 52 week challenge.

The top one has some enhancements through the digital program. I am a total newbie when it comes to digital art and very timid with the program. I think I need to find a course or two to find out how I can really make my art gleam in that medium.

The original is done with oil pastels on primed paper. I will need to do more fish before I am happy with the results.


A story a day. Day 8 a very interesting prompt today but you will have to wait for the end results because I am only part way through. So today I give you day 7's. :) 

Day 7 Writing Prompt from Becca Puglisi – Ending Line

Becca Puglisi is passionate about learning and sharing her knowledge with others. This is one of her reasons for writing The Emotion Thesaurus, The Positive Trait Thesaurus, and The Negative Trait Thesaurus. A member of SCBWI, she leads workshops at regional conferences, teaches webinars through WANA International, and can be found online at Writers Helping Writers (formerly known as The Bookshelf Muse).

May 7, 2014 by Julie Duffy

The Prompt

Write the story that accompanies this ending line:

I clicked off the safety, swearing that if she showed her face here today, my room would be the last one she ever entered.

We work in the factory. Her factory. Sixteen hour shifts with two ten minute breaks for the toilet and food. No more than four of us at any time through any exit. Guards, cameras, guns and shock sticks. Thousands of us work here. We don’t get paid, they tell us our families get the wages, we just get tired. If we are late to our station they punish us. If we don’t eat the meager rations they give us they punish us, if we don’t meet quota they punish us, if we get sick – we don’t get sick. She likes to mete out the punishment herself and makes it showy. She reminds us on huge screens that we would starve if not for her generosity and our families would starve and that we can only help our families by doing our best. We have to watch when she punishes one of us as an example. We don’t know where the bodies go.

Every day this same routine of  work interspersed with violence for some infraction, a never ending cycle with no end and no hope and her standing over all of us inflicting her cruelties.
There had to be some way to end the torment.

In repetitious tedium my mind wandered to a solution. Improbable, impossible maybe, a solution that would free us all is worth the risk. I allow only the barest attention for my job and the invisible watchers. I plan and I am patient.

I worked secretly building it one circuit at a time in stolen moments and stolen parts, under cover of her constant surveillance. Except it isn’t constant and I find the gaps.

I build it in the space under my work station. It has to be small to fit there but I can do it

The end of the shift we shuffle to our sleep mats. I share a room with seven others. We rarely talk. What is there to talk about? None of us have been outside since we arrived. I sign up for an extra shift once a week.

When it is ready I smuggle it to my room.

I clicked off the safety, swearing that if she showed her face here today, my room would be the last one she ever entered.  381

I am thoroughly enjoying these little prompts. I also need to do this weeks 500 words for the 38 week challenge. The theme is 'plucky' and I have had a few ideas but nothing solid enough to grab on to.

I am giving the Midweek Blues buster a break this week. Sometimes the songs do not do it for me.

I am having plenty of opportunities to read and write revisions this week. Once the week is over though I really need to make sure my word counts are through the roof as I finish off several novels I have begun especially one with the working title "Goldilocks and the Bear".

 It is well over the 60k mark and needs just a few more chapters to end it but I am having difficulty deciding how it will end. I have three possible scenarios playing around in my head, where they have been doing a slow dance for several years. It is time to pin one down and commit to it.  I am loving this novel. It started out as an idea chewed on over a hot cuppa with my cousin and grew over several years then last November during nanowrimo I put 50,000 words together. The research was so exciting. I learned so much about Australia in the 50s and 60s and how the growth of telephones and ownership of cars skyrocketed. I learned about travel by ship then luxurious aeroplanes and finally more modern transport which is faster but far less luxurious. I learned about work and pollution in London in the fifties and I had to research several jobs including one setting up road houses and petrol stations along the highways in Australia. I even learned when the first motel came into being and why motoring hotel was so quickly diminished to motel. Research is almost as much fun as writing the story. This novel is about two Australian women from two different generations in the same family walking the same path with very different outcomes.  

Zed vs Zee

"Zed!" I growled at my daughter "The letter is pronounced ZED we are not American, nor is this the 57th state of that particular country."  I was fuming. I had just read that yet another American based company had bought out yet another Australian company and was attempting to Americanize it, ZEDs and all so I was not in any mood to have my daughter and her friends singing with an American accent. The inevitability of blending everything in the world as we become a global nation rather than individual places has produced many a backlash against the bombardment of our own identity markers.

