Recent Activity

Filter by:

All

• 

  The Creative Person's List of Laments ….Because we creative people have the amazing magical power to create neuroses out of thin air!
  
  I may not be as helpful or clever as Merlin Mann, but hopefully this is reasonably entertaining. I enjoyed writing it, although I'm vaguely embarrassed at how many of these neuroses—er, laments—I have personally indulged in on repeated occasions.
  
  So You've Got a Bouncing Baby...Whatever That Is 
  
  1. I'm not even sure this is a very good idea in the first place. Perhaps I: am getting old / killed too many brain cells in [insert college name here] / should have been a [insert more lucrative career here]. (select all that apply)
  
  2. I'm never possibly going to finish [project title].
  
  3. I'm never going to finish revising / perfecting [project title].
  
  Once Your Project Is Done. Or IS it? 
  
  4. Is it really done? Maybe I should just tweak this word / sentence / line / stray pencil mark.
  
  5. It's not done. I never should have sent it off to that literary magazine / editor / agent / contest / juried show.
  
  6. Another rejection? I'll never find an agent / a gallery / a publisher. (See #1. Repeat as needed.)
  
  Break Glass In Case of Unexpected Non-Rejection 
  
  7. They're never going to like it as is. They're going to ask me to completely recreate my drawing / painting / sculpture / main character / plot. 
  
  8. Nobody's going to read / notice / like my book / poetry / artwork.
  
  9. My work will never be as good as [insert name of more talented and accomplished colleague] or [name of ridiculously successful professional in prime of career].
  
  10. The reviews and sales figures will only prove my unsuitability for this career / lack of creative ability / mediocrity / insanity.
  
  When It's All Over...Lather, Rinse, Repeat. And thank your lucky stars you're doing this instead of anything else in the world.

  Copyright 2010 Sarah J. Stevenson. Some rights reserved.

  2 months on
  aquafortis
• 

  Son of Figure Drawing: Escape from Monster Island Just kidding. No monster island. But I am happy to report that the first ever figure drawing session held in our home art studio was a success. It's a closed session--just five of us total for this first one (not counting the model), and honestly, that's as many as can comfortably fit in the room along with enough tables and easels and chairs for everyone. Anyway, Rob's idea behind the private sessions was to have more control over poses and timing than is usually available with the sessions that are open to the public in our area.
  
  
  It ultimately costs the same amount per person, but it's much more comfortable for us, and also affords us the chance to focus on whatever type of drawing we want to do that day as opposed to what's set by the organizers of the open session. We've been hoping to set this up for a while, so it was satisfying to actually set a twice-monthly schedule and hold the first session. Next time, we iron out the kinks and really get down to business. Honestly, though, I can't complain much because I got two good drawings out of it. It took me about half of the three-hour period to get warmed up, but once I did, the results were pretty fair. I'm looking forward to producing some useful sketches in the near future, and maybe even a few finished pieces. I've been wanting to put my artmaking time on more of a regular schedule; this should really help.
  

  
  
  

  Copyright 2010 Sarah J. Stevenson. Some rights reserved.

  2 months on
  aquafortis
• 

  Me As Pathetic Victorian Child
  

  

  Among other things that have been keeping me pretty well occupied lately, I finally started the laborious long-term project of scanning old childhood photos into digital format. I'm putting some of them into Flickr (sorry, you won't be able to see them unless you have a Flickr account and I've marked you as a friend/family), including this one of me in London in 1981.
  
  We were visiting Hampton Court Palace with a friend of my Mom's and her nephews (pictured). I look a bit disgruntled in my frilly dress. I have no idea why my mother put me in a frilly dress, but there you go. I guess I can blame it on the 80s, like the socks-and-sandals look I'm also sporting, and the bowl-cut/pageboy hairdo.
  
  My parents had met in London, and lived there before I was born. On this trip, we were touring around England and Wales, visiting old friends of my parents and sightseeing. I actually have quite a few memories from the trip, thanks to a travel journal that my mom kept. She'd write in it with me every evening, jotting down about a page about the events of the day. Back in Southern California, I would read it over and over again for years afterward, cementing some of the memories in my mind.
  
