An Odyssey of Dreams

I wrote this on Friday afternoon, and having sat on it for a weekend, figure it's still worth posting. I don't like feeling like I'm angsting publicly but this journal is supposed to be my outlet for creativity, and creativity has been sorely lacking.

deliasherman once told me that you can't write while things are going wrong. She's right, of course. (I'll not say "She's always right," but near enough. Let's go with "She's often right.") So perhaps it's no wonder that I draw blanks whenever I so much as look toward one of my writing notebooks - this entry, after all, is being composed on paper dedicated for class notes, during class, no less.

But none of that gives me any comfort when it comes to how well Honour isn't going. Sure, the past month or two I've had plenty of excuses. But what about before? Has the steam gone out of my writing? Am I bored with my own story?

If that's the case, there's also the question of the short stories that have been sitting by, waiting their turn. I've only gotten a few lines on one of them, and I wonder where it's going and what my audience for that one could possibly be.

It feels like someone rolled a big-ass boulder into the middle of my creative stream and every so often I just collect what leaks through.

Well, okay. That's fine for now, I guess. I'm busy with school, and my family is taking far more of my attention now than previously (one way to know you're no longer "the baby" - everyone is looking to you to tell them what to do). But these things are temporary. I won't be in classes forever, and as my family heals and deals we'll lean on each other less.

And then what? Will my interest magically reappear? Do I just wait by the window for my muse to drop by? Until it condescends to see me?

I am so grounded in real life and the mundane right now I cannot fathom fantasy of any sort. (And so I went to Boskone. Heh.) And it makes me want to cry.

fuyu_no_fuhei has *ahem* hinted that I might want to do NaNoWriMo this month. As I have an outline and a chapter and a half of Honour already written, there is wisdom in this idea.

But I'm currently feeling like a very busy grad student. I recognize that much of Glamour was written when I was busy applying to grad programs, studying for GREs, taking a class, and working full time. So I may just be pulling a "woe is me!" here.

And so, I ask you to help me decide.

[Poll #858166]

I am off visiting people at glorious Pennsylvania retreat, where internet is limited, and even if it wasn't I'd not be spending much time on it as there is a lake! For swimming! Still, gmail's inaccessible and it's driving me batty to not get my e-mail, so I'll settle for posting briefly.

I've been reading Dawn Cook's The Decoy Princess, which is great at subverting tropes and full of enjoyable characters. Not Faulkner, but then I'm in the mood for a light read having re-read ellen_kushner's divine The Priviledge of the Sword prior to leaving. I've got my head chock full of thoughts on how Alec Campion is a great champion of women's rights, and when sober, a remarkably useful person to know. There might be a post on that later, full of spoilers for all three books. Then again, that depends entirely on how coherent I can make myself under all the squee.

My own writing is still being beaten into submission. I feel like I've written something that might have a few jewels underneath if only I can scrape away all the dust and annoying bits of forcing the plot to the point where it makes no sense. And rewrite the prologue so it's not a vehicle for all! melodrama! all! the! time! (Yes, I do like my exclamation points today.) Still, it's a process that's helping me immensely, and I like to think is actually simplifying a narrative that will be difficult enough with all the characters and their arcs in there.

But more importantly, swimming!

I lack discipline. Every time I make plans, they get sidelined and I wind up reading Jane Austen instead. Not that reading Austen is bad, by any means, but I do have a book I need to rewrite in large chunks. And so, a meme stolen shamelessly borrowed from truepenny.

A List of First Sentences of Works in Various Stages of Progress:

( Cut because I care, and you may not. )

Picked up Naomi Novik's Temeraire series and am mid-way through the Throne of Jade. Thus far, much more bloody than the first book.

Stopped by a Half-Price Books on my way out of Pittsburgh and picked up the 7th Annual Year's Best Fantasy & Horror for $5, a hard-cover edition of Black Heart, Ivory Bones, also for $5, and a $3 copy of The Perilous Gard. In short, very profitable even if it was annoyingly confusing to get back on the freeway in the right direction.

My own progress has been minimal, but nonetheless existant, for which I have yuki_onna and grailquestion to thank - after we had lunch Wednesday, I got some editing done (mostly of the cosmetic variety), while Cat discovered and explored Gather.

Stargates were tonight, but I find myself to "meh" on them to properly discuss. That could be because of the headache, though. I'm going to take a jacuzzi and see if that helps. (Only in my parents' house do I get to say that.)

I got into a discussion with a friend that led to my making a comment about writing. It might have been misconstrued - I don't know, really, but it's sort of giving me cause to think about the way I regard my own fiction.

