aamcnamara

The Big Sleep, Chandler: The dawning realization that now I know where Guy Noir came from. An impressive novel; the context of "so this is where this comes from" made it even better.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Dick: Wildly different to any the several ways I had imagined it. (One based on the title, one on Bladerunner--I know, I know--and one on the few pages of it we read at Odyssey.) Also very good. I stood at the Amherst bus stop today reading this, and didn't even notice it was forty-some degrees (and me in light jacket and scarf), or that the bus I thought I was waiting for wasn't going to come, until I finished it.
The Shape of Things, LaBute: A student production of it went up this week in the campus center. The cast and crew were all awesome; I detested the script. Can't win 'em all, I guess.
Baccano!: An anime my roommate and I have been making our way through. (She's seen it before.) Violent, bloody, ridiculous, awesome. 1930s mafiosos plus immortals plus awesome people plus a helping quantity of silly. I hear the English dub is better (1930s mafia accents?) but we don't have a copy of that. Ah well.

Next up is Gun, with Occasional Music, and then I think my Noir Run will be complete. Unless anyone else has recommendations.

(Novels to work on? What novels to work on? I would radiate guilt, except I'm too tired.)

Apparently, since I curated this display, I get to post pictures of it online.

( teaser picture! )

Putting this together was, overall, an awesome experience. I look forward to making more displays... possibly not with quite such a time constraint, but hey! That's life sometimes.

No progress on A Returning Power because I have a) been busy and b) figured out that it's not so much what I do with the dragon as what the war is about and why the people who win it do so. Tricky business! And I have had no space in my brain for novels, worse luck. (I tend to get really terrible about working on things once the school year hits; the hope is that having the outline up on my wall this year will prod me to add some words to it once in a while.)

On the bright side, as I posted to facebook a few days ago, I know how to say "I have an evil plan" in Homeric Greek.

And hey--tomorrow is Inauguration (aka a good excuse to not have class on a pretty late-September afternoon; not sure yet if I will go to the event itself), and the weekend looks like it will be awesome. Maybe I will even find my brain enough to get some writing done.

I wrote 64 whole words today!

There are, as always, excellent reasons for this. One is that I showed off my political cartoons to

1crowdedhour at the library. Another is that I started reading Delany's About Writing this morning.

And then I read it on the bus to the library, and possibly missed my bus back from the library while reading it at the stop (I was reading! I'm not sure!), and read it on the alternative bus back toward home, and while walking home from said bus...

In summary, I think Samuel R. Delany is really, really awesome. I knew this already, and in fact had read several of the essays here contained before (in Jewel-Hinged Jaw), but even the short months since reading Jaw had given me a different perspective on those pieces, and they are surrounded in this by other essays and letters and interviews...

Delany makes me feel ignorant, unsophisticated, like I never read (anything, or anything good), and like I don't try hard enough. He consistently humbles me in every single way possible and some I didn't think were. Also, every time I read his essays or letters or interviews this one quote from DWJ's Year of the Griffin comes floating back to me--the one about Elda floating into breakfast with her mind feeling like a stack of umbrellas that have been opened, some of them inside out. My mind usually feels like that afterward.

So writing, even sixty-four words, feels like a major accomplishment. Instead of reading Delany's essays and going "I could never have that determination to the work, I may as well give up now" I took it and grabbed a prompt and wrote. Okay, two paragraphs (one a sentence of dialogue), but still! Not becoming completely discouraged! This is victory.

And then I stopped and wrote over three hundred words of analysis of possibly what those two paragraphs imply about the rest of the story. There is probably way more I could write down, and will. But in the meantime: sixty-four words! Hooray!

(The thing that is not a word is 'rimned', which I totally thought was a word until I figured out that I was conflating 'rimmed' and 'limned' into one portmanteau word that meant what I wanted it to. Now I think that 'rimned' should be a word. Intuitive? Votes?)

23.6 / 80

This might have to be all for now.

Last night I stayed up too late reading Fire--less because the text compelled me to finish it than that I started reading it again too late to make clear decisions about What Is Best For Me.

So this morning I was tired, and didn't want to write, and allowed myself to have a break. Breaks are permitted sometimes, I think. After lunch I rallied and wrote this much, and then... dinner grew long? I made muffins (and a muffin-loaf as I ran out of muffin cups)? I am not quite sure what happened to the evening, really.

Anyway, part of the not wanting to write this morning was talking to

haddayr and

naomikritzer yesterday about the Ridiculous Revision Attempt (which was really nice!), and thinking about the whole thing some more, not feeling certain that I'd want to submit this draft even if I got it done in time, et cetera. And if I'm not going to submit this draft, then where is the line between 'practicing discipline' and 'driving oneself wild with self-induced stress and lack of sleep to no good point or purpose'? It is a fine line, I think.

This draft is... better. Far more coherent than the previous draft, at least so far. (Which may have something to do with the compact timeframe, and definitely has to do with my increased ability to tell things like plot and structure.) But while I'd be happy to put my name to it as An Example Of How I Write Second Drafts Of Novels Right Now, I am not so certain I want to put it out there as a Finished Product, a representation of myself... and while the money, and the possible in to the publishing world, would be neat, continuing to work slowly and steadily on my craft might work better.

Which may all be to say: I am headed out of town tomorrow for a day or two, and will not get much writing done, and I am trying to talk myself out of feeling guilty about it. Not going out of town--I've had that plan for a while. The not getting much writing done part. Even though that's a nearly unavoidable consequence.

So. Tomorrow I will pack the rest of the way and then sit down and see how much writing happens, and I will continue to do at least that second step each day--and press myself to go further than I think I can, but not hold myself to any certain etched-in-stone standards--and if I don't decide to submit it at the end (which at the moment I am feeling I may well not) then, um, yay I have a second draft?

Goodnight, anyway.

Today, my family had Adventures.

These involved going to a hardware store, cleaning up a garden plot, having brunch, stopping at a tea store, going to a grad party for a couple of my friends from middle school, walking around at an arts festival/old car show for a while, and buying groceries.

It was hot out. I drove everywhere. I don't have my license yet, and not endless amounts of driving practice; also, driving everywhere means I had to park everywhere and I'm not so great at parking; and I went on the freeway today for the First Time Ever Omg. We crossed the Metro area at least twice.

After I got home, I did the week's slush for Ideomancer. Tomorrow morning I will get up and go to the library and work there for most of the day.

So, in conclusion, I wrote about two sentences today. Possibly less than that. And I am going to bed.

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