This is the space for our members to discuss and share their creative projects, ranging from written works to drawings, photography, and even craft projects such as knitting and woodworking. Self promotion is welcome (websites where we can view and/or purchase your work). Please do continue to preface if content is NSFW and be sure to properly spoiler/link such content. Those of you who’d like to post future Creative Endeavors Threads, please be sure to check out the Sign-Up Sheets and act accordingly.
The past couple of weeks have seen a bit of an infrastructural hiccup; my Comcast router finally gave out and the nearby hotspot I generally use in case of trouble has been nicely done over by nearby (if personally welcome) road construction. While the inconveniences are fairly obvious—I had to decamp to the library last week to chat in this thread and post the regular “Hooray This Shit” feature in Tolerable Discussions—on a number of levels it’s been a major boon. I’ve been getting a lot more work done, including on the webcomic, and the lack of Internet has helped to restrain a couple of unhealthy habits. I’ve been going to the bar less and getting up a lot earlier, though the latter has more than a little to do with my obnoxious upstairs neighbors.
So with all that, I briefly entertained the probably unworkable solution of giving up home Internet and going back to using the library for essentials now that I have my own laptop (the first several years in town I was more or less reliant on the library computers for online access and I don’t relish returning). Either way, the idea of setting hard limits on my Internet time the way I, say, occasionally diet or exercise (another area of my life that’s gotten a huge lift), has really taken hold, not least for the clear benefits the resulting mental solitude has had on my work the past few weeks. How important is solitude, mental or physical, to your own creative work?
Today’s header is Caravaggio’s St. Jerome Writing (1605), one of several paintings he did of the saint and Biblical translator, who presumably needed boatloads of alone time himself to produce the influential Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible, which became the standard for Roman Catholicism (and most of medieval Europe) well into the Reformation, when cheeky competitors began to appear. Hoping to further emulate his example in getting my own project done. And, as ever, having said that, here’s yet another installment:
Show us your work!
