Local Visual Artist Seeks Support

Hi all!  If you enjoy visual art, or have always wanted to help a local artist (well....local to me, I guess) then this is the entry for you.  You can get the work of a talented artist and earn yourself some great karma for prices that are ridiculously reasonable.

Most artists don't live the high life on the French Rivera that you see on TV (or even that struggling but plucky life in the huge warehouse apartment you see in movies), and the "bohemian life" loses its romantic glitter pretty quickly when the first bill for a root canal or broken bone lands in the mailbox.  Most artists work really really hard and make much much less than any "normal" job.

I'm invoking one of the (few) perks of having a blog, and boosting the signal for an artist friend named Lydia Rae Black.  (I'd rather have threesome invoking powers, but signal boosting will have to do.)  She is a struggling artist as well--a little further along in her professional career than I am in mine--but one who didn't use my insane strategy of renting a Spartan room, having no car, and never having kids.  (Cause...you know...that's lonely and it hurts your feet.) In the case of Lydia's family, the bill looming on the horizon is for the clutch on their car, and they could sort of use a small miracle right about now.

No one is asking for a handout, but now would be a really wonderful time for a couple of her paintings to sell.  And these aren't refrigerator magnet art pieces either--in both form and content, they explore the tensions between what our society finds desirable and what it finds unwanted or no longer useful.  For the talent and skill on display, and the complexity of themes being expressed, they are priced at an unreal bargain.  So if you've ever wanted to help a local artist, invest in some fine art before the artist's renown made it crazy expensive, or just hang something aesthetically pleasing and really cool on your wall, you could make this particular struggling artist very happy if you did it today.

This is her webpage: 

 lydiraeblack.com



And this is her Etsy page: 

http://www.etsy.com/shop/LydiRae

A Potpourri to Inspire You

Shakespeare would have written over 50 plays if it weren't for Facebook.
Yes, of course they didn't have Facebook back then.
I just wasn't sure you'd even know what Friendster was.

There are, of course, some truly miserable writers out there, and some of them are (or were) absolutely incredible writers.  I like this quote not because it has a happy dog, happily happifying the happy landscape.  But the actual text seems more inclined towards seizing life by its soft parts and not letting go.  Writers might not all be happy, but most of them do know how to drive like a guided missile towards opportunity.  So if someone leaves a metaphorical gate open around you....well, you know what to do!

Kindles aren't going anywhere.  People mistake the medium for the message.  The "smell of books" crowd have ignored the figures that Kindle book sales are up to 15% of the market while simultaneously wondering why their sales are down 15%.  However....all that said, books aren't going away in our lifetimes.  And they do smell kind of good.

Book Snippets.  A simply charming collection of short excerpts from books the Snippets author is reading (or read) that she posts each day. What a capital idea--useful to any writer who wants to be able to go back and take a look at the sentences that take their breath away. No author uses anything but the same 26 letters and 14 pieces of punctuation, and taking a look at how to combine them into something magical is always worth a moment or two. http://booksnippets.tumblr.com/   I always find the careful attention to a single breathtaking sentence to be particularly inspiring.

There is a question, especially in America, about the "utility" of art. A long recession, as long recessions tend to do, has many "more pragmatic" people wondering about anything that has no "practical value." Don't you listen to it for a second.  Art changes the world. It has done so before. It will do so again. It is doing so now. Don't ever forget this when you're wondering why you're turning yourself inside out for something that probably won't ever make you enough money to live on. Art is its own reward.

Conquer the shit out of yourselves, writer peeps!  Conquer the absolute fucking shit out of yourselves.













