Forbidden Knowledge

Ohai thar. xD

Another random post, inspired in part by mychemicalromance.com’s site upgrade, because all those guys need to do is breath and I’m obsessed inspired. I’m a helpless, teenage fangirl and I send my apologies for that.

It’s 3am, more than less. I have to go to a hearing that will be rigged so that I lose my job. Fear about this unfortunate scenario may be why I am awake - that, and the magic of a DS with Disgaea. <3

Now that I’m all grown up and have houses to worry about, along with Christmas parents and groceries, losing my job becomes a very big thing. It doesn’t help that my beloved has also lost his job in this corrupt mess that involves pretty much everyone at my work place being gotten rid of.

So, unlike my chillax’d internet manner may appear, I am quite panicky. But not to the point that I’m in real danger, so until then, wish me luck.

This blog needs more pictures. I would show you some of myself completely sober

and yet lacking in my cardigan at my last wild party, but some of you might not approve, so instead, have a picture of my dog looking at a cup of tea.

Isn’t that cool?

Also, the high school in Nairn have been randomly assigned to do a book report on Dragon Tamers 2: Digital Tempest. I sort of feel sorry for them for having to report on the second one instead of the first, which is confusing, and on a book that was rushed into print, which results in even more confusing prose.

My boyfriend’s brother informed them that I previously spent some time staying at his house. His classmates would not believe him, insisting I lived in a really posh house - and he informed them that no, I live just off the high street. He’s had this argument before.

This made me laugh. It always does. The irony of yours truly barely being able to afford the rent this month isn’t quite so funny, but still, you gotta laugh.

Stay safe.

E.Maree

xoxo

I was in the process of jazzing up FK with some plug-ins when I found an automatic WordPress update plugin. Itw worked like a charm, and now everything’s working smoother than ever, complete with a new backend. The admin layout is a lot brighter and fun to use, this makes me happy. :3

Now, this blog has been neglected of late, but I’m working on sorting that. Look out for fun things like this in the future:

- Life updates. My boyfriend and I move in to our own house on my birthday, the second of October, which along with the workload requiredb to afford this is sucking up a lot of my time.

- Writing updates. New short stories are underway, including a new one you can read over at the forum.

- Art updates. I’m still drawing, I just don’t have scanning time.

- Reviews. Books, movies, games, anything really… I’ll be working on developing my critical abilities.

- Essays. I’m still in two minds about this, haha, it reminds me a bit of school, but I should be attempting some essays.

- Site updates. UG’s overhaul is still not completely finished - I need to sort out issues with spam on the blog and news, for instance.

- Merch updates. I will eventually get round to designing new products from Punk Ethic. Where I will get the funds to create these projects is another question entirely.

- Creation of a ‘member’s club’. This is more complex, and still under construction, but I’m working on unifying membes via a feature called E.Maree’s Army. It might involve premium forum status or access, early viewing of sample book chapters, exclusive wallpapers and other such goodies.

How I’m supposed to do this with SMF, WordPress and a normal HTML/CSS site is a good question. xD

…Fun times.

Also, if anyone reading this and is proficient in WordPress design, I’m looking for some help integrating the blog into the main site’s layout. Give me a buzz at emaree@used-goods.net =]

Thanks for reading.

E.Maree

xoxo

…and it’s been a while.

As I documented earlier in a few posts, I started working a ‘real job’, and quickly discovered I don’t have the strength to write as much as before when I’m working so hard.

This lead to a lot of angst, but work also lead to something more - after slowly starting to pick up books, I found the time between getting buses in and waiting to get them home was perfect for reading. I hadn’t enjoyed reading in more than a year - a side-effect of my depression that I never expected.

With the combination of great webcomics (Zombie Hunters) leading me to great podcasts (Writing Excuses), and getting addicted to the crack-like guilty pleasure that is Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series…. I’m writing The Network again.

Properly. Professionally. With redrafting and editing and hopefully, with the help of some forumers, beta readers.

I missed this.
Expect more blog entries, soon - with anything from random acts from the rewrite to book and movie reviews.

