cobweb
It is lovely in its simple complexity.
A methodical tangle of string.
Airy and weightless. Fragile.
Until you touch it and it won’t let go.
They call it a web, but it is more than that.
It is a boundary. It is a cage.
To keep things in.
To keep things out.
About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.
I am so close to the end of revisionland I could throw rocks at whatever land it is that lies beyond revisionland from here.
Technically, I don’t have any more writing-writing left. But there is ordering and formatting and fun stuff like that between here and the point of done-done so it doesn’t feel finished yet.
It doesn’t feel finished in general, actually. There’s something missing that I can’t quite put my finger on. I’m hoping my team of fabulous beta readers will be able to help with that, and I’ll be able to give it another post-beta polish after they read it.
But for now it is index card time! I am sure most writers do this in outlining phases, but in my wacky, non-linear way I seem to have made a habit of writing out of order and worrying about how to put all the pieces together after the fact.
I’ve added and dropped enough sections from the previous draft that I have some serious reordering to do. So I made all new index cards.
They’re color-coded by type of chapter (circus tents proper got to be silver this time around, because metallic silver Sharpie is always good times) and then color-coded again by which characters are featured. These still need dates written on them, I have those broken down on a list (in approximate book order and again chronologically.)
Tomorrow I get to spread them all out on the floor and play the “no, this has to come before that” and “too much of this character in this area” and “Bucket, stop sitting on the index cards” game. It’s a good game, until kittens start eating the cards.
I am so ready to hand this off to the beta brigade, and distract myself with tarot kings and NaNoWriMo planning while I wait for feedback.
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About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.
We’ve had a very busy, very long weekend.
Thursday night we went to see Moby at the House of Blues. I’d never seen him in concert before but I listened to Play practically non-stop when it first came out and his new album, wait for me, is marvelous, so the boy & I decided it might be fun. It was phenomenal. Quite possibly the best concert ever and it just kept going and going. And Moby is seriously adorable. Go see him if you get a chance. Highly recommended. (And hopefully you won’t have people loudly discussing BC football standing behind you the way we did.)
Friday night we went to the boy’s cousin’s wedding, which was sweet and fun even though the cake was elusive. But for two nights in a row we didn’t get home until about 1:30am. So we’ve been pretty tired.
Rather than sitting around all day yesterday, I suggested we take advantage of the lovely weather and run around outdoors. Our original plan was to go apple picking, but that was apparently also the plan of every other person in New England yesterday, so instead we ended up wandering around Den Rock Park for a couple of hours.
It’s really lovely, and we had great light for it. There’s a beaver pond (we saw a goose, but no beavers) and a river and tall rocks and absurd amounts of acorns. We saw two little snakes and a lot of ferns and I took a bunch of photos. It was a relaxing way to spend the day (and so quiet! We only encountered a handful of other people walking around, and one very pretty dog) after all the raucous late nights.
And then we came home and made apple crisp. There are more photos on my Flickr photostream (of the park, not the crisp). Today is grey and rainy and not so photogenic. I am packing up my wine and cookies to take back with me to revisionland, where I will be pretty much full-time for the next two weeks.
hallowed halls
I had a dream last night that I was in college again. Not college-as-it-was, but college-as-it-might-have-been.
With old wood and ivy and bricks and the paper-musty smell of books that have been read over and over and over again.
Frozen in that time when graduation would never come, stalled in coffee cups and GPAs and Times New Roman twelve point possibilities.
Stained with ink and oil paint and tears and laughs and lack of sleep.
Measuring by semesters instead of seasons and it would never be over, never be older.
The way it always never was.
In between classes. In between worlds. Sitting on stairs bathed in golden light.
About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.
