Noctuary

I've been MIA from here for a while. I guess I've fallen into tumblr and the nano forums and lost track of this place. Besides... this is my writing and reading blog, and I haven't been reading much lately, or keeping up with my writing.

That is to say, I hadn't. Of course it is NaNo month, so I've been pulled back into things, writing daily (or near enough). It's good to be doing that again. I even scribbled some notes for my other novel last night, and it's funny that in the midst of this mad dash, trying to cobble together a new novel, the MC of my other novel is still foremost in my mind. Turns out I knew her a lot better than I always thought I did.

At any rate, the Heathen places in LJ are pretty, um, yeah. Quiet and dead. The Lokeans community is still running OK, but I think I should poke around in this place to find some more Heathen communities.

God, I'm feeling too critical.

My editing is over. Now the proper rewrite of the end of Novel #1 is to begin in earnest. And it is hard.

Part of me doesn't want to do it. I can tell. Part of me keeps jumping up and down and pointing at another unfinished novel, insisting that polishing that to a sparkling shine would be easier. (To be honest, it probably would be.) This is in part because I'm having such difficulty just creating. Editing, now, that I can do... Now I have my hand in, I'm an editing god. But creating? Well....

I'm a good writer. I know this. Even my drafts are pretty well put-together. Sure, a few paragraphs need re-doing, and sometimes something needs to be rewritten to make sense, and bits and pieces need to be moved around. Overall, though? It reads well. And I'm a critical bitch. So on that score, I am happy.

But now I'm returning to a point of pure creativity, where I'm supposed to set aside the plans and the critical eye and the inner editor and just let the story flow. And it's really difficult re-programming myself to do that.

I remember a month or three ago complaining at how hard it was to edit when what I wanted to be doing was creating. Once I hit my stride, though, editing was a lot easier to do. Still exhausting, but I could get through five pages in an hour so long as I wasn't procrastinating.

Tonight I've written about 550 words. This surprised me. I didn't think I'd get anything done. I'd like to hit between 1000 and 2000 words a day. Hopefully that would mean finishing the novel within a month or two. I realise hitting that number might not always work, but I have to keep it there because if I don't have an aim, I won't get anything done. So I've written 550-ish words tonight. And MS Word is sitting there, open, ready for me to continue. Frustration welled up - and here I am.

Why so frustrated? I feel like i don't know where I want to go next. Now I have an eventual aim in mind, I just have to circle the novel back around to meet it. My character has two or three more works of art to meet, and I have to re-assess what I want those to be. All these ideas are almost blocking me. My character is lying there on the bed looking around herself with a lazy air - and that's good. Meanwhile I, the writer, am sitting here worrying over what has to be done and how I'm going to get there. I'm not sure what to do about that.

Obviously this is my problem, not the novel's problem. Once I can set those worries aside, I can breathe and let it flow. I also have to bring myself to put down/lock up the Inner Editor, as well, and leave a clumsy sentence as clumsy for the time being. I've put a marker into the text so I know what's been edited and what hasn't. This is very difficult for me, as I've always been a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to crafting an excellent sentence, and of late I've just been writing short stories, drabbles, bits and pieces. I've been paying great attention to the craft of those as I write them. Now I'm to stop that and just go hell for leather, I squirm. I don't waaaant to. But I must.

At least I now have the opportunity once more to say to myself "2000 words a day" and aim for that. Accomplishing a word goal is always a pleasing feeling. I will feel as if I have accomplished something - for a change.

I feel very guilty. I haven't been doing my exercises the past couple of weeks. I know, the only way to get around that is to just pick up the damn book and start over. I haven't done yet. But I will, just give me some time. As soon as I finish this post - I swear.

It's Yuletide, and a time for telling stories. Hopefully I'll get some good reading done this week, and some good writing too. It's all a part of the rich tapestry that is my religious tradition. Or whatever. I'm still not waking up anything like the time I want to and I often feel tired and frustrated because of this. I miss out on most of the day, which is not something I want to do; I may feel more awake at night, but I also don't feel particularly like working once it hits a certain hour. I'm also pretty sure that the "no liquor before five" rule should be changed for those of us who get up after noon. You know. Pushed back.

Sigh.

