The Mouse That Roared

I need a good book to read. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. I prefer something grand and sweeping with dragons and princesses. But that’s just personal preference.

And also, for the discerning reader, I’ve added two new links to my Stella Reads section. The Hogwarts Professor is a fun fun site for the “more serious Harry Potter reader.” I was tickled and fascinated. And of course, at long last, Educating Alice, whom I’ve liked for some time now, just never got around to adding. Hooray!

I studied in Paris, France for four months.

The picture on my computer desktop is:

Isn’t it beautiful?

To get here, you take the number 6 Metro to Bir Hakim. Exit to the left, and go down the stairs. Take a right outside of the metro station, and you’ll cross a street towards a stand that has the best crepes in Paris. And a very nice, talkative creperie artist. Is that what they’re called?

Round the corner, and you’ll see her for the first time. Standing tall. Keep walking, and at the corner with the second souvenir stand, take a right, and then on the next block, among the pricey apartments and scooters, there she is again. And there’s a small dirt path that you can take, which makes you feel as if this experience were somehow unique to you alone, to an area where there are a few benches, to the southwest of the tower. And you can sit there, with the pond in front of you, and her thick, iron legs reflected back like underwater fire.

My heart is bursting with it all. Do you know what I did? Do you know? I lived in Paris! For four months! Oh, there is nothing like her. She is my soulmate. And goodness, how I miss her.

My apologies for being so very absent lately. But it’s just that, I’ve been feeling a bit absent.

I’ve come under a bit of stress lately, but it will all be okay, and of that I’m certain. I’ve far too much left to do in this life to be killed by my own demons just yet.

Speaking of which, I don’t know if it’s the result of the stress, but I really don’t know if I’ve ever felt so dry, creatively speaking. Nothing that comes out of my pen or my typing has any color or flavor to it; case in point, I spent a whole page describing a white room and had to resist the urge to white it all out. I don’t know what’s the matter.

I’m afraid I was never really in love with my characters to begin with. Or maybe I don’t know them well enough to love them like they deserve. Right now, they’re all so very vague, and I keep telling myself that they’ll fill in once I put them on paper. But all that comes out on paper is the shadow that’s in my mind. And no one wants to read about shadows. Unless, of course, it’s an actual shadow, like Peter Pan’s, but even that play of light had personality.

Why can’t I love my own creation? I have a feeling this bodes poorly for my maternal instincts. It just feels so very dry and chalky, and not at all wet and lucid and texturized like I want it to.

I keep thinking of Harry. And it’s quite foolish for a 21-year-old college student to be comparing herself to the best-selling author of all time (or at least our modern day and age). But really, I’ve been thinking a lot about him. How does one create a character that is so ordinary and able-to-be-identified-with, and yet who is so extraordinary at the same time? In my case, how do you craft someone who is frightened and unsure and hesitant and full of mistakes and yet who has the balls to step up when it’s needed, to call out the best in others, and to throw herself to the mercy of fate and love when the time comes? I know it’s all so very bildungsromanesque, but aren’t those the very best sorts of stories? I like to think so.

I just hope I find that spark again soon. I’m beginning to think I may be selling panties for the rest of my life, and I don’t know how well I’m going to handle that particular reality.