All writers have these moments, at least, I hope and think they do. I have been reading Gillian Flynn’s book Gone Girl for my book club this month, and her beautiful character development and intriguing story have me internally weeping over their beauty, and despairing because I feel like what I’m writing is crap comparatively. Though I often remind myself (crucially) that I’m reading final drafts, published works, while what I’m working on is a first draft.

But I still found myself compelled to Google “Gillian Flynn writing technique,” just to see if she’s ever spilled any information on how she does this thing called writing. And she has. And she has reassured me gloriously with her answer.

Parenthetically, I love this statement below, as I also feel like the most compelling stories are about characters, people, who find themselves caught in circumstances that have gone entirely beyond their control, and how they do or don’t get themselves out of it drives the rest of their story. This is true for books and films and television — I’m a sucker for a good story told in any medium.

What scares you in a good book? It seems that it takes more to sustain thrills, in this age of film, Internet, and quick-cut editing.

I’m old-fashioned. The stuff I love isn’t about gotcha scares, and gore doesn’t frighten me much either. It’s that sense of dread, and the sense that characters have gotten swept up in a current they can’t control, leading them toward something awful and dark. It’s why I love Scott Smith’s books, and Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon, and Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby. That sense of inevitable doom.

- Gillian Flynn, How I write

Yes, yes, yes! This is why I love the flailing, seedy, faltering, despicable Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) in Fargo. His descent into events out of his control, but which he triggered, is absolutely brilliant storytelling. Actually, the same can be said of Ed Crane’s (Billy Bob Thorton) experience in The Man Who Wasn’t There, and The Dude’s (Jeff Bridges) inclusion into events beyond his control in The Big Lebowski, and the role every single character plays in the spiraling tale of tragedy and comedy that occurs in Burn After Reading – a most brilliant tale about a bunch of terrible things that arise from an inconsequential event: John Malcovich’s wife forgetting her bag at the gym. (Ok, obviously I have an admiration of the Coen brothers. But they have mastered this exploration of “man in circumstances beyond his control, flails, kills, runs, fights back, etc.)

And of course, any novelist needs to know the method of other successful authors, of whether they write with the end-point in mind, the plot in their head, or just from a situation, and then see how the characters act and react until, voila!, a novel is writ. Again, massive relief in her comments on the craft.

Do you like to map out your fiction plots ahead of time, or just let it flow?

I let it flow, although that makes it sound more jazzy and less despairing than the actual process often is for me. I wish I could plot more efficiently or stick to an outline, but I just can’t. Partly it’s because, for me, the plot is the least intriguing part of a book. I start writing because of certain characters or themes or events I want to explore, but I’m often not sure what form that will take. So I do float along a bit. I probably write two novels for every one I end up with—lots of deleted scenes as I try to figure out what it is I’m really interested in, what it is I’m actually writing.

- Gillian Flynn, How I write

And of course, the blessed reassurance that we all must plea with ourselves, like we’re some unwieldy force that cannot ever simply sit, and write, without being coerced. As if this was something we were doing by force rather than by choice. Nope, even when I am so compelled to put words down on paper [word processor], I still need lots of self-control and personal incentives to actually do it, day after day. It is such, such an active process. There is absolutely nothing passive about writing a story.

Describe your morning routine.

Drink half a pot of coffee. Go downstairs to my basement writing lair. Sit myself in my chair and threaten myself like a recalcitrant child: you will sit in this chair and you will not move until you get this scene written, missy. Get the caffeine shakes. Regret drinking so much coffee. Finish writing the scene. Reward myself with a game or eight of Galaga.

- Gillian Flynn, How I write

Keep writing, keep writing. The first draft of anything is shit. It’s ok. Just keep writing.

What advice would you give to an aspiring author?

Read all the time and keep writing. There are a million talented writers out there who are unpublished only because they stop writing when it gets hard. Don’t do that— keep writing.

