Wednesday, October 27, 2010

#21 - Participate in the Sketchbook Project each year.

I am just full of artsy projects, aren't I? I can't help myself.
My sketchbook!

Another good friend (Hannah Hinkley) turned me on to this one. An awesome Brooklyn group of artists and art-conscious people called Art House Co-Op puts on The Sketchbook Project, an art collective where you are sent a Moleskine sketchbook with a theme and are asked to send it back in filled with sketches and words and whatever else you can come up with. Then, they take the sketchbooks on tour (like a concert) all over America where people check out your sketchbook and flip through it. The sketchbooks are then kept at the Brooklyn Art Library, where people can check out your sketchbook - it's even got a bar code in it!

I'm obviously a big fan of this. Why? Because being able to flip through someone's sketchbook, for many people, is like reading their journal - much closer even than a painting in a gallery or a book or something like that. And, at any rate, it's so dang interesting to me to see how creative people can get when given the chance. And it combines two of my favorite things - art and libraries.

It was a $25 fee to sign up for the sketchbook and the project, and another optional $20 to have each page digitally scanned and able to be viewed/checked out online. (I contemplated an extra $20 for a t-shirt....but decided to pass.) $45 is about the price that many pay for a submission fee to a juried art show, anyways - and I couldn't pass it up.

At any rate, it's a really neat project and I have until January 15th to complete and send in my sketchbook. My theme is "...you'd be home by now", and I decided to devote my sketchbook to telling the story of "the lone wolf" (we all know one), and that wolfy part of all of us.

I'll post pics regularly. And, if you're interested, here is my Art House Co-Op profile. Cheers!

Monday, October 25, 2010

#96 - Participate in and complete a novel in NaNoWriMo.

"Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down."


Against my better judgment I have decided to nip my procrastination in the bud once and for all and take on NaNoWriMo - or the National Novel Writing Month tradition of writing a 50,000 word (175 page) novel in 30 days. OMG!

My good friend Kevin Flanigan turned me onto this project, and I immediately knew that I just had to do it. As a writer, I spend WAY too much time thinking about my stories and characters, and not a lot of doing. Not a lot of bringing to life. And that's embarrassing...and sad. Being easily "enthused", the prospect of NaNoWriMo is delightful. You log onto a website where you can share your word count, chat in forums with the thousands of other crazy people trying to write a novel in 30 days, and get and give moral support. Also, because it is obviously an insane task, you're expected to write something pithy, insensibly long, and comical. Finally, a writing program that isn't pretentious!!! Take that, Starbucks! And creative writing students in small LDS liberal arts colleges!

Needless to say I'm really excited. I've downloaded a fantastic trial version of a writing software for Mac called Scrivener (find it here) that will save my butt. It has a sweet interface where you can type fullscreen on a book-esque page so you're not distracted by the ugly-looking Microsoft Word technical business. It's open as a free trial from now until December 7th, when NaNoWriMo officially ends and the prizes are given out, and if you finish your novel by Nov. 30th, you get 50% off the full version (making it like $25 bucks). Or, if you're a participant, you get 20% off. Awesome awesome awesome.

In preparation for my "30 days and nights of literary abandon", I'm doing most of my academic reading and writing assignments now. This is the most responsible of a student I've ever been in my entire life. Crazy what a little motivation will do.

Update: You can view my progress, novel info, and word count here! If you're doing NaNoWriMo, add me as a writing buddy! I need all the motivation I can get.

Friday, October 15, 2010

Coming soon!

I'm writing my list right now - and when Tommy comes home from work, I'm going to make him do the same!


Life is too short to not have a bucket list, you know? One that you can work on every day, instead of putting it off and letting even a day go by without making something out of it, something you're proud of and you'll look back on and smile. Too often I find myself sitting around, "doing nothing", and not getting out into the world - helping people, helping myself.

That ends today! I'm looking forward to these 2.7369863 years!