No, really. I’m sure of it.
For some background: I grow mushrooms. Mushrooms are a lot more like people than they are like other plants, as they breathe oxygen and consume stuff like coffee (well, used coffee grounds) and oat bran. They are low-effort to raise, as you can keep them in a sealed bucket and they will eventually poke out mushrooms. However, you do need to top up the coffee, oats and water after every harvest.
The Procrastisnake lurks in the corner of my room. In the best of times, it stays curled up, hibernating. The best of times, of course, don’t happen often.
Anytime I have doubt or fear about what I am trying to do, it opens an eye, scenting food in the air. The Procrastisnake lives in the potential realm, and so it can only live on potential words, those left unwritten. And so when it finds me trying to find inspiration, it slithers over the keyboard. It curls itself around me and whispers in my ear. Well you don’t have to do it now… it’s too late to get anything real done… why not just check your email before you start…?
The abyss is Time with its sadness, its weariness. The birds are the opposite to Time; they are our desire for light, for stars, for rainbows, and for jubilant songs.
Olivier Messiaen
Time passes. Each moment is stitched to the next, the seams so small you’ll never see them. You thought the water was cool at first, but now it freezes your skin. You thought the wind was a whisper, but now it screeches and scratches in your ears. Yet nothing has changed. Only the moments that have been passing, one by one by one. Time passes and everything in its path is ground down to dust.
It’s time to start packing what we need for winter. We don’t call it fall here, but the leaves are starting to turn yellow and fall from the trees. It’s not winter yet, but it will be soon, and it’s going to be a harder and colder winter than the ones that have come before. You can feel the chill in the air, and the fear that is going around. Fear is catching.
I’ve finally finished Summer at Hotel Fulcrum. This is the longest work of fiction I’ve completed by a long shot (probably the next longest would be under 2000 words). So this is a really big achievement for me, and a project that I’ve learnt a lot from. Specifically, the following:
So I haven’t posted anything lately. This is partly because I was caught up in NaNoWriMo (I won, but only by not sticking to a single project, which is still a win in my book) but also because I’ve been distracted by a number of other things. But I’m back! And I have plans.
I can now say that I’ve seen water in a salt lake. It’s an unusual sight, especially as you can’t really venture onto a dry salt lake because there are a whole bunch of grasses, or reeds. Large unwelcoming vegetation. But a few weeks ago, I decided to go for a walk on a fine day that had followed several rainy days, and to my surprise, found the path flooded.
There are quite a few online writing challenges floating around these days. There’s the big one everyone knows about (National Novel Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo) and there’s also similar ones for short stories (StoryaDay), scripts (WriScriVember), and more. What’s the point of these, you may ask?
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