MEMBERS AND NON-MEMBERS ONLY

Persephone has been doing good for today and most of yesterday night, so that was good. I think she's well enough to come with me to the writers retreat tonight, which is good. So yeah, I won't be back until the morning, at which time I'm supposed to meet professor Perrin (have I said this already?) after which I need to go to chapel, after which... I plan on sleeping until the humanities reading that night.

I'm feeling slightly more chipper about this writers retreat though. I do like most of the people in my group, and I like some of the other people in the class, so maybe it'll be good bonding time.
Of my group, I find that Evan has the most interesting writers' neuroses. He's obsessed with parentheses and parenthetical phrases within parenthetical phrases (think Salinger + 10. Actually, he admitted that his inspiration for all those parentheses was Salinger. In high school he read all his short stories and became obsessed.) See, in Evan's stories, all of these sentences contained within one set of parentheses would have been enclosed within each other with other parentheses. Observe: (think Salinger + 10. (Actually, he admitted that his inspiration for all those parentheses was Salinger. (In high school he read all his short stories and became obsessed.)))

OK, wow, that's totally confusing. I'm going to have to start a new paragraph to make it clear that I'm no longer caught up in convoluted parenthetical phrases. Also, in addition to the parenthesis-obsession, Evan is afraid of italics. He doesn't use italics. Ever. Not even when his character is having an internal monologue. But he doesn't use quotation marks either, so it's really hard to read. In poetry you can get away with it easier, because there's usually no dialogue.

All of this analyzation of other peoples' interesting writing neuroses makes me wonder: Do I have interesting writing neuroses that I don't notice? Or actually, any writing neuroses that I don't notice? How irritating are writing neuroses to a reader? Is there a line between "characteristic" and "obsession"? For instance, what if a critic said I had an interesting characteristic way of talking using semicolons? If I was obsessed with using semicolons, would I begin to use them every sentence?

So yeah, that's my thoughts before the writers retreat. Good night all. I hope you sleep more than I will tonight.