- Gillian Flynn, How I write

Oh, can I say? It’s absolutely more stunning in person than any photo can portray. But that’s true of every single quilt.

I seriously considered buying the whole pattern and fabric swaths — which were sold there in one of the shops in the vendor hall, all in one pretty, little package — though I couldn’t bring myself to spend the $130. I am loathe to make anything that is an exact replica of another quilt, when it’ll just ending up looking like a copy. Hers is just so great anyway.

Close up:

So instead, I started taking pictures of houses. Houses that inspired me, on the neighborhood roads of Austin.

I found myself wandering those neighborhood streets one morning, after just missing the bus, and being frustrated that the next #10 would not be there for another thirty minutes. Rather than sit at the bus stop and wait, all the while looking at the same run-dow avenue near my hotel, I took off on foot, figuring I’d find the next stop somewhere along the way, and if nothing else, at least I would be walking in the direction of the convention center. (It was roughly 5 miles away and would have eaten too much of my day to walk the whole way there. Long story short, I had someone book the hotel for me, and they booked the wrong Super 8 – farther up in Austin. But they have a GREAT $1/trip bus system. Thank you, Austin!)

Whatever neighborhood I found myself in was winding, charming, and downright hip — but not in that super modern or super folksy way either, just a little bit of both. A bit of Texas tumbleweeds and cacti combined with some small-town charm that reminded me a great deal of the Midwest neighborhoods where I grew up, in Upper Michigan. These neighborhoods, and the houses themselves, look nothing like neighborhoods I see in Atlanta — except for some of the older neighborhoods like Virginia Highlands or Cabbagetown. We are rife with uninspiring, suburban clones, home after home of too-big, ugly houses that have not a lick of character. I’ll take overgrown any day, instead.

So I started taking pictures. It was a gorgeous day, and I was so thankful to miss my bus.

Then I came home, duly inspired by The Local quilt and my own homes photo series, and equipped with Heather Ross’s totally inspiring words ringing in my ears, and a signed copy of her book in my hands. Heather Ross is a fabric designer, author, and children’s book illustrator, and she’s amazing. I had never heard of her before QuiltCon, though I could tell when I went to her lecture that I was not the first to develop an instant artistic crush on her.

She opened her lecture with a reading from her forthcoming book of essays and projects. She is a beautiful writer, and I was in tears at her words. She spoke of her childhood and building forts made of leaves, lovely things that reminded me of the woods near my own childhood home, one of many homes where I lived.

Her book details how to begin designing your own fabric, and then, when you’ve got your Photoshop files, how easy it is to upload them to sites like Spoonflower and print your own fabric. This was quite cost-prohibitive even five years ago. I’ve used Spoonflower before, though never as a fabric designer, and it’s an amazing place. Totally inspiring as well. So I made my own fabric, using a sketch I did of one of the houses I photographed.

[Here is the house that inspired the sketch and fabric design below.]

The whole process was stunning to me, firstly because I never think of myself as an artist who draws. I suck at drawing. That’s what I am always reminded when I try to do it. I drew three of them the very week I returned home, and grew more elated with each rendition. For some reason, working on these houses came easily, and I loved my final product.

I don’t really know where this will go next. It’s a big series of things in my brain that I’m adoring, exploring, and learning. I picked up Photoshop and was very patient with myself, and I learned some new skills. Invigorating skills. I have the power and creative will to design fabric. I own that. What an amazing thing.

One thing I do want to do is learn some paper piecing, make some of these homes from my photos and sketches into a quilt, perhaps a larger scale than Carolyn Friedlander’s. All my own homes depictions, of course, and all my own choice of fabric, whether I design it myself or not.

my second job: selling clothes

I have found myself, as I’ve eked on into adulthood, more and more fascinated by work. By the tasks and responsibilities people, billions of people, rise each morning (or night) to perform. How did they find this job? What does it mean to them? Is it what they envisioned doing? All the jobs I ever had before, in high school and college, were purposely temporary, means to an end, not “forever” jobs.

