Comments | faeriemaiden: upon a winter's evening

faeriemaiden

upon a winter's evening

Dec 19, 2009 19:55

Hello, universe. It's a cosy snowy day and I have a satchel full of books tumbling out beside me, so all is well, even if I have to play four or five songs at church tomorrow and still have college applications looming over my head (and brushing at my skull with their leathery black wings -- are you kidding, of course they have leathery black wings ( Read more... )

pen in my hand, nostalgia, yuletide?!, fanfiction, the writing life, the astonishing adventures of me, fic-writing

Comments 6

rj_anderson December 20 2009, 01:27:37 UTC

YOU WROTE DEAN PRIEST FIC ILU

*dashes off to read it right now*

Sometimes I think about re-reading the Emily books but then I remind myself it will still end the same inexplicable way. Sigh.

faeriemaiden December 21 2009, 03:36:58 UTC

The Emily books are some of my fundamental idealogy forming books, especially about writing and observation, but yeah, the last book is frequently hard for me to read -- although a lot of that is also because, as someone who struggles with severe clinical depression, Emily's experience cuts uncomfortably close to home. Oddly enough, reading it at sixteen or seventeen was a lot harder than reading it at ten.

Although I was, in a weird way -- not heartened, really, but relieved?, that Emily's depression was portrayed as art-killing, that she was less able to write through it, not more, as I've always felt obscurely guilty and lacking since it seems that every other storyteller ever thrives on depression and misery and carves their best work out of it, whereas I... stop working altogether.

Also, yay! and COMMENT, THANK YOU, and yes, I'm not sure of how Emily and Dean's relationship should have proceeded, but the fact that it ended with Dean utterly isolated and directionless just makes me utterly sad.

rj_anderson December 21 2009, 03:45:32 UTC

I can't write through depression either. It leaves me completely blank and spiritless. I seem to be holding mine at bay these last few months with vitamins B-12 and D (all I can think is that I must have been severely deprived of both), but I still go through phases twice a month when for 3-4 days at a time, I can barely string words together.

Based on what I read in the appendices of Touched By Fire: Manic Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament a lot of writers who found depression limited or stifled their ability to write, and could only produce work while in a manic or stable phase.

So you are definitely not alone in that.

burningstarsxe December 20 2009, 01:58:27 UTC

Hurrah for the snow! It makes me muchly happy.

I say, what colleges are you applying to? I feel kind of dumb for only applying to one place, but I don't want to apply anywhere that I don't feel strongly about...perhaps you could recommend some places?

faeriemaiden December 21 2009, 03:50:24 UTC

Yes! I try to enjoy the heck out of the snow during the Christmas season because there will be plenty of time to loathe it in the months to come, alas. (Though as I am currently not bicycling to the mall in it and am learning to drive, it's something less of a horror ( ... )

burningstarsxe December 21 2009, 03:57:57 UTC

Eeep. I just looked at their website, and from your description, I am now dying to go there. To the point where I almost don't care about the financial matters at all, and want to apply.

The more I think about it, the more I want to find a school near Boston. I've looked at places in both Philly and New York (I don't really want to live in NYC, not at this point in my life at any rate) and neither one appeals anywhere near as much as Boston does.