Meet a fellow blogging peep (who has nothing to do with this Michelangelo quote). That Blond Mom is the blog of one of my old high school friends who has been a journalist for years. It's mostly a personal journal, but there is some intersection with her career as a working writer that I find very insightful. Though journalism is a shrinking field and a changing field, a writer could do worse than to cut their teeth on the regimented discipline of daily deadlines, the sense of official but not overly formal that makes print media generally an agreeable read, and the ability to do revision practically on the fly. Plus there's something to be said for those writing careers that offer a steady paycheck. Nothing cuts down on the romance of being an artist like having to sell your plasma. http://thatblondmom.com/

Let's let Ray Bradbury take us out by talking about writing persistently.

[Do you want to be featured in potpourri along with a few words from me about how awesome you are? Do you know a great writing link that I should share? Please send it to me at chris.brecheen@gmail.com, and I will post it along with a shout out singing your praises (unless, of course, you don't want one). There are four caveats to this. Please read them before you send me stuff. If I've posted anything that you feel is your creative effort in any way that you are not okay with, please just ask and I will take it down if you wish or preferably give you credit and a link back to its source.]

October November and Some Wonderful Geeks

I. Lister burst into my office just now and said he came up with a wonderful idea for a list, but he wasn't going to be able to get it written until tomorrow and could he please have an extension.  There was some back and forth.  He told me to do the Jazz Hands I'm always talking about. I reminded him of ratting me out to NaNo ninjas.  There may have been some eye narrowing.  In the end I told him to write his damned more-awesome list by tomorrow, and I would figure something out.

So I guess we have an excuse to do the end-of-the-month report today.  That's okay.  I don't have enough mail right now to do a Mailbox tomorrow anyway.

October was, in a word, spectacular!

Good thing November is just starting, or Chris would be sobbing into his pillow.

I didn't think that we'd get anywhere near the Stumbleupon-inspired spike of August for a few more months, but October was only a thousand shy.  Pageviews keep creeping up. Most recently we've started averaging about 350/day and peeking up over 400 from time to time.  Still not "real blog" numbers, but the rate of growth is encouraging.  I can't think of the last time I wasn't aware that "Gee we're doing a lot better than this time a couple of weeks ago."

October's Poll results are in for The Ultimate Poll of Ultimate Destiny.  They clearly show that bacon beats out both pirates and ninjas.  That's right.  The great war can be ended with bacon.

Or perhaps....not enough bacon is how the whole thing got started...

I personally believe there were a lot more ninjas on this poll.  They were just hiding.  But I can't prove it.   So look for the November poll in a few days, and in the meantime, I hope you all enjoy your bacon.

Weep for the future Na'Toth!  

In November, I plan to work a lot on "ground floor" projects.  The latest bumps in traffic have reminded me that even though I can get buzz from things like Skyrim articles and polls, but the basic lists and genuinely helpful parts of the blog are still very much "under construction."  I also eventually want to get that stuff finished so I can drop down to two or three updates a week and focus more of my energy on fiction.  Expect a few more glossary entries, an article on craft elements, and a product review.  Also I'll be rewriting the Bradbury review that my evil clone erased.  I guess I should start backing things up since he knows all the answers to my security questions, so changing the password does precisely dick in keeping him from messing with the signal.

INTRODUCING THE ACE OF GEEKS PODCAST!!!

I'd like to introduce some peeps who I see at the gaming conventions I go to and who I've been friends with for a while now.  They do a podcast called Ace of Geeks.  They're worth checking out--especially if you're into geeky stuff like I am!

I have to be honest with you...I've been waiting for months to pimp these guys out because they're friends and because their podcast is a lot of fun, but it's mostly about movies and games and geek stuff and only occasionally about writing or books or something that I could latch onto as pretense for a shout out here at Writing About Writing.  However, they recently did one of their podcasts on some book reviews, and I pounced on that sucker like a starving person pounces on the last Oreo.  It is listed here on their archive page as special episode #2.  Definitely worth a listen!

I'd Like You All To Meet Adam Licsko

http://www.adamlicsko.com/bio/

I'd like to introduce you to Adam Licsko.  