Retail associate at American Eagle was never supposed to shape into anything beyond school. Now I work part-time on nights and weekends at Gap, supplementing my full-time job, using what I learned about the industry during those years. And I don’t have the same dread about it, either. I’m not at work, willing the hours to pass faster so I can get out of there. I have a purpose: helping people find clothes that fit their bodies, making a good sale so Gap stays in business. And I work contentedly. Even if, yes, perhaps I would rather be at home. But isn’t that the definition of work?

And so my fascination grows.

This is the articulation of something I’ve been pondering a lot over the past year:

I’ve certainly experienced my share of cognitive dissonance when it comes to determining the social value of my career. But, like most people in their twenties, I find it very hard not to derive a lot of my self-worth from that career. For any recent graduate taking their first steps onto the ladder, a job is the culmination of fifteen years of education and all of the hard work, money and striving that comes with them. It seems like the most important thing in the world because it’s what finally qualifies us as grown-ups. In career terms, being in your twenties is a time to be selfish, to take what you can and claw your way to the top. The consideration as to whether or not this career, this badge that we wear so proudly, is actually of any significance to the universe can wait until later. Right?

Wrong. Part of the reason people burn out and have mid-life crises is because they reach a point where they realise that they’ve given the best years of their life to a career that didn’t really mean anything. And because all their self-worth was built around their job title, when that becomes devalued then so does everything else.

- JShakespeare

I started watching The Walking Dead recently, an AMC show that follows the lives of several little groups of survivors of the zombie apocalypse, basically. It is always intriguing to imagine what falls away and what is left, in humanity, when normal life ceases to exist. A cataclysmic event occurs, and those who survive must examine what is left of their life and what matters now. In stories like this, it is usually just survival. There is a part where four men from vastly different lives before are now devising a plan to escape from a large building in Atlanta that is surrounded by the undead, who are sure to feast on their flesh unless they’re quite careful. The American kid of Korean descent has come up with a great plan.

“What’d you do before all this?” another asks.

“Delivered pizzas.”

There. If the zombie apocalypse began tomorrow, your entire job life would stop, become defined by whatever job you had been performing, whether or not you ever considered it your forever job. I think quite often, things that start as temporary become your career, whether it was what you envisioned or not. Grocery store clerk, maybe a promotion to manager of a department or the whole store, if you’re a good leader. But if you’re not, there’s not an ounce of shame in being good at your job as a grocery store clerk. Or a pizza delivery guy. But it doesn’t mean that, as humans, we won’t spend plenty of time pondering out work, because it does provide a huge sense of what the meaning of ours lives is. We spend so much time at our jobs. So we do hope that, at the end of the day, there is some meaning there.

The longer I was in school, too, the more meaning I expected my post-graduation job to have. Surely this much education, this much money spent, means doing something really valuable for society afterward. I think people need clothes, which means people must sell them. People need gas and food and so there must be truck drivers and grocery store clerks to provide it. People need gas station attendants and train drivers and miners. As much as we like to ignore it, we also need seamstresses in Asia who make our clothes. The more I live, the more fascinated I am with the regular, non-glamorous, blue-collar work that keeps us all alive and operating. There’s so much meaning in that work.

Since then my second job and my new job, plus regular life things like cooking, sleeping, relationship time, exercising, and reading have occupied any time I’ve had. Oh, not to mention that little side project, my first novel, that I’m working on, too. And in the whole mix, I am truly inspired to sit down at my sewing machine and work on some quilts. I just haven’t had any time at all.

But I finally got around to curating a collection of my favorite images, my most inspiring snapshots, from the whole weekend in Austin, Texas, for the inaugural QuiltCon, and it was so lovely to reflect again on that special time alone. It was amazing to be there alone. No one else’s time mattered in the least; it was what I wanted to do, at exactly any time, for however long. Friday, I went to seven lectures, including Yoga for Quilters, where we actually got up and did some morning yoga.

