I know they are called Dog Days because of the prominence of the Dog star in the night sky (presently I am too knackered to go out and admire Sirius, Lyra and Aquila and other summer stars), but when I see Bernard, our cat stretched out on the lawn, often on his back with his paws above his head, eyes closed, and just a glimpse of his tooth between his little black lips, I think cats are the real high summer animal.
I am having a jolly nice time just now. Apart from a couple of mildly important domestic matters, I am largely free of any major tasks (I want to revise The Ash Grove, but that isn't urgent), so I have been seeing friends, which is always agreeable. Actually, that isn't true - it can be exceptionally disagreeable to see a friend who has an idee fixe that one doesn't agree with - and I spent about 20 minutes this arvo remaining resolutely silent about a certain matter. That aside, life has been very agreeable - I noticed today a Facebook post about "people interested in discussing political ideas" and realised that at present the last thing I want to do is discuss political ideas - maybe in September - but not now. It's just over a year since I joined the LP and attended the first local SUTU meeting - I confess I haven't been doing much since the election, because I've been writing and it has been a blessed relief.
The writing has reached the unpleasant point where the euphoria of having finished the first draft has finished, and while feeling pleasantly undaunted by the prospect of revising and re-writing - one begins to wonder what will happen if it meets the same enthusiastic lack of interest the others have experienced, if it will ever get published, and all the fond hopes that one had had on completion of the work seem to be nothing but egotistical fantasy. But this time I did feel I was beginning to get the hang of it all, the writing lark I mean. It is far from being a work of "extraordinary genius" - it may be more commercial than literary - although I hope it has enough resonances to last a little longer than some of the books I've read recently. I was introduced to the concept of "alterity" last night - or rather the word for it - I was aware of the idea, I just don't know what the current academic/theoretical names for things are. Anyway, in literature it was described as being "magical realism lite" - which I rather liked. I would hesitate to describe The Malice of Fairies as magical realism exactly. M has always snorted that there is too much "magical" stuff in my other works. This is monstrously unfair - I wish it were so.
Anyway, on the whole I have been having a more interesting conversations than usual, and I have also been reading proper books: I just finished Station Eleven by Emily St John Mendel, and now I'm reading Half a Yellow Sun by Chimananda Og something - it's a slightly unusual Nigerian name which I didn't catch easily. I am terribly tempted to just go and tear books out of the shelves and read them all day. I wish I had an intellectual project to research - this often a good time of year to study something, but I don't. So I will just continue this brief period of self-indulgence before the wrath of autumn falls on us. That will be time enough to get started on something else - maybe time to start researching the non-fiction project. It would make a nice change, and there is no real urge to write any more fiction at present - although I have plenty of ideas.
I am having a jolly nice time just now. Apart from a couple of mildly important domestic matters, I am largely free of any major tasks (I want to revise The Ash Grove, but that isn't urgent), so I have been seeing friends, which is always agreeable. Actually, that isn't true - it can be exceptionally disagreeable to see a friend who has an idee fixe that one doesn't agree with - and I spent about 20 minutes this arvo remaining resolutely silent about a certain matter. That aside, life has been very agreeable - I noticed today a Facebook post about "people interested in discussing political ideas" and realised that at present the last thing I want to do is discuss political ideas - maybe in September - but not now. It's just over a year since I joined the LP and attended the first local SUTU meeting - I confess I haven't been doing much since the election, because I've been writing and it has been a blessed relief.
The writing has reached the unpleasant point where the euphoria of having finished the first draft has finished, and while feeling pleasantly undaunted by the prospect of revising and re-writing - one begins to wonder what will happen if it meets the same enthusiastic lack of interest the others have experienced, if it will ever get published, and all the fond hopes that one had had on completion of the work seem to be nothing but egotistical fantasy. But this time I did feel I was beginning to get the hang of it all, the writing lark I mean. It is far from being a work of "extraordinary genius" - it may be more commercial than literary - although I hope it has enough resonances to last a little longer than some of the books I've read recently. I was introduced to the concept of "alterity" last night - or rather the word for it - I was aware of the idea, I just don't know what the current academic/theoretical names for things are. Anyway, in literature it was described as being "magical realism lite" - which I rather liked. I would hesitate to describe The Malice of Fairies as magical realism exactly. M has always snorted that there is too much "magical" stuff in my other works. This is monstrously unfair - I wish it were so.
Anyway, on the whole I have been having a more interesting conversations than usual, and I have also been reading proper books: I just finished Station Eleven by Emily St John Mendel, and now I'm reading Half a Yellow Sun by Chimananda Og something - it's a slightly unusual Nigerian name which I didn't catch easily. I am terribly tempted to just go and tear books out of the shelves and read them all day. I wish I had an intellectual project to research - this often a good time of year to study something, but I don't. So I will just continue this brief period of self-indulgence before the wrath of autumn falls on us. That will be time enough to get started on something else - maybe time to start researching the non-fiction project. It would make a nice change, and there is no real urge to write any more fiction at present - although I have plenty of ideas.
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