neon anima

i joined a local writing group. i asked to observe a meeting first, because i didn't know what to expect, and they let me. it was on zoom and the group's moderator was in, i think, south america. there were three other people-- a 60s-ish man with white hair and a woman around the same age who talked about how her recent writing inspiration has been the need to tell past generations stories, because she's observing a roll-back of women's rights as someone from the generation that fought to get them. the third writer was quiet and said she wrote literary fiction. i only read part of the white-haired man's story, because we were streaming the two-day moz conference at work and it was in pacific time. i pretended i had a therapy appointment at 6:30.

i enjoyed their company and just listening to them talk about each other's work. i've been trying to actively appreciate writing for its own sake and seeing it like playing on a local softball team. because doing is the fun part. i keep encountering these messages in the wild about how striving and wanting are the best parts of any ambition. i watched fleischman is in trouble, which is all about being almost forty and having to remind yourself to keep growing as a person. and there was a trailer for baby reindeer that stood out to me, where the main character says something like "i thought achieving my dream would make me happy, but now it seems like it has to be a choice between the two." and in the new season of hacks, ava's advice to a fledgling comedienne to enjoy the place she's in right now, because it's the good part.

i'm working on turning the rough draft of a new short story into a first draft, which is due to the writing group sunday. having a deadline for it is exciting. knowing that multiple people will read it is exciting. i'm looking forward to seeing if this awkward waking dream about being a queer girl in our current cyberpunk dystopia means anything. the main criticism i've received about my work is that my characters' motivations are murky and there's no forward momentum and i'm allowed to specifically ask for critique about that, which is so great it feels like cheating! that wasn't allowed in college (i don't think)!

went to a park today. it's next to a river and there were people wading, fishing, sitting on the bank with their feet in the water. there was another park on the other side of the same river that i think is still being built, as it was just a chapel, a winding little path through thick woods, a couple of fields, footbridges, and one road lined with construction equipment.

sitting on the patio the other day, i watched a skink skitter along the wall. it had what i think was a moth in its mouth, occasionally chomping but not seeming to make much progress in his dinner. it snapped its stiff, tiny jaws and stared with its black bead eyes without seeming to see. i was reading justine by lawrence durrell, which is dense with philosophy and psychology, descriptions of alexandria, and ornate language. at times it's perfectly what i want in fiction--stories within stories, elaborate guesses, and revelations that only pose more questions, all gesturing toward the delicious and disastrous unknowability of other people. the way durrell describes characters is so layered, revealing them but always alluding to darker, unknown depths. i could be happy picking up even a sliver of this skill from reading him.