So I am sharing, in bits and pieces, some of the images and quilts that made the biggest impact on me. This is a series of beautiful things that struck me at my core, in a larger weekend consumed by beautiful things. What I mean is, pretty much everything was amazing to even make it there, but within that highly competitive and truly modern collection, there were some that spoke volumes. And there will be bits of my experiences too.

This quilt, by Elizabeth Hartman, is simple enough, but so striking. Initially, I didn’t think much of it, really. But I kept coming back to it. Something about the crisp lines where the diamonds touch the negative space is so satisfying. I was struck by taking simple strips to make stacks of color, tone on tone, but making their ultimate shape a diamond instead. I’m not a huge fan of lots of pattern in my fabrics, so I am always looking for clever ways to use some of it without overpowering the pattern and tiring the eye. This is a pleasing presentation of prints (I adore the deer wearing sunglasses in the pink polka dot fabric). I’m using it as inspiration for a wedding quilt, which I’ll of course share when it comes together.

I’ve wanted to do a flying geese motif pretty much since I began quilting. I admire the classic (and okay, traditional) pattern every time I see it, even if I hate the fabric or find the overall interpretation slightly boring. I love the motion, the movement. Back in September, when I made a list of three things I wanted to do while I am twenty-five, one of them was to make myself a flying geese quilt.

(The other two are to run a mile, which I do now regularly, and more than a mile; and to write a novel–which I’ve been plugging away at with a little more than 35,000 words in early February.)

This quilt is what I used as my color inspiration, as I continued to obsess over it for weeks after I saw it on Pinterest. I think I did a pretty good job finding the right tones to imitate, considering I bought all the solids on Fabric.com, because I need to have my Kona solids, and they have the largest selection. That’s not a true black, it’s Kona Pepper, and the creamy white is the all-time most perfect tone of white: Kona Snow. I actually thought I had missed the mark a lot more, until I put these photos up next to the one below. Love!

So now I just need to decide how to arrange it all. I like these flying geese, but I don’t love them yet. I am pondering adding some half-square triangles into the motif, because I love the way multiple directions of points and triangles play off one another in a quilt. I will at least make some and see how I feel about it.

Later on this year, when I finish the quilt top, I have decided to hand-quilt this one. I’ve made enough quilts at this point where I don’t feel a great need to churn them out. However, I do feel a need to be creating something, working on something beautiful. So if I make this take a long time, I won’t be in such a hurry to move onto the next project. It means this quilt will probably take me into 2014, actually. Yikes! But I think I should learn the patience, and the techniques. And I love the way the stitches look, their texture and imperfection.

What are your favorite flying geese or other triangle patterns and motifs? Do you have a favorite interpretation, that you or someone else has made? What tips do you have on hand quilting, or what tutorials helped you the most? Do you have any suggestions on how to arrange my flying geese to help me fall in love with them? I know there is great potential here, I just have to let it arise, in time. I’m letting it stew here for awhile. In the meantime, I have a novel to write in my spare time.

Tonight I brought my iPod on my run, because I wanted to hear Marketplace, the little gem of a show from 6:30 to 7:00 on NPR. It’s the prefect combination of economics and culture, delivered always in fabulously interesting reports. For such a short show, they manage to cover intriguing subjects and highlight aspects of the economy that I don’t hear other shows covering.

I wanted to hear the advertised upcoming report on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s hometown, and his neighborhood through booms and busts over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His hometown, of course, is Atlanta, and his neighborhood is Sweet Auburn District. Georgia State’s President Becker and Dr. Cliff Kuhn were both featured in the report, representing my urban alma mater and its relationship to the historically African American district of the city, that was torn right in half with the construction of the downtown connector when the Interstate highways were built.

Also on the show was a report about tailor’s shops in Hong Kong: the decline in number as tailors age and retire, while some others are catering to younger crowds with stylish and modern interpretations of the suit and high men’s fashion. Great stuff.

