Hi there. Already thinking about Christmas

I want to make a wind up toy where when you turn a crank, the sleigh and reindeer rock up and down as if surfing the wind and clouds.

I worked out the basics here.

And this is where I am today.

I used the paper to measure how much room I will need for the base. More than  two feet! It is a big prototype!

And what would it look like with a cute dinosaur in Rudolph's position?

I can't recall what the schematic calls for, but I will use a 2X4 for the base, straightened and re-curled paperclips to hold the crank shaft and the crankshaft itself will be a straightened and refolded coat hanger.
 

LTCH Fast Animals

I am trying to find animals that I can make quickly so that I can make enough for residents to sand and paint.

'Quickly' means 'roughly' so there aren't many details. That's fine; that's what paint is for.

Still, I have not found any animal that I can carve quickly. Cut quickly was a saw, yes. But once the knife is used, the takes a long time.

Here are the animals before painting or sanding:

The giraffe necks took a lot of work, as did the legs. The bodies are very boxy.  They were cut from a 2" x 4" with the two pieces, neck and neck overlapping. I cut earlier pictures and will add them soon.

The fish is simple and mostly fun. The main challenge is quickly getting the fins and tail thin enough. A blocky tail just looks wrong.

The deer were fun and mostly done by keyhole saw and then coping saw.  There is a bit of story to their creation. I used this template.  I don't have an electric saw or room to place one if I did so I used a hand coping saw. I also don't have a vise. I used a clamp but since is pinched the wood at only a small spot, my sawing put too much pressure on the neck and snapped the first deer's neck. At work, I used a vise and since it grips the wood across a wide area, and the positioning was so much better, I was able to cut these deer very fast. Maybe twenty minutes for two. They don't have pleasing contours but still the basic shape is very obvious. And fast! 

The necks of the two giraffes went from recognizable to pleasing with a good sanding.

I work at two LTCHs (Long Term Care Home) and in one is a coworker who is both an excellent painter and painting teacher. One technique I learned from her, perhaps obvious to others, is to paint the lightest colour needed first and dry it. She uses a hair dryer but we waited overnight. So we somewhat sloppily painted one or two colours - fur brown and beige antlers for the deer - and the next day added other elements. For the giraffes, the plan was to paint them a light tan one day and the darker spots the next.

These aren't art grade carvings so it was silly for me to imagine the residents of the LTCHs would attempt art grade painting. They did attempt, and manage, fun grade painting. We all had a lot of fun

I will definitely make more deer, perhaps enough to try to sell the completed works, next year. Both LTCHs I work at have bazaars and the sale of products made by residents - as tree ornaments  perhaps - would go well.

And as my saw work improves, maybe I will try giraffes again. The iconic long neck is easy to identify so the finished work is not as confusing as dogs or cats might be - I probably wouldn't be able to carve -quickly or not - enough detail to allow people to recognize the difference. 

LTCH Crafts: looks fishy to me!

I am currently an activity aide at a Long Term Care Home (the 'LTCH' in the labels or tags for this post). I want to do creative work with my residents but many suffer forms of dementia and other challenges. I do not want to put sharp or heavy tools in their hands; not merely because they might use them on each other but, well, I have a big scar on the back of my own hand and my residents often have shakes or palsies of their own.

Another consideration here is my own limited ability - remember that scar on my hand? I can cut wood but not always in a straight line. 

So I thought for a long time on how wood working projects we could do. At my mother's home, I saw a big carved fish - very simply done, mostly a slab of 10" by 2" that, well, looks better than the ones below but clearly similar.

I was able to find some soft wood, cut out some big chunks and do most of the rest with a knife.

There was a discussion online about asking people to draw a bike from memory. Many people had trouble with the shapes and how they connected. Because I love cycling, I got all but the fine details right - and as not before about my ability, those fine details would be sloppy anyway. In this case, I think I conflated many different fish and how their lower fins fit and worked.

This one from   Government Fisheries, has four forward fins, almost like four arms on terrestrial verts.

Some of my fish has two forward and two hind fins while others, to look less like legs, had two forward and one hind fin.

I am not too concerned as I wanted these shapes to be quickly made. This wasn't supposed to be my project but one for the residents that I assisted with.

