Lili Saintcrow @lilithsaintcrow@raggedfeathers.com

In which dogs must dog, writers must write, and the final bell remains un-rung.

A Little Grace https://www.lilithsaintcrow.com/2020/08/a-little-grace/

Ball’s final line in this piece haunts me. “Even one voice lost is too many.”

“That is what should be celebrated now, but instead we keep picking at Lovecraft like someone picking at a scab, never letting it fully heal.” https://tornightfire.com/stop-giving-awards-to-dead-racists-on-lovecraft-and-the-retro-hugos/

Brb gotta dance around the office to Rihanna’s “Umbrella”.

I’ll leave you with another piece of advice from Lucas: “But make a new dream for each book. Even if it’s the same old dream with the serial numbers filed off.”

Anyway. Pain avoidance is a utility, but it can also be a binding. Learning to differentiate between the two uses is part of not just surviving but actually living.

(It’s raining today, and I feel like I might have the strength to go back to piano. Hope is a dreadful, wonderful thing.)

It’s like piano playing. You might not ever be Mozart, but daily practice for a number of years will make you BETTER, maybe even the best in a certain radius.

Lucas points out that writing is a skill, and a skill can be practiced. Any talent one has for writing, no matter how minuscule, can be exercised, watered, fed.

“As long as I don’t publish, my comforting dream of this book’s explosive success remains alive. I avoid the risk of pain.” https://mwl.io/archives/7300

Rain! RAIN! Beautiful, glorious rain, tapping the roof and hissing through the leaves.

Just when I’m at the end of my strength, something beautiful comes along.

I forgot I put Baltimora in the play queue this morning.

DANCE BREAK.

“The KGB had a euphemism for this kind of hit: fizicheskoye ustraneniye or “physical removal.””

“His method was to wait for a reaction—and to carry on emboldened if it failed to materialize.” Sounds eerily familiar, doesn’t it.

“The assassins who arrived in London in the spring of 2018 were not the first hit men sent by Moscow.” https://lithub.com/how-a-russian-defector-became-a-warning-from-moscow-to-london/

“Many of these authors were friendly with male writers who would go on to achieve greater fame, or they were tremendously admired by famous men, only to see their own names fade into semi-obscurity.” https://crimereads.com/weird-women-the-forgotten-female-horror-writers-of-the-19th-century-and-beyond/

Except I have no life preserver for the longing man. I am occupied with saving those who WANT to be dragged from the abyss.

…a wonderful piece Merve Emre, by the way.