Damnation Carnival

Q&A meme that was started by Stuck in a Book.

The Book I Am Currently Reading
I'm actually reading two books at the moment: Peter Carey's Parrot and Olivier in America and Martin Millar's Curse of the Wolf Girl. Both are favourite authors, and I'm loving both reads.

The Book I Finished Last
Martin Millar's Lonely Werewolf Girl (Curse is its sequel). I don't generally do werewolves any more readily than I do vampires, but I'd made an exception on this one because I love Millar's novels. And I don't regret it, I enjoyed it immensely and plunged straight into the next. That's the joy of coming late to a novel you don't want to put down at the end - the sequel is already out *chuckles*.

The Next Book I Want to Read
I want to get Clare London's 72 Hours next. I read an excerpt here and it hooked me sufficiently that I want the rest!

The Last Book I Bought
It was an eBook Shade gave me, The Balance of Silence. I'm ashamed to say I haven't loaded it onto my Kindle yet... *sheepish*. I am going too - tomorrow!

The Last Book I Was Given
I'm not sure actually. I can't remember the last time I was given a book as opposed to an Amazon voucher.

And just for the heck of it, an extra 'Book' of my own:

The Book I Wish I'd Written
The Harry Potter books. J. K. Rowling is worth something like $1 billion nowadays..... 'nuff said

Yay! I have achieved my goal of 5,000 words for the April Fool's challenge! *happy dance*

5,257 / 5,000 (105.1%)

No, I'm not going to get over-confident and complacent and up the ante again. I've done that already - I would have been chuffed enough with my originally planned 3k, so I'm well pleased.

What's next? *grin*

With one week still to go and despite being right about the distractions on offer, I think I'll achieve my April Fools goal of 5000 words *tentatively crossing fingers*

4,545 / 5,000 (90.9%)

Today's post for one of my collaborative novels at PanE adds another 686 words to my total, and with the addition of a wee piece done as a prompt for In So Many Words it inches me a bit nearer my April Fool's goal:
I'm getting anxious about achieving those last 1073 words. It sounds very little, but with the series of Bank Holidays we have lined up for the next 10 days, the preternaturally sunny weather luring me outside and the fact both my partner and I are off work for the aforementioned 10 days and there will be activities planned, it means there are going to be many, many distractions away from the keyboard!

So in the end I went for 500 words as my writing goal for the April Full Moon challenge, and am pleased (and relieved!) to say that I managed a post of 655 words - which not only achieved the Full Moon objective but also almost brought me up to my 3000-word goal for the April Fools too.

Rather than get too smug, I thought maybe I should move the goal posts for the latter, and so rather than rest on my mossy laurels I have upped the stakes for 5000 words. What makes me think I am going to regret it? *grin*

2,998 / 5,000 (60.0%)

Oh, and the real Full Moon is a huge and glorious bright orange sphere tonight - a hue I have rarely seen outside of a 60s technicolor scifi movie. Everyone is commenting about it on Twitter!

1,068 / 2,000 (53.4%)

** Target is 3,000

So, thanks to fae_noir 's encouragement I embarked upon the April's Fool thing. Since I missed the first week of the month, I set myself a very modest target of 3000 words (not 2000 as in the counter below; the counter didn't offer 3000 as an option) and managed a 618-word post for one of my characters today which got me off to a respectable start towards that goal.

I want to try and write something every day. However small. Whether its a something self-contained or part of a work-in-progress. I just feel its important to get back into the habit of regular writing.

618 / 2,000 (30.9%)

 

 Not in reading order, the books I currently have in the pile (paper and Kindle) are: 

1. The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson
2. The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
3. Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey
4. The Tulip by Anna Pavord
5. The Man Who Would be King by Rudyard Kipling

 I'm pondering taking hadrian_gray over to PanE, maybe using a blog there to post his stuff. I do like having the DW etc accounts for him as that's where the prompt communities are, so I' d still upkeep those, but I'm finding it really, really hard to get motivated in a vacuum. I was just trying to do some work on the timeline revisions, and found myself too quickly lapsing into that pernicious old 'why bother' mood again.