And, they lobbed this gem my way: Born On Inauguration Day, a special report featuring people of many ages and walks of life, who were born on various inauguration days in history. It’s equal parts regular and absolutely extraordinary. It’s worth exploring. 

And listen to the report that made an impact on me tonight: Born on Inauguration Day: Where We Go From Here:

I’m trying to do 1,000 words a day, as many days as I can. It is a pretty hefty goal, considering I work full time at one job, part-time at another, and try to fit fitness, a relationship, and food and sleep into the mix, too. So I’m averaging about 4,000 words per week.

I’m persevering often only because of great wisdom: a quote that I have printed off a put above my desk, that may or may not actually have been spoken or written by Ernest Hemingway: “The first draft of anything is shit.”

It’s okay, I can worry about the whole mess of this once I actually get the whole story out of me first. That’s when I can go back to make sure my characters speak and feel like real people, and their stories line up. (Sometimes I forget what I’ve said about them earlier–thank God for the “word find” function in Word, for when I need to remember what I named a character’s sister.)

A real tip from the snitch in the murder I’m writing about; my version is fiction

And I’ve been reading lots of fiction, to learn more about how dialogue is written and how great characters are borne from the page. I always gravitate towards non-fiction, towards societal studies and historical recountings and memoirs and case studies, and even true crime. But not fiction as much. I think all writing is worthy of helping writers learn more about their craft, so I don’t see any of this as a negative. But I have so enjoyed delving into the fictitious story, as a case study for how to, or how not to, write from the depths of story within, and not from a notebook filled with quotations, pieces of historical event, and other writers’ and scholars’ deductions before me. No, I am just writing from this unconscious place in my soul. It’s pretty amazing, if you let yourself get down that deep, what can suddenly arise in a character. Who knew Bill, whose adult son is shot and killed in my novel, was a fireman while his brothers were fighting the Second World War, home in small-town Wisconsin fighting wars against the flames that were rampant in the wooden farmhouses and grain silos of the farms there? I had no idea, until this week. But there it was, on the page, writ by me.

Among a collection of books my dad recently gifted to me, his own greatly parred-down collection (as my parents continue to downsize for their own grand adventures), I received Walter Mosely’s breezy 103-page This Year You Write Your Novel. My copy is signed by Mosely for my Dad, because we went to see him speak about this book together at SCAD Atlanta my sophomore year of college. It’s a lovely memory of mine, and the long-time author of fiction is wise and helpful, while being very, very brief. It’s kind of a little dream book.

One of the simplest and most significant truths he reminds the reader, is similar to what is written by my desk: it’s the first draft, relax. Amazon reviewer Donal Mitchell says this:

Writing is mostly about re-writing. New novelists often don’t realize that and invest too much in emotion and angst into trying to create the great American novel in the first draft. As Walter Mosley points out, the main value of a first draft is to figure out what your story might become. I thought that this book was the best I have read to make that important point.

- Donald Mitchel

I want to point again to that subconscious thing I said before. That’s one of the very first things Mosely brings up, and I’ve found it to be so true. Fiction comes from somewhere else in the brain, somewhere than cannot simply be called up at random. If you sit yourself down sporadically to write, well, you’ll stare at your notepad or computer for a long time, write a few lines, and putter out in despair. What he says is so empowering, scary, and completely accurate, all at once:

The most important thing I’ve found about writing is that it is primarily an unconscious activity. What do I mean by this? I mean that a novel is larger than your head (or conscious mind). The connections, moods, metaphors, and experiences that you call up while writing will come from a place deep inside you. Sometimes you will wonder who wrote those words. Sometimes you will be swept up by a fevered passion relating a convoluted journey through your protagonist’s ragged heart. These moments are when you have connected to some place deep within you, a place that harbors the zeal that made you want to write to begin with.

