I thought I would paste up lilacviolingirl's sparkly banner as a little keepsake for my first week of the novel writing. Third person past tense POV is really taking some getting used to (to say the least; what has it been, 9 years now?), but this is the way it needs to be told, and regardless the story is flowering dark and deep and pulling me in beneath its siren pulse, and here and now is the right time at last to be doing this. And so I am me again, in this little room staring out of broken mirrors onto refracted starlight from another world, writing.

In the coming weeks I will probably assign one day a week to editing, so I can begin filling the small gaps in-between, and sharing some excerpts, if anyone wishes to read them. For now this is just a moment of silence, me coming up for air.

An archive post for miscwriters as part of summerwrite for my new novel in progress, a steampunk work called The Amorpheum Key. This post will contain word counts, excerpts, inspiring quotes, songs, and graphics, and links to various steampunk/Victorian/Neo-Victorian resources.

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Drop a thought--a single thought--into the well of the electric;
watch it ripple outwards--
refracting and gathering luminescence--
before dispersing into the binary void
like rainbows glinting off oil and water.

This morning I woke to a watercolour sky, one that faded all too quickly into the eternal everpresent unblinking veil of blue. Somewhere it is autumn, somewhere there are restless winds kicking gold leaves down grey streets to dance with the windchimes and everything else is silence. A good thought to hold onto.

I have been enjoying the coding again, and the DIY diary/journal/thing project is coming along nicely. I've missed that dormant aspect of myself: writing and programming have always been enmeshed in my needs for some kind of sanity-or-insanity...and this has opened up my mind to other possibilities, and memories of times when things were more real. When the things I whispered were more real, more from the soul (or Id), just "more". After all that revelation, I needed time to heal, I suppose. Time to find something to say again, with that pure intensity borne of wanting needing to make connections. Back when I was Pegasus, on diaryland... I'm still finding beautiful things to read, and it's strange how much a platform can make a difference. I could never go back there--too much floodwater of blood and tears surging beneath too many bridges (and back then, no precious, we didn't even call it "emo")--but the journal code I'm writing is more along those lines, not designed for the clone-like configurations of so much other mainstream software out there. That's how it will be, on the screen, in my head, anyway. That's what will come to pass.

In amongst all the dithering I have finally made an absolute decision: I will not be using any of my journals for friends-only life-related posts from now on. The betrayal of having one of my hidden entries posted up wholesale for others to pick over stings too much. (This was the reason for so much umming and ahhing over whether to leave this place for good, by the way.) So I will re-invent my life for these spaces, again and again and again, and keep those I trust a lot closer than before (custom filters are my friends). This place still--for works in progress and friends and whatever whim demands. My own site for the words that will come to matter, that already do, though they need polishing again. The orchidveil registration needs renewing this year, and consequently I've been toying with the idea of getting a new domain name. But it's a lot of work, moving house, a lot of lost connections, and I haven't yet decided if there's a point to that. Perhaps a new domain, but not as a replacement. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

I am thinking too about going over the older writings like feathers with a fine tooth comb, discarding those that aren't..."necessary". If you have any favourites that you'd miss in absentia, feel free to tell me. Otherwise I'll be left to trust my own judgement, and there is no doubt much mirth to be had from the possibility of that.

Man, I hope this takes off...

"What if there were a library that held every book? Not every book on sale, or every important book, or even every book in English, but simply every book—a key part of our planet's cultural legacy.

First, the library must be on the Internet... Second, it must be grandly comprehensive. Even when the full text of a book wasn't available, it would take catalog entries from every library and publisher and random Internet user who is willing to donate them. It would link to places where each book could be bought, borrowed, or downloaded. It would collect reviews and references and discussions and every other piece of data about the book it could get its hands on.

But most importantly, such a library must be fully open...a product of the people: letting them create and curate its catalog, contribute to its content, participate in its governance, and have full, free access to its data. In an era where library data and Internet databases are being run by money-seeking companies behind closed doors, it's more important than ever to be open.

So let us do just that: let us build the Open Library."

My recent posts must perhaps have seemed disappointly analytical to some... from one perspective they have seemed so too, to me, but aside of myself I know that I am just circling round, working things out, backgrounds and foregrounds to an idea I've been nursing for over ten years now (proof positive that I have no wish to be 'professional' in my writerliness if such means churning out whatever every six-twelve months.) I think...I think I may be ready to tell that story now, from out of the sprawling vines of my strange little world where years can pass like days and days like years. This year, it will have been seven years since...

