Monday, June 09, 2003
It was an unremarkable weekend, for the most part.
On Saturday, I began what might turn into a short story. It's too soon to tell. It wants to be hardish sf, but also wants to reach into a more fantastic realm, unbounded by technology and science. It's this William-Gibson-meets-Lord-Dunsany mood I find myself in more and more often. If I put any stock in the zodiac (which I don't), I'd point to my having been born Gemini. I put only slightly more stock in psychology, so I shan't point to elaborate models of divided personality, either. It all seems more biological to me. Strands of DNA fused and split, recombined, and that's always where the most interesting things develop - the mutations, the sports, the freaks - in that seething literary-genetic cauldron behind my eyes, between my ears. Anyway, it was a little beginning on Saturday, and I'm not sure if it will go on to be more than that.
I need to be working on Murder of Angels, but the book has me at sixes and sevens. I'm not even sure this is a book worthy of the writing. That's how bad it's gotten. And I have a contractual obligation to deliver a new novel (oddly redundant, that) to Penguin by December. I'd intended to be somewhere around Chapter Seven or Eight by now. Instead, I've only just finished Chapter Four and am dithering over what to do with Chapter Five.
The obligation to tell long stories is more terrible than you might imagine. Even Scheherazade might stumble.
And she was a far better word whore than I. Than me? Than I am? See what I mean?
On Sunday, Spooky and I saw the restored Lawrence of Arabia at The Fox. Sometimes, I sit down to list what are, in my opinion, the ten greatest films ever. I never seem to get farther than Citizen Kane and Lawrence of Arabia. Anyway, it was astounding. I'd seen this print once before, at the Alabama Theatre in Birmingham, but the screen and projection at The Fox is better. The movie didn't let out until 12:30 this morning. I came home and watched a few minutes of Lon Chaney in Tell It to the Marines, then went to bed and read part of Lovecraft's "The Haunter in the Dark." After the fact, I've realized how much influence this story had on Threshold, what with the Shining Trapezohedron, malign heptagons, and all.
Anyway, it's 1:45 and I need to go face the words. They're waiting for me.
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