(no subject)
Karen, I finally wrote about my Five Things. So, five things I like. Karen sent me:
"Vodka, Writing, Westerns, Rock music, Crafty things (lol, I still remember making five billion paper stars with you)"
So, here we go:
Vodka.
Yeah. Okay so Karen made me sound like an alcoholic. Trouble is whatever I say here will also make me sound like an alcoholic. I like vodka. It is my usual drink of choice. Occasionally I get bored and drink whiskey, or wine, or something else . . . but like and old friend I return to vodka. I guess I like the fact that I drink in a real old fashioned Local Pub where I know everyone (yeah, everyone, me and hubby once worked out that we know more people through the Pub than from work lol). It’s cosy. And friendly. And I feel happy there. And I drink vodka. I like to try different vodka’s. So far nothing compares to Absolut Raspberry (it was divine and the bottle was gorgeous and is currently used as a bookend in my living room!) but I like Vladivar, Smirnoff, all the usual stuff. I have in reserve a ridiculously expensive bottle of welsh vodka that will one night be opened for a true celebration. However the absolute best vodka I ever managed to get my grubby mitts on was the genuine Russian stuff. Student exchange trip to Belarus when I was 17. Yeah. I brought about ten bottles of this stuff back and it was Goooooood.
Many of the more amusing stories in my life now begin with the opening line “So, I was with Karen and we’d drunk some vodka and I - ate a whole 2 litre jar of homemade pickled onion/then decided Sambuca was a good plan, became arboreally angry and got into a fight with a plant and lost/tried to dance sexily and failed/nearly wet myself laughing when someone showed up in the pub dressed as a giant chicken.
So yeah. I’m sorry and shamed, but I like a tipple. (And my hubby likes me tipsy ;) I also tend to find that when I have a tipple my creative juices (ooh er) tend to run a bit better, and then I want to stay up all night talking ideas over, and jotting notes down for my:
Writing.
Yeah, this is kind of the wrong place to talk about this since I never update. I do however love to write. Since I was a child I have made up stories. When I played with toy figures as a kid it was never enough to just ‘play house’ I had elaborate plots - wars, fantastical adventures, love - the works. It never went away, and the characters have just changed and grown and developed with me. I started officially trying to pen it all when I was a teenager, got mocked a little, and was pretty much devastated by the whole thing. However through the persuasion of Karen and my hubby I have now started writing again. At the moment I am working on a bizarre and complicated story set in a fantasy world. People die. Battles are fought. And I torture my characters emotionally and physically quite a lot. Karen thinks I’m a sadist, cos I just can’t stop poking them with big pointy sticks (which in literary terms we call plot lines!) I also like to give them exotic (with an ‘x’ Karen not an ‘r ‘) names. These characters are so real to me I can picture them quite clearly, and in fact have done several sketches over the years. Infamously my favourite ‘hero’ (I hate the term, but it is true in the literary sense) who I had sketched in profile aged 14 is the spitting image of my now hubby. Whom I met some 3 years later. Weirdly one of the biggest inspirations to my writing is music. I have whole scenes which in my head are sound tracked by particular songs. And being a rock music fan (as you will soon find out) these songs include Audioslave - Like a Stone, Metallica Unforgiven II and System of a Down - Chop Suey. Bear in mind the world I am writing about is old, they ride horses and fight with swords. All (in my head at least) to a background of heavy metal and electric guitar. Like Sharpe but, no, in fact not at all like Sharpe. Although Sean Bean, mmmmmm.
The biggest problems I have with my writing are:
I am a perfectionist. I hate plot holes and things that do not fit/make sense/add up. So in writing one scene I may end up having to edit another one, which means I have to edit another one, which means revising my plut . . . . and so one. See why I drink now?
I don’t write in a linear timeline. I don’t follow my plot from beginning to end. If a scene is vivid (whether it fits into what shambles of a plot I have or not) I will hammer it out. These moments of inspiration are of course usually fuelled by music (and of course a drink). This means that I then have to order all the random chunks of text into some kind of plot, and decide what comes where, and then edit (see above).
I still have no idea about the overall plot, and am pretty much making it up day by day. I change my mind a lot, and only a handful of things are set in stone. And every change means editing (again see above).
