Stuff and Nonsense and a new story and a confession.

[elfs]

First, the important thing, as I missed this last week: Journal Entry 177 / 01312: Dreamteam Calamaties: Wish Upon a Star is out. I liked this one; it has some nice metaphors and descriptive moments and it really helps flesh out Wish's character. It's not nearly as comprehensive a first-person view as a later story I've written for her but it shows more how other people at the Villa treat her.

And the confession: I haven't written a new word in any of my story series since early June. I know, that doesn't sound like a lot of time, only about two months, but you have to understand: while on a good day I can put out two thousand words, on average since I've was eighteen I've written three thousand words a week, every week, nonstop. About the only thing that slows me down is sickness: that week three years ago when I was hospitalized with possible sepsis, or the past winter when I had that horrible flu. Six weeks without having had a creative thought is scaring me... a lot. And it's not as if I'm out of ideas; hundreds of fragments sit in my working directories, waiting only for the real creativity, of turning "an idea" into a story, with an arc, a plot, characterization and dialogue.

In the meantime, I've been reading a lot. I've read two Vorkossigan books in the past three days, Mirror Dance and Memory, and have started on a third, Komarr. I've also been dipping back into my Nabakov collection because of all the people in the world I want to "write like," I want Nabakov's voice. Here's Humbert, looking through a photo album shortly after marrying the widowed Charlotte:

So I tom-peeped across the hedges of years, into wan little windows. And when, by means of pitifully ardent, naively lacivious caresses, she of the noble nipple and massive thigh prepared me for the performance of my nightly duty, it was still a nymphet's scent that in despair I tried to pick up, as I bayed through the undergrowth of dark and decaying forests.

Set and Osiris, what a voice. "Wan windows" for fading photographs, "dark and decaying forests" for his middle-aged bride's nakedness. Such glittering, polished, untortured language used to produce a book filled with such loathesome characters always struck me as a shame.

Comments

typos

[(Anonymous)]

The Villa was not roughing it my any measure.

my -> by?

If had an orgasm tonight, it would be a side-effect.

If I had?

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

I think Mirror Dance is my favorite of her books in a technical sense, but A Civil Campaign is the one I keep reading over, and over, and over...

[(Anonymous)]

As another creative human being I can say that downtime sucks. It's the feeling you get when a family member dies. You just keep waiting for them to walk through the door and say hi like they always do, but they just dont. Its loss. Thankfully though, it wont be forever. Inevitably your game will be back. It'll happen out of the blue. A sudden raging desire to do something, ANYTHING, creative. And you'll somehow be better then you were before, inspite of the fact that you've just languished for however long. This will be good for you in the long run. Painful as it is you're growing now by not doing a thing.

-Darrin