This is from Australain Geographic magazine's article on the top 100 Australian Icons. http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/history-culture/2010/11/australian-geographics-100-aussie-icons/

Australia is a nation with both a very old culture and a very young and very mixed population bringing with it all of their former homelands and so our cultural identity is something we are still discovering.   There was a lot of bad feeling between Australia and America during war times. At a ground level not in international political paperwork but in the face to face interactions between Australian and American military. Many a skirmish between them is recorded in various places due to inequity in wages, holidays and because the 'yanks' took all the local girls. Many a half yankee baby was born in the aftermath of the war. The local blokes resented that.  In a country such as Australia, post ww2, our identity had an abrupt shift. In the 60s we no longer wanted to identify as British and many people were ashamed and embarrassed by the way our leaders and predecessors from Europe had treated our indigenous people. Legislation began to change to recognise the legal standing of the Aboriginal people and the younger generations were beginning to say "I am Australian" and not 'run home to the mother country' as their parents and grandparents most likely did. Many young peoiple had never been anywhere near Europe and had no connection with it in their own minds and personal identity.
 The biggest problem for generations has been popular fiction. Most of our television content was and still is American. The children of the 70s and 80s grew up saying zee because they do on sesame street. The movies were predominantly American and the bombardment of advertising and merchandise was also American. The 90s saw a shift from this and we now have a higher Australian content of live children's shows but still the cartoons are all American.
It is only very recently that our Indigenous population and culture has begun to filter into the daily psyche of our people. The reality there is that every tiny thing we embrace halts the atrophy of this once great culture with its myriad of language groups and history. We have lost so much that can never be recalled but still it is an uphill battle against the might of the media that dictates our daily dose of pop culture.
Much of our Australian identity is myth rather than reality but it gives us a sentimental view of who we are and helps us to become what we really want to be which is not American. Just as I am sure my American friends would not want to be Australian, I do not want to be American. I would love to visit, I would love to see some of the things I learned about in movies and hear in song lyrics, I don't want to live there, I like it here.

"I Am Australian" is a popular Australian song that I love to sing. It was written in 1987 by Bruce Woodley of The Seekers(almost iconic folk band)  and Dobe Newton of The Bushwackers. Its lyrics are filled with many historic and cultural references, such as to the 'digger'(WWI soldiers), Albert Namatjira(indigenous artist) and Ned Kelly(bushranger/cult hero), among others. It is a terrific song for encompassing what we are trying to see as being Australian.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD3SkTyXzcE&feature=kp

My Island Home" is popularly believed to be a song about Australia. However, it was written by Neil Murray and originally performed by his Warumpi Band in reference to their lead singer's (George Burarrwanga) home up at Elcho Island off the coast of Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory as said by Neil Murray's Site

My children's book for the day is about that song. My Island Home by Neil Murray is illustrated by children from Papunya and Galiwinku, and with paintings by Peter Hudson. It contains the lyrics to the song, ‘My Island Home’, written by Neil Murray for his friend and fellow musician, George Burarrawanga when they were both members of the Warumpi Band.

I love the foreword in this so much I am  going to reproduce part of it here.

listen to the Christina Anu version here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2Lx_y-FyT0&feature=kp

 Identity is something many nations are fighting to maintain. Not just in Australia.

Foods identified with a particular place such as  Gorgonzola, Parmigiano-Reggiano, Melton Mowbray pork pies, Piave cheese, Asiago cheese, Camembert, Somerset Cider Brandy and Champagne can only be labelled with those names if they come from the designated region. To qualify as Roquefort, for example, cheese must be made from milk of a certain breed of sheep, and matured in the natural caves near the town of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon in the Aveyron region of France, where it is colonised by the fungus Penicillium roqueforti that grows in these caves. 
Three European Union schemes of geographical indications and traditional specialities, known as protected designation of origin (PDO), protected geographical indication (PGI), and traditional specialities guaranteed (TSG), promote and protect names of some agricultural products and foodstuffs. This was a vital move for people who were frightened of losing their identity to a larger global beige where all the local colour and flavour would blend into a dull nothingness.

How we identify ourselves is important to our sense of self and the way we deal with the world at large. I hope one day in my lifetime everyone will identify themselves first as human and secondly by their place of origin or chosen home. That might just turn us into rainbow people rather than beige. 

 Last day of blogging my book and camp nanowrimo. My tally sits at 27ooo + I have around 2400 words to go to hit the finish line for the month. I will have to write at least another 30,000 to finish this novel but it is off to a very good start. CampNaNoWriMo is a good practice run for the November challenge. Last year in April I wrote 57,000 words but I was not doing any other challenges and I was staying with a friend with NO Domestic duties. A real holiday that was. In November last year I wrote 104,000 words which became two novels. One complete and sent out into the world and one yet to finish but I plan on doing that next month.

