Again I am plagued with that feeling that I am not doing right. I worked out my weekly schedule hoping to allot time for all things I want to do, but I can see that there is still more to work out. There are some things I feel closer to eliminating from my life completely. When I cast my mind back to years before I can see that I was held in place by a routine and driven by a goal, and that somehow that work was happier than what I do now. I have never completely confronted the fact that I felt bereft on entering so unceremoniously "the real world." When I consider my strange behavior after college graduation it makes even more sense. I stayed up till 3 and 4 in the morning shopping on the Internet. I think I did not want to face the uncertainty. And now, I tend to do the same thing when I am confronted with uncertainty.

By all means, let me confront the uncertainty. Let me empty my closet of so many meaningless things now. Let me undo this tangle of things and uncertainty and wind my way back toward my point of origin. Let me remember. Let me be free. I am so afraid of facing unstructured time.

I feel like I came into the world somewhat overprepared. I can write good thesis papers, to what end? This world is so different. There is not the drive toward an end in a job the way there is in school. I think that's what it is for me. I think that's what I haven't gotten over. One day feels so much like the next. They flow together, and I find it frightening.

I have finished my first pass at Red Rose. I will stop my editing at that for the day. I am amazed that in such a short period of time I have made serious editions of Red Rose and The Awakening. It has been three weeks since I began my writing routine, and I can see now that with this kind of effort I will really produce something.

My ambition hasn't stopped there. Lately I have been building on my dreams to make a Heaven on Earth. Tonight I am cooking Moroccan chicken stew in the crock pot. The preparation has proved to be kind of intense, so next time I will omit the squash, unless I can find pre-cut pieces.

A Heaven on Earth is the home in my long-ago dreams. It is a place where sunlight filters through open windows, and wind blows the filmy curtains and makes the candles on the table and the mantel flicker. There are prisms hanging in the windows that throw colored light over the walls. Jars of honey and various projects of steeping and preserving are in the kitchen window. The kitchen window looks into a yard, where there are animals.

Labels: story notes

Today was my first day of vigilantly trying to keep my weekly schedule. Mon and Tues are writing, Wed is sewing, Thurs is Internet. It looks like weekends might be erhu, since my interest in playing is increasing.

Today—when I thought of the fact that I was going to write after work, I was filled with relief and happiness. This morning I woke with the dreadful feeling again. I wondered for the first time if that feeling arises because my writing is what I am supposed to do, and something deep within me knows that, and makes me miserable till I write. Because I definitely do not have that feeling when I write daily.

Today, I did not write. I edited the first twenty pages of Red Rose. After I am finished working on my stories every time, I feel like they are good. My post-apocalyptic stories, at least. I also got the idea for a new kind of romance. A post-apocalyptic like one. Setting romances in rustic scenes, like Amarillo, Route 66, Illinois, Kansas. Something deconstructed, mysterious, wandering, restless. They would be normal paperback romances. I don’t know why I cling to writing those, but I do. I feel like when I read the romances from a century ago, or three centuries ago, I feel the beat of those times in that romance just like I do in literary work. It is the same. Somehow I feel like that is what I should write, too. The romances, not the literary work. Maybe it is because I have an increasingly technical mind, I appreciate the formula, I want to refine it and fulfill it, rather than go out and make something totally unstructured.

My problem much of the time is that I can’t put an identity to my body of work. It has shifted in the past few years. It is not really like science fiction or fantasy I have read, but the emphasis is not on the romance, it is more a a gothic emphasis, discovery of past secrets.

Anyway, I feel more confident about Cambriel and Red Rose. Red Rose has a lot of revelance right now—it’s actually what is hot. It’s vampires and the Snow White fairy tale. That is an idea that could really sell. Cambriel unfortunately is so short now. I also sense as I am reading my writing that my prose is actually somewhat trite and uncomplicated. I want to take a closer look at that. I will leave things that require study for later and do what I know to do now. Right now I am editing for continuity and glaring errors, eliminating my overstatement, which I tend to do a lot. Cambriel is more interesting than Red Rose, but Red Rose is more intelligent. Cambriel, more romance and Red Rose, more science fiction/horror. The only thing I would really improve with Red Rose is the intelligence of the prose. With Cambriel, I sense I really need to bolster the story and give it a bigger identity. It’s a vagabond journey of sorts, not in keeping with the original Sleeping Beauty mythology. That bothers me, because I would like to see a parallel. Red Rose has an obvious Snow White mythology and the third book that I will write in November, The Empty City, has an obvious Beauty and the Beast mythology. Also, I don’t like the title Cambriel. It gets under my skin. I don’t know if I even like that for a last name. Maybe Cambria would be better. That reminds me of Percy Bysshe Shelley—not that he isn’t referenced plenty in the story already.