  That day at Hampton Court Palace, my mom wrote, "We saw some lovely costumes from 'The Six Wives of Henry VIII' (BBC Production), and the king's kitchen, the beautiful gardens full of trees and flowers and interesting rock paths; and best of all, we went into a maze!" The hedge maze is nearly all I remember now of that day--scary but fun, with kids running and screaming down the rows, gleefully getting lost and finding each other again.
  
  I have one other memory of that day, something that was significant to my child-mind but seems so ordinary now--finding a strange but interesting rock on the ground, somewhere amid the otherwise-unremarkable gravel of the paths. It looked broken, split open like a tiny hemisphere, with the broken side showing both dark greyish-brown as well as a lighter beige center. I remember showing it to my mom, who was sitting on a bench. She let me keep it as a souvenir. I'm not sure what ultimately happened to it, but I kept that for years with my other mementos of the trip--which included other stones, beach-smooth ovals from the ocean at Tintagel (where King Arthur was born, according to legend). Apparently I really liked rocks.

  Copyright 2010 Sarah J. Stevenson. Some rights reserved.

  2 months on
  aquafortis
• 

  Eat This I don't really post recipes here, mainly due to the fact that there are plenty of other bloggers who do a much better job of it than I do. Not only that, I'm not the most creative cook. I love working with other people's recipes, and I will customize them to some extent, but in our house, Rob is the one who invents recipes. I'm the one with a cookbook fetish.
  
  However: occasionally I do come up with something worth saving, and this one might be the best yet. I liked it enough that I'm going to share it here. But first, here's the story behind the recipe. Last night, we ate a completely vegan meal. This isn't entirely unheard of in our house, but neither of us is vegan. We're not even vegetarian. I'd call us equal-opportunity eaters. But we do love vegetables and try to consume as many as possible, so the menu I settled on last night was pita chips, beet hummus, and some sort of vaguely Middle Eastern salad. The beet hummus was really tasty (though I ended up adding about a tablespoon of olive oil to increase the smoothness) but I was very proud of myself for inventing this salad. Sorry, no picture. The salad was consumed before I thought of busting out the camera.
  
  Cucumber-Mint Salad
  
  2 large or 4 small servings
  
  1 cucumber, peeled, quartered lengthwise, and sliced thickly
  1 tomato, diced
  4 radishes, thinly sliced
  1 green onion, thinly sliced
  1 avocado, diced
  2 tbsp mint leaves, chopped
  1 tbsp parsley, chopped
  
  Dressing:
  juice of ¼ lemon
  olive oil
  pepper
  
  Combine salad ingredients and toss. Whisk dressing ingredients and drizzle over salad.

  Copyright 2010 Sarah J. Stevenson. Some rights reserved.

  3 months on
  aquafortis
• 

  Mythbusters Volunteer Recap, Part II Those of you who read my Mythbusters Volunteer Recap Part I, written way back when in February, were clearly anticipating with glee the eventual Part II, in which I could write about what actually happened without releasing any spoilers. Well, several months after the fact, and a couple of weeks after the airing of the episode—entitled "No Pain, No Gain"--here it is. The story of  
  
  HOW I VERY PROBABLY BECAME KNOWN AS "THE PROBLEM VOLUNTEER"
  
  So, in Episode I, I talked about my arrival at the studios. After they processed all the volunteers—all women, that day—we waited around in the front room and the hallway to get called in for an individual debriefing before going down to the workshop to participate in the experiment. First things first: everybody met with their house EMT, Sanjay, who asked a few health-related questions to make sure nobody had any heart conditions or anything that would prevent them from taking part. Sanjay is now on my list of awesome top-notch individuals, for reasons which will become clear later in the story.
  
  After talking to Sanjay, I waited around some more, feeling totally out of place among the volunteers—though not due to driving distance, for once. There were volunteers who drove in from San Luis Obispo, so my measly 90 miles seemed like nothing at all. When they called me in for the debriefing, I went into the office where they sat me in the ejector seat from a previous episode and explained what would happen during the experiment. At this point, they also attached a microphone to my sweater.
  
