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greygirlbeastThis is one of those rare mornings when I wake freezing, shivering, headachey, just shy of full-blown hypothermia, somehow having divested myself of all the blankets in the throes of this or that bad dream. And then I need two hours to get warm. Only, according to Spooky, I was actually being a bed hog, and if I'm cold it's my own damn fault.
Yesterday, I did an interview. An important interview. But I cannot yet say for whom or where it will appear. I will tell you as soon as I can. But it ate up more of the day than it should have. Also, I've gotten bloody sick of talking about myself. It's a little easier to talk about Imp or Sarah or Dancy, and almost as accurate since they're all overlapping aspects of me, anyway. To all prospective interviewers and would-be biographers of Me, I say to you, the only biography that's worth a good goddamn, the only truth-be-told, must first be filtered and fictionalized. You reduce the lives of women and men down to mere fact and history, and mostly you'll be left with the banal; if you're lucky, you'll get monotonous tragedy. Mythologize, though, and at least tragedy will seem noble, and even mundanity may be transformed and redeemed.
I am a writer, and my lot in life is to lie constantly, all the while never failing to tell the truth.
Today, I go back to work on "The Lost Language of Mollusca and Crustacea," and hopefully finish it. It will come in Sirenia Digest #73, with a great illustration by Vince Locke, plus Chapter Two of the original (scrapped) attempt to write Silk, plus (!, I hope) a new science-fiction story. I hope. Maybe.
Yesterday, I saw the colored pages for one of the Alabaster stories, colored by Rachelle Rosenberg, and wow.
An announcement. Every morning, or early afternoon, or mid afternoon, I spend anywhere from one to three hours on this journal. An hour and a half is about average, but let's say an hour, because round numbers are easier. That means I journalize seven hours a week, twenty-eight hours a month, three hundred and sixty-five hours a year (or about 15.2 days; and, in truth, a considerably larger sum). Think of all the stories or vignettes or work on novels I could get done in that time. And I've been doing this for more than eleven years, almost every single day! So, I'm thinking that after March, after the release of The Drowning Girl, I'm going to cease this every-goddamn-day blogging thing, this wearisome cataloging of the humdrum events of my humdrum life, and reserve the LJ for news of forthcoming books and of occasional interesting trips, saving untold hours that can be devoted to work, waking up, staring out the window, reading the day's news, et aliae. It's unlikely I'll change my mind.
It's looking now like the "teaser" trailer for The Drowning Girl will go live until January 3rd, due to web-design issues. We have everything in place, it just has to be assembled. The new front page of my website, that is. The thirty-second trailer is edited and ready to post (thank you, Brian!).
Yesterday, well, not much else to tell. I read a pretty good story by David Barr Kirtley (whom, I admit, I'd never heard of before), and before bed I read Stuart Moore's graphic-novel story loosely based on Thomas Ligotti's "The Last Feast of Harlequin (2007), as illustrated by Colleen Doran (I worked with her on an issue of The Dreaming, but, offhand, I can't recall which one). I napped. I watched a PBS documentary on the AZORIAN Project and the 1974 attempt to raise the sunken Soviet submarine K-129. I played Star Wars: The Old Republic. And there was other stuff.
And now, I go forth to think on bivalves and cephalopods.
Warm Now,
Aunt Beast
Yesterday, I did an interview. An important interview. But I cannot yet say for whom or where it will appear. I will tell you as soon as I can. But it ate up more of the day than it should have. Also, I've gotten bloody sick of talking about myself. It's a little easier to talk about Imp or Sarah or Dancy, and almost as accurate since they're all overlapping aspects of me, anyway. To all prospective interviewers and would-be biographers of Me, I say to you, the only biography that's worth a good goddamn, the only truth-be-told, must first be filtered and fictionalized. You reduce the lives of women and men down to mere fact and history, and mostly you'll be left with the banal; if you're lucky, you'll get monotonous tragedy. Mythologize, though, and at least tragedy will seem noble, and even mundanity may be transformed and redeemed.
I am a writer, and my lot in life is to lie constantly, all the while never failing to tell the truth.
Today, I go back to work on "The Lost Language of Mollusca and Crustacea," and hopefully finish it. It will come in Sirenia Digest #73, with a great illustration by Vince Locke, plus Chapter Two of the original (scrapped) attempt to write Silk, plus (!, I hope) a new science-fiction story. I hope. Maybe.
