Quitting Forever Again

Man, it's so frustrating when I feel like I'm improving but produce a drawing like this:

Blech. What a monstrosity. Makes me sick to even look at it.

I've been trying to practice faces again, since obviously it's an area that I need a lot of work in. It's tough, though, because drawing something you suck at drawing just makes you want to quit. The good news is I only wanted to quit for about 20 minutes or so before getting mad and jumping back in because I didn't want to be defeated. Still, it would be nice to just be better at this already...

It wasn't a total loss, I also did this drawing. While it's no masterpiece, at least it wouldn't scare sewer rats to death like the image above.

The first drawing (which actually came after this one) has no redeeming qualities at all. This second one, though, has glimmers of "not too bad" which I can build on. So I'm trying to focus on the glimmers instead of the total disaster.

In other news, I just finished "reading" The Enemy by Charlie Higson.

I put "reading" in quotes because to be honest I probably read half the book by the end. I skipped paragraph after paragraph at times because I just wanted to know what happened. It was a good enough book to make me care enough to finish, but not good enough to hold me with every word. There were a lot of gory descriptions and drawn out internal monologues that just didn't interest me, so I skipped them. The first few chapters I didn't, but as the book went on (too long, in my opinion) and more characters died, I cared less. I will say this about Mr. Higson, though. He does an incredible job at making you care about the characters as people. I'm not sure how, but even a few pages in I was caring about a character who dies early on, and it was a blow when he was killed. As such when a MAIN character died (stupidly) part way through, I was hurt and so began the downward spiral of numbness to characters being killed. By the end I was just flipping through pages to get to the minimum information needed to tell me the story.

I think if it had been TWO books, I'd have enjoyed it a ton more. It was split into pretty clear halves, really. When the characters (who you care about because of Higson's particular writing skill) achieved their first big victory (where the book should have ended) you didn't have time to revel in it at all. It was just "Okay, now here is the next problem." I would have liked a little more time to revel in the victory. It would be akin to combining the first two Harry Potter books. Harry saves the day at the end of Sorcerer's Stone and then BOOM, gets thrown right into Chamber of Secrets. There would be no time to enjoy the win, and that's what happened in The Enemy. You already had such devastation and heartbreak with the characters who died, and then when the kids left "made it" it was like it was all for nothing. The book was just too long.

Still, I'm going to track down Book 2 in the series later at the library. I care enough about the characters to want to see what happened. I expect, though, that I'll get through the 400 page novel in about an hour, as I'll be skipping most just to get to the good parts. Makes me wish the whole book was edited down to just that (and who knows, maybe the second will be different and achieve that).

Of course I understand a lot of folks enjoyed every word, so I'm not saying it should have all been cut. Merely that the best books I've read have held me through every last word, and the ones that don't reach that level I find myself skimming just to see what happens in the end.