Tag: random thoughts

It’s a cracked mud sky

Posted on by Ashlee Scheuerman in Thoughts

The clouds which fill the sky are like a thin layer of silver-grey mud, laying dried and cracked over the dark blue expanse of night. Our waxing gibbous moon shines with such intensity that there is a rainbow halo pushing through the clouds. In the gaps between greyness you catch a twinkling of stars here and there. I miss being further away from the city, where the sky seems more starlight than darkness. The more alone you get, the more together and reachable the universe seems.

Somehow the air is clear and crisp, not a trace of mist or haze, and the lights across the river are reflecting brightly. A radio tower with a blinking red light at its peak is the silent sentry over the night. It stands upon a hill and casts its crimson glow into the air. Toward the middle of the river is where its reflection falls, and the water is ruffled, dancing for its own inconceivable reasons. If I had the time, and an inclination towards impish frivolity, I might even take one of the small boats tied by the water’s edge for a joyride. But no, I’m just too well-behaved for that.

There is a surprising lack of people around. It’s early enough that there should be someone still practicing sports on the playing field nearby, but the oval is empty and unlit. It’s too cold for the smell of grass to carry over to me, there is only the scent of chilled moisture. Even though the first whispers of spring show during the day, I still need a coat. Two trees in my yard are bursting with flowers, one covered in yellow, and the other ranging from white to purple, the petals changing colour as they age on the branch.

The six seasons of Australia are always most evident the harder I wish for winter to stay around. To the local native people, August and September is the time of Djilba, the warming season. No amount of European/English classification will change what Australia gives me. The cold rains have mostly passed until next year. There won’t be many more opportunities to lay by a fire and read while a freezing storm lashes from the west. Time goes on, and indeed, everything is changing.

~A

Of all the best intentions

Posted on by Ashlee Scheuerman in Blogging, Thoughts

I make plans to blog on Sunday, and that’s fine. I forget it’s Sunday when it is. I remember, and half-write a post. I get distracted and irritable, then watch anime for four hours (finally got around to watching Darker Than Black, and it’s all kinds of awesome). I forget it’s Sunday again, or forget I meant to blog, I’m not sure which happened anymore.

Monday morning, and I look back over the past week of taking a break from most major writing. I’m feeling the urge coming back, but I still have a handful of other responsibilities. I ignore half of them, and read the internet to see what other people were doing while I was asleep. Then I remember to blog, and come to write this post.

After walking beside the beach yesterday, I want to take a little more time. Relax, hang out. We’ve got something vacation-like booked in a week or thereabouts, but as with all organised holidays, it’s never really that chill for me. There are Things that we Will Be Doing. It’s planned. I enjoy going to new places, and it’s awesome that my husband gets so excited to be doing something different, but it won’t be the same as just sitting around outside.

Some people write long blogs, and I could do that. Keep going, talk more in-depth about my thoughts, my work, whatever comes to mind. But I write short, as just a window into my daydreams. As with all the best intentions, I’d like to go laze about under the rain, but I’ll probably get back to writing a story soon. I can feel it building.

~A

Sitting with Boobook

Posted on by Ashlee Scheuerman in Thoughts

I was graced with the beautiful presence of the boobook owl who lives at my workplace. He sat on the balcony’s handrail, peering left and right, fluffed up against the wintery night chill. He would turn his head to inspect new sounds, but he was content with me sitting and watching him from just a couple of metres away. Of course the sun had set and the few external lights are dim, otherwise he probably wouldn’t have been sitting there, so I couldn’t get any photos of his gorgeous form. In the darkness, I could still see his large shining eyes, and the typical “frowny” look of his kind.

I feel such contentment and affinity with owls, but after seeing the boobook, and hearing him call so frequently, I love them even more. They are a special and sacred creature (though I really do love all animals!), and while I sat with him, I just wanted to snuggle his feathers. My husband insisted that the owl would bite my fingers right off if I pet it, to which I fondly agreed. Of course he would bite them off. He’s that kind of owl.

I’ve been thinking of getting a second tattoo, one featuring an owl. Tattoos are really important things, and I would take a very long time in deciding what I want (just like I did with my first ink, my little bat). This might be done to mark my first publication, and of course, because I just want to.

In other news, I’ve updated my sidebar links/Favourite Reads to include a few more of the blogs I read frequently! I kept forgetting I needed to do that, what with my head being filled with too many stories. But now there are new additions, and there will undoubtedly be others again in the future when I find more awesome people and places around the internet.

~A

Dinner, and the weather

Posted on by Ashlee Scheuerman in Thoughts, Writing

I guess some people have a problem with writers including observations of the weather in their stories? I don’t understand that. I love weather, and it’s always something I’m aware of. My favourite weather is the cold and rainy days that dim the sun and make me just want to curl up beside a fire, favourite book in hand and a tidy selection of Royal Gala apples available to eat throughout the day.

