{"id":15376,"date":"2012-11-30T10:24:00","date_gmt":"2012-11-30T15:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/hameblog\/2012\/11\/30\/drawing-challenge-catch-up\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T07:50:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T10:50:13","slug":"drawing-challenge-catch-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/2012\/11\/30\/drawing-challenge-catch-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Drawing Challenge, catch-up"},"content":{"rendered":"

So this one is “Your favourite place.” If you’ll pardon the expression, when I tried to free-associate on this theme, I drew a blank.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Place<\/em> is a bit of a challenge for me. I don’t feel like I really belong anywhere, probably because I’ve moved to a new place every ten years, so I’ve never had a chance to really identify with one location. That said, I wouldn’t trade the experiences I’ve had, and for all that I’ve lost culturally by doing that, I’ve gained a broader perspective than I would have had, and a sense that I don’t have to choose; I get to belong wherever I am at the moment””even if I’m missing a lot of back-story, information, and fitting-in behaviours.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

So for this one, I chose something more general: “caf\u00e9s”. As I’m saying in the doodle below, I love caf\u00e9s, because they represent the possibility of of doing creative work and not having to be alone to do it””yet getting to be alone!<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

(Which sounds awful now that I read it. Not that I feel the need to get away from my beloved; one of my most favourite recent experienced was going to the new caf\u00e9 at John O’Groats with Craig, drawing and writing while he read and took pictures of the wild Pentland Firth outside.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The caf\u00e9 I drew is one back in Edinburgh, Black Medicine. It got crowded and studenty, but I do remember having a great writing session there when I was working on Idea in Stone<\/em>. That memory is an important touch-stone today, because I’m using up a few vacation days before I go to Canada, and today I’m in the pub, determined to get back to my novel.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

(People keep asking, “How’s your novel going?”, and I know they’re being supportive, but it does put one on the spot somewhat””sort of like when I was an actor, and after a show someone would say, “So what are you working on next?” Usually I had no idea, or I’d gone on some auditions, but talking about that would invoke the dreaded jinx<\/em> and set up a potentially awkward question for the future. “So did you get the lead in that film you auditioned for?” No, Christian Bale did. But I’m sure it was close.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The bottom panel is horribly drawn; as I write this, I’m assuring myself that’s okay, because this is drawing practice<\/em>. In it, I’m saying, Then there are diners, though we don’t really have those in the UK, so my favourite one of those exists in my imagination, where I go to review my projects.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

So. It’s Canada, 1967. Height of the Cold War. Our story begins in a snowy field, miles and miles outside Ottawa, where cipher clerk Eddie Miller is about to have a job interview at the government’s secret nuclear-bomb-proof bunker. Except he can’t see it, just a little shed jutting out of the snow…<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So this one is “Your favourite place.” If you’ll pardon the expression, when I tried to free-associate on this theme, I drew a blank. Place is a bit of a challenge for me. I don’t feel like I really belong anywhere, probably because I’ve moved to a new place every ten years, so I’ve never […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15376\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}