Hope and Inspiration

Back from Puerto Rico. It was . . . well, it was interesting to be away for awhile. It was nice to see Fernando's family and hang out a bit. It got a bit tense at the end, and I'm not going to lie; toward the last few days, I started to go nuts. Here's why:

I missed home. I missed my cello, really missed my cello. I would kind of zone out every now and then, using my right arm as a kind of fingerboard to practice my fingerings. And, I missed writing. I brought my laptop with me in the hopes of writing in my spare time (of which there wasn't much), but that didn't work out. When I write, I have a kind of routine. I sit on my futon, I put my giant headphones on and listen to a very select number of albums. Or sometimes I sit at my desktop, depending on my mood. But once I'm situated, I go for hours. I've spent entire days doing nothing but writing, starting at 7am and only stopping when Fernando comes through the door. I couldn't get into that focus while in Puerto Rico.

And what's worse, once I got home, it took me a few days to get back into the swing of things. I'm only just starting to write again today, and we returned home last Friday. I need to work on my recovery time if I'm going to be a real writer.

Inspiration is a strange thing. I'm finding it kind of an adventure to map out the stimuli that inspires me to write, the things that get the juices flowing, so to speak. There is a kind of understanding there. Writers (good ones, anyway) need to observe and evaluate. A good writer needs a greater than average insight also. It's beyond me to try and quantify all the things necessary to become a good writer though.

I spent the last few days in an absorb phase; I read an obscene amount. Though is any amount of reading ever obscene? I've noticed that I tend to read with a much more critical eye now; I pay much greater attention to word choice, detail, flow, the percussive elements of structure, and what makes a sentence sound good as opposed to clumsy.

I'll be honest; when I first read Twilight, I really liked it. Very much. I was in a bad relationship, desperate for any scraps of romance that could be had in the world, but also it's an entertaining enough story that I enjoyed the way you enjoy a fast food meal; you know it's bad, but you like it. But I'd never realized how bad it was until just recently! I tried re-reading it just a few days ago, and I'm struck by how rudimentary the writing is. I don't think I'm an excellent writer, but I've written better things than Stephenie Meyer has. Fernando tells me my Scholar and the Flame story was phenomenal, and my Leto story was visceral and gripping.

I don't know whether to feel hopeful or discouraged. Does the quality of Twilight bode well or ill for my chances to be published?