Petrarchive – post your work

I've been putting together a very small (<40 pages probably) collection of writing I've made over the last year. Once I hit ten pieces I'll consider it done, though I don't know if I'll do any meaningful editing besides cleaning up punctuation (e.g., proper em dashes, curly quotes) as all of the pieces were intended more as exercises, even if some of them I like quite a bit. So far intend to keep the order chronological.

Pic related are two I've posted here before (I think the second was in the last incarnation of this thread). The piece I've got titled Short-Term Memory is probably my least favourite/effective of the current bunch, and it makes me wonder if I shouldn't be more selective in what I include or consider more serious edits. There's a line in it that is nearly repeated in something I wrote more recently, which makes me think there was still something essential in it I was trying to get at. The second piece is the second appearance of the highway-lake scene in the stories I'll include, and that repetition isn't something I dislike.

There was an old magazine I found that came in a similar skinny format, which I liked very much. Considering I've got this typeset on letter-sized pages the font now is pretty big but not bad, and I might mess with the margins to add some more whitespace. All the pieces are between 2-4 pages so far, so I've got room to adjust. Not sure how I'll go about printing it, but will probably try to make a few basic copies out of printer paper and staples.

The title of Short-Term Memory came retroactively and is a riff on the title of a James Tate piece (Long-Term Memory, though I couldn't say it had direct influence on the piece otherwise). Not sure I'll keep the title. The titling was also based on a collection of James Tate poems.

And here's a sketch I made based on a guy's Bionicle MOC over on 4chan.

>>8495

That's a nice interpretation of the figure. As a kid I lamented how the official animated media and games would hold very steadfast to the forms of the actual plastic pieces instead of giving leeway to more creative interpretation. I also like that you didn't include the weapons in the drawing, IMO the tackiest part of the MOC.

My ex viscerally hated Bionicle and would always go on these boomer-esque rants about how they subvert the Lego idea by being less modular and allowing for less freedom in expression. I don't disagree with him over the overall trajectory of the company and it's fellatio of franchises, especially in recent years, but every time I see a Bionicle now it reminds me of him.

>>8494
It looks elegant.

>>8497
>didn't include the weapons
Yeah, it's only the main silhouette of his MOC that's interesting (sans the wings). Even still, the MOCs legs are horribly bare, even if it makes the silhouette neat. That's something that got worse quickly with the design language of Bionicles, where they went from high-detail pieces with no modularity to more generic limb pieces, then the dogshit cheap, smooth CCBS shell+skeleton system. As much as I might long for a highly-modular Bionicle-Technic system where limbs and torsos are more buildable, at the scale (and cost) of Bionicles it's hard to imagine. But it does make MOCing more interesting in forcing you to be creative for variety and articulation.

Pic related are some MOCs of my own from when I still had my collection.

>>8497
>As a kid I lamented how the official animated media and games would hold very steadfast to the forms of the actual plastic pieces
I'm split on that, where I think a more serious sci-fi interpretation of the sets/world means you have to depart from the toy forms, but then makes certain very charming elements of them less obvious, like their modularity. The original Toa building themselves on the beach isn't something that makes a lot of sense when you start thinking too hard about how they're built and how they function.

Pic related is an in-house(?) comic by Bo Torstensen for what was then known as Voodoo Island (I think) but soon after became Bionicle. There was a lot more emphasis on their construction, and I find it very whimsical and charming.

>less modular and allowing for less freedom in expression
I can see that especially in the early sets, though they made up for it a bit with gear mechanisms and such, which quickly vanished. Later sets also suffered from being too barebones individually, but Lego has always benefited from collecting many sets and making new things. That said, even with all six Toa sets of one of the later years, there's nothing particularly novel you can build out of those pieces. And Lego rarely if ever released real parts packs for Bionicle. It's a shame for sure.

>>8498
Thanks. I'd worked on some projects in the past that were comparatively very visually busy and haphazard, and I wanted to move away from that without giving up on making it distinct. For instance I'm normally skeptical of double-spacing paragraphs instead of using linebreaks in print, but it's nice to lean into the use of negative space.

I made a compilation of a bunch of writing from /lit/. Learned some typesetting software (Scribus) in the process of making it, and I feel the selecting and editing made me a much more involved reader. Of the authors I was in contact with, it seemed to mean a lot to some of them, which in turn meant a lot to me considering one of my main aims was to elevate the writing in it. There's plenty I'd do differently a second time around, style-wise and in terms of the process, but I'm pleased to have done it.

One of the authors posted about it here a while after it released, and it was really cool to stumble across discussion of it totally independent of myself. A /lit/ poster I've befriended IRL was also recently trying to get me to print copies and peddle them locally, and borrowed my copy to read through, so that's been encouraging in spite of the fact that I've mostly laid the project to rest (besides the occasional shilling on /lit/).

I also had to send a couple copies to Edward Burtynsky for contractual reasons (licensed his photo Breezewood), which was kind of cool.

>>8869
Making magazines is the best. It really feels like gathering a bouquet.

>>8870
I like the bouquet analogy. What kind of stuff have you worked on?

