Back to Basics

My writing felt flat on Monday, I was utterly uninspired by my WIPs, and my mood was a bit down over a couple of recent rejections, so it was time to initiate the usual contingency plan for such times - take a sanctioned writing break and do more fun, randomised reading so as to remember why I do what I do and usually love it.

I got through two, very different books. The first was Dodie Smith's genteel I Capture the Castle, which I had somehow managed to not read in my youth. The two sisters in it were so much more worldly than I'd expected, real bohemians when it comes to their surprising frankness about sex and religion, and also far more calculating. Their scheming about snagging a rich husband would be off-putting if they weren't so charming about it. I loved the non-whiny attitudes and resourcefulness of all the characters despite their appalling poverty - you'd be hard put finding a modern character eating cold broccoli and rice and simply being grateful for the way it so satisfactorily filled their stomachs. The characters are all well delineated as individuals yet work well as an ensemble, and mostly remain intelligent, gracious, funny, breezy and tough, each making the best of their lot while trying to better their lives and help others as best they can. The descriptions of the English countryside reek of nostalgia (then author was living in the US when she wrote it), and the village scenes evoke a dreamy, slow-moving era now long gone. There's a lot of kindness in this book. Whether real or imagined, it was nice to read about such gentle folk.

The second was Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan, a real page-turner which had been stuck in one of my TBR stacks for ages. I'm now kicking myself over not reading sooner, and will have to get my hands on the sequel ASAP.  Alternative history with famous names popping in and out of the story, WW1 politics with a twist, genetic manipulation on a grotesque and often unsettling scale, grittier, more grinding and more oilier than usual steampunk, brave and resourceful main characters, action scenes galore - it's got the lot. Ten pages in, I found myself wishing I'd written it, which is always the first sign that I'm on my way to being cured of a bout of writing apathy. By the end, I'd fully recovered and was eager to get going again.
 
So, with my enthusiasm for writing fully restored, I shall hit the keyboard tomorrow, and hit it hard.