tahiti, writing angina, and stories that go bump in the night ~

[lookingland]

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 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?

Comments

[sparowe]

Erm. I'd rather you didn't, actually, because I try to keep unique icons for my journal. But I can't actually stop you, either... so I guess if you do, just credit? :/

[geckobird.livejournal.com]

that's why I asked. If you rather I didn't, then I shall not. Though I am curious as to how you created it.