Well. Let no one tell you that the pain of loss recedes in time. Let no one tell me, in any case. Enough of that. Perhaps, yes, it's time I told that story, before wastelands and but an echo of memory shroud the world at last. My sanity hinges on the single-ply spiderweb tightrope not snapping, and my footfalls placed perfectly. Funny: that expectation of perfection, still, from a creature such as me.

I have begun to delete all traces of myself from the social-networking superhighways that have no tales of their own to tell. Perhaps my devArt account as well, definitely sometime this year: I don't like the thought of all that advertising. Here, too, possibly eventually, but not for quite a while yet. orchidveil is the place I have made my home, and that is where my essence should be.

Perhaps this is me, in my own small way, returning to the ideal of 'writer as enigma', old-fashioned 90s sentiment, taking back the web. Heh.

x-posted from my post to web_writers where I described it as "preposterous and overwhelmingly ignorant elitism" (let no adjectives be spared when I am wrathful, lo!): this article from the if:book blog.

"I’m aware that all this could easily be read either as a dismissal of the cultural value of the Web, or else as a call to the world of literature to get back in its box. But I mean neither of those things. What I do want to suggest, though, is that it's not enough to murmur soothingly about how Web is a young form, and that it'll take a while for 'great writers' to emerge. Rather, it strikes me that the ideology of ‘the literary’ - including that of 'great writers' - is profoundly bound to the physical form of books, and to pretend otherwise is to misunderstand the Web.

Obviously plenty of print books have no literary value. But the ideology of 'literary' is inseparable from print. Authorship is necessary and value-laden at least partly because with no authorship there’s no copyright, and no-one gets paid. The novel packs a massive cultural punch – but arguably 60,000 words just happens to make a book that is long enough to sell for a decent price but short enough to turn out reasonably cheaply. Challenge authorship, remove formal constraints - or create new ones: as O’Reilly’s guides to creating appealing web content will tell you, your online readership is more likely to lose interest if asked to scroll below the fold. Will the forms stay the same? My money says they won’t. And hence much of what’s reified as ‘literary’, online, ceases to carry much weight.... Anyone serious about using the Web on its own terms as a delivery mechanism for artistic material needs to abandon print-determined criteria for evaluating quality - literary values - and investigate what the medium is really good for."

To quote Robin Williams' charming Mr Keating in Dead Poets Society... Excrement.

To deny the fact that great writing can or should exist on the web--or any medium other than print--that readers can't connect with writers' works as long as there's scrollbars on a 1024x768 viewing resolution (ironically from within a post that contains more than a screen's worth of scrolling), that we need to rethink entirely what quality is in terms of giving it life in a new medium, and that aspirations lead directly to acceptance by what is ultimately just another 'brand' (in this case Faber) deserves no more than that concise quotation in summation.

Never mind the fact that this particular new medium happens to break down barriers in international distribution, cuts out the more and more unnecessary middle men, allows readers access to writing on the fringe (just cos something's not acceptable to the marketing department doesn't automatically denounce its literary qualities) and other sectors of societies and cultures who have hitherto not been allowed/given a voice among the throng of new writers pimped as commodities. In essence these "ideals" are just another form of elitism that basically tells the unwary artist on the outer edges of the herd that oh no, pet, you can't _really_ be an Artist without the sanction of a corporation, your work ain't all that unless you've put paid to a small acreage of rainforest (most of which will be recycled as bog paper), and conveniently forgets that, despite all the critics' best intentions--from Alexander Pope to Harold Bloom and on and on beyond--while there are certain basic standards to be upheld, taste and what is ultimately considered "literary merit" is still quite relative.

It's not enough to tell people "it's not A unless it appears in/as B". There must be valid reasons given for that assertation, and more valid conclusions drawn than simply "I have told you what the web is NOT good for, now the rest of you go off and figure out whatever it IS good for."

From Scott Rettberg at Fibreculture Journal, an interesting, if somewhat long-winded, article about the creation of electronic literature (i.e. interactive fiction, hypertext, web writing, &so on), comparing its ideals and methods somewhat to the Dada art movement...