It’s good to be here again. =]

E.Maree

xoxo

Just got my first paycheck today. =D

It’s not much - £90 for just under a week’s worth of work, I’m gonna say around 3 full days - but it gets me out of the messy situation of being unable to pay the hosting bills for my site. Without my sites, Emma is a sad kitten. >: Plus, the site’s form an important, if grossly underestimated, part of my livelihood - publicising my work and giving me an outlet to sell it.

I’m working in Vue Cinemas right now, and it was a slight culture shock to begin with… I’ve never held a ‘real’ job before, and being stuck in the arse-end of the employment, otherwise known as retail, probably wasn’t a nice soft welcome. I had trouble not being able to work at full-potential and help out when I was getting trained up, I am easily wounded by customer abuse, and my ever-mysteriously frail health state meant that after enough hours with movie times and short staffing preventing me from taking a break, I’d be on my last legs and unable to keep standing unless I was concentrating on till-work. This triggered a return of my old mate depression, which didn’t help.

Buuuttttt I’m doing okay now. The hours are long and the pay is next to nothing, but I can do it fairly well and enjoy it. =] With luck and enough saving, myself and my boyfriend will be able to save up and get an apartment of our own and move out of our temporary carvan accomodation. xD But the current housing crisis makes that tricky.

Work is… an interesting experience, and one that’s drastically cutting into my time spent writing and drawing. But it’s contributing - to society, to the relationship, to a future. It’s also being part of the loathed rat-race and being penned in by minimum wage and the restrictions of my age, but it’s doing my best to make my own living. And that’s nice.

SUMMER BLOCKBUSTER SEASON NAO. OSHI- =P

E.Maree

xoxo

As soon as I accomplished my dream of becoming a published author, I was able to create new dreams - all artistic, and all equally epic. From becoming a true ‘performer’ in the artist community and going on fantastic book tours with costumes and backdrops, starting a publishing label of my own, to singing on stage as part of a rock band, to have my lyrics brought to life by one, to becoming a (good) webcomic artist online - and I get new goals every day, from learning to watercolour paint to illustrating and writing a childrens book. I never stop.
All of these goals are still relatively high on my to-do list. I’m still learning each day and becoming a better writer, and will eventually go on those tours and maybe even have my own publishing side-label and be able to scout for new, unique and fantastic talent to liven up the literary world. I’m working on a webcomic with my beloved. I’ve tried and tested rock bands and am now practicing to get my singing to a professional level and learning instruments and sound production so I can become my own one-man rock band, ala one of my favourite musicians, Trent Reznor. But though I have self taught myself art, writing and singing, some things require more help than that.

Next Wednesday, I have an interview with a college so I can learn music and finally understand all the theory behind it, as well as receive tuition in instruments. I’m excited, and yet afraid… I don’t know which song will be skilled enough (it asks for Grade 2, and the Grade 2 exam syllabus lists mostly classical and cultural music, not my usual rock forte). I can’t even do the slightly easier-to-judge acoustic because I’ve only just learned my first song (Ode to Joy <3).

I'm scared and excited and a lot more besides that. I'm on my way to building up a skill-set I can be proud of, balancing writing with music and illustrating my own books, albums, merchandise and comics. I aim too high and dream of a kind of multi-tasking artistic mastery, but I don't mind, because it's a direction to go in and a future to aim for.

And despite worries about money and work and deadlines, I'm doing everything I've always wanted to do, I'm sticking to my dreams regardless of how lacking my skills in the field may be, and I'm proud of myself for it.

Impossible is nothing.

E.Maree

xoxo

The label on my blouse calls it electric blue, but the dark tones never bring to my mind the bright crackle of live, high voltage. It’s a size too big because stocks were low, and five minutes ago half the buttons were undone for a boy I am proud to call my own.

It’s the second of two, because when you’re working at someone’s beck and call and crashing out at the end of each shift, there’s sometimes no time for washing. It lacks the stains of a day’s hard work and a lunchtime’s ice cream in the sun, it lacks any of the always necessary pockets in the typical and ever so annoying fashion of female clothes. It’s two days old, worn for only one of them, and it identifies me as the bitch of some big corporation, or the loyal worker of one - take your pick.