Adam is a painter and visual artist of extraordinary talent.  This is his website where you can see how amazing his dramatic use of color, light, and scope is and how he uses deceptively simple form to bring out really rich content.  His paintings remind me of the best kind of fiction--the stuff that just keeps getting more complicated the longer you look at it.  It's sort of like the visual version of Raymond Carver.

I've known Adam since junior high when we were fast friends.  And while I will not tell you that we broke into the Calabasas Lockheed facility and dodged security cameras for fun, we had many a childhood adventure.  We would stay up all night watching Jaws at our friend Brandon's house.  We would invade the local business offices with our water gun wars because they always had the best cover and obstacles and clear out long before the police arrived to drive us off.  And I can't even tell you how many times we walked around the lake in Calabasas Park just talking.  (We were so young that the security guards didn't have the heart to kick us out of what was a private park not intended for the apartment-dwelling likes of me and Adam.)  Whether it was the beginning band of A.E. Wright middle school, the first stirrings of our artsy brains to appreciate certain things that many of our other friends just didn't "get," or just general mayhem, we were partners in many wonder-years stories of mischief.  But not that Lockheed one.  Seriously.  That never happened.

Adam has recently written a hilarious book self love, called Kama Sutra for One and a blog promoting it.  I hope he doesn't hate me for saying I find his painting much more inspirational.  It's not that I don't want to think about the guy up at the top of this entry giving me tips on masturbating, it's just that I think that...okay yeah, that's exactly what it is, actually.

Mostly though, Adam inspires me because he's an artist.   I grew up with this guy.  We played Atari together, and agreed that Tax Evaders was the worst game ever.  (Of COURSE I mean except for E.T.)  We watched Blade Runner over and over because even back then we could tell something more important was going on in that movie than in Star Wars.  And he is a working artist.  He made it.  I lost track of him for years, and then one day I walked into a gallery in Cambria (on the California coast near Hearst Castle) and half the store was just his stuff.  I tried to convince the store owner I knew him, but I think she thought I was a stalker fan or something and wouldn't pass a message on to him for me.  It took me a few more years (and Facebook) to finally track him down.  But knowing Adam when we were both young, and seeing him later, really brought home to me that working artists are not some strange species of creature.  They're just humans with a flicker of talent, and the passion and will to blow that spark into something greater even if it takes a metric asston of work.

He's had so many recent articles--of high praise--on Huffington Post, that I'm pretty sure he HAS to be sleeping with Arianna.  And yet...I still knew him during the summer where I'm pretty sure he didn't say a single thing that wasn't a Bobcat Goldthwait impersonation.  Though, maybe Arianna likes that sort of thing, I don't know.

Technically I even own one of Adam's paintings.  I could NEVER afford one myself, but I did some biography writing for him a couple of years ago and instead of mess with freelance contract BS., he just offered me a trade of one of his smaller prints of a dirigible.  (Which I will totally be staring at repeatedly when I write my steampunk zombie story.)  He just needs to get off his tortured artist butt and actually send it to me.

Nothing but love Adam.  Seriously.  Not anything (well, except perhaps for a hint of envy that is probably good because it drives me forward).  It's been an honor to know you.

And you guys should totally check him out.  Spend more than a couple of minutes looking at one of his pictures, and I promise you'll realize something you didn't see at first glance.  Sometimes art of completely different media can be the most inspirational thing you'll ever encounter.  Well, except maybe for realizing that the working artist with the gallery in Cambria and the mind blowing paintings used to be your friend who didn't like to practice drums and always stole your fries.

Folks Worth Checking Out

Other Blogs I Write For
NOT Writing About Writing- A blog where I share some of my more personal, political, and non-writing thoughts.
Ace of Geeks- [This blog is on a indefinite hiatus]
Grounded Parents- [Retired, but several articles remain.]


Friends Worth Visiting

Book Snippets- Microblog with great quotes from great books
Anita M King's Writing Window- Blog of a fellow writer.  Lots of good creative prompts here.
That Blond Mom- Blog of a friend, journalist, and working writer.

