Wintertide creates holidays more easily than religion...

I'm at home, which is generally (in terms of setting and comfort) a much better place than campus. There's real sunlight, real darkness, honest to earth trees and shrubberies, and the air smells better. The showers are awful, but I only deal with that for something like twenty minutes. So there you are.

Luckycat R and Superopie were here last night. We played Star Wars Trivial Pursuit, talked a lot, watched some video, and laughed a great deal. Hopes for an early twelfth night celebration rise. Today one works and the other's sick, so I've been mostly alone. That's mostly okay, though.

My RSS feeds brought me several things about writing today, so that was interesting:

Le Guin reacts to Sci-Fi's Legend of Earthsea.

The books are about two young people finding what their power, their freedom, and their responsibility is. I don't know what the film is about. It's full of scenes from the story, but in this different plot, they make no sense. Its hero goes through lots of Ged's experiences, but learns nothing from them. How could he? He isn't Ged. Ged isn't a petulant white kid.

Neil Gaiman describes how scenes change over time, and the general state of an author, apart from the euphoria bit that's quite nice.

I told my agent today, when she made the mistake of asking how the novel was going, that all was misery and gloom and that in addition I couldn't write for toffee. She pointed out cheerfully that we've had this conversation three quarters of the way through everything I've ever written in the last sixteen years, which frankly was not the kind of sympathetic response I was looking for*.

Also, Theresa Nielsen Hayden recommends a 'patron saint' for writers.

Hayden also mentions an interesting wintertide tradition that I might look into. Mostly, I'll need to hunt up how to make rice pudding, and maybe buy an interesting book.

I finished Gibson's Count Zero today, and started Moorcock's Wizardry and Wild Romance. Gibson's book was fantastic, as I expected, and Moorcock's essay on epic fantasy is turning out to be wonderful as well, though I (naturally) disagree with him on some points. If you don't know, Moorcock is fairly well known for disliking Tolkien. And while that seems to lead to a dislike for much of modern "epic" (i.e. Jordan-esque) fantasy, which I support, I also love Tolkien. But he makes valid points, which I can accept and still love the books, I feel. Fantasy writers should read it (after reading Joseph Campbell). He mentions Borges several times, and three people have, in reference to things I've written, told me I should read his stories. When I get back to school (and its library) I'll try to get on that.