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Stashing Christmas Again
Christmas is over and so is Epiphany (unless you’re Orthodox), so it’s time to break out the plastic totes and move on to a new phase of decor. Kelly has enough snowman decorations to get us through the rest of winter.
Lies, Damned Lies And Statistics
People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election. ~Otto von Bismarck
The news has been mostly bad for the last couple of months. So much so that one can barely stand to listen to it anymore.
Fortunately, I have work enough to keep me away from the soul-sucking, time-wasting experience that is the news.
Back after 9/11, I (like so many others) became something of a news addict. Eventually, I got news fatigue and got on with life.
I think I’m back there again. After a few years of nonstop fuckery, I’m developing a healthy dose of news fatigue.
Just as well, I’ve got too much to do instead of wasting my time obsessing over stuff I can’t control.
Hopefully, nothing dreadful will occur to get me back on the news carousel again for the foreseeable future.
North Pole Goblins
J.R.R. Tolkien, Father Christmas and the Goblins (1932) – Classic Christmas Literature
Sure, Christmas is over for now but I couldn’t help sharing this charming little story that JRR Tolkien wrote for his kids back in the 30s.
The idea of the North Pole being infested with goblins is pretty funny to me. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Perfectionism
An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s. ~J. D. Salinger
One of the noteworthy pitfalls that writers fall into is the curse of perfectionism.
Naturally, we need to have standards and we have a notion of how we want our finish products to turn out. That’s healthy and appropriate.
The problem is when you run into a paralysis of analysis.
Fortunately, when it comes to writing a Holiday Season Serial Romance like Merry 🔔 Bells, I don’t get hung up on perfectionist tendencies. Being a “pantser” or “discovery writer” tends to spare me that particular hangup.
On the other hand, since The Sentinels is a massive endeavor, I want to plan everything out and have massively interconnected plotlines, etc.
This is further complicated by the fact that the 🍂Autumn🍂 / ❄️ Winter ❄️ timeframes make me want to genre-hop over to Tales Of Olde Auringia.
In either case, I think I’ve worked out a mechanism by which I can leverage my discovery writing approach to build up a body of work that can be cobbled together the way I envision it all falling together.
The thing is, since my Holiday Season Serial Romances take place in The Sentinelsverse, these relatively unrelated stories keep feeding me worldbuilding tidbits and off-handed references to things that happened. Not a lot, but interesting little writing prompts that I can use for the series.
Another thing saving me from perfectionism is basic exhaustion. I just finished a 190 page book and I need a break.
I’m going to sleep in and do things at a casual pace. There’s so much to do, that it’s hard to envision being able to do this in quite this way. Even so, I’m so freaking tired that I have no choice in the matter.
I’m tired enough that I either do things in go-slow or I don’t do anything at all. That suits me fine. I’m excited about having a chance to do absolutely nothing now and again.
Laying fallow helps me physically recuperate while also letting some of the deeper plot lines take root.
Besides, I’m old and I could really use a nap.
That’s it for today. I’m quite busy trying to catch up on all the stuff that followed me over from last year. I hope your weekend is more restful than mine.