"The preference of women for men with high cheekbones helped shape human evolution, a new study claims.
"From earliest times women have opted for more placid partners with broad faces and smaller even teeth rather than larger males with more aggressive-looking canine teeth."
found at:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/05/12/wboys12.xml
Hm. Every new theory wrecks another aspect of By Right of Conquest I thought I had firmly in hand.
(Reconsiders Lurian canines.)
I'm not sure how this editing thing is actually going. I have pages with no notes, and pages with every other word rearranged, excised or replaced. But no pages where paragraphs or scenes get reordered, so I tend to think: am I doing this right?
Which isn't just rhetorical, except that there's actually no one to ask. This is the solitary part of being a writer. People can judge the result; people can tell you how they do it; no one can tell you if you're doing it right.
I assume.
Heavily.
"The term language family is sometimes criticized as a dangerous metaphor, suggesting as it does a biological analogy. This criticism has some justification; languages are not discrete entities, like kittens, born at one specific time and dying at another. They are not separate creatures from their "parents"; rather, they are their parents. Spanish is not something entirely separate from Latin; it is one of the thigns Latin has become over a period of two thousand years."
from A Biography of the English Language by C.M. Millward (p.45)
Anthropologically speaking, family-tree analogies are similarly detrimental to discussions of species and speciation. Like Latin and Spanish, so are Neanderthals and we. (I believe, but I'm also a student of the great Wolpoff.)
Let's not talk previous goals. I don't even remember previous goals.
I'll report on progress. Or, "progress."
-Chapters 1 & 2, edited. (Brook). By hand, on paper.
-Much time thinking. I now have about 10 new/different scenes, where the action will be built more gradually, more purposefully. I spent a lot of thinking time on them. Brainwork is just as important... isn't it?
-"Majuscule" about half-researched
-"Superliminal Letters" (a very working title) half-written
-begun, The Clairmont Correspondence
Goals for next week?
"Just keep doing what you're doing, hon."
Good deal.
Island of Ghosts by Gillian Bradshaw (25) (re-read)
(sigh) Such a good book.
And, I think, one of Bradshaw's more successful novels. Ariantes is a very likeable character, equal to Gwalchmai or Charis in narrative voice. First person is perhaps Bradshaw's forte?
It's not Beacon at Alexandria, which is almost perfectly meaty. What's here is lovely, if a bit spare (somewhat lacking in sub-plots; even the romantic sub-plot gets eaten by the main thrust of the story).
The legs of the story may be in the cultural comparisons. How she makes the Romans seem so alien and mysterious, while making the scalp-taking, nomadic Sarmatians seem likeable and rational, I'll never know. It's a gift.
Wifey by Judy Blume (24) (re-read)
Well, admittedly, this book was the height of eroticism when I first read it in early high school. This time I read it for the story and kind of glossed over the sex parts as not particularly interesting.
Also, admittedly, there was much I couldn't understand about the story when I was younger. For example, I kind of viewed the book as having a happy ending back then, because the husband forgave the wife and they stayed married. I'm not so sanguine, now.
Still, and all. The characterizations are deft. Very readable, though a lot depressing.
edited to add:
It occurred to me at one point while reading this, and then again later after I posted this, that this is a distillation of Austen's Persuasion. Or perhaps an answer-back to Persuasion.
Sandy is persuaded not to marry Shep; Shep returns. However, Sandy and Shep both married in the meantime, as if to say to Jane Austen: compromises happen. Which may, in fact, be the theme of the book. Sandy stays married to the Mr. Elliot character (Norman) in the end, and Shep is a serial adulterer, for all that he's found some measure of happiness with his wife.
Hm....
We've had storms blasting through for days now. Finally, something had to give, and it turned out to be our cable modem.
*gasp* No internet! For almost 20 hours! What's a young couple with more computers than cars to do?
I mean, besides growl and swipe at one another?
I don't know what my husband did, but I started making a list of agents and wrote about half a short story. (Yeah, I know. I'm "giving up" on short stories! What's going on?) But without the distractions of the internet, I was forced to mull things over a little more strenuously than I would otherwise.
No, it never occurred to me to go turn on the TV. Why do you ask?
And no, the satellite wasn't out. Just the cable. Take that, stupid cable commercials.
On the drive home, I saw the beginning of a story. I dutifully took notes, with no detriment to my driving because of the inevitable traffic back-ups.
Later, after dinner, I sat down and started writing. Got that beginning out.
Sat staring at the screen for a while.
A long while.
Closed the computer and went to bed.
There's something inside that needs to come out; no doubt about that. It's just not anything I can give to a short story.
