Katiefoolery

Words Aloud

by Katie on 20th May, 2013

One of my worst habits (and believe me, there are many), is my tendency to hold myself back from doing things I am actually keen to do. It’s a stupid habit. Why is my brain more keen for me to do the laundry or take the rubbish out instead of installing Premiere Elements and getting started on some video projects? Essentially, if I were to compile a list of habits I’d really like to break (another fantastic way of avoiding the things I want to do), that one would surely be right at the top.

This very habit is the one that kept me from recording a ficlet I wrote the other day, even though it was something I was quite looking forward to. I wrote the ficlet to be read aloud; I have discovered that I love reading my stuff aloud… so why didn’t I put the two together and do it straight away?

Because of reasons. Because of that annoying list of excuses that pops up whenever I set my heart on something. It was too cold (actually, it was freezing in the room where I had to record, so this was slightly legitimate); I had a cat on my lap; we had to watch an episode of Location, Location, Location; now it was too late.

At last, I managed to record it and here it is for you now. I decided to upload it to YouTube this time, just in case that made things easier in any way. It avoids the need to download anything or open up a media player, so I hope that’s a good thing. Please let me know what you think of this: helpful, or not?

Check out the 15 Minute Fic community on LJ if you’d like to have a go at writing your own ficlets. It’s a lot of fun and it’s great for challenging yourself and improving your skills as a writer, particularly if you feel uninspired or in a rut.

By the way, if you’re wondering what the odd noise in the background of the last word of the ficlet might be: it’s my cat, Pickle, sneezing. When she realised she couldn’t photobomb an audio recording, she worked out the next best way to be involved. “Sneezebombing,” is what the Chef calls it now.

Tagged as: Audio Ficlets, Writing

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Card Games and Something Else Starting with C

by Katie on 13th May, 2013

It has been ten days since I last posted in my blog. I wish I could tell you I’d been off doing something exciting: racing across the country in hot air balloons or hiring a private steam train so I could take the Failboats on a random old-style adventure. Or maybe I could have run off with the Chef to live in a small farmhouse with hens and pigs and with no obvious source of income.

Alas, this has not occurred. Instead of such excitement, I have been partaking in the following:

working
watching youtube videos
smothering homicidal feelings while at shopping centres
playing cards

I have also been reminding myself that, not so long ago, I made a list where I claimed I wanted to focus on only writing one or two blog posts a week, yet ever since then, I’ve been doing my best to write three in any given stretch of seven days. It’s not that I don’t enjoy writing blog posts, because I do, but it does eat into time that could be spent indulging in other areas of interest and productivity. Although, at the moment, those areas mostly involve the watching of youtube videos, as mentioned earlier.

But I do have plans! Plans with a capital P, in fact. Firstly, I am collaborating with the Well-Lettered Lady on a writing project that has us both squeeing at all hours of the night. This squeeing and Planning has awoken old characters and has invoked in me a sense of excitement as well as fear, the latter due entirely to the fact that I need to remember how to be a proper writer.

Secondly, I want to make videos again. I have the perfect project with which to start: a video about LorF, the collaborative project that brought the Failboats together in the first place. A few years ago, five of us made videos where we talked about the project and what it meant to us, with the understanding that I would edit it all together and make a video out of it. It was a good, solid understanding and its only flaw lay in the fact that the five of us managed to contribute well over an hour’s worth of material to the project and I had no idea where to start with it all.

Well I do now and, moreover, I have a proper editing program that I need to learn. These two facts seem to go together perfectly! I even have a basic structure written out in my notepad, a structure that should help me turn seventy-odd minutes of talking into a ten or fifteen minute video of awesomeness.

That is the plan, at least; time will tell if I succeed. If all goes well (or even not entirely badly), I shall make more videos! I have a head full of ideas to inflict upon the world and a camera with which to bring them to life. Plus, YouTube is stuffed full of instructional videos and tutorials to help me in my ambitions (and to take up hours that should properly be spent Doing Stuff and not simply Dreaming About Doing Stuff).

Thirdly, I want to make my blog posts feel more like letters than anything else. I miss writing letters and this seems as good a place as any to get back into this most enjoyable of pastimes. So if you’re reading along, you can expect this blog to take on more of an epistolary nature, hopefully interspersed with the occasional video or audio-ficlet. With any luck, it should be a lot of fun!

Tagged as: Life, Musing