Yesterday, I saw the colored pages for one of the Alabaster stories, colored by Rachelle Rosenberg, and wow.
An announcement. Every morning, or early afternoon, or mid afternoon, I spend anywhere from one to three hours on this journal. An hour and a half is about average, but let's say an hour, because round numbers are easier. That means I journalize seven hours a week, twenty-eight hours a month, three hundred and sixty-five hours a year (or about 15.2 days; and, in truth, a considerably larger sum). Think of all the stories or vignettes or work on novels I could get done in that time. And I've been doing this for more than eleven years, almost every single day! So, I'm thinking that after March, after the release of The Drowning Girl, I'm going to cease this every-goddamn-day blogging thing, this wearisome cataloging of the humdrum events of my humdrum life, and reserve the LJ for news of forthcoming books and of occasional interesting trips, saving untold hours that can be devoted to work, waking up, staring out the window, reading the day's news, et aliae. It's unlikely I'll change my mind.
It's looking now like the "teaser" trailer for The Drowning Girl will go live until January 3rd, due to web-design issues. We have everything in place, it just has to be assembled. The new front page of my website, that is. The thirty-second trailer is edited and ready to post (thank you, Brian!).
Yesterday, well, not much else to tell. I read a pretty good story by David Barr Kirtley (whom, I admit, I'd never heard of before), and before bed I read Stuart Moore's graphic-novel story loosely based on Thomas Ligotti's "The Last Feast of Harlequin (2007), as illustrated by Colleen Doran (I worked with her on an issue of The Dreaming, but, offhand, I can't recall which one). I napped. I watched a PBS documentary on the AZORIAN Project and the 1974 attempt to raise the sunken Soviet submarine K-129. I played Star Wars: The Old Republic. And there was other stuff.
And now, I go forth to think on bivalves and cephalopods.
Warm Now,
Aunt Beast
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no subject
Date: 2011-12-29 06:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-29 06:39 pm (UTC)but I will really miss your blogging.
And, in many ways, I'll miss it, as well.
But if giving up blogging will make things easier for you, that is of course the most important thing.
It essentially comes down that, yes.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-29 06:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-29 06:43 pm (UTC)Yeah, I was horrified to realize my paper journal essentially died a slow death somewhere around 2007?
Same here, and I'm hoping that as I move away from blogging, three months from now, I'll return to my pen-and-paper private journals.
I was the Girl with a Notebook.
Very good sentence.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-29 06:35 pm (UTC)I think Harlan once described himself as "a paid liar" in an interview.
What did you make of the graphic novel of Last Feast, by the way? Have you read the other Ligotti adaptations?
no subject
Date: 2011-12-29 06:40 pm (UTC)I think Harlan once described himself as "a paid liar" in an interview.
Exactly.
What did you make of the graphic novel of Last Feast, by the way? Have you read the other Ligotti adaptations?
I haven't read others. This one was good, but...odd. It really had virtually nothing to do with Ligotti's tale, hence "loosely based on." I think "suggested by' would have been more accurate.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-29 07:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-29 08:03 pm (UTC)Yeah, "suggested by" is a good term for them.
I was disappointed not to see actual adaptations.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-29 06:35 pm (UTC)That should be printed on a t-shirt. Or at least embroidered into one of those wall hanging things. Great post. I'll miss the daily journal entries, but know what you mean about it being a timesuck.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-29 06:42 pm (UTC)Or at least embroidered into one of those wall hanging things.
A sampler! Yes, that would be very bow tie.
I'll miss the daily journal entries, but know what you mean about it being a timesuck.
Spooky has been a major impetus behind this decision, and she's simply right.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-29 06:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-29 07:57 pm (UTC)Given your work tempo, I can only imagine the difficulties.
I would never call it a waste of time, but it's one of the only things I can drastically cut back on.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-29 06:43 pm (UTC)No truer words were ever written.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-29 06:44 pm (UTC)No truer words were ever written.
And yet, there must be a lie in there somewhere. In my comment, I mean.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-29 06:45 pm (UTC)Your journal is not wearisome to read, but that sounds like a very sensible form of self-protection, especially if you're already feeling too deeply scraped at by interviews and other personal look-ins.
