louiegitsham10

[louiegitsham10]

Presentation and Reflection -- Blog 5 for Engaged Citizenship.

The presentation was bumpy, but let's just say that I had good suspension. My preparation, understanding, and hard work made sure that the stonking, raging headache didn't get in the way. I hadn't eaten -- because I was anxious and I can't eat when I'm anxious -- and my group went last, which meant two hours of nerves and studio lights in the eyeballs.

Every group did brilliantly, I have to say the group who made the tiles was my favourite; I can see that being something I'd take my kids to do on a day off or something. And then it was our go...

I spoke first, and managed to get through everything smoothly, with no stutters or heart flutters. I covered our initial group discussions, my research, and the plot of the final story, as well as playing a sample of dialogue I had recorded.

If I was going to change something about the presentation, I think it would be the timing. I had a lot I wanted to cover, in only five minutes, and that time would've been better if focussed on the results -- my final designs, sheep pixel art, reading extracts to the group -- rather than the pretty basic, Googleable research that I did.

But, to end this series of blogs on a positive, I have to say our presentation looked great, received feedback from both lecturers and peers, and the artifact looked brilliant, especially under the studio spotlights.

This whole project has been a pleasure and engaging -- pardon the pun -- to participate in and has given more value to me than a more "academic" module might have.

And, with that, I'll sign off for good and go figure out how to submit this link!

[louiegitsham10]

The Preparation -- Blog 4 for Engaged Citizenship

I hate presentations, and not because of the work required or the grade, but because of the the public speaking. But those nerves aren't just jitters or hear racing ones; I used to skip school to avoid them.

Back in secondary school, I went though a phase, where I had to make a short two minute speech and I went up to speak and froze up -- this was year eight -- and then said I would come back and do it the next week, and then I go too nervous to do that, so I said I'd just do it to my teacher, and then I got too anxious to do that, and then, somehow, I got too anxious to go into school for an entire week. I don't know what happened, but some deep-rooted, tribal part of me was so terrified of speaking that it did everything it could to keep me away.

Since then I have made incremental progress and slowly but surely built my confidence back up. But even at the beginning of university I had to do my presentations in private to my lecturers.

Last year I built up the confidence to do one in front of the class, and this presentation was the next one in my journey.

I've learned a lot about my fear over the years, and I know how to keep it at bay. How to bunker down and load the MG 42s for D-day.

My main defence is preparation. Preparation to the point of boredom. To make the words muscle memory, make them dull, make it so the only reason I don't want to go again is my heavy eyelids.

So, that's what I did.

The group had agreed which slide belonged to who and then I began putting in my research and recording my voiceover -- which I quite enjoyed as it allowed me to gather my thoughts. And then I read it through, and again, and again until I could do it without any pauses. I timed myself, shortened some bits, and lengthened others, until the whole thing came out of me like some long-known ballad.

And then I stood up, and did it to the rubber duck that I won in a quiz earlier this year, I did it to my books and records, my blank TV, my mirror, my posters, until they agreed I really did have it down.

And then it was time to go to bed, wake up, and do it to the rest of the class.

[louiegitsham10]

The Assembly -- Blog 3 for Engaged Citizenship

Hours and hours of work came together over the course of one. Each of the group had been working on their own tasks separately and then we met, roughly a week before the presentation, to assemble all of that work into the final product; the book, Defending the Frontier.

I had written and formatted the story, which was a process in and of itself, mainly because of my laptop's refusal to process anything more complex than a sentence in Word. Moving text around, and editing, a thirty-page document was like calculating every digit of pi to this poor thing. But I got there in the end after lots of waiting and foot tapping and teeth grinding. I then added embellishments. These were little animal icons at the top and the bottom of the page.

The birds -- seven little ones to represent The Treespikers and The Workers and a hawk for The Manager -- were easy to copy and paste from Google. However, the same icons for sheep do not exist.

So I made one.

On windows computers there's a way you can draw your own letters and add it as a font, so that's what I did. After a few attempts -- after an hour -- I had the icon done just right and inserted it into the document. My work was done, and it was time to assemble the book.

Here's a comparison of my first attempt to the one that made the final cut:

The whole group met together in Eldon. Aaliyah sent me her sketches, I added them to my document, and then we went and printed them. Then, along with Emma's character profiles and Charmaine's mood board, cover, and pop-up page, we stitched the whole book together.

And, with that, it was time to prepare the presentation.

[louiegitsham10]

Hit a Wall, Hit it Hard -- Blog 2 For Engaged Citizenship

I began a blog post earlier this week because I couldn't seem to break through a scene I was writing for this project. I was doing everything to avoid writing it. Eating, scrolling, I even ran a ten-k, all so I wouldn't have to face that teasing cursor, that mocking blank page.

I couldn't even finish that blog post. But today, I broke the wall. It wasn't really a smash, I didn't wrecking ball through, unfortunately. It was more of an Andy-Dufresne-chisel. I tricked myself into getting everything set up, getting the doc loaded up, getting my laptop in, cooking a chilli con carne, making a coffee, drinking a coffee, making another one, going to the toilet, and then I sat there with that document -- by then it was six o'clock -- and I just didn't let myself leave.

