Good and bad. But the good wins.

 

Hellhounds ate lunch.  This hasn’t happened in WEEKS.*  And they followed this up by eating dinner**.

Almost everything else has gone awry but my priorities are clear.  Hellhounds who eat are crucial to my mental and emotional health.  Which you can therefore imagine have been a little thin on the ground lately.***

I was supposed to sing today, and I got a laconic text from Oisin at about noon, saying that he’d forgotten about another (better paid) accompanist gig later in the afternoon and could I make it early?  —Erm.  No.  I had a bad night even by my standards† and was still in the mainlining caffeine, how does this strange grey†† clamshell box with a keyboard on one side work exactly?, stage.  Singing was hours away.

About two hours later I got a text from Niall asking if I wanted a lift to handbells at Gemma’s.  HANDBELLS?  NOBODY TOLD ME THERE WERE HANDBELLS SCHEDULED TODAY.

I didn’t make that either.  However, I have hauled Kes through some further (metaphorical) hedgerows today.  And the hellhounds have eaten TWO MEALS IN A ROW.  YAAAAAAAAAY.

Nat

Why do they never ask ‘How do you winnow down all the thousands of ideas you have into ones that ring true for you?’

Well, and that ring loudly enough and to a melody you have some chance of learning—to stretch an analogy till it whines and wriggles and begs for mercy †††.  It’s not just the ideas, as you say:  it’s finding the one(s) that you can do something with.  SHADOWS, for example, would be likelier to be provided with a sequel if I knew more quantum physics and were fluent in Japanese.  It’s not usually that straightforward—and I daresay I could find people to tutor me—but the fit between writer and idea, however good the idea is in an absolute sense, is also frelling CRITICAL.  Think of Rudyard Kipling writing one of Jane Austen’s stories.  Or JRR Tolkien one of Diana Wynne Jones’.  Or Peter one of mine or me one of Peter’s.

Surely there’s only so many times you can write variants of ‘I stare blankly into space and try to remember not to drool’ to the dreaded ‘Where do your ideas come from?’.

Yes.  And I passed it years ago.  . . . Furthermore I don’t even bother trying to remember not to drool any more.  I have dogs;  everything I own is washable.

Jmeadows

That list. . . .

*shovels chocolate into face*

Most of these have happened to me and I’ve only been published for a couple of years. I’m trying to imagine what it must be like after *mumble* years and all I want to do is eat more chocolate.

Yes.  Well.  I stay home a lot.  I might also recommend weaning yourself onto carrots.  Excellent things, carrots.  I eat a lot of them.  Arrrrgh.

PamAdams

Sigh. I think I’d boycott the bookstore as well–perhaps we could sic the hellterror on it.

WHAT A GOOD IDEA.  SHE’D HAVE A GREAT TIME.  Pity it’s kind of far away.  But I am much attracted to a vision of the hellterror whacking the ankles of Clerk of Infamy with the long hard plastic wand that is her present favourite toy and—ow—being invited to play hurts.  Also, everything in range is destroyed.  Who bought this blasted toy anyway?  —Oh.  I did.

Blondviolinist

Reading that list? Chucking stones at wild cats sounds safer. A tiger isn’t going to spend time thinking up a thousand horrible ways for you to die.

It’s not the thinking you need to worry about.  It’s other aspects of applied creativity you might want to consider.

Gwyn_sully

springlight wrote on Fri, 13 December 2013 09:51


  some books just deserve bookshelf space.

This is true… of course it implies that I have any bookshelf space to give it. I am forbidden from buying more books unless I first buy more bookshelves. And since I currently have no space for more bookshelves, this is an issue.

‘Forbidden’?  By whom?  Tell them that the hellgoddess is looking at them in a hard and meaningful manner and that, furthermore, you’re a member of her personal forum and it is RUDE not to own all her books in hard copy.

3rdragon

Okay, now I’m REALLY curious to know who Author X is. Just to know.

I suppose it could be just about anyone, really, depending on which of Robin’s books one starts with. Or the pool of anyones who write well enough that *someone* thinks their writing is awesome. Which, given the range of people in the world, doesn’t limit the field very much.