The way you get to this unconscious place is by writing every day. Or even not writing. Some days you may be rewriting, rereading, or just sitting there scrolling back and forth through the text. This is enough to bring you back into the dream of your story.

What, you ask, if the dream of a story? This is a mood and a continent of thought below your conscious mind — a place that you get closer to with each foray into the words and worlds of your novel.

You may spend only an hour and a half working on the book, but the rest of the day will be rife with motive moments in your unconscious — moments in your mind, which will be mulling over the places your words have touched. While you sleep, mountains are moving deep within your psyche. When you wake up and return to the book, you will be amazed by the realization that you are farther along than when you left off yesterday.

That wondrous passage gets me reinvigorated about my work every time I read it.

He also talks about learning to write without restraint — a big lesson for me. As humans, we naturally restrain our thoughts, be they sexual, violent, hateful, so as to normally interact with society. In good stories, these things are essential components of complex characters, as well as the events and predicaments they find themselves embroiled in. Someone might hate their children, or rape another person, or kill them, and I have to be able to write this. I must learn to write without restraint, and somehow make these people feel real.

One of the most important things you will do this year will be to create complex, authentic characters that begin at one point in their lives and advance (or devolve) to another.

Indeed, that simply-stated and immensely challenging task is one of the most important things I am doing this year. There are stories for me to tell, and my unconscious mind is bringing them out, even if right now, in first draft form, they are fit for no audience yet.

Christoph Waltz spoke to Terry Gross on Fresh Air on December 19, 2012, to talk about Tarantino’s new movie, Django Unchained–which is the second of his films for Waltz. They talk about a lot of things, including Django, and how Tarantino finally found him, an actor who is fluent in English, French, and German, but also had the skills to deliver his signature dialogue. That delivery ability is what got him the part as the Jew Hunter in Inglourious Basterds, and it’s what won him the Oscar for it, too, easily. If you haven’t seen that movie, watch it for Waltz’s performance alone. Seriously. And if you have seen it, go watch it again. And call me and I’ll come watch with you.

In the meantime, read Waltz’s answer to Terry’s question, in which he perfectly explains Quentin Tarantino’s insane ability to keep us totally enraptured by seemingly pointless moments in the lives of his characters. I could swim in his dialogue, and he clearly agrees.

TG: So when you had your audition for Inglorious Basterds, how well did you know Tarantino’s movies?

CW: I knew all of the movies.

TG: You’d already seen all–?

CW: I had seen all Tarantino movies as they came out, as they were released. Starting with Reservoir Dogs, and I even had seen Death Proof. So I knew them all.

TG: So you already had an ear for what he was doing [in terms of dialogue and delivery of Tarantino’s writing]?

CW: In a way, in a way. I had a fascination. You know, even in Death Proof, which is somewhat, you know, not as easily accessible, but somehow watching Death Proof, I understood something about the dialogue, because these girls were driving in a car and one had her legs out the window, and the other one was just bored and getting on with it somehow, and they were talking about nothing in particular, for a long time… and… I was mesmerized. And I always wondered, what is it that I’m so interested in? There’s nothing interesting. But why am I captured, why am I at the edge of my seat, even though nothing is happening other than two bored girls driving along?

Exactly! But we are. The first time I saw Pulp Fiction, it was only a portion of it, playing on cable television (which in retrospect seems a shockingly inadequate way to watch Pulp Fiction), and I kept watching out of pure intrigue, because I loved how the characters were talking. That was it. I wanted to listen to them talk to each other all day. It was the superfamous scene at Jackrabbit Slims, the retro restaurant Vince Vega takes his boss’s (Mrs. Mia Wallace) wife to for dinner. I was in high school, maybe seventeen years old. I bought the dang DVD because I had to hear more, after I kept seeing only snippets when it aired on TV. Then over time, I devoured all his other movies. I even like Death Proof; yes, what is it about those girls that I’m so interested in, every time? But I cannot look away.

