Lines drawn, indefatigable

Missed me? I am currently enjoying my dark, cozy retreat beneath a rock where I toil away at revising and complain about the dropping temperatures. I've missed you too.

The Progress Report 📰

Song of the Immortal is getting some kind of face-lift. I cannot say exactly how this will go, but my outline-turned-synopsis is 17 pages long and includes feminine violence in the basement of a famous opera house. Just girl things. 

As I take a small repose to gather my marbles, I can only hope I included all the dangling threads and errant hopes and dreams I was supposed to.

Considerations in Craft 🎨

For the past few weeks, I have been writing mini essays (or rants, depending on how you read them) on craft. I've talked about concepts and outlines, the pain of middles and the value of going fast. Unfortunately, I've been so deep in outlining that I have no such essay today. (I have some ideas for later, though.)

Why?

Because after an outline, all that's left is to write. I've done all the planning I can possible do. I've turned down the volume of doubt (let's be honest, can you really kill it?) and checked and rechecked my trajectory and backup plans. 

Now comes execution. 

Luckily, though my brain is empty I don't have to think anymore. I have no more thoughts, because I've dumped them all on a page and then pieced them together. All I have to do now is paint-by-numbers. And there's editing after this, so I don't even have to color in the lines.

Weather Forecast 🌙

This upcoming week, I will be without thoughts, eyes glued to screen, click-clacking just like this:

I will be posting daily revision music on Twitter and Instagram (@wickedjamison for both), however. Consider them signs of life.

For Your Consumption 🎭

Double dactyl, double dactyl, toil and trouble. Today's poem form is the double dactyl created by Paul Pascal, Anthony Hecht, and John Hollander in 1951. It's like a modern limerick, silly or humorous in content, not meant to be taken seriously. Its rules are also fun and silly—with specific order of stressed and unstressed syllables for its two stanzas, the first line as nonsense, second line as subject, and sixth or seventh line as a single six-syllable word that, as far as you know, hasn't been used in any other double dactyls. How delightful!

"luna"

demon kitty demon,
writing is hard when you
scream and try climbing walls,
exorcist mode.

maybe meditate, my
indefatigable
hellion. please go to sleep
or i'll erode.

She is eight pounds and three years of raw terror.

And a little Digestif 🧉

So have a delicious treat in my honor and toast to my suffering:

• 🎵 Crown the Empire's latest single, "Dancing with the Dead" (lots of screaming and noise, this is Luna every fucking day I swear)

• 📖 This Savage Song by V. E. Schwab

• 📺 Teen Wolf, Season 2

And now I bid you adieu! Happy weekend! Hyvää viikkonloppua! ❤️