Ventoux lol, made with Scribus. And other stuff for work.
It's both a small consecration for every contributor, and a mirror you tend to the community showing off "this is what we can do". It really is a great object to make.
That's mainly why zines survive I think.

>>8873
How'd you find/go about the selection and editing process? Was there much that was changed between submission and publication? Did you have many clear criteria for selection? I was going to say selecting from "live" submissions must be pretty different from compiling from old ones, but probably not (though most of the best-of pieces were selected publicly or by consensus), and the editing would depend on how much you want to do and whether the authors care to give input.
>That's mainly why zines survive I think.
Survive in that they're archived? or survive in that they persist? For the latter, since they exist outside of a monetary interest, that decouples them from relying on making money, but they're inherently niche.

>It's both a small consecration for every contributor, and a mirror you tend to the community showing off "this is what we can do". It really is a great object to make.
I agree. When I look at the mainline issues of & or older /lit/ magazines, the most valuable thing about them seems to be representing the group that made them. Getting people to take part is tricky, but the end product says something about the group regardless of the quality. I almost feel the best-of was antithetical to that for pruning away so much and cost it character, but I also put a lot of thought into keeping it representative (others were involved in the selection process too), even if the emphasis was on uplifting the good works.

You might find this article on the /lit/ wiki interesting:
lit (dot) trainroll (dot) xyz/wiki/Collaborative_Works

>>8874
I only did the layout. Petrarchan's admin made the selection.
>but they're inherently niche
Indeed, they are by design. A small group produces something and by doing so, exists. It's truly performative.
>You might find this article on the /lit/ wiki interesting:
Thanks!

bump
somebody post something

>>9659
I did things but I don't want to doxx myself and I'm tired of using pseudonyms.

guess who

>>9670
>guess who
No idea,
but love your art expression and style

>>9685

thanks. it's Dorian gray

Been practicing painting after my day job (and trying some writing). New to both. Living in a backwater limits opportunities to discuss creative stuff, so let er rip.

>>9670
reminds me of hunter Schafer for rookie mag drawings, those meant a lot to me as a kid

>>9708
love this, what are you using to learning?

>>9708
>>9711
Also interested in the answer.
There is a motif I've been wanting to paint for a year, and I have no idea how to approach it. Yet committing to a painting course is not possible/too much.

think i didn't post this poem before, i'm the most proud of it compared to any other thing i made, pretty much
>>9708
i think you've really got the sauce, but you could push the composition a little more. the bull is very monstrous and the background is very foreboding, but i feel like the cowboy sorta character, being all centered and vertical, perhaps is somewhat an impediment to the energy and mood the rest of the painting creates
>>9670
is this colored pencil? i think your linework would be so cool with pen and wash watercolor!
>>8869
doing graphic design & typesetting for zines is so much fun, especially if you didn't write everything in it (too much work otherwise plus then you start rewriting your stuff & it just becomes a mess)

>>9766
This is cool. Did you start with the first and final phrases, then construct it from there? or what was the process and what lead to the in-between word choices?

>>9772
i had the last line & the overall image in my head, and then i tried scrambling the letters around to see what words i could make, then i wrote the poem, and then i made paths in illustrator with all the letters written on them, and finally it was a really long process of wiggling them around to try and get the poem to show up

Here's my low rent method for starting painting specifically. I started by searching thrift stores/used book stores for "old masters" type coffee table books (Great Drawings in the Lourve, art history primers, medieval religious art collections etc.) I also started sketching everything; that bull lives in the pasture behind me. After that, I bought/collected the cheapest paint I could find. The cowboy painting is a combo of $6 gouache set, ink, and wall paint on an old canvas that I found in the thrift store. I then replicated paintings that I saw in my books or from pictures I took in a museum while I was visiting my buddy in a major city. The rider in the painting is basically a one to one of an old Madonna and Child from da Ferrara, which accounts for that particular stiffness lol.
May not work for everyone, but I have spent maybe 30 bucks on the whole hobby and feel like I've made progress. If there's an image that particularly strikes me, I just paint it over and over in different forms for practice. (The cowboy painting comes from a truly bizarre rodeo experience where a circus family put their kid on a bull)
I hope this helps y'all if you're wanting to start. And please forgive me if I didn't use the reply function correctly bc i'm a Luddite.

>>9784
That's good, thanks. And deceptively simple, I don't know why I expected something more complicated.

painted over some cheap-o frames with the cardboard pictures built in

I have a pretty nomad lifestyle these days. I miss building things, making preserves, thinking long term about one place and making it mine (and adapting myself to the place).
I write and I'm learning an instrument to make music though (although finding a piano while traveling is not that easy).

I wrote a couple pieces of flash fiction for a thread on /lit/. The first was for the prompt
>Being stuck up a tree
and took some editing to pare into something that fit the 3000-character post limit, though I think it's better off on account of that. Pleased with how it turned out, though still skeptical of whether the ending is connected well enough to the rest.

>>9833
I really like this. The way the central character blends into the background is really nice, and it has good balance with the motion of his being pulled up and outwards to where the painting becomes indistinct or black.

