erin

unplugging, sort of

I’m taking this week off from the internet. Mostly. I’ll be checking my e-mail but that’s about it.

Originally I’d intended to do this in order to cocoon myself into the Revisionland Hotel and get large amounts of stuff done rather than little bits and pieces.

Now I have the added bonus of also trying to rid myself of a horrendous head cold that’s been making me a miserable monkey all weekend. I hardly ever get sick and I don’t even remember the last time I felt this ill. My ears hurt.

So I shall be crawling into cups of tea and gargling with cayenne pepper (it works, seriously) and I will be back on Friday with flax-goldens.

If you need me for anything or the internet blows up or you want to send me virtual vitamin C, feel free to e-mail me.

Love & kisses,

e.

By erin, ago

flax-golden tales: perpetual teatime

perpetual teatime

perpetual teatime

My grandmother is a bit on the eccentric side. My father always says it’s because she has too much money, but he gets weird about money things so I’m not really sure that’s it.

I love to visit her house. When I was younger I’d play for hours in the backyard. In the garden there’s this table set for tea but everything is bronze, cups and books and teapot and even the tablecloth. When it rains the cups fill with rainwater and I remember it looked almost like tea to my younger self. I think I tried to drink it once, with some difficulty considering the cups don’t come up from the table.

I asked her about it recently, having gotten old enough to wonder where the table and its contents came from instead of just accepting it as it was. She told me that once it was a regular table and she and my grandfather would sit there and read with their tea every afternoon. After he died she couldn’t bear clearing it away and she hired someone to cover the whole thing in bronze, so their last teatime would stay there, always.

When I visit now I leave roses in the teacups.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

By erin, ago

on not writing

I have been trying to write all day and failing.

First I was trying to write in the ever-ongoing Revisionland Scrivener Document of Doom, but I have been looking at the same gap between paragraphs that needs to be sewn together somehow periodically all day and nothing is coming to me.

So then I said to myself, well, I’ll write something else. I haven’t blogged this week, I should come up with something to blog about.

And I sat and tried to think of something to blog about while listening to the rain and giving Bucket tummy rubs.

I got nothing.

Nada. Zip. It is just not a good word-brain day for me, apparently.

I have done other things. I adjusted the settings on my e-mail accounts. I deleted lots of old e-mails. I decoupaged the top of what will likely end up being a jewelry box. I listened to the rain & thought about revisions, even though I didn’t actually write.

I don’t believe in writer’s block, not really. At least not for me. But I do have days when the words don’t want to transmit properly from my brain to my keyboard, and apparently today is just one of those days, so far. Sometimes I write better at night, so we’ll see.

I did spend part of yesterday figuring out the plot of a long-languishing work-in-progress, completely unintentionally. So I might have tricked my brain out of revisionland and now it has to slowly meander its way back. Poor confused brain.

It’s hard to feel productive without wordcount as a measurement. It’s so easy, to say “yay, I wrote 2k today!” and feel accomplished. I know I can write 2k or more in a day when I’m just drafting, but revising is a different game and I’m still getting used to it. It’s about working in pages and paragraphs instead of thousands of words. Writing one really good sentence instead of lots and lots of sentences.

So I have to keep telling myself that even though I feel like I’m not making enough progress, not revising fast enough, I’m probably wrong. I’m being methodical and thoughtful about it. I am getting something done even when I’m just listening to the rain.

By erin, ago

flax-golden tales: sentinels

sentinels

sentinels

At first there were complaints about the noise. Not that anyone knows what the noise is, precisely, even though it is rather loud. Whatever it is inside the building, echoing and humming and clicking, remains a mystery.

The bits that spill out onto the surrounding lot are made of stone and glass and wood, pieces without any easily discernible function, sitting quietly while the echoing hum rumbles continuously on.

After a bunch of kids threw stones at the glass the noise stopped for about a day.

The next morning the odd-shaped glass bits that had been shattered were intact again and the eagles were there, keeping watch.

The stone throwing stopped. Everything stopped, really. The graffiti, the robberies, any sort of crime within several blocks just stopped that day and so far it hasn’t started up again.

No one complains about the noise anymore.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

By erin, ago

{cancer horoscope for week of february 18, 2010}

Once again, Rob Brezsny makes me feel better about my life:

“Jane Austen was the spinster daughter of a clergyman who led an uneventful life,” wrote Geoffrey Wheatcroft in The Guardian. “She just happened to write half a dozen flawless masterpieces, which came perfectly formed, not from experience but from imagination.” Most of us don’t have anything close to the inconceivably potent imagination that Austen possessed. But I believe 2010 will be a year when you can access at least a portion of that wondrous capacity. You’ll be able to fantasize about vast possibilities in exquisite detail. You will have great skill at smashing your way free of limiting expectations through the power of your expansive vision. And the coming weeks will be a time when it should all kick into high gear.

By erin, ago