A Writer's Paradise

Excelsior Update, and a Story

Tonight we had about half the anticipated attendance at Excelsior, which was fine, because with just four of us, we eased up on the rules a little and everything went fast anyway. It was quick, fun and productive. All the things a writing group meeting should be.

Of course, by my attendance at Excelsior (on what was a surprisingly easy drive to Canton--well, easy once I got out of Ann Arbor), that meant no Write Club with Julie. That we do next week instead. We think we'll give Bert's Cafe a try for a venue, since it's in the building (library) that connects Julie's and my work buildings, has a cafe (yay), and when we're done eating, if it looks like we're pressed for space, we can branch out into the library and still have drinks. And electrical plugs.

Of course, next Wednesday is the grand opening of said cafe, so perhaps we will not start at Bert's that day...

Anyway, back to Excelsior. Everyone is far too nice to me in that group. I wish there would be more pointing out of embarrassing typos. I live for a good typo.

I feel that this has been an incredibly dull post, so I will share a nearly-amusing anecdote.

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, which happens to also mark the sixth year since my husband proposed to me.

Now, he largely proposed to me on Valentine's Day because it was convenient cover to do something romantic and then Unexpectedly Propose. I think that was his reasoning, anyway. You'd have to ask him.

However, prior to this, over the many years of our romantic relationship and even during our friendship before that, he had insisted vehemently many, many times that Valentine's Day is a crap holiday. You know the type of vehemence I mean. "It's all the card companies' doing." "I don't need a special day to say I love you." Etc. Not that we never did anything for Valentine's Day, it's just we never did much that was super-official or very exciting. Our first Valentine's Day, in fact, I think I took him to a concert and gave him a CD and he was both stunned and chagrined because he didn't get me anything. Some one or two times I think he managed to send flowers or whatnot--certainly, I've managed to send him flowers and whatnot several times too--but mostly, the day is marked with a kiss and a card, both brief, and perhaps a chocolate something.

It is, and was, never that big a deal. I've never been a consistent traditionalist with any holiday, let alone Valentine's Day. Sometimes I want a fuss, sometimes I don't, and that holds true for Christmas as much as Groundhog Day.

So, it didn't even seem that out of the ordinary when he decided to make a fuss that fateful Valentine's Day back in 2002. Other than that there'd been a mysterious answering machine message from a jeweler, so I had my suspicions. He took me to a movie. And didn't propose. He took me to a super fancy restaurant. And didn't propose. And it was getting on towards 11:30 at night, and the anticipation was building, and I had finally told myself that if he was, in fact, intending to propose, he was deliberately waiting until it wasn't Valentine's Day so that I would never, ever have an excuse to celebrate it on a regular basis (as our Engagement Anniversary).

I was so convinced, in fact, that at 11:45 when he pulled out a ring and asked me to be his wife, I said:

"You idiot."

And then said, "If you'd just waited fifteen more minutes, then Valentine's Day wouldn't be our Engagement Anniversary!"

There was some blinking. "Engagement Anniversary? That's not a thing," he told me.

(Sometime shortly thereafter, I did agree to marry him, and then got all sappily teary-eyed, even. I do have a gushy center. It's just surrounded by a big, double-thick layer of irony.)

This year, after several years of Not Doing Much for Valentine's Day, I sent him a bouquet of roses and wrote on the card, "Happy Engagement Anniversary. It is TOO a thing."

He sent me a cameraphone pic of the bouquet and message that said, "It is NOT a thing."

The debate rages on.

(Our love is so pure because we bicker.)

The House of Scott Westerfeld Fans

My stepdaughter was thrilled beyond measure to get Uglies and sequels for from her dad for her birthday, and even more thrilled when she realized I'd gotten them signed for her.

Today, when I asked her how she was liking Uglies, she said, "It's really good!" And then told me how she's the envy of seventh grade--she flashed around her Scott Westerfeld signature to some friends and had to swat their hands away. But the real icing on the cake was the "What would Tally do?" ribbon that Scott was giving out as his guest of honor ribbon at Confusion, which I had been really grown-up about and not added to my badge but rather tucked into Uglies for her.

"I don't even know what it's for," she admitted. "But it's cool, and everyone is jealous." So I found my con badge in the mess on my desk and showed her. She looked at the ribbons, and a very non-thirteen-year-old gleam of "ooh, shiny!" came to her eyes.

"Do you want my con badge?" I asked.

"Yes, please*," she said, holding out her hand.

A true geek in the making. She thinks con badges are cool!

* Her "yes, please" is a spot-on imitation of Alexis Bledel from The Gilmore Girls. Say what you will about television in general and the CW in particular, but TV and the CW and The Gilmore Girls have taught someone, somewhere, actual manners.

Ugh.

To quote kythiaranos: "I cannot life. I has the ill."

I've been trying to clean off my desk for to receive a new monitor from Dann for the last two hours, but somehow, it just ends up with me wandering back to bed or looking at bits of paper or on the internet.

I should know better than to try to do things when I'm sick, but there's just only so long I can stay in bed.

I'm at that point where my head goes "whoosh" whenever it moves. It's like being drunk. But not as much fun.

And my husband made dinner tonight (fauxtatoes and venison) (fauxtatoes being cauliflower mashed up like potatoes, OBVI), but the servings were very (rationally) small, and even with a bowl of grapes after, I'm still a little peckish--just the right amount for a normal weekday night at 9PM, really, but when I'm sick, my body puts out a call for calories and gets really distressed when I ignore it. So, I think it will shortly be cheese and crackers on the couch time.

All of which is far more information than anyone on this journal wanted to know about my illness, but I did mention that illusion of being drunk thing...

Holidays

...they have sucked away my soul. And by soul, I mean time. But also my soul.

First of all, I have been cleaning and shopping and cleaning and shopping in alternating frenzies. Clean up. Dirty the house. Buy presents. Give them away. Repeat.

The bonus here is that after tomorrow's clean up, there'll be a New Year's party, and after that there's another clean up, and my mom comes, and then there'll be another clean up... Wait. Hm.

Basically, once school derailed writing, it's been nearly impossible to reattain my focus. (Not that I had focus. I guess I mean output.) I so need my focus back. I have purchased new calendars and am ready to buckle down and start again--for reals--as I put goals and achievements in the calendars to keep myself honest. It should work, right? Right.

Okay. Enough resolve, we'll see what actually happens. For now, I'm going to do my last book report of the year, and then finish out with my reading-year summary. Ta. Da.

Snow & Time

I have nothing but snow and time on my hands right now.

It is SO THE BEST FEELING.

Tomorrow, I might even write.

A Couple of Things About Libraries

Here we will be using the north Michiganian sense of "a couple" where a couple may be three things instead of two.

Item the first: people who recall books from other patrons (ME) when there are perfectly good copies sitting on shelves in the Undergraduate Library RIGHT NEXT DOOR to the Graduate Library (from whence the recalled book came) are not my favorite people.

Item the second: I am training a new person at work, and to my entertainment, he decided that the arcane processes of interlibrary loan are just like spell-casting. Get the order wrong, and your books turn turquoise. *poof*

Item the third: I have applied to, been accepted to, and have registered for library school, aka, a Master's program in Library and Information Science. Since I'm taking a whopping three credits a semester (for six years!), I don't anticipate that it will interfere overmuch with writing. If anything, it should help focus me as I'll have less time to screw around on the Internet, though that might be a pipe dream, I admit.

Now. Since I'd like to write books about libraries for the rest of my life, don't you think I should be able to deduct the cost of library school since it's clearly empirical research? Hm.

Getting back on track...

So, you ever have one of those weeks where your washer breaks, you break out in the nastiest case of poison ivy you've had since the time your eyes swelled shut from it when you were 10, your computer gets a virus (or thirty), you got ant and fruit fly infestations all in one day, and your dayjob went just as non-stop as dayjobs get?

That was my week.

I did manage to accomplish non-vermin, non-allergen, non-crisis related things this last week--moments of grace included a good evening working on a novel (not the right novel, but a novel), seeing Becoming Jane, and learning that you can actually catch more flies with vinegar (white wine balsamic) than with honey.

Tomorrow, I'll throw down a book-readin' post, and Tuesday, expect some good rejection-sharing on the Getting Beyond Competent experiment.

What a long week.

The Bestlaid Plans of Mers and Men

So, how much have I written? Not that much. I was making good progress... right up until I went outside to garden. Not a highly strenuous activity, necessarily, but I must have bent just right for just long enough... because after I went back inside and sat on the couch for a bit (at an admittedly odd angle, but it's my usual angle, so how odd can it be?), and then dared to try to get up--I was seized by sudden, breath-taking, curse-making pain just under my left shoulder blade.

Ow.

OW.

So. I spent the next few hours rolling around on the miracle balls and using the massage thingie until it made my skin itch, and then I spent the hours after that trying to lie as still as possible. I'm really caught up on House, M.D., which will not stand me in good stead with my husband, since we were supposed to watch that together, all 13 episodes that we hadn't seen yet. (Well, I still have like 8 to go.)

Every plan has been totally derailed by the not-sitting, not-bending, not-moving too quickly. Thai peanut chicken dinner became leftover pizza dinner, for example. I'm really grateful that I managed the biggest chores before this happened--the cat litter, mainly, but also cleaning up the total disaster of the kitchen. Currently, we have several rooms in minor disaster stages that will remain so. I don't think I'll risk bending down to retrieve laundry any time soon, or to carry it downstairs...

Sitting isn't so bad this morning, so maybe I can do a little writing, but... c'mon. Me and physical pain? Have never been stoic companions. I usually manage to deal with pain by just not having it.

Okay. I'm not whining, I promise. I'm just expressing my dismay.

The funny part in all of this? Was waking up at 4AM this morning because I heard a sound. And realizing that in my delicate ass-dragging to bed last night, I didn't manage to lock the back door or close the garage. So, I tentatively slid from bed, grabbed up the hammer that hasn't been put away since hanging my stepdaughter's calendar, and sneaked downstairs. Moving slowly is easy when you have physical cause. It's not that I really thought someone had broken in--after all, our neighborhood is very quiet--but there is a prison not too far away, and (independent of this) there are the occasional crimes of opportunity (things stolen from unlocked cars). But I had to check. Because I almost certainly could have done nothing with my hammer, but by gum, I'm not smart enough to just ignore sounds.

Well, it almost certainly was a small cat skirmish that woke me, I concluded; but I did lock/close all available doors before going back to bed.

Blurgh.

I never tell Saturday how much I love it...

Recent events and accomplishments, briefly noted:

Friday:

• I finally finished the rewrite of "WDTP" and posted it.
  
• Also finished the craziest week of dayjob evar. Until next week, of course.
  
• Found out Asimov's pays $.06 per word, not $.05 (for the length I wrote to). This is, as my husband pointed out, a 20% raise.

Saturday:

• Woke up early and wrote some more of "The Girl-Prince." Managed to squeeze in a whole bit about heteronormativity and fairy tales in what I hope is a clever way. I should really say something about fairy tale rewrites soon. I have a lot to say.
  
• Won $2 at poker tonight. Am rich.
  
• Am 3/4ths done with herb garden prep. Of course, the remaining quarter is the hard part.
  
• Checked on my Baen's Universe sub. It says, "Mike and Eric are currently reading stories from March 2007. (There are about 30 stories from earlier months that they've read, but haven't yet made a decision on.)" And since there is no update beyond "Recommended - 2007-02-07," that would mean mine is in that batch of 30 stories. That's not a bad update.

Live from James John Cafe

Greetings from Portland. I'm blogging from a cafe that has a delicious breakfast biscuit torte, good chai, and free wireless.

I'm here visiting my friend from college, Stephanie, and her husband and cats. A good time is being had by all (including the cats. Jake slept on my foot today). However, the real world has intervened in the fun--Steph had to go teach today.

So, I walked the six blocks down to St. Johns' downtown in search of a warm place to sit and a wireless connection. Having found both, I am here to tell you that I managed to finish "Lawncare in the Afterlife" shortly before leaving for the airport on Wednesday... It's a chunky 6000 words, even after trying and trying to rein it in at 4000 or even 5000. I can probably cut ten percent, if I'm lucky. We'll see.

Nonetheless, that's my first finished short story in 2007.

I'm way way way way behind on my novel. Tarot Book, though hast forsaken me. Or I hast forsaken thee, which is more it. I'm planning to dig in and work on it in for the next hour, and see where that takes me. I've done a lot of the hard brainwork while on this vacation, but as we all know, brainwork doesn't look like progress.

Added to that, it's hard to take the time you need to write while you are living in other people's spaces. Sure, I have a room of one's own and I have even had a few large chunks of time, now and then, but there's a certain lack of settledness and consistency that makes it difficult for me to perform. I suspect some people are not meant to be vacation writers. And by some people, I mean me...

Restraint at the Office Supply Store

I'm not sure what it is about the scent (and feel and look) of fresh clean paper that turns me into a consumerist predator, but that scent (and feel and look) is the reason I do not go gentle into that good office supply store on a regular basis.

