treading lightly

I am very interested in K's meme over yonder in that I keep reading his post, but I can't seem to get my thoughts organized enough to respond in any cohesive way. I think wishing I could steal the strengths of other writers/getting inspired by the things they do is maybe just so much a part of my everyday existence that writing it down feels redundant.

For example! I am loving Kathryn Davis's The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf so, so, so much. Every time I pick it up I feel my little writer-bars (imagine the life-bars in a video game) filling all the way up. Imagine structuring a book this way -- the actual facts of the present-time story (I'm about half-way through) would take barely an inch of prose to describe. (Frances Thorne's friend has died, and left her with an unfinished opera to complete, ok, got it.) Instead it's all this really rich-feeling delving into the back story of Francie's late friend/current haunter, a Danish composer named Helle. The influence of fairy tales is as palpable as the shade in a forest here, and as moody. Helle's own recounting of her past is often mingled with stories from Hans Christian Anderson or various operas, including her own. Davis's sentences are so delicious, too -- you can feel the the pleasure she takes in finding just the right word or description. I would love to have her vocabulary, her stamina, her gift for fully immersing the reader in an alternate world.

Also, it makes me want to reread fairy tales. Doesn't that seem like a good winter project?