projects

Script Frenzy and other projects

June 2, 2007 by Susanne 25 Comments

I promise to write the next installment of “How to be creative when you don’t have the time” soon. Seriously. As soon as I have finished reading all of the hundreds of blogs I like to read and as soon as I have written my script.

“What?”, you say. Or maybe “WHAT?” What is she doing now? Well, when she read that there would be a NaNoWriMo-like event in June called Script Frenzy she, that is to say I, decided to use that as a chance to complete the movie script I had started writing in 1992. Back then I chose to finish my master’s thesis and continue writing a script afterwards. And then it never happened. And I really don’t know why it should since I’m not that much into film and won’t submit it anywhere. It’s just that it was a good idea and I’d like to see how it turns out.

Which is quite optimistic considering that I still haven’t had the heart to read the novel I wrote in November. I printed it out, though, and re-read page one. Then I thought to myself, “This is really crappy.”, labeled a new file with “NANOWRIMO-NOVEL”, put the manuscript in there and decided to read it in August. 2007. Maybe. If I have the time.

With the script I was quite good yesterday, I sat down in the kitchen with my laptop, without wireless, and wrote 1,125 words. This time there won’t be UFOs but witchcraft. And drumming women. And ethnologists. Of course it’s set in Germany. Oh, and it’s supposed to be a thriller. Right now it feels quite boring to me but then I have yet to write something outside this blog that holds my interest. I suspect that this is the same phenomenon as with my late dissertation. In the end I found it completely boring because I had spent so much time with those same ideas. Each time I told somebody about it though they seemed to be genuinely interested. On the other hand maybe I have a distinctly boring writing style when writing fiction (or dissertations). I’ll have to think about this some more because I’m never bored with the short, short pieces of fiction I write as a homework for my writer’s group. I don’t think they’re well written either but then I can’t expect that much when I always write them on the train on my way to the meeting. (That’s about 20 minutes of time.)

So while I don’t like to work under pressure I do quite well with time constraints. Deadlines. And I’ll be writing another 1,000 words on that script today. Somehow.

The only thing that can hinder me will be very sunny and dry weather during the next week. Because then I will be painting the porch, balcony and some windows. I don’t mind the painting that much but I really dislike having to work on a ladder and, um, there I had to go and look up a word, what I meant to say was “Schwingschleifer”. Probably a sander. Anyway, it’s one of those electrical thingies to grind paint from wood. It doesn’t seem to be heavy until you have wielded it for hours at improbable angles. And then you have to get your sandpaper and try to sand all the nooks and crannies. Afterwards you stand in the heat, wield your paintbrush inhaling paint fumes… I’m so looking forward to this. Not. So that’s project #1. Apart from the script.
(Here I have to add that though this reads as if I were painting and sanding the porch single-handedly, in real life – which is much less dramatic than blog-life – my poor and long-suffering husband will be the one doing most of the work while I will meekly wave a tiny paintbrush around and say, “I’m hot. I’m tired. I don’t want to do this. I have to have a break. Shall I bring you something from the kitchen?” Then I’ll vanish inside to emerge about an hour later saying, “Wow. You sure did a good job. Can I help?” (Yes, I know that I’m prone to exaggeration, thank you.)

Project #2 I won’t have to do myself. We’re getting a wood stove for our son’s room. Yesterday somebody re-opened the chimney and made everything ready and on Monday the stove will be installed. You might ask why we install a stove in our son’s bedroom. Well, this once was our living room and it will be again sometime in this century. And it already had a chimney which was sealed up when we installed the new gas heating.

Project #3 is a project in waiting. After sewing my grocery bag some weeks ago I got bitten by the bag sewing bug and so I’m planning to sew a bag for my yoga mat using the free Amy Butler sewing pattern. This will be the test to see if I should ask for a new sewing machine for my birthday. Will my renewed enthusiasm for crafting continue or not? So far I have visited two fabrics stores and then decided to use some leftover fabric from curtains for the exterior bag and bought some cheap fabric for the lining.

fabric on yoga mat
(in real life the fabrics match because the red is brown-ish and not pink-ish)

Of course I do need a bag for my yoga mat which travels all the way from the right side of my computer desk to the front side of my computer desk about once a week. But it will be nice to install a hook on the wall and have it hung up instead of falling over every time I need a book or an exercise DVD from one of the lower bookshelves. And one really doesn’t need a big reason for a new bag anyway.

Project #4 has been an ongoing project for some time now, I’m knitting a woolen cardigan. This I do because I couldn’t find something pretty, or even wooly at all, and it makes my almost daily “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer” sessions seem more productive. Also I found that my tolerance for family gatherings and such vastly improves when I can take my knitting with me.

chocolate-y cardigan
(yes, I’m worried that it looks so small too)

One could say that the watching of all episodes of “Buffy” in chronological order might be a project too. So far I have less than ten episodes to watch. And then I’ll start to watch all of “Angel” in chronological order. Which will take another six months at least.

