Observation Journal: Patterns in days

While working on the observation journal, I’d been wanting to play a bit more with the adapting note-taking styles to looking at other things — in this case, a given day. This was partly to look at the particular day, as much as it was to find out\ how the approach works (swapping out context and content are very useful for this in most things).

I used the Patterns/Surprises/Likes/Dislikes/Steal-try-transform structure (Todd Henry’s Book The Accidental Creative, with a dash of Austin Kleon’s Steal Like An Artist — see more in the post Bookmarks and Remarks).

I do want to try it again, on a different sort of day — it was a hot, strange, sad Wednesday: a funeral (I’ve hidden a few family specifics for now), conversations on public transport, and other things.

But it was very interesting to treat a day as a distinct object or narrative (intentionally created or otherwise) with its rises and falls, its accumulating impressions, its accidental resonances, the sense of winding down, of jettisoning plans just to get to bed, or of running out the door without even a pocket-handkerchief.

I was also starting to think more, here, of the distance between Ideas and Finished Things, and where it’s shortest, and how to get over that ground lightly. Converting “creativity” to action (in class as in life), and dealing with the aftershocks of finishing projects (such as the emotions of stumbling upon them unexpectedly in unlikely locations).

Observation approach (for writing, or art, or just looking at familiar things from an unfamiliar angle — or for working out how an observation structure works):

• Use a note-taking/analysis technique you’ve come across (a classic plot structure? traditional composition principles? garment construction?). Or try the approach above which is, basically, try to find at least three each of of the following:
  • Patterns (in the thing itself, and between it and other things you’ve seen/read/noticed lately — I always try to force a few unlikely connections);
  • Surprises;
  • Likes;
  • Dislikes; and
  • Steal (interesting things to adapt to your own work — if it isn’t obvious, choose a project you’re working on and find something you could adapt).
    (Note: mostly from Todd Henry’s Book The Accidental Creative and Austin Kleon’s Steal Like An Artist)
• Apply it to something it wasn’t designed for: A day, a house, a stranger.
• How does it change the details you notice about the thing observed? Can you rewrite/redraw the thing to highlight that unexpected structure? Or can you borrow those unexpected angles or details for another project you’re working on?

Five Things To Steal — Through the Woods

I’ve previously mentioned incorporating Austin Kleon‘s “things to steal” into my general Todd-Henry-based note-taking structure (Patterns/Surprises/Likes/Dislikes/Steal — see Bookmarks & remarks). It’s also become an occasional feature in the Observation Journal.

I used to make a note of things that were merely “interesting” or “to try”. What I like about phrasing it as “steal” (yes, obviously not plagiarise) is that, as well as adding a touch of glee, it forces me to immediately think of ways to transform whatever it was I was admiring.

The “five things” also fills the page usefully. It’s a nice length, easy to remember, and usually makes me either think just one or two steps beyond the obvious, or distill my very favourites.

Here’s a close-up of the right-hand page: FIVE THINGS I WANT TO STEAL FROM EMILY CARROLL’S THROUGH THE WOODS (a wonderful collection of… comics? illustrated stories?)

• Her use of endpapers. This tied into broader thoughts on surface decoration, and a general reminder (and licence) to draw on everything. I’m working on this for some projects now, in a completely different style and for a different purpose.
• Using white outlines for only certain characters, with notes on the ethereal effect, and a desire to try to achieve this in prose (I think I wrote a paragraph or two to experiment with this; I also have a continuing interest in how authors get specific art styles into purely prose pieces — among others Dorothy Dunnett’s buttery Rembrandt light; Mirah Bolender’s Ghibli-esque curse motion in City of Broken Magic; and a very Hellboy-esque lighting setup in a novella I read recently and can’t find again).
• Her use of different colour schemes in the same scenes to show brief flashes of memory. Again, I wanted to try this in prose, but also to see how to get away with the effect in (for example) black and white.
• The variable structures of the stories, panels, style, and whether this could be replicated with e.g. subtitles in a purely prose piece. I have some story ideas I want to recast and plan to revisit this (in combination with some mythic/folk horror scene transition/viewpoint gymnastics managed by Paul Cornell in Chalk and Maria Dahvana Headley in The Mere Wife).
• The last one is the only observation without a specific adaptation, and it’s mostly a reminder that the ordinary and extraordinary both gain power when they’re mixed.
• Also some tree-appreciation — “Einar?” was a late-night misremembering of Eyvind Earle.

The last point, a “question for later”, led to playing with some small creepy stories in other formats, inspired by other books.

I enjoy this format, and what it’s led to. I’ll probably post some more examples later.

Activity/Heist:

• Find something you admire in another field than the one you work in (a movie, a book, a comic, a painting). List five things you like about it. Try to work out how you could steal each of those elements and convert them into something in your own field.

 

And in case it needs to be said: Don’t plagiarise!

Also: Read Through the Woods.

Bookmarks & remarks

I keep a vase full of bookmarks on the coffee table — it’s attractive and useful and doesn’t shed petals onto the floor.

Making bookmarks is also an excellent way to use odd bits of time, to make something, and to try out new pens.

I also printed the bookmarks below for my classes this semester, back when we had classes and physical books, and so on.

I encourage students to use this structure, because it usually means we have something to talk about in class, and it’s well-suited to craft analysis and creative work — to reading books less for what they say than for what they are, and what you can make of that. It’s mostly from Todd Henry’s book The Accidental Creative, with a dash of Austin Kleon’s Steal Like An Artist. This is the formal, university-appropriate phrasing — for my own use I reduce it to Patterns/Surprises/Likes/Dislikes/Steal.

Books read, things seen – January 2016

Books finished

The Accidental Creative – Todd Henry: Read on Peter Ball‘s repeated recommendation, and proving very practical as I sort out how this year is working.

The Black Sheep – Georgette Heyer: I’d forgotten I’d read this book until I reached the last few chapters (of which I’m rather fond). Mari Ness’s write-up of this on Tor.com (Almost Slumming It: Black Sheep) is, as usual, thoughtful and thought-provoking: “Miss Abigail Wendover, the protagonist of Black Sheep, is under the very understandable impression that she is in a Georgette Heyer novel.”

The Scarecrows – Robert Westall: courtesy of Kelly Link

The Seance – John Harwood: recommend and lent by Angela Slatter, with a gorgeous Niroot Puttapipat cover.

Radiance – Catherynne M. Valente, with a Will Staehle cover which perfectly captures this “decopunk pulp SF alt-history space opera mystery set in a Hollywood-and solar system-very different from our own”

The End of a Fence – Roman Muradov: I still have no idea what happened in this little graphic novel but I liked it, and the author has confirmed that is the point. It operates slightly below the conscious level, is very beautiful, and without looking in the least like it reminded me slightly of the world of Shaun Tan’s The Lost Thing.

Claiming the Courtesan – Anna Campbell’s debut novel

Assorted books in progress

Making Your Own Days – Kenneth Koch

Boy, Snow, Bird – Helen Oyeyemi

The Memoirs of Harriet Wilson – Harriette Wilson

Chocolate and Cuckoo Clocks – Alan Coren

Movies and music

Sherlock: The Abominable Bride

The Big Short

Joanna Newsome concert

Thoughts

A pattern I noticed across many books I read this month was that of lies, duality, falsehood and their power to create truth, or something new and true and separate from the truth they started off from…