Echoes in a Hollow Space

Quote of the day:

"Journeys are the midwives of thoughts."

—Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel


Interesting sight of the day: I was driving home last night, headed south, and stopped for a light on Pacific Avenue. Some folks were crossing the street—probably headed for the beach a block further west. This first group were a young family. Dad had baby, maybe six months old, slung from one of those stomach slings and [she] looked very pretty in her red-striped hat and baby bib-overalls. She was so happy, too, just laughing and giggling, her little cheeks glowing peachy and her little arms dancing with excitement. I got all warm and fuzzy and giggled along with her.

About six feet behind the family came a late-twentysomething, early thirtysomething guy, short black hair, with a surfboard under his arm—one of the older, bigger ones—hurrying down to catch the last waves after work. His wetsuit was peeled down to his waist exposing a lovely expanse of tight, hunky, naked chest. And I went, "RRRrrrrooowwllll."

And then I felt emotional whiplash from such a sudden shift in response.

But at least I knew I was still alive.

And this morning after catching up on my sleep deficit for the week, with some unpleasantness at work settled, I feel better about things in general.

Writingness of the day: I did a lot of writing last week. I spent it cycling between the short story, "In the Black;" the novella, "The Heart of the Western Tide;" and the novel, Charged with Folly. I decided there's no reason not to keep doing that, seeing what strikes my fancy on any given day, since I seem to be in a cycling kind of mood these days.

And I also decided that it's foolish to set anything in stone about where I'm going to "waste" my creative resources. They are limited, true, and perhaps I should concentrate on what I do best. But I think when you solidly close the door on some aspect of your creativity you really run the risk of choking off something vital. Creativity feeds creativity. Even if short stories, for example, are something I'm never going to master, they're obviously giving me something or I wouldn't keep trying to write them. So I'm just going to let the good times roll and not worry it so much. That chew rag has gone all moldy with old spit, anyway. Time to throw it away and start gnawing on something new.

Astrology of the day: I have a Virgo Sun (ego shell) and Mars in Virgo (Mars being the source of one's energy and drive). I can't help being a neurotic worrier. And just to make things interesting, I have a Pisces Moon (emotional nature) and a Pisces Ascendant (personality), throwing paranoia into the mix—as well as even more ability to worry. My three planets in Libra, however, make me completely charming. Right? Right??? [winky-winky]

First, happy father's dad!

Second, I'd like to thank everyone for their kind words about Undie. My roommate appreciates them a great deal, too. And I'm sure Undie does, somewhere in the vast Universe.

In other news: I've switched the story I've been writing. As the week progressed and my mood got fouler, the comic baroque style of "Heart of the Western Tide" got harder to maintain. Besides, that one has delusions of grandeur and expectations of going loooong—and I just don't want to go there at this time. I feel bad about not finishing what I started but sometimes these things happen. And I've always been more of a quilter when it comes to short stories, anyway—stiching them together here and there. Probably why most of them turn into novels...

So I switched to my ghost story, "In the Black," which I began back in April, inspired by jmeadows's OWW challenge of the time. I can never write stories fast enough to meet the challenges and, besides, I was pushing to get the monster novel done, so I gave it a start and put it away. It involves two ghost-hunter characters I created for another story. The idea should work well with them. But we'll see. I haven't creeped myself out yet, but I'm sure that's coming. And I cannot imagine this novel can be anything more than a short story. It just doesn't have novelistic legs. (I can be fooled.)

Bookiness of the day: I've been reading An Assembly Such as This by Pamela Aidan—not a sequel to Pride and Prejudice, but a parallel told from Darcy's POV. So far I'm enjoying it well enough, but I don't know if I'll enjoy it three books worth: it takes her three books to cover what Jane Austen covered in one. The current book ends after the infamous first proposal. (Since there wasn't a chance of ruining an ending, I peeked ahead.) But Aidan's Darcy voice works for me and I think she does a credible job of presenting what might have been going through Darcy's head and making him a complex individual, his view of his fencing matches with Elizabeth. However, I felt a longing to rent P&P so I could get that feeling of story completeness.

I remember how when the Colin Firth/Jennifer Ehle P&P was all the rage the internet was awash with "wedding night erotica." Apparently some of that has reached book form. I haven't got much pride in my entertainment these days so I may try one of the "hottie sequels."

You know, I am fairly easy to entertain lately. I won't say I've got no standards, because I do, but if certain criteria are met I'm usually willing to go along for the ride. Characters that I can believe in or just want to believe in seem to be all it takes sometimes. It's nice to turn off the critical faculties and just glide along.

I was having a discussion about this with a friend recently: I went through a phase where I couldn't read fiction because I'd been doing so much critical thinking about writing. All I could see were the flaws, the less-than-stellar prose, or the plot holes—or worse, I could see the bricks and mortar used to build the plots. Now I seem to have gone from one extreme to the other. Overall, I think I'm happier. I'm glad to do critical thinking when it's needed—for my own writing, to help friends, to parrticipate on the workshop—but it's good to be able to turn it off and allow myself to be taken away to someplace else.