  They told me it would be a pain tolerance experiment, involving submerging my hand in ice water for as long as I could tolerate the pain, up to a maximum of three minutes. I was to tell them when it first started becoming painful, then I was to sit there with my hand in the ice until I couldn't stand it anymore. Then they asked, "do you still want to take part?" Of course, I said yes. EMT Sanjay (not to be confused with Dr. Sanjay) would be standing by to look us over after we finished. We'd be given one of those post-skiing hand warmers to squeeze, to thaw out the frozen hand. It was all straightforward. Anxiety-producing, to be sure—if you're me (not a big fan of being on the "hot seat," here)—but straightforward.
  
  And then I was descending the staircase into the workshop famously shown in Mythbusters episodes from time immemorial (okay, slight hyperbole)--the intriguingly labeled boxes on shelves lining the wall, the worktables and tools, the special chair set up with the glass bowl of ice water for me to be tortured with—and, oh yeah. About eight or ten associated producers and camera crew watching my every move. Cripes.
  
  

  

  I got my picture taken with Adam and Jamie—a very cool thing they set up for the volunteers—and proceeded to sit in the, er, cold seat. Time ticked by. Not a lot of time ticked by before I decided that, yes, OUCH, this hurts. And it kept hurting. OK, ouch. Ouch, ouch. Ow. But eventually I got to a sort of plateau where it hurt a lot, but didn't hurt any WORSE. So I sat there for a while, wondering when I should take my hand out. At some point, I realized it just DID NOT feel good. I felt weird. So I thought I'd take my hand out. Not so much because of extreme pain, but because my body was unhappy with me for putting it through this discomfiting situation.
  
  At this point, I was having center-of-attention anxiety and failed to look at the timer to see how long I'd lasted. Probably no more than a minute and a half, but I guess I'll never know for sure. I stepped off the chair, they thanked me, handed me a hand warmer for my hand (which I now could no longer feel), and I walked off camera and into the next room where the EMT told me to have a quick seat.
  
  Here's where I became the problem volunteer. There I was, sitting in the chair, minding my own business, squeezing the hand warmer, when suddenly I felt a tad bit woozy. I felt my hand loosen around the hand warmer, my eyes closing. A moment later, EMT Sanjay was talking to me, asking me very calmly but very concerned, "did you go out on me for a second there?" Me: "Uh, I guess I did. That was weird." "Was it the pain?" "No, no, I doubt that. It wasn't really excruciatingly painful." Not to mention, this was quite a bit after the fact. "Do you have anxiety issues?" Oh. Huh. "Yeah, I guess that could be it."
  
  So we're talking, and he has me relax in the chair for another minute, and then I pass out AGAIN. Just momentarily, not completely—I never dropped the hand warmer or fell out of the chair or anything like that. It was more like I had temporary narcolepsy. For the record, I've only ever completely fainted once before—over 12 years ago—so it's not like this was a regular thing. So then Sanjay busts out the oxygen mask, which is really embarrassing with other volunteers walking through and getting their uneventful post-experiment cursory examinations and me sitting there in the chair with a breathing apparatus. He monitored my blood pressure for a minute or two more, but at that point I was feeling a lot better, I could feel my HAND again, and I was more than ready to flee in humiliation.
  
  Fortunately, this was all off the record, not captured on camera for posterity. Sanjay finally let me go, with strict instructions to go to the cafe next door and eat a sandwich—we figured part of the problem was the fact that I'd eaten breakfast in the car around 7 am and then nothing at all for the next five-plus hours. So, to sum up: Sanjay kicks ass. The Mythbusters rock. And I am apparently a wimp when it comes to not eating for hours and then subjecting myself to physical strain and anxiety.
  
  Although, as a post script, a doctor I mentioned it to suggested that it may have also been vascular...um...something. A reaction to the actual warming-up process having to do with blood vessels suddenly constricting, or un-constricting, or something of that nature that I don't remember because I'm not a medical professional. That made me feel a little better.
  
