blog entry #5

It’s only my fifth blog entry and I’m already losing momentum and any interest in keeping it up. I mean, what’s even the point, right? Here I am, baring my heart and soul and no one gives a shit. Anyway, I’ve completed another book this week. So go me! It might very well be my tenth full-length novel, give or take. Though, at this point, I’m pretty certain that it’ll be my tenth failed attempt at getting published. I’m going to give it a try, of course. I’m nothing if not a masochist, who likes to have her hopes and dreams dashed by perfect strangers with their stupid rejections. That’s why there’s no excitement or elation or hope that I used to have once upon a time upon finishing a new book. It’s quite sad, really. I can hardly convince myself that this is it – the novel that will finally make me famous – not after all these years. On the other hand, there’s a definite feeling of accomplishment that I’ve written another novel. I love writing and that’s what ultimately keeps me going despite rejections and failures. I’ve already started editing the first chapter and it’s all red. I must say that nothing wakes my inner perfectionist like editing, turning it into a never-ending process – my personal writing hell. Eventually, I will have to put my foot down and tell myself to stop and be happy with what I have already done. I’m looking forward to going back and rereading everything that I’ve written. It took me over a year to finish this book and I barely remember most of it, apart from a few parts that stand out quite vividly in my memory. For a while there I struggled with the ending, because the ending that I had been planning to write just didn’t work, and that’s when I had an idea for a continuation of the story. It was so vivid that I didn’t have any trouble writing it down. It was quite fun too and I hope that I’ll get to write it at some point. It’s just that once I finish editing this novel, there’s another novel (another continuation) that’s been waiting in the wings for far too long, so I’ll be working on that next. However, all these books and book ideas belong to the same universe and it’s pretty exciting to see how many different stories it provides me with. I can’t wait to write them all. If nothing else, writing for the sake of writing, writing because there are stories in my head that must be told, is what makes me happy indeed. So I’m off to the editing land now, because the sooner I finish working on this novel, the sooner I’ll be able to start working on a new one!

blog entry #4

I think it was two years ago that I finally watched “Peaky Blinders” for the first time. I immediately fell in love with the show and its aesthetics and became so obsessed with it that I watched it several times in a row – then two more times with my mom. I just couldn’t get enough. Unfortunately, even the best shows can’t fully escape the fate of going sour at some point and, as I’m watching the final season of “Peaky Blinders” on Netflix, I’m sorry to say that the spark, the heart, and the soul of the show is quite gone. I’ve seen too many shows in my life to know that it’s a disturbingly common tendency among showrunners to make each new season bigger and darker – until there’s nothing to speak of but darkness and dullness and drudgery of watching something that has become barely palatable, which is exactly what happened to “Peaky Blinders” in the end. Unlike the previous seasons, the sixth season lacks everything from plot to tension that was particularly palpable during the final minutes of the fifth season. Now not only is there no tension, there is no dynamic or action of any kind – apart from some sporadic explosion or other. Mainly, it’s just a rambling, disjointed, and repetitive exposition. There’s no balance between dark and light. There’s no light. Period. No humour. No love. No sense. No brilliance. No wit. The story lost its grip and any meaning. I knew that the sixth season would be difficult to watch for a number of reasons, but I wasn’t prepared to watch something so… dead. Just like Tommy’s eyes. I push myself through each episode of barely tolerable acting and boring conversation between bored to death people that cannot stand each other. Even music is not what it used to be. It’s jarring. Every note rings false: loud and out of tune. All the bonds are broken and no Polly to keep everything and everyone together. Helen McCrory’s terrible loss is too painful. I don’t feel like I’m inside the story anymore. I just don’t feel it. Perhaps, making fascism, nazis, and their sympathizers part of your main storyline wasn’t such a brilliant idea, after all, because any normal person will feel instant rejection and revulsion upon seeing them, and that’s even before they open their mouths and spew out all those horrible things. It’s one thing to watch your protagonist deal with an imaginary antagonist, however repugnant, and it’s quite another matter to watch him rubbing shoulders with actual historic figures, obviously too bored with their lives, who smoke and drink and reminisce about how they made Jews eat grass while drinking coffee, as though it’s something normal. I’m sorry but that’s not the show that I started watching and that’s definitely not the show I want to continue watching. There’s something very wrong there. In the past “Peaky Blinders” had so many iconic scenes and dialogues, but now it’s just one dull scene after another. With two more episodes left to watch I feel like the show is beyond salvation just like Tommy Shelby himself. The only good things so far have been occasional glimpses of Ada’s badassery, even rarer glimpses of Alfie’s idiosyncrasies, and Cillian Murphy’s acting. With one more episode left to watch I feel like it has been a massive waste of my time. Well, I guess the final episode wasn’t as bad as the others. I think it tried to recapture some classic moments of the past, but, generally, the whole season was a massive disappointment and wasn’t worth the wait. Tommy’s story was meandering at best and as for the rest of the characters they didn’t seem to have anything to do at all.