Not that long ago, 3M (or someone) had hired students to stand out on the Diag and to distribute samples of this new product: magical note-cards with stick-'em on the back, and the wonder of it is that the stick-'em sticks to 'em but not to each other. So you can notecard your whole novel on the wall of your bedroom, and then take all the cards and shuffle them. I took three samples, and toyed desultorily with them, knowing that 9 cards (three to a sample pack) were not enough to do any real damage notecarding.

And then last week I ran out of hanging file folders.

While I can live without many things for long periods of times, I cannot live for long without hanging file folders. I have a filing habit to support. (As a child, my dream was to own a file cabinet. I now have two. I'm thinking of branching out into a third. Though my second cabinet--which was really my first, and the one I picked up for $10 at a garage sale, and to which I had to install the brackets that made it support hanging folders, and is now really just used to store college notebooks, and is only 12 or maybe 18 inches deep--is only two drawers high, and also the drawers stick, so I don't know how I can rightfully claim that it is a file cabinet, let alone one of two file cabinets which I own.)

I held out as long as I could on that new batch of hanging file folders, but I had recently come across the disturbing fact that I don't have a ROME folder, and egads, a girl like me needs a ROME folder. Not for the TV show. For the Roman Empire. I have a ROME notebook. I have a ROME bookshelf. How could I have failed to have a ROME folder?

So, I went to Office Max tonight. And I was pretty restrained. Having recently come into a glut of calendars (there was an unexpected late Christmas gift of a calendar, which put me into extraneous calendar territory), I did not purchase any calendars. Not even a shiny laminated dry-erase calendar that displays the whole year, to which I could have stuck little Post-it flags saying "FINISH NOVEL" and stuck to a date. (It was hard to pass by, but I have nowhere to hang it.) I did not purchase any notebooks. I stayed away from envelopes. I had to turn the other direction and walk away when I saw they now make a rainbow pack of Sharpie markers with little keychain attachments (I could have strung them together into a Sharpie necklace, I just realized, and walked around the office like a... freak). I was sooooo good.

I only bought 50 new hanging file folders.

And only 540 sticky notecards. (Three packs of each color, and only the one size. RESTRAINED. I am not even testing if I would notecard better in 4 by 6 versus 3 by 5.)

And we all know that 540 notecards is probably not even two novels worth of notecards.

I am a model of self-discipline.

Retrospective Meme

1. What did you do in 2006 that you'd never done before?

Hm. Saw Mt. Rushmore, and a geyser, and buffalo up-close-and-personal.

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Did I make some?

*blinks*

Oh, GOD, I did, and I so didn't keep them.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

I have a new niece!

4. Did anyone close to you die?

Unless I'm being horribly, callously forgetful, no.

5. What countries did you visit?

None. Didn't even make it to Canada.

6. What would you like to have in 2007 that you lacked in 2006?

Plenty of things. An agent. A book contract. Eligibility for SFWA membership. Greater amounts of sanity. Winning lottery tickets. New bookshelves.

7. What date from 2006 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

Hm. None are jumping out. Some good friends got married, but that's not so much "etched" as "lightly imprinted." Seriously. I have to strain to remember my own wedding date.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Finishing the stories I finished. It was like running with broken legs for some reason. Oh, and driving half-way across the country with my mother and stepdaughter. Some things at work that I don't want to talk about because I'm on vacation.

9. What was your biggest failure?

I will call 2006 the Year I Finished Almost Nothing I Started, Except at Work, Where I Kicked Ass.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Nothing terribly serious, but I did have a fluish thing for a week in October.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

Probably my wool scarf.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

My husband. Every year he gets wiser and cooler.

14. Where did most of your money go?

Into our joint account--for food and mortgages and all the upkeep and whatnot.

15. What events did you get really, really, really excited about?

ConFusion, J & B's wedding... Scrubs airing in syndication. Yeah, not the most exciting year ever...

16. What song will always remind you of 2006?

"Fighting for My Love" by Nil Lara, maybe?

17. Compared to this time last year, you are

Happier or sadder? probably a little sadder, but I hope it's temporary
Older or wiser? wiser, though I don't feel wiser
Thinner or fatter? same
Richer or poorer? same

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?

More meditation, more time outdoors in the sun, more swimming at the lake, more finding small adventures, more writing.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?

Hating work, sleeping late.

20. How did you spend Christmas?

Quietly... with Dann's family.

21. Did you fall in love in 2006?

Heh. Dann and I celebrated being together ten years this winter... Fun times.

22. What was your favorite TV program?

Scrubs.

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?

Uh, no...

24. What was the best book you read?

Hm... some really good ones this year. I really loved Truthteller's Tale by Sharon Shinn, Terrier by Tamora Pierce, Elizabeth and Mary by Jane Dunn...

25. What was your greatest musical discovery or rediscovery?

Nil Lara; Jim's Big Ego; Medieval Babes (or however you spell it).

26. What did you want and get?

A video iPod! And a good tenth anniversary.

27. What did you want and not get?

Maid service. More time in the day.

28. What were your favorite films of this year?

Of the few I saw in the theater... Marie Antoinette did not disappoint, but it was a bit... frail? Like, I had a hard time connecting with it. But it was SOOO pretty.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I turned 31. My husband made tacos and we had ice cream cake. I don't really remember any of the rest of the day, sadly.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Bigger, better bookshelves.

No, seriously.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2006?

Accessorize, Lady. I have branched into scarves, and wearing more earrings more regularly...

32. What kept you sane?

Julie. Dann. The Four. Dave Klecha, remarkably (for as little as I see him). Lunches with Jason. Communiques from some Milford folks (Jane and Vaughan) (Jane, I owe you email...).

33. What political issue stirred you the most?

I tried not to let them stir me...

34. Whom did you miss?

Mainly Steph.

35. Who was the best new person you met?

Did I actually meet anyone new this year? Anyone who was a repeat performer in my life, I mean? Oh, yes, at work. I love all the people I hired this year (in a totally cool platonic boss-like way). They're very good at their jobs, and they've made my life easier.

36. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2006.

It's all about perspective.

Behind on Emails

I'm behind on emails; the day-to-day urgencies are mostly kept up with, but there are a few actual correspondances that I feel bad about neglecting so that I can stare at the empty screens a bit longer and wonder why psychic paper hasn't been invented yet.

I'm not blocked, per se; I can write bits and pieces of lots of things. Can't sustain effort on anything, though, and certainly can't finish anything.

I've even gone so far as to try and change media--writing longhand in a notebook over typing on the laptop--and that has elicited further failures. Every where I turn, I find inspiration and no way to apply persperation. I am the opposite of blocked, at least in the traditional sense.

The only thing I can think of is to apply my creative energies to an unwriterly sort of creation--perhaps some soap-stone carving or some book-making or some drawing, but none of that seems any good to me either. (Well, maybe the drawing. I only thought of it as I typed the other stuff.) What I wouldn't give for easy and free darkroom time again...

So, as I stare around my office, looking for the key to distracting myself just enough so that some writing slips in, I notice: 1) a tarot deck, and think, yeah, I could do some readings until something comes up and 2) a copy of Water Witch on my shelf... the book by Cynthia Felice and Connie Willis. I read the library copy to virtual tatters (maybe. Maybe I only read it three times.) in the late eighties, and at some point in the last two-ish years, scored a used copy for m'self. Looking up and seeing it there was like, "Oh! Hello. I totally forgot you moved in, old friend."

One of those weird moments that probably don't strike anyone else as weird...

Man, am I stumped. Stagnantly stumped.

*headdesk*

Happy Four Days Off to my Fellow Americans

Ah... Thanksgiving weekend. Were I NaNoing, I'd be writing frantically right now, hoping to pull in ten thousand words in a day or something. As it stands, I'm just writing, and that's just fine.

*

Pointed out by Jer Tolbert: An Economic Answer to the Fermi Paradox.

The Fermi Paradox being the "if aliens exist, why haven't I met one by now?"

I don't think it's a particularly good paradox, m'self. Seriously. Did Fermi not know how BIG space is and how LONG time is? To use a smaller-scale example: how many great empires existed in human history simultaneously? Not usually more than two. MAYBE three.

And how many Mayan citizens met Byzantines at the height of either civilization? Or at all, just from 330AD to 900AD, when the two civilazations overlapped in time?

And how many citizens of the Roman Empire met British Victorian Imperialists? Or Aztecs? Or modern Americans?

Even if life and sentience and civilization are not rare, I think that "not rare" in a universe as big as ours is still rather sparse. And beyond that, I have a feeling that life beyond our own may not be immediately recognizable.

STILL sick.

But Merlin-cat is really happy about it. Warm body to cuddle with all week is a bonus in his book. Except now I know he talks in his sleep, just like me. Random "meow" every half-hour or so.

*

It's very easy to call in sick to your dayjob. It is much less easy to call in sick to writing.

Writing, Apples, Guns

I've been working on my rewrite of "Almanac for the Alien Invaders" this afternoon, and I think I've maybe finally made the ending work.

One of the hardest kinds of stories to write is the kind where the main character has a slow realization about decisions that she's made early in the story. Coming to acceptance of a situation without a sudden epiphany doesn't necessarily make for good story. I honestly don't know if I've made it work here, but the rest of the story is so complex, I didn't feel like I could have a traditional sort of conflict.

And honestly, I only wrote this story to clarify some things that happen before the beginning of a book I'm writing. The mere fact that it's turned out interesting and plausibly saleable is icing.

I'll have time to think on it more while I'm at the apple orchard with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law and stepdaughter and husband. I am not having my usual struggle with autumn this year--didn't have it last year, either--and it's wonderful. I'm looking forward to an autumnal activity for the first time in... ever? Well, ten years or so. I never minded autumn in the least in North Carolina, in part because there wasn't much to mind.

And if there's time after the apple orchard, my friend Jason is taking me shooting... because nothing clears the mind in quite the same way.

Plus, when a character picks up a gun, I feel I should know what that feels like, and every so often, I need to remind myself of it.

Compassion

Every once in a while, I hit a weird point of anxiety about not doing enough. Not finishing enough stories, not working hard enough on novels, not having enough stories in circulation, not being close enough to seeking out an agent, not taking writing seriously enough, I guess.

I feel a little strange that I haven't had one of those in a while. Not since, oh, "Rampion in the Belltower" was finished. That's a good month, possibly more.

It could be that I'm in a goodish place right now, where I feel like progress is being made--I sold "Bound by Spells" (even though its name got changed)! At a professional rate, no less! And in print!! I've been held over for third reading at Interzone! I made it into Surreal Botany! I got the Honorable Mention for "Huntswoman!" There is not utter silence from the Land Beyond the Transom!

Even though I still occasionally dump into a trough (JJA still rejects me, not GGV! I still get Blue Forms of Death! I can't get this story for Ideomancer right! I only seem to have written/sold one story of true literary merit, by my own exacting standards! No one wants my novelette! My dayjob is sucking my will to write!), I notice that these troughs are less perilous when

wait for it

I have compassion for myself.

Now. I once would have said that I have peee-lenty compassion for myself, probably too much. I let myself slide on ALL kinds of things I shouldn't let me slide on. But that's false compassion right there--that's the false compassion that raises bad kids and lets employees hang themselves with too much rope. That's the false compassion that comes from poor supervision. I'm a manager, after all, and at least a partial parent, so I think I know whereof I speak.

I'm going to address this in middle management terms because to do this as a dual metaphor would kill me.

In short, a good manager: sets guidelines, deadlines, and expectations, and makes clear, deterring-but-not-punitive consequences for when guidelines, deadlines, and expectations are not met. Discipline, not punishment, is the watchword.

I've run into the theory that you should reward yourself when you finish a story (or sell a story, or both). And it seems nice, though I have to say it mostly doesn't work for me, in part because I forget all about my reward. (Perhaps if I set up a schedule of rewards. Finish a story, take one reward less than or equal to $10. And so on. But it would have to be written down, because I'm forgetful like that.)

But honestly, rewards are not part of my make-up. Not for small things, not for when I do things I should be doing, anyway. I can see having a celebration to mark milestones--ten years of service, 100 rejections, whatever--but rewarding myself (or the others who work for me) for getting the monthly report in on time? Nah, not so much.

(Is that less compassionate? I don't think so. After all, I'm a Northerner of Swiss and Prussian descent, from a family with a stricter-than-Puritan work ethic. We have Expectations, like early is on-time, and on-time is already too late.)

So, anyway. In spite of the previous paragraph, and thanks to my mom's reminder that compassion for oneself is as imperative as having compassion for others, it has recently become clear that I'm doing okay. No, I haven't started writing a story a week or anything, and no, I'm not going to win the Campbell award next year, or even be in the finalist group, but those weren't actually options. No one should have ever had those expectations for me. (And no one did, except myself.)

