greygirlbeast | "If there's no one beside you when your soul embarks, then I'll follow you into the dark." (Reply)

The snow is here again. Not that it ever went anywhere. The new snow is here, adding another stratum atop the last. Though, at least it may not be as bad as the Weather Channel was predicting last night (early this ayem). Still, I don't think Providence will be free of this blanket until sometime in late March. I woke this morning about seven o'clock and stood in the parlor a moment, in the perfect grey quiet, watching the slow white rain.

Note that between now and Valentine's Day, Spooky's offering free shipping on any jewelery purchase from her Dreaming Squid Dollworks and Sundries Etsy Shop. Please have a look. Right now, my favorite piece is the mermaid's garden skeleton key necklace. I tried to get her not to sell it, but I usually lose those arguments. So, buy it for someone and make him, her, or it very happy, with my blessings.

Yesterday was...I'm not sure I have an adjective for what yesterday was. In my Moleskine I wrote, "Scaling back ambition." And also, "This is the day when I realized that I'll not be writing the book I thought I'd be writing, but, instead, the book that I can write." Spooky and I spent hours talking through what's left to be done, how much has been written thus far, deadlines, the story as I understand it, and my somewhat precarious mental state. I have two months until I have to deliver the novel, and if I'm only halfway through, I'd need until the end of May. Which I don't have and can't get. Also, the manuscript would be, at a conservative estimate, 150,000 words long (my contract stipulates 100k). And, sure, it's nice to take the high road and declare that the book will be as long as the book needs to be. But, sometimes, the high road is inaccessible to even the best climbers, and another route has to be found. Yesterday, I began finding that alternate path through The Drowning Girl, seeking another way to tell exactly the same story without rewriting anything I've done so far. It's going to require at least a few days to sort out, but I'm starting to see how it can be done.

Probably, yesterday was the most utterly terrified I've been of and about this novel, and also the day when I suddenly felt very relieved. Someday, when it's finished, I can talk particulars.

And my thanks for all the kind words that people offered in the comments yesterday. As much as words can help, they helped. I read them all, even if I didn't reply to them all. I finally admitted, publicly to something I've known for a long time. In response to

whiskeychick, I wrote:

"...the truth is that, in one way or another, I've been writing exactly the same book, trying to achieve exactly the same catharsis, since Silk. It will never be written out, and I have to accept that. Haunted people do not get unhaunted, and closure is essentially a lie."

It is my intention never to write this book again after The Drowning Girl: A Memoir. I won't have written it out, or found "closure," or have healed, or any of that nonsense. It'll still be right here locked up in my chest, where it's always been. But what's going to make this novel different from all the others will be Imp coming to understand that haunted is forever. There are no exorcists, no psychiatric miracles, no magic words, no salted earth, no cleansing fire, nothing with the power to dispel our ghosts. Not really. And you live, or you die. Either way, you move on.

Anyway....

Not much else to yesterday. I was very late at the doctor, until about 8:30, and then there was the market, and dinner, and a few hours of intense rp in Insilico. The latest incarnation of the Xiang AI may not be the strangest yet, but she may be the most lost. Oh, she named Nemo. Then, I was unable to get to sleep until almost five ayem, and didn't sleep long enough to escape the effects of the Seroquel, so I'm kind of oogy just now. And here's the view from our front parlor window this morning: