5:00. Had a nice brunch (though I didn't quite manage to finish washing dishes before people arrived). Got into a big discussion at the tail end of it about e-books and print books and all that; I'd recap for you here, but it was long and complicated and tiring! It did put me in a good mindframe for my main task today -- finishing revamping my ICFA presentation into an editorial for Strange Horizons. This is my current draft -- I'd really *love* any feedback I can get on it in the next 3-5 hours or so (yes, I'm working on this one up to the wire). Do I say anything egregiously stupid? Do I miss anything obvious? Do I miss something not so obvious? Am I a raving optimist? (If you read this after 4/1/01, the draft may or may not still be here -- check SH for the final in any case). Are there too many commas? (Would especially love comments from Tim Pratt and Timprov and others in the web publishing community who may be reading this journal).
I'm kind of anxious about the piece. It presented well at ICFA, but an oral presentation is very different from a text piece that people can quote from as they point out what a silly point I made (or missed). And as editor-in-chief of Strange Horizons, I feel an uncomfortable weight to my words when I talk about online publishing these days. I'm not positive I know enough (or say it clearly enough) to be taken as seriously as people seem to take me. (It's a perpetual academic problem too -- feeling like a fraud (probably because the more you know, the more you're aware of how very much you don't know). I'm told that the feeling lasts for decades.) Jed and I got into a minor fight about it yesterday; I'm not sure why he got stressed, but I know that I was being unreasonable about it because I was anxious. We sorted ourselves out relatively quickly, but it was annoying to be so bothered by a piece of text.
And now I'm feeling fretful and having trouble concentrating on anything else, but Jed and David aren't available to look at this draft yet. I've roped Kevin into looking at it -- he may catch logical problems, but won't be able to do line edit-type stuff. Which is okay. I just want it to be done, and done now! :-) I think I've had too much caffeine and sugar (Steven brought an Easter cake to brunch, which I had a big slice of -- I think it was mostly frosting).
Okay okay. I'm going to go read Nabokov for a while. Hopefully I'll be able to concentrate on it. And if not...I dunno. Maybe I'll go pull weeds in the garden. The bulbs from last year are unexpectedly sending up lots of green shoots -- that was a surprising delight. I should probably nurture them a bit.
Kevin will be here Sunday! :-)
Sorry, that keeps popping into my head at odd moments. My house is almost clean, and my mind feels clearer as a result. What an odd correspondence. But it means that I can now feel free to look forward to his visit, without feeling like I'm drowning in a messy sea of dirt and overdue paperwork. That's nice.
The editorial for this month really took a lot more work than I expected -- and it's still pretty darn short. I could probably take each paragraph and expand it into a page or two, making a very detailed 25-page paper out of the whole thing. But I don't know that there's much interest in it, and even if there is, it feels a bit futile to pour that much energy into trying to assess the situation, given how fast everything changes on-line. Not right now -- not until someone offers to pay me to do it, I think. :-) But go read it -- tell me what you think.
Back to Ada now; may stop in later.
Today is one of those run-until-you-drop days -- but, frustratingly, some of what I have to do is just stupid. I'm talking about that idiotic fifth-grade driving workbook. For complicated reasons, I really ought to take my driver's test before the end of April, and my written test this week, which means I need the certificate of completion from my driver's ed class ASAP, which means I need to spend much of tomorrow dealing with that, which means I have today and tomorrow morning to finish this stupid required workbook. As if I didn't have better things to do with my time! I may even cut a class today so I can have a better chance of finishing it and still getting some sleep tonight. I hate having to make that kind of choice.
On the other hand, it'll be nice to have a license. Then I can stop having arguments with dumb people who don't think my government-issued green card is a valid piece of ID. It has my fingerprint on it, for chrissakes, and they stare at me with blank faces and say 'must have driver's license'! Ah, bureaucracy.
Gonna go grade student web pages; I'm scared to look at them, but it must be done. Then a long day on campus, gobs of errands, try not to fall down, come home and work on the workbook. I know I just had four days at home, but I worked all of them! If I had just one more day, I could get caught up, I know I could. (Heh. Jed tells me that he and I just need to accept that there will never be enough time to do everything we want to do. Hah, I say! Hah! Hah! Hah! *maniacal chuckle* Just you wait, my pretty...)
Okay, time for tea and a shower. Maybe I'll be less insane after that.
(Is it megalomania if the people really would be happier under your absolute domination and control? Or is it just good sense? :-)
8:30. Okay, there's no way I'll get all these graded in time. So I'm going to have to give them back next week, so I'm going to switch over to doing the dumb workbook. Poor munchkins -- but they'll live. Popped back in here mostly to show you a picture, taken by Elan Ruskin at ICFA:
This is Sean Stewart, looking at a picture of him I took on the digital camera. My picture was okay, but Elan's is better. :-) Elan was one of the finalists for the Asimov Award (excellence in undergraduate writing, I believe). He spent most of the convention hiding behind his camera; maybe next time he'll actually talk to me. I'm not so scary. Sean is a fine writer, and a really tremendously nice guy. He's incredibly considerate, which plays out in all sorts of small ways. Maybe the mix of Texan and Canadian upbringing? :-)
At least, I think they're tulips. I honestly don't much remember what I planted last year - several bulbs, of which I think only two types of tulips came up. I vaguely remember some tall dark red ones, and some with lovely variegated leaves -- but maybe those are the same ones? I guess I'll find out soon, if the cold doesn't damage them. I did go out and clear all the muck and such out of the planters last week, positioning them to catch as much sunlight as possible -- my front walk isn't all that sunny. But they did okay last year, so hopefully they will this year too. Honestly, I hadn't expected to have them come back up, and I hadn't had time/energy to plant this year, so I'm actually really pleased to see anything at all.
If I have time on Saturday, I think I'll pick up some bedding plants for the tiny strip of soil I have next to the walk. Last year I put in pansies and sprinkled alyssum seed; the alyssum rather took over. It was fine, but I think I'm going to go for more lobelia this time around -- I have a strange passion for lobelia. I bought a bunch of seeds a month or so ago, but honestly, I'm not sure what to do with them. Just sprinkle them all over the soil and hope? Nurture them carefully in pots? Give it up because I've waited too long? I've never grown anything from seed other than the alyssum (and Arthur told what to do with those), so I'm feeling a bit lost.
Speaking of lobelia (which Arthur introduced me to, lo, these many years ago), Arthur and Pam have just got engaged! That's really delightful; he looked so happy when I saw him a few weeks ago. She appears to be good for him, and hopefully, he's good for her too. I miss hanging out with them. Part of me wants to just run off to the Bay Area again as soon as the semester ends, because there are so many people there I want to spend time with. But I think I'll go to Chicago -- I want to see how Roshani's Zoe is doing (she'll be six months old!) and spend some time with Roshani before she goes back to med school. Poor chica; she's having a rough time at the prospect of leaving the baby to go back to school. I suppose no one really gets to have it all, eh? There are always choices to be made -- sometimes it feels like you're lucky if you have the best of good choices to make, rather than the best of bad ones. Maybe you are lucky. I'm not sure.
The trees here have a mist of green on them -- all these tiny little buds just waiting for one more week of warm weather so they can burst out into joyous leaf. The sky today looks odd -- cloudy white, with these almost bare branches sticking up, with that hazy green. Strange.
See, I woke up around 7:30, and I felt well-rested, and the sun was brightly shining through my window, and I had been having some relatively pleasant dream. If I'd gotten up then, all would've been well. But since I'm not teaching today and don't have to be on campus until 12:30, I decided I could stay in bed a little longer, so I dozed until 8:00. By which point the sun had disappeared between clouds, my body had started feeling a bit sluggish, and I'd had some semi-unpleasant half-dreams. This always seems to happen when I try to snatch a little more sleep; you'd think I would have learned by now.
