Skip to main content

Writing

Last evening attempting to write and failing at it did much for me. For once, really doing it, I finally realize what I should do. I am too burdened by past stories, many novels, to write any more. Difficult as it may be, I want to apply myself to revising these completed novels to my satisfaction before even touching the unfinished novels, much less beginning a new one.

It has been on my mind for some time how many completed novels I have, and how all of them are unfit for human eyes-- Love's Shadow, Love's Image, Cymbeline, A Question of Honor, and Winter's Light, and the short stories, The Grove (lost presently), The Beekeeper, The Tower, Absinthe (also presently lost), and The Annunciation. And my two oldest, A Fragile Reverie and Winter Rose. I am starting to realize that with regard to revision and display, I can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear: nevertheless it gives me great pleasure to share my earliest work, whatever its flaws. Winter Rose was an attempt at Regency romance, Engel von Nacht influenced by the highly dramatic gothic novels of the 1700's I was into in high school, which Jane Austen scathingly parodies in "Love and Friendship" which I am presently reading.

Some old things I simply can't continue, others I can. But I won't have peace until I try.

By the way, I am exiled from the Internet for a week. If I like it, I may exile myself longer, perhaps for a month. Thanks to this Treo I may write in my weblog. Desktop entries will be sporadic and only when I send and receive email. I have determined that I am far from an Internet addict, but a piece of insight stuck with me: if it makes you feel lonely and depressed, then excise it from your life. Similarly, do without it and you will learn that you can. This encourages me in so many ways. Weirdly, I'm already contemplating all the things I'd love to say I can live without, or with little.

Sent from Amanda's Treo @-'-,--

Popular posts from this blog

Snow White and the Prince

I dreamed in darkness, cold and alone. Phantasms shifted around me, frightening me, but I was powerless to escape them or even move, as I was sealed in a casket. I thought of the Queen, my Stepmother, and tears dripped from my eyes as I considered the quasi-poignant moments we had once shared, when we might have been considered to be close, when the Queen had nearly been a mother to me, and the face of love had shone radiantly upon me, before eclipsed again by the storms of Venus. I thought of the huntsman, stung to consider that my only friend had been poised to betray me, to kill me, and again in my mind I felt the horror of his shadow, of waiting while he came behind me, knowing there was no escape for me from a death he would inflict. My heart lifted as images of the Prince entered my mind, his grace atop a white-maned horse, always out of my reach, just beyond the words I longed to speak. If only there had been more time for us to fall in love. He might have saved me from those...

Where does it lie

I look out onto the yellow and brown vegetation beneath my window, at the castle-like buildings far away and wonder where do I lie in all of this? There was a time when I was unfettered. This was a time before I entered the working world, before I was independent. My heart was free as a bird when I was in college. I did not know what happiness I experienced in my creativity because I had never known different. In other aspects of my life I knew pain but my stories, sprung up lately from a gothic mist into an immersing Pre-Raphaelite painting, were a richness and the most beautiful thing I had ever known. That the most beautiful thing I knew to exist happened inside of me made me very happy, even though I didn't know it. Now I know the sun is setting, even though I can't see it, because the bank of brown, twisted trees and shrubs is lit gold, like a reflection from a golden chalice. Slowly, slowly it will fade until everything is a homogenous, uncertain gray. This is the nightma...

The day was described as unseasonably warm

The day is so beautiful, but I do not feel beautiful. I feel like a void. The world will not be any more beautiful if I go into the park and enjoy the sunshine. The birds will still sing whether I go or stay, and this person does not seem capable of feeling any kind of happiness. I have been going through old entries, and find the same things I have always found when doing this. I have the same feelings and interests as I always did, I feel the same pressures and struggles as ever. I have been tagging things, but it is a never-ending task. I have nearly 800 posts in this journal alone, to say nothing of paper journals and other notes on the Internet. I thought I would organize my notes because I do not feel capable of imbibing any kind of information or communicating anything of importance. However, I am tired. I did not sleep well last night. It is as though at some point years ago I lost some sleep, and I have been losing it ever since. I have a strange, lost feeling when I thi...