  So there you go. How I became the problem volunteer with temporary narcolepsy. But hey: at least I looked normal in the TV broadcast. Not only that, I had more screen time than I ever expected—I wasn't even relegated to the montage. Not too shabby.

  Copyright 2010 Sarah J. Stevenson. Some rights reserved.

  3 months on
  aquafortis
• 

  "I'm Not Dead Yet." Monty Python quotes aside, I'm still here. I've just managed to mostly intimidate myself out of blogging by making it seem like an agonizing and mountainous chore. That, and I've been trying to avoid doing anything extraneous that would distract me from finishing my revision. Which, by the way, is DONE. Almost. I'm having Tanita look at it and let me know if I've committed any egregious no-nos before I give it one last once-over and send it back to my publisher. 
  
  I've also been spending a lot of time writing such gems as this and generally getting caught up after being away for a week and a half. I have a new freelance project that involves social bookmarking, so I am now far more familiar than I ever wanted to be with a handful of social bookmarking websites. If you want to find me on Digg, Mixx, Propeller, Reddit, or Mister-Wong, just look for MeddlingScribe. I may or may not accept your friend request, since I need another online social outlet like I need another hole in my chest cavity, which is to say, I really don't need ANY. (I'm not counting my belly button, since it's not technically in my chest, and it's not really a hole per se, but I digress.)
  
  Anyway, tomorrow I anticipate additional article writing and what-not, but while I'm still here and have your attention (or is it BLOGGER which has MY attention? oooooooo trippy), why not donate books on behalf of Native American teens? Operation Teen Book Drop is LIVE and all you have to do is buy a book or two on Powells.com. Check out details here. Also, please enjoy these photos of Kilauea Volcano by day and by night:
  
  

  

  
  
  

  Copyright 2010 Sarah J. Stevenson. Some rights reserved.

  5 months on
  aquafortis
• 

  Art, Work, and Other Time Drains It's been busy around here. That's for sure. My absence has been long and filled with not only toil but also some much-needed relaxation and getting away from it all. The Big Island of Hawaii is a great way to do that, since it's in the middle of the ocean, far away from EVERYTHING.
  
  The week before we left, Rob and I went to another of the local figure drawing sessions and I did these two pieces. The one on the left I did using Walnut ink, a reed pen, and a brush for wash. For the one below, I used a combination of vine and compressed charcoal. Neither is my best work, but on the whole it wasn't a bad drawing evening. In any case, it's all about practice, practice and more practice.
  
  Not unlike with writing, which has comprised most of my workload lately.
  
  

  

  I've had my hands full, actually, which is a pretty good thing. Plenty of articles for All Star Directories, like this one, but also working on my latest novel revision for my publisher. Of course, as I go through and edit the manuscript, I keep finding little things I want to change, and it's taking a lot more time than I thought it would because I have now entered the land of the obsessive-compulsive perfectionist.
  
  I've also reached a point I never thought I would reach: I'm officially sick of even looking at this project. Until a couple of weeks ago I was still totally in love with it, but now I only have eyes for its flaws, which is a difficult place to be mentally. I've gotten to that point much more quickly with most of my other projects, but it took a lot longer to get sick of this one, and I was hoping that day would never come. But still I'm plugging away, and hopefully I'll feel better about it once this round is done.
  
  And yep, we're back from our trip to visit friends in Hawaii. I'll post about that later in the week. Plus photos. I promise.

  Copyright 2010 Sarah J. Stevenson. Some rights reserved.

  5 months on
  aquafortis
• 

  Some Non-Controversial Book Cover Discussion Sooooo...I heard back from my publisher. Needless to say, this was an occasion of great excitement and celebration, perhaps even minor squealing and drunkenness (figurative and literal). At any rate, I found out the next steps in the process: I'll be doing another round of edits (which I expected), not quite as drastic as the last round but fixing lots of small issues. Due May 3, so obviously the original publication estimate of April no longer applies, but I was just happy to hear my book was still on the radar.
  