But it's not so bad as all that. I finished my silly driver's course yesterday (and may I note in indignation that I spent hours and hours working through that damned notebook, and the girl just picked it up, flipped through it to make sure there was writing on every page, and then checked it off the list -- argh!). Their exam was ludicrously easy -- I haven't thought about driving stuff since last spring, and I still managed to get 90% in the ten minutes I spent on the test. (You need 80% to pass -- that means you can get 20 out of a 100 answers wrong!!) I don't know what these people think they're doing, but they sure aren't teaching anyone anything. I also spent at least two hours getting down to Sandy and back for this 10 minute nuisance...but I'm letting it go. I'm letting it all go. I'm done with the course, and tomorrow Paul will drive me to the DMV and I can take the written test and schedule a driving test and if it looks like I won't get in there before the end of April, I can pay $25 and schedule a driving test with my driving school and trek all the way down to Sandy again and be done with the damn thing one way or the other by the end of April. I suppose I might fail the driving test. There's no possible way I can fail the written test. I can't believe they let people out on the streets with this kind of training. Don't they know that they're giving incompetent 16-year-old's the keys to free-wheeling death machines?
Anyway, it's done, and the stupid notebook is out of my house, which is a relief. The plan for this morning is to finish up a few more overdue tasks; if I'm good about them, then I might even not be overdue on anything by lunchtime. That can't be right. I'm sure I'm forgetting something. It's a nice thought, though... I'll finish my dishes, and make a nice big batch of chicken and potato curry, and then I'll go off to class, and then run some errands (because Kathryn's out of town, speaking at Yale), and then meet with Melanie, and then I have two hours to kill before a 5:30 meeting, so if I'm good I'll find a quiet spot and read Nabokov. Although finding Susan and playing some pool is also an option.
I've just had too many unfinished things hanging over me for too long, I think. That's the real trouble with taking lots of projects on; it's not that I won't have time to do them, but that with each one I add, a part of my brain gets a little more anxious. On Myers-Briggs, I'm ENTJ or ENFJ, pretty evenly split between T and F, but the relevant bit is that I am way over on the J side of things. If you're not familiar with this personality test, the key to know here is that people who are strongly J (judgement) really hate leaving things up in the air. If there's a decision to be made, then we like to just make it as soon as possible. We don't like waiting for more information. We don't like thinking it over longer. We really hate 'wait and see'. (Kevin is far over on the P side of things, which we eventually figured out was one of the reasons we had trouble with some sorts of decisions -- real, frustrating trouble. It helps a little knowing that it's just our personality-types clashing, and not that the other person is being deliberately difficult. A bit. :-) So I've had a whole ton of things in the last couple of months that have been wait-and-see or deal-with-it-later for various reasons, and that just drives me batty. I think I'm starting to come out of it now, though. Fingers crossed.
One side of my sunroom faces east, where huge grey banks of clouds are hanging over the mountains. But the windows to the west show tall trees reaching up into a bright blue sky dotted with fluffy white clouds. No sun yet, but possibly soon. I'm gonna face west for a while...
9:45. Added the sf market database to my own pages, so that I can continue updating it. I find it a useful tool for myself. I was delighted to see that since I wrote the piece, Chiaroscuro has moved from semi-pro to pro; that's terrific! Hoping they can keep it up!
Slowly, I'm feeling a little more like my life is under my control again. I suppose that's all an illusion, in some sense -- I could be hit by a bus tomorrow, or fall desperately in love with a stranger (very implausible), or win a huge amount of money (even more implausible, since I don't enter lotteries and such). But aside from the big things that can't be predicted, the little things are feeling more on track, and there aren't nearly as many of them waiting as there were.
I spent a while putting up signs for my apartment yesterday. I'm planning on being gone from May 1 - Aug 15, travelling around Chicago and up and down the west coast, taking the train from L.A. to Seattle. (I'll have lots of time for visiting people in those areas, so if you want to get together for lunch or coffee, drop me a line). So I'd rather not pay rent! I'm hoping to sublet my apartment furnished, so that all I have to do is pack up and store the more fragile and valuable items (plus enough so that the sublettor has room for hir stuff). I made up signs and wandered around posting them; while reading other people's signs, I was struck once again by the deep religious divide in this city. Almost every sign had either 'conservative' or 'liberal' indicated on it. Some said 'LDS standards', which I presume means that you could live there as a non-LDS if you wanted, but you'd have to live as if you were LDS. I wonder if you'd be allowed to have coffee or tea in the house. And then there were the ads that said 'married-only'. One of the girls who was posting a sign for me asked if my place was for a married couple or a single person -- as if those were the only two options. Weird, and creepy. Sometimes this place just gives me the shivers.
I was talking with Susan at a party; she's been doing some research on the LDS General Conference, a big meeting of the local church. Public transit mostly doesn't run on Sunday around here -- except on the weekends of the Conference. She's been talking to various people, reading documents, and she was pretty damn frustrated at the way she says young LDS girls are made to feel worthless until they're married, with children. That sort of cultural pressure is very hard to resist. It was hard for me to resist, and I wasn't nearly as steeped in it as these girls are. I don't talk a lot about LDS issues here, or about what it's like living in Mormon Country. I suspect I will a lot more once I leave Salt Lake; right now, it doesn't feel appropriate. If a student finds these pages, I'd hate for them to feel that I was dissing their beliefs, or culture. So mostly I refrain, for now. But there's a lot I could say, and probably will, in a few years. You'll hear about it, eventually.
Anyway -- the plan for today is to do some grading, do my taxes, and go to the DMV with Paul to take the written test (open book). Reasonably painless, I think. I've been working hard enough for long enough that I figure it's okay to schedule a light day for a change. If I finish early, I'll read more Nabokov; I ought to finish re-reading Ada by tomorrow lunchtime. There's a meeting on campus at noon tomorrow that I may attend (optional), and some history books to check out and read. Plus Nabokov criticism. It's a little odd to me how little time I spend in the library; somehow I thought grad students just lived in the library. But most of my work, I can do at home. I'm not complaining.
Have a good Friday, munchkins.
Today I need to work, though. I'm still reading some fluff (currently Pratchett's The Fifth Elephant), but hopefully that will be interspersed with taxes and grading and making up a quiz for Tuesday's class. That's the plan, at any rate. It's a good plan, I think. If it stops raining, I'll duck out and do a little planting at some point (though it's a cold day for it). I went for the jewel tones -- ruby snapdragons, cobalt pansies, indigo petunias. I'll sprinkle some cobalt lobelia seed as well, and see what happens.
I spent a while yesterday doing research on mugs for Strange Horizons. They're going to look pretty spiffy, I think. But the thing is, I know some of you were interested in getting mugs of my own poetry, but it'd be $200 minimum to do a run of 72 mugs (the smallest order possible), and I just don't think that 72 of you will be interested in buying mugs. I'd need to charge you $5 just to cover the cost + shipping; if I wanted to make any profit, I'd need to charge more. So I dunno...maybe I should just do it through Cafe Press -- even though they'll charge you like $12/mug and not give me any profit, at least I don't need to outlay $200 up front. What do you think?
(And for those of you still waiting on the CD, that's going to have to wait a while longer, because while I have both of them recorded beautifully now, I can't afford to duplicate and package them at the moment. Probably at the end of the summer, when I get the second half of my BW payment. So they might make nice Christmas gifts. :-)
Anyway, just tying up loose ends. I should go back to work, or my book, or something. I'll talk to y'all later...
3:00 - This is just a quick note to point you at an article that my friend David T. showed me. This is why I sometimes feel under siege, living here.
If this slows down Kevin's plane, I'll hurt someone.
9:00 a.m. Still snowing, but the forecast claims it'll stop around noon. The rest of the week is just rain and clouds, so it should theoretically just be the one day of snow; my flowers may survive. I suppose I should have waited a few more days to plant, but it's April, dangit. This is ridiculous.
