My really cute novel idea did pale by morning time. So I faffed around a bit, trying to find something else to pursue. Honestly, I feel like I’m in a bit of a transitional period. My first year at Hopkins, writing was really difficult, but then I had a solid twelve month period where I felt electric and was tossing off stories and novels like mad. But the last six months hasn’t been like that. Firstly, writing that middle-grade novel was like pulling teeth. Secondly, I feel increasingly hemmed in. Last year, the world felt so expansive: I knew I could write about anything and anyone.

Now it’s different. I feel like there’s less and less that I can write about. I go through about a hundred ideas a week, and they all start to seem silly and stupid and shallow when I actually begin to write them.

Anyway, it’s a growth period. I’ve had them before. Usually, I come out of them with some fantabulous new insight about what I want to write and why. And then the insight gets thoroughly integrated into my writing process and I forget that I ever had one.

This afternoon, though, I resurrected the really cute idea and attacked it from another angle and wrote a few thousand words. Hopefully it won’t fall apart like everything else I’ve been doing lately. I’m really quite charmed by this idea; I’d like to be the kind of person who can write something lighter once in a while. In both my life and my reading preferences, I’m not nearly as grim as my stories tend to be. Although I guess there’s a fair amount of subtle humor in many of them.

In other news, I’ve decided that it’s totally inappropriate for me to keep listening to all the music that I’ve stolen over the years (mostly when I was in college), so I just signed up for Spotify Premium and I’m now slowly piecing together a collection on that site so that I don’t accidentally forget about some artist that I really like. Then, after a few days, I’ll go ahead and completely delete my iTunes music collection (up to 30 gigs now!) Certainly not proud to have done so much illegal downloading, but whatever…everyone was doing it.

As a result of this, all of my playlists are public. Which, initially kind of unsettling for me, but then I thought it might be a cool opportunity. Since I really only make playlists for listening to when I’m writing and since the music that I listen to is almost always pretty embarrassing (pop country and top 40 hits feature prominently), I thought some of my readers might be interested in seeing them. If so, you can follow me right here. And the playlist for my current work in progress is right here. Yes, I have listened to Rihanna’s “Shut Up and Drive” about 100 times in the last two weeks.