Black and White Photographs
I didn't go to school today. I'm not exactly sick yet, but my joints and muscles feel tender and weird, and I think I have a low-grade fever. When my body is in this state, it's best for me to just stay home and rest.The orange cat is in the house. According to the records on the kitchen table, he's been properly innoculated, and I'm glad he's been rescued from the cold, but I still feel a little miffed that no one called me last night to let me know. I wonder how dramatic the rescue scene was. Was it really a two-person job?
Also, his name appears to be Carl. He is in hiding, and looks shell-shocked.
A bundle of writerly nerves. Started reading Kate Atkinson's Case Histories, which is extremely good and has such a compelling beginning -- three chapters about three families, all ending with tragedy. Atkinson has an acute sense of pacing and plot -- I remember this from her other novels as well -- she knows exactly when to insert the next shocking tragedy. I should try to learn something from her, since my Gabby/Liz novel has been water-logged from just this thing -- not knowing where to situate the tragedies. Too close together, and it overwhelms the reader (and the characters as well -- an entire cast of overwrought characters being too much of a soap opera for my tastes). Too far apart and the novel may lag. I'm reconsidering weaving the Gabby/Liz novel with the Isobel/elf novella I was writing. I think it may lead to some interesting results, but I'll have to be very careful about the strands connecting the two stories.
So I'd like to start re-writing that, but of course I need to revise the beast (oh, okay, the thesis really isn't that much of a beast). And I'd also like to write a story about a protagonist who keeps finding mysterious black and white photographs of an unknown girl stuck in the pages of his (or her, don't know yet) books. This stems directly from buying a copy of The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll: The Search for Dare Wright at the Strand for a satisfying $12.50 (beats the $24.00 for a new copy), and finding a black and white photograph of a long-haired girl in old-fashioned dress slipped into the first few pages. The girl, who looks a lot like Leor, is standing in the middle of what looks like a wilderness. It appears that she has four arms, two resting at her sides, and two extended in mid-air. I wonder if it is the same girl in the photograph Judson found in his book, also purchased from the Strand.
Maybe it's a kind of avant-garde art statement -- or maybe this girl just enjoys hiding her pictures in used books, like some erstwhile Easter bunny.
posted by Empress Girl @ 3:29 PM
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