Today’s quotation comes from Boundrose:
I find this very, very easy to forget. There are loads of things I forget every day, but this should never be one of them.
What about you – do you need reminders to keep pushing forward? What form do your reminders take?
(c) 2017. All rights reserved.
Have you ever had a book hangover? You know, where you devour a most excellent novel (or series), and then suddenly, it’s over, and you don’t know how to deal with the loss?
I am so there right now. Except the cause of my hangover isn’t a book this time, but a movie.
This movie: behind the cut!
She could feel it burrowing inside her; the earworm was nothing if not persistent, and it had lodged itself firmly within her brain before cranking up the volume to eleven. Pretty soon, the bright and brassy sound of a new age jazz tune was the only thing she could hear; its rhythm pulsed through her, and she couldn’t stop her toes from tapping along in time. Though she tried – oh, how she tried – to stifle the urge, the day finally came when she could no longer keep from singing; she threw herself up onto the stage and belted out the earworm’s tune, and the thunderous applause made the months of torture worth every minute.
(c) 2017. All rights reserved.
She crouched over his body on the floor. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be happily ever after. He’d sold her a fairy tale, a life she’d barely been able to imagine.
And now he was dead.
They had had only a month together, hardly enough time in which to give her the moon and the stars like he’d promised. He’d sold her a fairy tale, a dream he could not make true.
And now he was dead.
The wind carried her anguish to the hills, swirled her bitter tears out to sea. The trees bent beneath her wails, snapping and cracking like his bones, creaking and groaning like the bones of her house.
When the freak storm finally passed, her neighbors found her frozen in the rubble, still crouched over his body, and thought how sweet it was that they had perished together.
(c) 2017. All rights reserved.
“Fare thee well, my love,” the old man whispered.
The love of his life lay broken on the beach below, hair splayed out like rays from the sun, and he thought as he plummeted toward her that he’d never seen her look more beautiful.
Photo courtesy of Purple128 and Flickr’s Interesting Photos section. 🙂
(c) 2017. All rights reserved.
It was rainy and dreary here on Monday, then foggy as anything yesterday morning. Nothing inspires me quite the way fog and rain do, especially at this time of year. Add to that “Gretchen am Spinnrade,” which has been getting a lot of play on my iPod, and I quickly found myself in Inspiration City. This piece has been brewing for a couple of days, and I hope you like it. 🙂
The steady beat of the rain on the glass echoed the steady beat of her tears on the floor. The fog on the lake mirrored the fog in her soul, and she wore it the way she’d have worn a comfy old coat. If she could just find him, she could make him see. If she could just find him, then she’d be free.
But the fog hid more than her drooping frame, and the rain did wash freedom’s sun away. She searched through the windows, tore open the door, but the fog hid her love forevermore. She climbed up the mountain, looked high and low, but the fog hid everything in the valley below.
Then a flash caught her eye and without hesitation, she stepped into the sky. She dove toward the lake where he’d rested his head on a pillow of stone, with sand for a bed. But a trick of the light was all it had been, and the freezing cold water welcomed her in. The bitter blue waves stole every breath; with tears in her eyes, she at last greeted Death.
The steady beat of the rain on the glass echoed the steady beat of her tears on the floor. The fog on the lake mirrored the fog in her soul; she wore it the way she’d have worn a comfy old coat. If she could just find him, she could make him see. But she never could find him; she’ll never be free.
(c) 2017. All rights reserved.
Work on my novel continues…slowly. I’m my own worst critic, I know, but it’s very hard to turn that inner critic off.
Still, I didn’t think this bit was all that bad:
It was then that he noticed the silence. Riverdell was a small, quiet town, but it had nothing on this place. Even on the quietest night in Riverdell, there was always traffic thrumming in the distance. Electricity sang through the power lines; streetlights hummed on otherwise dark streets; kids toting stereos pumped up the bass loud enough to rattle a whole building.
There was none of that here. There was only the wind in the trees here, tall grass waving in the breeze, a cricket choir backed by a bug band singing him to sleep.
It was another beautiful day here today, and the warmth of the sun has been most welcome. I hope you’re all having a fantastic weekend!
(c) 2017. All rights reserved.
I’m home from work today with a sick little Thumper bunny and taking advantage of the unexpected time off to catch up on a bit of writing. I’m working on revisions for another novel, and it’s not going as well as I’d initially thought it would. There’s so much more to cut than I’d first thought: trying to keep it to one POV per scene is a major challenge.
I’ve been fiddling around with these books for a good decade. I even queried them a few years ago, but didn’t get anywhere. That, of course, happened long before I decided that one book should become two, but even then it was a hot mess. It’s still a hot mess, but at least I think I’ve grown as a writer since then. I still feel like the head-hopping isn’t such a big deal, but others (okay, pretty much everyone else) disagree, so I’m changing it.
And it’s hard. So very, very hard.
Silencing my diligent and devoted inner literary critic is even harder.
I saw this week’s Discover Challenge post about transcribingmemory about a day after I had discovered the site for myself. Being a huge fan of diaries, and having kept diaries of my own since I was eight, I knew this was a challenge I could have a lot of fun with. I may not be nearly as devoted to my diaries as I was before I had kids, but I do still write in them every now and then, and this challenge provided me with the kick in the pants I needed to sit down and read through some of my old, old, OLD writing once again.
I learned a few things from reading my old diaries, like…
As I was scrolling through Facebook tonight, I happened upon the following picture:
That could be fun, I thought. I’ll give it a try.
It seems simple enough, right? Ah, but coming up with the perfect potato title…
Suddenly they all died. The end. 