Tuesday, March 22, 2005
There was no writing again yesterday, mostly becasue of the idiotic events of Sunday. I also didn't go to Birmingham. I managed to accomplish very little hereabouts. I signed some eBay books. That was about it. Oh, and Spooky took photos of Nar'eth's pulse-pistol holster for Leh'agvoi, for the "winter special" manga that he's drawing, and I e-mailed them to him. I know that doesn't really count, but there you go. Late in the day, I came very close to choking to death on a frelling red apple Jelly Belly jellybean. Once I had dislodged it from my windpipe, I started laughing, which seemed appropriate then, no matter how inappropriate it might seem now. Last night, we watched Kill Bill, vols. 1 and 2.
I have allowed my ability to work to become too dependant on the stability of my environment. This is not something that happened overnight. I spent years letting this happen. A decade, maybe. Now, though, when there is chaos, I stop writing. And, with the load I have at the moment, that's going to do me in almost as quickly as the jellybean would have done. I have to write. I have to write regardless. I does not matter if I've had a bad day. It does not matter if I am depressed or in some other sort of mood not conducive to writing. I still have to write. I does not matter if the weather is crappy or if there's trouble in my family. It does not matter if I'd rather do something else. It does not matter if, in some objective, cosmic sense, I've earned the right to do something else. It does not matter if it's not my fault. It does not matter. I have to write. Nothing else matters, ever. Nothing else matters more. Them's the rules. I knew them when I signed on, and now I'm stuck with them. I have to find a way to write in spite of chaos. That's the only option, because clearly things have no intention of becoming any less chaotic.
Today, I have to attend to a number of things for Subterranean Press, little things that I've let build up until they have become, collectively, one big thing. Also, I plan to turn my attention, finally, to Chapter Four of Daughter of Hounds. It looks as if, because of those aforementioned concerns about ms. length, I'm going to have to do that thing I dislike doing and make at least a roughish sort of outline for much of the book. Nothing I'll have to stick to, of course, not if the story insists it must go elsewhere (and it will), but something to lay the story as a whole out before me so that I can keep it from sprawling too much. So, that's today, I think.
This next bit is for Leh'agvoi, who asked me to about the significance that the lines I quoted yesterday from the script for The Return of the King (the dream which, he recalled, had been Faramir's in the novel) had to J. R. R. Tolkien:
Occasionally, a strange dream came to him: a great wave towering up and advancing ineluctably over the trees and green fields, poised to engulf him and all around him. The dream was to recur for many years. Later he came to think of it as 'my Atlantis complex'.
—and—
Tolkien's legend of Númenor, the great island in the West that is given to the men who aided the Elves in the wars against Morgoth, was probably composed before the writing of the 'The Lost Road', perhaps in the late nineteen-twenties or early thirties. It had one of its origins in the nightmare that had disturbed him since childhood, his 'Atlantis-haunting' in which he 'had the dreadful dream of the ineluctable Wave, either coming up out of a quiet sea, or coming in towering over the green inlands.' When the inhabitants of Númenor are beguiled by Sauron (the lieutenant of Morgoth who had already appeared in the long poem about Beren and Lúthien) into breaking a divine commandment and sailing West towards the forbidden lands, a great storm rises, a huge wave crashes over on Númenor, and the entire island is cast into the abyss. Atlantis is sunk.
(From Tolkien: A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter, 1977)
Turns out, VNV Nation will be playing Atlanta on May 11th, and I would love to go. But whether or not I do will depend on several factors. First, whether of not the venue is non-smoking, because I try not to do smoky shows anymore. Secondly, whether there will actually be tickets. Georgia's pro-scalping law makes getting tickets very, very hard and/or very, very expensive. So, we'll see. I would dearly love to go. Also, the new Moby CD is out today. That's a good thing. And Moby will be making an in-store appearance at Criminal Records here in Atlanta on March 24th, which has Spooky rather excited.
There's still a copy of the hardback edition of Low Red Moon up on our almost-for-now-concluded Ebay auctions. Don't make me eat the listing fee on this one, folks. Someone bid. Hell, twelve someones bid. The more the...well, you know how it goes.
11:45 AM
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