The Diary of Queen Mothy |
And Now... For Something Completely Different written @ 11:35 AM on December 31, 2003 The past couple of days have been productive-- at least as productive as someone like me could get on her winter break. Actually, I've been racking my brains out completely bored since Christmas ended and have been forced to come up with creative ideas to be productive. My last entry's to-do list was not nearly as helpful as I had hoped, but brace yourselves, folks, for here is an exercise in "production:" In the past few days I have written over sixty or so pages on and off for Book Two in my series. These chapters, few in number, include a major military invasion, the denoument of Book Two, and all other loose ends that needed to be tied up. Therefore, quite unexpectedly, I finished Book Two yesterday afternoon. It was one of those odd experiences where I kept rolling like a storm through my plot toward a cliff whose ground unexpectedly gave out from under me. And suddenly I was done; I sat back and said, "Oh. It's finished. Wow." Yeah... So, I suppose now I'm doing some prewriting outlines for Book Three. There ya go, Sammy, just keep on truckin,' eh? *** After I finished my book, Kat came over; we were both driven on a mission to beat Syberia, this spiffy computer game we've been playing since this summer. If you've ever played the games in the Myst and Riven series, where a game follows a hidden storyline and throws at you a bunch of mind-numbing puzzles, Syberia will strike you as similiar... only the puzzles weren't nearly as mind-numbing as the games in the Myst series and required helluva fewer Internet cheat peeks. *wink* Kat came to my house at roughly a quarter to three, I think, and she didn't leave until shortly after 11:30pm that night. And we beat the game. Oh yeah. We rocked. I think the game ended a little abruptly for the two of us, though: one moment we were making drinks for this retired opera soprano to get clues to continue on to the next level, the next we were running from bombs set by this psychopath that seemingly popped out of no where, and a minute after-- without hardly any mysteries explained or solved-- the game ended with the main character giving up her life in New York to prowl the Syberian wasteland. I was like, "Dude... What the hell just happened?" Via Harry Potter, it wasn't like we had a Dumbledore to tie up all the loose ends this time. *sigh* But maybe Kat and I just missed some crucial detail somewhere. In any case, if you like mind games that follow a plot, I recommend Syberia. *** Beyond all these fun and games, I have tried to do some real work, i.e. sketching designs for A Piece of My Heart. I read through the play again, making notes and highlighting different things I should keep in mind. I played around with different stage designs, such a theater in the round and a thrust stage. I went online to see how other designers approached the play, to find images and textures about the Vietnam War that inspired me. In the end, though, I came up with very little and found myself approaching a huge creative block. Until last night. I lay in bed about to fall asleep when I began to think of textures, colors, shapes, and unusual objects. Cargo nets . . . red splatters . . . abstract platforms of various levels . . . ramps . . . stairs . . . timbers. I snapped to an upright position, exclaiming, "Eureka!" My cats, who slept at my feet, flinched and gazed at me in puzzlement. It must have been almost two in the morning when this happened. It's going to be a thrust stage flanked with the cargo nets that the U.S. military uses, with a scrim in the background. The platforms are going to be of different, abstract shapes sloping downstage and united by a ramp. The adjoining platforms pieced to the set will be accessible by stairs. The sets will be scumbled with two shades of green and a dark gray, splotched and stamped with red to compliment the scenery when it comes to the Tet offensive in the play. If done right, the red won't look like blood... because that would just be cliche and morbid... but as far as design goes, it would balance the composition. It's probably best not to make it any more complicated than what it appears in my head now, but I'm also playing around the possibility of creating some sort of skeletal structure out of bamboo around the set. Not sure how this would fit, though. All in all, I'm trying to combine lighting design into the scenery and using scenery design to push the creative outlets of the lighting. I talked to Erin, the lighting designer, about what was to be done about the Vietnam Wall seen at the beginning and the end of the play, and we have this mutual vision of enveloping the entire black box theater in the light of thousands of names, so that suddenly the audience seating area is very much incorporated into the set design. *** Every year I try to come up with feasible New Year's resolutions, and if you look at my back entries, you'll see I periodically do this and try raising the act of making resolutions to an art form. The success rate has been 50-50 since I began doing this in the first grade, but I have only two goals this year: 1. Stop being such a jerk. Because I have been a jerk to a great many people who have waned my patience incredibly thin this year. 2. Stop being such a prude. This word has now and then been thrown in my face, but I only recently looked it up in the dictionary when my own mother called me the aforementioned. And while I will not change to suit anyone's vision, I have determined that it's probably best for my psychological health (and my social life) that I lighten up, loosen up, and wear mini skirts. I know at least half my audience is cheering right now. *** Thus, the old high school posse is gathering at my house at 7:30 this evening, and then we're car pooling it to Christine's new apartment in Northern Kentucky to ring in 2004. You know what? Everyone got screwed in 2003 the world over. I read in the paper that only Governor Ah-nold seemed to have had a good year. Just something to think about, kids, and one more reason to break out the alcohol.
A Bit of History ~ And Onward! L'Amour Toujours! - August 08, 2005 |
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