  Then, I was asked to generate some alternative title ideas for the editorial staff to consider, which was an interesting task considering I am CRAP at titling anything. Plus I liked my existing title. Fortunately, I get to keep my title (The Latte Rebellion), which is good considering the alternatives I was able to come up with (a few choice examples were Beyond House Blend: The Official Autobiography of Agent Alpha and Skin Deep, Coffee High, so it's no wonder the existing title seemed fine by comparison). So that's one reason I'm quite happy right now.
  
  

  

  I was also asked--and this occasioned more happy spazzing on my part--to generate some ideas for the book cover. It's not common for an author to get much say in what the cover looks like, so I was basically overjoyed to have input. I looked at a lot of existing covers, including those pictured here, and evidently the cover artist they've chosen has a good idea of what to do, so...it's just a matter of waiting to see what she comes up with.
  
  

  

  What was extra funny about this is, a couple of months ago I had a very vivid dream having to do with the title and cover of my book. I dreamed that my publisher had decided to change the title to Deep Woods (which, incidentally, has zero to do with ANYTHING in the book) and had sent me a sample of the cover, which looked a lot like this sketch here only in color, lots of dark browns and greens and ambers: the main character, her back turned, regarding a crow on a branch; the main character with two shirtless guys (was I thinking about Twilight, maybe?) in the lower foreground; everything framed by two trees at the left and the right and looking an awful lot like the cover of a DragonLance novel.
  
  I think, in the dream, I was appalled.
  
  Fortunately, I don't think I'm in any danger of my book looking like this and I now can be certain there will be no utterly random retitling. Reason to celebrate. 
  
  
  

  Copyright 2010 Sarah J. Stevenson. Some rights reserved.

  6 months on
  aquafortis
• 

  Found First Line Experiment #1: Speculative Politics What's the Found First Line Experiment? Well, I just made it up, sort of. It's vaguely based on a writing exercise I read about in Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones. I clicked into Google News, picked the third article down, took the first line, and wrote a story starting with that line. I'm trying to post more creative explorations here, and also trying to do more "fun" writing experiments that I can use to simply let go and enjoy myself...and why not share some of the results? If you decide to try it, too, leave me a link.
  
  ***
  Not every rookie political wannabe gets to have his campaign announcement on national TV. It's why I felt lucky. Not charmed; not privileged; but lucky. I didn't have any famous family members, I wasn't part of any East-Coast old-money political dynasty. I wasn't involved in the city council or the school board. I'm not even very telegenic. I'm told I have big pores.
  
  What do I do? Well, I used to teach. I volunteered at hospitals on the weekends.
  
  So when they picked me, I felt like the luckiest guy in the world.
  
  
  They put me up there behind this podium that was draped with dark blue and affixed with the Grand Seal of the United Western States. I felt like I'd won a contest. In reality, it was more like a random drawing. The way they do things these days is supposed to be the most equitable method of leadership selection yet to be devised.
  
  We've gone through some seriously kooky changes to our election process over the years, but get this: after you pass a citizenship test, you get enough names on your petition to meet the minimum and you get one entry; every 2,000 names after that earns you another entry. Into the hat, as it were, though it's really more like a silk-covered box printed with the humpback whale emblem. Political party is not a consideration. Five different names are drawn and those are the ones eligible to campaign. No exceptions. No write-ins. And no backing out.
  
  Once the campaigning starts, it's no holds barred. Any strategy is perfectly legal as long as you can pay for it and don't get caught breaking any Western State laws. You can even, say, bribe a doctor to certify another candidate is legally insane and not fit to lead.
  
  The bright stage lights hanging above the podium made my eyes water, but that only helped my cause, mistaken as they were for tears of emotion. I was grinning like a fool, and maybe I was one. Because once you're on the road to campaign glory, it's assumed that you wanted it enough in the first place to throw your hat into the ring.
  
  I guess the only problem was, I didn't want it enough.
  
  I scratch my day-old growth of beard, stare out the window onto the perfectly manicured grounds, and sigh as the orderly hands me my morning pills. The television in the common room is announcing that Fergus Smith is the new President of the United Western States. The screams of triumph from his supporters sound like the discordant and chaotic jabbering of the deranged.
  
  And I may not have a choice about it, but I can't help thinking I'd rather be in here.

