The rains have moved back in, or at least the clouds. This pleases me. I was reading yesterday about theories that the sun is conscious and while that makes as much sense as anything else in the universe does, it also makes the big yellow ball fit the description of an Elder God and that’s hardly comforting. Of course the blessed thing powers all life on this whirling rock, so I suppose one can’t complain, but still…I prefer a bit of rain.
I’m in the middle of the Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation novels, which The Untamed is based on, and enjoying them roundly. A collection of Haruki Murakami stories, a translation of the Tao Te Ching, and Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey have all been thoroughly enjoyed lately. That last was an Experience–I hadn’t read Odysseus’s adventures since middle school, and Wilson’s an extremely gifted translator.
I did want to smack Telemachus several times, though. Boy needs to keep his manners on while talking to his mother, fa cry-eye. Even Achilles was nicer to his mum.
I might need more Murakami, I can’t tell yet. I read him while in specific moods until the itch is scratched, like listening to Jandek. Then I’m fine for a while, but at certain points I require another dose.
This is the part of book hangover (or snapback, as I call it) when I am irritated that recovery takes so goddamn long. No matter how much I pad out my estimation of time needed to re-wrap my nerves after a zero draft’s finish, it inevitably takes three times as much. It also requires a lot of “filling the well”, as Julia Cameron put it–giving the Muse and the rest of me enough grist for the creative mill. So I’ve been watching series and movies, and diving into the TBR like Bugs Bunny into a barrel of carrots. The massive effort to get a book out under significantly non-ideal circumstances does tell on one.
I mean, no circumstances are ever wholly ideal, but some are less ideal than others, to coin an Orwell-ism. I’m waiting for the swimming-relief phase instead of the merely exhausted-and-blinking bit. Boxnoggin likes that our daily rambles have become a bit slower, though I always let him sniff as long as he pleases at the usual spots. I’m just not moving very quickly otherwise.
However, work on the serial proceeds apace, as well as the short story collection, which has a cover now. (Long story short, the universe itself is conspiring to make me throw this collection out into public.) Other stuff will have to wait for an upcoming deadline; once that’s past I can engage in more and better planning. Of course Chained Knight and Gamble both need revising, and I should check in about Hell’s Acre again…
Ah, the reward for finishing a zero draft: more work. Still, I’m content to have it so. As long as there are more books to read–and to write–the gods can’t take me, right?
Right?