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Let's not talk about Greek class. That's depressing.
Let's talk about writing! Namely, my short fiction, which has been flailing and languishing recently. I suspect part of the problem is that I really want to break out of a certain tone and style of story and write something different for change, and I'm rapidly discovering that this is less like "I'm tired of painting in blue, let's break out and some red paint!" and more like "Well, I've been playing the trumpet for years. Why don't I just pick up the clarinet for a bit?"
Which is to say, it's not going well.
For example, I have a short story in progress that was going to be a novella, and got severely pulled back, and is now frozen midway through because it's all austere, bleak dispassionate description of what happens when people push on beyond the end of a tragic story. Also: taking place in a dreamland, because, hey, when having difficulty giving a visceral sense of connection in a story, the way to fix that is totally to set it within a literal dream, right?
And I find that what I want to write about is the happier stories that are implied to come before. The exciting, dramatic, kids-have-adventures stuff. I want to stop writing The Magicians and go back to writing The Chronicles of Narnia. (Not that I've achieved either, but as tone goes...) Which isn't working, because when I sit down to write something exciting and adventurous and cheerful in short format, three paragraphs in it's gone all wry and detached and is demonstrating why the princess's birthday party is actually symbolic of the inevitable pettiness of hereditary leaders. Or something like that.
Still, trying to work this is a good way to distract myself from how much trouble I'm having with Homer. (Damn you, Homer! You and your stupid pronouns!)
Let's talk about writing! Namely, my short fiction, which has been flailing and languishing recently. I suspect part of the problem is that I really want to break out of a certain tone and style of story and write something different for change, and I'm rapidly discovering that this is less like "I'm tired of painting in blue, let's break out and some red paint!" and more like "Well, I've been playing the trumpet for years. Why don't I just pick up the clarinet for a bit?"
Which is to say, it's not going well.
For example, I have a short story in progress that was going to be a novella, and got severely pulled back, and is now frozen midway through because it's all austere, bleak dispassionate description of what happens when people push on beyond the end of a tragic story. Also: taking place in a dreamland, because, hey, when having difficulty giving a visceral sense of connection in a story, the way to fix that is totally to set it within a literal dream, right?
And I find that what I want to write about is the happier stories that are implied to come before. The exciting, dramatic, kids-have-adventures stuff. I want to stop writing The Magicians and go back to writing The Chronicles of Narnia. (Not that I've achieved either, but as tone goes...) Which isn't working, because when I sit down to write something exciting and adventurous and cheerful in short format, three paragraphs in it's gone all wry and detached and is demonstrating why the princess's birthday party is actually symbolic of the inevitable pettiness of hereditary leaders. Or something like that.
Still, trying to work this is a good way to distract myself from how much trouble I'm having with Homer. (Damn you, Homer! You and your stupid pronouns!)