Writer's Block?

Well, no, I don't really have a block in my way so much as a field of mud. Despite my best efforts, everything is going so very slowly, and so tediously, which makes me suspect that they are therefore not my best efforts after all. I'm planning on giving up Facebook for July to see if that makes any changes, but for now I'm just continuing my life as usual, just trying to write every day and get back into the swing of writing seriously every day.

Today I baked banana bread, which I have actually never done before. I just guesstimated how much nutmeg to use, and was terribly anxious the whole thing would come to pieces when I flipped it out of the baking pan, but it stayed together nicely and tasted great spread thinly with margarine. It made me very happy, and my siblings and parents liked it too. There's just enough of the loaf left to eat at breakfast tomorrow alongside my usual grapefruit, so I'm looking forward to getting a yummy start to the day!

My brother's currently reading "The Tempest" for the first time, and I think he's enjoying it. My nine-year-old sister is just starting in on "The Return of the King", how exciting for her to be reading that amazing book for the first time! I wish sometimes I could rewind the clock just to read my favorite books for the first time. There's a special feel to reading them a thousand times, a sort of worn and comfortable and happy feel, but the first read is always so exhilarating, and alas, it only happens once. At least I got to read LotR for the first time when I was six, completely unaware of what would be in store for me on the next page--She's grown up surrounded by LotR movie posters, books, movie books, art books, and a wall I papered entirely with newsclippings from when the films were being released, hehe. So she's known who Frodo and Gollum and Aragorn, etc., are since birth. That's got to make for a different reading experience.

I myself am reading--well, nothing really. It's very bizarre. I desperately need new books to read--Namely, Chesterton's "The Napoleon of Notting Hill", the next few books in the Aubrey-Maturin series, a long list of Sutcliff books, more works by Faulkner after "As I Lay Dying" whet my appetite for his work back in April, Silvius' "Achilleid", "Seven Against Thebes", and sundry other reads. I'm still reading "Le Morte d'Arthur", but the going isn't very fast, and I'd like to be able to leapfrog between five books at once like I usually do. I started "Guy Mannering" yesterday, but so far it's not really caught me, though I'm sure it will eventually--that's generally how Sir Walter Scott books go. I'm going to start reading to my sisters at bedtime again, but the problem is that we had just started "The High King" when I left for college two years ago, and never finished it, so they want me to finish it now, but I feel obligated to begin the entire Prydain series over again from "The Book of Three" because otherwise they won't understand everything that happens in "The High King", the best book in the series, because they'll only have fuzzy memories of who everyone is, especially side-characters like Prince Rhun and Magg. What a muddle.

The good news is that I've FINALLY begun writing chapter one of my novel today. Remember I referred to my current authorial state earlier as a slogging through a field of mud? Well, it's coming along. I've been expending all my extra thought on the problem of this beginning for the past week, and I think I finally made a breakthrough this evening. I have written most of the first few chapters, as well as eighty pages all told of the actual novel, but the very beginning has always escaped me despite innumerable rewritings and has left me rather stymied. I think, however (although I have thought it before) that today I've begun the process of conquering it, which is a glad thing indeed. I'll try to get it all written tomorrow, and then on with the story! I'm determined to use this year off of school to write my novel, and of course NaNoWriMo is quickly approaching again! This time I'll be ready for it. I have a few ideas about what I wish to write, but I'm determinedly not thinking too much about it because I want to be free enough to write 50,000 words quickly without worrying about niceties of plot and things.

Any other happenings around here? Um, no, not really, other than "Vincent and the Doctor" continued "Doctor Who"'s winning streak for me that really began with "Vampires of Venice" and hasn't let up since, huzzah! In fact, "Vincent" might be my favorite of the new Doctor's stories so far, but I'm not sure. "Amy's Choice" was also excellent. And "The Lodger" looks to be nothing but more goodness. But "Vincent" made my eyes tear up a few times, and was all-in-all very well done indeed. Scenes like the one below were amazing (don't watch if you haven't seen it yet, of course!).



My only critique for this series really is its fondness of Earth. Very, very few stories have been set outside of Earth (Okay, "Amy's Choice" was kinda not Earth, but it kinda was still), and although I've loved the time traveling, which I felt wasn't done enough with Tennant, I miss the space traveling. And with the finale taking place at Stonehenge (yaaay, Stonehenge, I remember going there! It was very windy and very wet), it seems the series will be sticking with Earth until the end. At least it's broken out of the previous series' fondness of London, though, ha. Hopefully next season will have more planet-hopping action. And more aliens that are truly evil, too, not just misunderstood creatures :)

Oh, and I keep meaning to post some art on this blog again, but I keep forgetting, and though I have remembered now, it's late and time for me to be getting to bed, so it'll have to wait. Good night!

PS-I just realized that my last post was number 200. Wow.