I’ve finally figured out why I get paralyzed every time I try to write anything. After spending the last several months almost exclusively on polishing, I sit down to write something new and everything coming out of my brain sounds like total crap. And then I get mad and start deleting, and then I get mad and go wash dishes or play the piano or… solitaire. :) Oops. I just gotta remind myself that first drafts will never sound great; that’s what revisions are for. Yesterday I finally let the yuck flow, and it started to be fun again. I think next week will be good for writing.

In other news, I didn’t mention that my recent run in with translating a sentence pushed me over the edge and made me decide to start learning Norse. (Yes, I know, in normal people thought processes, “I want to read the Eddas…. I’ll learn Norse!” does not make sense.) Anyway, I think I was afraid if I mentioned it too early, if I gave up having learned no more than “Heil! Ek heiti Jackie!” that I’d be a quitter. But, well, I’ve got down the present tense verb conjugations and masculine declinsions through the dative. I’m learning cool quirks like in the Eddas they would be more likely to say, “King Olaf offered the vikings to get on his ship” than “King Olaf commanded the vikings to get on his ship.” (Heehee… an offer they can’t refuse…) Not a ton, but a significant enough accomplishment that I feel justified in saying, “I’m learning Norse!” I do find it endlessly amusing that instead of “to love” being the first verb (other than “to be”) that I learn to conjugate (like my other language learning experiences), Oskar Gudlaugsson and Haukur Thorgeirsson (the online site I’m learning from) teaches you “to slay” first. Now that’s vikings for you.