blog entry #3

Do you know that I started this blog back in 2012? I know it’s a stupid question. Of course, you don’t know that. Why should you? You’re probably wondering who the hell this person is and why the hell they’re rambling on and on about things that no one cares about, right? Well, sheesh, I know that you don’t care, so there’s no need to tell me that. I don’t have any illusions – well – delusions, really, about that anymore. And it’s not like you’re even reading this, so why should I care what you think? You’re not even here. I’m writing to myself. Anyway, I vaguely remember that I started blogging much earlier than that – around the time I started writing “Margaret’s Rematch” for the first time (in order to establish my ‘online presence’), so that was years and years back – and that there had been another blog before that and that it had been way more popular than this one but that I had to abandon it at some point because I messed up my account somehow or other and there was just no going back, which really sucked, because I never regained a rather large number of my followers after that and I always regretted that. I might have taken a prolonged break between the two blogs, I guess. I just don’t remember anymore – water under the bridge and all that. I do remember that there had been quite a few other blogs in between, with various entries dedicated to different subjects that all perished into the void in the end. But I’m glad that I managed to keep this blog running, even after the whole blogging thing became pretty much obsolete. I’m actually sorry that I got rid of all my other ‘side’ blogs, because as I set off down the memory lane here, scrolling all the way back to 2012, I realized how precious all these little memories are. Well, they’re precious to me, obviously – not to anyone else out there. As I’ve said before, I’m no longer holding onto the delusion that I’ll ever become so famous an author readers will scour every nook and cranny of the Internet in search for information about me and – most importantly – my books. I found it interesting to read through some of the older entries that were all about documenting my writing progress, hopes, and dreams, as well as reading excerpts from different writing projects, some of which have become actual books and some of which have been abandoned or forgotten. I envy Cassandra Clare in this respect: she went from a fanfic writer herself to a world-famous, best-selling author with thousands of fanfics about her own characters (not to mention a movie and a TV show!). Anyway, this blog was supposed to record my writing journey and my eventual publishing success and triumphant rise to the author stardom of Cassandra Clare’s caliber. Instead, it became a miserable record of my writing struggles and failures with sporadic mentions of my old and new book-, film- or show-related obsessions in between (or occasional relapse and return to my old fanfic-junkie days). I sometimes think that I’m the worst writer there is in terms of writing success (or its complete lack thereof) rather than in terms of my writing skills. After all, no matter how many times I take up blogging again and no matter what book I’m currently working on, I always end up here: back at square one with nothing to show for it. I guess some things never change.

blog entry #2

In recent years I seriously began to question my ability to read as fast and as much as I used to do in the past. Turns out all I needed in order to start devouring books again was to find a book series that actually interested me enough to do so. I’ve been on the look-out for a new fantasy series I could fall in love with for a long time now, but I never thought that it would be “The Mortal Instruments” by Cassandra Clare. But this May I read six books in the series in a space of a few weeks, proving that I still had it in me. On the other hand, it could be that the books are well-written and easily read, the world is well-shaped, and the characters aren’t too bad either. It’s not a new discovery for me. Not at all. In fact, I read the first three books in the series many years ago – probably soon after they had come out. I watched the film based on the first book in the cinema just as many years ago and I actually liked it a lot, so I was sorry to hear that there would be no continuation. I even re-watched it not so long ago. However, I couldn’t completely like the series, because I’m not a huge fan of the main characters: Clary and Jace. Normally, I need to love the main characters in order to enjoy the books, but these two just annoy me to no end. Still, I’ve kept an eye on the news about the Shadow World all these years and watched as more and more books joined the series, expanding the world that held a certain irresistible attraction for me. I love its structure and hierarchy and laws and all the problems that come with them, so I guess it was just a matter of time before I came back to devour the rest three books. A few years ago I chanced upon a used copy of “City of Fallen Angels” and bought it without any clear idea to ever actually read it. I just knew that I wanted and needed to have it. Well, this spring it finally came in handy and I was happy that I got my hands on it when I had the chance. Earlier this spring I finally watched “Shadowhunters: The Mortal Instruments” TV show and loved it much more than I’d expected to. In fact, I had been convinced that I wouldn’t like it at all and the only reason why I even started watching it was because I had always been impartial to Alec and Magnus and the loveliness that is Malec. So I shifted my focus from the main couple to my favourite couple and with that new view in mind reread “City of Bones”, “City of Ashes”, and “City of Glass” before continuing with the rest of the series. It was like coming back home to familiar settings and friendly faces and I love when books make me feel like that. Along the way I’ve read some stories from “Magnus Bane Chronicles” and “The Eldest Curses”. I’ve already read “The Red Scrolls of Magic” and I’m currently reading “The Lost Book of the White” before returning to finish “The Mortal Instruments” series with the humongous volume of “City of Heavenly Fire”. For years I’ve felt this strange pull towards this series and it looks as though my longing to plunge headfirst into the world of Shadowhunters and Downworlders has finally won over. And I can’t say that I’m sorry!