I could scroll, I could look out the window, the bargain was that I didn't have to write a thing, I could do nothing, as long as I did nothing in that chair, with that laptop whirring in front of me.

It's not really a nervousness in that situation. It's really nothing to be complaining about. It's sort of a niggling, or something, where whatever idea I have in my head can only stay as good as I think it is while it's in my head. Once I start writing, once I make it real, and not an idea, it's normal. It can no longer be my magnum opus. It can no longer challenge Proust or Camus or John Fowles or Meiko Kawakami or whomever. When it's real you have to read it and pick it apart and admit, really -- it's the admitting that sucks -- that you need to work harder, and might not be exactly where you want to be.

But I stood up to it, and I stood up to it with a sentence, and the sentence was: Shuffling steel toes and lopsided hardhats wait outside the container.

And then I left it for about fifteen minutes and then pushed out another line and another and I managed to make it all the way through the scene. And after that, even through its eleven o'clock now, I made it all the way through this blog as well.

So I've managed to conquer this scene which will be the opening scene of the book. After this is a scene that leads to the climax of the first story, the one about The Manager, before a flashback, which I've already written. It's all going well so far. Some bits of writing that are my favourite from today are, this little bit of characterisation of the worker called Idris:

He’s spat his stem out, and replaced it with a quarter-burned cigarette. That was one of Idris’ things. He was always smoking, even when he was chainsawing or wedging or in the forwarder, he had a perpetual cigarette dangling from his gums, but you could never catch him lighting it. “It’s only two past,” Sharleen says. 

“For him, that’s late.”

“I’ve never noticed.”

And another thing I was happy with was the first description of The Manager and Tommy, his bulldog:

The Manager looks at him and him only, while standing atop the pulpit of those metal stairs, the door closed behind. Stares in his full suit and farmer’s cap, his red tie and his cowboy belt. His boat shoes and his sockless feet jammed inside. This ugly, cultural mosaic watches with something stumpy standing tight to his naked heel. Folds upon folds of brown and white pudge and a coiled tail behind it. Its blue-grey cataracts stare out at nothing and a tear of drool hangs perpetually from the corner of its mouth flap. The Manager’s bulldog, Tommy.

So, we built up through this scene to the next scene which is going to be the felling of what they call The Great Oak. This scene is meant to illustrate that even when deforestation is done sustainably, you can't just replant something as grand as an oak that existed before the Magna Carta or Marcus Aurelius.

This scene will then lead into a rescue of a fox which will, in turn, lead to an allusion to The Manager's "inclination" towards animals. This will then lead to a nighttime scene where The Manager discovers and chases Treespikers but before he catches them, we will flash back to a scene introducing the 'spikers.

Stay tuned! :)

[louiegitsham10]

A writer’s guide to forests: the timber harvest

Looking for something that can serve to set the atmosphere, be a background detail, or even be a plot point? One idea would be the logging industry. No matter your characters or their society, as long as they live on land, they will need wood. The scale of harvesting can greatly impact the forest, and your characters.

The three methods of harvesting both wild and managed woodland are:

Clear cutting- In the short term, this method allows for the greatest yield. An area of forest, sometimes many acres in area, is selected, and all trees within are felled. What happens next can vary. Land slated for settlement or farming will be left cleared, while areas that are part of a managed woodland or plantation will be left to regenerate. Periodically, trees that are diseased or crowded will be removed, but otherwise the forest will be left alone until the time of harvesting. Clear cutting is controversial as the wide scale destruction leaves the topsoil exposed and vulnerable to being carried away by the wind or water runoff. The large scale clearing also destroys large swaths of habitat for wildlife, which can spell trouble for endangered species.

Seed tree harvesting-This is a variation on clear cutting. At the time of harvest, several trees are spared from cutting. These then disperse seeds which become the basis for new growth. As the new trees grow, they are periodically thinned, and the parent trees are harvested. Once the trees reach maturity, a small number are marked to be left standing, and the cycle begins again. As the forest floor is (almost) fully exposed, this method of harvesting suffers from the same problems as regular clear cutting.

Select harvesting- The least destructive method of logging. Only a small number of trees are harvested, with the rest of the forest left alone. As more of the canopy is left intact, the forest floor will naturally be shaded, and the growth of new trees will be slower than if the area was cleared and exposed to the sun. Critics argue that this makes selective cutting not viable from a monetary standpoint, especially when there is a high demand for wood and wood derivatives. Supporters say it is more sustainable and preserves the most forest area for wildlife.

No matter how the forest is harvested in your story, there will be a few things that will more or less be constant. Your characters will need some sort of camp where they live, and where they bring logs. There may be a sawmill on site, as well as a way to transport characters, wood, and supplies. Roads or railways can be used to move on level ground. If there are hills or deep ravines, it would make sense for some sort of chute, funicular, tramway, or switchback railway to be used. And don’t forget about water. Rivers, lakes, and canals can be traversed by boat, with large inlets or natural harbors being the ideal anchorage for timber ships. What is the daily life of people here?

