How cool are these? My Fred treated me to a photo fest on Friday afternoon, these old steel-faced printing blocks are gorgeous!
This is how books used to be done...some day, I'd like to work with a letterpress (like Syracuse's very own Boxcar Press or Amaranth Press and Bindery) and make a limited edition book of Po-emz...gotta write some first (well, I do have a few, just not sure if they should see the light of day or not.)
Wow, it's been a while since I posted here...
Snowing today, rain by tomorrow or Tuesday...sunny and 50's by Wednesday (snow all gone until the next time a front passes by with some to share.) For now, the wind that blew away February has calmed down, the flurries are falling in a gentle manner, steady and abundant, reminding us that it is winter after all...
A red squirrel and a gray squirrel were fighting over a peanut outside my studio window a little while ago...a very dramatic furry fight...gray squirrel held on to that peanut, red squirrel just bitched about it while rifling through the leaves at the base of the lilac bush, the gray bushy tail with pale ears munching the prize...once the peanut was eaten the fight was over, gray squirrel went one way, red squirrel went the other...gotta love the backyard drama...
I've been painting much of today and yesterday, and when not painting, editing Chapter 35 of
Drinking from the Fishbowl...it's coming along, tightening up, expanding a bit, these last few chapters were always a little thin and felt rushed to me. I'm glad to be spending time with them and making them right...it's a long process, at times arduous (writing a book is a lot about patience), but I'm enjoying the immersion now that I'm returning to the rhythm of it after being so out of sorts for several months, I felt like I was reading and not comprehending anything I had written. Sometimes it's hard to talk about what I'm working on only because I fear boring people with the process, it's like watching grass grow, okay? Some nights I'll work on one paragraph...and the next night, the same paragraph, only I change a word here, add another sentence there...the next night, take that sentence out, change that word back to the original word. (See what I mean?) You'd think I'd know what I want to say by now...I don't believe a book is ever truly finished, I could go back and rework it endlessly...the story will remain the same, but the words might be rearranged to tell it better. (What the hell right? If Stephen King can say the
Dark Tower series is done at last, and then add another book in the middle of it a few years later, that's entirely up to him - it's his story to tell, and if it's still being told, let him tell it. If I want to shake my fist and say: "You bastard!" That's fine too. ) I do love
Fishbowl, even though I've had such a time with it, the darn thing came from my earliest efforts as a writer, before I really had my literary shit together. I'm sure not everyone will like it just because they can, but the ones who will like it, will appreciate it for what it is...it's a psychological study, the loyalty of friends, a love story (with a little bit of a nod to soap opera's, which makes it a social comedy of sorts, tho' a little darker in a grim sort of way)...it's a book about dreams and realities. I'm glad that I haven't rushed it...it's going to be a better book for the extra effort on my part. I'm sure everyone who has an opinion will try to tell me how to write it, but see, the thing is...it is written the way I want to tell it, it has it's own voice, and who's to say that voice is right or wrong. I'm quite satisfied so far...but then, it's been several years in the making, and I haven't read the first chapter since March 16th of last year...so you see...who knows what I'll find when I pick up the printed hard copy later this spring once I'm ready to do the final pass through this summer! I'm a different writer now than I was a year ago, my vision has sharpened, not that I'm going to carry it off to another realm, there might be something that I've learned since then that I will need to apply to the earlier chapters...
I know I'm excited. It's a beautiful thing.
