Tuesday, August 05, 2003
I'm coming off a couple of truly miserably barren writing days. Saturday I managed only about 200 words. Sunday, maybe a single sentence that I didn't throw away. Yesterday, I wrote one frelling paragraph (92 words), which I entirely rewrote today. Hours and hours of staring at the screen and nothing much happening, mired in a scene that refused to move forward no matter how hard I pushed. It didn't help that I'm trying to seriously cut back on caffeine and a couple of other stimulants. The last twenty-four hours have been a little slow-mo. Molasses time. Right now, I have all the spunk of a constipated slug.
Today was better. Today I wrote 714 words on Chapter Seven of Murder of Angels in four hours and may have come to the end of the offending scene. With luck.
Blah, blah, blah.
Last night, Spooky and I watched a couple of eps of Farscape ("Out of Their Minds" and "Scratch N' Sniff"), because I needed something to soothe my brain, and then we indulged in a few hours of Tomb Raider. Finally, I went to bed and read the first half of Lovecraft's "The Strange High House in the Mist," which I think is, in some ways, one of his best and most under-appreciated stories. In it, Lovecraft's prose poetry achieves a crispness that usually eluded him. It's one of the few pieces of weird fiction that I find a joy to read simply for the beauty of the language. This passage, for example: "And later, in still summer rains on the steep roofs of poets, the clouds scatter bits of those dreams, that men shall not live without rumour of old, strange secrets, and wonders that planets tell planets alone in the night." Exquisite.
|
|