I would easily take Tarantino’s dialogue over Shakespeare’s any day. That is all.

I made it for the daughter of a friend, who lives far away, and though our lives intersected in the same city for only a couple years, she made an important impact on my life — in fact one that she had no idea about at the time. We attended the same middle school for two years, and then we both moved away before high school began. Though we were in classes together during that fleeting time, we didn’t “hang out” after school or anything like that. But I found her entire presence inspiring. Okay, I realize this sounds very strange. But I remember tiny details like the binders she used, and her hand-writing — always in pencil — and I so admired the way she was nice to everyone, never trying to be cool or put on airs to anyone else. She was confident, solitary.

Little triangles in lovely colors

When I moved away and began high school with an entirely new set of peers, and began the loneliest and angriest year of my life, I sought to be like her, or at least the way I perceived her. And I think it worked, because I no longer cared to be “cool” for anyone; I was certainly always a nerd, in fact. Never one to really want to go to parties anyway. I was content driving to Macon alone to read books and magazines in Barnes & Noble on a Friday night. And I was nice to every single person in high school, perceived social pariahs included. It’s why I felt so strongly to run for student body president my senior year, the inaugural year of student council at our school: because I didn’t want one more friggin’ popularity contest, and I felt like enough people knew and respected me that they would vote for me over the bitchy girls in my grade. And I was totally right. I loved that people who were not “popular” got so excited about my campaign, as if they could finally feel good about a student-voted position in the school’s list of students who mattered. I’m just trying to give an example here, but what I really mean is that the way I am now, through pretty awful high school years, has shaped the way I am as an adult, and the confidence to remain my own person in the face of The American High School Experience can be traced directly back to one middle school classmate who inspired me with her confidence. It never seemed like she needed the approval of others to be happy, and as a confused 13-and-14-year-old, that was what I so wanted myself. That’s what I embraced when I moved, and she’s responsible for inspiring me. Simple as that.

Hexagons come together

I’ve never seen her since. But we have in the last few years become friends again via social media. So I guess you can say we are back in touch, in a way. This past fall, as I’ve been having a pretty rough time in the job market, she took time out of her already busy life (kid number two was impending, to boot) to help me with my cover letter and resume. She went above and beyond for me, and I really value the investment of time she made to help out someone thousands of miles away when she had plenty of other things on her plate.

All those little stray seam allowance triangles, so cute.

And there’s not a lot of ways I can thank her, being low on money, but I have my quilting skills. Since her daughter was to be arriving sometime around early December, a baby quilt was the natural gift. Alma Zoe arrived on November 24, and I believe the finished quilt arrived with not a week to spare beforehand.

One finished strip of hexagons

It is based on a quilt I’d pinned on Pinterest, but I made up the pattern myself, going off of that image. I love triangles in quilting anyway — but across the entire quilt, it can be a bit busy, and has been done many times before. I was drawn to this particular use of triangles, in a hexagon pattern, across only one part of the quilt, giving your eye a rest with the simple solid on either side.

Straight-line quilting detail

And I purposely used a darker Kona Ash grey, instead of my regular creams, whites, and beiges, because it’s for a baby, and babies make messes with food, split-up, poop, and any manner of matter they can get their grubster hands on. My favorite part of quilts as my art form is that, at their core, they are essential tools of warmth, and they serve a functional purpose. But they are also art. So it is important to me that anything I create also not be treated as too precious; it exists to be used.  

Little pink squares for the backing fabric

Alma’s quilt came together quite quickly — that’s probably the most joyous part of making a baby quilt, the nearly-instant gratification compared to the larger beasts I usually assign myself. And every minute of thought and energy put into it was of pure love for a beautiful family, that I admire for many reasons.

Alma’s quilt, ready to head to Utah.

