I took a long hiatus...
From ambition, from discipline, from the ever-growing list of rules. Over the past month, I've indulged in reflection. I roughly sketch out ideas and doodles and steered clear of major projects with big goals. I carefully shopped for pieces of my doll project and contemplate what I might still need but they sit in a myriad pile of boxes unstaffed while the way I want to tackle them actually changes bit by bit with new inspiration.
I dream of changes to UnHeard's draft. Some I've added, some I'm still uncertain of and become notes. There's been no look at word count, no minding the words for an audience just yet. I reverted to private journaling because there is something stilted about many of these public posts that I couldn't quite place. Whether I was holding something back or struggling with the inability to keep to a topic, I'm not quite sure, but I do know that I needed to change gears.
I bought a second doll without finishing the first. As Rienna grew in my mind, I saw Talia warring for space to grow a physical form. No, not literally. I haven't decided to jump ship and talk about my characters as if they have a mind of their own. I simply thought of my early drawing of her, the wild flame of her dancer costumes, those blue eyes and fire engine red hair and knew she'd be cropping up in the scheme of things.
I'd love to do a doll version of a male character but I find too many of the affordable male dolls are generic if not crude builds. The female bodies and faces are many and the males, if having any muscle detail at all, tend to be boyish. While some of my male characters are young, I want to realize the string mass, stubble and broad strength of my oldest characters more. I see Corvus or Eredin or the mercenary, the hardened bitterness of Melchior.
I might have loved the boyish characters when I was younger, but my scars have been more drawn to those creased and mature faces, those eyes that squint in caution and swallow light rather than wide-eyed and reflecting it. The female characters are their own enigma. They war with their youthful appearance, sometimes determined to show the strength of femininity, sometimes striving to be androgynous or childlike so that gender isn't the way people assume their roles.
In a way, that's a piece of my struggle too. I didn't play with dolls because it's what girls were supposed to do. I don't exactly play with dolls now. I try to evoke from them all the forms womanhood can take in pain and triumph. To enjoy an aesthetic rather than model myself to it. To separate and join with a construct I still struggle to understand.
So things are moving much slower, but I haven't been fighting to catch a fast wave. Like all good things, it's not as wonderful when all of it is forcing the effort. In all my journaling that will never see the light of day, I find a few shiny bits that may after all. And remember not to treat every word so sacred.