Not so much fun stuff to do today. I did finish my taxes yesterday (though I'm waiting on the first half of my BW money before I can afford to actually *pay* the taxes), but I didn't do any of the class stuff. Tomorrow is going to be busy with various errands and such, so I really ought to try to get the rest done today. Finishing re-reading Ada shouldn't be too painful, but I'm not so looking forward to writing the paper (I think I'm going to hold off on the library research until I'm doing the final paper for the course, the big one). It's only six pages or so; shouldn't really be a big deal. I'm just not in the mood for it. I also have a pile of student websites that I really must finish grading, and a quiz to design -- that last shouldn't take more than an hour or so. Not too bad, truly. I'd just rather lie in bed reading more Terry Pratchett. :-)
Maybe I'll take a little while and make another collage today. I finished the one based on the bones want to fly, and one for And the sea is shaking..., and I've almost finished one for Beneath the Lemon Tree. I'm not positive which one I want to do next -- I have some ideas for Sitting Under a Tree, in the Rain, and also for Her Body Awakens, so it'll probably be one of those. I'm mostly decided that I'll be taking at least some of these to WisCon to try to sell them there; we'll see what people think of them. I rather like them, to be honest -- I could see buying them if they were someone else's. :-) I'm not sure how to price them -- the supplies cost between $5 and $15 each, but then you factor in my time, plus the worth of the poetry, and the trouble of hauling them around, and WisCon's percentage...art is complicated! It's a lot easier to just sell text, in a lot of ways. I think they're going to range between $30 and $50; that won't make me a profit, but it'll pay for my time and supplies; since it's not my main livelihood, I can afford to not make a profit on them. Besides, there's always the chance that people will love them and bid against each other, and that they'll end up going for more. :-)
It's interesting thinking about how unique they are -- even if I used the same poem and a similar style of collage, it wouldn't be the same piece at all. And I don't think I'm likely to repeat poems, actually -- part of the fun is designing a collage that suits a particular poem, and I don't know that I'm interested in doing it more than once for each poem. And the gods know I have plenty of poems to keep me occupied for a long time without repeating. :-) Hmmm...I'm guessing most of you won't be at WisCon. If any of you are really interested in buying one of these, let me know, and I'll take some more photos of the completed works and put them up so you can get a good look. Not sure I'll bother otherwise. Though it might be interesting trying to do a page that shows them off well; a record for myself, in case I sell them. I'm finding myself rather absurdly fond of each one; part of me doesn't want to let them go at all. But it feels odd decorating my walls with my own work. :-)
4:30. The snow stopped around noon, as predicted (I was kind of impressed by their accuracy, actually). I just took a long, hot shower, washed my hair, and am now sitting at my computer in a beautiful patch of sunlight. I feel so much better. I'm not usually so dependent on sunshine; I think I may have been spoiled by the Bay Area. Although it's been almost two years now; you'd think I'd have gotten used to having winter again...and the winters here are pretty sunny. I dunno. Maybe I'm just weird.
I've been reading Ada on and off -- it's not so much that the book is long, but that it's incredibly dense, much more so than Lolita. Even though I'm re-reading, I have to pay a lot of attention to follow what's going on. Slow going. But I have tons of material for my short paper; in fact, I could probably stop at any point and write it. I think I'm not going to try until tomorrow morning, though. I'll just see how far I get in the book today.
I got a request for photos of the collages, so I'll put those up soon. It'll be first-come, first-served on buying them, I think -- can't think of a fairer way to do it. I started doing the one for "Her Body Awakened" this afternoon -- two sheets of glass, with stained glass water behind, and the poem and crimson stained glass in front. I think. I'm not sure how the crimson will look over the water...will just have to try it and see. I get these ideas, and I *think* they're going to look good, and then I find out that they're just goofy. :-) Anyway -- if you have any requests for poems you particularly like, that you'd like to see as collages, drop me a line and let me know. I won't do them unless I feel like it *and* I come up with what seems like a good design for it, but suggestions are always welcome.
8:15 p.m. I'm going mad waiting for Kevin to arrive, mad I tell you. His flight gets in at 9:20, so it'll be close to 10 before he gets here. Eep eep eep. I'm trying to distract myself, but it's awfully hard concentrating on anything. Making collages seems to work best -- but there are long periods when you just have to wait for glue or paint to dry. So I take photos and download them for you instead. Take a look.
I'm not quite so good, though doing okay. Slept very badly last night, including a couple almost-panic attacks. I'm guessing that's just having someone else in the bed -- you get used to sleeping alone, y'know? And I have a terrible bed for sharing with someone -- it's queen-size, but it's an incredibly creaky futon. I'm okay on it by myself; somehow I find the non-creaky bits. But with someone else there, every time either one of you shifts, it creaks loudly, which is almost guaranteed to wake up the other person, so they shift, and it creaks some more, and neither one of you ends up getting much sleep. argh. If I remember rightly, we adjusted to it before, so we probably will again, but right now, I'm feeling a little groggy.
It's also odd being with Kev again. This happens pretty often too, with the long-distance thing. Sometimes, especially if we've been talking a lot on the phone, he shows up here (or I show up there), and everything is completely normal. And sometimes, we feel a little bit like strangers. When he arrived yesterday, we sat on the couch and watched the Simpsons for a while, and it felt...odd. We got most of the way through that last night, though, and by tonight, it should be fine.
Have I mentioned that I really do hate long-distance relationships? Even when they're entirely my own choice?
Okie, back to work.
11:00. Kevin's just left to go into the math department; hopefully he'll run into some colleagues there and get to have a nice, long math natter. (I think 'natter' is a word. Is it a word? Am I making it up?) We had a pleasant morning -- he woke up soon after I did (around 7), and sat on the couch and did math for a while. I worked on the computer for a bit, making up a quiz for my students, and then came and read on the couch, with my cold feet tucked under him. Lovely.
I have a few students coming by in the next hour or two, and three things to do today: a) grade the web pages (a couple of hours' work), b) read Henry Miller's The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (due tomorrow), and c) keep reading Ada, which I really do plan to finish this week, dangit. So it's definitely a work afternoon and a work evening. I'm not sure if I'll stick around here; it's so tempting to check e-mail every five minutes. I think I'm going to go have some lunch, and then try to grade web pages. When I can't stand them anymore, I'll take the Miller downtown to Borders for the afternoon, I think. I need to pick up a wire picture hanger from the craft supply store sometime soon, and mail Lisette's birthday present from the post office (I got her the latest, very wicked, Laurell K. Hamilton book -- with any luck, it'll make her blush :-) so that should all tie together nicely. I like it when my errands are efficient.
But I also feel like he missed my main point, and I don't know whether I expressed myself badly or whether we just have really different views on this, so I'm going to talk a little about what I mean by 'professionalism'.
I am all for idealism, y'know. I couldn't have done Clean Sheets, or published my own work, if I wasn't willing to do what I think is right, no matter what the establishment, or the authorities, or my parents think. Sometimes doing that is awfully lonely. Sometimes you say stuff that people only get upset about, and you wonder if it was worthwhile. Every time I've posted a version of "Mint in Your Throat", I've had to deal with lots of frustration and anger and denial from readers who didn't think I should talk about rape and arousal in the same breath. When I wrote that robot teddy bear sex story ("Amanda Means Love"), looking at child sexuality, I got blasted by some people who I thought were friends. I still haven't found a market for that piece, and maybe never will. So be it. If I eventually give up on all markets, I'll post it here, because I think it's important to say these things. It's incredibly difficult to say them sometimes, but that's just the way it is with the important things, sometimes.
What surprises me more, and always has, is how much people do listen. How most of the time, they don't actually recoil in shock and fear. And I may be wrong about this, but I think a lot of the reason I've had as much success as I've had, has to do with style and presentation. Meaning that if I write and publish something and talk about it as a perfectly normal sort of thing to have published -- people respond that way. If I'm at a dinner party and my work comes up and I stay very calm and matter-of-fact -- within fifteen minutes, I often hear other people saying very honest and revealing things about their own attitudes about sex. That's amazing, and it really changes the way people think, and I bet you that if I'd acted jittery or ashamed or gone quiet, that later conversation wouldn't have happened; people would have had their prejudices confirmed and gone away thinking less of me. Some of them, anyway. Should they have risen above their own programming? Maybe -- but if I can help them, so much the better.
