So I missed the Yale-Harvard Blood Drive, but the regular Red Cross chapter house on Whitney Avenue did allow me to donate yesterday; I can now feel useful to society. (My iron levels are on the low side, but I used this as an excuse for gosht saag at Tandoor. Spinach is spinach, right?) We'd originally intended to see The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe at the Medical School right after dinner, but time constraints wound us up with the Phantom Edit—or at least a Phantom Edit; I can't tell how many are out there—of Star Wars Episode I, which did indeed suck less than the actual release. The 90% less Jar Jar helped. I still don't understand what has become of George Lucas' brain. And in the end, we went to the later showing of Lion . . . anyway, because [person who does not have a livejournal and therefore I'm a little awkward about using his actual name] had never seen it. I've already rambled about the film at great length, but I should like to state for the record that it holds up very well on second viewing. We are definitely renting Orlando soon.
I'm re-reading Sheri Holman's The Dress Lodger, provoked by some recent conversations about cholera, and it reminds me once again that I should learn how to write historical fiction. It's the research that eats my life. I've recently come back to a story that has Cain in Germany in the late 1930's, and the only scene I've been able to complete so far is the one that has the fewest external references: I realize that I don't know what brands of cigarette people smoked, or what music would have been on the radio if you snapped it on in the afternoon (and didn't get news or politics), or the names for various fashions, and I freeze up. If I were to research the story to my satisfaction, I'd lose weeks. I know there are short cuts. I can't persuade my brain to take them.
On the same lines, I don't know if it's the blood drive, or Forever Knight, or the phases of the moon, but I am starting to feel as though I want to write about vampires—an impulse from which I immediately shy away. There is so much bad vampire fiction out there. I don't want to add to the list. I don't even have an angle, or characters, or language, which is where my stories always start. Just a vague inclination in that direction and a somewhat less vague intimation that this could very easily be a bad idea. Why does my brain never listen to me?
I'm re-reading Sheri Holman's The Dress Lodger, provoked by some recent conversations about cholera, and it reminds me once again that I should learn how to write historical fiction. It's the research that eats my life. I've recently come back to a story that has Cain in Germany in the late 1930's, and the only scene I've been able to complete so far is the one that has the fewest external references: I realize that I don't know what brands of cigarette people smoked, or what music would have been on the radio if you snapped it on in the afternoon (and didn't get news or politics), or the names for various fashions, and I freeze up. If I were to research the story to my satisfaction, I'd lose weeks. I know there are short cuts. I can't persuade my brain to take them.
On the same lines, I don't know if it's the blood drive, or Forever Knight, or the phases of the moon, but I am starting to feel as though I want to write about vampires—an impulse from which I immediately shy away. There is so much bad vampire fiction out there. I don't want to add to the list. I don't even have an angle, or characters, or language, which is where my stories always start. Just a vague inclination in that direction and a somewhat less vague intimation that this could very easily be a bad idea. Why does my brain never listen to me?
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