My guidelines are clear: write every day, except when the well is dry--refill well before writing again. Don't watch too much TV. My deadlines are clear: send stories out when they're ready. Keep momentum going on novels. My expectations are clear: write the best that I can. Write the stuff that amuses and excites me. Write the stuff I'd write even if I weren't trying to get published.

The rest of it?

The rest of it--the selling and the awards and the pushing myself to do more than I comfortably can do with the job and the family that I have/need/want--the rest of it is just a lot of thunder and lightning without any rain. The rest of it can go take a flying leap off Mt. Compassion, in fact.

And that's where I am today.

Messes

My desk is a mess. My story is a mess. My plan is a mess. My files are a mess. Everything came to a screeching halt when I went on vacation, and just when they lurched back to life, there was a second screeching halt when work got crazy.

Sadly, this job doesn't even suck the greater part of my soul or brain or energy, like so many jobs would. This sort of month is unusual. It does, however, always suck my time away. Sucks it away like whoa. An hour a day for lunch. An hour for commuting. A (half) hour to make myself look presentable. I steal as much time back as I can, by writing in breaks and lunch hours, by listening to podcasts on writing and science fiction on the commute, but there's still that pesky 7.5 hours in which I am expected to be as creative, involved, and dynamic as I am when writing. When the job sucks away mental energy while in the shower, at lunch, on the commute, I'm bitter. When the job sucks away the breaks or eats into my lunches, I'm downright cranky.

Last weekend was a good breathing space, and I accomplished a lot. However, I crammed so much angst and stress into the four days I worked that it was all I could do to brush my teeth.

I'm taking up meditation again. There's no other way.

The finer things

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.

Weekend

I came home Friday to find that one of the cats--no longer able to pee in our laundry pile because we have deployed the technology of hampers--peed on an afghan and missed most of the afghan and hit the couch instead. I spent Friday night cleaning up this debacle and laying down tin foil. (Cats don't like to walk on tin foil, you see. And what they do not like to walk on, they also do not like to pee on.) I've informed Dann that we are getting more litter boxes for more floors of the house.

The cat pee will not win. The cats might, but not the cat pee.

Saturday, we headed out to the lake cottage, mostly to see my stepdaughter since she's been at horsecamp and her mom's house (alternately) since school let out. Swimming was accomplished. Brownies were baked. Tennis was badly played. We attempted to teach the kidlet Euchre, that "descendent of Whist and the ancestor of modern Bridge" that I think no one in America knows anything about unless they grew up in Michigan or Wisconsin. This was largely not a success.

Saturday was also good because I managed to write for a couple of hours. I smoothed the first 8000 words of "Wedding Dress Tea Parties of 2443" so that they all made sense in the order they're in, and in preparation for what I believe to be the final 4000 words--that's my best estimate, and yep, I'm already in novelette territory. I'm terribly happy because I have figured out the plot entire, and I'm no longer flailing. I'm a smidge less happy because, well, you reach that point where you just don't know if the story is worth writing. Sure, it's entertaining you, but is everyone else going to toss it down by paragraph two and forever afterwards groan when they see me coming?

Oh, yay, self-doubt!

I think this is a legitimate fear arising from writing to an unfamiliar length. Is it so long because it's actually just boring crap? Is it so long because I'm trying to fit a novel's worth of concept into a short story? Is it so long because it's actually just supposed to be that long? Yeah. Self-doubt.

Anyway, I intend to jam on it: a thousand words a day this week until it's finished. Then, I've got about another thousand words left to wrap up "Almanac for the Alien Invaders." Then, I think I'll need to rejoin the OWW, get these bad boys posted for some feedback, so they can exeunt, stage left, into slushpile.

I find the waiting for feedback phase to be the most maddening part of the writing process, but the getting of the feedback is simply too valuable to skip. Or, at least, it has been... I'm getting a better, deeper sense of what I do that works and what I do that doesn't, and how to make what I don't do as well matter less. At the same time... ya can't write into a vacuum. Can you? Is there actually a point where people don't need extensive external criticisms anymore? (I'm not even suggesting I'm there, but I wonder.) I suspect, no, there is no such point--you'll always need someone to tell you when you've crossed the line into self-indulgent pap.

Right, so. Today I got some more done on "WDTP," and did edits on the car-ride home on "Rampion in the Belltower." Other than spelling "soldiers" as "solders," I figured out a couple of major things I need to add and jumped on some deeply awkward phrasing. I think it'll be ready to send out the door this week.

Right now I need to cogitate and try to remember the story idea I had on the way home Friday night--the one that went immediately out of my head when confronted by cat pee.

Tres Anos

Happy third wedding anniversary to Mr. Haskell.

The third wedding anniversary gift is supposed to be either leather or glass/crystal. I'm sure there are many people out there who don't stick by the lists, but we do because then it saves us from asking "What do you want?" and concentrating on purchasing things we don't want. Or at least don't need. Trust me, it's more efficient this way.

Actually, we've done all right for the past three years. For year two's cotton, I got some nice t-shirts that I sleep and garden in (cotton shirts with Chinese characters on them, a nod to the china that is the traditional gift). And, entertainingly, for this year's crystal/glass component, I got my husband Pokemon Crystal--an old game, but one he didn't have, and the cognitive dissonance was too good to pass up.

I'm sort of hoping to get a wood-burning stove insert for our fireplace for the iron anniversary (year six), but I'm not planning on it. I can do without the seemingly inevitable sweaters of the wool anniversary (year seven), but I suspect Mr. Haskell will outthink me on that one, anyway. (And is that where the term seven-year itch comes from? The wool sweaters?)

Though, actually, I hope in year seven he considers the traditional gift, then goes one better and gets me, instead of a desk set, the movie Desk Set with Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn. I can't give it to him, because he just wouldn't care, but it's the second-best librarian movie ever (the first being that one I've never seen but it's all deeply intense about anti-censorship and has, like, Barbara Stanwyck in it or someone I always confuse with Barbara Stanwyck; the third being a tie between The Mummy and The Librarian: Quest for the Spear).

Now. What I think the biggest problem with this anniversary gift-list schmebus is, is that it only goes to year 15 and then skips every five years afterwards. Though the experts hardly agree: the list of wedding anniversary stones goes up to year 20 and then starts skipping. This list is good, and I hope its authentic or thingummie, because it means that if I can be patient, 16 years from today I might get an aquamarine, which is a particular favorite of mine in spite of people assuming it's my birthstone when I wear it. (No. I just like it. I wear garnets, too, and amethysts and iolite and all kinds of things that aren't my birthstone, which is diamond, and I wear that every day because this is America, baby, and you must have a diamond to prove that you have acheived the status of engaged at some point, and too bad for April if you're into birthstones, you April kids will never get a birthstone that's actually a stone, because the diamond market is kuh-razy. Not that I don't love my engagement ring, but it's an heirloom diamond at least. Reduce, reuse, recycle.)

Uhm. Anyway.

So yes. Happy crystal, glass and leather, my dear. Onward to fruit. And flowers. And appliances. And don't stop until we hit diamonds. Again.

Art and Gardens

Particularly when I'm working in my herb garden, I get the same sense of flow and accomplishment that I do when I'm writing. Maybe it's simply the act of shaping meaning, since I don't find as much joy in flower gardens (too much pretty, not enough utility) or the vegetable garden (too much utility, not enough pretty). With an herb garden, I imagine myself coming out to snip a culinary herb for some dish I'm cooking, or imagine drying some medicinal herb to store for winter (to never be used because I don't actually trust my herbal skills enough to self-medicate with them)...

And there are more layers to herbs than utility and attractiveness; herbs function as symbols, as well, and I'm not simply talking the Victorian language of flowers... There are magical associations--some herbs are sacred to different gods and goddesses no longer worshipped, or are associated with rituals or planets. And there are personal associations: I love my rue border because I like how rue looks, how it smells... and also because when I was sixteen, I placed rue under my pillow intending it to help me dream of my true love's face. (I didn't remember a single rue-dream, as it turned out.)

Then, there's the artistry of location. Thymes with thymes, sure--that's my current choice--but do the thymes go next to anything else? I now have thymes next to basils, but I'm aware that's a transient thing, since basils are annuals. I'm trying to add a lavender a year, though now I'm a lavender behind since last year's didn't survive the winter. Adding in a garden path in the herb area has meant that the lavenders are now isolated on a peninsula of yews that segue into the rue border, and that seems wrong to me; I think the basils next year will be lavender land.

Rosemary gets pride of place in the center (behind it will go the bird bath, when I get around to buying one); we'll see if I can find a way to nurture it through the winter (I read somewhere online that wrapping it in Saran wrap is the way to go; Saran cuts wind, creates a greenhouse-like effect, and yet lets light through in early spring; plus, I'll try to remind Mr. Haskell that autumn leaves are the best protectant for tender plants, and see if we can remember to heap the leaf-fall up into the herb garden this autumn). The oregano has taken hold where it is, and won't be going anywhere; the chives are well-established in their spot. And I like them both where they are, so it's fine, but they seem light on meaning, being solely culinary in nature, so I desire to plant something else nearby, something with some depth.

Anyway, I've rambled long enough without managing to help myself understand how it is art, if it is art.

Attempting a Cheery Wave

My big plans for the long Memorial Day weekend--besides putting in the dock and trying out my new swimsuit--are to read Anne Bishop's Sebastian and to spend twelve hours writing over the three day weekend, eight of which must be spent on The Bitter Road.

Really. Just those plans. And I have six anise gumdrop-colored Buddhas to witness my vow.

Anyone else with big plans?

Emotions.

I promise, if I ever figure out how to write through trouble, I will write a book (or at least a post) on it.

Something blew up at work today, and I don't know how to do anything right now except pace mentally. I thought I'd be able to write, but I just end up with fingers flexing over the keyboard--flexing, flexing, flexing, and nothing goes.

I really resent that dayjob interferes with nightjob. Especially since I'm very good about not letting nightjob interefere with dayjob. You'd think the two jobs could have mutual respect. But I guess there's the whole "my dayjob is my livelihood" thing, and it's just being a big jerk about it.

Gaugh.

Good timing.

Just when I was thinking, "Oh, noes! LiveJournal is teh broken!" because I couldn't get it to load after two tries in ten minutes, it occurred to me that a small LJ blackout would add 20 minutes minimum to writing time tonight.

Perhaps it's time to re-evaluate my journal-reading time... maybe purchase that egg-timer I've been thinking about buying.

I'm just sitting down to write right now because I was out celebrating my husband's 33rd birthday. Thirty-three is a magical number, as I'm sure you all know; not only is it the hobbit coming-of-age, but it's the number of minutes it takes for the Cylons to find you.

The latter is certainly more appropriate marker of meaning to suit Mr. Haskell's personality, though I'm sure he finds both references impossibly geeky.

Also, I maybe won at Birthday this year, at least in the Gift-giving category: as a tribute to Mr. Haskell's love of all things Green Lantern, I got him... wait for it... a green lantern. It's a lamp in the shape of a Chinese take-out box--green, of course. It's utterly ridiculous, and it made him laugh pretty good, so I win.

Woeful Behindedness

I turned 31 yesterday. *hums a happy little tune that indicates that turning 31 is jes' fine* My husband bought me an ice-cream cake from Baskin Robbins, which might seem a bit twee, but it was because of "31 flavors," which made it adorkably cute.

I'm woefully behind on writing work. And blogging. And housecleaning. And much of that is because I segued right from a bad bout of flu with a long recovery into a weekend of familial obligations, and in between picked up a nasty Farscape addiction.

I initially started watching the show with the intention of rewarding myself with an episode after every finished chapter of The Bitter Road. But then, I watched all of season 1 while sick, and I've barely been able to restrict myself to 2 eps a night since then. Tonight I will institute a 3:1:1 ratio--for every three hours of writing/editing and one hour of research I put in, I may watch 1 episode of Farscape. Additionally, I may break for an episode if I finish a chapter or a research book. That's the carrot. I'm still not sure what the stick will be, other than handing over my wireless internet card to my husband.

But yes. I'm 31. It's time to get disciplined! In addition to my 3:1:1 ratio (which is probably expressed totally wrong, but I'm not mathy), I am instituting a weekend ergonomic solution that will increase my productivity and my house and garden's cleanliness and keep me from staying a sedentary lump during writing times in my office. My solution? 45 minutes of writing topped by 15 minutes of cleaning/gardening. Email checks no more than every four hours. (Once more, this may require husbandly interventions with the wireless card.)

Why? Well, because one of my biggest problems with Sitting Down to Write is that if I think there's a remote possibility that I might get interrupted to do some chore or, well, anything, I tend not to write. I sit down and head straight to the internet because I've put up the mental block that writing would be pointless anyway because I'm not going to be able to work uninterrupted for four hours. This is utterly ridiculous, of course. I think the best thing to do is to aim for mandatory and scheduled interruptions. During the dayjob, I tend to work best if I start a small project or project segment about an hour before a meeting, so that I know I'll have to quit. I'm much more focused during such hours, knowing there's a deadline. And I feel better when I have days filled with these little mini-units of work because I don't sit endlessly in the same position at the computer.