I hate retail. Nobody enjoys it, you barely earn enough to scrape by, you hours and workload vary by the second. The customer is always right, your co-workers always have someone who will hate you, the customers will always complain about everything you have no power over.

This is my first job, and two days in I’m already half-dead from a flu and have lost my voice for the first time ever. I wish I had actually been hit by a bus instead of just feeling like one, because then I’d have a reason not to show up.

I’m Emma Maree Urquhart - a writer, not the slave to minimum wage, and yet I’m showing up when sick to impress the managers instead of slacking off and trying to write with my head weighing my neck down - and I today, I taste like medicine and too little to eat.

My boyfriend’s calling me, my foot is going numb, and I have to get a bus in a few minutes so I can wait around for another four hours until my shift.

But I’m making money, I’m being someone, I’m helping others - and I guess that, really, I have no complaints about any of it. =]

I believe I am reaching a sort of ‘writer’s puberty’. Lately has been a whirlwind of emotions, loosing and gaining faith n my abilities, wanting to change my style entirely, being unable to pick up a pen, being convinced it’s my only option.

Now, I could attribute this to my PMS-inspired abandonment of my medication (hey, I can do what I want, even if it’s stupid :P), but I would rather attribute it to my recent foray into the bullshit-ridden fields of ‘how to write’ books.

It’s a bad genre to say the least, filled with books full of nothing at all, but I’ve made a few wise and not so wise choices - Stephen King’s “On Writing”, and someone-or-other’s “Reading Like A Writer”.

The latter, though educational, is also filled with the high-and-mighty superiority of your stereotypical Oxford graduate in English literature, the doting love of the classics and, frustratingly, a tendency to focus on writing at it’s most complex and tangled instead of readable, enjoyable work. Now, I love the critical genius of these type of people, but there are few things more off-putting than reading spiels about work that you need to re-read to even begin to understand, to hear about the beauty of sentances, and to have to listen to the words of someone who seems to feel so much more about writing that you do.

I hate high-and-mighty types who think they’re better than every other reader because they’ve been through ‘War and Peace’ five times and have twice the vocabularly you will ever have, because I believe art is something to be enjoyed, not to be toiled over… but that camp is split into two halfs, with writers who follow my free-flowing mind-set, and others who believe every word should take an hour’s thought beforehand.

Reading this is opening my eyes to the true complexity of the written word… a complexity that will take me a lot of years to fully understand and love. It’s making me think abut what I write, about the meaning, and the significance, the style… and all of that is wonderful.

But it also makes me hate my work, for not being able to make it feel ‘beautiful’ to me. Once I was a storyteller, and to an extent I still am… but I’m trying to become more than that, a writer, and it’s hard. I think it will always be hard - after all, it’s a field filled with self-doubt, rejection and criticism - but now I’m beginning to realise just how much deeper than that it all goes.

So I’m growing up, as a writer, and immersing myself in writing as skilled craftmanship and art instead of well-written, enjoyable entertainment. It’s hard… hell, it’s terrifying, and I know that as soon as I ‘mature’ I’ll never be able to see writing the same way again.

But it’s progress, in the same way every book I’ve written before and every book I shall write afterwards is progress, and one fact still remains unchanged - with every word written, every chapter finished, every lesson learned, I’m getting better.

Writing, and any kind of art, is not about perfection from the get-go. It’s about learning, and improving, until the end of your days.

So here we go.

Hm, I’ve been avoiding mentioning this for a while now, but I feel you guys are owed a bit of news, so…

Yours truly is homeless, lulz. :3 Got a roof over our heads, but no place to call our ‘own’ anymore. It means a lot of tough things are being thrown onto me… I have to get a job when I’ve never really had a ‘real’ one before and have no idea what I want to work in, I have to find a way to get there for my current temp residence in the middle of nowhere, I’m going to need to make enough money to keep up my half of eventual rent despite being under 18 and working part-time (the other part of that time is going into writing).
So yeah. It’s tough. Money has never been a necessity until now, and I loathe it for its need now.