Back to novels, until I fool myself into thinking I'm a short story writer again. So, next week some time.
(grumble)
My list is huge, my ambitions high, and my resolve weak.
Can't possibly read 14 books this month. Why am I even thinking about it?
Better updates tomorrow. I'm very tired tonight. I don't even know why.
Julie combed through Chapter 2 for me, and I did Chapters 1 & 2 myself as well, and part of 3.
Of Brook, you see.
I have to get this girl a proper title, by the way. Brook's Journey is, at best, the title of the series. Or just a working title.
Anyway. I figured out how to tighten some of the POV, but Kestrel is still appallingly distant from me. Drat. I may just try to rewrite Chapter 2 from scratch and see what happens.
Just sent my request in for tickets to the University Musical Society. Since the family expedition to see Handel's "Messiah" (quotes or italics? hm.) went over like a lead balloon last year, I've decided to forego that pleasure this year. But, I should have shiny tickets soon for what is supposed to be a "savage" rendition of Hamlet, and Shakespeare's Globe Theatre is back this year for A Midsummer Night's Dream, which will be paired with Mendelssohn's music, done by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.
I have the goosebumps of pretention at the moment.
I bought sparingly this year. There were a dozen things I'd be interested in seeing, if I had a willing companion and money to burn. But I have neither. I'm not too upset, though. My homespun entertainments of "instant messenger" and "writing novels" get me through most evenings.
I'm just a little sad about not taking the opportunity of seeing Baryshnikov and puppets.
Yes, in the same play.
Thought up several new Brook scenes while weeding the herb garden.
Of course Brook is going to worry about what happens to her garden if they never go back to the Hat House.
Duh.
(grin) Don't mind me.
I won't mention my first story submission; I didn't even send an SASE out, because I was 15 (or younger), and didn't know. My aunt, when she wrote obituaries for the Midland newspaper, had made a friend, a poet, who encouraged me to submit said story to a certain magazine, but she sorta failed to mention the SASE, or my aunt failed to pick up on it, or maybe I didn't hear the advice...
And that's Rule #2. Rule #1 is finish a story. Rule #2 is the SASE. Even if you write in crayon (not advised), you gotta send the SASE, or you won't hear why they're rejecting your crayon-written story. Right?
I also won't mention how my first actual rejection was from myself, nominally. The double-blind submission process to the high school literary magazine that I edited meant that I never, of course, judged my own work, so I didn't really reject myself. I just happened to be the name on the mast-head, or whatever we had.
I crumpled that up and threw it away, by the way. I was pretty unhappy about that one.
The next rejections--I don't have all of them, and they are sort of hazy in my memory--were sporadic, because I submitted sporadically. Rule #3 is to submit a clean manuscript and Rule #4 is to follow the damn guidelines, but Rule #5, which is in bold type, is persist. That rule took the longest to learn.
Basically, I'd write a story, send it off, get a rejection, and mope about it for a year--shuffling said story out of sight for the better part of ever. In other words, I was not persisting. I was treating rejection like it was a rejection of myself, not my work.
And even when I started paying attention to other writers, I couldn't understand. I assumed, for example, that other writers just weren't getting rejections, or if they did, that they suffered the same torments I did. It didn't take much effort to realize this was fallacious--just time. About... three months of semi-concerted effort and about 10 rejections within that span of time.
Oh, it was a slower process than that. I'd get a rejection from Fantasy and Science Fiction, a JJA special: "didn't grab me," and I'd slump on the couch for a week and mope. Then I'd get up, because this was F&SF after all, doesn't the Pope subscribe to that?, and try a less well-known venue. But a week was way down from a year, and I didn't trunk my stories afterward, in part because I had friends who set a better example and in part because I promised myself 2 years of concerted effort before I gave up again. That second part is important. It's a committment I took as seriously as my marriage.
(When I said Pope, I just may have meant Connie Willis. Who knows.)
Then, it was four days, not a week. Then a day, not four days. Then, ten minutes. Then I got to where I looked forward to the rejections, because I might get an insight into what I was doing wrong (can I just say? Best rejections ever from Jeremy Tolbert from Fortean Bureau and Jed Hartman at Strange Horizons; both are largely responsible for how I stopped worrying and learned to love the rejection).
I can't say I still love the rejections (that may have been a strange case of Stockholm-type syndrome); however, they sure beat silence.
Likewise, hitting 30 rejections was nice. It felt round. And by then, I'd already gotten an acceptance or two, so the sting was right out of it, most of the time.
