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lookingland Oct. 27th, 2007 06:37 pm)
lookingland Oct. 27th, 2007 06:37 pm)i am generally having a good day, which makes it somewhat perplexing as to why i feel like chucking it all like Gauguin and moving to tahiti (i really need to make that into a tag). i've been drawing (or rather struggling through the drawing ~ which is okay, it's progress). and i took the doggies to the park and i went grocery shopping. i ought to wash dishes, but maybe i will get to that after dinner.
i feel like writing a long thing about writing and confronting demons in our work, but i don't really have the words. today i was working on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lanyn's prompt with sorta unexpected results and though i love the scene and think on some level it could be brilliant if properly executed, i have rampaging trepidation about posting it because it will likely offend people (and it should!), but i cringe at being the cause of offense. i don't know if i am wise enough to tackle with effectiveness some of the more complex themes in my own work. and this is the sort of scene that seems easier to write than to draw (because the drawing feels like such a reduction sometimes). like every flaw of the illustration makes it somehow more offensive.
i dunno ~ this makes sense in the wasteland of my own head, i guess. i'm prolly pre-worrying and pre-flipping about nothing and should just post the picture and let you all be the judge (which i will, i promise).
and this is just because this post needs a picture
last night i read a short story by s. weir mitchell (obsessed, i know) called "House Beyond Prettymarsh". if i had known what sort of story it was, i would not have read it before bed because it was freakin' yarghy as all get out (totally unexpected). basic premise: guy decides to have an idyllic day taking a sail and is intruded on by an acquaintance he can't easily shake. they get caught in a storm and wind up at an old abandoned house (recognize this formula?). nothing much actually happens: the house is weird, one of the rooms is burned as if set on fire, they discover a smashed and rotten cradle in the basement (with a single baby's shoe), then have a spectral encounter with a woman in a mirror that sends one of them screaming out into the rain. it was just creepy enough to unsettle me (which isn't easy ~ i know few writers who can actually scare me). mitchell had an interest in spiritualism, which he writes about in a number of his other books (and which was all the rage in the last half of the century), but this is the first straight up ghost story i have come across by him. a serendipitous halloweeny treat.
anyone have any favorite ghost stories they want to share?
i feel like writing a long thing about writing and confronting demons in our work, but i don't really have the words. today i was working on
lanyn's prompt with sorta unexpected results and though i love the scene and think on some level it could be brilliant if properly executed, i have rampaging trepidation about posting it because it will likely offend people (and it should!), but i cringe at being the cause of offense. i don't know if i am wise enough to tackle with effectiveness some of the more complex themes in my own work. and this is the sort of scene that seems easier to write than to draw (because the drawing feels like such a reduction sometimes). like every flaw of the illustration makes it somehow more offensive.i dunno ~ this makes sense in the wasteland of my own head, i guess. i'm prolly pre-worrying and pre-flipping about nothing and should just post the picture and let you all be the judge (which i will, i promise).
and this is just because this post needs a picture
last night i read a short story by s. weir mitchell (obsessed, i know) called "House Beyond Prettymarsh". if i had known what sort of story it was, i would not have read it before bed because it was freakin' yarghy as all get out (totally unexpected). basic premise: guy decides to have an idyllic day taking a sail and is intruded on by an acquaintance he can't easily shake. they get caught in a storm and wind up at an old abandoned house (recognize this formula?). nothing much actually happens: the house is weird, one of the rooms is burned as if set on fire, they discover a smashed and rotten cradle in the basement (with a single baby's shoe), then have a spectral encounter with a woman in a mirror that sends one of them screaming out into the rain. it was just creepy enough to unsettle me (which isn't easy ~ i know few writers who can actually scare me). mitchell had an interest in spiritualism, which he writes about in a number of his other books (and which was all the rage in the last half of the century), but this is the first straight up ghost story i have come across by him. a serendipitous halloweeny treat.
anyone have any favorite ghost stories they want to share?
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Not always, of course. I can think of a couple instances where something was said to me that made me cringe then, and still does now. On the other hand, they almost stand out more for being the rarity, if that makes sense?
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: o p
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: D
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Most of the ghost stories I know has been told to me by my grandmother and my Dad.
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: D
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Though the dark tales, scared the bejabbers out of me as a child. Still do. Maybe I should share them sometime? Swap ghost stories, especially since Halloween and All Souls Day/All Saints Day is around the corner?
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but -- it is this story, where the "ghost" (he isn't, technically, but close enough) goes to visit his own grave, and the excitable descendant of his love tells him the story of his own mysterious disappearance. and he's like "yes. I know the ending already" and she's like "... my friends put you up to this, didn't they? HAH! come to the pub." and it's beautiful.
also, the story I reread just recently, whose author I cannot recall. but it is about a ghost whose whole family poisoned themselves before dystopia set in on their future world, and she lives on the top floor of a ghost building, which is where this one crane in the dystopian future works, and the crane operator falls in love with her and the books she tells him about (although she is quite serious about it. "I miss new books, I've read all the ones here.") and kills himself with chocolate and books to be with her forever. And it's not at all sad, just creepy and beautiful.
i am sorry if this is incoherent, I will delete/fix in the morning. it is just late, and i am incoherent at this hour.
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: D
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I disturbed myself last week by thinking of a disturbing image, then taking that image and forming it into the first line of a potential short story, then thinking, "I'm writing that down in my journal as soon as possible and try to find a way to base a story around it!"
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and you're right about offense. people will be offended if they choose to be ~ and i am certainly not trying to be a mud-wallowing swine.
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