I know PanE isn't exactly full of interested readers and commenters either, sadly. That is a source of constant head-banging frustration for me, but I still feel rather less adrift there. It's familiar territory, if nothing else.

 March Prompt:

 As the ripples of Reverb 10 settle across my life's stagnant duck-pond, I discover belatedly that the exercise is being continued into 2011 with a series of monthly prompts. I didn't see the prompts for January and February - if they existed they may have drowned in the tangled morass of my inbox folders - but the prompt for March has just floated ashore. 

I can't say I liked this film exactly, and I admit I found parts of it disturbing and hard to watch. But that's okay, because I did admire it. It's a brilliant piece of film-making. Despite it's length I found it absorbing and well-structured. The acting is superb, the cinematography atmospheric, and the script tautly written and character-driven. The sexual violence was graphic but not gratuitous, and never aestheticised. It was nasty and brutal, pulling no punches in demonstrated how hideous and demeaning violence against women really is.

I can't compare it to the book which I haven't read, but reviews I've read have all praised Noomi Rapace as being perfect for the role of Lisbeth Salander. She is certainly compelling - fierce and vulnerable, damaged and unapologetic.

It's obvious why this was the most successful film in Europe in 2009. Somehow, even when they have big budgets European films tend to be less commercialised and are more grittily realistic than their glossy American counterparts. Northern European filmmakers especially don't generally care for cute sentimentality, and aren't afraid to experiment. They don't patronise viewers with trite and contrived happy endings that leave no threads hanging. They tend to choose actors best suited for the roles rather than this year's biggest box office celebrities. In comparison Hollywood is safe and bland and unexciting, especially since at the moment it seems to be stuck in an endless cycle of inferior and pointless remakes starring cookie-cutter actors.

I'm not at all suprised Hollywood are remaking this film for their own market. I'm sure it will be glossy and explain all the mysteries and people who can't read sub-titles will be pleased.

 The arrival of the New Year was marked for us not by fireworks, but by a bonfire of negativity. 

Prompt: Gift. This month, gifts and gift-giving can seem inescapable. What's the most memorable gift, tangible or emotional, you received this year?

Gifts have been rather sparse this year as myself and everyone else I know in fleshpace are being dull and economising. I did treat myself to a new snow shovel, but I'm not sure that was particularly inspirational to look back on. It was damned useful though, and I had many occasions to bless it heartily in the few snow-blanketed weeks before Christmas. I was given an Amazon voucher for Christmas which was most eagerly welcomed too, since I'm in desperate need of something to read and the local library doesn't seem to have had any new books in since 1976. But I suppose the gift I'll most remember from this year is that my partner and his father together provided the wherewithal for us to be able to take a much-needed holiday in the sun even though I wasn't earning any money and couldn't have paid my own way.

Prompt: Beautifully different. Think about what makes you different and what you do that lights people up. Reflect on all the things that make you different – you’ll find they’re what make you beautiful.

Okay guys, I've got some news for you. No one is as 'different' as they think they are. Out there, there are millions of people with the very same traits you think make you unique. And in striving to be 'different', we very often simply fall into another defined category - remember how you demonstrated your 'difference' as a teen by joining a youth subculture and subscribing to its predefined  physical code and attitude? And just how different do you really want to be anyway? Different isn't automatically beautiful. Different can be very ugly and drag with it a whole set of problems, prejudices and hurts. Growing up gay taught me that, and being gay is only 'different' because other people make it that way.

I don't want to be different. I just want to be special. It's not the same thing at all.

Things that make me beautiful: I love unreservedly but am aloof with strangers; I daydream when I should be working and get excited over small pleasures; I'm vain but shy and introverted, am fierce in defense of my personal space and prefer animals to people. I am reputed to be closely related to a cat. I don't light people up, but I sometimes amuse and please them.