Today's writing exercise - a 75-word drabble I may post in the future... or hell, at the end of this post - struck home one of my personal problems when it comes to writing short stories, and that is that I'm rarely sure when to stop. I often reach a point where I feel an end could be, but I'm unsure how to bring it about. I often also have more to say, so I keep going. Often it does come to a satisfying end, eventually. But one thing that often concerns me is whether something has been overstated. Do I ruin the story by keeping it going past the original point of "I-feel-like-the-end-could-be-here"? Is everything after this point just belabouring the idea, or spelling it out for the reader unnecessarily? Or is it the other way around.... if I stop too early, is the reader left wondering "what the fuck was that meant to mean?"? Am I failing to explain myself properly? Am I selling the story short (sorry) by not letting it breathe and take shape over more pages?

God even this post is awfully written today. It's just been an evening for it, I think. Forum posts a mess, brain all over the place with the wind. The wind is blowing a gale, and quite literally. It's fun and exciting and makes one feel warm and cosy, but it's just possible that it has also addled one's mind.

I think in the case of my vignette, I am happy with where it finishes - but I feel like there could be a lot more to it. I may well work it into a good short story in its own right. Of course, reading over the vignette itself, it's really awful.... Looks like it's a project for the future: to rewrite the entire thing as a genuine short story.

My "Writer's Book of Days" has arrived. I admit I'm a bit disappointed with the quality of the paper - I'm the sort of person to whom that sort of thing is important - but it was half price, and the content appears to be as good as I hoped it was. Or at least of the type I hoped it was. Time, of course, will tell.

I'm going to start, hopefully, writing a piece a day. Some of them might fill in the backstories of some of my novel characters. Some might be new short stories with new characters. Others might end up being incorporated into novels half-written. Others might wind up being journal entries. few will end up being posted here. If I don't like the prompt given in this book, I might take one from one of the communities I'm a member of, or from the book of prompts I have. Regardless, I hope doing this will help both with my writing practise and with fleshing out my novel characters.

There are other things to work on, too. I keep stalling on my way through "The Ode Less Travelled" and should get some proper poems written that aren't sonnets. And, of course, I'm working on finishing the novel properly. I have less than 20 pages left to edit now, which itself is scary. I don't enjoy editing but I also don't know if I'm ready to run out of what I've already written and come to the point where I have to set aside my editing hat and put on the creating hat once again. The prospect is frightening... and while I don't want to get mired in short stories to shield myself from Finished Novel Land and the concerns of sharing and publishing that come with it, it could also be true that exercises here and there might bolster my creativity so I can finish it off.

And this sounds silly - or maybe not - but I think I need for these to be private. I might be going to put this novel out into the world for all to see, and perhaps one day, a book of short stories - Tales from Montmartre? - but these exercises, private, in a special private journal. Maybe shared on occasion, but written specifically for me. I always write for me, but often worry over how good this is or that, and who I can or should show it to.... these can be just for having.

Meanwhile I should be reading over the notes I took when I visited the Louvre last year, but I can't bring myself to do it. I feel a particular angst regarding them, for some reason. And, yes, as should be obvious my now, I am still writing this blog to avoid actually working. I mean, I've edited four or five pages today. I don't theoretically need to work any more today. But I want to (yet I procrastinate). I don't feel like I've accomplished anything today. I need that extra something, to help get the angst out.

The Schedule went pretty well yesterday, although I didn't get enough exercise in. But the lack of sleep the night before set me sleeping through my alarm this morning, so... so much for today. One soldiers on, however. At 10.30 with very-nearly-two-glasses of wine down my gullet (yes, Inebriati reference) I don't feel particularly inclined to doing any work, lest I scrap the whole thing and just have the two main characters having sex.

That's not meant to be how it goes! (In fact I should probably rewrite that entire page, or even two or three.... I get the idea I only wrote it in the first place to fill in my wordcount.)

Things I want to do right now:
Get drunk and watch noir with friends
Make friends who like to do things like get drunk and watch noir
Find a hard-boiled PI to fuck

Not necessarily in that order.

The little mood bat looks a lot happier than I currently feel. He's all "WOOO TEQUILA" and I'm all "I want to have angry sex with a PI from the 1930s. Fuck you, little bat." and "wine is good, but I am discontent".

A short little thing from a prompt that caught me. (I have been browsing Book Depository for a book to inspire and reading through a few previews. This one doesn't seem like something I'd want to buy, but one prompt did set me thinking.)


