When the fuck did my blog wind up on GoodReads? I hate GoodReads.
Yesterday, I wrote 1,256 words on Fay Grimmer. I'll likely finish Chapter Six this evening, and begin Chapter Seven – the last chapter – tomorrow. I am now, at most, a week from finishing the novel. Also, yesterday, with less than nine thousand words left, I finally figured out how it ends. Tiddley-pom.
This is of no especial interest to anyone. Well, perhaps only to a very few.
Last night, Spooky and I saw Rodrigo Cortés' Red Lights (2012). Ignore the fucking critics and the fucking reviews; last night, it was an unexpectedly superb find. I'd not even heard of the film, which stars Sigourney Weaver, Cillian Murphy, and Robert De Niro. It is certainly one of the least appreciated films of the year, and I very much encourage you to seek it out.
Please have a look at the current eBay auctions. A copy of The Dry Salvages has been added (OUT OF PRINT SINCE 2004!). Thanks.
1) Inspired by
2) I have come to the lowest point in my opinion of my work since...I don't know. There was a bad patch in 2007, but I'm not sure it's ever been this low. I love nothing that I am working on. And I am working on a lot*. After The Drowning Girl: A Memoir, everything else seems like silly fluff. I thought, last year, that I needed a "break" from the "serious" writing. But I see now that I was horribly wrong. That it was a mistake. That there is nothing else I see any point in writing, if I am to write. And that's all I can do. I have no other professional options. And now I've let myself slide into a place from which it's going to be hard to break free. But I have to, if my writing is to continue to have any worth. To me. I'm not only talking about money. But much of what's gone wrong has arisen from a fear of poverty, from a loathing of poverty, and from taking on much more work than I can possibly handle. Now I'm blowing deadlines, and literally forgetting what I'm supposed to be working on. Sounds bizarre, but it's true. I don't precisely know how to escape this mess. Likely, it will cost me income I can't afford to lose. Likely, it will cost me opportunity. I just don't know. But here is the fact of it: I will never be a bestselling author. After twenty years, it's time for me to accept that. I am, at my best, a very good writer, and I will not sacrifice that.
Both of these things, I wanted to say them publicly. I can't say why. I suppose I've also been seduced buy our relatively new mass exhibitionist/voyeur society. The social confession. The abandonment of privacy. Then again, I've been doing that in blog form for over eleven years now.
Two Steps Backwards,
Aunt Beast
* I will exclude The Ape's Wife and Other Stories, which I hope to be a fine collection. However, most of the stories were written a while ago, as far back as 2007, and therefore aren't actually relevant to my current dilemma.