It is also almost the end of RhyPiBoMo and I am happy to say I completed two picture book drafts in rhyme which are now with my critique groups. I also entered a writing competition and an illustration competition and submitted six stories to anthologies and six pieces of flash fiction to various places online. I kept up with the 52 week illustration challenge and we are now into week 18 which is themed Celestial Body. That should be fun to draw.

Thank you to everyone who came to visit my blog during the A to Z challenge. I certainly enjoyed visiting other people's blogs and finding out so many new and wonderful things.

So as Z is the end of the alphabet, the 30th is the end of April and  all things come to an end at some time,  I would like to remind myself that ends are usually beginnings on the other side of the door. 


Sending love to all my fellow humans out there.

L for Lacrimonious Lundi

although I am not extremely teary and weepy at all.

Love is the best L word I think and Lasagna, licorice, lollies, lick, lemons, lyrebird, lyrics and lace.

Lucy Lawless is apparently an L name for today and has been on the tongue (la langue) of everyone at Melbourne SupaNova pop culture convention.


Lots of lucious L words languish and are lost from our language and we should look them up in a lexicon so we can avail ourselves of such luxuries.
Here is a favourite L word that people keep trying to correct me on when I already use it correctly and they don't...

‘Laid’ or ‘lain’?

People are often perplexed about this group of words. The important thing to remember is that there are two quite separate verbs involved. 

Lay is the present tense of a verb whose basic meaning is ‘place something in a more or less horizontal position’, with the past tense and participle laid.

Lay is also the past tense of the verb lie (‘assume a horizontal or resting position’); while lain is the past participle.

So the proper use is:

	Lay	Lie
present tense	Please lay it on the floor.	Go and lie down.
past tense	She laid the book on the desk.	She went and lay down.
past participle	They had laid it on the floor.	The body had lain in the field for some time.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/laid-or-lain

 And my novel is still under construction. I am pretty sure I will have enough words to drive me crazy through the editing process by the end of the month. An easy 30k. I was reading up on showing not telling and realise I am getting better at it.

RhyPiBoMO: Since today is L day I thought I would share a Limerick. 

there once was a girl who loved music
though she could not rhythm or rhyme
so out of time  and tune did she clap
everyone said "please stop its such  'c--ap'"
so she made her living as an insurance salesperson 
  (it is supposed to be bad :S)

 today's lesson on RhPiBoMo was a pep talk about music and believing that we all can and should sing and no one is tone deaf is they can hear the difference between a tuba and a piccolo  or a cow mooing and a bird tweeting.  Then we were all encouraged to go and make our words 'sing'. I think mine are becoming more lyrical. I am certainly having some excellent responses to the work I am sending for critiques. I find when I try to force the story it falls flat but if I let it just flow out of me then the words flow too.

I read "We're going on a bear hunt" today and several other rhyming picture books and then listened to them on youtube. It was a delight to simply listen to the flow of a story being read out loud. Then I went and wrote a mini horror story. Which might seem a little incongruous but it is all about the writing and making the writing work. I cannot share it as I am sending it off to an anthology but it made my sister shudder in broad daylight so I think it works. :)

There was a little rhyming party this morning at 9am (6pm US time) and I missed it catching up on sleep from the night before that I missed so it was 11am when I finally dragged myself out into a beautiful sunshiny day. I washed the curtains to take advantage of this late Autumn sunshine and scrubbed the stove and sink and did lots of domestic things including making a fantastic chili con carne which isn't exactly an L word food. I served it with spiced wedges made from potato, carrot and pumpkin. Delicious.

Lundi by the way has a variety of meanings
in countries that are partially derived from Latin it meant day of the moon diēs(day) of the lunae (moon) lunae being a form of luna. and so Moon Day = Monday
In Old Norse it was a masculine noun lundi  and it means puffin so any languages derived in part from Old Norse have kept the word.
it could be argued then that today is Puffin Day. :)

No one won in this weeks Mid week Blues Buster. Not enough of us entering work but it is still a great opportunity to right tight and under 500(although I went WAY over limit).

My 38 week challenge piece seems to have favourable reviews this week

In the 52 week challenge there is a lot of encouragement going on to get the onlookers participating. Too many have expressed nervousness that their work is not good enough but it is such a lovely place to put art and all the people sharing are encouraging and kind and very supportive.

Alright then my L day is nearing the end. The sun is down, the house is settling. My curtains need to go back up on the window and my tea is getting cold so I will wish you all LOVE and kindness and hope your week ahead is wonderful.