I’m talkative this morning. Work avoidance, I suppose.

Working rather feverishly on the mini-story for the Digger collection. I am getting a little nervous about it–not because I think it’s bad but because I’m getting the peculiarly exposed feeling that I get sometimes when I write fiction–the sort of “There is too much of me in this, and my soul is being laid entirely too bare to any casual reader” feeling.

Weirdly enough, sitting here and actually baring my soul and talking about myself doesn’t bother me at all. Maybe the truths in fantasy are deeper and much more embarassing. Possibly it’s because if I’m simply stating something, I can phrase it as delicately or as flatteringly as I wish, whereas the reader of a story actually SEES it. It’s the difference between stating that you’re Reubenesque and full-figured, and having somebody actually see the pudge and the flobbing flab in person. Or something like that.

While this story is supposedly the origin of the statue of the Ganesh–and without spoilering–it’s essentially about the life of a sculptor. That his sculpture becomes an avatar of Ganesh became pretty much a footnote–the sculptor himself ran away with me. (People are more interesting than gods anyway.) He’s pretty one-dimensional, a creative impulse and not much else, but seven pages isn’t the place to write War and Peace. It’s funny, of course–I mean, it’s me writing it, I can’t keep a straight face for more than a page or two–so there’s a delusional emperor and random turnips and so forth, but still, I find myself looking at this with beady little eyes and go “Dude, you wanna just write “I AM BURNED OUT ON COMMISSIONS: A Pictorial Essay By Ursula Vernon” across the title page, or what?”

Probably I’m just neurotic–I’m sure all my myriad writers in the audience can tell tales of how they’ll re-read something and think “Jesus, this says WAY too much about me!” when nobody else would neccessarily think that. Hell, maybe it’s a good thing.

Ultimately, I think it’s an okay little story, and that’s the important bit. Of course, only the readers will tell in the end. *grin* And now I gotta get back to work on it, because too much navel gazing doesn’t get the art done…