reading block
Sorry for the lack of updates lately… for the last month or so, I’ve been hit with a really severe reading block.
Not really a writing block (though I haven’t done much of that, either). It’s more of a sick listlessness that I get when I pick up a book. Part pessimism, part weariness, part complete lack of attention span. I’m not sure why. It might be the season. It might be that the snowcrete (snow partially melted, then frozen to a rock-hard shell) and isolation have kept me indoors and the lack of exercise and sunlight are getting to me… Maybe depression, maybe stress, maybe literary burn-out. Maybe everything combined.
Have you ever had a dream in college where you suddenly realized that you had signed up for one extra class, but then forgot about it, and never attended and it’s almost time for the final? I’ve been having that dream in reverse. I dream that there was one other class that I was supposed to teach, but forgot all about, and my students have been without an instructor for weeks.
Anyway, this blog may go into hibernation mode until that changes.
Cheers!
happy singles awareness day!
Alright, I’m a day early. It’s probably tomorrow off in Russia, though, so the title stays.
This is just a short update on the novel progress. I’m now sitting at 92,645 words. I’ve just finished chapter eleven last night. I’ve got two more chapters before the book is done, so I’m predicting that this draft will hit about 105k. 1,000 words a day, and I should be done before March.
Also, I’m very pleased with my reveal. I’d been worried about handling it right. Now for the grand finale!
Oh, and happy singles awareness day. 
short story interlude
I visited a writing group this morning. It was about what I expected– six conservative hating women in their fifties and sixties, writing off of prompts cut out of magazine clippings. I’m not sure that I at all fit in with them, but the practice is appreciated. We wrote to six prompts, each 6-8 minutes, and I thought that I’d share my best with you.
Mr. Thompson was a gentleman, as far as society was concerned. He wore a silk top hat with a black ribbon about the base, and his coat was brushed and pressed to a crisp. Intellectualism was the norm for the wealthy aristocracy, but I couldn’t help feel that Mr. Ezra Thompson took it too far when he invited me for tea and showed me his doomsday device.
It weighed fifty-ton and ran off of steam, he told me. Brass fittings with giant bolts and gears, the monstrosity of destruction took up the whole of his workshop.
“It is… interesting,” I said.
“It is amazing, Miss Dellia! The greatest invention of our time, perhaps!”
I wasn’t so sure. “Does it play games? There is an automaton… a machine that plays chess in the form of a Turk, I’d heard. Austrian make, perhaps?”
“No.” Mr. Thompson appeared put-out.
“Does it take snap shots, or inform one of the state of the weather?”
He confessed that it did neither.
“Well, what good is a devise that can neither play a game, nor take a snapshot, nor give one the weather? No, no, no, my dear Mr. Thompson, you must keep working.”
And he nodded, and set about redesigning the machine once more with the air of a scolded dog.
I’ll save the world yet.