Now, the disruptions caused by logging can be a driving factor or your plot. This could trigger conflict between lumbermen and activists, or people who already live in the forest. What will the felling of trees mean for the wildlife? And is this just a timer harvest, or the prelude to settlement? How these conflicts play out will affect your characters and their society. Look to history for inspiration, but don’t be afraid to take things is a different direction.

[louiegitsham10]

The Stuff I'll Steal -- Blog 1 for Engaged Citizenship

I’m not one hundred percent sure what this is meant to be, but that has never stopped me before. I aim for this to be a blog to log progress and ideas throughout my Engaged Citizenship Through Interdisciplinary Practice module (mouthful!) and maybe also serve as a slight creative outlet.

We will see.

So, where are we at as a group? We’re a fragmented bunch, from all different corners of the university, and some of us are yet to be found. Architect, Media, Fashion, unknown, and me, the Creative Writer. After some brainstorming – or more accurately, me and Aaliyah convincing the other members of the group – we’ve homed in on creating a model, and a companion book. Both of which explore deforestation, or exploitation of habitats (the latter has a better ring, I think). This way, each one of us can steal our little bit of the show, I get to write, and contribute what I can there, Aaliyah gets to practice modelling, Charmaine her textiles (as we are going to have the model overflowing with fabric wildlife; a little textile rebellion).

If I may, I’m going to talk a little bit about what I specifically am bringing to the table of room W1.09. The bones of the book will be a short story I completed last year. It’s set in the Amazon, from the perspective of a manager of a lumber company, and it chronicles him as he works hard, and indulges in his evil obsession – his exploitation made a little more literal – of having sex with Amazonian animals. Sloths, monkeys, anything he can get his hands on, really. His mortal enemies are the Treespikers, a group of climate activists (he prefers the term “ecoterrorist”). The story climaxes with his and his twelve-gauge’s clash with them and their knives (and hammers and nails and bolt cutters). This is the foundation. From here, I’ll rewrite it to set it in the UK, as close to Portsmouth as possible. I’ll also expand on the backstory of the Treespikers, and perhaps even tell the story from a dual perspective. We’ll see, but I’m glad I now have something to aim for and I can soon start burning some keys and pen-tips.

Well, soon.

The first step is prep and research. There are a couple of need-to-knows. Where is deforestation at its worst in the UK? Who runs it? Can I use a real company, or at least hint at one? What animals live in these habitats? What tools are used to destroy them? Can I remember the details of the Treespiking life? What tools, what are their methods, why, who? What is the backstory of the Treespiker we follow? Where do they come from? Why do they do this? Maybe “soon” was an understatement…

I do have some little details that have emerged recently as additions to my story; little details that get me all giddy and remind me why I like to write. The first is from a book. I was reading Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy the other day and the absolutely terrifying Judge Holden has an engraving on the side of his gun: Et in Arcadia ego. Or, even in Arcadia (utopia/paradise), there I am. Basically saying you can’t escape death, but it also felt like this was the Judge saying He is Death, with a capital D. And I want to steal that. Engrave it on the side of the Overseer’s shotgun. I feel like his ego would be that big, however unearned. Don’t call it stealing; call it homage, call it pastiche. And anyway: good artists borrow, and great artists steal. Isn’t that what Picasso or Dostoyevsky or Rembrandt or Einstein or someone clever and important said? Anyways, I’m doing it.

The second little detail is something that Matt mentioned in the lecture yesterday and I scribbled it down because I thought it was a sentence that was so stark, so simple, but something quite soul-crushing. He said that during an exercise where he asked people to talk about how biodiversity affected that a poor student had said, “My mother is dying, and she is not sick. She is dying because where she is living is too hot.”  Wow, that is horrible, and I’m thinking – to be a selfish, gluttonous artist – that that would be an incredible opening line for our Treespiker character.

Maybe.

During the same lecture, I also rambled out a line that I think I want to use for the final fight sequence of the story. I scrawled it out in a rush, I’m not sure if there are any spelling errors, or if it actually makes sense; I promise I’ll leave it in if there is: “I palm his face and grip it tight. Chubby red cheeks and an eyeball and a blackheaded nose bulge out through the gaps in my fingers, blobby- and liquid-looking.”  I don’t know, it’s a maybe.

Another tidbit of humanity I’ve decided I want to appropriate is the phrase that I’ve seen online recently to mark the decline of the climate. Again, it’s simple, and it takes something traditionally beautiful, and destroys it. Flowers are blooming in Antarctica. Again. Flowers are blooming in Antarctica. Flowers are blooming in Antarctica.

Maybe they’re blooming through the cracks in the concrete as well?

[louiegitsham10]

thinking about jeff buckley being asked, "how do you want to be remembered?" and answering with, "as a good friend."