Light Snakes
I woke up to the news that my long sought after tattooist, a Paris based artist, would be able to see me come November. He’ll be in Mexico City and I confirmed an appointment over Thanksgiving. Note: I last had an appointment with him years ago but that was cancelled due to visa issues. My original plan was to spend a few weeks in Mexico City this year anyway so this would dovetail perfectly.
If all goes well, I'll be done with the final draft of this book by then and returning from Taiwan, so money willing I can just rent a place for awhile and invite friends to drop in. I made a short list of people who had experience with Mexico City and am excited to have a new place to visit at the end of the year. Tacos everywhere!
As I lay in bed, I texted with a friend about her fear of having her parents see her many tattoos, even though they live on an entirely different continent. The things we still do as adults to hide things from our parents… Somewhere along the line I had the bright idea to make a spreadsheet of my tattoos and discovered that I had done just this documentation two years ago! The stats tell me that I’ve gotten seventeen tattoos -- in about fifteen sessions -- and have spent nearly five thousand dollars on them, not counting the upcoming one.
Expecting my book edits back today, I was given a reprieve as my editor said that they’d come in later this week. I had been just lamenting how I had wasted the past week not doing any draft two prep so I guess this is a second chance. I also decided I needed to set tasks for my off time, which basically consist of doing something productive each day, inclusive of reading, watching, researching, organizing, etc.
Real life mini-productivity yesterday included going through my wardrobe to dump about a third of all my clothes to give to Goodwill, visiting the tailor to tighten two pairs of pants, and shipping out a karaoke machine for someone.
Tonight I prepared to watch Clouds of Sils Maria, but was sidetracked immediately into a Korean thriller called Svaha: The Sixth Finger. My friend was over so it was safe to watch something possibly scary, but instead Svaha turned out to be not that scary but definitely thought provoking. And then we cleaned up with Guava Island, which was light and absolutely short and aside from some of Donald Glover’s music scenes, was mostly forgettable. Rihanna was entirely wasted in a role that had her doing not much more than reaction shots.
Svaha was sort of a True Detective and The Da Vinci Code combo and dovetailed nicely with a piece I recently read about the proliferation of Korean religious cults. A few weeks ago I had been chatting with Victor about what made Korean movies so good these days. I still have no answer but even a movie like Svaha, which was pretty much tepidly reviewed, contained so much more than expected. Korean movies are likely the best movies out there these days, right?
And below are two links about plots and stories, and the difference between the from an Eastern versus Western perspective. I found myself forwarding these on a lot so thought I best drop them here.
I’m doing my absolute best to kick my LOL habit once book writing begins again, and toward that end I aim to get some books off my to-read pile, starting with All the Ways Home, a recent release from an online friend. Oh and I fiddled around with ideas for my new author Instagram, learning how to make grid photos like people do these days. And then I had to dust off some Illustrator skills but realized that I actually didn’t have much idea what I was doing at all. Last week I was talking to someone about how many of our schools were self-taught but that also left us just short of actual proficiency. My take nowadays is that I can do what a real person with the requisite abilities can do, but in a much longer time frame. It would certainly be worth it to take some actual classes in some design work.
My general idea with the new Instagram is to use a close up image of a book cover and then the interior would be some related thoughts or pictures of the book in question. If you don't know, #bookstagram is quite a thing and there is a whole subgenre of beautifully curated photos of book covers and matching items and backgrounds. That sounds like too much work indeed but I'd like to join the community somehow.
If all goes well, I'll be done with the final draft of this book by then and returning from Taiwan, so money willing I can just rent a place for awhile and invite friends to drop in. I made a short list of people who had experience with Mexico City and am excited to have a new place to visit at the end of the year. Tacos everywhere!
As I lay in bed, I texted with a friend about her fear of having her parents see her many tattoos, even though they live on an entirely different continent. The things we still do as adults to hide things from our parents… Somewhere along the line I had the bright idea to make a spreadsheet of my tattoos and discovered that I had done just this documentation two years ago! The stats tell me that I’ve gotten seventeen tattoos -- in about fifteen sessions -- and have spent nearly five thousand dollars on them, not counting the upcoming one.
Expecting my book edits back today, I was given a reprieve as my editor said that they’d come in later this week. I had been just lamenting how I had wasted the past week not doing any draft two prep so I guess this is a second chance. I also decided I needed to set tasks for my off time, which basically consist of doing something productive each day, inclusive of reading, watching, researching, organizing, etc.
Real life mini-productivity yesterday included going through my wardrobe to dump about a third of all my clothes to give to Goodwill, visiting the tailor to tighten two pairs of pants, and shipping out a karaoke machine for someone.
Tonight I prepared to watch Clouds of Sils Maria, but was sidetracked immediately into a Korean thriller called Svaha: The Sixth Finger. My friend was over so it was safe to watch something possibly scary, but instead Svaha turned out to be not that scary but definitely thought provoking. And then we cleaned up with Guava Island, which was light and absolutely short and aside from some of Donald Glover’s music scenes, was mostly forgettable. Rihanna was entirely wasted in a role that had her doing not much more than reaction shots.
Svaha was sort of a True Detective and The Da Vinci Code combo and dovetailed nicely with a piece I recently read about the proliferation of Korean religious cults. A few weeks ago I had been chatting with Victor about what made Korean movies so good these days. I still have no answer but even a movie like Svaha, which was pretty much tepidly reviewed, contained so much more than expected. Korean movies are likely the best movies out there these days, right?
And below are two links about plots and stories, and the difference between the from an Eastern versus Western perspective. I found myself forwarding these on a lot so thought I best drop them here.
- What’s behind South Korea’s attraction to fringe churches?
- The significance of plot without conflict (2012)
- Our Fairy Tales Ourselves: Storytelling From East to West (2016)
I’m doing my absolute best to kick my LOL habit once book writing begins again, and toward that end I aim to get some books off my to-read pile, starting with All the Ways Home, a recent release from an online friend. Oh and I fiddled around with ideas for my new author Instagram, learning how to make grid photos like people do these days. And then I had to dust off some Illustrator skills but realized that I actually didn’t have much idea what I was doing at all. Last week I was talking to someone about how many of our schools were self-taught but that also left us just short of actual proficiency. My take nowadays is that I can do what a real person with the requisite abilities can do, but in a much longer time frame. It would certainly be worth it to take some actual classes in some design work.
My general idea with the new Instagram is to use a close up image of a book cover and then the interior would be some related thoughts or pictures of the book in question. If you don't know, #bookstagram is quite a thing and there is a whole subgenre of beautifully curated photos of book covers and matching items and backgrounds. That sounds like too much work indeed but I'd like to join the community somehow.