To close this rambling post I’ll point you towards the just post roundtable again. You have until June, 7th to nominate post or submit one of your own. If you don’t know anything about it just click on the button below.

Blog Party! Blog Party!

May 10, 2007 by Susanne 6 Comments

I know it’s only Thursday, but since Thursday’s the new Friday and since we can have a party whenever we want (even wearing pajamas and no make-up) I’d like to make this party-time. So, imagine decorations, champagne, paper hats if you’re so inclined, and delicious food of course.

I’m inviting you first, to have a look at the Just Post-roundtable:

As every month, Jen and Mad sent out for posts about social justice. And they’re well worth the read.

But the main topic of this gathering is the unveiling of a brand new blog. A brand new type of blog at that. Interested?

See, after all this talk about blogging and bloggers and such in my house, my husband got interested and started reading. And then he thought, “Why don’t I do something like that?” and so he started his first blog. It is a new type of blog because it is a music blog. A mlog one could say. Every week or so he records something and then posts it on his blog. With beautiful pictures. Sometimes there even are words. He isn’t posting songs though, he is posting improvisations. Just him and an electric guitar, no overdubs, only occasionally a little cutting. He tries to play in the state of flow so they have a meditative aspect, but they’re not often sounding meditative. Or what one thinks of as meditative.

I told you that he had abandoned the thought of making a new CD for now, even though he has spent about two years in preparation for it. Getting the sounds and the equipment, which for electric guitar is inextricably linked, just right. But making CDs on top of everything else, as a “hobby” so to say (as much as I despise that word when used in relation to making music) is a little too much. So I’m very, very happy to announce it here. I hope you hop over and listen to what he plays. For months now I’ve only heard these beautiful improvisations through the wall. Glimpsing only part of it. Now I have the chance, as you have, to hear some of it fully.

Here it comes, the big official unveiling of “psychedelic zen guitar“:

My husband told me that his blogging goal for the next months is to get two comments…

Here, let me get you another (virtual) glass of champagne, click on the image above, set back and enjoy.

(Really, I’d serve you real champagne but you’d have to come over to my place.)

Technorati Tags: guitar, psychedelic zen guitar, zen

Does a blog need a mission statement anyway?

May 6, 2007 by Susanne 21 Comments

Well. Does it? You can instantly tell that I was once trained as an academic because my answer is: It depends. (I often identify very much with Agnes Nitt the witch who is always in two minds about everything. She’s also a singer but that’s totally besides the point here. So I add it anyway.)

If your blog is needing a mission statement depends mainly on two things, on you and on your blog. If you have a business blog or plan to become rich by blogging you better have one. If you just blog for yourself and maybe your family of course you don’t. If you are a person who likes to putter along, be spontaneous, and do whatever she likes – no mission statement. If you are like me and require a plan, a system, and a list for absolutely everything in your life – then you need a mission statement.

The thing about lists, plans, and systems is though, that they can be as abstract as you like them to be. So while I tend to acquire goals like other people women acquire shoes I don’t necessarily stick to them. In the last week alone I have started to work towards a brilliant new career as a tarot reader, towards the total de-cluttering of the attic and the garage, and started learning a totally new way to play guitar though I haven’t mastered the old one in any way yet. The vision is always beautiful and then the pesky little details all get in the way. But back to the meta-blogging. (I’ll have to write about my new status as a professional dilettante some other time.)

As you can see I’m really not good at this blogging-advice thing but since I have thought so much about it and since the question of “how do I make my blog attractive”, and how do I get a better technorati ranking interests most of us bloggers I’ll try it nonetheless.

In my post about my current blogger’s block I wrote that I need a new mission statement. I have thought a lot about that statement lately. So I found that my main mission statement still remains the same:

I want to write a blog that I would like to read.

There. That was easy. Um. So what am I enjoying in a good blog? When I started this whole blog thing I found that I didn’t want to have one of those: “And then I went out for coffee and met Claudia.”-blogs. Who is Claudia? Why should I care what you had as a snack? On the other hand this clearly is a personal blog. Not a business blog. And since I’m me and this is mine I tend to write I, me, and myself a lot. When I read that I shouldn’t it only made me self-conscious. There are other parts of my initial mission statement – which by the way never was written down – that still apply:

I like posts that are longer than one or two paragraphs.

I like personal posts, but I like them more when the writer is still thinking of an audience. For example blog posts should be legible even for people who happen to stumble on the blog for the first time. (Hi, all you bag lovers who found me through flickr. This isn’t a crafts blog. I hope you enjoy it anyway.) On the other hand you don’t want to explain everything right from the beginning every time. Again, a balance thing.

