Yesterday went well, so far as the writing is concerned. To my great surprise (and relief) it only took me 364 words to reach THE END of "For One Who Has Lost Herself." The "final" word count is 5,860 words. Now I'm stepping away from the piece for a couple of days. I need some perspective before I read through the whole thing, start to finish. I've gone ahead and sent the uncorrected version to Vince so we can start talking about the illustration. I also did a great deal of revision on the pages I wrote on Wednesday. Note, this story isn't erotic, and "pas-en-arrière" is only very subtly so. The pieces just came out that way, and I wasn't about to force sex upon them if they didn't want it. Wouldn't that be a sort of literary rape? Anyway, what I was going to say is that if you've been fence sitting about subscribing to the journal because you were afraid the sex stuff might not be your cuppa, here's a chance for you to try Sirenia Digest relatively sex free.
I've grown to love Klaus Nomi's music, but it inevitably makes me sad, in the way that joyous things can sometimes make me sad if I know too much about the life of the artist who created them. Bittersweet, I guess. I'm listening to Nomi on the iPod as I type this and thinking perhaps I'll switch to the Dresden Dolls.
I did a little more thinking on the avatar thing yesterday. It occurred to me I'd left out a few major ones. Keith Barry, for instance, who, I believe, was a sort of proto-Deacon. Also Jimmy DeSade, and he's an important one. He and Salmagundi may in fact form two halves of a greater compound avatar. Jimmy was my fury at things that have been stolen from me, my guilt at not having done more to prevent those losses, my determination to make the whole world pay (for whatever). There's also Echo from The Dreaming. Echo's obvious. Anyway, yeah, I'm still working all this out.
Spooky just came back from the p.o. with a nice little package from
girfan, which included a really beautiful set of British postcards adorned with images of Ice-Age mammals (Smilodon, a woolly rhino, woolly mammoth, cave bear, and Irish elk). They're much too cool to ever actually use.
The mailman brought new books yesterday. That's always a good thing. Kathe Koja's The Blue Mirror, Jeff VanderMeer's City of Saints and Madmen, and Ronald Hutton's Triumph of the Moon.
After downloading Typewriter 2.10, I was seized with the need to find an image of the old Royal I used as a kid. Here's the best one I've found so far:
Royal Model KMM (circa 1938, I think)
I'm giving myself a day-off after five straight writing days. I want to be outside, and I've got to spend the weekend finishing with the Alabaster galleys. We're supposed to reach 82F today, with rain tonight. Hopefully, I really will leave the house and not wind up spending the whole day working on Wikipedia or playing videogames or some other such indoor silliness. Oh, I've noted Poppy's poetry meme, which I think I shall do at some point today or tonight or tomorrow.
I've grown to love Klaus Nomi's music, but it inevitably makes me sad, in the way that joyous things can sometimes make me sad if I know too much about the life of the artist who created them. Bittersweet, I guess. I'm listening to Nomi on the iPod as I type this and thinking perhaps I'll switch to the Dresden Dolls.
I did a little more thinking on the avatar thing yesterday. It occurred to me I'd left out a few major ones. Keith Barry, for instance, who, I believe, was a sort of proto-Deacon. Also Jimmy DeSade, and he's an important one. He and Salmagundi may in fact form two halves of a greater compound avatar. Jimmy was my fury at things that have been stolen from me, my guilt at not having done more to prevent those losses, my determination to make the whole world pay (for whatever). There's also Echo from The Dreaming. Echo's obvious. Anyway, yeah, I'm still working all this out.
Spooky just came back from the p.o. with a nice little package from
girfan, which included a really beautiful set of British postcards adorned with images of Ice-Age mammals (Smilodon, a woolly rhino, woolly mammoth, cave bear, and Irish elk). They're much too cool to ever actually use.The mailman brought new books yesterday. That's always a good thing. Kathe Koja's The Blue Mirror, Jeff VanderMeer's City of Saints and Madmen, and Ronald Hutton's Triumph of the Moon.
After downloading Typewriter 2.10, I was seized with the need to find an image of the old Royal I used as a kid. Here's the best one I've found so far:
Royal Model KMM (circa 1938, I think)
I'm giving myself a day-off after five straight writing days. I want to be outside, and I've got to spend the weekend finishing with the Alabaster galleys. We're supposed to reach 82F today, with rain tonight. Hopefully, I really will leave the house and not wind up spending the whole day working on Wikipedia or playing videogames or some other such indoor silliness. Oh, I've noted Poppy's poetry meme, which I think I shall do at some point today or tonight or tomorrow.
- Current Location:The Plateau of Leng
- Current Mood:
energetic - Current Music:The Dresden Dolls, "Backstabber"
Page Summary
- galaxiezero : (no subject) [+2]
- bosstweed : (no subject) [+2]
- cucumberseed : (no subject) [+0]
- cucumberseed : A host of nosy questions. [+1]
- girfan : (no subject) [+1]
- morganxpage : (no subject) [+3]
- subtlesttrap : Delilah [+1]
- sovay : (no subject) [+5]
- sleepycyan : (no subject) [+0]
- wishlish : (no subject) [+0]
- tagplazen : (no subject) [+1]
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Comments
i've never had an avatar for any aspect of myself, but there are always the ones out there that i can relate to. i see my stubborn logical self in chance, and sometimes the rage and fear of narcissa and dancy. of course, these are all open to a person's interpretations, and we will always see what we want to see in those people...
is the new dresden dolls out already? i'll have to look...congrats on your day off, you deserve it (lest your brain seep out of one ear from overuse).
