Interstitial!
June 12
So last night was a total misery-fest. I woke up yesterday morning absolutely brimming with what I must term (despite the cheesiness of the phrase) "creative energy". It was the kind of day when I could do good, important work on my writing, the kind of day when I itched to lose myself in my own fictional worlds.
Except, you know, I had to go to work. And, for some reason, it was a really rough day -- not that anything especially bad happened (though I pretty much perpetually feel like a fuck-up at work, to be honest, maybe because it's the first job I've ever had where I'm not one of the smartest people around; my co-workers are all at least a few watts brighter than I am, and that's including the Officebaby), I just had trouble coping, and I felt that creativity being beaten out of me. Mostly this is internal angst -- I've been feeling creatively frustrated for a while now, like I'm working way below my potential in terms of productivity; the work I'm actually doing is good enough, mostly, but I'm not doing nearly enough of it. I have something of a reputation for being really prolific, but it's less and less deserved... I mean, I've written about 80,000 words in the past 18 weeks -- that's 5K a week on average, and that sucks, for me, especially since that's not even all fiction, that includes reviews and poetry, too. I could be doing much more, but I'm getting all touchy and bitchy and weird about my writing lately; I seem to have lost the gift for interstitial writing. I used to write on the bus, on lunch breaks, in the evenings, all the time, whenever I could grab a few minutes -- now it's like I have to have a couple of uninterrupted hours, and the right music on the CD player, and a cup of tea or coffee... and the stars have to align, a cockerel has to be sacrificed at midnight, &c. It's stupid, and it's a relatively recent development, but I just realized it, like, this morning. But last night I came home feeling beat, and didn't write at all. I took a nap and sulked and basically marinated in my own black vapors (which was no fun for Heather, who was very sweet and tried to jolly me out of it). I did nothing creative, which was so depressing after how jazzed I was...
So today I did better. I wrote a thousand words on my lunch break (which is all I can squeeze into half an hour, usually). Tonight I went to the gym, then to Au Coquelet, where I had dinner and read a few things in the East Bay Express, then came home and up to my room. I put on some Old 97s, but for once they didn't fit my mood, so I put on some recent Radiohead instead, wanting something where the lyrics wouldn't distract me (Thom Yorke's "sleepy jack the fire drill" and "where'd you park the car" are not the kind of lyrics that compel me listen too closely to the words) and started typing away. I did another 1300 words, which isn't a great writing session, but added to my lunchtime writing, it's respectable. It makes me feel better. I get cranky when I'm not writing enough, y'all. It's one of my many flaws...
That's about all that's going on. I'm pleased to have rediscovered the joys of interstitial writing. I feel a period of productivity coming on -- I hope it's not a fata morgana. My novel gets cooler by the sentence, too, and I think I'm hitting some powerful emotional notes -- it's pretty intense for me writing it, anyway, and with luck that will translate into intensity for the reader.
Now, random things: Go read "Show and Tell by Greg, over at Strange Horizons. It's short, and it rules; I think it's the best piece of science fiction they've published, and that's high praise, believe me. The more I read of Greg's work, the more I love it.
Wet: More Aqua Erotica, an anthology edited by our own beloved Mary Anne is now available for pre-ordering over at Amazon. Go get you some of that good waterproof erotica. You know, if you're into that.
Words written since February 1, 2002: 85,070
Words written since last entry: 2,300
I could use some Rockwell Church CDs; all I have is a couple of dubbed tapes, even though they're one of my favorite bands. Hell, buy their stuff for yourself. It's good.
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