Progress notes: 20th October, 2006

New words: 947 words on Thought and Memory. 874 words revising an old short, The Bone Dance.
Total words: 80,302 on Thought and Memory.
Reason for stopping: Tired.
Exercise : Walked 30 minutes.
Other work: Nothing.
Reading: Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Scion.

Feeling better today, but still somewhat lacking in energy.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

Progress notes: 20th October, 2006

New words: 947 words on Thought and Memory. 874 words revising an old short, The Bone Dance.
Total words: 80,302 on Thought and Memory.
Reason for stopping: Tired.
Exercise : Walked 30 minutes.
Other work: Nothing.
Reading: Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Scion.

Feeling better today, but still somewhat lacking in energy.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

Inspiration

An interesting thread over at the livejournal: what inspires you?

My answer:

For me, a huge part of inspiration is music. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been able to pop on my headphones and go away to a different world. I composed stories to go along with songs.

I studied music up until year twelve (I played clarinet, and at the time was seriously encouraged to follow music as a career. Not for me, though.). I have so many vivid memories of score reading in class, but with only half an eye on the score. The rest of my mind was composing a story to accompany the music.

I could never do so when I was actually playing, however. I lost myself in the music in a different way. Which, come to think of it, is probably half the reason why I never felt compelled to follow music as a career.

So-called “true” tales of the paranormal are another big inspiration. As soon as I learned to read and discovered the books on unsolved mysteries, I was hooked. Many of the stories are still knocking around in the basement, but at least one has made it to publication – Listen, which was in Shadow Box. This story was inspired by electronic voice phenomenon, something that simultaneously fascinates and horrifies me.

This brings me to what is probably the biggest impetus for what I write. Fear.

As a kid, I feared almost everything. I feared being alone, I feared the dark, I feared pain. I could make a list a mile long and still not be finished. As an adult, the ghosts of those fears are still there. It is an effort to banish those ghosts, some of these stories. This is why I write about the darker things – the things that lurk behind the night.

And to move in an opposite direction, we have Beauty. I have Charles de Lint to thank for this view of the world (and the associated mythologies that he, in turn, references). We are all capable of changing the world – by creating further darkness, or creating more Beauty.

Beauty is the hope that resides in every one of my stories. Beauty is in the urban fantasies that I write (and can’t find a good place to publish). It is the girl who finds her wings through a painting, the girl who steps beyond death to find something deeper than the world. It is a promise that there is something more to this world than what we can see and feel.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

Inspiration

An interesting thread over at the livejournal: what inspires you?

My answer:

For me, a huge part of inspiration is music. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been able to pop on my headphones and go away to a different world. I composed stories to go along with songs.

I studied music up until year twelve (I played clarinet, and at the time was seriously encouraged to follow music as a career. Not for me, though.). I have so many vivid memories of score reading in class, but with only half an eye on the score. The rest of my mind was composing a story to accompany the music.

I could never do so when I was actually playing, however. I lost myself in the music in a different way. Which, come to think of it, is probably half the reason why I never felt compelled to follow music as a career.

So-called “true” tales of the paranormal are another big inspiration. As soon as I learned to read and discovered the books on unsolved mysteries, I was hooked. Many of the stories are still knocking around in the basement, but at least one has made it to publication – Listen, which was in Shadow Box. This story was inspired by electronic voice phenomenon, something that simultaneously fascinates and horrifies me.

This brings me to what is probably the biggest impetus for what I write. Fear.

As a kid, I feared almost everything. I feared being alone, I feared the dark, I feared pain. I could make a list a mile long and still not be finished. As an adult, the ghosts of those fears are still there. It is an effort to banish those ghosts, some of these stories. This is why I write about the darker things – the things that lurk behind the night.

And to move in an opposite direction, we have Beauty. I have Charles de Lint to thank for this view of the world (and the associated mythologies that he, in turn, references). We are all capable of changing the world – by creating further darkness, or creating more Beauty.

Beauty is the hope that resides in every one of my stories. Beauty is in the urban fantasies that I write (and can’t find a good place to publish). It is the girl who finds her wings through a painting, the girl who steps beyond death to find something deeper than the world. It is a promise that there is something more to this world than what we can see and feel.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.