Cris de Borja

What Inspires Me Right Now

At five o’clock, if thick rain clouds aren’t blocking out the sun, the sky is still light. For me, that is a marker of a change of seasons, not the seasons of winter-to-spring, but of winter-darkness to end-of-winter light. I’ve been in the PNW long enough to know that spring doesn’t come until it’s official, and spring weather isn’t even guaranteed as late as June. Cherry trees may bloom, only to have the blossoms turn to wet slurry in March and April rain. This is the place I call home, with my heart.

What I’m Reading

Morissey’s autobiography is a long lyric, a stream-of-consciousness memory, like listening to his thoughts. Manchester-recalled is a dark and dreadful place. I feel glad to have a cheat sheet scrawled from mystery-thrillers and BBC America to help me understand things unexplained. Don’t judge me.

What I’m Writing

The thing I will codename Project E is at 85,500+ words. Good heavens. I’ve been writing it for a year. Great googly mooglies. It’s the equivalent of making bacon brownies. It’s fun, and at the same time, I’m ready to flourish “the end” and give attention to an entree.

I’m concurrently writing and rewriting EA, the magic girl serial. I say that, and I think of all the other stories in various states of waiting. It’s why I blog so rarely. Time, divided. I’m always coming across tidbits that fit interestingly into this one or that one. My stories are like shoeboxes, and I will take one from lower on the stack and open it to pop something in (e.g. robot camel jockies), and then spend hours daydreaming through the collection. In fact, I keep an “Idea Book” to reduce the number of metaphorical shoeboxes.

I’m a slow writer. I’ve found myself worrying what will happen if I don’t write them all.

Technical difficulties mean doing editing on a short story for my writing group’s anthology in fits and starts. It’s not a bad story, but I rather wish I had gone with something more in my usual style and topic of interest, instead of something I thought would push my edges outward. But revising always makes any story dire and unpleasant to look at, while the revising is ongoing. I have that on good authority, too.

What Else I’m Doing

Now that my air-drying clay beads are dry, I need to take advantage of a dry day and gloss coat them. I have two different spray glosses, and limited number of beads. My plan is to split them into two similar groups and then compare the finishes afterward.

The clay beads are colored with a mix of metallic mica and toner (as in, printer cartridge) dust. Upcycling!