An October of Sleep (soon)
Wild when the waves start to break,
And god knows, they're breaking in me now. (Poe, "Wild")
The collaboration with Sonya (sovay) is almost, almost finished. She sent me the sixth and final section at 1:34 a.m., but I've only just now read it, aloud to Spooky. The whole thing needs a little tweaking here or there, but it is, even in the rough, something I'm very pleased with. Right now, it's about 9,500 words, so not a vignette at all, but a true and full-fledged short shory. Almost a novelette, had I not such disdain for that silly word. And it seems that a sister cycle to the Dandridge House stories has begun.
Yesterday was a very good writing day. I did 1,285 words and finished "Forests of the Night."
Today, I will begin a new vignette. Counting today, I have five days to finish Tales from the Woeful Platypus without a deadline extension, and I'm pretty sure I'll just squeak in under the wire. Also, I've got to send "Forests of the Night" and "Daughter of Man, Mother of Wyrm" to Vince, so he can begin the illustrations. This evening, I'll read over the collaboration, start to finish for the first time.
It looks like Sirenia Digest 10 will be going out tomorrow evening. Huzzah!
After all the writing yesterday, I spent most of the evening playing Drakengard 2. I've become quite fond of this game, especially that little spitfire Manah. I'm in direst need of a Manah LJ icon. Later, we finally allowed ourselves to begin Mark Z. Danielewski's Only Revolutions, and wow and goddamn, what a ride this is going to be. I don't think a book has affected me this way since I first approached Finnegan's Wake or Naked Lunch. We made it through the first eight pages of the Sam narrative (November 22, 1863-November 13, 1869), then flipped the book over and read the first eight pages of Hailey's story (November 22-December 9, 1963). But then I became obsessed with the relationship between the sidebar text and the narrative text, how the latter reads like the voice-over for a newsreel formed by the former, and then I started looking at the cover beneath the dust jacket. We stopped and read the Wikipedia entry on the book, which led to my correcting a number of mistakes in the entry. The mummified anole was listed as a "salamander," for example. I spent a good forty-five minutes pouring over that beautiful cover with a magnifying glass and have become obsessed with identifying all the beetle, butterfly, and bird species in the photo. So, yeah, this book is having the same sort of effect upon me that House of Leaves did, and that makes me grateful for its existence. I love simple stories and ripping good yarns and straight-forward narratives, but I also love intricate puzzles formed from words and images and the interrelationship of words and images. Spooky finally took away my magnifying glass, read me Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey, and, with my head full of 1863 and 1963, mallards in Boston parks, and "Forests of the Night," I stumbled down to sleep.
Okay. Onward to the next vignette. Time waits for no nixar...
Postscript: I'm tired of this dull LJ format and would like one of those goregeous custom backgrounds I see and covet on the LJs of others. Could someone volunteer to talk me through the process? Please? I'll even toss in a gift as a bribe. My html skills are sort of stuck in the late 1990s.
And god knows, they're breaking in me now. (Poe, "Wild")
The collaboration with Sonya (sovay) is almost, almost finished. She sent me the sixth and final section at 1:34 a.m., but I've only just now read it, aloud to Spooky. The whole thing needs a little tweaking here or there, but it is, even in the rough, something I'm very pleased with. Right now, it's about 9,500 words, so not a vignette at all, but a true and full-fledged short shory. Almost a novelette, had I not such disdain for that silly word. And it seems that a sister cycle to the Dandridge House stories has begun.
Yesterday was a very good writing day. I did 1,285 words and finished "Forests of the Night."
Today, I will begin a new vignette. Counting today, I have five days to finish Tales from the Woeful Platypus without a deadline extension, and I'm pretty sure I'll just squeak in under the wire. Also, I've got to send "Forests of the Night" and "Daughter of Man, Mother of Wyrm" to Vince, so he can begin the illustrations. This evening, I'll read over the collaboration, start to finish for the first time.
It looks like Sirenia Digest 10 will be going out tomorrow evening. Huzzah!
After all the writing yesterday, I spent most of the evening playing Drakengard 2. I've become quite fond of this game, especially that little spitfire Manah. I'm in direst need of a Manah LJ icon. Later, we finally allowed ourselves to begin Mark Z. Danielewski's Only Revolutions, and wow and goddamn, what a ride this is going to be. I don't think a book has affected me this way since I first approached Finnegan's Wake or Naked Lunch. We made it through the first eight pages of the Sam narrative (November 22, 1863-November 13, 1869), then flipped the book over and read the first eight pages of Hailey's story (November 22-December 9, 1963). But then I became obsessed with the relationship between the sidebar text and the narrative text, how the latter reads like the voice-over for a newsreel formed by the former, and then I started looking at the cover beneath the dust jacket. We stopped and read the Wikipedia entry on the book, which led to my correcting a number of mistakes in the entry. The mummified anole was listed as a "salamander," for example. I spent a good forty-five minutes pouring over that beautiful cover with a magnifying glass and have become obsessed with identifying all the beetle, butterfly, and bird species in the photo. So, yeah, this book is having the same sort of effect upon me that House of Leaves did, and that makes me grateful for its existence. I love simple stories and ripping good yarns and straight-forward narratives, but I also love intricate puzzles formed from words and images and the interrelationship of words and images. Spooky finally took away my magnifying glass, read me Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey, and, with my head full of 1863 and 1963, mallards in Boston parks, and "Forests of the Night," I stumbled down to sleep.
Okay. Onward to the next vignette. Time waits for no nixar...
Postscript: I'm tired of this dull LJ format and would like one of those goregeous custom backgrounds I see and covet on the LJs of others. Could someone volunteer to talk me through the process? Please? I'll even toss in a gift as a bribe. My html skills are sort of stuck in the late 1990s.