Here is how the project progressed:

I work in a locked home area with the most confused residents. Most were happy to chat while I, a volunteer and one resident did the sanding. The sanding took an hour or a little more and we were all amazed at how soft the fish felt after the sanding. We could have left the project there and simply used the fish for tactile purposes!

Instead we painted a few of them. I am not much of a painter but a coworker is both a skilled painter and an excellent instructor in the painting process. Where I  painted the yellow fish carefully doing both colours at one sitting, she would have done the whole fish one colour, let it dry and then done the second, darker colour. Sounds simple but I didn't think to do it the first time.

These fish were simple and fun but took more time on my part in the basic shaping than I wanted. I need to get faster, get more of a production line approach going, or I will be wasting my time in prep.
---
Future plans:

Sept: Little Bird:

 

Oct: Jack-o-lantern:

 

Nov: Eagle Feather:

 

Dec: Or ask residents - offer a choice of what they want to make.

Owl:

Jan: Dinosaur

 

Walking stick gift

My wife is not Canadian and in her country did not much celebrate Christmas. She is all for getting our son gifts of entertainment and educational and clothing types but doesn't want gifts herself. I do. And I didn't want to have zero gifts for her under the tree.

One thing I knew she would like is a gift I made. She and I have made things for each other in the past with hers being the more beautiful. She no longer makes Hanji boxes or lights but the ones she did make were remarkable. I apparently don't have photos of them quickly available. Here is a Google Search for Hanji papercraft.

Anyway, I made a walking stick for her. It started as a one foot long dowel and I carved a little, added a rope with a cool knot, measured to her size and then added a copper ferrule to keep the bottom from splitting. Click on any image to embiggen them. 

I think I found the idea of using a bit of copper piping for the ferrule on a scouting website. I am sorry that I cannot find it now to offer a link.

It is a little short for me but the hand grip is quite long so I could use it or my wife could descend a steep slope and still use it when it is planted below her feet.

The staff has a long hand grip area, a Korean flag and a rope affixed with a monkey fist knot. I carved the staff down quite a bit, leaving a knob to put the monkey fist around.

I will soon make a similar walking stick for my son, probably with a half-Korean, half-Canadian flag and whatever other personalizations he wants. Then one for me. Then I will, using the expertise acquired by making three sticks, make a better one for my wife.

Bravery and foolishness

 I had it in mind to carve a "Nune-saram" (눈사람). In Korean, this means 'snowman', but 'Nune' can mean 'snow' or 'eyes' so the carving was going to be two big eyes with a tophat, arms and legs. Oh, Korean snowmen (snow-people?) are made of only two segments, rather than the North American three, so a pair of eyes would fit very well here.

It would look something like this.

I am at a camp and will soon be teaching science at the camp. Ah, the subject isn't important. It is important to my story that I am not at home and only brought a few tools with me. I expected to borrow a saw to make cuts of the big chunks of wood so I could remove them more easily.  Out of impatience or boredom, I decided to start the work without the saw.

And so last night, while pushing my gouge with great effort, it slipped from the wood and ran across the back of my right hand.

I will be okay. The blade cut through all the layers of skin but no deeper. The doctor stitched it up real nice and made a pointed comment about how lucky I was; all my tendons are intact!

So, what do I do now? Naturally, I will not carve tonight. But if I can get a saw, I intend to at least do that work. But will I finish this? Or give away all my carving tools? Will I be able to carve again without my hands shaking?

TWIC: Inktober, CBC, LeGuin, writing, quora,women, Voynich solved, carving tools, tree font

Inktober is coming.

---
Do submit entries to CBC literary contests. Don't make these mistakes. Here are two:

3. Including your name (and address) in the file
It's impossible to anonymously evaluate a text when you have the person's name sitting in the right hand corner of the last page. Please remove your name and any identifying information from your submission (except the title, of course). We have our own ways to keep track of who you are and what you wrote.

A guide to writing prizes for Canadians4. Sending the wrong file
Are you attaching the proper document? Sometimes we receive frantic emails from people who realize they've sent in the wrong version of their story. Some keep tinkering with it after it's been submitted and want to send a tighter version. By then it's too late. We only accept one version of each entry for evaluation.
A guide to Canadian literary magazines and journals open to submissions

-
The CBC has a new short story prize; submissions accepted now!