So it's felt very important to me with the erotica to be as professional as possible about it; to do is well, and with elegance and grace if possible -- to stand up straight and speak the truth, as much of it as I can figure out. Of my truth, anyway. To strike the right tone, so that I make it as easy as possible for people to hear what I have to say. To engender respect -- and if I have to start with respect for my spelling and the magazine's timeliness and its pay rates, and only then have readers move to actually respecting the work, that's okay with me. It's part of why I cross-publicize CS in the sf/f world; because I know that if I act professionally there, sf/f writers will think of the magazine professionally. They're deeply invested in being paid on time for their writing, after all. (Susannah's taking CS in different directions, which is fine -- I'm just talking about the way I operate, which doesn't have to be the way anyone else operates).
For me, professionalism never means not saying what you believe. Let me repeat that, just in case -- Say What You Believe. But professionalism is all about saying it in such a way that people hear you. It's usually about presenting your best side, your calm, reasoned arguments. It's about making sure the trains run on time. It's about putting in hell of a lot of work, and then taking a shower and putting on a clean dress, so that they don't see the sweat. It's about not getting so carried away with emotion that you say things you don't really mean. It's about trying to be someone worthy of being admired, and emulated, because I think that's the best way to really get your message across. It's about wearing a suit if you have to (and gods, I hate suits, and am profoundly grateful that sf/f doesn't expect them) in order for people to see and hear you in the right frame of mind. It's about thinking over what you say ten times before you say it, sometimes. It's about being a little careful, thinking about all the ramifications of your actions. It's about trying to understand why and how people judge you.
This is not the approach for everyone. It precludes possibilities, like fine, inspiring rants. You don't see a lot of those in here, and the ones you do are still generally pretty carefully written, even if the tone is that of an impetuous madman. I'm always aware that the world is watching, and it keeps me from saying some things. I don't always rant about a book I hated for example, or an author or editor who pissed me off. In part because I'm not sure that kind of thing is ever very constructive, in part because I'm thinking about consequences. So I end up making trade-offs between complete honesty and what I think will lead to greatest effectiveness. I might wear a suit, even though I hate them -- because in the end, the suit doesn't really matter. In some ways, it's a very political choice; compromise sneaks up on you over time.
I have a few friends who are wonderful, passionate, honest people -- and they say things, publically, that get them into trouble. That is their right and prerogative and it's probably good for us all to have people like that around. If they were just lone voices crying in the wilderness, working as happy accountants by day and posting journal entries by night, I'd say go for it (but remember that what you say can hurt people sometimes). But all of these friends of mine also have writing-related careers -- as writers, editors, publishers. And I'm worried about what will happen to those careers when they come up against the reputation that they, as individuals, have built. Because people do judge you, and if you're trying to reach those people, if their opinion matters to you in any way at all (even if you're just trying to change their minds, or especially so), then you may have a hard time reaching them if you're not speaking their language. Some lone wolves have managed to be heard very widely -- but I think that's a really tough road to walk; it's hard to balance on that kind of edge and not fall off into oblivion.
I really want Speculon to succeed. I really want some of my writer friends, who I think write some truly fine stuff, to find publishers, so more can read and enjoy and learn from their work. And while I acknowledge the value of speaking up and speaking loud and saying exactly what you're thinking -- I think that sometimes the result is that you shout so loud that nobody hears you anymore. Unless you've built a really solid reputation (which is why Ellison still has people listening to his truly idiotic rants -- because he wrote some amazingly fine stories, that established part of his reputation for all time in sf), it's just too easy to dismiss you.
I'm all about the consequences, I guess. I care deeply about what happens as a result of my words and actions -- and if I have to compromise some things in order to be effective, I will. I won't compromise everything, and there are some things I won't compromise on at all. It's all a question of where you draw your line in the sand, I guess -- what compromises you can reasonably make without destroying your own integrity.
Every time I went home for Christmas, I used to fight with my mother about getting my hair cut. She wants it short. I want it long. It used to be a symbol of all our disagreements; I was deeply invested in not cutting it. A few years ago, I got a trim while I was out there -- they took off four inches. She was so much happier. And I didn't compromise on anything that really mattered to me -- I did a small thing to make her happy, and we talked better that year than we've ever talked before -- about my writing, my love life, all the important things.
The hair grew back, too.
Yes, it's snowing so hard that the tree branches are carrying huge, fluffy piles of snow; every once in a while, one of them gives under the weight, swoops down, dumps it snow, and then quickly comes back up and starts collecting another load. I weep for my flowers. Ah, my snapdragons, my ramunculus...
But I'm in a pretty good mood nonetheless. I caught up on some sleep last night; went to bed around 11:30 and woke up at 10:00. I had had fine plans for getting some writing done this morning (when I woke up at a projected 7:00 a.m.), but y'know, the writing can wait a little. It's okay.
The main thing I'm working on this morning is drafting some letters and faxes for Bodies of Water. The first stage of this project (while the over-the-transom subs accumulate unread) is finding that big name (ideally more than one) that will lead the collection. This is a remarkably tough thing -- it's hard to find big names who are available to write new fiction. I'll settle for a reprint if I must, but even that is tricky. I would adore some help with this -- all I need are suggestions of good, literary authors, who you think could write something sensual. They should be somewhere between midlist and top of the list people. Here are some of the names I'm currently writing to -- most of these are tremendous long shots: Isabel Allende, Dorothy Allison, Nicholson Baker, Samuel R. Delany, Chitra Divakaruni, Laura Esquivel, Neil Gaiman, Mary Gaitskill, A.M. Homes, Ginu Kamani, Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Jeanette Winterson.
I would really appreciate any suggestions for more names for this list! If you send anything, please attach a suggested title for me to read, plus any notes on why this would be a good author to solicit work from. Help?
I'm going to get back to drafting that letter; I'll talk to you later. In the interim, let me point you to something very beautiful that Susannah sent me: The Century Project. I sent him a note saying I might be interested in posing. But frankly, the thought terrifies me as well.
12:30. I'm taking a snow day! I decided to stay home and work today. My students don't have class because they're working in groups, and I'm being pretty productive at the computer, enough so that I can feel semi-justified in staying inside in my flannel pyjamas rather than trudging through the still-falling heavy snow. The tree outside my window is covered in lemon-green buds; it's so wrong for them to be coated with snow.
Kevin's still fast asleep -- he came to bed around 4 last night. This is fairly typical for us; when we lived together in Philly, we were often on a schedule that was about 4 to 8 hours off from each other. Interestingly, that worked really well; since we both spent a lot of time working at home, it gave us several hours of uninterrupted work time. In a way, it was very focusing for me -- I knew I had this window of time alone, before I had to interact with anyone. I wonder if people with kids who get up early in the morning to write feel the same way...
I did take a little while to take photos of the other two collages, so you can see them. I'm pretty happy with how they both came out. You may notice that I've raised the prices a bit -- that's because the person who bought the first two insisted on paying me more for them; I think her subtle way of hinting that I was way under-pricing them. Who am I to argue? So they're listed at what she paid for them, and I set the initial prices a little higher on the others than I'd originally planned -- you can blame Barbara for that extra $10. :-) There *is* one of you who has dibs on "Beneath the Lemon Tree", at the original price -- if she wants it, she gets it at that price. I think I'm going to work on "Sitting Under a Tree" next; I suspect it's going to be similar to "the bones want to fly" in style -- doubled glass, one layer etched, torn paper, pressed leaves and petals. That kind of thing.
I ran some errands on campus, and then came home, had a dinner of leftovers (we had Indian food delivered last night), read a new Tamora Pierce novel, Magic Steps. Kids' books are great. I'm not sure what I'm going to do next; I should probably clean up the place and then do some work, but what I really feel like doing is curling up and going to sleep. Too early for that. Television instead, I suspect, with bits of cleaning in the commercials.
Three more weeks until the semester ends. I have a lot of work to do in that time, and I should probably be wishing for more time to do it in -- but honestly, I'll just be very glad when this semester is over. I'm tired. I need to rest for a while.
Random bits and bobs this morning, I think. I have a student coming by at 1:00 to take a quiz; aside from that, it's just cleaning up e-mail, paying taxes, reading history, etc. I have to write the Ada paper this weekend, come hell or high water -- I think I'll try to do it tomorrow morning.
I'm listening to the soundtrack from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Melancholy music. Suits my mood.
