What a month
I had plans for last weekend. Unfortunately, I also had stomach flu, and that sort of trumped the plans. And work was as busy as short work weeks tend to be, so I didn’t actually get here until now.
In any case! I got nominated by What’s it all about and other stories for the Tell Me About Yourself Award. It was kind of startling, but in the good way–like having the cat appear from nowhere to jump onto your lap and start purring, actually, which is totally not an example drawn from recent personal experience.
So… wow, okay. Five Things About Me:
- I knit. Most of the time this is very satisfying, kind of a cross between assembling a puzzle and getting a room cleaned. But occaisionally I get anxious over the fact that what I do with it isn’t creative, and it ties up my hands so that time spent knitting is time taken away from typing. (I also knit stuff with no idea of who it should go to, and probably need to start clearing out a few things.)
- I find it easy to get involved in stories, to think about what they mean in an idealized way. I read a horror novel and I see how it reflects King’s ideas of Appolonian and Dionysian struggle; I get into a gaming setting and start gushing when I try to describe it, the idea that among the crooked or the corrupt or the afraid, you may look into the darkness and pick up your weapon and stand your ground. I can get sappy over TV Tropes; I know that so much of what’s there is pulp, but (as they say) tropes reflect life, and they are about celebrating fiction, not mocking it.
- I spent the first four years of my life that I remember in London, England–age three to age seven. I got the chance to go back three years ago and it was lovely; I can’t remember the last time I’ve felt so comfortable in a place.
- I have depression. It’s currently being managed, but I’m still dealing with a chronic condition, I’m not better. I try not to hide it, because I don’t want to feel shamed into pretending I’m well in order to live my life. I’m near-sighted, I’m physically weak, and I have a neurochemical imbalance–describing it as diabetes of the brain seems to help some people get it, and to not sneer at my meds.
It’s hell. There is no-one in the world I can imagine ever, ever wishing it on. - I love the TV show The Wire; I honestly think it’s the best one I’ve ever seen. It’s an exception to point 2: the world is so low-key and plausible and compelling and honest that it comes in feeling almost more like a documentary than a story, a roman a clef, and the story’s so vital that there’s no inclination to wander into the abstract. It’s brilliant and harsh and honest and sad and funny, and the kind of thing I buy on DVD specifically so I can loan it to people.
EDIT: This post was originally titled “What a week”. I’m still not finished. Posting as it stands, for the moment, and will update with a list of people. Apologies for the delay.
Matters of sense
I shall not argue on the Internet when sick and annoyed. First, I might get mean. Second, I might misunderstand. Third, I will probably not be thinking clearly and may make logical arguments which I am later embarrassed to have attributed to me.
…it helps, sometimes, to remind myself of this.
Haven’t been posting lately. Need to fix this.
Open question.
Why do you own the books you do? I mean, why did you buy them instead of take them out of the library; why did you keep them instead of reselling or trading or giving them away?
What makes them worth it?
This just in…
…and by “this”, I mean “me”. Just got in from the late showing of The Avengers. We were going to the earlier one, but it was sold out, so we all went for dinner and hung out for a bit. And now are home.
Some quick notes, not spoilery:
(1) Much love for Banner. More the more I think about it, actually. I… really bought him. Been there, know that guy.
(2) Heee, the lines.
(3) Liked Loki and Thor much better than in the Thor movie.
But yes. And aside from that, something happened on the way to the movie:
I ran into a friend.
This hasn’t happened in… years?
I mean, I see people, sure. But I don’t meet them by chance–and no, I don’t count meeting a knitting friend that I know from knitting at the knitting store where we both go a fair bit as meeting by chance. Meeting the knitting friend that I know from knitting because she is headed one way after dinner and I am headed the other for a movie and our paths happened to cross? That is meeting by chance.
Nice feeling. Makes this place seem a bit less lonely.
Right. Sleep is in order, now.
Settling through
I had a couple of ill-advised over-enthusiastic book purchases this year, and my number of owned-but-utterly-unread books is edging uncomfortably close to triple-digits. (In fact, I think it might be over triple digits, but I am not checking at the moment; the list of eighty-six is quite unnerving enough without entering the books from one particular bookcase.)
(The list was actually at eighty-nine as of April 30.)
In light of this, I’m making a serious effort to read what I own. I liked them enough to buy them, and as flip as I may occasionally be about this, that’s not a casual thing. And an untouched book strikes me as a horribly sad thing.