I could be Very Wrong about all of this, of course, and it won't work without the cooperation of my household... but I bet my husband will be glad I don't whinge about the innnnnnterrrupttttiiiiooonnns, as long as I can convince him that 4-8 15-minute work-units will be more effective than 1 or 2 straight hours of housework or gardening. Granted, we've used the Flylady 15-minute cleans to get housework done before, but not quite like this.

I am a Junior Marshall with an Eggplant Head

Well, this is just one more port of call on a lifetime cruise of ridiculousness. I'm trying to dye my hair--which is one of those rites of beauty for which you either pay through the nose or through the dignity. Today I chose to lose the dignity--I'm saving $74.02 by not going to a salon (plus tip).

I was tempted by a new product (washes out in 8-12 shampoos! no mixing! just apply a colourful mousse!), lulled by the price and the promise of little fuss. Of course, "little fuss" always means "more fuss than you'd like" when it comes to hair dye. Once--perhaps 9 years ago to the day, because I seem to remember that this dyeing thing overtakes me frequently with the approach of my birthday--I managed to turn my then-new boyfriend's cat a bit pink on one shoulder blade, because it's hard to control the drips and because that cat was young and curious about anything you did in the bathroom. Then, yes, you guessed it: plop. White cat with gray spots becomes white cat with gray and Russet Harvest spots.

So, what happened today that tops dyeing a cat? Technically, nothing. I just went to the closet and got an old towel, per the instructions--a towel that is older than my stepdaughter, and which dried me after exactly one-third of the showers I took in my freshman and sophomore years of college, because it was one of the three towels I received as high school graduation gifts from an aunt. Then I draped it over my shoulders. Off of which it promptly slid. I tried closing the towel at my throat with hair clips, the way it seems my hair dresser does. I think she has better clips, though, because two seconds after I got the plastic gloves on and covered them in purple mousse, the clips popped off and the towel slid to the floor again. I ended up dyeing commando while standing atop the towel.

After the dye-mousse was applied--I built it up into a towering purple beehive that looks a lot like I'm in a Sci-Fi Original--I hoisted the towel onto my shoulders again and went in search of something more secure than hairclips. I found--not the big-ass safety pin I was hoping for--but my junior marshall pin.

Do all high schools have this tradition? That the top ten members of the junior class attend senior graduation and hand out programs and wear big sashes? Not that I did that--junior marshalls in my year were completely honorary, because there were no seniors ahead of us, it being a brand-new high school. Instead of a sash and a tour of duty in a sweltering stadium, I just got this fancy pin that looks like I got wounded in some academic battle: from a big purple ribbon is suspended a bronzeish medallion emblazoned the Lamp of Scholarship.

In any case, once I caught sight of myself in the mirror with my teal towel thrown over my shoulders like a cape, my big eggplant head and my matching purple medal, I knew I had to blog about it. And take a picture.

Not that pictures do it justice.

Sickly

I've been a sickly thing. No writing... no writing about writing...

I did manage to sell a story while in my sick bed (mostly by lying still and letting the editors think about it): The Town Drunk has agreed to carry the "reprint" of "One Million Years B.F.E.: Diary of an Anthropologist in Exile". I am quite pleased.

Still sick.

Not doing any writing, or much thinking about it.

Did reach that wonderful point yesterday afternoon where the lucid dreams were crazily beautiful, and I dreamed two complete stories--one was a book, really--but was unable to wake up long enough to write even a hint of one of them down. Alas. I have but scattered fragments: "applejack" poptarts (uneaten for five years); masterpieces of Renaissance art painted onto the ceiling of a camp cabin; driving across lush farm country; stopping at a little temple with hot water springs at the corner of M61 and Bard Road.

Strange and wondrous.

Ow.

Somehow

I have managed

to obtain

Con Crud

without going

to a con.

Good Morning

Up betimes and to my office, leaving my husband in bed... I never cease to be amazed at how much Sam and I have in common. Though, really, it is just sleeping spouses.

It's a stepdaughter week. The sun was just rising when I woke up at 6:15. It was a fortuitous thing--I hadn't actually set my alarm. I thanked the sun, made the stepdaughter French toast, did the dishes (our dishwasher very alarmingly started leaking into the basement a few weeks back; it was declared dead. The new one has not yet been brought in), checked the weather, made sure the stepdaughter packed everything up (crosses fingers), and sat through five painful minutes of Dave the Barbarian.

Then--then--I did not go back to bed. I checked my email (still no news on two submissions, one of which is a little late and one of which is VERY late, and yes, I am getting agitated), showered, dressed... checked all the blogs I usually read... backed up my files from last night (hint, hint)... and tried to figure out if today was a bring-the-laptop-to-work day or not. My shoulder says no. My mind says no. I think it's a notecards-and-research-books day. Now, I'm going to pack myself a lunch, throw some chicken, apples and potatoes in the crockpot and go for a walk.

I don't know how it is that I get into such denial about how winter makes me feel. Just a little extra light at 6:15 and this is what happens. I don't mind the snow and I think I don't mind the cold; it's the dark that drives me to my knees, and I feel it as early as September. Six months of feeling light-deprived is about five months too many...

Notes

• John Scalzi gets personal about money, specifically, money made from writing. I tried to talk about this with my husband, but all I got was a fish-eyed stare that said, "And why aren't you making $100,000 this year?"

• My laptop has started in with this faint buzzing noise. Entropy or something stuck in the fan? Or would something stuck in the fan be entropy? Of course I could find the expiration date of my warranty when I was looking yesterday, but I bet it's close.

• I dragged an old radio downstairs so I could pump tunes through my PodFreq while cleaning the cat litter. One "Superhero" and one "Vampires Will Never Hurt You" later, I was done. It made the task much less onerous, and since I wanted to last out the end of "Vampires," I did a smidge more cleaning than was strictly necessary. Will this be the year that the F-----s Haskells declare victory over the basement?

• My maiden name is Haskell, btw. After living with my husband for a few years before he was my husband, I was rather tired of being called "Mrs. F-----" when there was no such beast. My favorite day was when someone called him "Mr. Haskell." Additionally, for the purposes of this blog and my writing identity in general, I'm going to refer to him as Mr. Haskell from now on, just because I can.

• I finally figured out how to write a story that I've been mulling over for years. My excitement knows no bounds. Actually, that's true, but there's almost no way to say "my excitement knows no bounds" anymore without sounding ironic.

• "If someone else can write the story you're writing right now, let them." Discuss.

• (re: the last one, I think it's like saying, "you can't stand in the same river twice.")

Perplexities & Ideas

I'll note that as soon as I said I didn't have much time to read, I managed to finish four books in a weekend.

The overwhelming font of ideas that was sort of beating me down for the last two weeks (a fortnight during which I used an entire pack of note-cards) seems to have pulled back a little. Today I only hit upon two great ideas, and I think they're both more or less immediately useable. I mean, if I could remember either of them.

I tend to get ideas when I have movement. While driving or walking, mainly, but you see, the movement is key. And usually what happens is that I walk out of my library towards the parking structure and get an idea or three--then I scribble madly once in the car, and then get another idea or six on the ride home. Today, I had an idea when I stepped outside, but the soughing of the wind through the pines distracted me, and I had to stop and listen for a few minutes. Then, on the way to the parking structure, the moon had seemingly turned the sky blue (it was a reflection from the clouded-over sunset, in part), and there were these dramatic, blue moon-clouds edged with that color between gold and silver that the moon sometimes is.

My ideas got a bit lost, between wind and moon. But I'm sure I'll find them again.

Oh, heavens. My workspace is a mess again.

We bought a house with four bedrooms just so my husband and I could each have an office until we have a new wee one to contend with. Turns out, we like having separate offices so much, that should there be a wee one, one of us gets to take over the music room/living room for an office. (We weren't using that piano anyway.)

Which just means that there are two bedrooms in this house that are horribly abused, because my husband and I are only aspirational cleaners. Meaning--we only clean if we know someone else is looking--we aspire to be clean. In the meantime, his floor is piled high with bank statements and comic books, and I am drowning in book-making materials, reference books and dirty glasses. I also get the detritus of Christmas and birthdays in the form of wrapping paper and Amazon boxes, and lots of sewing implements no one uses. Both offices are shameful, shameful messes.

Occasionally, I go on a tear and clean up my office, often because I've told myself that I'll write better when the office is clean. This is Basic Catwaxing right there, however, because the office has been a dire mess since Christmas and I've been highly productive. The mess just reached catastrophic proportions in the last week, and I've been a productivity ninja in response.

More frequently than the catwaxing ritual, however, the arrival of a guest precipitates a cleaning frenzy, since my office doubles as a guestroom. (A one-person guest room--there's a twin bed in the corner. I have a working theory that when the bed stops doubling as a filing cabinet annex, I'll actually curl up there with my laptop someday and achieve my favorite thing--writing in bed--combined with my husband's favorite thing--me writing in my office, not our bed.)

I think my One True Life Goal is organization. I've never really cared if things were messy or clean, as long as everything is organized. Getting a file cabinet was the culmination of a life-long dream. As a teenager, I kept all my papers stacked up in piles along one wall in my bedroom, in a very specific order; each pile (in my head) represented the drawer of an imaginary file cabinet. My mom thought it was a catastrophe that I had paper piled against one wall of my room, but I thought it was a good compromise.

I think I'm just one more file cabinet away from true organization.

I can feel it.

Self-Referential

I'm still sick, and I am plum tuckered out from it. On the plus side, I am completely caught up on Arrested Development; Dann and I powered through half of season 2 and all that's been aired of season 3 this week, thanks to a nice combo of DVDs from Netflix and the TiVo. AND we heard about how awesome the show was via word-of-mouth from Dann's brother, so take that, doubting doubters.

Arrested Development is in general a self-referential show... and in particular, too. The last episode aired is called "S.O.B. (Save Our Bluths)," and has so many gags about saving the show from its imminent cancellation that I'm pretty sure I didn't catch even half of them.

Now, one of the things that the self-referential humor made me think about was the complaint that none of the characters are sympathetic or relatable... which is largely true. The show is a dark comedy (more than 70% dark cacao, which is not to everyone's taste), and while there is at least one sympathetic character (I'm thinking George Michael), he probably doesn't read as very relatable, since he's the standard geek/good kid half the time, and the other half the time... he's in love with his cousin. (Oh, is that not relatable?) I love George Michael. I love all the characters, and I do find them sympathetic at points; their dysfunctions and self-absorptions read like the shadow side of every sitcom character we've been told we love via the Nielsen ratings, and their brief human moments seem more real for it. As for relatable... dude, I don't watch TV to see my problems rehashed. This is why I generally prefer costume dramas and science fiction, yannow?

In the midst of this, I was thinking of how much I do appreciate self-referential humor. (And referential humor, too... I'm now thinking of AD's Tony Wonder's "Use Your Allusion" magic DVD) I'm not really sure why self-referential humor works for me, though I did wake up with the best of all self-referential songs in my head this morning: Tenacious D's "Tribute."

Some day, when I'm feeling more the thing, I'll explore this further. At a guess, I'd say I like self-referential humor because it feels like the author, or maybe the narrator (depending on what medium we're talking about--but author fills in for "writers" for me) knows that we are all experiencing a fiction together. It acknowledges that, and yet, does it without breaking state--ie, without ruining my suspension of disbelief. But that's just a guess. And I'm not even sure about the suspension of disbelief thing.

Sick

Yep. I'm sick. I've discovered a brand new item on the market to distract me from being sick--these foaming disks that you put in the floor of your shower that release camphor, menthol and eucalyptus vapors when water hits them. You stand there and breathe, perhaps for the first time in days.

Genius.

Of course, they do have a captive audience. I've seen nothing but bed or couch for a while now. I'm not really sure how many days. It seems like many. It's probably only one. Maybe two.

But still.

Genius.

Merry Yule

*waves at you all from behind a stack of new books*

I'm taking a few days off of writing from necessity. Hope all is well and happy and warm.

Cleanliness: May Be Next to Godliness, but Very Far from Writerliness

Of the bedroom that I share with my husband, there is a bit of space that's his, and a bit that's mine, and a lot more that's community property. Somehow, I managed to spend four hours cleaning up a 6'x2' bit of real estate that includes my dresser and under my half of the bed.

There was a lot of dust.

I found:

-a CD I thought I'd lost and already replaced on iTunes
-six books, loaned to me variously by my friends Mary Lou, Julie and Jason
-a manuscript of my first Regency that I mean to edit earlier this year
-some books I knew I had, but was fuzzy on the location, including Liz Williams' Banner of Souls
-six candles I forgot I owned
-two bottles of linen spray I forgot I owned
-a diamond nail file I forgot I owned
-a CD case I thought I'd left in my old car
-a CD Dann owns that I'd wanted to rip to my computer that I'd never seen before, I swear
-my raincoat liner
-a whole box of Nag Champa incense, and a box of lavender incense as well
-16 pens
-and three pages of notes to myself about stories. Some of them even make sense.