Trying to think of ways to make money out of work, like commissioned art or writing, online store installation and maintainence, sales through Punk Ethic… it’s tough. I know there are ways, everything from ghost writing to magazine writing, but I’m just a kid to the eyes of the world and I can’t get my foot in the door all that easily.

I can’t say it isn’t refreshing, though. The bitter cold, the star-flecked nights, the shared toilets, the lack of privacy, security or confidence… there’s something cold and real about it, and I love it. I feel… healthier, almost. A little more real, a little more me, a little closer to where I’m trying to be.

But yeah. Since I know a few readers will be concerned, I’ll throw up a few money-earning links, and I’ll take any paid requests for next to anything via e-mail… but really, I know my boyfriend and I can get through this off our own backs, so don’t feel obliged. I just want people to know where I stand, so they can understand why it’s hard to write right now.

Any, the obligatory stuff - Punk Ethic Productions is my online store, the stuff there’s cheap and a large percentage of what you pay will end up going to me to help with this matter.

And if you don’t want any next-to-unheard-of, but nonetheless pretty sweet, books, then have a donate button:

And if you don’t have money but enjoy visiting internet forums, becoming a part of the /forum community is awesome too.
That’s all for now.

Yours&his&hers&theirs,

E.Maree

xoxo

Afternoon, how is everyone?

Enjoying the summer sunshine, the new series of Doctor Who, the frequent holidays, the longer days?

Life’s been as unstable as always here, and events have led to me feeling the need to find a place of ‘my own’ - that is to say, with my boyfriend and possibly flatmates, but with independancy and the stability to allow me to work.

Think it’s a noble endeavor? Well,  I could use all the help I can spreading the word about Punk Ethic Productions… my online store provides rare books at slashed prices, lower than any other competitive independent store… but unfortunately, it also lacks the large clientèle that allows other stores to sell these product for extortionate prices.

So, spread the word and help honest intentions and sane prices flourish.

Or don’t. xD But cheers for reading, anyway.

E.Maree

xoxo

bleh. got a lot of deadlines to get through, the stress is leaving me prickly and irritable and generally not fun to be around. pity the live-in boyfriend.

due to the joy of stress, I’m getting torn up by a lot of feelings of inadequacy an worthlessness. I want to be able to write at a compete, professional, respectable, Oxford-graduate level, but I can’t. I want to have a regular updating webcomic, but there’s no chance. I want to serenade by beloved but I can’t play guitar well enough. I can’t do anything much right now.
My agenda currently goes like this:

- writewritewrite. this is hard because nothing i write feels good enough and i’m being powered mostly by pressure instead of motivation.
- read books and comics. improves writing style and art style respectively.

- play a little guitar. not putting any real pressure on learning  right now because my current level at fail when it comes to memorizing chords/notes and playing quickly makes me emo. D=
- practice inking. due to my free-flowing sketching habits I’m bad at having a steady tablet hand and creating clean lineart. this is frustrating but i’m not going to focus on it right now.

- working on a wholly original art style. yeah, I know, I’m a fool.

- practicing more with traditional media. because traditional work has a kind of magic to it that digital work can never have.

- be a good girlfriend. ‘cos i loose all motivation and will to work when depressed, and without a stable relationship I loose the ability to keep myself on track and fall off the tracks for a while. happiness + love = creativity.

- sort out the dragontamers.net. again, o pressure ‘cos used-goods is functioning fine.

- add a gallery to used-goods.net. bo pressure to do this ‘cos Gallery is annoying.

- add a webcomic or two (or three or four) to used-goods.net, using iStrip or Comicpress. no rush ‘cos I still don’t really have the skill in digital art for it.

bleeeeeh.

I think once I’m finished the rewrite I’m going to relax and read constantly for a while, do some short stories and new projects, and generall polish up my style a bit.

hope everyone’s doing ok. =]

e.maree

xoxo