and throw yourself into another creation utterly, i have been trying to alternate writing spurts with the reward of elementary episodes.
i think i said once (somewhere else? or did i only think about saying it, and then never actually typed it out?) that i have a holmes thing. i grew up with jeremy brett and the original stories and i loved them; i still do. holmes showed me it was a great thing to be smart and well-read and have heaps of facts at your fingertips; each story was like a puzzle, and the more i was able to suss out the story before the big reveal the prouder i felt. which is my rationale for elementary over sherlock (though i do watch the latter): in elementary you can watch the theory form and reform, you can understand the leaps as they are made . . . without needing access to, say, highly-placed government officials and information about things like global terrorist networks. the original stories encouraged you to practice deductive reasoning and question your assumptions: sherlock holmes, c’est moi. they celebrated human intelligence—as, i think, does elementary. sherlock—at least for this viewer—doesn’t celebrate human intelligence; it celebrates sherlock’s intelligence.
HOWEVER. having a new series to catch up on, and an american one at that (because we have so so many episodes each season), is a terrible distraction. especially when you are rewriting things for the umpteenth time and finding it very hard to rekindle the spark, because you so very much want to be further along in the story. and besides, you can do some writing-things while watching . . . like, um, sending out submissions . . . or checking your query letter for typos . . . or checking your duotrope and querytracker statistics and NO that’s gotta be the wrong suspect, it’s just too straightforward and why would he be so obvious and why the eyedrops and why isn’t anyone spooked by the possibility and
*grabs the veggie chips*
*an hour magically disappears*
oops.