I just finished Terry Lamsley’s Conference with the Dead yesterday. I discovered I’d read a couple of them before–this isn’t atypical, I’ve read horror anthologies and magazines for a couple of decades, and it’s actually getting a bit hard for me to find an anthology or collection that doesn’t have something I’ve read before. Still, it was long enough ago that I decided it was worth a reread.
His writing seems quite plain–not in a bad way, but plain in the way M.R. James is quiet. The later stories in the book are slightly weirder; there’s the same calm explanation as always, it’s just relating how reality is doing a quiet little fever-dream melt and slip. They never quite end up portraying the misunderstandings of a character as reality, though–it’s something I associate very much with Ramsey Campbell, and with him writing the introduction, I was a bit anxious about the possibility.
Overall, a very good read.
(Please understand; I like Campbell’s writing, but I’d settled into the quiet ghost story mood of he collection, and I don’t think the style would have fit.)
Not wanting to turn out the light.
Let’s be clear: this is not being afraid to turn out the light. This is knowing that when you turn out the light, you will spend a moment (and moments can be very long) lying in the dark, listening to your breathing, and thinking about what you just read. And what you just read is creepy, and not relaxing, and you can’t quite stop dwelling on it.
(Awesome feeling, really. Right, where was I?)
I was browsing through my list of currently-being-read books and noting most of them don’t have that–or at least, I don’t expect them to have it. Still working through them, after all. Of the two that might, one is a brick of an anthology from ’85, and one is a limited-edition collection. (Yes, both are a pile of short stories; I find those tend to disturb much more easily than novels.) Both are hardcovers. Neither lends themselves to being read comfortably in bed.
This is probably a good thing at the moment, since I need to be up early tomorrow, and do not want to be awake thinking about how wonderfully Michael Shea handles shoggoths and limited-omniscient POV voice. But I still rather regret not having more quietly unsettling things to read.
In the meantime, however, I’ve finished Horns (yes, I know; started it yesterday and had it all-but-done the same, read the epilogue-ish moment today) and am looking around for something to relax with. I may dig out some Stuart MacBride; I’m not sure why the Logan McRae novels are always soothing, but at this point I’d just like to be able to unwind and read enough to get to sleep.
Surprise reads
Light of my life found a hardcover copy of Horns (horror novel by Joe Hill) on clear-this-out discount sale last time we were at Chapters. I woke up at 2:30 in the morning and couldn’t sleep, and thought reading for a bit before lying back down might help, so I picked it up.
(Also, honestly, I can’t find “The Library Policeman” and I knew enough about the premise of Horns that I thought it might have some decently plausible writing about a guy coping with an impossible situation.)
Anyway, I promptly got hooked. Read through the entire first section and a few pages into the second before deciding I was tired enough to be put the book down, wander out for a glass of milk, and poke the keyboard. As one does.
The first section really grabbed me. The second section, however, is a digression-back-to-childhood or prequel or something else that I can’t remember the name of right now, because it’s 3:30 a.m. and I’m going back to bed. I found it a lot less gripping; could practically feel the momentum of reading screeching to a halt. Not sure how much of that has to do with being tired again, though.
More later.
Excuses to not write
So! I ended up hearing from my friend; we got about 1300 words written, actually. But I haven’t gotten anything else written, and it’s starting to… not worry me, exactly. Make me wonder if I’m avoiding it. Because writing with her, it’s fun and it’s engaging and I get what Stephen King (well, Paul Sheldon) calls the gotta; I gotta keep reading, I gotta keep writing, I gotta get more of this done. And this is a really good feeling, don’t get me wrong.
Just beginning to wonder if I’m paying so much attention to writing this way because it drowns out the fact that I’m not writing for myself. Or writing out my own ideas, rather. There’s the morgue story, there’s that crime one I was hacking away at (well, plinking away at, really), there’s the mushroom story, there’s the other mushroom story, and none of it is getting done.
(Heh. Came in to work an hour early. Half an hour left before I can actually start. Fiction writing done? Zilch.)
I get upset when I don’t get things done, and the light of my life occasionally reminds me that it’s okay. What’s the worst that can happen if I go out and try to write and get distracted? I don’t write and I read or play video games instead.
I think I might be forgetting that the worst is I don’t write. Okay, yes, not a tragedy. But I don’t write, and then another day’s gone by and I’m no closer to finishing anything and closer to not having any more time.
I just wish that was motivational, rather than depressing paralyzing.