{"id":42123,"date":"2012-04-30T20:44:57","date_gmt":"2012-04-30T20:44:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/2012\/04\/30\/engaging-my-senses\/"},"modified":"2012-04-30T20:44:57","modified_gmt":"2012-04-30T20:44:57","slug":"engaging-my-senses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/2012\/04\/30\/engaging-my-senses\/","title":{"rendered":"Engaging my senses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I took this weekend off &#8211; well, to be honest, it wasn&rsquo;t voluntary; I&rsquo;ve been feeling out of control of my life a bit, what with things changing and my temporary housing situation, so I really wanted to cling onto my project as the one thing I felt like I <em>could<\/em> actually exert my control over. \u00a0But Jake, in his infinite wisdom, told me I should take a couple of days off and take in some material instead of trying to output it again right away. \u00a0He was right, of course.<\/p>\n<p>Ignoring my project, except when I was inevitably reminded of it, was rather difficult. At first, everything I was watching, seeing, doing, smelling, etc. had everything to do with AGGO and I felt like I couldn&rsquo;t turn my brain off. Finally I got to the point where I was actually ignoring it, and I did take in quite a few useful pieces of media and experience, including:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A bit of Viewing #3 of HIMYM<\/li>\n<li>Hand-sewing a shirt design that I created<\/li>\n<li>Paddling around on a crystal-clear prehistoric lake at night (it was as cool as it sounds)<\/li>\n<li>Reading a book called &ldquo;The Accidental Creative&rdquo;<\/li>\n<li>Reading a Star Wars book<\/li>\n<li>Watching Jake play SW:TOR<\/li>\n<li>Playing some Oblivion<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And now I&rsquo;m thinking what I need to focus on is taking in new sensory experiences, no matter how unrelated to my project.<\/p>\n<p>Weird? Not really. Sensory details are one of my strengths, and though I&rsquo;ve spent several months&rsquo; worth of solid time in a desert environment, I want as many sensory details and experiences as possible to bring my book to life. \u00a0It&rsquo;s a story for which my readers are going to need to suspend their disbelief, and I would like to inject as much realism as possible into it so they don&rsquo;t feel cheated.<\/p>\n<p>So I&rsquo;m going to start with the sense of <strong>smell<\/strong>. \u00a0To this end, I will:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Walk by restaurants that make unusual or aromatic dishes<\/li>\n<li>Sniff all the shampoos, lotions, and other yummy-smelling products I can find<\/li>\n<li>Really stop to smell my food before I eat it<\/li>\n<li>Try to identify city smells when I&rsquo;m wandering around downtown<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you spot a girl in a sweatshirt and cap (I&rsquo;ve taken to always wearing a hat, my hair is at that super awkward length) wandering around downtown Seattle sniffing the air like a dog, it&rsquo;s probably me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I took this weekend off &#8211; well, to be honest, it wasn&rsquo;t voluntary; I&rsquo;ve been feeling out of control of my life a bit, what with things changing and my temporary housing situation, so I really wanted to cling onto my project as the one thing I felt like I could actually exert my control &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/2012\/04\/30\/engaging-my-senses\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Engaging my senses&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7957,11556,9029,1584,11765,6995],"class_list":["post-42123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-a-god-grown-old","tag-aggo","tag-author","tag-novel","tag-novelist","tag-writer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42123\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.augustwritesabook.com\/tumblr-backup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}