As projected, the start of the new semester coincided with a lull in blog posts! But this was inevitable. I am slowly getting back into student mode. After an excruciating two-three weeks, there are finally some moorings in my chapter. Which is good, because there’s going to be choppy waters ahead, and many-tentacled monsters lurking in the deeps. While I’m on a sea-faring metaphorical streak, I’d suggest some of you peek at Jim Bloom’s delightful essay on seafaring narratives and other fantastical things, Fantastic Voyages: By Ship to Nowhereland and Back (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3) over at Cabinet des Fees.

Also, if you’ve been pretty clueless about the past weekend’s #amazonFAIL flap over @ the twitterverse and blogosphere (ZOMG, I said blogosphere in a non-ironic way!), Cheryl Morgan’s post gives a pretty good summation of kerfuffle between two leviathans, with writers being the casualty. Also check out the excellent posts by Jay Lake and John Scalzi. I’m bemused by the war and am wondering where it will all lead in the long run. It feels like something started over the weekend and I’m interested in seeing the developments as per people switching to alternate online book distribution services. People have been mentioning indiebound and book depository as alternatives, for instance. I’ve heard good things about both services, and removed all but one of my amazon.com associate links ages ago, since I decided I wasn’t making enough revenue to justify all the hits I was sending to their site.

About the Photo

I decided not to do anything with photoshop here, so you’re just viewing the results of a pixel resize as well as the addition of copyright text. I loved these shots of wildflowers I took in the late afternoon sunlight in the tiny copse of trees on the grounds. Being outdoors is, as always, a balm. The older I get, the more I resist sitting still and working in this position for hours. I get up and do housework or various domestic activities in between batches of studying and writing. Some days it feels excruciatingly slow, but then I start getting modest results and it feels like it is somehow worth it. Every moment is like a wildflower with Blakesean eternities trapped within its petals, after all! Petals and manuscripts are in my head right now, both of them connecting in strangely whimsical ways. It’s an interesting start to February, and I am wondering what artistic adventures I will embark on this month. I am determined this year to balance the two parts of my being far more efficiently, since the lack of progress in either part of my creative/intellectual process makes me feel like half a person. I’ve been thinking about this, and the fact that we forget that research and research-writing requires creativity as well, and that creative work requires the intellect, the power of analysis and of making informed artistic judgements. In the end, are they so dramatically dissimilar?