10:30. I keep forgetting to mention this week's offerings at Strange Horizons. I'm a goober. We have an interview with Lynn Flewelling; I'm particularly pleased about that because Lynn was an author I feel like I discovered, in an odd way. I had read her first novel, and enjoyed it quite a bit, and added it to my list of queer stuff in sf, because she has several gay characters. Lynn dropped me a note about that not long after, thanking me for listing her, and offering to send me a copy of her next book. I took her up on that offer, which I feel a little guilty about, since I would have bought and read and listed it anyway. :-) Ah well. Anyway, she's doing very well, and it's a good interview. We also have a story by D.K. Latta (one of our first repeat authors in fiction, I think), that is really different from his last one with us. "Something on the Bed" is a story about the monsters under the bed -- but it's from the monsters' point of view. Very cool. And there's a really interesting review of a book I haven't read yet, Point of Dreams; what I found interesting was its discussion of various types of Renaissance magic, most specifically, the art of phytomancy -- working magic through flower arranging. :-) Good stuff.
12:30. Chicken evaluation -- good concept, poor execution. I should have reduced the fruit glaze to a much more liquid thing than I did; the pieces of fruit that remained whole all charred, ending up little use to anyone. The skin ended up pretty tasty nonetheless, so I think the ingredients were a sound combination -- on the other hand, I don't usually eat the skin, so I'm not sure it does me much good. If I were making it again for myself I think I would skip the glaze and just pack the chicken with a mix of fruit, chopped onion, and the spices. Since I'm not eating the skin anyway, it doesn't make sense to do anything with it. Of course, I'd probably want more fruit than actually fits in the cavity, so I might stew some separately as well, and then mix that with the stuff cooked in the bird. If I were serving it to guests (who might like the skin), then I'd take some of the stewed fruit, add the preserves, some honey, and some port, reduce it down to a fairly thin glaze, and use that to baste the bird. Live and learn...
Journal as writing practice. I think for me, the journal does serve this purpose. It gets me writing almost every day. Over time, I think doing the journal has made it much easier for me to get over the little wall that appears every time I think about starting a piece of writing (whether it's fiction or poetry or an essay or a book review). The wall still shows up, pretty much every time I sit down to write. But my brain now really knows that if I only start, it'll happen after that -- the words will flow onto the page. And having an audience waiting to read the journal (even if there are only six of you), is far more of a motivator for me than writing to myself. So it works a lot better for me in that regard that some injunction to 'write a thousand words a day' would. At this point, I'm not sure I need the journal for that anymore -- but it still helps, a little. I'm guessing that Todd doesn't feel that this aspect is a significant help to him. Fair enough.
Journal as community. Writing is an intensely solitary business. If you're at all the stressed, insecure type, it can really help feeling part of a writing/reading community. Being all alone can block your writing. I get a tremendous amount of value from writing to you and having you write back (even if I write terribly brief responses to your individual e-mails). I imagine journals serve a community function for most journallers; I also think many writers are especially in need of that function. But again, even if Todd found value in that (and I'm sure he did), it wasn't sufficient value to outweigh some of the negatives of journalling. More on those in a bit.
Journal as personal revelation. I actually think this is the most valuable part of the journal to me, and perhaps to you, and I suspect to Todd's readers (both of his journal, and of the old-style mouthorgan). We are hungry to know each other and to be known. I am delighted when I start to get a real sense of someone else -- whether it's a character in a book that I fall in love with, or a journaller who rather repulses but also fascinates me, etc. and so on. As a journaller, I can reveal myself to you -- sometimes in very small doses. Telling you about the minutiae of my day does in fact give you some sense of who I am (someone who prefers sitting in cafes or staying up late having pseudo-intellectual conversations to jumping around a tennis court or lifting weights in a gym, for example). And perhaps more importantly, there's an odd dynamic that occurs in which telling you the minutiae day by day, getting back little e-mails from you guys advising me on this or that, building something of a relationship -- that creates a space in which I can occasionally say something really revelatory. Something I might have trouble saying to friends in person. It's a medium that offers the opportunity for a particular type of speech, and one that I really value.
As a writer, I tell certain big truths about myself in my fiction -- I can't help that, if I'm honest in my work. But other things stay hidden, and I tell some of them here. I think Todd does understand this dynamic, this relationship. I think deep down he understands why people had a great fondness for the old mouthorgan, the one in which he pontificated on this subject or that, occasionally with a charming interjection by Debby. We weren't reading it to be enlightened -- we could just scan the news for that. I'm not a newspaper reader at all -- I read the old mouthorgan for the personality that came with the sex news. It was sometimes funny, sometimes acerbic, often insightful, sometimes quite blinded by preconceptions...but always willing to engage in debate, to question and consider and think hard. It was idealistic and charming. And if I keep reading mouthorgan now, I do so for the little bits of Todd that slip through still, even in this weblog format. I may be the only reader that does so -- but I doubt it.
It's not about the quality of the writing, you see. Sometimes I try to craft some pretty prose here, but mostly I don't worry about it. That's not what this journal is for. I don't think there are any journals that I read solely for the prose style -- even when I read Pamie, it wasn't just that she could tell a funny story. It's that she could tell a funny story *and* she revealed herself to her readers; she was honest and open about some things that are sometimes hard to be honest and open about. That's what I really think is the heart of online journalling; it's what I value, at any rate. A fine prose style just helps carry you along -- it's not the important part.
And I think the real problem with Todd and journalling is that he wants people to value him for his fiction writing -- and until that happens, he's only going to be disgruntled if we value him for other things. That's fair enough -- it's an artistic choice, to decide what part of your work you want to concentrate on (and have others concentrate on). Sometimes you need to step back from one part and really work hard on another. But I hope he realizes that even if he ends up writing very good fiction (and as an editor who has looked at his work, I do think he has the potential for that, though I don't think he's pushed it nearly as far as he can yet), that doesn't mean that the kind of writing he does in the journal and mouthorgan aren't worthwhile in their own right.
They're a form of non-fiction writing, like essay-writing, and that is a remarkably difficult field in many ways. It's not so much in fashion these days; the personal essay doesn't sell the way fiction does. And even when it does sell -- in the pages of Harper's, or the New Yorker, for example -- it does so in a much more tightly crafted form than Todd has created in the journal or mouthorgan. I think he could go farther with nonfiction writing too, but what I devoutly hope he realizes is that he does in fact have a gift for nonfiction writing that reaches out and touches his readers; that moves them, even as he informs and entertains. If he wants to set that aside for a while to work on his fiction, that's fine. But I hope he is not undervaluing it; I meet far more good fiction writers than I do good nonfiction writers, these days. It's a rare gift.
So is he right to stop the journal? For a while, maybe. Journals can suck up writing energy. They can keep you trapped in negative thought loops, where you write about the same thing over and over again. They have, in a sense, a very narrow focus -- the journal is, one way or another, about you. Fiction has a much broader palette, in some ways. More importantly, until Todd gets some real validation for his fiction -- and in his mind, that means sales, means people actually paying him money for it (I may think that's a slightly silly definition, but hey, we all have some silly definitions engraved into our skulls) -- until that validation happens, he's going to feel every word of praise for the journal (probably including the ones above) as a little drop of acid eating into his writerly heart.
So go, Todd. Go and write and edit and send things out, dammit, and publish and be paid. And when you're finally feeling satisfied with that, come back to us and tell us how it's been. We'll miss you.
As fellowships go, it's the baby one. It's not the Steffenson Cannon, which I also applied for and which gives you gobs of money. This one is basically a class release -- you get paid a standard TF salary (about $10K for the academic year), but instead of teaching three classes, you only teach one. It's certainly a bit of a disappointment not to get the gobs of money, but I can apply again for that next year, and it's definitely going to be a good thing to have some extra time next year to focus on my work. There's a lot I want to get done!
Perhaps most importantly, it feels like a validation. Y'all will remember that I was wait-listed to this program -- so while I was delighted to get in, I have had some doubts...not about my abilities, but about their assessment of my abilities? Something like that. There's only one Neff awarded each year, among all the graduate students in the department who apply for it (don't really know how many that is -- I'd guess somewhere between 5 and 30 -- not such a precise guess!). So the fact that I got it -- well, it makes me feel like maybe some of the faculty are excited about my work. That's a really good thing.
