• Mood: still tired
• Music: The Decemberists, "Apology Song"

all the lies that aren't my life

Yesterday wasn't a good writing day, but not a total loss, either. I managed to eek out 626 words over about four hours. The problem, this time, is that I have finally come to that moment where I lead Soldier down into the Blackstone River Valley to Woonsocket. This scene has been in my head since I first laid eyes on that town last summer (see relevant blog entries for June/July 2004), percolating in my imagination, fermenting, my impressions of that place waiting to be written out even as my expectations built up out of all proportion. This is an important scene to me and to the book, and I have to get it right. Not just good. Not just very good. I have to get it right. As if any such thing as "right" might exist in this world of subjective tyranny. So, each word is picked with undo care, only to be discarded for some other word chosen with equally undo care, only to be discareded, and so on. It does not help that I was in Woonsocket in the summer and, for a reason I cannot now fathom, I chose to set Daughter of Hounds in the winter. This means I have to translate all my summer impressions and memories into simulated or adapted winter impressions and memories. This scene is one reason why it has taken me so long to get this far into Chapter Four.

Today, I have to work on "this thing" for Marvel Comics, but I'll go back to the book tomorrow afternoon.

I did get a good bit of reading done yesterday. I finished Lupoff's unsatisfying Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure. I re-read portions of Chris Bennett's "The Osteology and Functional Morphology of the Late Cretaceous Pterosaur Pteranodon," with especial attention to the sections on the hindlimbs and pectoral girdle. I read the new issue of Dame Darcy's Meatcake (Richard Dirt rules!). I read from E. Richardson's 1876 History of Woonsocket. So, I read.

Spooky and I are utterly in love with The Decemberists. They're not a new band, just new to us. I haven't been this excited about a band since the emergence of the Dresden Dolls back in 2002. The Decemberists are joyously geeky in all the right ways, and you should check them out. They'll be doing a show here in Atlanta at the Variety Playhouse (smoke-free!) in May.

And here's one of the many shots I took of creepy ol' Woonsocket so very many months ago...