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Year in Review: 2020 (main entry)
Jan. 13th, 2021 07:46 pm2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 (limited-access appendix), 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007
1. What did you do in 2020 that you'd never done before?
- see pandemic timeline appendix
- twerked
- sewed facemasks, including for a conceptual project called "Masked Futures"
- appeared on facebook live
- did a readthrough of act one of the musical I'm writing with Chris Blacker, which is currently titled The Lady Takes the Mic
- started shot-logging Romie and James Take A Walk in the Woods, my second feature, which wrapped principal photography in 2018
- inadvertently formed an electronica band, Stopwalk, by handing off my vocals and keyboard track for a song I want to use in the movie, and then liking the stuff Paul Starr added to it so much that well I guess we're a band now and I need to put off the movie this song is for to give this song its own space to shine.
- released a song through a distributor (CD Baby), such that it exists on streaming services like Pandora and Spotify and Apple Music
- joined Instagram (as Stopwalk) and created facebook and google business pages for the band, which give me radically different analytical tools than my personal page does. Relatedly had to set up accounts with a lot of other social media platforms and streaming services
- the "Homosexual Art Attack" music video is the first music video I've made for my own music. I've written lots of songs and made lots of music videos - and other people have made music videos based on my songs - but weirdly enough this is the first one that's by me on both sides.
- emailed a bunch of radio stations
- did not bother with pencil underdrawings for inktober and just freehanded everything with a fine-nib felt-tip pen, because I didn't have time otherwise. It looked great. It did push me in a more journaling direction where I was drawing from what I saw instead of planning out imaginary locations.
- made cabbage rolls
- early in the year but after the pandemic had already started, an Indian production company wanted to produce one of my feature scripts, a horror film originally set in Iceland which they wanted to relocate to Belarus to take advantage of co-production money, and which I actually agree is a better setting for the story. They asked whether I'd consider changing the main characters' lesbianism and I said absolutely not because their being lesbian is a key reason they are vulnerable, especially in Belarus where it's illegal and everybody got very excited because of how serious an artist I am, but then armed conflict broke out (ongoing) and it became obvious to them, as was already obvious to me when we started the conversation, that none of us was going to be making a movie in Belarus this year.
- was interviewed by Five Thirty Eight as part of an early series on people whose financial position was improved by the pandemic (mainly interviews with essential workers, of which I am one)
- "A Robot Walks Into A Bar" was anthologized in We, Robots as one of the 100 definitive robot stories in the English language, was mentioned in the English newspaper The Independent
- had an experimental essay published in Australia about ways gaming culture changed or didn't change in quarantine, "Rules Variation For a Tabletop RPG Over Webcam With Social Dysfunction And No Snacks"
- wrote a Petrarchan sonnet as a challenge to myself during National Poetry Month. It's not a form that comes naturally to me.
- did a frog stand for an appreciable length of time without landing on my face
- was part of a directors' roundtable on Backlot, a streaming website that's like an online film festival
- won (collectively with the Strange Horizons staff) the first ever Ignyte Award at the first ever Fiyahcon, in the category Outstanding Efforts in Service of Inclusion and Equitable Practice in Genre.
- was interviewed (again collectively) by Nerds of a Feather, not for the Fiyahcon award but for the Hugo nomination (we once again did not win)
- had some Postorbital microfiction reprinted in the new webzine Microverses
- wrote the Christmas carol "Do They Have Christmas in Canada"
- wrote a science fiction short story about time travel and the evolution of policing, "Evidence of Six Hundred Years." It was my sister REL's Christmas present, and I only finished it on Christmas eve, so I haven't done an edit pass or sent it around yet, but I'm very confident it will get published, although as usual I can't tell whether that means quickly or "in eight years."
- had a sonogram of my neck (to check a lump which was ultimately diagnosed as a non-cancerous swollen lymph node)
- edited someone else's book-length poetry manuscript, in a months long process that involved a lot of research because the poems were very referential - so I would solve each poem like a puzzle, piecing back together what it was collaged from, and then we'd talk about what each line was doing, and then he'd write several new versions of the line, and we'd look together at how that would or wouldn't change the piece. It's somebody whose writing I like a lot and enjoy spending that kind of time with. This is the only poet I've ever done this for.
- painted a psychedelic mural inside the kids' bedroom closet, so they can open it when they transform their room into a disco (which they do a lot, because their bedroom has blackout curtains and they have access to LEDs and strobe lights and lava lamps and things)
- was sent a message from the International Space Station, because one of Ilario's schoolmates is the nephew of an astronaut and she sent a video to the school but the school was remote so it got emailed to us.
- started making cocktails that use raw eggs; I finally get how they work
The pandemic and lockdown have not thus far changed my creative output noticeably, because I was already exploring themes of isolation and of maintaining a sense of self and purpose in times of uncertainty and absurdity. That's been my oeuvre this whole time. I've always been operating with mainly self-imposed deadlines. I've perpetually had a large percentage of my friends and collaborators geographically dispersed where it's normal not to be able to meet in person.