While it would be a folly to attempt to generalize the contexts in which electronic literature is produced and appreciated, we can note some similarities between the milieu in which electronic literature and Dada art are addressing their respective cultures. Most electronic writers and digital artists do make strong claims about their work as a way of making art, but they do so outside of conventional channels of cultural production. While mainstream literary institutions are largely ignorant of literary experiences made for the electronic media, authors and digital artists distribute their work independently on websites, small journals of their own creation, and internet mailing lists. While works of electronic literature are finding some audiences within the academic world, the literary mainstream largely regards electronic literature with either apathy or animosity. Electronic literature is distributed virally. Individual works move from screen to screen via links and mailing lists and performances. It shows no respect for the rituals and institutions of publishing houses, and needs no publishers. Formal boundaries between poetry and fiction, art and literature, documentary and satire, and genres of all kind break down. While carefully established niches such as classifications in the Dewey decimal system bound traditional literature, electronic literature defies simple categorization. Where books are discrete objects made for the single purpose of reading in quiet contemplation, works of electronic literature are unruly objects, presented in the cacophonous flow of networked communication, read alongside business correspondence, email messages, stock quotes, newspapers, weblogs, instant messages, Flash cartoons, and MySpace profiles, just another element in an unbroken stream of networked communications. Electronic literature has no home base or center. Electronic literature, like Dada, presents itself as an antidote to established literary and artistic conventions. It is both of literature and other than literature, art and anti-art.

Many authors of electronic literature would laugh at me if I told them they were part of a movement. They have made no pledges to one another, and often have radically different and opposed ideas of the nature of what they create and its purpose in the world. They are a diverse motley crew, who live in different parts of the world and adhere to different values. Yet they are a form of community. They respond to each other’s work, they gather occasionally to fervently debate esoteric matters of art, and they correspond with each other. They borrow from established traditions and disciplines yet work outside of them. Like Dada, electronic literature is a movement of fierce independents, who create their work outside the established constraints of literary cultures and economies.


It's funny to think of a "movement" occurring unbeknownst (or at least formally unacknowledged) among its practitioners; artists creating in a vacuum, yet bound together by a fibre-optic string of zeros and ones, sometimes touching or bumping together, either by accident or design, deep within virtual space. Especially when compared with the ideals one typically has/is given of "The Olde Days": a time when poets nursing green-winged absinthe faeries in their laps let poetry spill from their fingertips or splashed over the canvas in blood and black madnesses, to be absorbed by the audience like a nectar of the Gods; in coven-like circles planning revelations and revolutions through landscapes of words and oil-paint and song. (I don't suppose it was ever really that way at all, of course, but the heart does yearn...)

I suppose this is my way of saying, I am becoming excited about the medium again--at least, as far as my own output and direction is concerned. I love the fact that Trapdoor is (also) a book, and while I could see myself nesting other creations in something like book form, for me that is ultimately an interstitial ideal--meant to supplement the work in its online form, rather than ultimately supplant it (or override its beginnings). I love too the idea of letting my work speak for itself. In these days of Web 2.0 buzzard buzzword marketing, I adore and cherish the idea of writer as enigma. I want to wonder about who created these words, how much of it all is true, in what way is it true, is this person even still alive? and so on. I don't want Facebook and MySpace and insertsocialnetworkingsitehere pimpage and articles designed to pull in more webtraffic and all the things the marketing pro's (deliberate abbreviation) tell us to do to gain readership and hits and search engine rankings. It's never been about that for me. It's been more about the kind of things present in some part in this article, I suppose. Combined with a good old-fashioned punk aesthetic, the whole do-it-your-own-damn-self thing, a refusal to kow-tow to ultimate corporatisation, and the ephemeral "found object" possibilities inherent in the world of zines and underground presses. Build it and they will come? Seriously, at the end of the day: take away all the bullshit, leave only the words that speak, and those as are meant to will still come.

So I'm taking a third path through those yellow woods...okay. It's encouraging when I think and discover and remember I'm not the only one.

While preparing to send off a reader's Trapdoor order to the US today, I realized that it was actually the last offset copy. (Apparently inventory isn't my strong point, heh.)

So now I had really better get my proverbial butt in gear and have the new edition taken care of once and for all.