Did you post some of your paintings in the last incarnation of this thread? and have you finished >>9708?

>>9665
>>10129
>I make stuff but I won't show you
Hell, at least describe things you've made or your approach in some meaningful way, like the guy talking about his approach to painting. I mean even "recipes" are suggested in the OP.

"post your work" is an /ic/ meme reply for people who sound like they're talking out of their ass or otherwise don't substantiate what they say. If they don't reply with their own art (or if they do and it sucks ass), they're outed as a pseud. It's more or less a meme to encourage deeper engagement.

Second one, for
>Inventing the fork
though when I finished it I immediately realised that I should have given the narrator his own, brief, caveman-esque dialogue. My whole intent going in was to have that contrast with his narration. Ah well.

I'm still camping that thread and posting critique, which is a nice exercise for myself (but probably annoying for some). I'd actually remade the thread based on one someone else had posted a couple days before, which never had any stories as replies. The current one is getting better reception.

I have started two novels and four short stories over the past few years but seem to never be able to finish anything. I think about the idea, take notes on concepts I want to explore with them, then often fall into an autistic research mode where I feel like I need to "understand" every possible aspect of something before I can write about it but it precludes me from making real progress.
For example, the novel I've made the most progress on is only about 110 pages or so and its structure is based on the mysteries of the Rosary (VERY loosely). But in writing new pieces of it, I get hung up on mysteries I'm unfamiliar with and need to read up on all of them to feel like I truly 'get' the message of that mystery and I spiral in convincing myself that the work will come across as a hacky mess if I don't know everything there is to know about e.g. the Wedding at Cana and all its precedence in other parts of the Bible or in pre-Christian myth or its later interpretations in art/history way farther down the line that actually shapes the event in people's heads and then months later I haven't written the chapter.
It might be a product of the writers I admire most being people like Gaddis who will draw all of these allusions to everything under the sun naturally through full lives spent immersed in learning, but the result is that nothing gets done except very short poems, and those don't come to me often. Sometimes it makes me suspect that I just am not creative as a general rule and don't have that spark in me.

>>10392
Yessiree, here’s the finished product. I posted some of my other work in the old thread; I’m surprised anyone remembered.

Also, I really enjoyed the caveman’s narration, and I agree: upping his primness and adding some grunting utterances for juxtaposition would sharpen the work. As for the first, I think the tonal shift for the end section is natural given the course of the story. Maybe you could have the brother giving bad advice to the younger one (rather than just casual neglect) to maintain the thread of him acting older than he is? Then the abruptness and sparseness of the last part could show the shame of a kid “playing adult” when the real deal shows up at a tragedy.

>>10395

this is why i gave up on writing. the best writing advice i came across is "write what you know". i know little about a lot of things. i dont have an autistic level of knowledge of anything and i recently realised i'm not the kind of person who can immerse myself in acquisition of knowledge on one particular subject and one only about a certain thing even casually. i don't love anything that much

>>10413
>caveman
Right when he lunges towards the fire is where I think it'd have been best. "Grug! Sticks! Give sticks!" woulda done it, I think. Maybe an allusion appended to the end about tossing shit at Grug.
>tree
Maybe it's a matter of indecisiveness on my part, or some ambiguity I can claim is important in retrospect, but I didn't want the older brother to be explicitly responsible in any way. I'm not sure he's even meant to be underestimating the situation so much as he's able to see in retrospect the possibility for calamity, with the slight pangs of unease in the narration being what I was going for rather than making his choices the point of tension. And that his then-frustration over a trifling issue is contrasted to his feeling of responsibility, with an emphasis on the dynamic of the brothers and the unfairness of the accident. Something goes horribly wrong and you wonder for years whether you really did the wrong thing, imagine the possibilities, but as the distance grows you come to grips with the simple unfairness of the situation, and guilt is replaced by something calm but uncertain.

There's a story I read later the same day as I wrote the one with the brothers by DFW called Incarnations of Burned Children (that you can find online on Esquire, which I came across in an archived flash fiction thread on /lit/). The question of responsibility, of guilt, of unfairness. Part of me feels this story is successful but that it's shallow somehow, maybe simply grotesque and too unfair. I wonder whether I did the same.

>your painting
I've gotta say the composition in this one feels weird to me. It's got a cramped planning like your other painting, but it makes the saintly/Jesus baby too big (and definitely too big in proportion to the bull who in the draft is very menacing and ominous, especially with the earlier horns). I see the likeness to the oddly adult-proportioned baby Jesus of classical art, but it comes across as stiff in physically infeasible way. The set of symbols I think is very cool, but feels too thrown together. I try to imagine it from a perspective further away, so Jesus is small to the bull and the bull even smaller to the empty plain of land and even smaller to the sky, but I also like how you obscured some of the bull beyond the edge of the frame. Even with just more vertical space on a taller canvas you could emphasise the proportions, especially the sky, which I think could take up much more space and lend a lot more to the feeling. The gun as it is really points nowhere, but you could say more if it could point to the turmoil or eruption of the sky.

What was your thinking/idea behind this one?