Somehow, it is an iconic day for me...

I always think back to a quote from HT. Let me go dig it up:

I sat up in bed, did some less than coordinated stretching, and started to recall random fragments of the night: Rocky Horror music, eyeballs, Twix, and running at top speed... What about the figure in the yard? I got up and looked out the window again. It was the same sight as always, only now it was November 1st, and everything was drenched in rain.

*looks out the window* Yes, everything IS drenched in rain. But Halloween was nothing special or interesting. I was at work. 

Still, it's a very transitory day, where I "wake up" from the tunnel vision of October, in which I was scrambling to make a costume, or trying my best to soak in the spirit of the month while it lasted. Okay, so, November 1st. Now what? There is less to grab onto, that helps define the experience I'm having, or that informs the direction in which I should go. It's almost too much freedom all of a sudden. Will the rain hinder me, physically or in spirit? Who am I?

Kidding. lol But yes, it's very much that sort of tune. I'll need a moment to find my grip and start climbing something new, or something else. I actually love November. It's atmospheric in its own right, lots of cozy things. In just a couple days, on the 3rd, it will be the tenth anniversary of being introduced to Nosferatu, the film that changed my trajectory as a student, inspired my first cosplay, and also inspired the start of a TV mini-series. Whoops - never even sort of finished that. 

Perhaps I could see November as the month of Nosferatu. So then, what does that mean it's about? Embracing the cold, drawing inspiration from the night, keeping my curtains open so that I can peer out the window. Deciding what is beautiful about the grotesque. Stringing together poetry of monstrosities. Thinking about how a work might give one experiencing it a hypnotic, even addictive, sense of dread. Stimmung. Which, when I think about it, has been set up pretty well in CRYSTAL PALACE, which from henceforth I'll write in all caps because it just seems more fitting. 

I think there is something within HT, even though I'm not planning to write it soon, that still applies. What begins on November 1st for Lily, my narrator? A game between her and Mischief. Poking and prodding of the other. Finding that attraction/fascination alone can send her off the rails. Risks. Inviting the monsters nearer. 

*shrugs* Dunno why I'm writing this entry in such a way, but there it is. Food for thought. Snacks for meditation. 

The sombrero and yarn ball are for the Chiodo Brothers, who were responsible for the Cheshire Cat puppet, so those are some of his props. hahah The green hat is just something we see from time to time in Hatter's house, though ironically it was also in his grandfather's hat trunk that they found after going on a "treasure hunt". I guess Hatter kept it around afterward! Anyway, we used that to represent Lois DeArmond, who did constumes. I don't know if she designed the hat or if Kelly Van Patter did, since nobody ever wore it, but it was a clothing item that just popped in my head when I thought of Lois, and I knew I didn't want to redraw an item that the characters wore, since it's already represented in their profiles. Then there's the record player, which you can barely tell reads "Dinner Music", and it's for Mark Mothersbaugh, the music director. It was fun drawing that one because in order to get a good reference, I got to look at Hare having a difficult time with it. XD ooshkabooshka so cute.

So~ that just leaves two drawings for the makeup artists and the writers. I'm doing a collection of things: the makeup artists get three items from the Queen's table (a lotion dispenser, a hand gel bottle, and a facial creme container), and the writers are getting a stack of books seen in the show with one of them leaning against the stack with the cover 3/4 facing us. The books will be... the Large Print Dictionary, Hatter's Daffy Taffy book, the Red Pages, Field Guide to Wonderland Plants, Rip Roaring Rabbit Tales, and Diary of a Mad Hatter. It's between the last two which one will be facing forward.

When the props are done (hopefully today) I'll assign myself the cast profiles for the rest of the month. But then... I don't know if I can stick with this project next month. I'll be hyper-aware that it's NaNoWriMo, I'm already kicking myself all the time for the amount of time I've lost to write this year.... I still have no one helping me sort out my thoughts for He's There, so it still feels like deep space around here. Very stale air, nothing getting done.

I had high hopes this year, but I'm not going to have met any of my goals. Not a one. He's There won't be finished revising, I won't have a new AIW fanfic, I won't have done my own Script Frenzy for Nosferatu in Love, I won't have advanced my Orlok costume because the tailor I was talking to earlier this year seriously never got back to me with a quote and I don't know who else to go to. I've got nothing to be proud of except *maybe* this website. Maybe. I know I'll need another month on the site, but another month remains open if I can actually pull myself up to stance and do something. But what? And will it be next month?

I'm going to have to think it over. But if I decide to plot HT and get somewhere with it in November, I'll need help fast.

:/

Started in January and completed on November 3rd, the anniversary of my first viewing of Nosferatu. I was imagining this music video last December when I decided that I would go ahead and draw every shot and let everyone know about the absurdities running through my head. There are 135 drawings. I bring to you, finally, TEARIN' UP MY HEART.