Some of them *almost* make sense, like "Arabella, not James, or 'virgin' queen" which I believe refers to some historical or almost-historical happening that I can't for the life of me recall. I think it was about one of the potential successors to Elizabeth I, but I'm still not sure why I wrote it down like this. Thoughts?

I posit...

...that natural short story writers thrive on constant movement; submission, rejection, submission, rejection, submission, rejection, submission, acceptance. Next story. That is why they get so antsy when magazines have long response times.

That would make natural novelists pleased that they can go months at a time before considering the tidal beat of submission, rejection, submission...

Of course, before I even finished the first sentence, I knew this whole theory was bull. Sure, one may have a natural inclination for how much one wants to hear from editors, but it would simply be luck of the draw if it turned out to match one's natural writing talent. Like handedness and eye dominance--there are poor archers out there who are right-handed and left-eye dominant.

Ok, erase everything I just said.

I posit that one can never be truly content with one's writing career. But that's as it should be; otherwise, would one bother to keep trying?

One Thing

One thing I've decided I don't like about writing novels is that I don't feel as productive. You can't write double-digit numbers of novels in a year, eh? You can short stories. You could probably write triple digits if you were crazy.

I suspect I just need to rewrite my paradigm on productivity, but that sounds like more work than it's worth.

One adventure from reading about kitten heels in the last book I read was searching for them on the internet, so I could be more knowledgeable about my gender's fashion trends... This was by far the best of the Google hits on the subject. It doesn't tell you what kitten heels are, but I really enjoyed reading the email exchange between a novelist and her translator.

Cats, Life and the Internets

The cat has been sleeping on my keyboard. There is a tuft of cat hair stuck under the backspace key.

Why does he think this is a good idea? The computer isn't even left on to be temptingly warm for him.

***

I've been having something of an identity crisis recently about why I blog. I'm not someone who generates great dialogue, in general, about writing and the world. I struggle, and I do it publicly. I also bite my tongue a lot, which probably undercuts the potential for dialogue. It's a choice...

Recent goings-on in the writerly community have reminded me that it doesn't matter what you say, someone's going to take it the wrong way. Or even possibly something that someone else says is going to be held against you. Or... well, you know. Expand infinitely on that theme.

There's no value in a sanitized blog, and there's no safety in it either--except the safety of not having any readers.

So. Why do I blog again?

Somewhere

Somewhere, beneath a pile of comment spam, I am kicking. Alive and kicking, even.

My new job makes me happier, but I think it also takes up more brain space. At the same time, it makes me more creative; I have more ideas than I can jot down in the course of a day. I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed in many regards.

The other night, I was so overwhelmed in fact, that I took out a bunch of markers and started marking up a big sheet of paper with all the themes, phrases and motifs that keep jumping at me--or onto me--or into my work--or around the edges of it. In ten minutes of hurried scribbling, I identified the major themes of what I like to write about (healing, war, dreams, beauty, virtue and silence are the words in caps). It was a weird experience; it didn't get me very far that day, but I think it helped something. I may try this again on a more specific level, trying to identify words and concepts that relate to what I'm working on presently. I guess it's not unlike brainstorming plus, whatsit, thought bubbling? I remember some teacher wanted us to do thought bubbling once, but I got sick that day. I think on purpose. Now I wish I'd paid attention...

Anyway, that's me. How are you?

Back from the Wedding

My attempts to get to my husband's brother's wedding reception site early enough to help them decorate were thwarted by an errant transmission--my errant transmission. Or should I call it erstwhile? It's no longer alive, in any case.

The search for a new car has begun.

Meanwhile, my brother-in-law did manage to get married, and my drama had little to no effect on the proceedings (and what effect it did have seemed too much--I understand the sympathy, but "can we just talk about how beautiful the bride is?" went through my mind a hundred times). It was an exhausting day (series of days) for me as a bridesmaid (must have been worse for the main players), but it was beautiful and fun and well-executed.

Now, back to the grind.

Palmistry for Cats

I'm easing myself into some better time management scenarios. Expect to see phrases like "less television" and "less internet" and "more writing" and "working lunch hours" bandied about.

That's an aside, but it also sets up my punchline way down at the bottom.

Other things that occur to me...

I still don't know how to make this damn journal display paragraph breaks in the livejournal feed. Sorry. I've tried everything short of installing the new Movable Type.

I wrote my "fat is a feminist issue" short story about two years ago now, and only recently had the courage to send it out again after almost a year. I've been very afraid people wouldn't get it. But then, after I saw a certain editor's blog complaining about too many negative fat stereotypes in the slush pile, I thought, "Eh, there you go." I'm still nervous about it. I'm still afraid people won't get it. But (and here's the kiss of death) my friends really liked it.

I'm currently writing a story that I've been trying to write for almost ten years. I think I first got the idea when I started working at the University--it's a story about the month of October. I think it used to be about the loyal scions of the Religion Library (not that U of M has a religion library, but this is fiction) fighting the demon-summoners in the Math Department, but it has since morphed in a variety of ways to a coven of witches working in the library to what it is now, which seems to be a Tam Lin retelling.

In any case, about four years ago, my black cat, Arthur, scratched my palm whilst I was trying to do something heinous to him, like clip his nails or something, and the scratch ran right along my heart line. I wasn't sure what he was trying to tell me then, but since then, I have gotten a thorn scratch on my life line while trimming roses and yesterday I got a paper cut along my heart line. All three of these things happened in October.

In other words, this story wants to be written.

(Argh. Another sign of autumn is here: I have a fake Japanese ladybug buzzing my head. They always sneak in during the last warm days of autumn, looking for places to hibernate.)

So, anyway, I need to sign off on this entry... looking at my "better time management scenario..." I'm thinking I need some sort of cut right down my time line, but unfortunately, I don't carry my timeline on my palm.

Ok, so it wasn't a good punchline.

Sliding an entry in before the deadline

Am reading On Writing.

Am smelling my teatree oil pore mask.

Am pondering the state of my story.

I have a big thoughtful entry brewing on the last one of these. Perhaps for when it's less Friday around here (yes, after three weeks of being brilliant at the new job, I fscked everything up today that I could without being an intentional doofus).

Yes. Friday is the new Monday.

Ayeeee!!! + Reading: St. Raven

Ok. I'm a no-bloggin' losah. Still getting a handle on the job, yaknow? I mean... it's not like the job has taken over my life (not exactly), but between resolutions earlier this year not to internet when I should be writing, combined with the new job's necessary no-internet-while-working interdiction, and the total impossibility of internet while showering (don't even suggest wireless, waterproof phones or similar--I'm not in the mood) and the even greater impossibility of internet while sleeping, that means... almost no internet.

I can't say the impact has been negative on my psychological health. I do feel a bit out of the loop, but I also feel... much more positive. Hm. Perhaps one can know too much about the lives of those around you--locally or professionally. Or, perhaps one can be too invested in learning about the lives? Something like that.

Onward.

St. Raven by Jo Beverley (43) [romance]

Quite good. A couple of momentary quibbles (I didn't think sidesaddles were common in Georgian England, but were a later Victorian addition, but I could be so very wrong), but I gave them up in order to enjoy the story. The few things Jo Beverly does less well are completely eclipsed by that which she does extraordinarily well. All writers should be so lucky. The female lead had enough chutzpah to keep me interested and enough propriety to be realistic. A delicate balance!

Balance

Spent the morning submitting stories. Felt accomplished.

Spent the evening (well, an extra half hour) at work, doing something that hadn't been done in a week or more due to massive miscommunication. Felt stupid.

So, we're back at square one.

At least tonight I have a Cooling Gel Mask for the soothing of my skin and tinying of my pores. That makes everything better.

One day later...

And I have a power cord.

Well, all right then.

The end is in sight for two stories right now; I had a breakthrough on "Breakfast at Antigone's" and I think I can muddle my way through "Wedding Dress Tea Parties of 2443." Then... well, that's the question--what then? I've made myself a promise that I will let things rest before submitting them to editors anymore; but I'm not sure about the period of time it should rest before heading out to, say, the Online Writing Workshop. I have learned that my work tends to need rest, any way you look at it, whether it's enforced rest from it languishing in slush piles so that I get to rethinking it after five rejections, or voluntary rest in that I shelve it for a period of time. --Well, I think I just answered my own question in writing it--rest comes while on the Workshop simply because it takes a while to get five critiques.

Oh, what a ridiculous thing to twitter on about.

Anyway. I got words this morning, and right now, I intend to have more.

Perplexities

Dear little Serenity, the laptop of my life, will not talk to her power adapter. I've got an email in with Dell support--and it's definitely the power cord, not the laptop, so that's something, since I can take a charge from Dann's cord when I need to. In the meantime, I exchange endless messages in half-jibberish with customer support on the other side of the world:

"Please revert with the result of the above mentioned steps, so that I could
proceed further accordingly. I will surely replace the faulty part."

It's not like I don't get what's being said, but the more I deal with this sort of thing, the less happy I am with the farming out of customer support.

With my remaining 12% of battery power, I got the three most important things I've been working on off the laptop (it's been a week since I did backups, which is a normal amount for me, but still enough to make me twitch) onto my USB key, which I realize I can't plug into my desktop without doing an under-desk safari, through boxes of old letters and who knows what all. At this point, I think I'm going to go to work, plug the key in there, upload the stuff to my university space and download it here tonight.

Oh, the things I will do to avoid crawling under this desk. I'm not crazy, I don't think--I would surely bang my head.

Progress and the Lake

Ok. Here's the sitch:

I'm writing a space opera/fantasy of manners. (Space opera of manners?) It was meant to be a short story, but now it looks like it's going to top out around fifteen thousand words. That means it's a novella and there's not a lot in the way of markets for it, so I'm at this point considering it a gift for myself, as I'm having a ball writing it.

And yet, I'm taking it deadly seriously. A chance to hone my craft. (Plus, I am going to *try* to sell it. It's just... you know, there's x number of short story markets, and it's like x divided by... what, ten? More? for novella markets.) I want it to be good enough that I look at it in a few years and go, "Yes, yes, you had something." It's a goal.

Thusly, I've been sweating plot, character and structure a lot. And last week, I sort of miswrote myself into a sex scene. I thought it was a good idea at the time, thought it would be this subversive thing considering the rest of the story, and yet I think it's true to the world I've built. But it's been bothering me, and on the car ride to the lake today, I realized that it's not true to the characters. Later, in the lake itself (76 degrees in the water, 75 degrees in the air, and in moving from one to the other, it was hard to determine which was warmer) I realized that I didn't have to obliterate all my work--keeping it as a fantasy would suffice.

And that's what I did today...

Getting the Hang of It

Not sure I've got the hang of this up at 6, bed at 10:30 thing yet. My initial thoughts on my schedule were that once my stepdaughter was on the bus, I'd shower right away and set to work writing; walk for a bit and then go on in to the library to make my payday.

So far, I've not managed that. Today when K. got on the bus, my first thought was "I don't wanna shower yet!" and I crawled in here to check email. It's 7:30... I basically just wasted half an hour. But I'm not getting time to do my usual surfing at work, so something's gotta give... right?

(mutters) Tea. Tea would probably solve the awakeness problem.

Weddings and Readings

My poor misanthropic husband is worn to a frazzle with all the public interaction this evening, but I feel socially satiated. It helps that the wedding I attended this evening was largely populated by people I respect and admire and like and yet don't get to see very often--combined with the fact that, though I don't see the bride and groom as often as I think we'd all like, I do see them more often than 95% of my acquaintanceship that I respect and admire and like--so I wasn't sitting there feeling greedy for their attention. In other words, the perfect sort of wedding for me.

But, now, my feet hurt and I'm tired. I've taken off my makeup and my party clothes, and I'm going to settle in with M'ris's book, since I have approximately a day to get it back to her without being a schmuck. I like M'ris's book; I like it as much as anything I've read this year, in fact, which I believe bodes well for its future, though I'm not a book editor. Which is a shame, really. After that, I have Catherine's book and a stack of Milford manuscripts, and I should also read some things on stepmothers since I have to fill a half an hour with nattering about stepmothers in fiction at WorldCon. (It's not a panel. It's a talk. Yes, I'm frightened. But at least I'll be in a country where no one knows me.)

All right, another unfunny entry. Megan will be sad. Anybody got any jokes??

Cram-packed

As if this summer weren't crazy enough on its own... I just accepted a new
job. No official start date yet, but I will either start as soon as I come back
from WorldCon or very shortly thereafter.

Now, if I just manage to get an agent in the next two months, I'll begin to
wonder if I'm not really, secretly Stephanie Burgis on the inside.

But, no, really. I'd also have to be in graduate school and have a dog, so I'm
actually probably still me.

Plus, it's not like I have a book manuscript in any sort of shape to show to
agents.

