December 2018 – Stephen Reid… Writes

Deep Thoughts, WritingDecember 17, 2018January 2, 2019

Always wanted to paint stuff. I don’t mean like, walls or whatever, I figure I can do that if I ever need to do it. I’ve always wanted to paint geeky stuff, and so this year, I started to try and do it.

Why? No real reason. It followed a path though, which I can trace:

Getting into action figures in late 2017/early 2018
Checking out cool customized action figures
Watching videos about how to customize action figures and thinking “Hmmm”
“Hmmm” leading to haunting Target and buying random painting stuff, like these paint markers
Leading to much browsing on Amazon and buying stuff like Gundam markers
Buying cheap, mass-market toys like this Spider-Man (pictured) to practice on, as it were (he needs webs, and they’re easily added with a Gundam marker)

Spider-Man - Titan Hero series (pre-painting) — Spider-Man – Titan Hero series (pre-painting)

Buying cheap plastic soldiers like this set of ‘Merry Men’ so I can tell myself if I mess up, at least I didn’t spend a lot (per figure)
Buying random paints and brushes – including three different types of paints, because I thought ‘all acrylic paints are the same right’ (They’re not)
Gradually, slowly, painting stuff over months and months (feels like: only from September, really)
Starting to kitbash, I guess, 1/64 scale (Hot Wheels / Matchbox) cars into post-apocalypse junkers for games like Gaslands, even though I won’t likely play it

It makes sense to me. This is why I have a second table in my office covered in this stuff, with drilled holes in the plastic (over-enthusiastic attempt to deconstruct a car) and paint marks everywhere.

And, I suck at it. I do. Which actually, if I’m being honest, is good.

Why?

Because it teaches me (gradually, slowly, with great reluctance) that you can suck and still have fun and it doesn’t matter – because as long as you finish, you can then get better.

Guess what this relates to. Go on, guess.

Yeah, painting (badly) helps me realize that I can write (badly) and it’s still worthwhile as long as I finish.

In an eerie but not unexpected parallel, I haven’t really managed to finish painting a single miniature in 2018. So I’ve got two weeks to get that done.

Next time, pictures, I promise.

WritingDecember 13, 2018January 2, 2019

Someone I follow on Instagram said the magic words recently ‘morning pages’. Ah, morning pages. Thee and I wouldst have words.

I mean, that’s the point. Morning pages are about words, and the generation of words, and the discarding of other things like ‘thoughts’ and ‘doubt’ and ‘penmanship’. Morning pages, as invented (I guess? At least the phrase was coined) by uhhh okay, you know, I’ve forgotten the name* but hey, it’s from a book called ‘The Artist’s Way‘, anyway they’re a thing.

The ‘thing’ being pretty simple: you get up and the first thing you do is write. You write preferably in longhand, and you write three pages (suggested, three pages of like, Letter or A4 depending on your country). When I used to do them, I used a bound A4 notebook, the kind you steal from work if you’re in a White Collar Office.

Three pages is simultaneously nothing and the entire goddamn world of effort.

Because it’s three pages, in theory wrote continuously, without stopping, and crucially without thinking and without judgement, which is the all-important and nigh-impossible part.

Morning pages are about getting past the voice in your head that tells you that you suck. If you don’t have that voice you’re an alien. And that voice can be very unhelpful and self-destructive, so morning pages are about getting past it and getting towards something more, I guess, pure and artistic and all that.

I ‘morning paged’ for, I dunno, about half a notebook. A decent length and a decent number of days, and I stopped, to be honest, because it was becoming basically ‘The Diary of Stephen Reid Aged 33 and a Third’, or something, I can’t remember when I did it. It got too confessional. I got somewhat paranoid about it being a secret diary rather than a bunch of old rambly shite. So I ditched it.

But, they (the pages) have uses beyond that. The simple process of sitting down first thing in the morning and writing words, without editing, without self-censorship, builds something. Like muscle, only it probably matters more to you.

Anyway, that’s it. Morning pages. They’re a thing. They’re useful? You should try it. Or just type total bollocks into an empty WordPress entry, like this.

* Julia Cameron, I realized later.