Title: LORELEI: Howling Stars, Part I
Author: pierrot_doll
Fandom: Original
Characters: Fin
Prompt: 031. FLAME for 50_darkfics, 049. BURNED for bodyandsoul100
Word Count: 1070
Rating: PG. The only really offensive bit is, perhaps, my attempt at alliterative verse.
Author's Notes: Mme Morpheus aka The Dream 'Prince' finally gets an actual name--go me :/ This part is told from her point of view. Owing to the potential length of this piece, I've decided to split it into two parts. C&C always welcomed, and helps the author not be emo. A bit. :P

( I no longer remember in what lifetime I first discovered this place. Each time I return, I even have the faintest inkling that I was born here; each time the images that flash through my mind attain a greater clarity. Memories of me, bound to a table in a little room, seeing myself as a ghost of my sister, seeing myself reflected in her eyes, seeing her hand reach for my face as she lies beside me on another table. Green wires and black talons stark against white flesh and bulbs. Handprints smearing hieroglyphic signatures in blood down a concrete wall. Grains of stars drifting before my eyes, lodging in my throat. A kiss; my life-force sucked away. Heartbeats in tandem, slowing, fading. I begin to choke.... )

lorelei // table of contents

...because the words of some beautiful other--unveiled by clasping to my heart an ornate silver key that was left beneath my doorstep this morning--reminded me of the breathless thrill of discovery, the feeling of stars tingling through the veins to behold and know and find some frozen moment of connection and reflection--and because it has been so very cloistered here lately, and most of all because I remembered this...

...My heart was dusty, parched for want of the rain of deep feeling; my mind arid and dry, for there is a dust which settles on the heart as well as that which falls on a ledge. It is injurious to the mind as well as to the body to be always in one place and always surrounded by the same circumstances. A species of thick clothing slowly grows about the mind, the pores are choked, little habits become a part of existence, and by degrees the mind is inclosed in a husk. When this began to form I felt eager to escape from it, to throw off the heavy clothing, to drink deeply once more at the fresh fountations of life. An inspiration--a long deep breath of the pure air of thought--could alone give health to the heart...

...The rich blue of the unattainable flower of the sky drew my soul towards it, and there it rested, for pure colour is rest of heart. By all these I prayed; I felt an emotion of the soul beyond all definition; prayer is a puny thing to it, and the word is a rude sign to the feeling, but I know no other. By the blue heaven, by the rolling sun bursting through untrodden space, a new ocean of ether every day unveiled. By the fresh and wandering air encompassing the world; by the sea sounding on the shore--the green sea white-flecked at the margin and the deep ocean; by the strong earth under me. Then, returning, I prayed by the sweet thyme, whose little flowers I touched with my hand ; by the slender grass; by the crumble of dry chalky earth I took up and let fall through my fingers. Touching the crumble of earth, the blade of grass, the thyme flower, breathing the earth-encircling air, thinking of the sea and the sky, holding out my hand for the sunbeams to touch it, prone on the sward in token of deep reverence, thus I prayed that I might touch to the unutterable existence infinitely higher than deity...

...It is eternity now. I am in the midst of it. It is about me in the sunshine; I am in it, as the butterfly floats in the light-laden air. Nothing has to come; it is now. Now is eternity; now is the immortal life...
--The Story Of My Heart by Richard Jefferies

163 words

Touch Typing

40 words up on my last test (not using this system) and not bad on a G3 Pismo PowerBook either. (I also got 5 words wrong if you're into accuracy.) Now if only I could think as fast as I can type, I'd be a veritable writing machine. Or something. :P

I decided to do this in response to this post by sora_kainomori at the web_writers community, an interesting place for writers of web fiction & serials. Then I panicked that it qualified as tl;dr to post in the comments, so I'm posting it here instead, for anyone who's interested in reading about Lorelei/the writing process.

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For astral_fighter, perhaps for no reason in particular other than I've been enjoying her work.

Title: LORELEI: Looking Glass Lucretia
Author: pierrot_doll
Fandom: Original
Characters: Lorelei
Prompt: 027. NARCISSUS for 50_darkfics
Word Count: 570
Rating: PG, I suppose. Here there be the merest hints of murder, in case you weren't paying attention.
Author's Notes: Told from Lorelei's POV, as she is starting to "awaken". C&C always welcomed.

( And the key is cold and smooth against my skin, though I haven't let it go free since you pressed it to my palm. Am I the blood that flows through its greeny veins? I think I see a face there, I think I hear a song. And that song, like you, dances through my memory, all claws and petals and thorny wires thrown together by the storm. )

lorelei // table of contents