Remind me of the young

[greygirlbeast]

An escaped voice speaks from the corner of the room
It’s avoiding the plans
Sneaking past the narrow truth

Everyone else follows through (Sons and Daughters, "Dance Me In")

Trying to shake off the dreamsickness this morning. Still trying, more than an hour after I crawled up from sleep and out of the bed and into this chair. It's like waking up wet. Or waking up to nausea. Or waking to a sudden, unexplained noise. It's sticky and disorienting. It leaves the world slippery, and my eyes and mind slide off everything I see. My thoughts skip and shimmer, and the understanding of this given moment seems always just out of reach. Waking reality holds fast to an arbitrary sort of solidity, real only because I am assumed to be awake. The reality of the dreams, even as their non-linear, disjunct narratives begin to fade, is always nearer at hand. If someone's devised a pill for this, no one has yet offered it to me. I am awake, because I am no longer asleep. The worst of it, I think, is not the dread or the way I forget what I was just thinking, what I was going to say, the way I don't respond when spoken to — no, the worst of it is the urgent sense of unfinished business, of needing to get back there. The dreamsickness clings to me like wet cheesecloth laid upon my skin, and somehow I have to let the new day pull me forward on the course of this worldline, which, I would be assured, is the real McCoy.

I didn't go to Leeds yesterday. I couldn't stop thinking about drunken rednecks on I-20, or the price of gasoline, or the way people would stare if we should have to get off the interstate at Anniston or Eastaboga or wherever else that isn't anywhere.

But at least Dragon*Con is over. I can stop feeling like I ought to be there instead of here.

Yesterday...there's a whole lot less to say about yesterday than there should be. No writing. It just didn't happen. Nothing else much happened, either. My mood stayed black and low and bordering on angry. I spent some time with Hubero. I thought about books I should be reading. I e-mailed my mother to tell her we weren't coming. I e-mailed my agent. Spooky renewed Nebari.net for me, for two years, so thank you again corucia, and I talked about how it's been four years now since I started the site and promised myself that I'd do something more with it this year. Spooky made dinner — pizza with basil and lots of fresh garlic and red peppers and mozzarella. We had a long walk after dark.

And because Netflix just keeps sending movies, even though I should be reading, we watched The Libertine (2004) last night. I liked it quite a lot. A very, very beautiful film. Johnny Depp gives one of the most impressive performances of his career. I don't know much about John Wilmot or Charles II, so I cannot vouch for the film's historical accuracy, but I thought it a very fine work of fiction. All histories are only varying degrees of fiction, anyway. This bit I especially liked, Rochester speaking of actors (though it has a much broader relevance, i think):

You make time seem so important. "I must change my clothes now." "I must make my entrance now." But life is not a succession of urgent now's. It is a listless trickle of "Why should I's."

Also, The Libertine was a pleasant sort of penance for having wasted 99 minutes Sunday night watching Poseidon.

Today, I have to send the galley corrections from Daughter of Hounds back to NYC. And I have to write. Fiction. First, though, let me remind you that you can still order Daughter of Hounds from Amazon.com with Alabaster for a mere $27.70. I should also remind you that unless people buy these books, I will not be able to continue to write them. And if you're one of those readers who only reads the online journal — and I still don't understand that phenomenon, for what possible interest could I ever be beyond my writing — I would remind you that unless the books sell, I will see no point in continuing this journal, either. Now. Time to write. I can stall no longer.

Comments

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

Out of interest, is that illustration of Dancy more the way you envision her than the version of her on the Threshold cover?

Yep.

that you were considering doing a YA novel set in MoA's alternate universe/fantasy world thingimagum- are you still considering that?

I am, but it won't be the next book.