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Running on the beach and making peace with the water gods
Making peace with the waves, and finding deeper meaning through personal achievements.
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Byron was a handsome scoundrel
By Richard Westall (died 1836) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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A great and torturous circle
“Oh, Joss, it’s a great and tortuous circle. We have found each other, time and again, across time and across worlds. Which of us began which poison? I am, and am not, a product of my own mind. I was shaped, as you were shaped. Sraosha trained up Verta, and Verta trained up me—and I found you. And we fight and hate and wound and take down entire worlds with us, century after century. And for what purpose? Do we truly make world better? Or are we simply forces of destruction? I have to believe there is some reason to all of this, some greater plan, some great melody that…
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Look into my brain, why don’t you?
Pinterest and a poem from Watcher of the Skies.
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Blake Illustrates Shakespeare
Yeah, that pretty much sums up where things are at the moment. And then things are going to get really, really bad. Ah, writing.
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Happily lost in the weeds: balance and the writer’s life
Sometimes balance in the writer's life comes in odd places.
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Writing Stories With Dinnerware
Writing Stories With Dinnerware I wrote this piece for GeekMom last night, and thought it also pertained to writing. So thought I’d share here!
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O For a Life of Sensations
Indeed, I’ve been busy. I started the new job a month ago, and it’s been honestly quite awesome. There hasn’t been much in the way of writing, but I’m okay with that. I’ve found that it’s best to be realistic about these things. I had a brief moment of insanity where I thought that it might be a good idea to try and finish Watcher of the Skies in time for my daughter’s first birthday (marking two books since she was born) and then I laughed a while and poured myself another glass of wine. I had a visit from my best friend, Karen, all the way from Arizona. And she,…
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Current Meditation: Keats to Benjamin Bailey, 22nd November, 1817
Keats often puts it better than I can even begin. Some of my favorite bits: I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of Imagination – What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth – whether it existed before or not – for I have the same idea of all our passions as of love: they are all, in their sublime, creative of essential beauty. And: O for a life of sensation rather than of thoughts! It is a ‘Vision in the form of Youth,’ a shadow of reality to come. And this consideration has further convinced me, – for…
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The Art of the Matter
Since beginning the journey of writing Watcher of the Skies, I’ve spent a great deal of time looking at things. Yes, I did the same for the previous book, especially considering that the main character herself was something of an aesthete. But because this novel takes place over decades, and the first was just a few weeks (depending on your particular perception of time, of course) it takes a different approach. Not to mention it stays in the secondary world the entire time (well, mostly, ha)–and so, where with Pilgrim I was describing the world from her eyes, as a visitor, I’m steeping myself in Regency/Romantic stuff. One of the pathways I’ve…
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…a brief thought on writing alternate history
Sometimes it only takes one ripple in the water to change the shore.
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Exploring the Edges: Writing Outside the Boundaries
Write what you know may be the most hackneyed advice out there. And, well, it really isn’t that well informed. Yes, writing the things you know about–especially when you’re starting out–are safe bets. Keeping to the zone of your knowledge means that you’ll likely not be called out as a fraud and that you’ll keep going because, well, you already know about it. And as writers we have a tendency to cluster around the things that inform our existence. It’s why I wrote about New England in the beginning of Pilgrim of the Sky, even though I haven’t lived there in over a decade. It was part of my own origin…
