Catching up on 5 Q

[butterflydreaming]

1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by asking you five questions, possibly of a very intimate and creepily personal nature...
3. You WILL update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

I'll do what I can about generating questions, but I'm not making any promises. I'm just finally getting around to these five that I asked for from bdkellmer. I know I still also owe one or two to buhrger... I have to look on my computer at home for the ones I missed.

• What is the significant of Chuang Tzu to you? I mean, you named your LJ after him...

Up until I started watching a lot of anime, I thought I was the only person who had heard of the story of Butterfly Philosopher. I retold it often, with the result of baffled looks.

Once there was a man who had a vivid dream. In his dream he fluttered through trees as a butterfly. When he awoke, he wondered: had he dreamed a dream that felt real, or was he now dreaming? Was he a man who dreamed of the life of a butterfly, or was he a butterfly, dreaming the life of a man?

I don't remember when I first heard that, but it's a concept that I have turned over in my mind since childhood. What is real? Characters, whether those in a book or my own, can feel very real. When writing a character, that person can have the same presence as a Real Person. Where does fiction begin and end? Who is the dreamer?

To our characters, we are God. We ourselves, depending on personal belief, can be thought of as the dreams or fictions of a greater Creator. Personally, I find that comforting.

When I started putting my writing online and needed a username, I like the sound and allusion of "butterflydreaming". Butterflies are loaded symbols; they are the soul, dream, change, and more. I also found out that the JP word "cho" -- first letter of my first name and two first of my last -- means a length of distance (travelled) as well as butterfly. I felt that I was at a point of change in my life where I had far to go, spiritually and creatively. Also, I have long had a sense of unreality in my life. It seems appropriate that I would be the butterfly, dreaming.


• what are your writing goals?

Oh, boy. I've been asking myself this same question. My best answer is that my goal is to develop a habit of a regular writing schedule. I keep trying to address my conflicts without success, but I have not given up. I honestly don't care about publishing. It's a nice idea, but if I'm not actually doing the work then all it is is a nice idea. I wish that I could say that I have an Ultimate Goal, but I have been goal-less and directionless for a rather long time. Well, not directionless, since forward is the only direction any of us have.

I enjoy writing short story, not only because of the length commitment. (I love reading short story, too.) I have yet to finish writing a novel. I'd like to do that.


• what sort of beadwork do you like?

When working with beads I prefer the small seed beads, worked either in peyote stitch -- a needle and thread stitch like crochet -- or on a bead loom. I find the sculptural aspect, like mosaic, more satisfying than stringing larger beads. The kind of beadwork that I admire is anything that uses the integral aspects of the beads (shape, material) in harmony. A well composed piece of beadwork is like a well composed piece of orchestral music. It should matter whether the blue bead is glass or stone or enameled metal.


• tell me about your favorite fountain pen and why you like writing with it.

My favorite pen isn't fountain but dip-and-write. It was a gift to me when one of my close friends was living in France. The shaft is plastic, purple, and the finely pointed nib is a little rusty because I didn't take good care of it. Still, it writes with hair-fine lines and makes a slightly scratchy noise that soothes me. This is my letter-writing pen and sometimes my journal-writing pen.

When I write poetry or fiction, I write in pencil (or keyboard it).


• Who's your favorite writer? What inspires you the most about them?

The writer I most admire (currently) is Michael Marshall Smith. I think he is brilliant. His work has an originality to it that at the same time seems like something you should already have thought of; it's not outlandish or farfetched, but it is fresh. He writes horror that doesn't rely on blood and bodies.

There is more variety to his short stories than to the short stories of Charles de Lint, another writer that I greatly enjoy reading. CdL seems to state what I already Know; MMS states what I didn't realize I Knew.

What inspires me about the writing of both of these very different authors is that they seem to be writing whatever they want to write, not generating "what will sell", and both of them are very successful.