Write Club Report

Sad to say, Write Club was Farewell Club. We bid adieu to Lou, who's off to Library School in Maryland.

Write Club will henceforth be much quieter, less exciting and waaaay less slashy.

Wha?

Don't ask me how it became Friday already. I'd have no good answer for you, other than another damn cold has tried to wrest control of my head from my brain. So far, I'm not laying bets on who's winning.

I'm almost done with a handful of books, so I should be able to report on them soon. But even if I go on an intercontinental book reading spree (and I do have one slated in August), I probably won't reach my goal of a hundred books this year. I used to be able to do so. It was all so effortless and easy, to read in all my spare time. Before writing.

And the internet.

And TiVo.

Dammit..

Flail, flail, flail

Heading off to L.A. and Santa Barbara tomorrow. Have been packing. Have not, thusly, done any writing, but I did pick out a market for one story.

Having one of those self-disillusionment moments (read: days). It's not that I don't want to write. It's that I don't want to schill.

I remember being blithe about the whole thing, once upon a time. "I shall send out the stories and not worry about it," I would tell myself. "What's $.83 going and $.37 coming?" Rejection, sure, that sucked, and that's when I was most prone to depression. Now I get depressed trying to send things out. "There I go, wasting another $.83 going and $.37 coming."

(le deep sigh)

What kind of business is this, where you can look at what you've done, at how far you've come, and somehow see it as less progress than the last time you looked back?

Daydream

One of my recurring daydreams is of spending a year on an island--particularly, Mackinac Island, which is located at the straits between the upper and lower peninsulas of Michigan. Mackinac has no cars and is expensive as hell, but it captured my imagination when I was a child through daytrips with my family (too expensive to stay over), stories from my mom's summer working there, and a number of books about the island.

Two years ago, we honeymooned there. It was amazing to watch the town slowly decompress after the last ferry of daytrippers left in the evening. We ate on the terrace of a restaurant, and when the smell and noise of the crowds died away and the smell and noise of the island itself returned, I knew that my imagined island sojourn wasn't simply wishful thinking. The place has a magic that speaks to me. It's not unlike my trips to Glastonbury and the Tor, and the shape of the island is actually not unlike the shape of a tor, so perhaps there is something to it...

In any case, my stepdaughter and I are going up to the island for a Girlscout weekend, and while I'm trepidatious (I'm missing more work than I can afford to miss, and it's a long trip, and well, what exactly is the Girlscout angle going to demand of me?), I'm extremely excited as well. Time with K. is good, of course, and I hope I can share some of my love of the place with her--this is important, since I feel like my mom passed the sense of the place to me--but most of all, I get to spend two nights on the island. Very, very cool.

Obligatory plug: read the The Loon Feather. Iola Fuller won a Hopwood Award for it, which is the undergraduate award for writing granted by my college, and though I never had my act together enough to apply for the Hopwood, it was definitely something that attracted me to my school in the first place. My mom had a copy that she let me read to shreds when I was growing up, but it was the one book she took a stand on and wouldn't let me borrow permanently when I left home.

Mrph.

Whoever said you can't organize clutter, you can only clear it, was right. I've looked around this office twenty times, trying to figure out how to start organizing the remaining clutter, and frankly, there's no place to put it, no way to organize it, it just has to go.

Now. Once I figure out how to apply that lesson to writing, I will. Though, as far as writing is concerned, clutter seems to be the order of the day.

Random thoughts attacked me during the day (as they tend to do).

The scent of boxwoods is very distinctive. I wish I could describe it other than "green"--for it is not the green of cedar or grass or pine or any of the other greens I know. For me, boxwood scent evokes memories of being a little girl and heading up the front walk of an elderly lady neighbor's house, the seemingly impoverished kin of a wealthy robber baron of yesteryear. For all I know, the impoverishment was merely a combination of stubbornness, frugality and a pack rat mentality, and maybe even the robber baron uncle or cousin was a neighborhood fiction...

There are few places as mysterious as a hundred-fifty year old library. Hidden doors, caves under the steps, plaster bumps in the walls, secret windows, narrow marble staircases... I could write about my library (and I do consider the Grad to still be my library, in spite of my three-year allegiance to another) in a dozen stories and not tell half the mysteries I've seen in just ten years.

I'll stop there. There's writing, after all.

Grace

I am not gliding gracefully into summer. Instead, I am being dragged backward into it, sweating and screaming.

I drank what seemed to be about seven liters of water yesterday. That seemed excessive. Every time I looked down, I was holding an empty glass or water bottle.

Thank goodness I decided to install a ceiling fan in my office, or I might not write again until winter.

Worn...

I'm worn out with gardening and mentally arguing with everyone I've ever known (and not a few people I haven't known, actually). Apparently, I'm at some sort of mental threshold. Or else going crazy. But I think more people who see me regularly would be expressing concern at this point.

I have a blister, and I'm in the middle of four books. Maybe more. That's reading, I mean; I'm in the middle of writing a number of books who are darting around like gnats and refuse to be counted.

And the short stories are getting anxious.

No slushing of late--nothing in my slushbox. I did crit a story on OWW, so I'm adhering to my 1 crit a week goal. Ideally, I'd like to, you know--actually put a story up there sometime again.

Goals, goals, goals.

Drowning in Notes

I have definitely mentioned that I'm still in the process of cleaning and organizing my home office. (Though I probably just referred to it as "my office." Work office is "the library." I think. No promises.)

Well, what I haven't mentioned is that the work office, aka the library, is waving their magic wand and having our department switch with another (much smaller) library (a library so small that they are essentially housed within our library. Anyone who doesn't think libraries are magical has simply not been exposed to them.).

In any case, I had (several weeks ago) managed to reduce the pile of paper debris on my desk at work significantly. Mostly little notes: check this file for an interesting article on third generation Asian-Americans, check out this book on warrior women. Writer debris. I thought I'd managed to wrangle it all into three main email messages to myself, after which I recycled the papers.

Today, I cleaned out a little used desk drawer and found a huge stack of writer debris I had obviously shoved out of sight when my desk needed to be clean for some reason.

Huge.

Five times as big as the stack I dealt with the other day.

And at home, it's about twenty times worse than that.

Email is not proving equal to the task. I'm cluttering up my inbox. Plus, I like to keep important stuff in my work/alumnus account, not my gmail account, for no good reason, and I can't search my work/alumnus account, because I still used Pine. I'm old school in a bad way, I'm sure, but I can't give it up. Won't, in fact.

But then, I realized the web is an even greater archiver than anything ever invented yet. Things Don't Die on the web. Most of the time. Plus, I can search this site fairly easily. Plus, some of this information may be things you are interested in. So, I'm going to start inputting notes from time to time--items of more general interest (not, for instance, the reams of call numbers I have jotted down with no notation, nor links to university-only resources).

But this, for example: a pink post-it note, and what I think is a list of post-apocalyptic YA books. I'm only guessing, actually; I didn't title the list, but I did manage to locate one of the books the other day, and I think there are a few loose rocks in my head, banging around and making sparks of recognition.

In any case, that list:

The Disappearance by Wylie
Shade's Children by Nix (the one I bought on Weds.)
No Blade of Grass by John Christopher
Earth Abides by Stewart

In the same pile: a short story prioritizing list from at least a year ago--there are stories on it that never really got off the ground, like "Dogwood and Angel," and stories I don't even remember at all, like "Free Show Tonight." I figure I have more notes on both of those stories somewhere, so I'm scrapping this list. I'm also scrapping some notes on what I think may have been instructions on what to put in the sidebar of this journal. I'm not really happy with my sidebar, but this note is surely not the cure. Scrap!

A list of numbers programmed into the speed dial. No, that's not for the web...

Oh, a note to check out The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, plus the call number. I think that's worth entering into an email. I'm sure I ran across the book while doing some course reserves work with it, which meant I didn't get a chance to check it out--which is why there's a note--but I probably paged through it a few times and realized it had info I might find useful for my alternate America story.

Treasures indeed.

Buh-leah

Nothing to report on the writing front. I thought today I could query on a story, but I doublechecked the submission date, and no, it's next month. Also, realized I only have four stories out. This has to get remedied this weekend.

Tonight I hung two pictures in my new office. One picture works--translucent dogwood petals in black and white on my magentawine wall. The other one doesn't quite work. I don't know why. Maybe because it was an expanse of creamy white and now it's a wall with a picture on it. Before, potential, now, a thing. I'm not sure why the other one doesn't come to the same place.

Maybe that white wall is too big for my small picture. Maybe if I move it over, and put something else beside it, it would work. Every other space is an overload, and that one isn't.

There'd be a metaphor in this story, if the world were just.

Correct

I was correct in guessing that three more hours wouldn't be the end of my office. Of course, if I hadn't decided to clear out the closet as well, I wouldn't be in this mess. But I'm very definitely in this mess, and I won't be able to pick it back up again until Friday, due to my usual weekly and bi-weekly commitments tomorrow and the day after. That whimpering sigh you just heard was a tired woman thinking about being out past 11 two nights in a row this week and wondering why that's so damn hard anymore.

I really probably should give up gaming, but then I'd never see that subset of my friends more than once a year.

Aye, me. Well, I'll write for an hour and sleep at 11, and hope that extra hour helps propel me onward through the week. It won't, but let's just pretend.

In other news, I slushed today... and had that pang of regret for rejecting perfectly serviceable, frequently well-written and often clever fiction. Since I write perfectly serviceable, frequently well-written and often clever fiction, it is doubly hard to send out such rejections. I am probably not cut out to be an editor--not while also being a writer. And since I can't stop the writing thing... not yet, anyway... I will eventually stop slushing, I suspect.

But maybe not. That's just today. Maybe I'll get that "wow!" story in the mail next week, and it will all seem worthwhile. (Please note, Lords of Universal Irony, this is not a request to not write a "wow!" story, so just turn right back around... go ironize someone else.)

Am I Face or Hannibal?

I love it when a plan comes together. That is, I love the fact that my resolution to write between 9 and 11PM every night has led to me feeling incredibly antsy here and now at 9:22PM, simply because I haven't started writing yet. That means I've become habituated to the schedule--and fast. (It helps that it wasn't too far off from what I was doing anyway, it's just that it became more official.)

The bad news is, my coming-together-plan means that I do not have the patience to continue cleaning my office, which is sorely in need of arrangement since the painting. True, I've been up here working for a couple hours already--husband has hung shelves, and I have filled them accordingly; also, I've sorted four separate piles of crud, grown misty over my wedding pictures, taken away two loads of garbage, an armload of tools and a pair of winter gloves that were mysteriously residing in here... Alas, but there are still many piles to be sorted, and many papers to be filed, and many keeping-places of notebooks and other books to be reassessed, as well as pictures to hang and craft projects to put away. There is also the nasty business of the ceiling fan. And I have a wossits, a curio shelf of sorts, that needs to be hung and filled.

In short, I'm nowhere near done.

But the lesson here is probably very simple. It's not like I would finish a novel tonight if I sat down and tried; but if I don't sit down and try tonight, I'll never finish a novel. Of course, this office might very well be righted in just three more hours (though I suspect not). Either way, I'll benefit from the slow/steady approach, right? Because otherwise, I'll get tired of the whole thing and start shelving books willy-nilly.

And we can't have that.

White Crevices

All the crevices on my hands are white--two days of priming and painting, and all my shadows have become bright.

I also have a black cat with white whiskers on one side of his face.

I've pretty much only done freewriting the latter half of this week, writing I don't actually intend to ever be sold or even seen, and if I don't feel like a million bucks for it, I certainly feel like seven hundred and fifty thousand. I think freewriting didn't work for me in the past because my mental view of it was too free. I told myself that meant I didn't actually write stories, I just brainstormed bits, or... something. It goes so much better when I let myself tell a story. It's a version of "give yourself permission to write badly." A corollary, perhaps: "give yourself permission to write whatever you want, and to finish it, too."

Writing this freely is not unlike looking down and finding the crevices of your hands turned white. The world has briefly reversed itself. Everything looks different in negative, and the shapes of things are more clear. Fascinating.

The On-Going Saga of the Workspace

I bet you're as sick of reading about this as I am of writing about it, but in fact, while painting my office, I shall not be writing. The ultimate painting and rearrangement and declutter is supposed to make it easier to write in the long run, but for the short run, it has killed the writing thing.

I spent about two hours at Lowe's, contemplating mistinted paint (not for this project) and wood putty (not for this project) and wallplates (for this project) and shelving (for this project) and herbs (not for this project)... and bought also the paint trays which were the only thing I needed in order to start. Came home to find my husband had fled, presumably to the casino, though when I left he'd still been undecided about his plans. Hm.

Spent the next eight hours painting and listening to an audio book. Unfortunately, the mauve seems to be taking three or four coats before showing up as a color I can actually live with. I should have bought primer.

