“everything’s gonna come around / shout out someone will listen to you to me / someone’s gonna see”

[larryhammer]

It’s been an odd year for me, writing-wise.

Under my wallet name, I translated two long poems and a handful of shorts, and polished and posted a longer original poem, part of a series. I have in queue a couple more original poems to finish polishing and posting (including a Chaucerian AU of Ovid). I also revised and polished three stories, of which posted one, sent the second on submission, and … um, lost track of the third. Should be ready for submission, I think. Also lost track of: finishing publication of a collection of translations, previously created as a single-copy presentation edition given to my mother.

Under a handle not connected to my wallet name, I revised and posted three novels of erotica and a couple shorts, and just finished a draft of another novel, a sequel.

No new poetry, except for two in-character poems in the novel, and no new fanfic. And no progress on rewriting the YA novel on deck, but that’s situation normal since parenthood.

Whether feeling deeply unsettled is symptom or (partial) cause of all this, I cannot tell. Regardless, an odd year.

---L.

Subject quote from It’s Gonna Get Better, Genesis.

Comments

[larryhammer]

On the one hand, it feels good to be back to prose, even if done purely for personal enjoyment. On the other, where did my translation brain wander off to? My Chinese brain? And why such the focus on clearing out my trunk?

[thistleingrey]

It would be deeply weird to me if the translation/language parts and the generative writing parts were mutually exclusive in your brain. More writing of prose/story -> less linguistic bridging per se makes perfect sense to me, IOW, FWIW.

[larryhammer]

I've had periods, though, of doing extended original writing and translation at the same time -- such as that poem-a-day project while also managing a classical Japanese poem every other day or so.

A big part of it is I've only so many creative spoons a day. But also, different processors go on- and offline in patterns I cannot discern.

[thistleingrey]

*nods* and at times I think it's the relative intensity of thinking through something, versus having done some of that work earlier such that the output part seems momentarily easier. If you figure out the pattern of online/offline, bottle it and write one of those howto guides to finance what you want most to do. :)

[larryhammer]

Ha ha ha ...