My perfectionism means that my world has to be real, and make some kind of sense. So background is really important to me. And again I haven’t yet got a firm enough grasp on that, so if I suddenly have an idea or change my mind I have to then edit the background, the foundation and bedrock of everything else I have written. Which means editing (and once again see above).
And the first stories I ever wrote? Were not fantasy at all. They were about Joe and Mary and Red and Dane. And Karen loved them. They were:
Westerns:
Yeah. I have loved westerns since I was a child. I adore western films. I used to religiously record them form the TV, label the videos and watch them over and over. The Searchers, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Major Dundee, The Outlaw Josie Wales, Shane, Pale Rider, Once Upon a Time in the West, Unforgiven . . . .Yeah. I still love them. Unforgiven rates highly because it so dark, and not as simple as many much much earlier westerns were. Pale rider (kind of loosely based on Shane) is fabulous for the air of mystery around the preacher, and my all time classic favourite is Once Upon a Time in the West. Like an Opera, where every character has their own soundtrack, and the blue eyed Peter Fonda (Who is for the sake of the film basically God) and a harmonica playing Charles “I saw three coats like that, in the coats were three men, in the men were three bullets!” Bronson. (Oh yes!!). It’s twisted and bizarre, and brilliant. Sergio Leone knew what he was doing. I love the harmonica music, it gives me chills, and speaking of music:
Rock Music
I couldn’t lead into much better than that sorry. To be honest it’s not that I am a heavy metal rocker, or a goth, or a grunge. I like music in general, and have pretty varied tastes. (From the Cardigans to Korn, from classic folk music to classic rock, and everywhere in between including country and western) in fact the only music genres I don’t particularly like are Dance, Garage, Pop and Rap. But even within them some songs are just good songs and I like them. However, I do have a particular penchant for music of a darker more heavy variety. I also have a weird and slightly annoying habit of finding a song I like and playing it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over . . . . until my hubby turns the stereo off and has a nervous breakdown. Recently that song has been Audioslave Like A Stone, Chris Cornell (from Audioslave) - You Know my Name (The Bond theme) and White Stripes - Seven Nation Army. I grew to like Rock music through quite a tame start - Bon Jovi. I fell in love with them at 13, bought all their albums and from there went onwards in my musical journey. I love Queen, Metallica, Black Sabbath, Guns n Roses, Aerosmith, Nickelback, The Zutons . . . . the list goes on. I have been very lucky and have been to a few live gigs now, including:
Wheatus
Bon Jovi (twice)
REM (twice)
Meatloaf
Bryan Adams
Nickelback (who were supporting Bon Jovi)
The Zutons (who were supporting REM)
My car always has the music cranked up so I can sing along. Karen mocks me for this. And for that fact that from 13 - 15 my room had one wall devoted purely to poster of Bon Jovi (and no, I didn’t fancy Jon, I have always fancied Richie Sambora instead, I’m weird like that). I used to spend hours arranging all my posters, and would have to move them all around if I got a new one. Oh, and that I used to copy out my favourite lyrics in Calligraphy and post them up too, because I have always been:
Crafty.
Ahaha a double meaning o_O.
I have done or made (and in most cases still do, though not as often as I would like):
Cross Stitch
Sketching
Painting
Calligraphy
Origami
Sewing
Baking
Friendship bracelets
Beaded Bracelets
Dream Catchers
I like to make things. I like to create, be it writing in a notebook, baking in the kitchen or sewing something as a gift. I like home made Christmas Decorations (and every year end up making another lot, even though the tree is already overloaded). I like home made cakes, and pickles, and jam.
I get frustrated with sketching and general ‘art’ as I can never get the picture in my mind down accurately enough. When I do manage to get it how I want it, that sketch or picture is then a thing to treasure and is kept very safe and very carefully. I think my best medium is pencil, as I tend to be heavy handed with paint. I am however quite proud of my calligraphy, and can produce some pretty nice pieces of work with that.
And the billion paper stars? I wanted to fill and old giant whiskey bottle with them. So Karen and I did. It took about three days, I have no idea how much paper and looked awesome (Oh and Karen, I later sewed them all together and they now go on the Christmas tree!!).