She sat behind a table in the café with tears in shining lines down her face. Wet blackness made a mess about her eyes, her mascara like ink smudged by a careless hand.
          She cried, and sipped her tea and didn't wipe her tears away. I suppose she felt she owed them the chance to see the world.
          She cried without a sound. Any sobs had long since died away and their harsh echoes hadn't touched the café walls and their hanging prints of Picasso and Pollock. Yet new tears still fell, unashamed, from each blue eye.
          From time to time her eyes would close, just for a beat. Then she would turn her face towards the steamed-up window and watched the blurred shapes that moved with such mad haste on the other side.
          When she left without a word through the café door I went to collect her payment from the little silver dish beside her cup. There I found a note, €20, and another in red ink writ on the bill:
          "Lies".


I'm not sure about that "writ" but I needed another syllable in there, but not two, so I couldn't use "written" and "upon" looked clumsy.

The worst thing about not writing is that, though I am procrastinating, I don't feel like I can permit myself to procrastinate at anything productive. I procrastinate by buggering around on forums or reading webcomics. I procrastinate by playing spider solitaire while I watch comedies or documentaries on Youtube. I don't procrastinate by doing the dishes, or sweeping the floor, or even by playing computer games or reading.

(My sim is more successful at getting her novels written than I am, that's for damn sure. She makes me feel inadequate. Which is ridiculous.)

But I cannot procrastinate by reading, because I am plagued, constantly, by the niggling guilt that I should be editing. I cannot bring myself to pick up a book because I think "No! I shouldn't be doing that!" and instead of enriching my mind and soul I play solitaire while half-listening to a documentary about some guy digging up the Taung Child.

I sit here with a ridiculously long list of books I have, over the past three years, bought and not read. Or read half of, and left off, and not come back to. I have a borrowed copy of Cassandra Clare's "City of Glass" that I've had sitting on the shelf for about two years. My friend may never get it back; I don't often see her, and I am notoriously bad at remembering to return borrowed things. (I do warn people not to lend me anything. Do they ever listen...?)

Aside from the ever-growing pile of spiritual works, the "To Read" list is as follows:

FICTION:
City of Glass
Gormenghast
Dracula (something of a re-read; I read most of it years ago but don't think I ever got to the end, and I'll need to read the whole thing over. Plus I have a shiny new edition.)
Titus Groan (nearly done!)
Winter Rose (read half of it, it suddenly got depressing, put it down to be picked up again when I was feeling less hormonal and never got around to it)
Wuthering Heights (I left it in the UK. Hopefully it is in a box and on its way.)
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell (Also winging - or sailing - its sluggish way across the seas.)
Exterminator!
The Big Sleep (I feel like I can only read this while in the bath with a glass of wine at hand. Thankfully it's nearly cool enough for pleasing baths again.)
Mysteries of Udolpho
Delta of Venus
Beowulf (alright, so not quite "fiction" so much as "epic poem" but whatever.)
Confessions of an English Opium Eater
The Long Goodbye
Possession
Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass (haven't read it since childhood and would like a reread. Plus, new edition, illustrated by Mervyn Peake!)
Justine
Ladies of Grace Adieu
Woman in White
Junkie
Tenant of Wildfell Hall (started. Not too far into it but enjoying it so far.)
Melmoth the Wanderer (started once, ages ago, and had to return to library. New copy now on its way with the rest of the UK box.)
Notre Dame de Paris (aka Hunchback)
Count of Monte Cristo
Changeless
Coraline
Jane Eyre

NON-FICTION:
Amo, Amas, Amat and All That (yay Latin!)
Hammer and the Cross
Queens Consort (got partway through, got distracted. Need to start it over again, I think.)
Everyday Drinking
Folklore of Discworld
Henry, Virtuous Prince (about a third of the way through.)
Great Dinosaur Discoveries

Add to that a list of twenty seven various assorted books regarding religion and witchcraft, from history to comparative mythology to Llewellyn-esque crap. Yesterday I started "the Spiral Dance" for the first time. I'm one chapter in and hope it improves, because it's really shockingly bad so far. I don't tend to like Starhawk's work as a rule because I'm not fond of her voice, but I am disliking this more because of her very poor ethics, her sexism and her bigotry more than a dislike for her writing style.

And this entire post made me feel a little like I'd accomplished something. To the extent that now I draw to a close and think of my work, sitting there untouched on the desktop, with a slightly lessened pang of guilt. This wasn't productive, in the same way as actually reading any of those books might be, but at least I haven't been pissing my time away on solitaire.

Remind me to get up early tomorrow morning. I tend to get a tiny bit more work done during the day.