So I’ve been reading this book about style and writing and about 25% in it got me in the mood to start up again, but then I got busy, and then I got tired. I spend more time reading about writing and reading others to learn how to write better than I spend on actual writing. I’ve read awesome books, pulitzer prize winners and am into Pale Horse by that Russian guy who wrote Lolita, which I’ve also read. In Pale Horse, he writes a 399 line poem, or some similar length in perfect iambic pentameter in rhyme, and then continues the novel. It is so cool. I’ve thought that it’d be funny to have a character who speaks in iambic pentameter, not necessarily rhyming, or rarely so, so that the reader only notices it obliquely at first until the rhyme hits. Funny.
I read this book on sleep, Why We Sleep, and it scared the fuck out of me. I mean, that horse has left the barn. I’ve lost so much sleep in the past 40 years that all hope is lost if what the author is suggesting is true; nonetheless, since reading it, I’ve been trying for my eight hours a night and, in truth, after my sleep deprivation “stroke” in 2006 or so (can’t exactly remember–can’t exactly remember lot fo things now) I’ve been going to bed earlier, which is part of my problem. I used to get a lot of shit done between 9 and 1, the up and at ’em 5 hours later. I should be working on turning Carmelita into a meaner little bitch than the relative saint she currently is, but when I start on that, I need at least an hour or two, and I’m too tired now but felt guilty about not writing lately, ergo, this, pointless as it is. At least it’s finger exercise.
My problem with Carmelita is that she does something bad but I have written her as a good person and I got hung up at the part where she’s supposed to do something bad and it’s not consistent with the girl I thus far created. Part of the problem is that I am writing this coming of age sexual stuff, and I’m no Vladimir Nabokov (author of the above). I remember reading Lolita and feeling guilty, like reading it made me a pedo. It was dark, funny, sexual, kind of what I seem to be after, it’s just that after reading him, I feel so utterly inadequate.