Less than Motivated, and a Detour.

While things hat Chez KnotMagick are slowly returning to normal, I'm still not feeling myself. I've not been very motivated to do anything, but I've still be getting a lot done--lots of cleaning (but still not all of it or even "enough"; I've kind of gone into clean freak mode where every little bit of mess drives me nuts but I can only find the energy to deal with about half of it), and a fair bit of writing. I've been working on an outline for the last two weeks. I'm trying to outline an entire storyline (which will probably encompass 2 books) before I start work on the book itself. I've been handwriting the initial draft while I'm at work with all of my notes and other information, and then coming home to type it up on the Sterling.

I love using the typewriter for outlines, almost as much as I hate using Microsoft word for the same. I particularly hate the 2010 starter version that came on my laptop. It has all of these autoformating options that I can't turn off, and they're usually wrong for whatever I'm working on. The typewriter does exactly what I want, every time.

The outline itself is beginning to look like a novel. I'm only about halfway through and it's already seven pages long (I write pretty detailed outlines).

I did not work on the Steampunk typewriter yesterday the way I had planned to. Hopefully I'll get to it some time this week. Instead, I was working on a quickie knitting project for the house (more on that another day) and marathoning Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood on Netflix.

It appears that going to see Pacific Rim last week triggered something in my brain. Half of the movie is your typical American action flick, but it's mixed with spot-on mecha anime.

If you haven't been here all that long, then you might not have seen my obsessive anime "phase." I started really getting into anime and manga (Japanese animation and comics) in middle and high school. I loved (and still love) just about everything about it: the art, the storytelling style, the music, and the cultural influences. Yeah, I was one of the girls who ran around in cat ears and dropped random Japanese words into conversations with fellow geeks, but it was a lot more than that for me. I studied the culture and history of Japan and the way it affected the art style and storytelling mode to the point that when I wrote a paper on it in college, my teacher accused me of plagarism until I dumped a stack of research, an award winning paper (okay, it was a 4-H award, but still. I was in high school) and a list of character references in her inbox.

She very quickly changed my "F" to an "A" with five extra credit points.

When I started art school, I wanted to be a comic book artist. That eventually got derailed, and then I forced myself to back away from anime completely because I couldn't afford it anymore and I didn't have a powerful enough computer or internet connection for streaming/downloading.

This was about eight years ago. I do still love anime, but I'm so far out of the loop that I'm not even on the map anymore.

Watching Pacific Rim brought all of that back. I started thinking about Gundam Wing and Neon Genesis Evangelion, both of which bear a strong resemblance to Pacific Rim. Then I started thinking about other anime, and my journey down that candy-colored rabbit hole started again. I've been watching it. I've been reading it. I even started sketching a little, and let me tell you what a huge deal that is--I've had so much anxiety regarding my art since art school that I've basically only sketched knitwear designs since then. I'm not doing anything great or intricate or even anything that should ever see the light of day, but it's reminding me a little of why I was so interested in art in the first place. I'm keeping it to myself for the time being. Maybe I'll come out on the other side and just be happy for the break from my every day. Or maybe this rabbit hole is actually a tunnel to Tokyo and it'll spark a renewed passion--It's already giving me way too many ideas. I don't know. But it's a bright spot for me and I'm going to enjoy it. It's been far too long.