I awoke with regret this morning, when I saw the daylight through the shade and under the door: it had been the intention to wake up last night and finish writing and begin drawing the previous chapter. Conducting a post-mortem, although such a description crushes the small action it speaks for, it appeared the alarm I confidently recalled setting for 11pm had not been set...guessing such a cause for thisbetrayal of intention doesn't take a detective, I am well aware, but it was disconcerting for what was a certain assurance of the mind to be surreptitiously betrayed. 'If the inner workings betray me, there must be good reason' was the conclusion then reached, and indeed it had been pleasant waking such that I finally found myself feeling grateful towards the intervention of that other side of the mind. An era of grand cooperation could be reached. To tie the ribbon I proclaimed it "a satisfactory affair"–if such a dull thing may be called an affair.

So from Snow Dream I woke and the next day woke; there was no snow. Rain ice and your breath and the cries of cold birds. No snow fell, you rather found a pitter-pattering chill on the body.

Writing. The intent is to draw but drawing is seldom spoken of–nay, drawn of–around these parts. I have been interested in both since a young age, although more in writing it must be admitted–this is just the stuff of frivolity–and unlike with the other, the idea of regiment has come up very little with writing. If a regiment of the written manifests here, it is unsuspecting, intended merely as accoutrement to the belabored illustrative struggle. For I have found lifestyle, not regiment, the good and effective (although 'effective' is an effect of my wanton authorial indulgence, not a true measure of efficacy as the wasteland of written word here before you belies) companion of writing. Writing is like a tide across the years. Unfortunately, I have not come across such a lifestyle of drawing–always a struggle, never good enough. Perhaps that was the divisor: I could make bad writing and it often became good in my eyes, but my bad drawings have much more frequently languished bad. To struggle with the drawn representation of reality never became an intimate process–how am I connected to the act of depicting? In drawing the pencil yielded no meaning which could be loaded into the chamber of language; drawing was always apart. In middle school I might have been struck by the beauty of a Dragon Ball cover, but my efforts to copy would fall painfully short. The subtle beauty of the drawing–the most striking, most difficult aspects to make one's own–were such that, following half or an hour of frustrative copying attempt, I'd content myself to only look at the cover. In that same middle school pocket of time I came into a once-a-while habit of tracing, such as to capture the beauty in pages and on screens, but there was little deep pleasure in the practice...The urge to draw never left, but the meaning never came.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

[https://i.imgur.com/4smYUFw.jpg]