Today, I find myself in a foul mood feeling rather like a waste of space. I have not plumbed all the reasons for this feeling, but I imagine a fair measure of it is tied up with the fact that I have neither been job searching nor grading papers over this break. I suppose I should give myself a break for, well, giving myself a break; however, I just haven't been conditioned that way. It's work-work-work and flagellate yourself if you're slacking.

Another fair measure of my attitude is tied up with my recent writings. For the past several years, I have allowed myself to write creatively only when I was "in the mood," which wasn't often due to the insane amount of academic work I completed while in college. Now that I'm trying to attain any notable level of productivity again (which I want, given how many awesome ideas I have laying about the place), I am suffering wave after wave of negative thought patterns that can be broken down into the following catch-phrases:

1. None of this is worth the digital paper it's written on: i.e., it's crap writing.
2. None of this is worth the digital paper it's written on: i.e., the writing's fair enough but no one could possibly care about my stupid story.
3. I'm not a skilled enough writer to pull this off; who am I kidding?
4. This feels like work: I must be doing something wrong. I'm an imposter.
5. ARGH, argh! glsglkhglkshglhg! What the fucking fuck, I am a fucking idiot, grrr, argh!

I have hopes that these are growing pains and I will get past them by ignoring them to the best of my ability and soldiering on. Please, for the love of GoD, someone tell me that I am correct.

Yet another part of my poor feeling could be due to the Lord of the Rings marathon I successfully pulled off today. I love Lord of the Rings. Lord of the Rings is one of the formative stories of my life: one of those books that built me as a child, given my mother indoctrinated me on it from an early age. As such, it's a very intimate story and I'm closely tied up with the journey of the Fellowship. It always affects me emotionally. And although our friends are successful in the end, the story pierces my heart, leaving me feeling wrung out after fully experiencing the story.

So here we are: the close of a Lord of the Rings marathon and me trying to prod myself into writing. Is it any wonder I'm feeling surly?

Instead of writing for the past hour, I have spent some time blocking out the story. I really think I'll benefit from this tomorrow as I try to make up word count: I have a brilliant idea, a haunted and beautiful place in the heart of sentient beings I want to evoke, but I wasn't entirely sure how to get my setting and characters to that one moment in time. I think I have it now, though only the writing (and then the reading) of it will prove my case.

Today's Goal: 750 words.
Goal met? No, only produced 319 words.
Reason for stopping: Foul mood; need to step away from the computer and relax with a book.

Project: Short story, working title "Green Dream."
Status of project: Blocked out a framework.

Time to scare up a nice cup of tea and snuggle down into bed with The Princess and the Goblin, an odd little literary fairy tale from the late 19th century.

This is wholly thewriteratwork's fault, but I love her for it. She recently spoke of novel_in_90 and how could I stay away? I couldn't. I approached it from the side, sidling up with no plans of partaking, but no one can leave such a work as this once they've arrived.

So, yes, I've signed up. A 270 page novel in 90 days. I'm working on a project that I've long had on the back burner, a collection of five (or four) novellas on a common theme: what does it mean to be the chosen lover of a god? Of course, I'm not so sure it's really about gods, per se, or elemental personages. We'll see.

To inaugurate this project (upon which I embark three days late, rather fitting, given it's me), I give you a GIP (taps the icon on the post) and the first two paragraphs of the first novella:

Hanayoru. My name skitters through my mind, errant leaves borne on a sere autumn wind. Those things have no place where I drift, exploded and twinkling across vast distances. My thoughts fasten on the word and I feel a bit heavier, denser, form and life following those little mortal sounds. Hanayoru: night and flower and part of this world, this human world. The moan rips through me, scarlet-tinged explosions in the black, light on veins on closed eyes, and I remember.

My name is Hanayoru. Not named such in homage to the night orchids that only the nightingale can describe in his liquid sweet voice; no, I am named for the bursts in the sky, those burning lights tumbled through black velvet by a god's hand. To bear my name is an honor and fit only for those who are chosen lovers of the gods, my parents said. But what did they know of that honor? What did they know of how heavy the gods lay?