“Regine, Queen of Creatures Unseen”
Gift for the lovely Loli Regine/Jinberry! She does some really gorgeous paintings/sketches and is a really inspiring artist. <3 Go check out her tumblr!
A sketch of Calder, concerned.
It’s also, strangely, perhaps a reflection of certain creative frustrations I’m experiencing at the moment.
I have to stop being afraid to lift up my pen and write words down, stop being afraid of writing or creating ‘something not good enough’ on the first try, because these are the very thoughts that are holding me back creatively. Lately, although I have all sorts of stories and characters swimming around my headspace, I haven’t written a thing because I’m being too precious with my ideas (“This won’t do! This first sentence isn’t good enough, urgh! Today isn’t my day, I might feel like writing it tomorrow, etc”).
There’s no ghoul standing behind me, judging the quality of the words of my first draft as I write them down. If anyone, that ghoul is me, agonising over every word to the point that any passion for the story disappears and writing becomes less an expression of the self, and more a kind of pained ‘scientific process’ that leaves me obsessing, ‘is this the right word to put in this part of the sentence?’, or ‘is the wording pretty enough’?
It’s important, yeah, but not to the point where I found myself crippled and unable to write anything at all, out of fear. It’s killing me, because I really want to write this tale and nothing - NOTHING - is holding me (and the story itself!) back except for my own attitude.
Alright, that’s it. I’ve had it.
Doubts, AWAY with you! I’ve got a story to write!
Sat down with amazing street artist Emya, surrounded by coffee, rocky road and turkish delights, and this happened!
“Every year, an extraordinary new show of mechanical curiousities would be unveiled before the townsfolk… One year, beautiful wind-up maidens fitted with frozen porcelain faces courted the men of the town with their beckoning, long white fingers. Another year, the dreaded lion-headed Manticore would roar ferociously from the stage, it’s red eyes flaming like red coals…By the end of the night, the show had stolen away the breath of every spectator that had beheld it.”
- Image and text from my zine, ‘The Magic Hands of Abdolas Parr’
