I’m having a certain amount of second sock syndrome, but I think that’s ok. It’s not like I’m desperate for socks, except on laundry days.
I’ve been writing, instead of knitting second socks.
Reading, too, which is good for the writing even when I’m sitting around thinking something along the lines of “argh, I can’t do this plotting structure thing, what is going on here, why am I even bothering, it’s not like I have stories to tell.” Then somebody comes in and asks for books on building furniture, and tells me about how he’s making movies about his father who’s a cabinetmaker. Which is kind of nifty. Or something somebody says makes me think maybe that needs to be part of a story, like Moses and Mordred. This week, I’ve read some of Stephen King’s On Writing, about half of a mad YA novel called The Year of Secret Assignments, chunks of poetry – Szymborska is really odd, who knew – the beginning of a John Shirley short story, a book about Elizabethan music … and I kind of think there might be hope after all. After all, I get to flip through every art book I shelve (I looked at a book by a contemporary Japanese artist whose name I don’t remember, but who works in a style very much inspired by those classical woodcuts, and it was pretty amazing). Somebody said all the characters in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen were public domain. If H Rider Haggard is public domain, I need to make an Alan Quartermain broadside.
Sometimes I feel like Willy Wonka. So much time, so little to do. Wait. Strike that. Reverse it.
Sometimes I wonder what I’m doing, but I know it’ll work itself out if I just have some patience. I know why I do the things I do, and that’s got to be enough for now.
That thing, now, needs to be a crane curtain. (Cranes take forever to string, and I’m running out of felt beads, but I keep reminding myself about patience and it’ll come along. Another six months isn’t going to matter, since it’s already been nearly two years.)