I had fun but also suffered over that project. So many eraser marks, and the occasional cramped wrist. I listened to the song over and over and did the dances in person and still failed to indicate those motions through still pictures. It has been almost an entire year since I began fantasizing about what it would look like. In fact, I still remember pacing around back at Mom's, with Christmas lights in the living room, but throwing my shadow on the wall and doing the gestures that would be the intermission between chorus 1 and verse 2.

It seemed like a huge, and meticulous, joke to actually make that idea, whether in person or as a storyboard, but when I came back for school in January, I had a new apartment, a good feeling about everything, and I wanted to embark on new journeys, plus I was so addicted to drawing Count Orlok, however poorly I did it at the time, that it seemed like it would be easy. I was pulling off 15-20 frames in a sitting for the first couple weeks, but it seriously started to lag as the semester went on. Spring got even busier with my first seminar and successfully completing Script Frenzy, my other Nosferatu project. Then Summer passed with no work at all. But Halloween was just the kick required. The rest is history. Or should I say, the RUST. *attempts to laugh as easily and as cutely as Hare, but fails*

Now, I don't know what to do with myself. I've decided to save CP4 until Winter Break, in part because I feel I can drastically improve my plans once I've sucked in all the knowledge from my Hitchcock class. Now it's just finding out what to do in November. It's either NIL + illustrations, HT + illustrations, or AIW fanfiction illustrations.

Or, fuck, I almost want to write another fanfic. I-I-I... I can't, though. It's not right.

1. Finish Trying Tuesday. (One more part. *crosses fingers*)
2. Make posters for all of my AIW fanfictions.
3. Design an AIW fanfiction ebook, with an illustrated cover.
4. Write HT
5. Make more HT illustrations.
6. Write NIL
7. Finish Tearin' Up My Heart.
8. Plan CP4.

*squints at list* November 4th is not the time to be undecided, seriously.

I've nothing to do between classes, so I figured that I would update.

I'm on my way to finishing Trying Tuesday, but I feel like I don't know what it is that I want to do from there. One part of me - the part that hasn't grown up or changed for three years - enjoys writing AIW fanfiction. She wants to write another one. She has already started it and feels like now she has the ability to do it justice because she has reconciled with Wonderland after kind of a drift. She thinks she might actually need to keep that part of her fully ablaze, and with there being episodes more than a month apart (as wonderful as their being posted at all is), this is really the way to plug herself in during the wait. And she wonders if she needs to do this because for some reason being back to school and around people is frustrating her, and her first video production class is frustrating her. All she actually wants to do is go home for Winter break already, in a way, and Wonderland is a little like Winter break, she guesses.

But then there's the other part that considers NaNoWriMo is just around the corner, that time of the year where she picks up something of worth and proves once again that she fails at completing it. It's just a ritual of life for her by now. November means taking out the dusty novel notes and pretending she has a fighting chance. She'll have support by her friends, a writing buddy who pushes her to complete the goals, and the joy of working on her story of five years. She knows it should be done. Not only that, but that she should enjoy it.

BUT, there is another part. And she's listening to Fleetwood Mac on the bus and fantasizing about the juxtaposition of Ellen and Hutter, from her freshest passion and newest project. She can imagine all of the beautiful illustrations, she's coming up with new details of that story often. She knows if she gave herself a goal for November to write this script, a goal like Script Frenzy's, she'd succeed somehow and enter December excitedly instead of dejectedly.

But which side is going to step in front?

It's taken WEEKS just to finish this AIW fanfiction. It will be my longest yet, but it still has been a struggle to find time, and for something where deep thought is not required. Nosferatu in Love and He's There will have to be treated like children.

Sometimes I honestly miss my days in community college. I miss taking two classes and being inspired by the campus. Something about it made it home - this university does not have those spaces that I enjoyed back home. On that subject, I miss having my home, having a comfortable, quiet home where I can leave my room, I can sit by the sliding glass doors and look at the plants rimmed with sunlight. If I want to, I can go out there. We have a yard. I can go to the kitchen, make tea, sit at the bar, pretend I'm with Hare. I can read, I can contemplate, or I can watch the changing leaves on our wooden porch surrounded in my mom's flowers. I'd better stop before I get too mushy to go to class.

I guess what I was getting at with that last paragraph is that it has always been difficult to squeeze in writing, but it was a little easier back then. I wasn't stuck in an unknown city, in a little apartment, always having to do full-time in school. I love school, but I love writing as much. There was once more of a balance.

Oh, decisions!

I've got 15 minutes until I leave for Japanese Literature. Decisions will have to be made later. Or maybe on the way there and back, I'll pick what happens in November.

-J