And today, in fact, rejection #36 (not counting any rejections prior to 2003), was one that's signed by Gordon Van Gelder. While the cautious part of me wishes to believe that JJA was merely on vacation, there's a part of me that's singing a little. I got passed up the ladder by the Slush God, so I could get rejected by the big guy. It's rejectomancy at its finest. Especially when it appears that the big guy didn't actually read my story, anyway.
I'm not complaining. (grins) I once said I thought that getting passed upward by JJA would be the reward that would content me for quitesometime.
Which is the point of all of this. My lessons are my lessons. I learned most of them the hard way, from the thing about the SASE to the persist rule. Learning to love rejection is just another hard lesson learned. I share with you all the love. You know, if you want it.
I poked gingerly at the sequel to "Reparations" last night (set in the same world, anyway). It's alternately calling itself "Reclamation" and something more clever that is written down somewhere I can't see from here. I re-read the first bit of it, and thought, "Yes! There, I have it, I have the plot--oops. It's gone again."
Bother.
So, fed up with the elusivity of "Reparations," I looked at "Antigone's" again, and it's proving equally elusive.
Yes, it's quite possible I'm Done With Short Stories For Now. I hope it won't be a long doneness. But on the other hand, I was Done With Novels for a while there, too, and you know. I'm over that.
And, and, I found a pretty piece of By Right of Conquest, which I showed to that novel's biggest fan, but he mostly just seemed flummoxed by it, since it was about a character I've never mentioned. Oops. But that's ok; it'll all make sense one day. It's only significant because it made me think, "Well, I know how to write some of it. Maybe I could just write around those areas I don't understand just yet." Non-sequentially. It's a thought. I'm not sure yet if I'm able to write non-sequentially, but why not give it a shot?
It's a thought. It might be a good summer side-project.
Actually, this whole dealing with elusive short stories is making me suspicious. I think it's probable that I'm about to (or just did) break through a plateau in the level of my writing, and I'm just... trying to deal with it.
Or maybe not. I might also be pretentious, and over-thinking it a bit.
Finally, Brook. I'm still distilling it, trying to figure out what to work on. Reading Sherwood Smith's philosophies avidly and turning over in my mind where I've been, where I'm going.
I realized that there's a point in Brook where people might think, "Gaugh! Message!" but ultimately, that was not my intent. Brook is blinded, both physically and clairvoyantly by a sorcerer, and has to deal with this; she regains physical sight, but not the other kind. It could be suspected that there's a Message in how she deals with this, but that was not my intention in the least. It's a plot point for the following books, as well as the thing which ultimately isolates her character from her peers. Yes, how she deals with it all is how I think people should deal with adversity, but that's not intended to be a Message, that's just the kind of people I want to write about.
Now, the fact that I spent all that time justifying myself, does that mean anything?
I absolutely must clean my office, and set a new writing schedule to go with my writing goals. Right now, there's no way to spread out and write at my desk. That's the other problem, you see; novel-writing (for me) has proven to be space intensive. Research books, book bible, notecards, notes, colored pens, all kinds of stuff. Tea or water. Space is necessary.
Rain has come. Every scent from the yard and garden is fighting its way in here. Lush. Yummy. The smell of green.
Yes, I have four stories to take care of, and a handful to rewrite, and I keep fiddling with silly things, instead. I don't want them to be silly things--especially not after reading Elizabeth Bear's "This Tragic Glass" today, which blew me away--I want them to be good things.
So, I have work. The question remains, have I the will to do it? Oh, I'm sure I will have the will, but I'm feeling right scattered lately. I've not quite recovered my routine since I started fiddling with Brook, and that's a problem.
Goals. I should probably write out my goals...
I'm not entirely certain how my garden went from bare to uncontrolled jungle in a week, but here it is, an uncontrolled jungle.
I've so much work to do this weekend. (brightly) Anyone bored and with a desire to get dirty, come to my house anytime! Weeds aplenty!
If I ever got rid of all my weeds, though, my hagiography won't stick. "Overgrown flowergarden" is my way of saying "weedy."
Oh, well. I'm updating from outside. The setting sun is in my eyes, though I'm protected by a haze of clouds. The light is pale. Some neighbor kids have found a wild rabbit, injured perhaps; a neighbor mother is trying to mediate the chancy territority of interfering with wildlife. I've no better advice, so I'm staying here; the damage has already been done. My mock orange is getting ready to bloom, and all kinds of birds are making their evening territory claims. I see lilacs ready to bloom at the edge of the yard. I should go investigate.
My to-do list for today has gotten somewhat out of hand. It includes things like "weed," which is an hours-long chore, and "Kayla + homework," which is to help Kayla with her state project... all for tonight.
Yeah, "write" doesn't make the list. But maybe after 10PM.