Saturday Potpourri

A few gems I've run into this week:

Daniel Abraham is doing something REALLY cool, and you should check it out.  It's called The Dogs Project and he's basically writing a story from beginning to end with each step of the way being transparent and online.  Basically AS he writes even his shitty first draft, he is going to talk about what he's doing and why he made certain choices.  Anyone who thinks publishable work springs fully formed from the fingertips of people "who just have talent" really ought to take a look at how much conscious thought and good hard work is involved.  But check it out quickly.  The project is already under way and it's only slated to last to the endish of April.

There are a pair of articles I want to point you to.  Even if you're not socially progressive like I tend to be when I'm not trying very hard to be in "objective artist mode," there is a point worth seeing here. I work every day with people of all political bents and all social stripes.  Most western Europeans already speak English so they don't wind up in my classes. I end up with a lot of staunch Catholics and Muslims (just by virtue of demographics of the places that tend to populate my classes).  They have conservative opinions, disagree with each other,  and we all do just fine focusing on the WRITING. My point is, I try to understand people I don't agree with, so I'm not putting up these articles by way of any agenda or to promote anything specific.  I probably found THESE articles because of the company I keep, but the take home message here is about the power of writing.  Pay close attention to how much each article CHANGED people who read it.  That's real folks.  That's what writing can do.  That's its power.  We're changing the world with twenty-six letters and some punctuation.   The first article is called I'm Christian Unless You're Gay and the second is A Response to I'm Christian Unless You're Gay.  Notice how the first article changed someone in the second article, and the second article began to change a whole small town.  You may never know the way your writing ripples outward and works in the grand scheme of things, but it only happens if you have the courage to write in the first place.

Okay, that was really heavy.  Here's something ridiculously light and fluffy to take the edge off.  You KNOW I'm not a curmudgeon about books over e-readers, and I think people who are denying where the market IS going are just going to get steamrolled, but this video is just FUN!

Lastly, I want to point you towards a Facebook page for a book called The Altar of Dead Pets.  Now this is a friend's book, and she would love it if you would "Like" it, but either way, you should take a look around.  This is a completed novel and the friend is currently shopping for an agent with no success.  One of the things she tells me about is how anachronistic submission processes can be.  They have rules back from before even making COPIES of something was easy.  The ease of sending an entire book online makes some agents' rules truly inane.  Many still won't accept a submission online you have to send it snail mail.  Something she said the last time we met has really stuck with me.  "These people deserve to be destroyed by e-publishing.  They refuse to acknowledge the effect that any technology from later than the mid seventies could have on the industry."  While she keeps trying to find an agent, she has decided to promote her work in other ways, one of them by creating a page for it.  Personally I'm all for making irrelevant the obsolete fossils who would rather go bankrupt than invest in a "smell of books" camphor cream (to put under their nose like movie detectives at a crime scene) that they can wear while they use an e-reader.  Modern writers have to be willing to do things that might seem strange (like giving their own books a FB page) in order to approach the problem of how to write for a living in a world with vastly new technologies than even a decade ago.

Don't look too hard though, or you'll notice that my potpourri and her page have a lot of overlap.  Basically, I practice the "writers steal what they like" concept chiefly on Altar's FB page.

[Do you want to be featured in potpourri along with a few words from me about how awesome you are?  Do you know a great writing link that I should share? Please send it to me at chris.brecheen@gmail.com, and I will post it along with a shout out singing your praises (unless, of course, you don't want one).  There are four caveats to this.  Please read them before you send me stuff.  If I've posted anything that you feel is "yours" (or "your client's" --eeep!) please just ask and I will take it down if you wish or preferably give you credit and a link back to its source.  Most everything here that doesn't have an embedding code within its source is some kind of meme, so it would be quite difficult for me to do proper attribution.]