At last, after not really being able to do anything productive in the evening or at night, I've finished A Clash of Kings, the second volume in the Song of Fire Ice series by George R.R. Martin.

I'm relieved - because now I can start writing and taking care of my growing list of to do's again - but saddened as well, because I have to admit that I was completely entranced by the author's grand tale of political intrigue and personal tragedy. More on what I liked so much later...

(I'm writing this from Google Documents, as a test).

I haven't posted anything for a while, for a variety of reasons:

1. Reading. Yes, I've been reading. Lots of reading - rather than writing. I was a voracious reader in my teens and tweens, right until our son was born. I kind of stopped making time for reading then, but now, as I picked up my pen and tried to write stuff of my own, I realised I had gotten out of touch with the voices that I love, with the stories that make me ache and burn inside.

So I started reading again. I finished Gibson's Spook Country, which had been lying around for a while, rushed through A Game of Thrones (and am now barreling on in volume two of A Song of Fire and Ice) and now, ten minutes ago, turned the last page of Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book. More on that later, I'm still too touched to analyse why it resonates so profoundly with me.*

2. Life. Work in times of Depression. Things that interfere and take away my drive to create.

3. Rewriting Total Immersion based on some valuable input from the SFF Writing Workshop people.

* Still listening to Sigur Ros, also to their previous album Takk, which is even more dramatic and makes for a great soundtrack to George RR Martin's epic fantasy!

My literary prowess is growing by the hour. I have just received my second rejection for Total Immersion - hurrah. Well okay, maybe I'm not quite feeling that hurrah deep down, but still, I am somewhat proud to have received a personal rejection this time.

Chris East from Futurismic sent me a little e-mail that commented on the writing and the story, and in short it came down to "there's some good stuff there but it's not up to par throughout". 

And you know what, I cannot agree more. I really have to sit down, go through the second half of the story and give a good, critical edit. In my hurry to get my stuff out there, I never paid as much attention to the second part of this short story as I did to the first half. I knew that, but I still sent it out, violating one of the basic tenets of writing as testified everywhere on the net, i.e. "Write, edit until polished, and only then submit".

The Futurismic editor did include the magical comment "We hope to see more of your work", which, if I can believe what various editorial blogs out there have taught me, really does mean they would like to see more (better) work. 

Time to start writing in earnest again, I suppose. After my previous writing post I haven't really written much, I've been chewing on some plot hooks that have going in circles in that foul broth of half-baked ideas and unrounded characters that is my mind at the moment. But I feel as though a few of them are nearing the point where I can sit down and write. Fingers crossed!

Excellent stuff by Maureen Dowd on the NY Times website. If you studied some Latin, that is!

I always loved weird literal translations like this. In fact, I once had a colleague with whom I had a deal to only send Babelfish'ed messages to each other... Hilarious stuff! Write your mail in English, then push it through Babelfish into another language you know. Or better, have it round-tripped into English :-) 

I've been struggling to write at anything close to a decent page these past few weeks. A paltry three, four hundred words here and there. At first I couldn't figure out why I slowed down so badly, while writing my first two stories I could maintain a higher pace. But now I think I've figured it out.

The thing is, you see, that I've been trying to follow other people's process. People whom I admire, true, but still, not my own process. I think I have to conclude that writing without knowing at the least the beginning, middle and end of the plot does not work for me. And as a consequence, I cannot write "a story a week" like some others, blessed with more creative minds perhaps, have been doing. So for me it's back to the drawing board, back to hammering out an acceptable outline of a plot before I commit myself to the actual writing.

Also, I've fallen in love with Sigur Ros and their latest album, Med Sud i Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust really has the kind of mood that makes me want to write epic fantasy instead of mundane SF. Whoda thunkit?

Story: The Singer Unsung (working title)

Word count: 300

Total word count: 1690

Reason for stopping: still not sure of where to take the plot. I know the boy is going to lose his friend, the only question is how and when.

To come back to writing process, I find that listening to some mood-setting music on my good pair of headphones is about the only way to get over my innate fear of failure, my automatic self-censoring mechanism that refrains me from writing freely. I'll try and use that to write sooner in the evening, which should give me some more time and allow me to go beyond a few hundred words per day. Should being the key word here. Oh well.

To me, it was a straight Joe Biden win. Palin did not screw up the way she did in the Couric interviews, but she was unable to hide that she really has no knowledge of her own on any of these topics, never mind having developed her own views.

Really, moderators in debates like this should have the guts to stop the whole thing until the candidates answer the questions. "I am not going to answer this question, instead I'll speak to the American people about..." I mean come on. Try that on an exam in college... :)