1) My specimen for the The Field Guide to Surreal Botany was accepted. I'm deeply stoked--this is probably the coolest idea for an anthology that I've had an idea for in turn. Given also that I have this big ol' shelf of herbals and field guides to medicinal and edible plants, I'm going to have a dilemma in shelving this one: does it go on the ego shelf or right next to Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs?
(This solution is easy, however: the complementary copy goes on the ego shelf, and I buy a copy for the botanicals shelf.)
2) Not nearly as, you know, relevant to my writing blog, but still deeply satisfying: the way to enjoy my English breakfast tea with milk (which seems to curdle in my magical "keeps tea hot for five hours" tea-thing (is it a thermos or a mug or a cup?) is to use Silk soymilk. Tastes close enough to real milk, and anything is better than curdling.
This was very important to get resolved before morning hot tea season reopens.
3) A simple acceptance goes a damn long way to curing some forms of malaise, even forms completely unrelated to writing. I found myself walking around the office doing "jazz hands" at one point. This was a significant contrast to my early moping.
So, that's what I learned... carry on!
When I was fourteen and used to sit on my bed plugging away at stories in notebooks or on my incredibly inefficient typewriter into the late hours of the night, listening to the hum of the fan, the chirps of the treefrogs and crickets, the sounds of the rain, the light classical music on the radio, I felt like I was wasting my life, somehow. I had some theory that I was writing about life and not living it.
Now, I am thirty-one and I am sitting on my bed, plugging away at stories on my laptop in the early hours of the night, listening to the hum of the fan, the chirp of crickets, the sounds of the rain, the Baroque cello music on the CD player, and I feel like I'm living my life.
This is the difference seventeen years has made.
It doesn't hurt that I crammed some living in there, I suppose. And maybe it's a rule that you have to stop doing something you love in order to appreciate how much you love it. I don't know. I'm just glad to be here, appreciating the finer things.
I hereby absolve August of any wrong-doing. We shall call it the month of refilling, and place no blame for the fact that almost nothing got written, absolutely nothing got finished, and I failed to perform in the slushbomb.
September's going to have to do double-duty, then. I have a short story to rewrite, a novella whose beginning needs a fix, and another short story to finish. And since I've only sub'd 25 times this year--I need to double that, though if I don't have the stories to sub and the editor's don't respond back in a timely fashion, there's almost no way to increase that. But there's simply no question: more submissions enables more sales.
The problem is not in coming up with ideas--and this month's underperformance aside--nor is it a problem to come up with the will and motivation to sit down and write, it's finding the TIME. I just can't write any faster than about 600 words in an hour, and I frequently write slower. And I rewrite even slower than that.
And I really need/want to get cracking and get another novel written. I still don't think I can fix Brook without another novel, maybe two, under my belt... the problem is, there is a tumult in my head, and I don't know how to listen for single voices exactly.
The Seeing Stone, Lucinda's Secret, and The Ironwood Tree by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi (45-47) [children's]
I'm really enjoying this series. Having spent my childhood absorbing whatever fairy lore I could come by, this series conjures up a deep sense of nostalgia. I did, in fact, run around with my shirt inside out to fool the fairies now and again. The older sister, Mallory, is very much my personal hero, too. I'm about half-way through the fifth book.
The Truth-teller's Tale by Sharon Shinn (48) [young adult]
This book is Sharon Shinn working her mojo. I love the premise (that there are Truth-Tellers who automagically know the truth and Safe-Keepers who are bound to keep secrets that they are told), and love the way it unfolds (twin sisters who are each a Truth-Teller and a Safe-Keeper). The book is mostly a coming-of-age romance, with darker emotions but lightly told. In spite of the semi-medieval, semi-19th century setting, the issues felt extraordinarily modern--loving, attentive parents still cannot protect their daughter from a sexual predator, for example. It was rather like tales drawn from Reviving Ophelia at some points, though all teen girl angst was done away with by the machinations of a loving sister.
It was a nice world to visit. Too bad we don't live there. I'd love being a Truth-Teller, no question...
The Geogrpahy of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently... And Why by Richard Nisbett (49) [non-fiction]
A nice, balanced overview of the intellectual inheritance from the Greeks in the West and Confucianism in the East. I wanted to read this book because I have been planning to write a book with an Asian-American character, but I think this book gave me a lot of ground to go one step further and think about how alien perceptions might differ from human perceptions. There's a sideways step to the left between the East/West dichotomy that aliens could slip into.
The things I found most revealing were not the most obvious ones--it's not really a shock that Asians think more holistically than Westerners--nor even the personal ones--I think my mother brought me up to think more like an Asian in terms of context and interpersonal relationships trumping other considerations. I was intrigued by the notions of "priming" members of one culture to think like another culture. Even more intriguing was the method of priming bi-cultural members, like showing Asian-Americans a picture of Mickey Mouse and evoking Western cultural responses thereafter, versus showing them Eastern iconography. Very interesting reading, and very illuminating.
Looks like you can read "Dead Languages" now (formerly known as "Bound by Spells") by subscribing to Farthing. I'm not sure how you get an individual issue short of showing up in the dealer's room at WorldCon, but I'll be sure to find out. I may have to send a representative to World Fantasy to pick up some extra copies for my family, since they all still seem interested in owning my stuff.
But anyway, it's cool! There I am, in print, and first story, no less. Now I have to not think about all the mags we read and discussed last year at WorldCon... Fretting does not become me.