Research week was... lackluster, but I did get some research done. We had a Write Club scheduling change, so I've already been this week. Again with the research, because nothing else was coming out.
No, really. The only writing I've done is resume and cover letter updating. This week. I'm not sure about a plan for this week yet. I need to cut 53 words from "Star and Galaxy" to send it out, run some minor edits on "Her Kaleidoscope Eyes" to send back to an editor, and find some sort of market for "June Mothers Stay Late."
I mean, assuming I don't just trunk everything on my list that currently feels as lackluster as my writing performance.
I just sold "Reparations" to Fortean Bureau.
This... yeah... I'm so excited! This one means a lot to me. I've been reading FB for a while now just for itself, as well as because M'ris and Stella have been published there. It's very good company to be in, in my opinion...
The story means a lot to me, too, but that's not news to anyone really...
London's Perfect Hero by Suzanne Enoch (23)
A very nice wrap-up to the trilogy. I liked this one best of all, and thought it was nice that the author didn't adhere strictly to her formula (heroine chooses to teach a man how to be a better gentleman, and they fall in love), but didn't leave it behind, either.
She (the author) is just getting funnier and more interesting... I'm ready for whatever's next. Enoch seems to handle darkness well, without making it cartoony or losing a light touch. I appreciate that a lot, and could hope that's an area she'll explore more.
April's Battle
Didn't know:
vaporware - a new computer-related product that widely known but unavailable
wallah - a person identified by a specified line of work or service
pukka - genuine or authentic
Easy month, with a 12-day run from the 3rd to the 14th.
I knew expedite, commodius, gossamer, taciturn, seder, daedal, Hosbson's choice, lambent, bathetic, sylvan, artless, palaver, contumely, tenacious, mettle, clairvoyant, putative, vitiate, egregious, dissemble, scarify, baptism of fire, impromptu, jabberwocky, funambulism, and aggress.
Out under the veiled stars again. It may be true that this is the grayest region of an already gray state. But there are thunderstorms brewing, and it's warm. So warm, in fact, that the noises of a few neighbors' air conditioning units obscure the soughing of wind through our pines, and it's very hard to pick out the frog noises.
No, suburbia's not my favorite place.
I do appreciate the scents: fresh mown grass, and flowers from a variety of trees. The violets are out, as well. If I try to candy any this year, I promise I will be more careful of the recipe.
In the middle of Suzanne Enoch's London's Perfect Hero. I think she's improving her style. It's been first-rate entertainment so far, and I'm not half-finished yet.
Other writerly news: Sherwood Smith appears to have a journal. My internet joy is exponentially increased today.
Today, I'm going to take a hot bath. The book I bring with me may or may not be hot. Hard to say.
Per a rather idiotic mis-speak last night at Write Club.
I read The Twelfth Century Renaissance (or, the chapter in it on women) and picked Mary Lou's brain (since she actually took a class on the twelfth century, and fairly recently). And I took notes. And it was good.
I've got some interesting theories on how a woman of letters in 12th c. Europe would come about. She could be privately tutored. She could be educated in a nunnery. Either way. She can certainly travel to Glastonbury, and she can certainly know monks, and she can certainly write. There were enough women who did write.
I'll finish the chapter, though I doubt I'll read the whole book. It might be wise to, but I'm not so much with the wise when there are other things demanding my attention, like histories of typography.
I have realized that research has gotten in the way of several large or important projects lately, to whit, everything I'm currently interested in working on. "Majuscule" is stalled. Midsummer is less stalled, but I'd feel better if I had more information. (
So, while I accomplished many writing goals from last week, I didn't accomplish the main ones of working productively on any new fiction. Just edited or re-read a lot of old fiction.
So. Research week. Possibly research month, if research week goes well. We'll see how it goes.
I always forget to update this on the weekends. I don't know why. More so when I'm not having a writing weekend, which I'm not.
Today is my husband's birthday, and I spent some time making a cake. As I was working on the custard layer, adding milk with beaten egg to hot butter and sugar at a rate of less than one milliliter per second or so, I was being very impressed with my concentration.
"I used to cook like this; now I write like this," I thought. I stirred the custard as I poured, finished adding my 2 cups of ingredients, and felt very self-satisfied.
"I'll just sweep a corner of the kitchen while that heats up," I thought. And I did. I swept all corners of the kitchen. All the dining room. All the living room. The front hall. The bathroom. The breakfast nook.
I came back to the stove and stared at the custard.
"Oh, crap."
Yeah, I had to make a second batch of custard. And I stopped thinking self-complimentary thoughts about my concentration abilities.