  Copyright 2010 Sarah J. Stevenson. Some rights reserved.

  6 months on
  aquafortis
• 

  Mythbusters Volunteer Recap, Part I

  

  I've been meaning to post my Mythbusters photos for quite a while now. I've been informed that, with good reason, they would like us NOT to post the photo we got to take with Adam and Jamie, because it was in the room where the experiment took place and they don't want to give anything away prior to the airing of the show. So I'm also not going to say much about the experiment itself until then (though, if you know me well enough to e-mail me about it, I'll probably tell you one-on-one). Anyway, just the lead-up to the experiment itself was a novel experience. After responding to their Twitter call for volunteers, I was selected to be part of a group that would be experimented upon on Wednesday, January 20.
  

  

  
  That morning, I left the house at 6:30 a.m. in order to ensure I could get to San Francisco, specifically the edge of the Mission/Cesar Chavez area, by 9:30. This may sound like overkill, but it turned out I needed that entire time (plus a little) due to the fact that it rained heavily throughout the trip and didn't let up until I got there (of course). But it was worth it, of course. Once I arrived, I knocked on the door of what appeared to be a sort of warehouse, which houses the Mythbusters/M5 Industries offices and workshop. In the photo above, you can see the check-in table and a few of the other volunteers (there were about 25 of us). We got name tags and proceeded to wait in what seemed to be the kitchen/break room area until we were called down for our turn to participate in the experiment.
  

  

  
  While we waited, we were asked a few inevitable questions such as our ages--at which point I found out, happily, that I was NOT the oldest person there by a long shot, though the group was a bit skewed towards 20-somethings. Also, we were asked The Ethnicity Question. That's always been a fun one (or not) for me. As a child, I enjoyed giving the most complicated possible answer by going into excruciating detail about every single fraction of my ethnic makeup. Now I try to suit the answer to the situation, usually going for less rather than more detail. But this wasn't a multiple choice situation, just the check-in guy going around and writing the answers down.
  
  So I opened my mouth and said "Pakistani, Czechoslovakian, and Caucasian." And then realized how that sounded, after everybody else was all "Caucasian" or "Scandiavian" or "English and German" or whatever nice and simple answers they were lucky to be able to provide. The guy kind of laughed and said "Cool," and then I was glad I hadn't given him the really detailed answer but instead just went for the largest fractions. For a second I thought I should have given him one of the mashup ethnicities that Rob and I came up with--Pakislovakian or Czechistani--but figured I sounded weird enough already. He didn't need to know that anything my maternal grandmother said about her heritage is suspect except for the Irish and probably the English parts, nor did he need to know that the Pakistani part actually originated in India but has quite a bit of Arab blood mixed in, too.
  
  Despite the fact that discussing my ethnicity makes me sigh sometimes, and also that my answer to that question at the Mythbusters studio probably made me "the weird volunteer," I had a good time. As for the experiment itself--I'll just have to give you a post-airdate debriefing, during which you'll find out why I'm also probably now "the problem volunteer."

  Copyright 2010 Sarah J. Stevenson. Some rights reserved.

  7 months on
  aquafortis
• 

  Check Me Out

  You may have noticed that the blog has a new look. That's what I did most of yesterday instead of, well, possibly more productive work. But I'm happy. I really wanted to make this blog more of a home for my creative burblings as well as occasional random thoughts, so now there's a nifty menu up top where you can check out some artwork posts, some creative (and not-so-creative) writing, or just browse my day-to-day blathering. My sidebar widgets are much improved, though still under construction (gotta revamp my link lists in particular) and I'm ridiculously pleased with the new graphics. I have to give props to the excellent Blogger Templates site and the template that I reconfigured to create this new look--it doesn't look much like the original, but I REALLY needed someone else to put the Blogger code together because I'm sure as hell not going to do it. Tinkering, I can do, and did.

  So...enjoy. I'm planning to post a bit more creative work here, show what I'm working on on a day-to-day (or at least week-to-week) basis, and hopefully encourage myself to do more.

  Copyright 2010 Sarah J. Stevenson. Some rights reserved.

  7 months on
  aquafortis