Poet's Corner: more sonnets by Borges

More sonnets by Jorge Luis Borges.

I by Jorge Luis Borges [from La Rosa Profunda, trans. Alastair Reid]

The skull within, the secret, shuttered heart,
the byways of the blood I never see,
the underworld of dreaming, that Proteus,
the nape, the viscera, the skeleton.
I am all those things. Amazingly,
I am too the memory of a sword
and of a solitary, falling sun,
turning itself to gold, then gray, then nothing.
I am the one who sees the approaching ships
from harbor. And I am the dwindled books,
the rare engravings worn away by time;
the one who envies those already dead.
Stranger to be the man who interlaces
such words as these, in some room, in a house.

( Nightmare )

Writing Meme: Questions 9 & 10

9. Are you more of a drabble or a longfic kind of writer? Pantser or plotter? Do you wish you were the other? Both, or neither?

I am a drabbler. I prefer writing short fics and drabbles. I don't usually read long fic either unless one of my friends has written it or it's something I am super keen on.

I am a pantser and a plodder. I write in sequence. I don't skip and move on to the next bit if I'm stuck. I may wait a day or two and come back to it but I don't continue on writing the rest of the story. That's not how my mind works.

I have had a long fic in mind for many years (a seven layer BBC Femlock mystery) and I would have to be a plotter, and a very good one, to realize it. I always think about doing it for Nanowrimo, but November is after October and October is my High Holy Season of Ficcing.

I think I would find it difficult to sustain enthusiasm for a long fic that involved a lot of plotting. It doesn't strike me as fun or a great use of my limited free time. But that's just me.

10. How would you describe your writing process?

So, I see *something* that gives me inspiration. A prompt. A bit of a film. An image. A quote. It almost always suggests a particular fandom at the same time. So I think about it a lot, first, composing dialogue, and then when I have a moment, I write it down and start plodding.

I ride my moods. If I feel like writing porn, I forgo sleep and other responsibilities and dive in. Sometimes I am feeling like something clever or quirky or sentimental. I take advantage of wherever my minds is going.

I usually write at night, but those days when I wake up early with a great idea are pretty special. Sometimes things just flow.


( The entire list )