Archive for June, 2019

Random quote of the day:

“if you don’t have much soul left and you know it, you got soul.”

—Charles Bukowski, “a dollar and twenty cents”

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Laurel and Hardy, Ariana Grande, or the Salvation Army Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

 

I haven’t written much in the last three weeks. I allowed myself to get distracted by my mother’s memoirs (and I do mean allowed). Then late Sunday night I came down with either a stomach virus or a bad case of food poisoning and have pretty much felt like I was run over by truck all week. But if I’m honest with myself, I have to admit I’ve been on a writing vacation. (Screwing off, in other words.) I’m finally starting to feel human again, health-wise, so I’m rapidly running out of excuses not to write. I need to just hunker down and do it.

I’m about 80k into the novel I’ve been working on. That sounds way the hell more impressive than it actually is because this novel is basically stitching together a bunch of pre-written stories. However, I’d say about 25k of that is new writing. I’ve gotten to the part of the novel where the pre-written material has mostly been used (there’s one more story for near the finale). I’ve completed chunks of partially written stuff and done substantial stitching together. My last bit of serious writing before flaking off was finishing a barely-begun story that had been sitting on my hard drive for years, than slotting it into place. It felt really good. I liked that section so much I even considered ripping it out and marketing it. But it doesn’t really work as a standalone story. It works quite well in the context of the novel framework, so I’ll just leave things be.

Finishing that was an important for me. I’d completed a couple of stories late last year—the first I’d finished in years, and real milestones on the road to recovery from writers’ block. But they weren’t great stories, more like stretching exercises after a long time of sitting idle. But they were finished, and they were stories. The one I just completed inside the novel was solid work. It will have to be edited, et al., in the larger context of the novel, but it was a substantial thing. It had always been a linchpin story in the greater context of the world I created here, but it had existed in my mind, not in actual writing. That was also true of other stories I had to complete for this project, but this one a big deal for me.*

Now I’ve arrived at another story I’ve needed to complete for some time—the last before the big push to the end. I always knew it was going to be the hardest to write. I’ve poked at it a little and edited out some superfluous material, but I’ve mostly been like a horse shying at a jump. I know myself as a writer well enough to understand that part of the reason I’ve shied away is because it was going to be difficult to write. I just didn’t want to go there and had to wait for my psyche/right brain/whatever-the-hell to build up its nerve. (This is a totally unconscious process, by the way, and has to work itself out in the back brain.) So, the time has arrived to get over myself, jump the hurdle, and get on with it.

The good news in all of this, is that I’ve started to tell myself stories again after a long while of nothing. I’ve got new ideas on the back burner wanting to be written and decent enough that I want to write them. (And by stories I’m afraid I mean novels. I don’t seem to be able to write anything short to save my life.) Also today, the end scene of the current novel popped into my brain fully formed, so that’s a very good sign. (I’d been vaguely aiming at a last line before this time.)

It feels good, it feels like I’m a writer again. I’ve even started to take it a little for granted which I haven’t done in a very, very long time. I don’t want to take it too much for granted because I know quite painfully how easily it can be taken away from me again.

By my own psyche, of course, but we’re always our own worst enemies, aren’t we?

 

 

*For those familiar with my Dos Lunas cycle of stories, Ramona finally got hers.

Random quote of the day:

“Anything can happen in life, especially nothing.”

—Michel Houellebecq, Platform (tr. Frank Wynne)

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Laurel and Hardy, Ariana Grande, or the Salvation Army Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

 

Random quote of the day:

“It’s a most distressing affliction to have a sentimental heart and a skeptical mind.”

—Naguib Mahfouz, Sugar Street (tr. William Maynard Hutchins and Angele Botros Samaan)

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Laurel and Hardy, Ariana Grande, or the Salvation Army Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“Clichés are the cockroaches of language. We may sneer, but they will outlive us.”

—Joyce Carol Oates, Twitterfeed, 3/3/14

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Laurel and Hardy, Ariana Grande, or the Salvation Army Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

 

Random quote of the day:

“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”

—Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Laurel and Hardy, Ariana Grande, or the Salvation Army Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

 

Random quote of the day:

“The value of the dwelling is in the dweller.”

—Moroccan proverb

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Laurel and Hardy, Ariana Grande, or the Salvation Army Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“There are two kinds of clocks. There is the clock that is always wrong, and that knows it is wrong, and glories in it; and there is the clock that is always right—except when you rely upon it, and then it is more wrong than you would think a clock could be in a civilized country.”

—Jerome K. Jerome, Clocks

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Laurel and Hardy, Ariana Grande, or the Salvation Army Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

My problem as a fantasy writer is that I’m too logically-minded for dragons. I swore I would never use them, but I went back on that promise to myself for one novel and it didn’t work out so well.

Someone suggested that it might be interesting to do a story from the POV of a very logical/intellectual dragon. I tried doing such a creature but reached the inevitable scene where someone needed to ride it and my mind rebelled against the usual scenario. It’s scientifically impossible for a human to ride on a dragon’s back. They’d be killed instantly, torn off the beast by wind velocity and g-forces. I couldn’t suspend my own disbelief in that regard and the alternate solution I came up with was utterly ridiculous.

So, an otherwise good novel was ruined in the third act. Alas, I didn’t have the heart for a complete rewrite at that point. And as time went on I realized there were other problems. (I tried to write a trilogy in one book, for one.) The dragon was just the most egregious.

Lesson learned: if you’re going to pull the dragon trigger, you’ve got to go all in, suspend your disbelief and have humans ride them in defiance of all laws of physics. Or don’t pull that trigger.

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I hate it when a trilogy is just good enough that you need to keep going but not good enough to be enthusiastic about it.

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It’s always a toss-up whether the Science Channel is going to inform me or scare the crap out of me.

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Maybe our alien overlords will impeach Trump. Then again, I don’t think even they could get it through the GOP-controlled Senate.

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Finally worked up enough nerve to open this box.

 

When in conversation I mention that I never really wanted children there is a certain species of woman who goes on about missing out on the miracle of birth and I want to say to them, “What a bunch of sexist crap.” It’s about choice, ladies, not about being brainwashed by social norms. I even had one tell me, “I’m sure you console yourself with that.” Believe me, if I really wanted to get knocked up it’s the easiest thing in the world. I just didn’t want it.

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The crows around here get most of my table scraps and leftovers that are past their prime. There’s one crow who sits atop the telephone pole near my house as a lookout. His job is to caw-caw-caw really loudly if I (or anyone else) throw things out into the yard. But before he does that he first comes down to help himself to a nice snack. Then he flies back to the telephone pole or the roof of my house and sends out the alert to the other crows. He ain’t no crow’s fool.

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You know, even if you roast troll meat in olive oil and garlic with some fine herbes it still tastes like sweat and urine.

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“Primitive” is such a Western-o-centric word, don’t you think?

Random quote of the day:

“The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.”

—Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Laurel and Hardy, Ariana Grande, or the Salvation Army Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.