AndreaBlythe.com

Last night, after doing some sketching, I tried to put some words down on the page. Normally, I write something down and, whether its good or not, I just keep going. but last night, I just couldn’t stand what I was writing, so I started scribbling violently all over the page.

It doesn’t happen very often that I react so strongly to my own writing. Not that everything I write is good — far from it — but that I understand that crappy drafts are a natural part of the writing process. Last night, I just couldn’t take my own words. As soon as I put them down on the page, I had to get rid of them. If I hadn’t scratched them out, I would have torn out the page.

I tried to write something down this morning and got the same result. It was NOT coming together, and I couldn’t force myself to keep going through the crappy draft to get to the good. It was just bad and so again, I crossed it out.

This kind of thing happens sometimes. (This is probably tied to my frustrations around the novel I’m supposed to be working on this month.) I will keep writing of course, even though I may end up with more pages like these, because I know this feeling of frustration is temporary. I’ll pull out of it. I always do.

So I’ll keep writing and keep writing, and eventually I get to open fields of words again, but right now, stuck in the muck of the forest is where I am.

[Cross-posted to my art blog. If you feel inclined, you can comment either here or there.]

1. Pride and Predjudice, by Jane Austin
2. The Boy with the Cuckoo Clock Heart (audio book), by Mathias Malzieu
3. The Sun Also Rises (audio book), by Ernest Hemingway
4. The Witch of Portobello, by Paulo Coelho
5. After the Dance: A Walk Through Carnival in Jacmel, Haiti, by Edwidge Danticat
7. Chasing the Dragon, by Nicholas Kaufmann
8. Brideshead Revisited (audio book), by Evelyn Waugh
9. Woman on the Edge of Time, by Marge Piercy
10. Fables: The Good Prince, by Bill Willingham

You can my reviews of these here.

I’m a little stumped as to how the year warped by. Christmas decorations are already out (granted they’ve been out for a considerable while now, but still). And Nanowrimo has begun. I can hear the clacking of keyboards as frenzied writers get to work.

Unfortunately I’m not one of them. Nano is too much for me this year. I’m traveling to Alaska to visit my grandmother and moving into a new apartment. But the bigger issue is that I do not have my laptop working, and without regular and easy access to a computer, it’s very difficult for me to work at that kind of a pace.

I am, however, participating in anti-nano (set up bynaomi_jay), in which we set our own smaller goals for whatever project we want to work on. My goal is to write 10,000 words on the Untitled Alternate World Fantasy Novel that I started last November. (Hopefully, I can finally figure out where the plot, if there is such a thing, wants to go.) My plan is to head to the library every Tuesday and Thursday and use their computers to get writing done. I may also borrow a family member’s computer and head to some write ins because I enjoy the collective writing experience.

To do in the coming week:
– write/edit 2-3 poems
– submit something for publication
– post a youtube video
– draw anything
– write 2,500 words for anti-nano

[Cross-posted to my livejournal. If you feel inclined, you can comment either here or there.]

In this darkly comic take on the zombie story, Browne presents a world in which the dead arise, but instead of being brainless shuffling corpses, they are actually intelligent and only occasionally shuffling corpses. After a car crash in which both he and his wife die, Andy finds himself embalmed and shuffling away from the mortuary on a distortedly broken ankle. His afterlife is immediately beset with problems, as he is now considered a worthless subhuman with out any of the basic rights that the living enjoy.

Andy spends his time watching reruns in his parent’s basement (with the door locked, because they are embarrassed of him), being shouted at and pelted with food when he walks down the street, trying to keep from falling apart by getting his fix of formaldehyde, and once a week going to Undead Anonymous meetings with others who are in his same situation. His daily depression is compounded by the fact that he cannot even speak of his problems to his therapist. Things begin to turn around for him, however, when he falls for another zombie who sucks on lipstick and makeup to get her fix of formaldehyde.

I love the dark humor and the clever writing style. You are made to wholly sympathize with the zombies and their plight to the point that humans, also known as breathers, seem to be one dimensional. Every breather is so disgusted with zombies that they are cruel and vicious to them (even the mother who tries to be nice still falls short). The reaction of just about every Breather when they see a zombie is either to scream or to quiver in fear. In a way this was necessary to your sympathy for the zombies, but it also made the world seem somewhat flat. For it seems to me, if zombies were a regular occurrence in the world, they would be treated just as often as a mundane annoyance rather then always objects of terror. Furthermore, we are really attached to our loved ones, and I have to imagine that a percentage of humans would look on their undead family members as slightly smelly loved ones, and that they would insist that their loved ones be treated by respect at large. But then I may be over analyzing, and the hateful and oppressive treatment of the zombies in this book — who often seem more human in comparison — is what allows the reader to maintain sympathize with them.

But all that aside, Breathers is a great zombie love story, or zombie revolution story (depending on your point of view).

[x-posted to my livejournal. If you feel inclined, you can comment either here or there.]

In the previous week I wrote some poems and sketched some…, well, one thing. I didn’t do much beyond that, but then I didn’t really expect to. This week I expect to be fairly productive along the same lines.

I really need to get back to doing some exercise. It’s been a while, and I can feel the tightness in my back from not doing yoga. It’s been really hard to motivate myself in that direction, though. Anywho…

To do in the coming week:
– write/edit 2-3 poems
– submit something for publication
– post a youtube video
– draw anything
– get some words down on that blasted short story

[x-posted to my livejournal. If you feel inclined, you may comment either here or there.]