On the negative side, my getting it means that some of my friends who I think are doing amazing work didn't get it. It's not a good thing having so few fellowships around. :-( I almost wish they would split this into two fellowships, each releasing you from one class. But I haven't looked into this in detail; maybe there are reasons why that wouldn't be a good idea. Not sure. The fellowship thing is complicated.
At any rate -- while there's a little part of me that's fretting about the others, I have to admit that most of me is selfishly delighted. I'd like to take the evening off to celebrate -- but I'm going to read some history instead. That's grad school, I guess...
This morning, some grading, followed by a long day on campus. I had planned to order the SH mugs tomorrow, but now I'm worried that they won't arrive before I leave town. I wonder if I can get Jeremy to handle them for me over the summer, since he's here. I also have to write that Ada paper tomorrow, and get it out of the way, so that I'm primed to write the big Kathryn paper next week. I also need to find out if I'm supposed to write a big history paper as well; not sure. I think it's all still do-able; I'm just feeling the time pressure. I slacked off a bit the last two weeks, and now it has come back to haunt me. Never again will I try to take four classes and teach one -- it's been a crazy semester, and while I think I'll manage it, it'll be just by the skin of my teeth.
I have a reading on campus this Thursday evening. If any of you are Salt Lake residents and are interested in coming, please let me know, and I'll send you the time and directions. I have twelve minutes; I'm not sure what I'm going to read. I had thought it might be interesting to read "Silence and the Word", but I think that'll run too long. I'll have to time it and see. I'm also not sure I have the nerve to read that one out to my classmates. I might read "Johnny's Story" -- that one is just fun to read, though my accent gets more and more implausible the further I go in it, usually. Any other suggestions? I read them "A Jewel of a Woman" for the Valentine's Day reading, so I can't do that one again. That's still clearly the funniest / most audience-engaging one to read aloud. I've used up my best material, and now I'm doomed.
I'd really like to write something new for this, but there just isn't time to do even a semi-decent job. As I was falling asleep last night, I was thinking it would be really fun to do a mini-play type thing -- I was imagining a series of monologues, with me up in front and various of my classmates in the audience. But we'd have to rehearse it at last once, and I just don't think that's going to happen. Not to mention that I was thinking about writing it about dating people in your department, which is maybe a slightly touchy topic. But it would have been fun. Maybe next year...
I'm starting to get the urge to write again, which is very good, since I'm hoping to do a fair bit of that this summer -- but I really can't do much of it now. I'm supposed to do one more experiment for Fiction class, due next week, but she's not expecting a finished story; just 1-4 pages exploring something. The start of a story, really. I've actually done enough on that already, but I think I'd like to set aside some time this weekend and actually try to develop it some more. We'll see.
I need to go do some grading, but I haven't given you guys any fiction here in a very long time, so I'm going to go ahead and give you the first page of this story.
Most days she trades much of her catch. She wakes up long before dawn, goes out for cold hours in the boat that she has learned to care for, to watch over, to love. Comes back with enough fish to trade for her other small necessities. Oil and chili powder. Rice and lentils. Her goat gives her milk; her chicken gives her eggs. It is not much, but she is not as hungry as she used to be, these days. Once the fish are gone, she sleeps away the afternoon. In the evening she walks on the beach; she sits on a particularly large rock; she watches the waves coming in, going out. Since the servant woman died, six years ago, she has lived alone.
Some days are different; this is one of those days. She pulls out her hoard of spices; she trades for rich coconut milk, ghee, fresh vegetables. The other women look knowingly at each other, and some of them tell their children: "Aaiyyee! -- Medha's cooking today. Go wait there." As Medha slowly walks home, limping slightly, the children trail behind her, eventually gathering under the huge spreading banyan tree that guards the door to her small house. The monsoon rain is pouring down; slamming hard into the ground, and the children jump around, squishing mud between their toes. Medha walks blindly, eyes unfocused, nose deep in the scent of fresh mango rising from the full string bag she carries. Her arms should be aching, but on days like this, she doesn't notice.
She enters the clean kitchen, clears a space on the table. She takes her large knife in hand, sharpens it carefully on a stone. Medha starts slowly, but then catches the angle, the rhythm of it, and moves faster. She puts down the stone, places three onions on the table. Cuts off the top and bottom. Cuts them in half, length-wise. Peels the skins off, being sure to get each bit of brown. It is not a day for being careless, for being just good-enough. When she is satisfied, she rinses in them in cold water, and then begins to slice them. Paper-thin slices, from a hand swift and skilled with long practice. She has been cooking since she was eight? ten? At least sixty years now. She remembers how her mother would come and pinch her the extra flesh on her arm, hard, when she did not slice thinly enough. Punishing her for two sins at once. Too clumsy, too fat. Probably for being too dark as well, though Medha truly could do nothing about that. If her mother could see her now, perhaps she would at least conceded that Medha is no longer fat. She has become a rail-thin woman; wiry and strong from the hours on the ocean, slender from endless meals of rice and lentils. Two cups of each will sustain her in a normal day -- but this is not a normal day.
She slices each half, keeping the shape of the half-onion, then turns it ninety degrees, and dices it cross-wise. For this first dish, she needs a very fine dice, a mince, really. When the onions are finished, she slides them into one of her large Teflon pots. Her brother had tried to send her money, from America; she refused it, over and over. But one Christmas, he and his wife sent her a beautiful set of Teflon-coated pots and pans. Those, she kept. She loved the way the food slid right out of the pan, the fact that she could just rinse it and be done. She had no interest in the gadgets they sent as well; one corner of the kitchen held cardboard boxes full of unused kitchen toys. But the Teflon -- that, she likes.
She sautees the onions in ghee, adding black mustard seed, cumin seed. She chops three tomatoes while she waits, chops them small and juicy. When the onions are golden, she adds perhaps a teaspoon of raw red chili powder. As it cooks, the smoke rises and makes her cough. That is her cue to add the tomatoes, a few tablespoons of vinegar, a little sugar, and a mix of dry-roasted spices, dark and fiercely aromatic. As the tomatoes cook down she quickly peels and chops three large potatoes; this first dish is a potato curry, because that takes longest to cook. Into the pot. She stirs hard, turning up the rich blend of onion and spice, coating every piece of potato. She lowers the heat on the gas range (another gift; she had once cooked over an open fire), covers the dish, and turns back to the cutting board.
Anyway. You see the difficulty. I think the tentative plan is to fly to Chicago first, lugging as much as necessary since there will be cars on either end. Then fly from there to the Bay Area in early June, still lugging. Then leave most of the stuff at David or Jed's, when I take the train down to L.A. for a week (probably third week of June); travel light. Come back up to the Bay Area for a week or so. Go up to WesterCon in Portland for a few days with Jed (fly?) in early July. Continue on by train to Seattle and visit Kirsten for a week or so. Take the train back to Portland? Fly back? Make Jed or David throw me a birthday part at the end of July? Just hang out in the Bay Area from then until mid-August and fly back to Salt Lake, lugging my stuff.
Something like that, anyway. Looks a little crazy, don't you think?
Today I need to finish up some odds and ends, finish my dishes, clean my room, and then go to Borders for the afternoon. There I will hopefully do the first draft of my Kathryn paper, and also do some browsing for possible authors to solicit BW stories from. I have a student conference at 6, so I'll come back for that. I think I may cook in the morning, so I can just eat leftovers for dinner, rather than expecting to have the energy to cook then. That sounds reasonable, yes? Seems a manageable day, no? I'm really trying to get everything done, but also not work myself into a state in the process. :-)
Much of yesterday was spent with SH stuff, as we wrangle out the details of a downloadable version. I'd go into it all here, but I'm frankly exhausted. I hope we settle this within the next couple of days so I don't have to think about it anymore. The very brief gist is that it looks like we may have another company do it for us, and the question still unresolved is whether we want to offer it for free or charge something nominal for it. I'm torn, but the staff seems to be leaning towards free. Hopefully more of them will chime in today so I can get a better sense of what they really want.