1.75 walls done; 2.25 walls to go. Unhappily, it's the hard 2.25 walls left to do--insomuch that I don't know where I'm going to move everything while I pain those last walls. It's rather like that game I had as a kid, with 8 tiles and 9 slots, and you have to keep shoving tiles around until you make the picture. I have exactly one slot worth of space. Today I moved a bookcase into it. It remains to be seen if the space opened by the bookcase will be big enough to do the rest of the moving I need to do. Somehow I doubt it.

Fortunately, Dann is an engineer. If I become trapped, he should be able to get me out. But for now--bed. I'm incredibly tired.

Tomorrow, I have to finish painting and get the office organized that I can slush. And feel ok about going out to muck around in the garden. There are hostas to raise (if it's time to raise hostas; I'm not so sure) and herbs to plant.

Did I mention "incredibly tired" yet?

Workspace, Part Deux

I've taped half of half of my walls. (It's complicated, and I'm short, and one wall is going to have to be painted in stages. Why? Because there's simply too much crap in my office.)

I may go downstairs and grab the stool and tape the ceiling tonight. I may just collapse into bed and wonder why I'm still not recovered from this illness fully.

I ordered the kickassest switchplate tonight. Dragonflies in antique brass. I don't actually like brass that much, but the pillow upon which the entire office's new design scheme rests has golden, uh, spots. And since I'm not made of money, brass is as close as we get to gold.

Initially, I was thinking the theme of the room would be (drumroll) sheep. I have been hoarding sheep-related items for a few years now, in some misguided pre-prenatal nesting thing. I love sheep. Babies love sheep. Someday I will have babies, and the sheep and the babies will lie down together... ok, moving on. I figured that starting a few years early would allow me to get the good sheep, not the crappy, any-old-sheep-I-can-get-my-hands-on-in-9-months sheep. I have the cutest sheep finger puppet in the world. And some little figurine lambs. And that's about it. Maybe one other thing. I honestly can't remember. Three sheep in three years.

My point is, I didn't really have another decorating scheme in mind, so I was sort of planning to whip out my sheep on my new mauve and cream office/guestroom. But I've since decided that sheep are not where it's at. The sheep can stay resting in their tissue paper nests until the babies invade, and this office becomes a nursery and I end up writing with only my right hand at the dining room table, a breast-feeding refugee of babydom. Until that weary time, my office shall be mauve and cream, and there will be iconic dragonflies and trees overseeing my work, and not iconic sheep. I sort of stumbled into it, but it will do...

Alas for the Workspace

I am trying to identify the environmental factors that make it hard for me to write. The theory is that I'll try to eliminate them, and then there will be no more excuses for my piddly 300-word nights.

Off the top of my head:

• bad chair
• too much ambient noise (music too loud is especially true at cafés, I note)
• too many cat claws in my thigh (my problem right now)
• too much clutter
• temperature problems

I think that's actually it. They don't seem so ridiculous, either, when written out like this.

I spent the evening trying to eliminate the clutter, but I fear I only made it worse. I took the "before" pictures, after I'd been cleaning for an hour. I will post them with the "after" pics sometime in the near future. My intention to paint and rearrange the office has to get resolved very soon; I think another reason I can't write in there is that I feel its temporariness. (I do manage to write in my bedroom, btw, much to my husband's irritation.)

My office does not, as a rule, suffer from too much ambient noise (occasionally, in the summers, the window is open and I have to close it because demons possess the neighborhood children, and that's never quiet), but there are very often cat claws in my thigh, because Merlin the Cat has attention deficit disorder--he gets disorderly if I don't pay him enough attention.

The heat problem I am taking care of with a ceiling fan. I suspect that will also help the cold problem. My office is just one of those rooms that doesn't work well with the rest of the house heating/cooling scheme.

As I maunder on, I wonder if I had a punchline in mind when I began this entry. If so, I've utterly lost it. Bleah.

The only punchline I can think of has nothing to do with the set-up, actually. So, I'll save it. You never know; I might stumble across the right set-up someday.

Birthdays & Such

In spite of birthday celebrations this weekend--or perhaps because of them?--I managed to pound out another few parts of "Breakfast at Antigone's." And, OMGBBQ or whatever the acronyms du jour for "wow!" are... I think that this time I've got the story. Byron is still giving me fits, and maybe, you know, maybe I'm just going to write Byron out. Maybe I'll stick with Shakespeare and Sophocles, and maybe Byron can have a cameo rather than a starring role. There. I've made my threats. We'll see if Byron is any better behaved from now on.

But, really, I don't need that punk. I have Emily Brontë. Just as good as Byron. You hear that, Byron?

Ok, one word of advice... don't expect sanity 24/7 from writers. Well, from me, anyway.

My birthday was tremendously good; I love my lovely friends and my lovely family, especially my lovely husband, who saw fit to give me an extremely generous donation to the Writing Effort, by essentially funding my trip to Milford and Haworth. I can gush about it here because I know he doesn't read this journal often (he's not a fan of gushing, being all Stoic and glowery and Mr. Darcy-like). I always knew he was supportive of my writing habit, but this was an unexpected vote of confidence.

So, all warm and glowy happiness, and... you know, it's just that much easier to keep sending stories out when you know you've got the home fires burning. Of course, since most writers write from home, this metaphor gets a little confusing.

Oh, yes, and one rejection--nolove on "The Lonesome Dark." A personal rejection from Asimov's, and no, I didn't count the days. Hm.

*sigh*

Home sick on what appears to be the most beautiful day of the year so far. I'm grinchy enough and smart enough to want it to rain. Grinchy so I won't feel like I'm missing anything; smart because my hostas are budding and look sooo dry.

My brain has taken a vacation and has been replaced entirely by mucus.

I'm mostly through a reread of The Blue Sword (and loving it still/again/whatever). I also lent The Hero and the Crown to my sister-in-law, who teaches 8th grade English and is apparently desperate for books that will appeal to boys and girls alike. I think that one has a good chance... I'll be curious to hear what she has to say. There are a couple of girly parts, but they aren't too off-putting, I hope, and are well-balanced by all the dragon-killing. In my opinion, anyway.

I have forty-two bajillion ideas for stories, and they are crowding my brain. Of course, since my brain is on vacation, I'm mostly only getting this through a shaky wireless connection, and the snot plug that's currently running my body has no notion of what to do with this information.

*gurgle*

I should have known how I felt last night was a harbinger. But I've been on the threshold of sick so many times lately and not actually succumbed... it was hard to imagine feeling like I feel right now.

Which is super-crappy, in case you couldn't supply your own adjective.

No writing today. Just reading.

A Catalogue of Deficiencies

Today at work, half the staff was out and I went to a meeting about 24 hours early. However, I did get birthday lunch from a cohort of former coworkers (well, today, it was a cohort of two, and one is actually my boss, but hey), and I remembered daylight savings time. But then, my right eye swelled half-shut after I took ibuprofin for an unexpected suite of menstrual cramps. I may or may not be allergic to ibuprofin--I just know I'm allergic to something that keeps swelling my eye half-shut at seemingly random points, and I've eliminated most of the possibilities. Now, my throat hurts, and the nap I took after leaving work a half hour early did me more harm than good, in the way of grogginess. And I've missed most of the first real day of spring.

Yet, I'm not in any way grouchy or unhappy...

In any case, there won't be writing tonight. I know it's helpful to carefully scrutinize the things that keep you from writing and try and figure out if you're truly justified in letting them interfere or not. But I've scrutinized today as much as I can stand to, and there is nothing going to keep me from my appointed rounds in the Land of Nod right now. Wait. Nod is where you go to sleep, right?

Invocation

Oh, magical weekends,
which make me forget
all about blogging about writing--
I smite thee.

Though it's not
as if I had progress
to report
anyway.

(Please come back tomorrow when, I promise, there will be no deplorable pseudo-poetry.)

Variety Pack

I'm reading Writing from the Inside Out: Transforming Your Psychological Blocks to Release the Writer Within. I'm sort of dipping in here and there and letting platitudes and questions wash over me ("Are you rushing the endings because you're afraid inspiration will leave before you finish?") and thinking about them. It's helping kill what ails me. Or, uh, cure what ails me. Whichever.

I"m also reading, concurrently, a book on the climatic change at the end of the age of dinosaurs and a couple books on ice ages in general, and I'm doing it for pleasure, not for the value of researching for "Thaw." "Thaw," indeed, proceeds on apace.

Thanks to the folks at the workshop, I'm rewriting "The Library Seed" with some very clear notions in mind. And some notions on how to be more clear, as well. I feel like this story is one where I'm hunched down in the Bushes of Conspiracy and plotting with the Abstract Muse, whispering loudly, "Ok, just this once, we're going to try to be clear about what's going on." It might be working. What really kicks me right where I live is the fact that the people critting me are good at this. I'm starting to worry about the quality of my critiques.

I'm also about ready to rewrite "Sticks and Bones." I have had a few dozen ideas for improvement, including adding another character... but I just got a good crit from Stella that made me think that subtracting is the true path to glory here. Tightening, anyway. I'll take another week or so to think on that, since I'd like to finish "Thaw" and I have my goals for BROC I'd like to hit this week, though I think my overall structural insecurities are ruining my plan to write non-sequentially.

Crazy dreams about acceptances last night. That almost assures a rejection, doesn't it?

Nephew

Off seeing my cute nephew. When I call his name, he smiles and claps his hands. Occasionally, he buries his head into the couch and giggles. If you all did that, I'd be here, but you don't, so I'm there.

Sick

Home sick today. During the muzzy dreams of the past two hours, I've been rolling around in a semi-fevered (might actually be fevered--I should check) and feeling guilty that I'm not using my sick day to better effect. I should be reading if I can't be writing.

This is entirely my subconscious talking. I'm otherwise perfectly well aware that when you feel like this, you have to stop moving for a while. And when I feel like this in particular, I have to just stare at the wall and drool a bit.

On the other hand, if I got some fluids into me and maybe some sort of headache medicine, and checked to see if there actually is a fever and then took steps if there is, I might not have to drool quite so much.

Days Go On

Not sure where the last few days went, but I think they happened something like this:

*zone out*
"Oh, look, another reading list from my teenage years, from February to June 1991."
*zone out*
"I don't think I should drive to work today."
*zone out*
"I'd read something. If I had an ounce of concentration."
*zone out*
"Thank goodness that it takes no effort to put songs on my iPod. No, rea--"
*zone out*

I think I might be over my Influenza of Apathy, but there are really no guarantees. I'd like to write something, since the 400 words of random scenes I laid down for By Right of Conquest (yes, this is merely an official working title) don't really quite equal the 5k a week goal I'd set for myself... *cough* Sorry, I think I just lost my train of thought by zoning out right then.

Measuring Progress

It's boring, but I keep better track of things when it goes on the web, believe it or not... and I don't have to worry about being at the right computer to access the information.

(Yes. I'm polycomputerous. There are three main computers in my life, and many more that I indulge in casual computing with.)

I'm tracking three four five kinds of progress right now:

draft four of The Bitter Road
draft one of BRC
short stories: writing
short stories: marketing
chores

See below the cut-tag for the progress I made last night. Well, actually. Don't, it's boring as hell.

Bitter Road

none; but tonight, I plan to pull together everyone's comments

BRC

none; I don't start writing this until Feb 1; right now I'm outlining and doing research. I should have done some of that last night, but sleep overcame me...

short stories: writing

I implemented the edits to "Sticks and Bones" that I came up with at ConFusion; I didn't quite get the sense of desperate, urgent digging that I'd been considering when I talked it over with Julie, but I think that there's more weight to the story now, anyway. I only added about 700 words, which surprised me. (I probably added more, but I took out some, as well.) We'll see what happens next--

I also polished up "Subletter," but no major structural changes. Punched up one or two of the jokes.

short stories: marketing

Found new markets (amazingly) for "Subletter" and "Star and Galaxy." This took actual work. Unlike finding a market for "Sticks and Bones" ("S&B" is on its first journey, and they always toddle off to F&SF first. It's my only real rule in this game.) Figured out the next few markets for a few other stories. Considered re-querying some things, but decided against it for now.

Chores

Painting
Did some easy sanding in the little bathroom downstairs. Couldn't quite convince myself to do the heavy duty stuff. (The day before I taped; today, I have to do heavy sanding, probably respackle a few areas and sand again on Wednesday, which leaves Thursday and Friday to paint.)

Other chores
Cleaned the cat litter boxes, Febrezed the basement. Tonight, I'll clear all food-related area surfaces (tables, counters, butcher block) of anything that might be construed as my problem.

Life and Such

Work is a madhouse. I'm at that point where I come home and say bizarre and incendiary things to my husband and we either end up in a friendly wrestling match or play-arguing. Work stress does that to me... And I never said I was easy to live with.

On the other hand, tomorrow is ConFusion, and I'm looking forward to thinking about not-work for a few days.

Really, really looking forward.

Keen To-Do Lists

I made a keen to-do list, which included "put away laundry" and "cat boxes" and such. And also "write a story."

Well, I got half the things done. "Write a story" wasn't one of them.

