Spillt Ink

I've been reading a dated, main-stream book upon writing character.  I'm reading it more for the authorial tone than for any help it has been giving me upon writing character the way I want to write character.  Because I want to write character where the writing of character is invisible.  This is tricky business.  Although the opposite is true too.  I mean if you can write invisible character development, well, when you're doing all mighty and bold, that says something.  (I'm laughing at this, you can do, if you want.)

I've also been thinking about poetry discussion.  (Because of that post I made and the comment that came back.)  Half of the time, I'm saying to myself that the person had what I said all wrong.  Half of the time, I'm saying to myself that the subject matter is too singular.  I'm a boulder.  I think that too.

There is also steampunk, which I love but seem to not to be able to write at all.  I want a world of chunky robotic creatures, maybe their own world.  They should be woodland animals.  A sort of animal world, maybe with children.  And the Green Man.   

Somewhere in my reading last week, (I thought it was in Weird Tales, but when I went back and looked for it, no, it wasn't where I thought it'd been) I read death ends love.   For when one is dead, they no longer have the ability to love, to love anyone or anything.

• Paper dragons (and shadow puppets)

• "My best friend is a brick wall.  Sometimes, at night, I sit beside him and read him stories in French.  The stories are always fairy tales and they always end sadly for the children."

• The carnival story with the fortune teller should hold detail in the tent canvas and the seer isn't the psychic.  The visions are of a man with substance abuse problems.  (See its twofold again!)

• Jungle foliage.  The name of plants, the amount of sun and shade, poisonous, and the creatures within.

The woman had been having arguments with her teenaged daughter.  They were arguing about a boy.  A boy that the woman believed was not only wrong for her daughter, but dangerous as well.  This boy tried to control her daughter.  He told her what clothes to wear, what friends she could have, where she could go and when she could go.  When the woman was asked what the her daughter saw in this boy, she replied in her daughter's voice, in a high-pitched, quickly given chant, "I love him I love him I love him," then in a quiet voice, a voice overwhelmed with disappointment, the woman said, "She says she loves him."

After reading "Retrospect" by Miller in Feb's F&SF, thoughts.

There's always a cabal, a group of usually all men, usually all of a mature age, gathering together in a back room or a living room or a deserted library, discussing whatever it is that is related to the story.  Maybe smoking, pipes or cigars, maybe drinking something from heavy glassware or heavy coffee cups, an elite community and where are the women?  Maybe they're in a bookclub, or they're composed of shoppers, gathering together for lunch, or dinner, their makeup perfect, their purchases clustered like small animals at their feet, their voices animated, their expressions quick, fleeting, except for one, there is always one, maybe the same one every time, the one with the problem, the problems, and the problem/s are always socially related; a boss, a lover , her mother/father/demanding-dependent-sibling.  Nothing about about the nature of the universe, although it is the universe on a macro scale, but nothing about ghosts or ghost stories (unless you count the ex-lovers, the deceased parents), nothing about the changing world or changing the world to change the situation.  And, maybe, maybe, maybe there should be.  

*note that with Miller's cabal there is a woman within the predominately male group.

Elemental search for possibility. I'm thinking dresses. Like this one. And others. Something's there, I haven't found it just yet. But I'm looking.

This morning, in my search of the items on my bedside table for my camera, I found a handful of pennies, two dimes and a nickel, a wee Pik-a-chu, a tiny glass bottle with a red cap, a miniature castle, clippers (four kinds), reading glasses, a tiny porcelain bird, two kinds of nuts and bolts, a flashlight with wornout batteries, two candles, a deck of playing cards, three pay stubs, 4 ink pens (all out of ink), a clear bottle of Frank & Myrrh oil, Christmas stamps, two wee cones of incense, rechargeable batteries and the rechargeable battery charger (without the necessary cord to make it work), a crystal crescent moon, a hemp bracelet, a flash drive and my camera. The camera needs its battery recharged.

The fortune in the cookie said, "Cut your losses.  You waited long enough."

The reverse side said, "Sympathize."