Yes.  Or no.  Apologies.  I shouldn’t tease you like this but I obviously can’t tell you who.  It’s just SUCH a SPECTACULAR story of what morons people can be.  And as for which book of mine . . . other people who have read both X and Y scratch their heads and say they don’t see any particular similarity, beyond fantasy and girls who do things.

Ajlr

No, no, no, no. Not to worry. This is a McKinley story, right? Can you   possibly imagine that I would let anything dreadful happen to Sid?

There are some things in life that one has total confidence in.

Oh good.  It’s not that I won’t kill off major characters if the story totally MAKES me.‡  Just . . . for someone with as PROFOUND A CASE OF CRANKY as I have, I write awfully warm and fuzzy stories.  It’s a curse.

* * *

* There is a God.  Er.^

^Have I told you Peter’s heresy?  (Peter who is not a Christian, and doesn’t mind Nicky Gumbel as much as I do because he wasn’t expecting much.+)  Peter suggests that God is both omnipotent and omniscient . . . but not at the same time.  You have to admit it would explain a lot.

+ Now that it’s too late, DOZENS of people are coming out of the woodwork, including a few on the forum, and saying, Oh, I never got on with Nicky Gumbel either!  —Oh.  Well.  The most useful thing anyone has said to me is to remember that it’s not merely that his lowest-common-denominator delivery is getting on my nerves, what he is presenting is only one take on Christianity.  I’m allowed to think ‘um, er, no,’ not merely ‘stop talking about your frelling squash game, okay?’

I wonder if I could get out my knitting?  I have a genuine reason for not wanting to look at the screen;  the backdrop is this vivid swirly orangey pink, which I would like fine in a cardigan but as your speaker’s background it starts to make me feel queasy.  That could be the presentation . . . but I think it’s the colours on a TV screen.

** There’s still supper to go wrong but we can live in hope for a few hours.

*** May I just bore you a minute by mentioning again how much I hate force feeding?  It beats their not eating by a big fat^ margin—if hellhounds miss a meal they will absolutely, guaranteed refuse the next one, and the one after that:  and by the third missed meal in a row they are lying listlessly in their bed and refusing to come out—but I HATE.  IT.  I had given up on lunch for the moment—hellhound digestion moves in enigmatic cycles;  lunch would become possible again some unknown time in the future—beyond a couple of dragooned mouthfuls so their stomachs aren’t empty and there’s some hope therefore they’ll eat dinner.  But I have to go LA LA LA LA LA LA very loudly and think about something else.  And Darkness’ latest placatory ritual to some other dark gods, since it’s certainly not me he’s trying to get on the good side of with this behaviour, is that he will ONLY eat, supposing he eats at all, if I force the first mouthful down his throat.  AAAAAAAAAAUGH.  He will actually lie there staring at me, waiting for me to do my part in ENABLING him to eat.

Moan.

^ ::Hollow laughter::

† Well, I’d had what I thought was this clever idea of getting all my tender plants outdoors the night before, since it was now mmph o’clock and the thermometer wasn’t going anywhere threatening, and I sleep, or anyway ‘sleep’, through all those early morning prime photosynthesizing hours, but during the ferrying process in the dark I had an Unfortunate Encounter with some hellterror crap . . . tiny turds that roll away from the main event look a lot like the courtyard gravel and are sometimes missed on pick-up even in daylight . . .  adrenaline is never your friend at mmph o’clock when there are faeces involved.

†† The moment I was most tempted to swap my PC for a Mac, with the unimaginable technological horror this would produce, was when they started making pink Macs.  Sigh.  Sanity prevailed, which is to say my computer angels support PCs, not Macs.

††† Not unlike hellhounds presented with food and a grim, determined hellgoddess.

‡ I still occasionally get furious mail from people who thought I’d’ve written a nice Robin Hood retelling, about the aftermath of the battle with Guy of Gisbourne in OUTLAWS.  I didn’t like it either, okay?  Just keep reminding yourself that even though I don’t get that far, I promise my Robin does not die through the treachery of a WOMAN.