I like to read blogs that have both deep and thoughtful posts and shallower and funnier posts. Again, balance.

I like to show how I live as a mother, teacher, musician, creative person so that other people, especially mothers, are encouraged to follow their dreams and do something creative. This I’m teaching mostly by being a bad example but at least you can point somewhere and say, “Well, it might have worked if only…”

So in this I try to reach out and say, “Look, you are not alone. There are other people like you.”
And then of course I say, “Look at me.” Because I like to be looked at as we all do. (And this time “we” means “us bloggers” or “us human beings”. I just say, because my husband pointed out to me that when I write “we” it always means “my husband and I”. Sorry. Or not. Mommybloggers are narcistic and egocentrical. Everybody knows that.)

But when you look I’d like to make what you see as interesting as I possibly can.

Since I have a life outside the computer I tend to post about 8 to 10 times a month. All the bloggers in the know tell you to post at least daily. But I say, “And who can read all that? And who can write that much?” Obviously there are people out there who can and I’m reading my fair share of them but I have to admit that there are several blogs I have stopped reading because there were up to ten new posts daily. Really. Sorry, but that’s too much for me.

So you can see that my mission statement is very unprofessional. But it can be since this isn’t a professional blog. It took me a while to realize this. At first I tried to improve this blog like a business blogger. I started writing magnetic headlines with lots of “How to…” and “Why… headlines. I took the free ecourse on blogging that Wendy Piersall is offering, and it did help me a lot. Until I realized that after all this is only my small personal blog and that I don’t have to follow every advice.

If you are interested in writing a better blog, making money from blogging and stuff, I point you towards problogger, Liz Strauss, eMoms at home, and copyblogger. I, on the other hand, have stopped reading this kind of advice-blog for the moment. (And maybe one can tell.) I have the feeling that the most interesting readers to my blog come through comments I have been leaving elsewhere. So that our blogs really are forming a web.

What about you? (Of course this is what you do when you want your readers to feel good, you address them personally.) Do you have mission statement for your blog? What do you mean, you don’t have a blog. Why? What does your blog want to become when it’s grown-up?

(And don’t forget the Just Posts. There is still time to enter the roundtable until tomorrow.)

So I did yet another project

April 30, 2007 by Susanne 16 Comments

I’ve been quite busy for the last few days. We’re working on some home improvement projects (I’ll probably post about them when they’re finished), we have been de-cluttering insane amounts of books and then I have been rediscovering my passion for bags. It all started with the fact that I bought a couple of new chocolate-brown clothes because of the fashion paradigm-shift. And despite just having bought a new purse in 2005 I had to get out and get another one. A black or brown one. Well, that was easily done though I had to settle for something affordable instead of the most beautiful purse I found. 380 € for a purse did seem a little much. So everything would have been well, I have a new purse which I like very much and I’ll still be able to buy groceries for the next weeks, but then I became hooked on a bag-making blog:

The bags are gorgeous, the blog is cheerful and visually stimulating, and best of all blogger Lisa is offering free tutorials on the blog.

So I went a little crazy and thought, why don’t I make myself a bag. An easy one like the big grocery bag with stuff sack. And she said it would take only one hour!

I went up into the attic and spent about an hour unearthing leftover fabric. I found something green and something purple which told me that the last time I sew must have been about twenty years ago. Apart from curtains and such. The next day I went to the local craft supplies shop. Well, I hope I’ll someday remember that it’s never a good idea to just go out and buy local where I live. What I needed was some fleece for padding and a bolt snap. Ha! There was exactly one snap, golden, ugly, heavy, and expensive and they didn’t have the right fleece. I bought some other lining because I didn’t want to leave the shop empty-handed, went home and decided to use what I had on hand. (Later I found a better snap at the hardware store…)

On my so-called “day off”, which means about 90 minutes of free time, I fetched my ironing board, iron (which hadn’t seen daylight for about two years), and sewing stuff.

I used an old newspaper for the pattern and started cutting the pieces out. Two hours later I was the proud owner of this:

Though I had to cut out one piece twice because I had forgotten to add the seam allowance to the top of one of the pieces, I didn’t dawdle. I think I might be what the Austrian author Christine Nöstlinger calls a “Haushaltsschnecke” (that’s household snail). Everything I do that has to do with housework seems to take ages. (On the other hand I think that having better tools might have helped with speed.) And speaking of seaming allowances, if it says, “Add seaming allowance to all pieces” then just add it. Don’t think you’re so clever and can leave it off. You might end up with a cozy that’s just a little too small. Just saying.)

After that day which I had devoted solely to the sewing project I was deeply frustrated and remembered why I had stopped sewing decades ago. I already knew that sewing projects require a lot more time doing things like ironing and pinning and thinking and then cursing because you just can’t figure out how the pieces are supposed to fit together than sewing time, but this was a little disheartening.

