Cockroaches

June 12

Hey. I'm 24 1/2 years old today. Rapidly approaching a creaky quarter-century. Eep.

Work work work. The boredom of last week is very much gone this week-- well, that's not exactly true. It's just a more active boredom, now. The boredom of having boring work to do, as opposed to the boredom of having no work to do. I'm mostly on the phone this week, calling people to update contact information. Fun, hmm? Especially since the people I'm calling all work on hiking and recreation trails, so none of them are ever in their offices (they are, reasonably enough, out on the trails), so in actuality I'm talking to a lot of answering machines. It does make the time go relatively quickly, though...

Last night was very writerly. I went to Pergolesi and read a story for a friend who wants a crit, drinking a powerful good cup of coffee (or, rather, pint glass of coffee, since that's the way it's served there). After I finished reading I sat down and stared out the window and let my brain do large conceptual things. Rangergirl is really coming together in my head-- the deep structure of the book, the motifs, the interrelationships, the web of cause and effect. Very macro thoughts about the novel as a whole. This is in some ways my favorite part of the process, when my scattered ideas and images begin to really gel and form an internally consistent, internally logical, cohesive whole. It's like shapes rising out of the fog. Interconnections becoming evident. Now it's just a question of running scenes in my head, writing them down, dealing with the inevitable snags and troubles and continuity problems as they come up.

So basically I did a lot of thinking and not a lot of writing, though I did do a partial outline for the book.

I wrote a poem, but I don't trust my perspective at all, so I don't know if it's good or not... it's called "Drawing Pain." I like the idea of the piece, but I'm not sure the execution is as good as it could be.

Getting into the headspace to do this new novel is messing with my perception. The book is set (largely) in Santa Cruz, and I'm paying closer attention to the town than I ever have before, since every streetcorner, parking lot and building is a potential setting. I'm eavesdropping on people (sometimes without much subtlety), I'm stopping in the middle of the sidewalk, looking at empty park benches, and laughing out loud as I imagine a scene that could be played out there. I'm peering at buskers as if they might be monsters in disguise, looking at homeless people and thinking about sleeplessness and scorpions, listening to the noise of squatters in the house next door and wondering if the town they inhabit is anything like the one I do, even though it's the same town. It's like I'm inhabiting some hyper-reality-- I think I saw Oden walking down the street yesterday, looking much the worse for wear. I watch people and wonder if they'd get along with my main characters. I lay on my couch with my eyes closed and talk to Marzi, my protagonist, run ideas by her. She wants to know if she should dye her hair pink. She wonders if pink dyed hair would glow under blacklight. I think about hot tubs and rain makers, and always, always dust.

This is a really cool way to live, even if it does make me quite distractable.

I talked to Heather last night, a lovely conversation-- nearly all my conversations with her are lovely, and even when they aren't lovely, they're interesting. After I got finished cooing and purring and chatting with her, I read a bit of Clive Barker's Sacrament. I'm about halfway through it (maybe a hair less), and it's quite good. It doesn't grab me like Galilee did, but it's still a very nicely nuanced, disturbing, and mature work. I like it. I'm glad I gave it another chance. It's not Barker's fault that the book's illustration and copy make it look like an introspective piece of rather dull li-fi-- inside, it's the same Barker, mad and layered, but his voice is more sure and his touch more deft with every book.

I got the doldrums later in the evening, though... or, as the French have it (if I'm remembering French class properly), I got the cockroaches (so much better than "I got the blues"). I don't know why-- some combination of worrying about money (which is silly, since I'm pretty okay money-wise, but for some reason that's where my thoughts spiraled), worrying about writing (I have lots of projects going-- I need to do a rewrite for an editor, and finish a short story that I've promised another editor, and those need to be the priorities, but I also want to dive into Rangergirl, and there's just not enough time with this silly day job), worrying about my job (and I hate that, because my job should leave my mind as soon as I leave my job in the evening)... none of this stuff is really all that problematic-- I was just feeling fretful for some reason, and my brain scrambled for things about which to fret.

The truth is... things are good. My life is made of love and art, right now. My writing has never gone better. My heart is full of Heather. My friends are wonderful.

Still. The cockroaches do not bow to reality. They scuttle in my head regardless.

Well. They did last night, anyway. I'm feeling all better today.