There, I did it, after much procrastination.
Now you know a little more about me :D
"Vodka, Writing, Westerns, Rock music, Crafty things (lol, I still remember making five billion paper stars with you)"
So, here we go:
Vodka.
Yeah. Okay so Karen made me sound like an alcoholic. Trouble is whatever I say here will also make me sound like an alcoholic. I like vodka. It is my usual drink of choice. Occasionally I get bored and drink whiskey, or wine, or something else . . . but like and old friend I return to vodka. I guess I like the fact that I drink in a real old fashioned Local Pub where I know everyone (yeah, everyone, me and hubby once worked out that we know more people through the Pub than from work lol). It’s cosy. And friendly. And I feel happy there. And I drink vodka. I like to try different vodka’s. So far nothing compares to Absolut Raspberry (it was divine and the bottle was gorgeous and is currently used as a bookend in my living room!) but I like Vladivar, Smirnoff, all the usual stuff. I have in reserve a ridiculously expensive bottle of welsh vodka that will one night be opened for a true celebration. However the absolute best vodka I ever managed to get my grubby mitts on was the genuine Russian stuff. Student exchange trip to Belarus when I was 17. Yeah. I brought about ten bottles of this stuff back and it was Goooooood.
Many of the more amusing stories in my life now begin with the opening line “So, I was with Karen and we’d drunk some vodka and I - ate a whole 2 litre jar of homemade pickled onion/then decided Sambuca was a good plan, became arboreally angry and got into a fight with a plant and lost/tried to dance sexily and failed/nearly wet myself laughing when someone showed up in the pub dressed as a giant chicken.
So yeah. I’m sorry and shamed, but I like a tipple. (And my hubby likes me tipsy ;) I also tend to find that when I have a tipple my creative juices (ooh er) tend to run a bit better, and then I want to stay up all night talking ideas over, and jotting notes down for my:
Writing.
Yeah, this is kind of the wrong place to talk about this since I never update. I do however love to write. Since I was a child I have made up stories. When I played with toy figures as a kid it was never enough to just ‘play house’ I had elaborate plots - wars, fantastical adventures, love - the works. It never went away, and the characters have just changed and grown and developed with me. I started officially trying to pen it all when I was a teenager, got mocked a little, and was pretty much devastated by the whole thing. However through the persuasion of Karen and my hubby I have now started writing again. At the moment I am working on a bizarre and complicated story set in a fantasy world. People die. Battles are fought. And I torture my characters emotionally and physically quite a lot. Karen thinks I’m a sadist, cos I just can’t stop poking them with big pointy sticks (which in literary terms we call plot lines!) I also like to give them exotic (with an ‘x’ Karen not an ‘r ‘) names. These characters are so real to me I can picture them quite clearly, and in fact have done several sketches over the years. Infamously my favourite ‘hero’ (I hate the term, but it is true in the literary sense) who I had sketched in profile aged 14 is the spitting image of my now hubby. Whom I met some 3 years later. Weirdly one of the biggest inspirations to my writing is music. I have whole scenes which in my head are sound tracked by particular songs. And being a rock music fan (as you will soon find out) these songs include Audioslave - Like a Stone, Metallica Unforgiven II and System of a Down - Chop Suey. Bear in mind the world I am writing about is old, they ride horses and fight with swords. All (in my head at least) to a background of heavy metal and electric guitar. Like Sharpe but, no, in fact not at all like Sharpe. Although Sean Bean, mmmmmm.
The biggest problems I have with my writing are:
I am a perfectionist. I hate plot holes and things that do not fit/make sense/add up. So in writing one scene I may end up having to edit another one, which means I have to edit another one, which means revising my plut . . . . and so one. See why I drink now?
I don’t write in a linear timeline. I don’t follow my plot from beginning to end. If a scene is vivid (whether it fits into what shambles of a plot I have or not) I will hammer it out. These moments of inspiration are of course usually fuelled by music (and of course a drink). This means that I then have to order all the random chunks of text into some kind of plot, and decide what comes where, and then edit (see above).
I still have no idea about the overall plot, and am pretty much making it up day by day. I change my mind a lot, and only a handful of things are set in stone. And every change means editing (again see above).