The 2018 CBC Short Story Prize is open for submissions. Canadian writers can submit original, unpublished short stories until Oct. 31, 2017.
The winner will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, attend a 10-day writing residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and have their story published on CBC Books.

---
Introduction by Ursula LeGuin to her new Hainish novels collection. An excerpt:

Methodical cosmos-makers make plans and charts and maps and timelines early in the whole process. I failed to do this. Any timeline for the books of the Hainish descent would resemble the web of a spider on LSD. Some stories connect, others contradict. Irresponsible as a tourist, I wandered around in my universe forgetting what I’d said about it last time, and then trying to conceal discrepancies with implausibilities, or with silence. If, as some think, God is no longer speaking, maybe it’s because he looked at what he’d made and found himself unable to believe it.


Usually silence is best, but sometimes I think it’s better to point out some of the gaps, to prevent readers from racking their brains in the effort to make sense out of what doesn’t. People ask, for instance: how did the League of Worlds morph into the Ekumen? or why did mindspeech suddenly vanish from the universe? I can’t answer the first question at all, but I know what happened to mindspeech. I couldn’t use it in a story any more, because when I began to think seriously about the incalculable effects mutual telepathy would have on a society, I could no longer, as it were, believe in it. I’d have to fake it. And though a fiction writer mustn’t confuse her creation with fact, encouraging “the willing suspension of disbelief” is not the same thing as faking.

---
From Quora: What should male writers think about when writing female characters. This answer reminds men that women are not always thinking about their chests in the way many men are. Here is an excerpt of what not to write:

She rolled out of bed and put on a shirt, her nipples prominently showing through the thin fabric. She breasted boobily to the stairs and titted downwards.

I did not answer that question but I did answer a few. My social media writing is really taking off - but I neglect my blog. I wonder what my priorities are?
I was one of several who answered:

• I lost my creativity. How can I get it back?
• How do I get new ideas?
• I rambled a lot in explaining why creativity is difficult.

---
Another question was about prepping -not for the coming zombie apocalypse, but before writing a novel. This list looked good.
---
The Voynich manuscript has been solved, or deciphered. It is text describing medical treatments for various ailments. It is difficult to find a single bit ot excerpt; I guess this will do:

It is reflected, however, in the illustrated Zodiac wheels of the Voynich manuscript; the additional ingredients can be identified by the trademark patterns on the bathing tubs, a practice of ingredient identification used by many a medieval apothecary on his albarelli (storage jars). Each Zodiac wheel in the Voynich manuscript is populated by depictions of naked female figures in the classical tradition of either bathing in hip baths or in physical exertions.

I briefly mentioned Voynich here, the link in that post goes to the digitized books.---
Using images in English Language Teaching, a free e-book (pdf format found at the link).
---
I try to carve wood. I know what a stop-cut is. At a carving tools fair, I picked up a few chisels, gouges and blades that I thought were appropriate; at the check out the clerk asked me what I planned to do with them. She then recommended fewer and different tools. Another subject I need to educate myself in. This blog post on wood carving tools will help.
---
Tolkien reads the Hobbit. This was his first time seeing and using a tape recorder.
---
A tree alphabet and font. Katie Holden has created an alphabet of trees. Part of it here.

I must admit I don't know how to install new fonts but if you can and want to, you can download it here.
Via Kottke.
---
Social Justice Warriors are(n't) taking over science fiction.
---

TWIC: formatting and publishing, carving tool, ninjas, atmosphere, scientific writing, editing,

A tutorial on formatting and publishing your e-book. THe tutorial uses screenshots and open and free software.

Resources:
Word Processor (MS Word, Open Office, Libre Office, etc...)
Google Docs
Calibre E-Book ManagerAn Epub Validator (There are many of these out there, but this one is free and was recommended by my original distributor)
Your Novel.