Nope. Almost. I think the website says the release date's April 18th.
As to the public psychoanalysis, I hope it continues. I hope that doesn't come across as snarky as I'm afraid that it might. The problem with so much fantasy and horror is that it doesn't flow from seem deep well inside the author. There are times I enjoy reading shallow fantasy, but when "genre" fiction moves beyond the generic it seems to stem from authors' long-term obssessive concerns, whether their work qualifies as public psychoanalysis or not. So much fantasy is so trite because the authors are not willing to put a deep part of themselves into it, and most of your stories seem like the sorts of things that really come from within. I really have a hard time believing you started writing Threshold by saying "dude, what if there was, like, Lovecraft and dinosaurs and a goth chick all in one book?" -- or that I would have liked it if you had. This has maybe stretched a bit from the original avatar point, and I'm not trying to imply that you're less invested in your current work, but I hope you get what I'm saying.
I had about 4, and they've gone through different settings, systems, names and such, but they run at four different angles from my personality.
(I'll spare you the gory details of who and what they are)
Now that I think of it more, this journal is not quite the person that one would meet outside of the magic of the intarweb, and is something of an avatar, itself.
When I started writing this, I thought I only had 3 that I'd developed and used, and that, in my current writing project, I was writing a main character that had little to nothing to do with me, but that isn't so. But there is a 4th, and that is the one I've been writing.
Have you ever had a character become an avatar you didn't expect? Sort of an avatar drift? Again, this is mostly based on the serendipitous connection between your posts and the conversation, but I find that happens pretty often in games. It also, sometimes, happens in writing, though not quite as much - I suppose it's because I have more (*snerk*) control over the circumstances of the characters in writing.
How strong do you think a personal trait (yours) has to be in order to animate a character? Now that I'm thinking, I've also written and portrayed a whole lot of different aspects of myself and the first post I made involves those that are, in some way (to me) fit to make protagonists.
Finally, how do you think the gender, sexuality and species of each character informs or is informed by the fact of it being an avatar?
Finally, how do you think the gender, sexuality and species of each character informs or is informed by the fact of it being an avatar?
I'm not sure. I mean, the effectiveness of my avatars doesn't seem bound by any of these factors. Hence, Jimmy DeSade, Salmagundi Desvernine, Narcissa Snow, Dead Girl, Gin Percel, and Nar'eth. It only matters that they can contain some fragment of me with needs containing and expressing. I might not have understood your question.
I sent them on Monday afternoon.
Glad you like them. The Royal Mail had a slogan "I saw this and thought of you" when I first moved here, and, well, I did what it says.
I want to get you something from Whitby (we go later this month) as well (due to something you said earlier).
A rock would be marvelous. A fossil would be marvelouser.
Actually, it just occurred to me...I have some ammonites from Whitby. Still, more is always nice. ;-)
~Morgan
It's a difficult thing, wanting to hear and enjoy the music as he meant it to be heard and enjoyed, wanting to get from it the delight he clearly put into and took from the process of making it...and yet...
Yep.
I had meant to ask about Jimmy DeSade. He is my favorite, if that is the appropriate word, character in your earlier work: I love his complications.
I was once so in love with Jimmy DeSade. I understood him so perfectly.
Also, I don't know if you've heard it, but Nina Hagen and Marc Almond did a fabulous tribute cover of "Total Eclipse."
I had that *same* typewriter as a kid.
I never would have remembered had you not put that picture up. I used to type all day on that thing. It was weirdly perfect for kids, a tremendously tactile thing.
Damn. Okay, now there's *three* things from my childhood my eventual kid needs- that, magnetic letters, and a Show-N-Tell projector/record player.
That typewriter totally made me want to track down that fucking album that every elementary school kid has been forced to listen to where the woman typed in rythmn with the orchestra, except I can't remember the name of the damn thing, and so in frustration I would have to say blow the thing apart like Burroughs with a shotgun.
Especially since one time when I was still a wee little bastard, we found one like that along with a jews harp in this abandoned barn during a burly cold snap with a wind chill factor so cold that when you spit it turned to ice before hitting the ground. I tried playing the jews harp which went well at first, until I became over exuberant and twanged the living hell out of it which caused my lower lip to wrap around the damn spring. Needless to say it hurt like a motherfucker and I was screaming with blood gushing like a stuck pig and my head was spasming out like those freaky bastards in Jacobs Ladder arcing blood all over the place to make little hissing noises in the snow as it fell.
This is what the old timers refer to as 'good times' not to be confused with Early Times, which has sponsored this post.
Okay. I laughed until I hurt.
Pardon me, I'm in a bit of an odd mood. I've spent the past two week slowing moving house from Picayune MS to Slidell, LA and eventually New Orleans.
I'll email you soon regarding the makeup artist you work with, and thank you so much for offering to put me in touch with him. I'm sorry I haven't done so sooner, things have just been...hectic to say the least.