Category Archives: digital play

Still cool, the air, not me

In a matter of days, K flies to India, which just happens to be where a new highly contagious variant of Covid is running rampant. Arcturus. The last time my husband traveled, he came home with Covid.

So I’m worried. About his heath. And mine. And since I fly to visit my brother within days of his return, also about my brother’s. We may live in separate rooms when K gets back just to be careful.

When I told my brother, he was pretty cavalier about it. For some reason it took me a full twenty-four hours to remember how much risk he lives with week-to-week. His partner is an emergency room doctor.

Not related to any of that, please find a new digital collage above.

As I wrote on Instagram:

Speaking of my manuscript, I deleted another 1,000 words yesterday. I’m officially under 130,000 now!

And speaking some more about writing, Deb Lacativa and I are critical reading partners (more involved than say, a beta reader) and she has begun feeding me new scenes. Completely captivating new scenes, need I add?

In all my noodling last night, a paragraph from Prophets Tango showed up. I loved reading this passage the first time. And the second. And third. You get the idea.

I can’t share an Amazon link because I’m on my phone (?) but if you just search the title in books, all three volumes come up.

New technique alert

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Much of creative discovery is propelled by laziness — or at least in my case, it is. It’s not that I mind performing lots of discrete steps or putting in the time (sometimes an obscene amount of time, I might add), it’s that I don’t always love some of the individual steps — for instance, gluing shit down.

Enter the scene: 8 1/2 x 11” sticky paper designed to be fed into an inkjet printer. Oh, am I psyched about this!

Step one: rip and cut collage elements. Place on blank page. No glue. Photograph.

This is as ephemeral as you can get, by the way, because by the end of this process, this arrangement will no longer exist. Digital record only. Do I mind the curling edges and the shadows produced by them? Sometimes. Sometimes not.

Step two: run photo of unglued collage through a bunch of filters using dianaphoto app.

My favorites below combined the collage and a photo I took of very weathered wood — perhaps a window opening to a slave cabin? I don’t remember. Using the “roll the dice” function for shuffling images in dianaphoto means I don’t always recognize what comes up and, having 13,000+ pictures on my phone, I don’t necessarily want to track down the source (see laziness, above).

Step three: select one photo of a layered collage and print onto sticky paper. Trim and stick to sketchbook page.

Step four: pillage elements from original collage (remember, nothing was glued down) and adhere them to the print/layered version.

I have trouble getting the interface between my phone and printer to do what I want it to, so I often just go with what comes out. In this case the slight change in scale served the design.

PS Sometimes I use the app “whitagram” to add a white border around an image so that when I print it, the image is smaller. In this case, I didn’t.

PPS The photo of the weathered wood was taken with the app “Hipstamatic” which applied the off-white faux paper photo border and also muted some of the color.

Maybe I’ll try to find the original after all. But first, it’s shrimp scampi for lunch (inspired by Melissa Clark’s cooking video on NYTimes cooking app) and then I’ve got to bake Za’atar Parmesan Pinwheels (same app) for a 75th bday party tonight!

The two female faces showed up in an earlier collage, some filtered versions below.

How it’s going

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Forty-seven queries. Started last February. There have been lots of lapses but still, that means it’s been a year of looking for an agent for my novel and coming up empty-handed.

Today: a new record. An agent rejected me THE DAY AFTER I sent my query. No wonder I identify with the cruddy, soiled, forlorn-looking toy kicked to the curb!

Paris Collage Collective for this week — digital and paper collage

And I keep getting sidetracked. I’m doing ANOTHER RUN THROUGH and am on page 87 of 200+. That’s edits of edits of edits. I keep an eye on word count, subtracting unnecessary words wherever I can (they’re everywhere).

In other news, birthday celebrations are ongoing! I kid you not. A friend is taking me out for dinner tonight and in March, two other friends and I will see a play together. Yet another friend ordered me a birdbath, which is not only generous but puts me in mind of spring!

From our room at The Porches, in North Adams

K and I went to the Berkshires for two nights which was mostly fun (falling on the pavement near MassMOCA was not fun, to be specific, and the falafel at our first dinner was inedible). But otherwise! Fun.

We enjoyed staying at The Porches, a funky inn near MassMOCA, and for our dinner in Lenox, we lucked out with a table at a popular Italian joint. I had cod topped with sautéed red peppers and artichoke hearts atop the biggest pile of mashed potatoes I’ve ever been served (garlic infused). There was a mass of wilted spinach too. Yum!

MassMOCA: A moving piece about student debt

There were times when I thought the structure was cooler and more interesting than the exhibits.

Perhaps more on that tomorrow.

It’s snowing

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I dreamt I was on a cooking show. I couldn’t find a spoon or a bowl or eggs and I had to make Yorkshire Pudding. Time kept sliding past. I had nothing to show. I can’t get an F, I thought. I’ll make a sandwich!

One of THoSe dreams.

Maybe the dream was informed by a stretch of intense editing. I deleted two more chapters. I’m back to tracking word count. Recently, sliced out nearly 1,000 words.

Time keeps sliding past.

Some pretty snowflakes are falling right now, but yesterday was rain, rain, rain. There’s been a lot of rain falling this “winter.”

I found out that The Sketchbook Project’s library is closing its doors in Brooklyn. There’s a narrow window in which one could sign in, pay a fee, and request the return of your booklet. I submitted two, years back.

I couldn’t even sign in. Had the right everything. I know it. When I can’t sign in somewhere I usually don’t have that confidence.

I may try again but if I can’t get in, eh. I gave them up once, it shouldn’t be that hard to let the status quo reassert itself.

Paris Collage Club effort that used a Sketchbook Project page as a layer

This link may or may not work.

https://www.sketchbookproject.com/library/S132182

I had to copy it into my search bar. ALSO, there’s a Sketchbook Project tag on the sidebar.

Let’s Count 10/22

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0 — number of times I’ve been discouraged by Dems in Disarray narrative, Dems need better messaging coverage, negative polls, or Doomsday DOJ sentiments;

0 is also the number of cold frosts so far this year; number of times I’ve had Covid;

1 — number of ballots cast this week; number of books I’m reading right now; number of queries sent out recently; number of mini, fallen skeletons seen in the neighborhood today.

2 — number of meals I served homemade croutons with (homemade spinach soup and a killer Caesar salad); number of manuscript rejections received with an actual email in last few weeks;

3 — number of people within two degrees of separation who have died recently. One was almost 100, one was almost 99, and one was 59. Also number of times I heard the liturgical response in Latin in my head at a funeral Mass this morning;

3.5 — number of inches of hair that I cut off this week;

4 — (also during Mass) number of times I heard my mother’s voice saying, “I love a good Irish tenor;” approximate number of times I wondered what my Jewish neighbors thought about all the sitting, standing, and kneeling going on;

5 — number of WIP quilts that I am actively working on right now;

6 — numbers of days recently racked up without sugar;

21 — number of white linens out to dry at salon on Center Street;

31 — number of tulip bulbs planted in containers to force;

75 — number of daily emails I receive from democratic candidates (just kidding, but whew — it’s a lot);

875 — total number of #PostcardstoVoters I’ve sent out in last two years (this is a real number);

Too many to count — number of times I’ve fast-forwarded through TV news coverage recently either because * I’ve already learned about issue in some detail through twitter or because ** it’s nattering on and on about what Dems are doing wrong or because *** they’re playing a clip of the former guy (and usually one I’ve heard umpteen times before — e.g. portions of his bullying, illegal conversation with Raffensperger); times I’ve felt grateful for Finn’s company.