--
My friend the Big Ho also offers some suggestions on e-publishing.
---
Plotting, planning and cooking up, 24 ways. I tend to do something like the 'tentpole moments'

TENTPOLE MOMENTS
A story in your head may require certain keystone events to be part of the plot. “Betty-Sue must get sucked into the time portal outside Schenectady, because that’s why her ex-boyfriend Booboo begins to build a time machine in earnest which will accidentally unravel space-and-time.” You might have five, maybe ten of these. Write them down. These are the elements that, were they not included, the plot would fall down (like a tent without its poles). The narrative space between the tentpoles is uncharted territory.
BEGINNING, MIDDLE, END
Write three paragraphs, each detailing the rough three acts found in every story: the inciting incident and outcome of the beginning (Act I), the escalation and conflict in the middle (Act II), the climactic culmination of events and the ease-down denoument of the end (Act III). You can, if you want, choose the elemental changes-in-state you might find at the end of each act, too — the pivot point on which the story shifts. This document probably isn’t more than a page’s worth of wordsmithy. Simple and elegant.
A SERIES OF SEQUENCES
The saying goes that an average screenplay usually offers up eight or nine sequences (a sequence being a series of scenes that add together to form common narrative purpose, like, say, the Attack On The Death Star sequence from Star Wars or the Kevin James Makes Love To All The Animals In Order To Make The Audience Feel Shame sequence from Paul Blart, Zoo Abortion). So, chart the sequences that will go into your screenplay. If you’re writing prose, I don’t know how many sequences a novel should have — more than a film, probably (or alternately, each sequence is granted a greater conglomeration of scenes).

---
Need a job? Have some unsavory skills that are somehow spectacular but discrete? Japan needs ninjas!
---
Atmospheric Background Music. Many options: Vampire's Castle, Lonesome West, Weirder Things? They got it.
---
I think I need a curved carving tool like this one.

---
A few from Quora:
Scientific writing is hard, here are some guidelines. James Emmerson had great suggestions and explanations.
-
Marketing or finding an audience for a storytelling blog.
-
A confused question about editing and drafts, I think.
---
Joe Rogan. I think he was on New Radio. Nowadays, I mostly know him as a moon-landing denier. Some people love his podcast. I am trying it out, listening to his interview with Dr Jordan Peterson.The same interview is on Youtube. Peterson is a U of T professor of psychology who also runs an online writing program where students write about their past, present and future. I haven't dug into any of this yet, but it looks interesting.
---
Before you outline. Huh?

TWIC: VPNs, carving, marketing, motivation,

I can't think of any way this relates to creativity but as an important public service, here is an article on how to secure your web browser and set up a VPN. Incredibly important!
---
How to sharpen wood carving tools.
---
Bizarre Japanese Nurse stock photos. Find information about them at that link. The photos can be found here. And #savedyouaclick: there are no tentacle porn or naked nurse photos. I, uh, didn't search for them...Well, I didn't specifically search for them.
---
Videos of Traditional ways of making from South Korea.
---
Working from anywhere: a laptop lifestyle.
---
Quora and Medium posts to attract readers.
and
Podcasting to attract readers.
---
What is stopping you from writing?
and
What's holding you back?
---
A poisonous grudge with another writer.
---
Camp Nano is going on right now!
---
Live like Kings and Work like Artisans.
---
Beautiful Bookstore
---
Bored scribes told a story in the margins of their illuminated manuscripts in days of yore. Why so many snails? The answer is in that video but it leaves out the possibility of a warning against Uzumaki!

TWIC: Chopsticks, slow week

---
I start this roundup soon after the previous one gets posted. When I start it, I set the schedule the publishing day and time. This iteration, I found an interesting story -Korea and woodcarving - and prepared the post. Then nothing and I just checked - this post goes live tomorrow.  I guess it is an unusually short one.
--
I continue to get by with Nano. Last night, I was a hundred words ahead and I remain on schedule today. But last year, I was ahead by a day or two by this point. It will be down to the wire, I guess.

TWIC: Grants, Writers and writing, Spoon, Pelee Island Retreat, pay

On Quora, the question How do you write a good grant proposal was asked and answered.