This has nothing to do with bivalves, but I was amused: a nicely bitchy takedown of the tropes of urban fantasy via "The Tough Guide to Fantasy Cities."
"Considering that vampires are very, very old undead people, whose flesh is unpleasantly cold and hard (marble-hard chest, flawless, icy features), it is surprising that they manage to have a sex life at all. Nevertheless, many tourists have a fling with a vampire on their Tour, so if this happens to you, there is no need to feel bad about it, or worry about your newfound interest in geriatric necrophilia. In some cities, a steamy vampire encounter is practically a coming-of-age rite."
I hope it's either an unremarkable or a pleasantly littoral day.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-29 06:47 pm (UTC)but that sounds like a very sensible form of self-protection,
Yes, it does.
This has nothing to do with bivalves, but I was amused: a nicely bitchy takedown of the tropes of urban fantasy via "The Tough Guide to Fantasy Cities."
Ohhhhh. This could be brilliant.
I hope it's either an unremarkable or a pleasantly littoral day.
Either will do, and thank you.
And So LJ Becomes That Much Less Bow Tie
Date: 2011-12-29 07:03 pm (UTC)Ever seen Pickman's Muse? I watched it yesterday and thought it was intermittently successful as an HPL adaptation ("The Haunter of the Dark"). Too much oversaturated cinematography, and some of the to-be-expected hammy acting, but there were good bits. In particular it did a decent job of capturing the despair & ennui characteristic of many of the narrators in Lovecraft's earlier stories.
Re: And So LJ Becomes That Much Less Bow Tie
Date: 2011-12-29 08:00 pm (UTC)I always figured that the blogging was serving a good purpose--would have to, if it consumed so much time--but when it stops being useful, well, it's no longer useful.
It began, as I was writing Low Red Moon in 2002, as an experiment: Here's what it's like when I write a novel. And it soon became this other thing. It's still useful – if only for promotion - but there's no way to gauge that usefulness.
Ever seen Pickman's Muse? I watched it yesterday and thought it was intermittently successful as an HPL adaptation ("The Haunter of the Dark").
I haven't. But that's a weird title for an adaptation of that short story.
Re: And So LJ Becomes That Much Less Bow Tie
Date: 2011-12-29 08:34 pm (UTC)Yes, it is. I think the choice was because of the increased role of painters/painting in this story--Blake isn't a writer at all, and there are a whole bunch of visual art-related things going on. Shades of "The Horror in the Clay" from "The Call of Cthulhu." Shades of "Pickman's Model," of course, but I felt uneasy watching it, as if (forgive me) the "Pickman" brand was being misused.
Re: And So LJ Becomes That Much Less Bow Tie
Date: 2011-12-29 08:39 pm (UTC)Shades of "Pickman's Model," of course, but I felt uneasy watching it, as if (forgive me) the "Pickman" brand was being misused.
I'd have to agree.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-29 07:39 pm (UTC)I'll miss your journal, but it sounds like the right thing to do, hands down. All the best!
no subject
Date: 2011-12-29 08:01 pm (UTC)your enthusiasm for LJ has never been more than "lukewarm, resentful".
Odd. Overall, that's never been my attitude (though it begins to describe my attitude towards writing and life, in general).
no subject
Date: 2011-12-29 07:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-29 08:02 pm (UTC)Again, just one example of many -- I could go on and on.
I'm glad to have introduced people to wonderful things, but...
no subject
Date: 2011-12-29 08:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-29 08:37 pm (UTC)In the end, it's up to the writer of the journal, I guess, not her readers.
Well, yeah.
We're not losing you.
Nope.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-29 09:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-30 06:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-29 10:00 pm (UTC)A fine mission statement for a grand Beast indeed.
I will miss your everyday blogging but I respect your reasoning; we have been so fortunate to experience all you have shared with us via LJ and your Blogger site, many thanks.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-29 10:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-29 11:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-30 12:19 am (UTC)I do want to make one request: I (among others, I know) really value your book/movie/music recommendations. In your occasional announcement/trip posts of the future, it would be most bow tie if you were to also mention good books/movies/musicians you had happened across.
Thank you again for all your blog posts. Now to prepare ourselves for the withdrawal symptoms, which are bound to be fittingly Beastly.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-30 02:25 am (UTC)It would be nice to see the occasional musing either on LJ or in Sirenia Digest.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-02 04:45 am (UTC)