Thank goodness the weekend includes 2 days. Now, to lobby Congress for 3.

Oops

Sorry for no consistent updatery around here. I'm not actually planning to let this log lapse or anything, even by slow degrees, but I'm having a hard time coming up with content that would be of interest for the all three people who check this log on an at-least weekly basis... though I keep this log as much for myself and for the Biographers as for a modern external audience.

(The Biographers are trademarked by Peg, I believe.)

So. In the interest of keeping things lively (if lively means "updated" and not "interesting"), I will start excerpting bits and pieces of story-notes and highlighting draft changes. Why? 'Cause I can. And 'cause I need content.

Hya.

Sick

Home sick today. I don't think I'll do anything but read. I'd reread something comforting, but the usual suspects--Wolfhunt, The Blue Sword and Jackaroo are out on loan (and have been for six months or more, so, time to get those back), and I feel like I just reread Crown Duel and Beacon at Alexandria (though, did I? I'll have to check.) What I've got is Silver, which I was in the mood for, right up until I opened the book, and the writing threw me off.

Silver is a great comfort read. Emotionally resonant. Stirring conflict. A strong heroine and a strong hero, both. The middle part of the book is too painful to read very often, but I was thinking about reading the whole thing instead of the beginning quarter and the end quarter (which I do fairly often). Then, three pages in, I was all "blah!" and threw it down. (Well, actually, it fell over as I fell asleep, but the "blah!" was there, it just trailed off into a snore.)

Right. Comfort reads. Back when better.

Ouch. Foot.

I dropped my laptop on my foot--or rather, I put my foot in the way of the falling laptop, feeling that I probably wasn't going to do damage to the appendage equal to the damage of dropping my main piece of equipment. I'd call it medium ouch. The laptop is fine.

The Write Clubbers are on their way to WorldCon next week, FYI. I plan to crouch at the feet of the great (metaphorically) and peck at whatever talent they drop. Rather like sparrows at an outdoor cafe in France. But less intrusive.

I made some progress on my redraft of "Sticks and Stones," and have found some readers for it. Unfortunately, on the way home from work today, I figured out that there's just not enough conflict in it. No climax. Hm. Can I even come up with a climax in such a quiet story? ...Crud.

The good news is, Miss Julie has posted stories to the Minions blog, and we shall critique her. Yayyyyy!!!

Files

I learned that I don't keep enough of my files on my jumpdrive.

Really, that's not a great lesson, but it's what I've got for today.

It came about when I was far from home with my jumpdrive in hand, ready to submit a story on-line, and found that I don't keep old, semi-trunked stories on the jumpdrive.

Beyond that, my weekend starts right now. I'm so looking forward to the reading. I may not even write at all. And yet, I might! Ah... the deliciousness of choice.

I'm going to finish The Secret Country, and make serious headway into Ash. I intend to read also Seduced by Moonlight, and who knows where it will go from there!

Mwaha!

Progression

I entered paper edits for a mere half-chapter last night on The Bitter Road.

Drat!

Must work faster.

Must also remember to print stories out and send them.

Oh, the slackage.

I'd say life was interfering--well, it is--but it's not good life, and it's not during my writing time. Work is imploding from outside forces. Everyone is freaking out about the new library management system. The irony here is that my boss is not freaking out--and neither am I--so you'd think I'd be implosion-impact free.

Not the case.

Earth

Spent the day gardening, and have the sunburn on my arms and the dirt under my fingernails to show for it.

I feel that there's some grand lesson learned that I should share, but there's not. I've been gardening for years; when I was about nine or so, I asked my grandmother for a patch of earth, just like the kids in The Secret Garden, and made a go of it. I learned slowly and without overbearing supervision, but not through trial and error either. By high school, I had convinced my mom--who had never liked to garden, for she considered it subsistence-level work (the joy of being raised on a farm)--to let me have an herb garden out back, and I worked in it every morning before school.

I've not been so diligent in the years I've lived with Dann, but I've felt a return to the old ways recently. Perhaps it's something that goes hand in hand with writing. I was excessively productive in high school, both writing and gardening. Maybe it's all part and parcel of having returned to who I think I truly am.

Ok. Maybe there was a lesson in it after all.

Opportunities

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.

Eek

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.

And today?

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.

Low Wind. Sheet Lightning.

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.

And then there was Wednesday

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.

Weekends

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.

Peaceful Night. Low Cloud Cover.

Well, my mother-in-law gave us her old patio furniture, which is now our new patio furniture, and I have discovered the joys of wireless and a good battery and am writing this al fresco from our backyard.

I used to think the height of civilization was a hot bath and a long book. I may have to revise this assessment. The height of civilization may very well be laptop and lounge chair--internet under the stars, if the stars weren't veiled.

The hammock is in a sad heap, taken down due to high winds a few days ago, but it will be back soon. But that's landscape, and there's not much landscape right now. It's dark. The amber gleam of our bug-ducking patio light is mostly ambient, reminding me of my days in the darkroom, when you'd turn on the safe light and wonder why you still felt blind.

I've not needed to light the citronella candle just yet; I sense a mosquito hawk noise-maker in my future as well... And bat-houses. Anything to reduce the mosquito threat.

I lied about landscape. I can see the silhouette of the maple tree against the sky, the tree that once thwarted my efforts to photograph starlight. All I ever captured was the moon, and too much of that. Should have looked up how to do that before taking myself off to the backyard and applying theories I read about when I was eight. "If I just hold the shutter open long enough..."

The most important thing, of course, is that I can hear frogs. Spring peepers everywhere in the distance. I thought the creek was too far away, and I know they aren't in our dinky excuse for an ornamental pond, so where are these frogs spawning? My growing-up-in house had a pond in visual distance, so I knew where the frogs spawned, where the sounds originated. Not so, here.

Of course, when I was growing up, I would have tramped through every one of these back yards, looking in every nook and cranny. I'd know about every culvert and swampy spot. I'd know where the frogs are.

I miss being a kid for that reason, and that reason alone.

:putter:

Update on the weekend? It's a noble idea, but my weekends are frequently so different than my weekday life that it just doesn't occur to me.

My writing update will come later, but this weekend was about cleaning and low-level socializing, the kind that comes without a price (no "stayed up too late" type hangovers, no performance anxiety).

So, here I am, just sort of waiting until it's time to go to Britain. Yep. Just waiting.

Dreaming.

Our planned route.

Did spend a fair amount of time this weekend trying to get my husband to buy new pants. You've never seen such a raggedy assortment of pants in your life. There may be one pair without dangling threads off the cuffs or holes elsewhere, but they would be inappropriate to vacation anyway.

Now, how to convince him that I'm not trying to change him, just his pants?

At least you can't hear my accent.

How to talk like a Michigander.

Naturally, I find something that celebrates my accent just when I decided that I need to rub it out.

(The terminology section is the true gem: make sure to read the definitions of "the big lake" and "the cottage.")

I have these memories of being asked to say "oil" in the 4th grade. "Oyl!" the kids all laughed, mimicking me. Of course, I felt like I had the high road: oil clearly begins with an o, not the a of "awhl" that my Southern classmates used.

But in the 6th grade, I stood in the front of the class to point out the parts of a plant. "Petal, stem, root," I said.

A firestorm of laughter. "The what?"

"The root," I said. Pronounced like "rut."

Turns out, they say the oo's in root like the oo's in boo in the South.

I don't mind the vowel hijinx. At least, not the o's. I can live with saying rut instead of root and ruff instead of roof.

But the next time I hear my voice coming out of my nose instead of my mouth, I may just bash my head against the wall. It's gaht to stahp.

Plans, From Start to Middle

My husband is off to Lansing today to take his interpreter certification test, or part of it, anyway. So, good thoughts for him.

(Random aside: "Off to Lansing" just doesn't have the ring "Off to Raleigh" does, but I think that's because of television. On "The Andy Griffith Show," "off to Raleigh" meant "beyond Mt. Pilot" (or was it Pilot Mountain in the show? I can never remember which is the real one anymore), off to a place where there were fun things to do. "Off to Lansing" usually means... going someplace less fun than where I am now.)

As for us, and not just him, we're planning our honeymoon (about ten months late). Scotland beckons. The plane tickets are in our pockets (metaphorically; they're e-tix), Dann is fighting out the logistics of renting a car, and I've outlined an itinerary.

The itinerary, in fact, looks like this:

April 05 (Mon): arrive 6:30 AM - drive-by tourism: Stonehenge, Longleat perhaps. Finish in Glastonbury.
April 06 (Tue): Bath and environs; drive north
April 07 (Wed): leisurely northern drive. Chatsworth, Arthuret, Carlisle, Gretna Green, end in, uhm... somewhere in Dumfries. Don't have my notes.
April 08 (Thu): Whitthorn and such; up to Glasgow
April 09 (Fri): Glasgow--up to Oban
April 10 (Sat): Isle of Mull
April 11 (Sun): Ft. Wm., Loch Ness
April 12 (Mon): Inverness (Culloden, etc.)
April 13 (Tue): Perth, St. Andrews
April 14 (Wed): Edinburgh
April 15 (Thu): Borders, Abbey
April 16 (Fri): padding day--drive to London
April 17 (Sat): fly to NY; attend nephew's christening (or at least the after-party)

I'm convinced that it's too packed, and I'll need to cut. Just not sure where. I'd cut the big cities if I could; I don't like cities in general. London? Bleah. Paris? Double-bleah. I realize I'm a freak, but give me a medium-sized town like York or Avignon any day.

However, I do feel Edinburgh should be Seen, and Glasgow's kind of right in the way, so...

Though there's interesting stuff in the Whitthorn jaunt, I think it would probably include the things least interesting to Dann. And another day on Mull, if that got us to Iona, might be worth it instead. Loch Ness is a must, on principle. You don't want to tell anyone you went to Scotland and skipped Loch Ness. On the other hand, this trip doesn't get us to Skye, and there's no time, just, *none* to get up to outer reaches.

I should probably scrap the Bath/Glastonbury leg, but I dreamed, a long time ago, that Dann and I went to Bath on our honeymoon. And the other night, I had this intense dream about Glastonbury; kept trying to get to the Tor and couldn't. Realized it was frustration over the thought of being so close and not going there. (sigh)

And yes, I pay attention to my dreams. For a variety of reasons, not the least of which, good story ideas come from them.

Hero With the Thousand Faces

I had a "S'more S'moothie" at Write Club tonight, purchased with the $5 gift certificate that I won back at Christmas. That seems about a hundred and fifty years ago, by the way (Christmas, not the S'more S'moothie).

Something about the whole endeavor made my stomach ache; I'm kind of rumbly as we speak, in fact. I did not manage to finish said S'moothie (which was really just a mocha-freeze with marshmallows and whipped cream and fudge sauce).

When I left Write Club, I obediently got in the turn lane for the highway, knowing that this is usually the fastest way home. Forgetting, of course, that any sane person should entirely avoid the Ann Arbor stretch of 23 for the rest of the summer.

Construction barrels; a yield sign; those incredibly bright lights for night road construction; smoke/steam from laying asphalt. There was ethereal madrigal-esque music playing on the radio; I'd paused on a station I don't usually listen to, because it sounded like the music on that one car commercial, but better. Plus, madrigals make me think of Peg and Liam, and I usually pause just for old times' sake. Incedentally, I had been searching through the radio stations because the muscle car that had pulled up next to me had been blasting the Dixie Chicks, and I thought I should be able to find that on the radio, as preferable to noxious late-night chat.

So, the smoke, steam and white lights against the inky night combined with the labyrinthine feel of the construction barrels and the soaring sopranos on the radio, felt otherworldly.

And the car in front of me pulled out in front of a big ol' semi that was going way faster than it should have.

And the semi bashed right into the construction barrel in front of me, sending it flipping up and out. I was so prepared for it, that I was actually amazed when it didn't hit my car.

My stomach flipped its flop; I saw a break in traffic, and drove around the barrel and tried not to die; none of the traffic was slowing down even a smidge, it seemed, even though we had far less than a full lane to work with.

And because there was less than a full lane, I bounced down and then back up onto the asphalt, and then hit my stride on a bunch of that "wake up" pavement. The jarring made my front right headlight come on. Apparently, the bulb wasn't burned out; it was just a loose wire.

And thus I drove home.

And to think, I'd just been talking about the Celtic Fourth Dimension with Julie and Lisa. Little did any of us know I'd be taking it home.

It was the perfect hero's journey. The call to adventure, the crossing the river (entering the highway), the challenges, the reward (my headlight coming on)... Joseph Campbell would be proud. I am the Hero with the Thousand Faces.

Just for today.

"some kid"

The doorbell rang half an hour ago. A little blond boy was at the door.

"Hey. There's some kid who lives here. Can she come out and play?"

Startled, I said, "Uhm, Kayla's not here today."

"Ok, thanks!" And then, as he jogged away, "Kayla. Kayla. Kayla." Muttered to himself.