Dreary days like today put me instantly in the mood to watch the 1980 Stanley Kubrick interpretation of The Shining. In the first place, there is something endlessly fascinating about a wrier’s descent into madness, and not just because I can sit and say, “well, at least I’m not as crazy as that guy.” (I feel this way about the movie Secret Window, as well — there is an unexplainable comfort in watching a writer go insane.) But I adore Jack Torrance’s dark spiral into insanity, until he finally realizes the Overlook Hotel owns his soul, he was drawn to the place because it was in fact pulling him there. Meanwhile, the dangerous connection his father has to this enormous hotel with a spotted past is the very thing that drives Danny, his son, mad, as he suffers visions of the murder and violence that has marred the halls of the place. His “Shining,” the brain power that allows him to see events past, present, and future, warns him — often and vividly — that his father has a dangerous connection to the place, and that they should not be there. Jack inevitably tries to kill them both, in an effort to stop them from ruining his own relationship with the hotel, and dies trying.

It’s a story about what happens to your brain when you’re in solitary confinement, or under the influence of alcohol, or a lack of it. He’s a troubled alcoholic, with a troubled family life, and all that comes into fine clarity when the three are all alone, together, to mull over their troubles for months and months of solitude in the snowy peaks of Colorado. Much more simply, it’s a haunted house story, and those have always been my particular favorite. Haunted house plus insane writer, set against a snowed-in hotel with inconic architecture and design details, and I’m sold. But add to that Kubrick’s flair for the bold, the terrifying musical score, and the many unresolved questions you’re left with at the end, and it’s bound to be one of my most favorite films of all time.

The scariest of horror films to me are the ones that leave some things impossibly unexplained  in other words, there can be no logical answer to resolution anyway, and so you are left pondering the events and the story long after the credits roll. The Shining does this. I’ve seen this movie probably fifty times, and I still find myself trying to figure it all out, only to decide that it can’t be done. Why this, or what was that supposed to symbolize? It doesn’t matter — it’s horror, it’s in your mind, it’s psychological thriller at its very best. And Stephen King wrote it during his darkest bought as an alcoholic himself. He remarks in his memoir how strange it is that he wrote the entire story of Jack Torrance without realizing that he was writing about himself. Darkness, indeed.

Beyond the amazing story, the imagery of this movie is absolutely classic. It makes me want to design my own home all around the theme of Kubrick’s Overlook Hotel. I adore the wardrobe decisions, I am obsessed with Shelley Duval’s style and facial expressions: it would not be The Shining without that horrified face and dopy sweater combos. I love the American Western and Native American motif influences throughout the entire hotel: the carpets and tile flooring, the furniture, the paintings and wall hangings and the antlers throughout.

I’ve heard before that Stephen King hated this 1980 interpretation of his book. I don’t know if that’s true. But I sure cannot get behind the 1990s-era miniseries that came out, supposedly a more accurate interpretation of the original story. It’s the iconic setting, this amazing hotel they found as the backdrop, it’s the musical score, it’s those actors, that make the whole thing so incredible. I cannot imagine anyone besides Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance. I’ve read The Shining, as an audiobook, and it’s incredible too – definitely worth reading it you’re into horror or thrillers or are a writer yourself. The mysterious happenings are much richer, and it helps you understand more about the film, and is scary and amazing as once. The ending in the book is far more satisfying and provides more answers and better closure than that of Kubrick’s film. But to me, these two works of genius stand alone from one another, and cannot be compared directly. They are a package set. And on days like today, I want to dive into both. But it’s that breathtaking imagery, and those spell-binding characters – the hotel and landscape themselves characters in this story — that I crave most. It’s a movie I find myself truly watching each time it’s on, not simply playing in the background. It’s an entire experience, and it’s kind of weird how often I can sit down and lose myself in all these magnificent components of film at its very best.

I watched it just a few days ago, when I grabbed these screen shots, and I am really itching to watch it again now, writing all this down. Maybe I’ll listen to the audiobook again.

“You must… correct them, Mr. Torrance.”

The moment Wendy realizes it’s all very wrong

Snowy motifs, I adore thee.