It turns out that Jeremy is willing to distribute mugs and t-shirts over the summer (I may give him a box of AE to distribute for me as well, but we'll see about that -- I'm not sure if a nice Mormon boy is allowed to keep a box of erotic books in his apartment). So that's good. I just sent off the last t-shirt of the first batch, so I'm going to check the budget and then order more t-shirts. I need to talk to Lucy, our main graphic design person, before doing the mugs -- another task for this morning, I think.
I also need to send off some faxes and letters for BW -- and I really need to do them this week, which means today, so perhaps I'd best go prepare those rather than chatting with y'all right now. I can come back and chat with you later, if time permits. I hope you're all having a good week -- the day here looks like it's going to be beautiful, at least for a while, though I suspect it will end up too hot.
6:30 p.m. It didn't actually get hot today -- it stayed lightly cool, lovely and spring-like all day. I hear we'll be having some rain soon; that'll be good, I think.
I'm feeling oddly exhausted -- not sure why. It wasn't really that difficult a day -- worked solidly in the morning, went in to campus, met with students, went to class, sent some faxes for BW, came home for lunch, went downtown and sent out various things (birthday presents, SH t-shirts) from the post office, checked my P.O. Box (nothing, sadly -- y'all don't love me anymore...), bought a few skirts at 80% off (!), came back, ate dinner, did laundry. Maybe it's just that the day's not done -- normally Thursday would be my evening off, the end of the work week, but tonight's my reading on campus, and in fifteen minutes I need to head over there. I'm supposed to go over to a friend's afterwards to hang out and play board games; that sounds like fun, but I may just be too tired. We'll see.
12:30 a.m. Just got back from Erin and Kelly's. I really wish I'd gotten to know them better earlier; they're both really cool, and sadly, they're graduating this spring and taking off at the end of the summer, so after two weeks from now, nada. On the plus side, they're both planning on submitting stories to BW, so they shouldn't be entirely out of touch. That part's good. Had a fun time hanging out with them, playing Yahtzee (I did okay, but Marcia and Erin both got Yahtzees and stomped the rest of us), chatting, gossiping, drinking a little red wine. I only had a glass or so, but I'm nonetheless feeling totally toasted -- I think I must be tired and maybe a little ill. I'll go to sleep soon and sleep 'til 9, hopefully. I have a student coming at 9:30, so I can't sleep later than that. And then I read history until my meeting with Anand at 3:00.
I'm babbling, aren't I? I'm feeling a little emotional, I think. It's the wine. Happy from hanging out with friends. Sad that they'll be going. Stressed about getting everything done. Emotion emotion emotion. Sometimes I feel like I'm just a little squishy sponge of emotions -- poke me, and another emotion will squirt out at you.
How's that for an appetizing image? Yumyum. Ick.
It's my nature to be emotional. Kevin called me up a couple nights ago and had me take a personality test with him -- he'd found a used book in a bin and thought it might be fun. It was an abbreviated version of the one the psych people use to test for personality disorders. Hmm...I was going to tell you about mine but I think I'll wait until I get to Chicago and can type in some of the stuff from the book properly. Some of it's pretty funny. It pegged me and Kevin pretty much dead on, I think. I will say that the category (there are fourteen) that I tested most strongly on (i.e., have strong tendencies towards) was "dramatic". Which goes with very emotional. Which, if taken to extremes, leads to "histrionic" personality disorder. I also tested very high on "conscientous", which could potential lead to "obsessive-compulsive" disorder. More on this later. I actually test quite safely with the average human being sanity range, if that's a comfort to you. I'm not sure it should be, since I have real doubts that the average human is all that sane. On the other hand, is sanity really such a virtue? Is it?
Okay, bed. Bed bed bed.
I miss my guys. I mean, I miss each one specifically, along with a lot of other people, but right now, I just want one of them here to pour water into me and put me to bed. A lullaby would be nice.
The day tastes of orange peel
and peppermint, yet the scent
on this April wind is smoky,
rich with the dust of scattered
autumn bonfires.
I dwelt as a child
in Catholic halls; but at
fourteen I went elsewhere,
to rooms full of fragile girls,
soft-skinned, unroughened.
In France, monks distilled
liquor, aromatic. I cannot
remember the scent of hyssop;
cannot reconstruct those
sweetly fragrant monasteries.
An old friend has written
with sad news. Memories
almost two decades old rise up,
burn bright and unforgiving
to eyes unprepared for light,
for liquids, for fierce winds.
I woke up cranky, crankiness not helped by the person who was supposed to look at my apartment not showing up. This exacerbated by the person who was supposed to come by last night not showing up. *I* call when I decide not to go look at a place I've made an appointment for. Goobers. I had also had some bad dreams.
I staggered to the computer, answered some mail, and spent a while being very anal about little tweaks on my web pages. Fixed up my publications list. Revamped the beginning of the Alternative Sexualities booklist. Edited my bio slightly. That kind of thing. It's mindless, but soothing. I'm so glad I learned HTML! I really ought to track Matt down and thank him sometime; I'm pretty sure he's the one who insisted that I learn it myself instead of just begging him to do my pages for me...though that was at least eight years ago, and my memory's a bit blurry. Could've been someone else.
In the midst of all this neatening, I realized that I never got around to sending "Deep with Sea" out again after the last time it came back -- that in fact, I haven't submitted any sf or fantasy in years. (Well, aside from the poem that Tim P. just bought for Speculon. :-) So I actually spent a little time revising it and sent it out. I hesitated a bit before doing so -- the writing seems fairly workmanlike to me now, except for a few good moments here and there. If I were writing the story again, I think I could do a better job with it. But y'know -- it's four years old. That's to be expected. And if I do that with all of my stories, then I'll never send anything out, 'cause I'll always be thinking I can make them better. And I don't want them to just molder unloved in drawers. (Virtual drawers.) So out they go! We'll see what F&SF thinks of it.
But much more exciting that that is that I went to Borders around 2, sat down, and wrote for three hours, making a story out of that cooking snippet I posted the other day. It now has a title -- "Monsoon Day" -- and is out to the readers' list. I will now wait anxiously for someone to tell me they like it. It's one of the shortest stories I've written in a while, actually -- 3300 words. I'm relieved, because I was starting to feel like I'd forgotten how to write a story under 6000 words. It's possible that this one may get a little longer; I conveyed a hell of a lot of information in a small space. But maybe not. We'll see.
I'm more curious about whether people find it suspenseful. (If you haven't read it yet and are going to, you may want to go do that now and come back to this in a bit.) It's not really an action story, though things do happen. It's not a big character-change story, though a lot of character is revealed. It's really a character-has-clearly-come-to-a-very-odd-place and let's-slowly-reveal-how-she-got there story. I think it's interesting enough that a sufficient level of tension is maintained; we'll see if others agree. I have no perspective when I've just finished a story. I think it's wonderful. I think I'm brilliant. Soon enough the ugly truth will surface, but for the moment, I'll just enjoy as much as I can.
Once I finished writing, I spent three hours reading a children's book. Much fun. And now I'm home, and I'll either read for the rest of the evening, or go to a party, depending on my mood. Life is pretty good right now. :-) I hope y'all are having good weekends too.
I took a break from any kind of writing for a while to read some Martin Amis, who I haven't read before. Duncan had suggested him as a possible BW author -- he's certainly a good writer, in that flip, sharp, cynical sort of way. Though I suspect there may be some heart to him as well. I'm reading The Rachel Papers, which reminds me quite a bit of Hanif Kurieshi's The Buddha of Suburbia. I suppose there are some obvious parallels. Both very good books, though. (Presuming the Amis maintains its current high performance). In any case, because it's for BW, part of my brain counts it as working and thus lets me temporarily off the paper-writing hook. Not sure how long that'll last though -- I appear to be drawn back compulsively to my computer. Though e-mail is a good distraction from paper-writing too, as is updating my journal. I did so well when I went to Borders yesterday, but the buses don't run today, and I don't really feel like either a long walk or taking a cab. What I may do is go get lunch at Cucina and set up there for a few hours. They close at 3 p.m. on Sundays, but I could theoretically have a nice solid chunk of working between noon and 3. Hmm...we'll see. If I bribe myself with one of their yummy sandwiches, that might work. (I wish that I could use exercise as a motivator instead of food -- wouldn't that be great? Like -- "Write this paper, and I'll let you go work out at the gym! Won't that be fun?" Hah!)
