Owl is suffering from writer's block. It's bad. Like, bad bad. Like, Owl can't read anymore because she's now allergic to words or something. They just slip out of her head. Like Owl's fairly sure she ain't never going to write or read again. Like, Owl's spending her weekends baking instead of writing, watching Korean dramas instead of reading, and composing spiteful messages to God. Or...wait, trying to and failing because writer's block. So most of the messages read something like this: Fooble. Snarl. Shitty poo poo pants. WOOOGLE. WAHHHHHHH! WAHHHHHH! And then Owl ends up on the kitchen floor clutching her stuffed whale and bawling. Gimme my words back! Gimme! Gimme!
Anyway, someone pointed out that a fair number of writers have said they ended up writing books they wanted to read. Owl should simply combine her writing style with the sorts of books she loves reading best and she will stumble up on a fountain of inspiration filled with glory. Not just water sparkling in the sunlight glory, but like chocolate rivers with strawberry slices and bananas bobbing along kind of glory. Serious glory.
Owl realized this was better than her other idea of experimenting wildly with other writing forms in hopes of discovering hidden talents. Owl did not discover hidden talents. Owl learned painful lessons like she's not cut out to write rap lyrics, someone who can't cook shouldn't write recipes, and writing obituaries about your friends is just...wrong. E-mailing obituaries to said friends and asking for writing feedback is just...well, yeah, don't do it. Just don't.
(Owl blames all of this on writer's block. Her judgment starts slipping when she loses her words.)
Anyway, the results indicated that Owl:
(A) writes memoir
(B) reads speculative fiction (yeah, Owl reads and blogs about all this other 'literature' crap and stuff, but speculative fiction is her drug of choice)
In other words, according to this analysis Owl should write an absolutely true memoir of her life as a sea monster.
New life plan.
1. Become sea monster.
2. Write about it.
At this point, Owl is pretty sure her writer's block is going to be permanent.
"What Cthowlhu Did", "Avanc of Green Gables" and "Kraken Jones's Diary" are all books I'd read. :D
ReplyDeleteHope the writing block doesn't trouble you for too much longer!
Camilla
Owl, why don't you submit a story to Machine of Death 2?? (Owl looks at Asakiyume and says, "Did you not read this blog post??"<--notice how both of us are talking in double question marks?? To which Asakiyume answers, Yeah but: it totally legitimizes writing obituaries for your friends. At least, sort of it does.
ReplyDeleteBTW just heard from husband that Shikuchi (as she's known on LJ--you wrote her a letter about colleges) is totally addicted to Korean dramas. Oh good! I thought. That means she is following in Owl's footsteps and will soon be winning a--wait, maybe that's information you don't want here. But you know what I mean.
@Camilla
ReplyDelete6/26/2011
weight: 107.2 kilos (will do better in the future, proper kraken weight at least 150 kilo)
ingested: two blowfish, half a shark's head, various pieces of desalinated seaweed
In an attempt to do something useful, spent the afternoon sunning myself on a rock thinking about whether I should focus on (A) terrorizing more humans and save the seas from overfishing (B) searching for my soulmate so we can breed a small army together and save the seas using sheer force of numbers (C) sunning myself and waiting for more brilliant ideas to appear.
Settled for (C).
(Do Kraken sun themselves? Very important question!)
Whoa. Best. New. Genre ever. I'm actually rereading all my Montgomery and alternately going--yay Montgomery makes me feel better, and boo, I've read and reread these books every year since I was eight and I need something new!
@asakiyume
Oh. Oh. OOOOO! Thanks for the suggestion. I will do this! I will do this in the dark of night and not tell anyone about it because then I will have no more friends left--(are you trying to kill us?! what's wrong with you?!).
YES! More people to the Korean drama fold! YES! Shikuchi already has like a zillion mega cool points in my book and this just made her cooler. Hmm...I wonder if she has any recs...XP
Is she applying? That's AWESOME!
And thank you for your discretion. :) :)
Haha--no no, not applying yet. But that's the sort of thing she'd absolutely love to apply for, given her interests.... as I understand them.
ReplyDeleteI will ask her what she recommends! Or you should--and you should recommend some to her, too.
P.S. Settling for C means you guaranteed yourself a successful outcome! That's skill, that is ^_^
I was going to write and then I turned on the computer and got a headache. I am not fibbing.
ReplyDelete:(
But I can totally recommend Korean dramas. A few of my favorites include Coffee Prince and The Palace (which I -think- is also called Princess Hours sometimes). Full House is also good. None of these are on tv right now, but the DVDs are available.
Also, I would totally be up for a friend writing my obituary and giving me the opportunity to provide feedback. (I secretly want people to say tons of awesome things about me, but not if it seems like I'm eliciting said awesome things, so this fits right in with that. :P )
Apropos of absolutely nothing:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.inkpunks.com/2011/06/03/know-your-markets/
(You probably know most of what's in this article, if not all of it, but on the off chance that there's something useful in it... also this inkpunks.com site has other writing-related advice, if you want to browse it and see if it's of use to you or not.)