Luckily, I Have An Appropriate Icon

Very good thing: two people whom I haven't spoken to in regrettably ages but whom I like very, very much were kind enough to friend this journal. Thank you. :)

Funny thing: hammered her feet like hammers seems to be becoming an in-joke for the ages. I've decided to be pleased about this.

Bad thing: Another one of my FList left some thoughtful commentary/critique stuff on my most recent brigits_flame entry, which I found last night, skimmed, and then lost all courage to actually read. I haven't read it yet.

And unfortunately for me--probably because I got another rejection for my novel the same afternoon I was writing the damn entry--where I was merely scared to write anything, now I'm kind of paralyzed with terror and misery.

I have no idea what to work on today. Pape and Danforth? Gills? At the moment I'm feeling like they both suck equally.

I know, I need to get over myself. People love what I write, etc. etc. But today it is especially difficult. Maybe I just need more coffee.

Okay, I'm going to read the critique now.

"Death by Drowning" (Round Four Entry for the Brigits_Flame February Writing Contest)

The theme for this round was, "Once More, With Feeling".

I was looking over my older stuff this afternoon, because sometimes I procrastinate that way since it makes me feel vaguely productive, and I came across a story I'd originally written in 1997. I realized while I was reading it that it fit the theme really well--or at least the repetition aspect of 'once more with feeling', which was how I had been planning on interpreting the theme anyway.

I ended up taking out an entire dream/fantasy sequence thing that I was sure worked brilliantly when I was (Christ, how old was I in 1997? twenty-five, yeah. Though come to think of it I'm sure I actually wrote that when I was twenty, because I was at McMaster and not the University of Toronto).

So, I thought the dream sequence thing worked brilliantly when I was twenty, but realized when I was reading it again that it actually comes out of nowhere for an unfortunate WTF? aspect. So I aced it, which might not make the story any more clear or less opaquely subtle (hey, I was young, at university and living in Canada at that point; I doubt my stuff could have been more Canadian unless I was writing autobiographical pieces about a world war).

Anyway, this I suppose is as good a place as any to admit that I've been more-or-less obsessed with (fictional! metaphorical!) drowning since I was twenty, at least. This might actually be the first example of that. As far as I'm concerned the title relates directly to the story, but then again I'm an opaquely subtle Canadian. It might just be confusing as hell.

And here is the obligatory link to brigits_flame.

( It's been dark for hours, she has better things to do. )