The answer (so far there is only one) is to find examples in books or in a Google search.  Most such proposals are generally vague and dry so adding some detail and working to make them interesting is important to be noticed.
--
Jeff Vandermeer's Wonderbook is one of the most beautiful I have seen.  Now I need to read it.  He has given lectures on the same content using images found in the book.  Find it here.  The image below, from the link and the book, has been shrunk. Click on it to a somewhat larger size or follow the second link to see it full-size.

---
'Verbing' is annoying for some people.

If you’ve ever been in a conversation with someone who makes liberal use of the verb form of summer – which is, coincidentally, also its nominal form – you’ve probably rolled your eyes at such egregious snobbery. Unless, of course, you were simply waiting your turn to share about your own summering, in which case it is probably correct to assume you also enjoy yachting, golfing, and cardiganing.

and

Indeed, in 2007, when Mike Huckabee was a candidate for the Republican nomination for US president, he used it on the campaign trail to differentiate himself from his Ivy League rivals: “For my family, summer was never a verb. We never summered anywhere.”
Well, plenty of other people have summered – for more than 500 years. According to Trish Steward, assistant editor at the Oxford English Dictionary, the verbal use of summer “goes back quite a long way,” its first recorded use being 1440.

I believe this is described as fossilization of a language.  The words and forms you heard as a child will always the the 'right' ones.   Verbing doesn't bother me that I can recall. As a competitive swimmer, the verb 'medalling' was common enough that it never upset me.

Other examples that affect me are Gonna, Wanna, and Hafta, but the one that really grates on my ears and seems common in the UK is "Haven't got". It's "Don't have", for crying out loud!
---
Twenty-eight thousand words in a single flight.
The article is difficult to summarize but here are his main points.

• Sleep during take off.
• Laptop on lap rather than chair table.
• Headphones, Ommwriter, Flux and background music
• drink a lot (of water) and don't eat.
• Get up every three thousand words
• Do exercises (ten pushups or squats) in the galley areas a few times
• Save frequently.

The author travels business class and can plug in his computer so he has power for the whole flight. I love Ommwriter (the Mac version is better) and Flux apparently resets the lighting so your eyes don't ache in low light situations.
---
The latest Hugo Awards shenanigans.

Question: If you could pick a single writer to make an effective, compassionate statement about identity politics to a divided literary community, who would you pick? Would it be a schizophrenic, autistic person who’d authored an e-book called Space Raptor Butt Invasion?
For years, writers and fans of science fiction and fantasy have been confronting that first question. And inadvertently, at the behest of right-wing trolls, the answer to the second question has recently become yes.

Via.

Beautiful (and moving) piece on @ChuckTingle, the Hugo Awards, Elves and Shoemakers: https://t.co/q7GVYmTlHy

— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) August 27, 2016

---
I know things that I didn't even know I knew.

Things native English speakers know, but don't know we know: pic.twitter.com/Ex0Ui9oBSL

— Matthew Anderson (@MattAndersonBBC) September 3, 2016

---
Will I make money as an artist?

A toast to every artist who has a piece of art out there with 10,000+ shares/likes and less than 5 sales pic.twitter.com/OvAv0D1V30

— Kate Leth (@kateleth) August 28, 2016

---
Lessons for Story Tellers at the World Domination Summit

(2) You can always edit more than you think
What it is the point we’re trying to get across with this story?
And then,
What can I cut out, but still get this point across?
It’s brutal. But in the end, I managed to edit some stories down to 30 seconds – which gave us wiggle room to add some details back in

---
Spoon! Jimmy Diresta makes one.


Boingboing has a quote from him with a link that didn't work for me.

As a dabbler who hasn't done enough continuously enough to learn by doing, videos like these are wonderful.  At the beginning, Diresta makes his block on two sides with the rough shape of his spoon.  Of course, once he cuts on axis, the marks have been removed. What does Diresta?  He applies glue to the part that will be next cut off and rebuilds his block. Then he cuts again and the rough is cut free top and bottom, left and right.  That was worth the price of the video right there.

And a graphic reminder:

This image was many places. I found this one on Reddit.
---
Pelee Island Writer's retreat funding on Indiegogo.

