Stalling.

Stayed home today to work on a new line for my stall. I'm hoping the new design will appeal to that all-important 20-something male stoner demographic. Last Saturday I bought a bag of polished black pebbles, and I've been making them into pendants by putting a blob of epoxy putty on the top with a hole for the string. I've modelled shapes into the putty (faces, hands, leaves, spirals etc) and when it's dry I'll add some colour. They've mostly come out okay. I plan to make some more with runes cut into the putty. I mean, who doesn't love a good rune?

Still need to buy some thongs for them tho'. Mmmmm... thonnnngggggg.

I'm rapidly running out of doll parts. I need a steady local scource of cheap spoof Barbiealikes to dissect. I'm thinking of making doll part jewellery (for that all-important teenaged goth chick demographic); by my reckoning, doll part jewellery has been over so long that it's now retro.

I'm doing other stuff too, like buying cheap notepads and painting the covers with gouache (you say that gwash, apparently). I've got some acrylic varnish spray to give them a durable finish. I'm going for a scattergun approach, finding out what goes over and what doesn't.

This whole situation both rocks and sucks. On the downside, I'm fed up with the no-job-having, and I want the stuff on my stall to sell and SELL NOW, goddammit! On the upside: money's tight but not a huge problem yet, and I'm rediscovering a whole slew of skills, abilities and drives that I'd almost forgotten I had. I'm in a fairly high-energy mode right now, fuelled, I belive, by the fact that I'm actually making stuff again. What with one thing and another, the arty-crafty side of things had to go on the back burner over the last four or five years; in retrospect, that may not have been such a great thing. Never mind. Spilt milk, now.

I really hope this make-and-sell thing could work out eventually. It's definately me. I think that one of the best things you can hope for in this life is the chance to express yourself, your beliefs and ideas, through the way you live-- something that few people ever get the chance to do. Also, if I could make a living (or even half a living) doing something creative, it seems likely that my head would be in a better place writing-wise.

Which brings me back to the writing.

Ah, yes. The writing. Hoom.

I've been coasting a bit lately. I haven't been contributing to my writer's group, I haven't been giving The Novel any love, I haven't been sending out stories to magazines. There was that virus, then I got all caught up in the making of stuff, and what with one thing or another I've not been working as hard as I should. Need to get back on the horse. Firstly, new word-per-day target: 500 words, min. Secondly, and rather painfully: blog posts no longer count towards the daily target. Blogging sometimes gives me a false sense of security, makes it feel like I'm on top of the writing when... well, really not. I've touched upon the perils of work-flavoured nonwork elsewhere, and sometimes blogging can fall into that category. This measure should help draw a line between really writing and just braindumping.