Welcome to Gaia! ::

Y'all still here, folks? Ever since the announcement of Terry's unfortunate situation, the place has been quite.....dead, if you'll excuse the wording. It's a bit...depressing.

C'mon, folks, don't hide now.

Does his writing inspire any of you to write your own works? What kind, where, how frequently? Do any of you aspire to be artists in the mould of the great Paul Kidby?

*waves* I'm still around. And yes, Terry has definitely inspired whatever
latent writerly instinct I might have inside. His books have been a 'light
in the darkness' during NaNoWriMo (National Novel-Writing Month which
is every November. You basically commit to writing 50,000 words of a
novel. You 'win' by hitting the elusive 50k. I only made it to 49k last
year...but considering I didn't do more than 34k the year before that, I'm
quite pleased. mrgreen Perhaps, I'll make it next time...)

And there is plenty of Disc fanart I've got to get around to drawing...
(hopefully, I'll have time for that soon, been studying for tests lately...).

I'm still here. I've been without internet much of the last six months since I've been in Ireland. But I am here and I did hear the news (Terry Pratchett is huge here, especially amongst the Polish members of my archaeologist team, before now I didn't even know that the Discworld books had been translated into polish.) I think the news is terrible, but Terry does seem to want people to not panic, so give it some time. Alzheimer's is not the end. Don't forget that Terry is fairly wealthy and will have access to the best medical care. Some of the new drugs on the market can push the symptoms back years. I always can take solace from the fact that Terry has inspired me to be a better writer. I've undertaken a new project that started as a short story and has now turned into a novel, truly inspired by Terry's work.

I'm back, if that helps. We had...an unfortunate situation of our own to deal with last June, and it's taken all my time and energy to get us to a point of true and unlying awesomeness, which we now occupy. The new house rocks, the kids are adjusting well, I'm going to start homeschooling my son this Autumn, I'm only panicking mildly about that, I'm finally teaching movement classes again, I love the house, I actually did some artwork after a long long long sabbatical, and I really do *love* the house (it's a 19th century Victorian cedar-shingle farmhouse, and in fairly good repair). The main casualty at this point is that the stress sapped everyone's immune system, so we've been catching *everything* and staying sick longer than average.

And yes, I find that no matter how hard I try, anytime I start to write anything, the snarky side of my brain that laughs hysterically at all pTerry's work keeps mst-ing whatever I write. This has led to an egregious number of first chapters, all abandoned due to excessive melodrama that I just can't stand to perpetuate, no matter how neat the idea. This, needless to say, is a bit of a pisser. Especially since, when I try to write the snarky way, I always end up scrapping it with an exasperated realization that pTerry could do much better than my crummy attempt. Grah! scream

My art lately is all either concept art for the hubby's game (which he scrapped and restarted yet *again*, which kinda snuffed out any urge I might have to keep contributing) or else Sumi ink painting. I doubt I'll be painting a Sumi version of Twoflower anytime soon, but if I do, rest assured you'll be the first to know. I *did* finally magically find the right watercolors for what I'm doing, so at least now I can branch out into color as well as b&w.