The funds raised in this one-time effort will be used for the start-up costs for the Pelee Island Book House and Writers' Retreat. Known for its beaches and birding, the island's quiet beauty makes it an ideal location. Perks are offered at every level,

---
Work free, for exposure.
I, uh, am attempting to write a (very) short story for this blog every week - see 'click bait' for stories - to produce content for this blog to attract eyeballs and good feeling from readers so that when I publish a book,there'll be some people to read it.  Maybe even pay for the dubious pleasure of reading it.  These stories are free - and that is probably a realistic measure of their value - and i do it for exposure.
Of course, I am doing this by choice, on my own platform.
At For Exposure, there is a long list of screen caps showing people asking for artists to work for free and getting angry when the artist asks for money. The above link is to a Twitter account and I think the examples are collected here on Imgur. As always, I have shrunk the images. To see them fullsize, and many, many more, follow the link.

Ha. Vulva owners!
--
And more on the same subject. Vice allegedly treats its freelancers badly.

IN AN ERA OF JOURNALISM in which freelancers have grown accustomed to being treated like disposable cogs of news production, Vice appears to be in a league of its own.
Interviews with more than a dozen freelance journalists suggest the young, edgy news organization heralded as the future of journalism also has ushered in a new low for its treatment of freelance journalists.

Via Boingboing.

Thinking about carving my (golf)balls.

I have carved the cores of a few golf balls before but am suffering from a lack of imagination for any of these.  I tell people my hobby is wood carving but I haven't done enough to get good enough to want to do more yet.

In the past, I have carved two elephants into cores.

The lower ball in the picture has a strange pattern drawn on the shell and '2015' so I've clearly had it for a while.

At the upper right is a Pasteur Milk golf ball. I have worked at a school near Pasteur Milk in Korea and the company once funded the school.  I want to give this ball to a teacher there.  He is German and teaches history.  His hobby is bug-hunting. Hmm. Beer-drinking mosquito?

Online resources for golfball core carving:

Suggestions from the Northwest Carvers Association.

III. Preparing the center for carving: (All sorts of subjects can be carved into the center. Here are hints to doing a face.

a. Planning and drawing the face:

1. Patterns can be found in many sources--magazines, books, paintings. You can copy expression and muscle movement from your own face.
2. Find the center, place lines. If you plan to use a hat or a beard you need to be sure to have space for these. (See Example 1)
3. I draw the nose a bit larger to leave room for error (See Example 2)

---
Patterns from carver's compantion. Here are some cropped examples:

---
I think this carver's exchange is ongoing.  You register with them and commit to carving one golf ball a month for six months and send off to others while collecting the same from six other carvers.  I guess this means you could carve the same thing six times.

The relentless demands of advent

Word Count

Wednesday, Dec 16: 601

---
A few years ago, my mother gave me a fabric Advent calendar for any year.

One of the many things I like about this calendar is that I am not giving my son chocolate every day.  But finding novel stuff to put in it is a challenge.  My son got a  triceratops head carving today and will get this owl tomorrow.

I am not as proud of the triceratops carving but was still fun to work on.

Write for your audience -and more

Word Count:

Monday, Dec 14: 420 

--
Ruben Bolling recently discussed Sandak's famous claim about his audience:

“I don’t write for children. I write – and somebody says, ‘That’s for children!’”

This confused Bolling until he heard Jules Feiffer say he wrote for both adults and children. "Both.  I write for the kid in me."

I hugely love Bolling's Tom the Dancing Bug comic and read it every week. He describes his work thus:

In addition, I realize now that when I write “Tom the Dancing Bug,” I’m not really writing for some abstract, whole “me.” I’m writing for the adult in me – that part of me that is interested in sketch comedy, absurdist humor and political and social satire.
But, speaking of plot twists, here’s the M. Night Shyamalan-type kicker at the end of the story: It turns out that even as I wrote my very grownup comic strip for 25 years, I’ve been also writing for the kid in me the whole time!
When I want to write about income inequality, I use “funny animal” Carl Barks-like comic book characters....
When I want to write about religion, I use a brightly colored, caped superhero.

