The Devil's Rose's blog

So yeah. Listening to Loreena McKennitt because her music feels like October and Halloween.

I've decided to try to be more descriptive in my journals for a couple of reasons. One, I was rereading some from when I was younger (I've kept journals since I was ten years old), and many of my favorite bits and pieces are the highly descriptive sections of what days and moments were like. The more ponderous musings are interesting, too, I like to see what issues mattered to me at any given moment in time, but my favorites are the descriptions of people and places.

Two, I want to be a writer. Part of what makes me love my favorite novels are the beautiful descriptions (and sometimes not-so-beautiful, just so long as they're vivid) of the characters and settings. It appeals to the artist in me. And the artist in me is nothing if not a tyrannical dictator - I grew up in an artistic family, so being able to create things that convey emotions and my visions of things was always encouraged, and thus has become extremely important to me.

Three, half the people who comment on things I write seem to like those parts best, too. :-D I may not be able to draw to save my life, but I seem able to convey moods and atmospheres with words.

So there you have it.

Bleargh.

Today was a dreamy kind of day. I was up late last night studying for a quiz on hiragana in my Japanese class today, and then the weather took a sudden upturn in temperature so we had that kind of fuzzy-blanket warmth in the air that makes you drowse off and not want to do much more than sit in bed with a book and daydream about faraway lands and exciting adventures in exotic climes. The air smelled like redwoods, too, which only aided to the sleepy atmosphere. It's supposed to rain tomorrow evening, and all day I could see the silver cotton clouds boiling over the ocean on the horizon. By late afternoon, they looked like silvered ice islands floating on the ocean.

I love the view from my school.

I love the dreamy atmosphere up here, too. I took a walk through the woods and the meadows this afternoon, watching the leaves of non-redwood and non-pine trees drift down and the sun slant through the needles of the evergreens up here. It gave me so many ideas for settings for my novel, which is tentatively going to be called The Mage Wars of J'Naya, with J'Naya being the name of the imaginary kingdom/dimension alongside our world that my main character will accidentally stumble into. I can't wait to start writing it, but I have to wait for November 1st. That's the rule.

Classes were a drowsy haze. Every classroom had the heat turned up in anticipation of the cold weather we had all weekend which left our windows frosty with angular lace patterns and made the new freshman briefly reconsider whether they really wanted to be here all winter long, but today was one of those Indian Summer days when, at the very end of autumn, you can toss the winter clothes back in the closet and go frolic in seafoam and sprinklers. So I had to fight to stay awake in class, but instead decided to let myself drift.

I don't think I've learned enough phonology in linguistics yet to create a full language for my world, which I eventually want to do, but I can at least start figuring out how it works and differs from English. Mwahahahaha.

The fog is rolling in now, all misty and red from the amber streetlamps scattered about my college. And R and S are back to continue cramming for Japanese, so I'll leave you there and get back to writing more tomorrow.

Until then, enjoy the tango videos below. One day, I will dance like that. I've promised myself. The first is the scene from Moulin Rouge, and the second is to a song I love called "Tango to Evora" which a Greek singer added words to and made into "Nefelis Tango".

Hugs and wishes for you to find magic around yourself. <3

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