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a curl of dragon breath
I saw the blue jays' exhaled breath, rising from their nostrils, as they carried off the peanuts I put out for them. Their internal furnaces are hotter than humans', around 105F (40.5C)--more than 120 degrees hotter (in Fahrenheit) than the outside temperature, so it's no wonder it was visible in curling plumes in the cold air. Little dragons.
I blew some soap bubbles and watched them freeze. This one got caught on the snow mound, and its deflated back rose and fell and rose and fell in slight breeze, as if it, too, were breathing. A very thin-skinned, tiny being.
Now maybe you're wondering if I'll ever talk about something other than the weather. I do have other thoughts!
Press A if you would like my thoughts on Sleepy Hollow--better yet, tell me yours.
Press B if you would like some hazy realizations about writing--or share yours!
I realized--or re-realized? realized anew?--how important details are for really giving a story a sense of depth. I know. This must win an award for the most unsurprising, well-known realization ever. But I was thinking of it with a short story that cafenowhere linked me to the other day. The story felt really *rich*, and it was because there were details that built up the scene.
... I realize this makes it sound like I'm arguing for really florid prose or something--or at least, I can see how what I'm saying could read like that--so I need to clarify somehow, because that's NOT what I mean. Writing could be either spare *or* florid, or neither. It's just that having more than the *bones* makes it feel real-er.
Some writers can and do get away with writing just bones--I guess famously Hemingway, for one--so it's not that it can't be done. But I like a dented coffeepot, the sound of the furnace firing up, the smell of onions and stale cooking oil, those kinds of things, to sink my mind into.
Press C if you would like a status update on my own writing--or tell me how yours is going (or your other pleasurable creative activity, if not writing).
Status of my main project, a novel, is that I realized whereas with most novels, I get a vague-ish sense of plot (summarizable in a sentence or two) along with a few characters, and then branch and deepen, with the current one, I have the characters and situation, and an ultimate destination (where I want the main characters to be at the end), but absolutely no firm sense of what I want the central story to be like. Depending on which way I decide to take it, it'll be very different in mood and feel. It's so strange to realize it's still so un-fixed!
I blew some soap bubbles and watched them freeze. This one got caught on the snow mound, and its deflated back rose and fell and rose and fell in slight breeze, as if it, too, were breathing. A very thin-skinned, tiny being.
Now maybe you're wondering if I'll ever talk about something other than the weather. I do have other thoughts!
Press A if you would like my thoughts on Sleepy Hollow--better yet, tell me yours.
Press B if you would like some hazy realizations about writing--or share yours!
I realized--or re-realized? realized anew?--how important details are for really giving a story a sense of depth. I know. This must win an award for the most unsurprising, well-known realization ever. But I was thinking of it with a short story that cafenowhere linked me to the other day. The story felt really *rich*, and it was because there were details that built up the scene.
... I realize this makes it sound like I'm arguing for really florid prose or something--or at least, I can see how what I'm saying could read like that--so I need to clarify somehow, because that's NOT what I mean. Writing could be either spare *or* florid, or neither. It's just that having more than the *bones* makes it feel real-er.
Some writers can and do get away with writing just bones--I guess famously Hemingway, for one--so it's not that it can't be done. But I like a dented coffeepot, the sound of the furnace firing up, the smell of onions and stale cooking oil, those kinds of things, to sink my mind into.
Press C if you would like a status update on my own writing--or tell me how yours is going (or your other pleasurable creative activity, if not writing).
Status of my main project, a novel, is that I realized whereas with most novels, I get a vague-ish sense of plot (summarizable in a sentence or two) along with a few characters, and then branch and deepen, with the current one, I have the characters and situation, and an ultimate destination (where I want the main characters to be at the end), but absolutely no firm sense of what I want the central story to be like. Depending on which way I decide to take it, it'll be very different in mood and feel. It's so strange to realize it's still so un-fixed!
no subject
My favorite part of last night's ep was when Abbie and Grace were prepping a spell and talking important shit, while Ichy stood there looking pretty and handing out herbs. <333
Annoyed as I've always been by Katrina, I've come to the decision that the writers just didn't know what the hell to do with her. As if the strain of writing bad-ass Abbie made them fumble all the other female characters. I think if Katrina's arc hadn't been so stretched out, she would've been a much more powerful character throughout, and more sympathetic.
no subject
And he does look so very, very pretty ^_^
Yeah, it was about Katrina that I'd been having thinky thoughts. I was thinking about how really she was doomed from the start--and I say this (a) having not seen the start and (b) not caring particularly because I'm very 100 percent team Abbie/Ichy--and yet the show managed to make her presence plausible and believable as a potential (if problematic) member on the Witnesses' team, at least for a while.
The more I think it over--as I type--the less I mind her story arc, after all--though initially I did (especially when she was being enchanted into believing Moloch was an adorable baby, *eyeroll*). I think she acted as a good foil both for Abbie and for Ichabod himself. ("I'll have doubts and failings so you don't have to.") I do wish they'd planted a few more seeds of her being tempted, or potentially tempted, to dark power earlier on.
The one lingering regret I had was that by confirming her as a bad-guy character, it cast witchery in a bad light--but then again, not really, because you have Abbie's whole female line representing how women's magic and witchery *can* be used for good. And, plus, Katrina's turning to the dark side doesn't really undo the good portrayal earlier on, I guess.
I really liked Grace. Abbie's *mother* is really powerful in a tough, anguished way, but I loved Grace for her gentle delicacy--a different version of female power. Sort of what maybe they were going for with Katrina, but with Katrina they went for the sexy angle, whereas with Grace there was a kind of almost angelic, non-sexualness about her.
no subject
I really liked Grace, too. She seemed so serene and welcoming--a very interesting counterpoint to all the other people of the past we've met on the show.
no subject
I feel as if the former is what the show was telling us, up until the last couple of episodes, when it became the latter.