---
Khiatons offers a round up of science news that seems perfect to power Sci-Fi stories. A few examples:

Carbon Farming Gets A Nod At Paris Climate Conference 

Computer learns like a human and (sort of) beat the Turing Test 

Engineers build biologically powered chip 

Google Teams Up With Scientists To Track STD Outbreaks 

Diagnosing malaria with a cell phone

This appears to be a weekly thing.  I don't think the links carried through so follow my link to Khiatons page for them.
---
Backstory: You're doing it wrong Lisa Cron explains a common problem with backstory - it stops the 'now' story and is mostly an info-dump.  Here is her suggestion:

...the protagonist’s backstory must be layered into the current action. Rather than learning about it “objectively,” readers want to experience it through the affect it has on the protagonist now, in the moment.
Here’s the secret: Backstory becomes present – and therefore active – when it’s influencing what your protagonist is doing, thinking, considering. That is the wavelength your reader is wired to respond to, because that’s where your protagonist’s motive lives. We don’t simply want to know what your protagonist does, we want to know why.

---
Jon Winokur collects quotes about writing.  For some reason, I am giving only a fragment of a quote he has collected from someone else.  Anti-plagiarism habits die hard:

It is a delicious thing to write, to be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating. Today, for instance, as man and woman, both lover and mistress, I rode in a forest on an autumn afternoon under the yellow leaves, ...

----
I don't want this blog to be only about writing. I recently watched a woodcarving video by Dennis Stallings and finally see how the eyes should be done. I have always made googly eyes or bulging eyes.  Here I see how to inset them a little.

Bravery

It seems this video on Facebook can be linked to, but I don't see how to embed it here.  The woodcarver, Mudana, does his rough work with a hatchet, holding the chunk of wood near his feet.

The bravery in the title however does not refer to the proximity of the sharp, fast-moving ax-head and his feet, but in the confidence in his work.

As a novice carver, I take only the tiniest chunks and scrapings from my work, terrified not that I will lose an appendage, but that I will make a irreversible error and remove a piece I need.  Training has given Mudana confidence.

But, as a writer, I can be brave and type stuff I'm not sure works.  Typed errors are far less likely to remove a finger and are far easier to repair.

Time to be brave and pound out some words, and 50,000 more in November.

Spoon!

While on a canoe trip in 2013, I was horrified to learn that I hadn't packed any cutlery.  I didn't need a fork because chopsticks are so easy to make but I did need a spoon and chose to make the spatula, well, just because I had the materials.  The photo of them below is foggy because I tipped my canoe early in the trip and my camera got wet... Really, it was a  pretty good trip and I do enjoy canoeing.  If you are interested in that trip, look here.  Here is the link to another spoon I worked on.

All that to introduce this post about a man serious about spoons.  Stian Korntved Ruud has been carving a spoon a day for, well, some time now.  He has thrown away the desire to make standard spoons and has been exploring, um, 'spoonness'.  I copied and pasted into Paint to display two of them and how one of them started.

via Boingboing.

Added a year and a half later: More from Ruud. Well, more pictures of his spoons.

TWIC: An overview, Drawing Nancy and making pliers

Creativity is messy.  This is a good overview of the science of creativity but I'm most impressed with the profanity - not often seen at Scientific American.

Ivan Brunetti was hired to draw Nancy long after the original artist had passed away.  At Boingboing, he describes the experience and what he learned.
I don't know where Woodring got this, but it does make you wonder what context could possibly fit.

---

Make wooden pliers using only ten cuts to basswood. i wouldn't say they're all that functional, but they are that cool.

.

back to work

I have a lot to do this month and some of it will require creative thinking.

In just over a week, the little guy and I will return to Korea and I have to figure out a way to pack and carry all the things we want to take with us.

I haven't finished the story I wrote for InNoWriMo.  Yes, I did write more than 50,000 words but the story isn't done - in fact it is stuck at beginning of the exciting climax!  I am not sure how exciting that news is, but the climax itself is so exciting as to deserve that exclamation mark.  I've got to finish the story, then start revisions.

In Korea, at my job as a professor of ESL for Dongseo University, I am taking over as manager of the English Cafe events and need to plan what is to be done there.  The typical program has included a daily games hour and a daily showing of the Simpsons.  I like both but also want to add and change the program.  I would love to somehow add a sports competition between the English, Chinese and Japanese cafes.