For me, including a small note about the weather or the season in my writing is just a natural thing. I don’t do it constantly, and I definitely don’t have any preconceptions about “dark and stormy nights”, because all my dark and stormy nights have been perfectly normal, or simply thrilling in the way lightning has filled the sky with wild blue and white bolts. Sure, it’s not essential, but there’s that degree of normalcy for me, and it can go a long way towards explaining character behaviours or putting additional conflicts in their path (the need for shelter from the elements, for a start).

On a vaguely unrelated note, I notice that fantasy works often discuss foods. Not only that, but the foods are frequently all of the “hunted a boar, roasting it now” variety, complete with mead, ale, or some wine or other. There might even be trenchers of bread! Dark bread, and rich gravy, and hard cheese. If you’ve read any more than a handful of fantasy novels, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

I am personally a big fan of eating. Food is awesome, sharing meals with loved ones is a special thing, and it’s just damn tasty. So I have a similar preoccupation with food as I do with the weather, but I’m not as driven to write about banquets, feasts and other such typical meals. I lean toward just include foods as a part of another scene; maybe the characters are preparing a meal as they talk, or they are interrupted eating to attend to other matters.

I think my take on weather and food is part of my “style”, as it is intrinsic to me. Without those little additions, I don’t think my stories would have the same sense of life to them.

~A

The Process

Posted on by Ashlee Scheuerman in Thoughts, Writing

My readers should already know of the wonderful Lisa Kilian (some of you are here because of her!). From her blog, What Not to Do as a Writer, comes an entry that immediately got my brain-gears grinding and banging away in a fit of “HEY GO WRITE ABOUT THIS THING NOW”. Check her entry, then read on! Mistake #110: The Writing Pedestal

The Writing Process. It’s a big thing, isn’t it? I don’t really understand the whole “muse” business, because I have known for many years that all creation is just living, experiencing, and really thinking, which condenses down into creativity, to burst out covered in this muse-like goodness.

I also don’t comprehend routines and rituals. I change too much to feel like there is one special key to unlocking my writer self. There’s no one thing that I always want to do, there’s not a single place that I have dedicated as my “writing space”, and there isn’t a specific time of day that I work best at. If I have any ritual to writing, it’s thinking a whole lot, then writing.

I write anywhere I want, on whatever suits me at the time. Notebooks (filled two in a quest to write a novel; it’s on hold while other projects get finished, and also while I come to terms with having to copy all that writing onto my computer). Shoddy old computers which CRASH WHEN YOU SAVE. I currently write on my mini laptop, a white and mint green EeePC, using my fullsize USB keyboard (the one with the bad W key that I have learnt to press just a little firmer to get it to work).

I write in our living room, bedroom, or the back room where the cats like to chitter at doves in the garden. Sometimes I write in the car (the joys of both notebooks and miniature laptop computers). I write when people are doing things around me, or I don’t, because those things are either interesting or maddening. I write to music, and I stop to sing along, and I get hungry and go make a sandwich.

Mostly, though, I just sit and write. Or sit and look at the ceiling. Or sit and have cats come out of nowhere to lay on my lap so I have to somehow write around them. And the words come out because I’ve been thinking about writing when I’m not physically writing. More than half of creating any story is thinking about it. Then scrambling to find a scrap of paper because I thought of something awesome!

The Process is thinking, a lot, then just banging it out and seeing what can be done with it later. The Process is not caring when I’m writing something dumb, and I know it’s dumb, because I can fix it in revisions. The Process is writing in a daze when I’m half asleep, and writing in a worse daze when everything is working perfectly. The Process needs no more than myself, my thoughts, and some (in)convenient writing implements.

The Process is getting angry and giving up. The Process is starting again. The Process of writing is to write. It’s not magical, and it totally is. It’s internal, and external. It’s all the times in life when I’m not writing. It’s the collective of my thoughts, and the thoughts of others, and the madness necessary to create.

~A

Full moon darkness

Posted on by Ashlee Scheuerman in Thoughts, Writing

I notice that we get to see the moon a lot during the day around here. There is something haunting and beautiful about it sitting in the sky, the pale grey of clouds, but round and still where it waits for the planetary kind of spin that pushes it to other skies. And of course, when night falls, the brightness! How it reflects the sunlight lets the darkness become its own kind of beauty. The contrast is all it takes to change the moon from a gentle addition, to the centre of your attention.

I think that most feelings, emotions, are at their peak when something is there to contrast them. When writing horror, the scary bits need to fall inside reassuring moments. Romance comes with a helping of distrust and heartache. Dark fantasy is contrasted when there is a bright, vivid moon shining down upon it, the beautiful moments that show you just how twisted everything else really is.

Even in shorter fiction, there has to be particular contrast, so the readers, and indeed even the writer can see just how poignant the central theme is. And sometimes that theme can blend into its surroundings first, waiting for the moment of contrast to truly show how important it is.

These thoughts come to me when I feel like I’ve perhaps deviated too far from course. When the scene runs on into characters sharing love and laughter in the lead-up to a challenging moment, I stop and realise that without these moments of brightness, the dark would not seem so expansive.

~A