( Read more... )
1. What did you do in 2020 that you'd never done before?
- see pandemic timeline appendix
- twerked
- sewed facemasks, including for a conceptual project called "Masked Futures"
- appeared on facebook live
- did a readthrough of act one of the musical I'm writing with Chris Blacker, which is currently titled The Lady Takes the Mic
- started shot-logging Romie and James Take A Walk in the Woods, my second feature, which wrapped principal photography in 2018
- inadvertently formed an electronica band, Stopwalk, by handing off my vocals and keyboard track for a song I want to use in the movie, and then liking the stuff Paul Starr added to it so much that well I guess we're a band now and I need to put off the movie this song is for to give this song its own space to shine.
- released a song through a distributor (CD Baby), such that it exists on streaming services like Pandora and Spotify and Apple Music
- joined Instagram (as Stopwalk) and created facebook and google business pages for the band, which give me radically different analytical tools than my personal page does. Relatedly had to set up accounts with a lot of other social media platforms and streaming services
- the "Homosexual Art Attack" music video is the first music video I've made for my own music. I've written lots of songs and made lots of music videos - and other people have made music videos based on my songs - but weirdly enough this is the first one that's by me on both sides.
- emailed a bunch of radio stations
- did not bother with pencil underdrawings for inktober and just freehanded everything with a fine-nib felt-tip pen, because I didn't have time otherwise. It looked great. It did push me in a more journaling direction where I was drawing from what I saw instead of planning out imaginary locations.
- made cabbage rolls
- early in the year but after the pandemic had already started, an Indian production company wanted to produce one of my feature scripts, a horror film originally set in Iceland which they wanted to relocate to Belarus to take advantage of co-production money, and which I actually agree is a better setting for the story. They asked whether I'd consider changing the main characters' lesbianism and I said absolutely not because their being lesbian is a key reason they are vulnerable, especially in Belarus where it's illegal and everybody got very excited because of how serious an artist I am, but then armed conflict broke out (ongoing) and it became obvious to them, as was already obvious to me when we started the conversation, that none of us was going to be making a movie in Belarus this year.
- was interviewed by Five Thirty Eight as part of an early series on people whose financial position was improved by the pandemic (mainly interviews with essential workers, of which I am one)
- "A Robot Walks Into A Bar" was anthologized in We, Robots as one of the 100 definitive robot stories in the English language, was mentioned in the English newspaper The Independent
- had an experimental essay published in Australia about ways gaming culture changed or didn't change in quarantine, "Rules Variation For a Tabletop RPG Over Webcam With Social Dysfunction And No Snacks"
- wrote a Petrarchan sonnet as a challenge to myself during National Poetry Month. It's not a form that comes naturally to me.
- did a frog stand for an appreciable length of time without landing on my face
- was part of a directors' roundtable on Backlot, a streaming website that's like an online film festival
- won (collectively with the Strange Horizons staff) the first ever Ignyte Award at the first ever Fiyahcon, in the category Outstanding Efforts in Service of Inclusion and Equitable Practice in Genre.
- was interviewed (again collectively) by Nerds of a Feather, not for the Fiyahcon award but for the Hugo nomination (we once again did not win)
- had some Postorbital microfiction reprinted in the new webzine Microverses
- wrote the Christmas carol "Do They Have Christmas in Canada"
- wrote a science fiction short story about time travel and the evolution of policing, "Evidence of Six Hundred Years." It was my sister REL's Christmas present, and I only finished it on Christmas eve, so I haven't done an edit pass or sent it around yet, but I'm very confident it will get published, although as usual I can't tell whether that means quickly or "in eight years."
- had a sonogram of my neck (to check a lump which was ultimately diagnosed as a non-cancerous swollen lymph node)
- edited someone else's book-length poetry manuscript, in a months long process that involved a lot of research because the poems were very referential - so I would solve each poem like a puzzle, piecing back together what it was collaged from, and then we'd talk about what each line was doing, and then he'd write several new versions of the line, and we'd look together at how that would or wouldn't change the piece. It's somebody whose writing I like a lot and enjoy spending that kind of time with. This is the only poet I've ever done this for.
- painted a psychedelic mural inside the kids' bedroom closet, so they can open it when they transform their room into a disco (which they do a lot, because their bedroom has blackout curtains and they have access to LEDs and strobe lights and lava lamps and things)
- was sent a message from the International Space Station, because one of Ilario's schoolmates is the nephew of an astronaut and she sent a video to the school but the school was remote so it got emailed to us.
- started making cocktails that use raw eggs; I finally get how they work
The pandemic and lockdown have not thus far changed my creative output noticeably, because I was already exploring themes of isolation and of maintaining a sense of self and purpose in times of uncertainty and absurdity. That's been my oeuvre this whole time. I've always been operating with mainly self-imposed deadlines. I've perpetually had a large percentage of my friends and collaborators geographically dispersed where it's normal not to be able to meet in person.
( Read more... )