And, to fill in some time now, I am working on a spoon.  The wood is just something I rescued from the fire kindling pile and cracks unpleasantly under my knife but the shape is working out.

The pencil you see was sharpened by the little guy with a Gerber Dime, a Christmas present I gave him.  Reports on the quality of the blade are not great but it is the right size for him and fine for him to practice with.  It took him around forty minutes to sharpen that pencil and he is learning what angle to use and how to draw the knife back during the cut.  He wants to do more but I am reluctant; I know he will cut his fingers a few times and want to delay that a little longer - no blood in this post, but I cut my hand twice in the beginning stages of carving his cheetah.

My son's writing project went well until we traveled to Alaska for Christmas.  I am hoping he will return to it and will push him a little to do so.  As for now, we have returned from Alaska and he has one more week with his Penetanguishene friends before leaving them - I won't distract him now.

I have writing projects in mind and want to carve at least three Christmas gifts this year - turkey will be extra.

TWIC Jan 2014

I had a great Christmas.  We went to my sister's home in Alaska.  The little guy liked his carved cheetah (see any of the past twenty or so blog posts on the subject) but received many toys that were more interactive.  I think the cheetah will be more of a memento of his youth than a toy to be used day to day.  That's what I tell myself, anyway.

My sister gave me a Dremel set.  There were some parts of the cheetah that my knives and gouges couldn't reach well and I think this set will improve future carvings.

I hope all my reader(s) -is the bracketed 's' joke getting old - had a similarly good solstice or Christmas or Festivus or the like and are ready for an exciting new year.  I still have not made any resolutions but do plan to.

Two links for today.
Fred Clark at Slacktivist writes with wonderful eloquence about empathy and evangelical Christianity.  I have no idea what he is like in meatspace but in his blog sure gives Christianity a good name.  Recently, he highlighted a blog post from two years ago that offers a suggestion for your next novel.  Well, the post is about a problem with libertarianism but is framed as a way to create a bully for your story.

Each of us lives in a network of levels of government, with each level in turn differentiated with various agencies, services, bureaucracies, offices, officers, regulators, responders, police, courts, councils, legislatures, schools, libraries, etc. ...non-state, non-individual entities that make up our world: families, friendships, clubs, teams, bands, troupes, affinity groups, congregations, denominations, businesses, banks, exchanges, markets, unions, neighborhoods, theaters, leagues, societies, charities, associations, etc....Look again at that list of entities above — families, friendships, etc. Any one of those might, at some point, come to function as a “bully” in the life of an individual. In doing so, it would be betraying its intended purpose and function, but any single one of those entities so corrupted could turn a person’s life into a hell.

So instead of using that list above as the starting point for another lecture on subsidiarity, let’s instead think of it as a novel-generating machine. Pick one item from the list. Twist it into a bully. Voila! There’s your next novel.

-------------

Dan Piraro and Wayno frequently collaborate on ideas for comics.  At the second link, Wayno goes into detail about how his original idea transformed into the published comic (found at the first link).

Don't be too alarmed - this isn't a real cheetah, just a carving.

I was a little disappointed once I had finished sanding the carving.  Even after vigourous sanding, there were obvious knife marks where I had cut too deeply.  I was really upset about how it looked.  Then, the yellow coat of paint was applied and it looked at least as bad if not worse.

Then, I added the spots and suddenly, it looks great!

Again, this is not a real cheetah in the picture.  It is a real snake so you can imagine a cheetah v python battle if you want.

And two closeups.

There are some glaring problems and errors - well, glaring to me.  Two pieces of easily shared advice I learned from carvers are 1) when carving with a blade, you always cut too deeply (the alternative is using a grinding tool) and 2) when showing your work, don't mention the errors or mistakes.  If you, the observer, can't see them,I'm not telling you what they are.  They stand out to me because I have held, cut, sanded and, yes, caressed, every bit of this carving and know it better than anyone else.
--
That said, many of the other carvers offered compliments, and advice.  One gentleman, as soon as he saw it, said, "It's too yellow!"  I was a little pissed off but the man who had lent me the paint accepted the criticism and remarked that that was all the paint we had to use.  I saw I was a little too thin skinned on the subject and so learned another lesson.