I thought of titling it The Awakening. I wonder how that would go. Too simple? I don’t know.

Labels: Red Rose, story notes

Pathway behind our apartment

Trinity River, near-dark

After dinner, we took an evening walk in the wooded area behind our apartment. We stayed too long and walked in the woods in the dark, and it was very dark by the time we reached home.

Labels: river legacy

Last night I made my preparations for the stew. I don't think I will ever cut another acorn squash again. It was way too hard, and I am way too clumsy. I said prayers the whole time and wasn't cut once. I was cut once but didn't bleed.

The onions and garlic were much easier to cut, and I blended the spices. When I get home all I will have to do is place it all together in the pot and hopefully do some editing.

I am so sorry that I didn't bring my laptop with me, because I ended up working late and know once I reach home my energy will give out, and there will be no editing. I have assigned myself instead a portion of The House of the Spirits, my third attempt on Isabel Allende.

I listened to Portrait in Sepia on audio. I liked it, but I think I would have been too fatigued by the prose to read it. Daughter of Fortune, of which Sepia was the sequel, I never could advance past page 10. I am taking on The House of the Spirits, and have reached page 20. Since it is part of my writer's assignment to myself, I'll read it on days like today, when I can't manage to work on writing.

Comments.

The South-American fantasists, Isabel Allende and Jorge Luis Borges.

So much narrative, so much back story, so much past-perfect tense. It's exhausting. What is the intent? I have often felt demeaned by the constraint of present convention, of describing the scene as it unfolds, movie-style. Allende is flaunting opposition to this openly, regressing perhaps to the style of the 18th-century gothic, where back-story, "telling," and long paragraphs make for an exhausting read. Now that I have read so many more of those, I think I am having an easier time with The House of the Spirits.

What is "telling?" Am I less engrossed in the story because so much of it is narrative? Unlike the 18th-century stories the narrative is punctuated by startling similes and details that capture my attention. I feel removed from the characters, not engrossed.

Fantastical beasts provide an apocalyptic sense. Clara's sister embroiders fantastical beasts into a tablecloth, while Clara has visions and owns a dog that grows to enormous size, with a very long tail. Borges wrote an encyclopedia of fantastical beasts. Characteristic of South American fantasists?

The only thing I have finished of Allende's is a short story called "The Goat-girl," about a girl who was part-goat and put to live in a yard. I edited a photo of myself with my goat into a smeary black and white and put in on MySpace some time ago, calling it "The Goat-girl," but no one really attended that.

In conclusion, I love the South American fantasists, want to read more of them, but their work is very hard to read. Borges' nonlinear fiction, The Garden of Forking Paths, I'm not sure I can take on. When I opened it it looked a lot like Finnegans Wake to me.

Victorian has evolved into a modern man for me, a stylish interior-decorator type rather than a romantic 19th century vagabond.

His house would be constructed of sturdy corrugated cardboard. I will decide what pieces I want to harvest from the recycling and preserve them. The exterior will be painted avocado green, the windows cut out with a box cutter. I will harvest his window panes from the hard plastic coverings from our electronics packaging. His rugs and hangings will be cross stitched. I can use my African or native inspired patterns for those. He will have lots of plants. I would love for him to have a rooftop vegetable garden and a solar panel. It will be really interesting if I can rig a small solar panel to furnish dollhouse circuitry with electricity. If not, he can do without electricity. His couches, bed, cushions could be made from my old clothes and stuffed with scraps. I could also try making much of his furniture from cardboard, at least a bookshelf and a bed frame. I could make his wardrobe from my old clothes as well of course.