My perfectionism means that my world has to be real, and make some kind of sense. So background is really important to me. And again I haven’t yet got a firm enough grasp on that, so if I suddenly have an idea or change my mind I have to then edit the background, the foundation and bedrock of everything else I have written. Which means editing (and once again see above).
And the first stories I ever wrote? Were not fantasy at all. They were about Joe and Mary and Red and Dane. And Karen loved them. They were:
Westerns:
Yeah. I have loved westerns since I was a child. I adore western films. I used to religiously record them form the TV, label the videos and watch them over and over. The Searchers, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Major Dundee, The Outlaw Josie Wales, Shane, Pale Rider, Once Upon a Time in the West, Unforgiven . . . .Yeah. I still love them. Unforgiven rates highly because it so dark, and not as simple as many much much earlier westerns were. Pale rider (kind of loosely based on Shane) is fabulous for the air of mystery around the preacher, and my all time classic favourite is Once Upon a Time in the West. Like an Opera, where every character has their own soundtrack, and the blue eyed Peter Fonda (Who is for the sake of the film basically God) and a harmonica playing Charles “I saw three coats like that, in the coats were three men, in the men were three bullets!” Bronson. (Oh yes!!). It’s twisted and bizarre, and brilliant. Sergio Leone knew what he was doing. I love the harmonica music, it gives me chills, and speaking of music:
Rock Music
I couldn’t lead into much better than that sorry. To be honest it’s not that I am a heavy metal rocker, or a goth, or a grunge. I like music in general, and have pretty varied tastes. (From the Cardigans to Korn, from classic folk music to classic rock, and everywhere in between including country and western) in fact the only music genres I don’t particularly like are Dance, Garage, Pop and Rap. But even within them some songs are just good songs and I like them. However, I do have a particular penchant for music of a darker more heavy variety. I also have a weird and slightly annoying habit of finding a song I like and playing it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over . . . . until my hubby turns the stereo off and has a nervous breakdown. Recently that song has been Audioslave Like A Stone, Chris Cornell (from Audioslave) - You Know my Name (The Bond theme) and White Stripes - Seven Nation Army. I grew to like Rock music through quite a tame start - Bon Jovi. I fell in love with them at 13, bought all their albums and from there went onwards in my musical journey. I love Queen, Metallica, Black Sabbath, Guns n Roses, Aerosmith, Nickelback, The Zutons . . . . the list goes on. I have been very lucky and have been to a few live gigs now, including:
Wheatus
Bon Jovi (twice)
REM (twice)
Meatloaf
Bryan Adams
Nickelback (who were supporting Bon Jovi)
The Zutons (who were supporting REM)
My car always has the music cranked up so I can sing along. Karen mocks me for this. And for that fact that from 13 - 15 my room had one wall devoted purely to poster of Bon Jovi (and no, I didn’t fancy Jon, I have always fancied Richie Sambora instead, I’m weird like that). I used to spend hours arranging all my posters, and would have to move them all around if I got a new one. Oh, and that I used to copy out my favourite lyrics in Calligraphy and post them up too, because I have always been:
Crafty.
Ahaha a double meaning o_O.
I have done or made (and in most cases still do, though not as often as I would like):
Cross Stitch
Sketching
Painting
Calligraphy
Origami
Sewing
Baking
Friendship bracelets
Beaded Bracelets
Dream Catchers
I like to make things. I like to create, be it writing in a notebook, baking in the kitchen or sewing something as a gift. I like home made Christmas Decorations (and every year end up making another lot, even though the tree is already overloaded). I like home made cakes, and pickles, and jam.
I get frustrated with sketching and general ‘art’ as I can never get the picture in my mind down accurately enough. When I do manage to get it how I want it, that sketch or picture is then a thing to treasure and is kept very safe and very carefully. I think my best medium is pencil, as I tend to be heavy handed with paint. I am however quite proud of my calligraphy, and can produce some pretty nice pieces of work with that.
And the billion paper stars? I wanted to fill and old giant whiskey bottle with them. So Karen and I did. It took about three days, I have no idea how much paper and looked awesome (Oh and Karen, I later sewed them all together and they now go on the Christmas tree!!).
There, I did it, after much procrastination.
Now you know a little more about me :D