Flirting with Danger by Suzanne Enoch [romance/mystery] (43)
The oddest duck in the world is the sequel to the romance novel (this one is the sequel to Don't Look Down). Usually they end up being romantic mysteries, I've noticed, and this one is no different--the difference here is that I was still compelled to keep reading.
I think I know why, too. Enoch's quite brilliant, really; the more I think about her method, the more impressed I am. Step one is the fact that she took the traditional romance "reforming the rake" plot and did a gender switch. Rick has only the window dressing of a romance hero; he's actually, perhaps, the heroine. Samantha is the rake--not sexually, so much; she's actually a cat burglar--and the tension comes in from not knowing if she'll reform. The question is still up in the air by the end of book two, in fact. And that's the thing about a romance novel ending: the readers have to believe that when the characters cross the threshold together that they are actually entering into a static box of happy domesticity.
Enoch is the master of making sure the box at the end of the story contains Schroedinger's relationship--you have to assume it's okay, because to peek at it continues the story. Works for me. I'd easily read another Samantha/Rick book, but I'm content if I can't.
Specials by Scott Westerfeld (44) [young adult]
The final book in the Uglies/Pretties trilogy. It worked pretty well, and I was satisfied. Perhaps my favorite of the series, but I'm a bit sad about the disposal/dispersal of Tally's love interests. I may have more to say about the trilogy as a whole later on...
There has been a full-scale site redesign for merriehaskell.com. The journal part has largely been left intact, but that won't last long due to the fact that Movable Type Version Old that I've been using forever is a comment spam nursery, plus parts of it got hacked and disabled while I was on vacation. For good or ill, I'll be moving to Wordpress, as my hosting service actually, y'know, supports it. I think.
But that's later. When I feel full of boundless web-creative energy.
The site redesign is late in coming as I deleted my first attempt (worse, I deleted it in attempting to archive the old site). In that debacle, I also deleted my first attempt at my Junior Year Abroad essay (accompanies the Freshman Writer and Sophomore Writer essays). So, the new essay is up (about four months late), and not as good as it probably was the first time. It's also (in my opinion) not as good as the first two essays, but that's because I've definitely hit a more tenuous point in my career where I have little advice for my past self. 20-20 hindsight isn't much good if you're still stuck in a fog. But maybe I'll take notes this year and see if I can't get something great ready for next April.
Additionally, in a strange fit of what might be considered vanity, I started an index of where to find my fiction for free on-line. It seemed potentially useful above and beyond the bibliographies, plus has things broken out by genre and sub-genre.
And beyond that, the beginnings of my Montana trip pictures are up, though if I get the rest of them up it will be a miracle, as the site is giving me fits when I try to upload files.
As I slowly become better at rewriting--and it's slowly, I promise--it comes to feel more natural. I no longer stare at the page and mutter, "Well, this is all wrong. What do I do?" and then do a search-and-execute on -ly words for lack of anything constructive to do. I actually have a grasp on things like "This conversation is boring. I shall add tension." Only, half-conscious-like. I don't know how to explain it, but I know that I'm doing it. And that's cool.
Of course, now that I'm ready to sit down and rewrite "Rampion in the Belltower," and am also feeling momentarily okay about my rewriting skills, I can't find the paper copy I marked up a while back, nor can I find my notes, and I really don't want to proceed without either even though that's probably the exact right thing to do.
The other things is, it's 11:45, and I'm tired, because I got up early (some might say on time) this morning and had a nice breakfast (I made muffins, and had half a grapefruit on top of it; if I'd remembered to make tea, it would have been the perfect breakfast).
The goal is actually to get up earlier even than today, have the nice breakfast, go for a walk for a half an hour, then get to a coffee shop in town and have tea while I write for an hour before work. That would mean getting up at the ungodly hour of 7AM however, and I have no idea how I'm going to do that without going to bed an hour ago.
Clearly, this plan requires time travel.
Back from Montana and the parts in between. I got my mountains, which Brook's book needed. I got other things as well... I'd like to do the trip again in a leisurely fashion--I could spend a full day in Badlands, hiking; I'd like to see Deadwood in spite of how hokey it looks; and I could stay a week apiece in Glacier and Grand Tetons and Yellowstone. But, all told, we saw plenty.
Came home to rejections from F&SF and Escape Pod. Onward. Just, not today. Probably not tomorrow, either.
I had something of a break from writing while I was on vacation. It was good I didn't take the laptop, really, because the amount of time it could have gotten conveniently used was negligible. Part of that was due to my traveling companions--my stepdaughter required all the attention I would have devoted to any writing. As it was, I did take notes on a story, sketch the beginning of another, and jot down some good thoughts--stolen moments, here and there. I think the break will last through tomorrow, as I'd very much like to get the house clean[er], and find a way to keep it clean[er].
I did manage to read a bit on the trip, though I haven't finished everything I started reading yet.
The Field Guide by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi (41) [children's]
Cute and fast--maybe a little too fast, as I'd sort of hoped this would keep our attention as an audiobook longer than it did. I didn't listen to the rest of the books in the series yet, and I feel that altogether they amount to a whole book... possibly a little young for my stepdaughter based on their length? I don't know. It's so hard to listen to an audiobook and judge what reading it would be like, especially for this age range.
Spin by Robert Charles Wilson (42) [science fiction]
Really good. The book ate my brain, in all the best ways. My favorite in the Hugo field so far. I may have more detailed thoughts later.