Since I absolutely wanted to finish this, though, I pulled everything out again on Sunday plus the sewing machine, and continued. First I finished the cozy. Well, I thought I had finished the cozy before I found out that I had to rip it up again because I had sewn it together wrong (I didn’t take a picture of this). But then I had this:

Progress! Then I tackled the difficult part. This is a picture of the half-finished lining bag (there wasn’t enough of the greenish fabric so I had to make it bi-colored):

And I really should have sewn the lining bag first because now I have an exterior bag with sewn-in folds where there shouldn’t be folds and a lining bag that’s smooth and perfect…

But eventually I was finished. It took about six hours for those of you interested and while having a cheap sewing-machine is better than having none there was a lot of frustration because the machine refuses to sew anything that might be a little thick. It just gets stuck and has to be persuaded by sheer force to transport the fabric. But who cares because now I have this:

Look at the interior:

And while I learned that sewing is something that needs lots of free time, a clear mind, and a room where you can leave the machine and the ironing board for a while, and more patience than I ever thought I might have, I also might be infected with the bag making bug.

After the concert

August 1, 2006 by Susanne 5 Comments

Yeah, the concert is over. I’m quite proud and believe the audience liked it too. For almost two hours I played Tori Amos-Songs. The moment I started playing I realized that probably no one knew Tori Amos before. Apart from one of my friends whom I’d given a couple of CDs. So between songs I talked quite a bit.

Before I began my stage fright was so enormous that I thought I’d be getting sick. Afraid and paralyzed I spent half the day in front of my computer and implemented nice new features into my blog (New! Improved! Better! Subscribe via e-Mail now!) Then setting up and sound check became inevitable. To tell it in front, after sound check I was about to cancel the whole thing.

I played in my husband’s music room (Yes, we do have two music rooms, it’s where we’re working). It’s the biggest room and the one with the PA. (Yeah, another acronym, public address, the amp and speaker system). We (my husband and me) set everything up, plugged in all the cords, and then we didn’t have any keyboard sound at all. Hm. Oh, switch on compressor. Okay, mike functioning, still no keyboard. The keyboard hasn’t got a status light, but when it’s on the same socket as the sound module, it has to have electricity. Well, it should logically have, but plugging the whole thing into another socket mysteriously worked. Relief.

The next problem: feedback. (You know that loud piercing sound, do you?) This is something I’m familiar with since my voice is quite soft when I’m singing low. Therefore you have to have the mike really loud, and then you have a higher danger of feedback. And then we had the additional problem that the room has marvelous acoustics. Like a natural chorus. The only problem with that is that it’s making amplification tricky. So you ask, why amplify? Well, an electrical keyboard does not sound good without an amp, mine doesn’t even have a speaker of its own. And besides I wanted to record the concert. We literally spent hours checking and putting sheets in front of all the windows and reflecting surfaces, and carpets on the floor. In the end we found out that a major problem was the gleaming surface of the keyboard itself reflecting into the back of the microphone. So I had to play with a woolen shawl on the keyboard. After checking the sound I was spent, nothing was going right and my voice felt weak.

Then change, make up, dinner – hang up laundry.

The three people attending (yes, three, never schedule a concert at the end of July directly before summer break) were quite punctual and after a glass or two of champagne (I told you, you’d miss something.) I started. The recording caused additional problems with set up and PA. During the first songs I was a little tense, but then it got better and better.

Sadly there where times when the audience was thinking, “Is she gonna make it?” (because of the piano), and that’s not so good. The audience was friendly and attentive, and my son (3 1/2) spent the whole concert sitting or lying on a chair, and didn’t utter a word. Wow! I’d have thought that he would have had enough at the break, but no. And he didn’t even sleep. When I was done, the babysitter put him to bed. The adults kept on talking and were really tired the next morning.

I’m really happy with this concert. This project was my chance to point others to music that I love dearly, all the way working on my performance issues, and get closure on a project. What I learned doing this (apart from the advice never to schedule something for the end of July again) is:

once in a while it can be fun to do a bigger project and pull it through,
a big part of my performance issues was the result of being unfamiliar with the equipment,
what a difference a good microphone makes,
that I used to be too sloppy with the preparation,and
even this time it was not quite enough.

But I’m also seeing that my decision to make a serious commitment to music will eventually elevate me to the next level. Each time that I’m in despair because music requires so much work, I’m seeing that it works the other way round too. When you’re doing the work, you’re getting better. Always. Maybe not instantly, but surely over time.

Addendum: I want to thank my husband too. He freed me of chores so that I could practice and he was my very own personal roadie, mixer, sound engineer and recording engineer.

Technorati Tags: Hauskonzert, Tori Amos