Because I don't think I write deep stories. I like the themes that come out of my work, but I don't actually put them in there. If I write a story about someone who thinks themselves an outcast it's only because that's the type of person I'm familiar with. Only later it may come to me that they might be dealing with alienation - at the time I largely think in terms of "what would happen next with this character given their mindset?"

I don't think I'll ever support myself with writing - that's not my goal. I don't think what I write will ever be high literature, though to be honest I doubt Dickens ever thought of himself that way, either. I write because I have stories to tell and characters to tell them with. I write to entertain myself, and my friends, and anyone else who'd care to read.

I want it to be a good story - I want to make it as entertaining as possible without sacrificing the things that gave it form. But at the same time, I never aim to hold up a mirror to my psyche or anyone else's. I just don't think in those terms.

It's something I was dealing with in high school - we were reading The Scarlet Letter and Great Gatsby and talking about the elements (the three lights in Gatsby, three town squares in Scarlet Letter), and I made the comment that I honestly didn't believe an author sat down to write and said to himself "I'll put a simile in here, a metaphor here...." I still don't. I think I've learned that there is certainly a framework in an author's mind, and you might build on it when such events appear in your own prose, but when you write you're just trying to put thoughts down on paper in a way that make sense for the story you're trying to tell. When you edit you try to find these things and bring them out.

At The Witching Hour last fall, Patricia McKillip made the comment that when she was first published she was vastly disappointed, as an English major, that her work was not the next Faulkner. That has stuck with me since I heard it because, quite honestly, she's not in a position to evaluate herself that way. History and critics will bear out whether she's the next Faulkner or not (though for my part, I'd agree with her, but in the sense that she is, in ways, better) - Faulkner certainly wasn't able to tell that he was the first Faulkner (well, other than the name). Shakespeare wrote to entertain - he had no idea that one day his words would be synonymous with the height language could conquer. He tried to tell stories, some good, some bad, in a way that appealed to the people who paid him.

I don't even know if I'm making any sense at this point. My point was supposed to be that I concentrate on telling the story it is within me to tell, and let the rest take care of itself.

mallory_blog opened a discussion, probably unwittingly, of whether alternate world (without explicit magic) is fantasy or not here. It is worth a look.

I should add my current mood doesn't have anything to do with the discussion. Rather, I've been apartment-hunting, and am deflated by the lack of everything I want being in one place at a good price.

But it's raining. Which makes me very sad.

I did buy Mélusine and am into Chapter 2. Exposition, who needs this exposition, I ask you? Just about everything that I'm spoiled for due to Amazon recommending The Virtu to me has already happened. Well, aside from the fact that the protagonists have yet to actually, you know, meet.

Still, as I read I continue to be startled by just how much one can pack into a chapter. It's also an excellent read as I continue to ponder lareinenoire's rewrite, and how to better structure that behemoth.

Glamour I'm trying to avoid looking at while I ponder what's bothering me. I think it comes down to the fact that once I'm in an action scene, I do fine, but actually leading up to the action is like pulling teeth. It's like I'm driving past the car crash and screaming "no, don't make me look, I don't want to look.... Oooooh." Plus that opening thing? Remembering I'm not writing 23 short stories would be helpful in the way I structure chapters.

In other news,The Green Man anthology is holding its own against the full-length novel, which is impressive in an of itself. I read the McKillip story today - lovely as per usual. Looking forward to the rest.

Why is it that my reading list keeps growing the more I read? Shouldn't it work the other way around?

Vacation was wonderful, very restive. I've only been back a day, and so not fully into the swing of things yet, but I'm already procrastinating. Our DVR broke while we were away, thus I have no Dr. Who, no West Wing, no Veronica Mars, and no Boston Legal. I also can't get cable in my living room. The company will replace the unit on Tuesday, but it's not the sort of homecoming I'd have preferred.

I've spent the day alternating between the second book in Patricia McKillip's Riddle-Master (the complete trilogy arrived while I was away, yay!) and the end of A Feast for Crows, with some forays into knitting books. I'm trying to convince myself that what I want to do is start revisions on the novel, or at least type up the chapters that are only in longhand at the moment, but I'm failing miserably. So I'm distracting my brain by trying to find a title for the book - its working title completely fails.

I've also got this story lurking in the back of my mind. Over a year ago, I came across mroctober's announcement about his forthcoming anthology, So Fey and had the kernel of a story. ( Usual plot-related wangst. )

And, just because AFfC appeared earlier in this entry, ( spoiler for most of the way through the book, however minor )

I posted a short story over here, at Gather.

Not entirely sure how I feel about that one, though.