"The prophet's head is all I ask."
After a night of nightmares and thunder and constant waking and tossing and turning.
So many anniversaries and personally auspicious dates pass that I fail to note, despite my obsession with the passage of time. For example, June 2nd marked my fifth year in Providence and at this address. That's my life-long record for having lived at one address, five years. The next closest is a little more than four years, in a life where I've moved more than fifty times.
Also, June marked the twentieth anniversary since my first fiction sale (the story was "Between the Flatirons and the Deep Green Sea"). I'd have to dig about in files - which are in storage - to find the precise date. But yeah. I find it odd I haven't been mentioning these things.
And I have this goddamn sinus infection that refuses to go away. That comes and goes. Which is what kept me up last night. And no, I don't do antibiotics unless it's a matter of life and death. No one should. That way lies antibiotic resistant microbes. Read up on the rate at which bacteria evolve....
I wanted to put photos from our Monday evening at Moonstone Beach, but I didn't have time this ayem to edit and upload them. I may make a second entry this evening and put them up then.
So, this short story that's been trying to grind my bones to dust, finally it has a name, "Ballad of an Echo Whisperer." Truthfully, I'm not sure I can blame the story. I'm tired. It's getting more and more difficult, this writing thing. I feel like I don't have the fire I could summon as recently as 2011 (though it was getting harder by then). My imagination seems disinterested in cooperation. My ability to fit together the jigsaw puzzle of words feels as though it's faltering. Hell, just finding the words is wearing away. I don't know what this is. At -09, a freelance who is, at best mid-list (and probably not even that) has to have at least a couple more decades worth of words left in her. A couple more decades of ideas, characters, prolix. It's too soon to be this tired.
Day before yesterday I barely managed 200 words on "Ballad of an Echo Whisperer." Yesterday I didn't even try to make progress towards THE END. Instead, I spent the day revising, rewording, moving a scene, trying to discover where I'd gone wrong, taken a wrong step. I bled red ink on the print out and typed in about a hundred changes. I read the whole thing (thus far) aloud to myself twice. It's actually quite a lot better than I thought, and that's a relief. But the whole breaking and resetting of a textual skeleton business left me too weary to do anything but lay in the dark bedroom and watch a documentary about the carving of Mount Rushmore (American Masters) and an episode of Antiques Roadshow. Yeah, I'm officially an old woman. Watching Antiques Roadshow alone. Jeebus.
Spooky spent the day working on a skirt she's sewing, then made spaghetti for dinner. Afterwards we finished Season Two of Treme. Superb. It's a crime this series didn't get more accolades or find more of an audience (it wraps with an abbreviated Season Four, which begins November 5th).
I did manage to read one technical piece, "The paleoenvironment of the Bernissart Iguanodons: sedimentological analysis of the Lower Cretaceous Wealden facies in the Bernissart area."
I've been trying to catch up on my email.
I need caffeine. Also, "My Little Pony" fandom remains the creepiest and most inexplicable fandom to date. Back in 1998, in the paleontology lab at Columbus State University, I dissolved a pink My Little Pony in a beaker of acetone. Only a pink scum was left, floating on the surface.
Not At My Best,
Aunt Beast
So many anniversaries and personally auspicious dates pass that I fail to note, despite my obsession with the passage of time. For example, June 2nd marked my fifth year in Providence and at this address. That's my life-long record for having lived at one address, five years. The next closest is a little more than four years, in a life where I've moved more than fifty times.
Also, June marked the twentieth anniversary since my first fiction sale (the story was "Between the Flatirons and the Deep Green Sea"). I'd have to dig about in files - which are in storage - to find the precise date. But yeah. I find it odd I haven't been mentioning these things.
And I have this goddamn sinus infection that refuses to go away. That comes and goes. Which is what kept me up last night. And no, I don't do antibiotics unless it's a matter of life and death. No one should. That way lies antibiotic resistant microbes. Read up on the rate at which bacteria evolve....
I wanted to put photos from our Monday evening at Moonstone Beach, but I didn't have time this ayem to edit and upload them. I may make a second entry this evening and put them up then.
So, this short story that's been trying to grind my bones to dust, finally it has a name, "Ballad of an Echo Whisperer." Truthfully, I'm not sure I can blame the story. I'm tired. It's getting more and more difficult, this writing thing. I feel like I don't have the fire I could summon as recently as 2011 (though it was getting harder by then). My imagination seems disinterested in cooperation. My ability to fit together the jigsaw puzzle of words feels as though it's faltering. Hell, just finding the words is wearing away. I don't know what this is. At -09, a freelance who is, at best mid-list (and probably not even that) has to have at least a couple more decades worth of words left in her. A couple more decades of ideas, characters, prolix. It's too soon to be this tired.
Day before yesterday I barely managed 200 words on "Ballad of an Echo Whisperer." Yesterday I didn't even try to make progress towards THE END. Instead, I spent the day revising, rewording, moving a scene, trying to discover where I'd gone wrong, taken a wrong step. I bled red ink on the print out and typed in about a hundred changes. I read the whole thing (thus far) aloud to myself twice. It's actually quite a lot better than I thought, and that's a relief. But the whole breaking and resetting of a textual skeleton business left me too weary to do anything but lay in the dark bedroom and watch a documentary about the carving of Mount Rushmore (American Masters) and an episode of Antiques Roadshow. Yeah, I'm officially an old woman. Watching Antiques Roadshow alone. Jeebus.
Spooky spent the day working on a skirt she's sewing, then made spaghetti for dinner. Afterwards we finished Season Two of Treme. Superb. It's a crime this series didn't get more accolades or find more of an audience (it wraps with an abbreviated Season Four, which begins November 5th).
I did manage to read one technical piece, "The paleoenvironment of the Bernissart Iguanodons: sedimentological analysis of the Lower Cretaceous Wealden facies in the Bernissart area."
I've been trying to catch up on my email.
I need caffeine. Also, "My Little Pony" fandom remains the creepiest and most inexplicable fandom to date. Back in 1998, in the paleontology lab at Columbus State University, I dissolved a pink My Little Pony in a beaker of acetone. Only a pink scum was left, floating on the surface.
Not At My Best,
Aunt Beast