Tangled Mind

is writer's block usually furry and attached to one with crampons? Or is this a vocabulary-fail?

I had intended to write some cheery fluff this afternoon, but ozymandias_cat had other plans for me, which did not include the proximity of either laptop or notebook/pen

Things done today:
- walk to shops with headphones on, first time in well over a month
- pack'n'post Folksy order
- sort out all craft debris, all of it, including categorising all small scraps of paper by colour.
- action all unactioned emails
- write up Inception
- decide Vistaprint no longer meets my needs
- design and order business cards / stickers on MOO
- take out rubbish
- tidy room, balcony
- take out more rubbish
- let cat through door (x many)

Things not done today which has been on to-do list, highlighted, all week:
- finish short story with a deadline of tomorrow

Things that progress this goal
- printing out story-so-far plus notes, so if necessary I can get going by retyping the last para, and will have notes in front of me

Things that do not progress this goal
- beating self up for laziness.

A while back, medusa suggested the Fair Unknowns project, in which she invited us "to be assigned a portrait and then write a short story for it, giving some of the incognitas of the art world a story at last. "
Here's mine.
( Virgo Persica )

Trying to think logically about the uneasiness engendered in me whilst reading portions of the current racism / Other / privilege debate.

I think what I'm most uncomfortable with, here and more generally, is the mixture of reaction to an author's work with reaction to that author. ("I don't like you": "I hope I never meet you": "I don't believe your apology".) It works the other way, too, with comments to the effect of "I won't read X's novels because of X's comments on this subject".

Over the last few years I have been attempting to think critically (in literary terms) about everything I read. There are some books where my emotional response overwhelms my critical response. This can go both ways. "There is something in this book that triggered a response in me that makes it hard to think critically about it" describes a book that irritates or distresses me to the point of not finishing it, and it also describes a book that sings to me -- perhaps because of a single character, a single resonant image, an idea that chimes with something from another context and starts a creative process for me.

I am reacting to the book, not to the author*. (Yes, of course book is product of author. But, to coin a phrase, it does not necessarily reflect the views of the author. Writing fiction about murder does not make me a murderer. Writing fiction about mad people does not ... oh, wait.)

I will happily argue about the book, about my reading of the content, about my assumptions about the author's intent. (What I read is not always what the author intended: when I write, people don't always read into my writing what I intended to put there.) These are my opinions and observations, my emotional reactions, my analysis. With some exceptions (internal inconsistency, poor proof-reading, factual inaccuracy) they are not objective. The author is not wrong, and nor am I. Either one of us (or both) might be misguided, overambitious, forgetful of detail, derivative, biased.

I have an array of bias: race, class, gender, nationality, political leaning, religious habits, mental health, age. They affect whatever I read and whatever I write. I try to minimise their negative effect. I try to notice their effect. I expect I'll be striving to balance them out for the rest of my life.

*interestingly, and embarrassingly, I am influenced in the other direction: if someone upsets or annoys me in person, I am somewhat less likely to come to their books with an open mind!

And considering it was 26K on Monday morning, and I haven't been writing at 100% capacity ... Well, it's all downhill from here, and I am looking forward to writing the next scene which is happy and has Biberesque music as a soundtrack.

but actually, I'm pretty confident about catching up with myself.

- tips and tricks? (like, how to avoid having four different choices at the foot of a page, with combined text that balances out the text in that section?)
- software to make it easier than simply creating x little HTML pages?

I have looked at Inscape, downloaded and played around with Inform and read the Wikipedia page on Interactive Fiction [these links here for my reference, not just to indicate Research] and read interesting piece on mission paths in Wing Commander (thanks, major_clanger!) but have not yet hit anything that is quite right for what I want to do. Which is basically a simple story with several 'decision points' at which different stories spin out. (Is there a technical term for this? Something vaguely quantum / alt.universe related?)

Which is grand, as I'm slightly ahead of target (from being nearly 4K behind on Wednesday) and it's only lunchtime.

I have a peculiar sort of earache, which I can best describe as the migrainey headache transplanted about 5cm left. It's hard to locate -- certainly not old-fashioned ache of inner ear, which I suffered from very badly as a child -- but very firmly in one place: problem is, the place where it feels as though it is, is outside my skull. Perhaps I have an invisible antenna or other sense organ protruding from my left temple, and it's an ache in that?

On the subject of invisible things, I realised yesterday that I was still suffering the hallucinations (or visualisations) that came with the migraine-or-whatever. Trust me, the middle lane of the M25, about to enter the Dartford Tunnel, is not a good time for this realisation. Very entertaining it was, though. Shiny and weird.

this next bit may sound slightly weird.
Given that many of my hallucinations are of people, I was vaguely hoping that a visit to St Peter's Chapel would produce ghosts themed hallucinations. It didn't. Though that in turn produced a story-germ, which I have dutifully scribbled.

Right: must be time to get up and go out for some fresh air, though possibly not as fresh as yesterday. Also to get ache out of bones. I'm still aching quite a lot from the tense muscles that so often accompany migraine attack. (And still feeling nauseous and randomly sleepy. This is a week after initial attack. Stop now kthx.)

- book reviews written today: 2 (Dream Angus, The Virtu -- over here)
- favourite fantasy novels reread today: 0
- words of Nanowrimo written today: 4255
- time spent online without agonising headache: over an hour and counting.