It's a very simple scene, and yet everything I write ends up as bird cage liner. Really. It's just shit. I've started from scratch about seventeen times - I counted - and now I've hit that wall. No more brilliance. This pisses me off; it's there, it's three-dimensional and vibrant in my head, full palette of colours, but there's just something missing. Prose does not issue forth from my fingertips. The scene fails to operate. There's a broken thing in my head, half-configured, and I am at a loss to retool it and build it out of the everythings therein. Something something about momentum.
There is a pile of books beside my desk; this is not the typical pile of books I haven't read, but the pile of books I'm planning on selling to Russell's, for some extra cash. I might spend some on a haircut at Jimmy's, but we'll see. I have to figure out when I have time to cart all of them downtown.
Comments (2)
Which books? Not that I need to buy any more, but ...
Bird cage liner! Really. Maybe for very vain birds, who would use it as a kind of snobby fashion statement.
Posted by Joy | April 3, 2005 7:33 PM
Posted on April 3, 2005 19:33
Well, you know me. Always been an odd duck. I like to write bird cage liner, apparently.
The list of books: "The Corrections," by Jonathan Franzen. "Chapterhouse: Dune," by Frank Herbert. "The Cheese Monkeys," by Chip Kidd. "Tess of the D'Urbervilles," by Thomas Hardy. "The Venetian's Wife," by Nick Bantock. "Colourbook," by Rosalyn Chissick. "Observatory Mansions," by Edward Carey. "Caleb Williams," by William Godwin. "The Locked Room," by Paul Auster (I have it as part of the New York Trilogy). "Madame Bovary," by Gustave Flaubert. "Evidence for a spinning earth," by Alan Pickard. "The Stone Diaries," by Carol shields. "Endgame," by Sam Beckett. "Arkansas," by David Leavitt. "Smell it," by Hal Niedzviecki. "Girl with Curious Hair," by David Foster Wallace.
Posted by ben | April 3, 2005 8:41 PM
Posted on April 3, 2005 20:41