Imbroglio (j)

Hobbits & Apples (j)

Quixotic (j)

Whinge (j)

Less is More (j)

Belles Lettres (j)

Half-baked (j)

A Tori Amos Wednesday (j)

Today brings to mind (and iPod) the Tori Amos song "Wednesday" from her album Scarlet's Walk.  For some reason, it makes me think about my writing process.  Instead of a couple with communication issues and suspicions, it characterizes my writing projects eluding me - midweek, midsentence, mid-daydream.  This Wednesday afternoon in particular has been slow and uncertain and unsatisfying (despite coffee), but I did somehow manage to meet my thousand word minimum.  Sometimes, the minimum is all you can do. 

Nothing here to fear
I'm just around being foolish
when there is work to be done
just a hang-up call
and the quiet breathing
of our Persian we call Canjun
on a Wednesday

So we go from year to year
with secrets we've been keeping
though you say you're not a temper man
seems as if we're circling for very different reasons
but one day the Eagle has to land.

Out past the fountain, a left by the station
I start the day in the usual way
then think, well, why not and stop for a coffee
and begin to recall things that you say...

One thing I can say is that it may feel like the Eagle keeps circling and circling and nothing is resolved on this molasses-slow day - characters are flat, words are silly and forced, the plot is limp as spaghetti - but it will "land".  Maybe not today, but it will. 

Dogsbody (j)

Hobbledehoy (j)

Reaching an Endpoint (j)

Joan of Arc's Birthday

Susurrus, a pretty word (j)

Is it just me or is my handwriting atrocious?  I sense an intense handwriting-improvement course coming up.  (For myself, of course.)

Worlds Away (j)

Zenith (j)

Meander (j)

Temerity (j)

Nacre (j)

Pridian (j)

111.  Eleventy, for all the hobbits out there.  The last word for 2012 is...

pridian

Pridian is an adjective meaning "of or relating to a previous day or yesterday." In this case, it will so be yesteryear.  Good-bye 2012.  May 2013 spur us on to great things! 

Hermetic (j)

Day 110 of Adventures in Logophilia.

hermetic

Hermetic means "airtight", difficult or impossible for one of ordinary knowledge to comprehend, and "resistant to outside forces."  In other words, like a hermit.  

Does this sound familiar to you, fellow writers?  When in the midst of crafting our respective universes, whether we're in a quiet space or a noisy high-traffic area, we are shutting ourselves off from the world in order to properly interact with new inner worlds.  There will be minor instances of leakage (more inwards than outwards), but for the most part, these worlds are self contained until they're ready to be released.  Like an egg hatching or a can opening.

This puts me in mind of Schrodinger's cat, a quantam mechanics gedankenexperiment (thought experiment) of the 1930s.  Put a cat in a sealed box with a radioactive atom and a poison.  Is the cat alive or dead?  The thought is that the cat is both alive and dead until the box is opened and the cat is actually observed - the mechanism being tripped and the cat dead.  This was not a serious experiment, by the way.  It was never meant to be carried out, but was rather a discussion point Dr. Schrodinger had with his intellectual contemporaries on quantam physics, Einstein being one of them.  From a creative standpoint, we as writers are a bit like Schrodinger's poor (albeit metaphorical) cat; the outside world has no idea what is going on inside our box (our hermetically-sealed creative world) until the box is forced open or... the cat itself comes out.  I'm not saying "Stay in your box!  Be a hermit!  Reject all social interacts!"  In fact, I see this as a natural state, when we're in the midst of our craft; a story or a novel will incubate as a mystery until it comes out into the world, and all bets are off.  Stephen King uses the phrase "keeping the door shut" until a story is ready for an audience.  Until then, embrace the hermitage.  And afterwards, find your friends in the world and make them wonder what you're up to the rest of the day!