I am not different, just unique.

Just in case you can't tell, I'll admit I didn't like today's prompt. Maybe it's the phrasing rather than the intent, but I found it subtly self-satisfied and irritating. But I guess that's one of the challenges of something like Reverb 10 where you're not choosing your own topics to muse on - you're going to get some prompts that you simply can't personally relate to. Moving along now.

Prompt: Community. Where have you discovered community, online or otherwise, in 2010? What community would you like to join, create or more deeply connect with in 2011?

In terms of online communities, strictly I didn't really get into any new ones last year. I've been a regular member of my main two writing communities - PanErotica and Panhistoria - for many years, although I'm less active overall than I used to be. I did start some solo creative writing efforts at Livejournal and Dreamwidth, but although I met several interesting and inspiring people through that, I wouldn't say I discovered 'community' at either of those places. Yes, communities do exist at those sites, but for myself, I simply shared an environment with thousands of other individuals without interaction, and probably without much common interest.

The only real life community I've really become a part of this year is one of my two workplaces. I've worked at home or with only other one person for a few years, but back in the Spring I took an extra part-time job that put me back working in a team. A small team, but a team none the less. People I had something in common with - even if it was only our work, but in some cases shared interests and outlooks too. This turned out to be an eye-opener! I'm a shy and reserved person in real life but quickly found I liked the contact and interaction with my work mates. I'll never be a sociable animal, but I hope to find a similar sense of connectedness in whatever job I find myself doing next year too.

I wrote a blog post last year about the loss of community spirit in modern Western society. Community, in the local sense, is becoming rarer than hens' teeth, especially in larger cities where one can live in lonely isolation amongst millions of individuals, with no friends or relatives in the neighbourhood. Internet communities are much maligned by some social commentators who blame them for contributing to desocialisation, but one could just as easily make a case that the lack of community spirit in our real lives contributes to us heading in droves to the big, bad cyberworld in search of social interaction, however shallow. Uh, okay, I'm starting to ramble round in circles now, it must be bedtime...

Prompt: Wonder. How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year?

I'm one of those undemanding people who tends to quietly appreciate the small stuff in life and find something to marvel at in the simplest things. And since this city boy followed the man of his heart to the country a few years ago, I have found I don't have to deliberately cultivate a sense of wonder, because happily it's never too far away from me.

I have always been fond of solitude, and on my expeditions through the woods and fields, moors and cliffs that surround my home I have not only found many peaceful (and creatively encouraging) moments but also many marvellous ones - and I mean that in the literal sense of something that provokes wonder and amazement.

Nature is truly a wonderful mistress. I'm not strongly articulate or deep enough to avoid horrible clichés where she is concerned, but there is incredible beauty in the fragile skeleton of a rotted leaf, mist curled like a cat in the valley, roses crystallised in hoar-frost, the fascinating alien microcosm of a clump of moss, cobwebs in sunlight strewn through the branches of a tree like fairy hammocks, the slant of light through a beech wood. These things are all still as fresh and wondrous to me to me as they were when I first saw them, and I don't think they will ever lose their magic:

This year I've decided to sign up for Reverb 10, which delivers daily creative prompts for the month starting 1st December. I'd heard several of my online circle refer to it as an interesting challenge and I do need something to slow the steady decline of my active brain cells. A month isn't too long a time to commit to a bit of daily activity, so I'm firm in intention and hopeful of keeping up.

Reverb 10 describes itself as "an annual event and online initiative to reflect on your year and manifest what’s next. The end of the year is an opportunity to reflect on what's happened, and to send out reverberations for the year ahead." You can read all about it and sign up on their website here.

So it's time again already for PanErotica's annual Hallowe'en Drabble Challenge. The theme this year is "Dead but Dreaming" which is a hell of a tough theme but I have only myself to blame because I set it. Yes, I am slightly crazy...