Thursday 4 March 2004

Pic of the day: Sakaki-san singing karaoke!

Urge to write rising

Today's illustration is a snapshot from the hilarious Japanese extended ASCII art flash animation featuring Azumanga Daioh characters and a crazy J-pop song about weddings and such (from what little I can glean). The animation (with loud music!!) can be found here (while stocks last) and I owe my gratitude to Eslington, Lord of the Muffins, for telling me. He is highly British (albeit somewhat bi-curious) and a fellow admirer of Azumanga Daioh, which is possibly the most accessible glimpse into the girliverse for us X-chromosomatically challenged citizens. Azumanga Daioh is soon available in the USA as manga or anime.

That being said, today's picture features the irresistible Sakaki-san in a very unlikely situation. Tall, sporty, well endowed in all ways, fond of pets and terminally shy, she is everyone's hero and even girls fall in love with her. Except cats, whom she loves and they hate her guts. She is also one of the minor inspirations for my novel in progress, in so much as there is any progress at all.

And that's what I want to write about today. This touches on what I wrote this Monday about web hosting. After not being able to upload the next chapter, I stopped writing completely. Not that I can promise that I would write anyway, because that's just the way I am, I don't finish things. After a while I just stop making progress. This may be good enough for journals, marriages and other "till death" activities, but bad for novels.

Even so, listening to this insane song and looking at the insane pictures and getting high without chemicals, the urge to write keeps latching on to me like cat teeth on Sakaki-san's fingers. I already have some more stuff written in my head, and I suspect once it is out the space may be filled with more. Although the quality may continue to decline over time, as I suspect it has done already. Perhaps a healthy dose of Azumanga would help. Female characters are always my weakest point, and in a romance novel the female gets a LOT of screen time.

Of course, something else that might help would be to actually get to know some girl better. But we all know the chance of that ... Right? ^_^*