But at least not having to do it this morning means that I've been able to be somewhat leisurely about my work. Instead of frantically trying to finish off a paper in the three hours I had between 6:30 and 9:30, I've been able to stay home until 1:30...which is four more hours, giving me the opportunity to alternate writing pages of the paper with reading chapters out of children's books and doing art. I'm making a stained glass panel for Roshani's Zoe; Roshani asked me for something that she can hang in the window near the baby's crib. So it's a large Z, in purple, surrounded by triangular pieces in cobalt blue, and those surrounded by triangular pieces in green. I can't really describe it very well, can I? I'll put up a photo when it's finished; I'm really pretty pleased with it. I'm sort of tempted to do matching ones for Roshani and Tom -- do Roshani's in rounded pieces, maybe in blue, red and purple, and Tom's in square pieces, in green and red and blue. Though those may have to wait until I get back from travelling...
Plans for the summer are firming up. I leave for Chicago next Thursday -- in the interim I have to finish up grading for the semester, finish this paper I'm working on, write two more, pack for the trip, pack up for the sublettor (he's a very nice Philosophy grad student), apply for one more grant (travel reimbursement), hopefully order some mugs and more t-shirts and bookmarks for SH, get my driver's license, and possibly set up the e-book stuff for SH. Oof! I think there's enough time. I think.
Speaking of SH, we've been having an amazing week. SF Weekly gave us a very positive review -- they're the sf news magazine run by the Sci-Fi Channel. As a result, yesterday was our highest day ever, and it looks like today is going to at least double that number. It's nuts! It'll be very interesting to see how many of these new visitors stay, but in the interim, it's a lot of fun watching the numbers just climb and climb. It's an excellent week at SH too, with a very solid review of a Ted Chiang story (by Greg Beatty, who I met at ICFA), a totally fun story, "Sittin' a Spell at Miz Love's", and a review by our own Chris Cobb of the newest Le Guin Earthsea book. A good time to get a horde of guests. Nice to have the place clean when people stop by. :-)
12:15. Hmm...an hour and a half yet -- can I finish this paper in time? The pressure builds. The anxiety grows. (Well, actually, it'll be fine. I just thought I'd introduce some spurious plot tension to excuse my avoiding my paper for a little longer with this journal...)
I did want to comment on something Marissa said today (and btw, I find it a little disturbing that I'm showing up in her dreams -- and even more disturbing that I appear to be causing anxiety in them...I'm not that scary, really I'm not. I'm always bewildered when people find me scary. I know Heather has told me I'm scary a couple of times, and I just don't get it at all. Not even a little bit. I am not scary. I am soft and fuzzy, a great big bundle of gushy Mary Anne-love). So M'ris was talking about people missing you when you don't post for a while, and how she finds that comforting. And it's funny, 'cause I was just thinking about that, 'cause on Monday night I wasn't feeling so good, and I got off the phone with Jed because I needed to just lie still and let Star Trek take my mind off my tummy for a while. And when I didn't post all day yesterday, he got worried about me, and called to make sure I was okay. And I know that if I didn't post for a week, I'd have a flood of e-mail, and probably a couple of phone calls. And by that point, I'd probably have coughed my lungs out on my bathroom floor or something, since I live alone with excellent sound-proofing, so my downstairs neighbors would be unlikely to notice anything amiss, but still, it's nice to know that y'all would try...
Good morning, munchkins.I woke up happy today. I've been waking up at 7, on the dot, as if to an alarm, for weeks now. Today I decided that I just wasn't going to do it, and I stayed in bed and dozed off and on until 7:45. By the time I woke up, the sun had made it over the mountains and was pouring into my bedroom through the sheer white drapes; the drapes themselves were billowing occasionally, letting in a crisp morning breeze. The combination of sun and fresh air just made my body feel so good (and it needed it, since it spent a lot of yesterday tromping around campus doing various stupid errands). So nice...
I haven't been so purely happy lately. I haven't been unhappy either, really. Just very busy, trying hard not to forget anything (I leave in less than a week!), getting stressed and anxious about finishing everything and finishing it well -- see, I don't really doubt that I'll write my history paper and my Kathryn paper; what I doubt is that I'll do nearly as well on them as I could. And it's funny, because I know I'll get a decent grade regardless, and this stuff isn't going to go on to be published (I might write a publishable paper at some point, but neither one of these is it), so it's really just my professors who will see it, whom it will affect. And I want them to be impressed. That's all it's about at this stage -- not the grade, not even my own satisfaction, because at this point I know damn well what kind of paper I can write if I take the time and put my mind to it. I know I can do something decent. The question is, will I manage to get something done in time that will impress them as something decent? We'll just have to wait and see.
All of this vague formless anxiety has come out in various forms. I'm either forgetting to eat or eating too much. I feel rushed, so instead of putting food onto a plate and sitting down at the table, I heat up some curry on the stove, and then stand over the pot with some bread, eating quickly with a book in my free hand. I do this a lot when I'm busy -- it's very characteristic, and somewhat odd. Someone should take a picture of me doing it sometime. Would make a goofy back cover photo for a book.
I'm also reading children's books a lot. I can finish one in about an hour, so if I'm feeling like I just can't stand working anymore, I grab one of them (I've been on a Tamora Pierce kick) and dive in. I've read six since Tuesday. If any of you ever live with me, please note that if I'm reading children's books compulsively, this is probably a sign that I'm over-stressed, and should be left alone. Unless you want to make me fabulous dinners and then watch me stand over the stove eating them. That would be okay too.
I've also been doing art. I'm so jazzed up with all these little bits and bobs floating through my head that I can't seem to just relax. I sit down in front of the tv and almost immediately pop up again unless I'm actually doing something. So I put the crocheting into my hands, and that'll keep me sitting through a sitcom, but I can't do it for a long time because it's a little tough on my right hand (which is too bad, 'cause I'm getting close to finishing this afghan finally, and I would really like to have it done before I leave. For no good reason. Just 'cause I'm finishing things up). But Zoe's stained glass has been good for distracting me; I can listen to the tv and be amused, while focusing on doing the fussy finishing work. But now I'm done! What will I do now?
I used to draw crystals a lot when I was a kid. Dunno why.
Today I have to do final grades for my students -- I had such a good group this semester! I've never given so many A's before -- it's a little shocking. I don't think I've been particularly easy on them; I think they've just worked hard and done good jobs. It's still a little odd realizing that there *might* be a B+ or two, and that the rest will be some form of A. After grading, a bunch of other little errands, and then I go to campus and meet with Kathryn. I don't actually have anything scheduled for this afternoon, which is good, because I have to clean and cook. I invited people over for dinner tonight for potluck Italian -- I'm making gnocchi, bruschetta, and mascarpone cheesecake with balsamic strawberries. Technically, I'm only supposed to make one dish, because it's potluck, but I won't get to cook for these people (I invited a good chunk of the department) again until August, so what the hell. If there's too much food, I can eat it from now until Thursday.
I wish I'd started it last week. I had ideas last week. This week, I just have a big mental glop where my knowledge of Sri Lankan history should be. I'm supposed to be writing on the way various peoples have constructed their identity, and the effect that's had on Sri Lankan politics. It's not going to be a really deep paper, I'm afraid, but I think it may be a moderately comprehensive survey, a recapitulation of a lot of stuff I've been reading in tons of books. I hope that's okay with Anand. (Of course, he said I could include fiction or poetry as part of the paper if I wanted, so he's clearly not so rigid about this kind of thing.) A lot of the literature has focused on the Sinhalese/Buddhist parts of this story, and while it's certainly interesting and necessary to talk about (how is it that such a peaceful philosophy has become a justification for brutal killings?), the other players in this get neglected a bit. The Tamil people are often described as mere victims, and the Tigers as understandably disaffected boys. That may be true enough, but stopping at one of their websites will quickly show that they're just as capable of creating nasty propaganda to support their cause as anyone, and that their own constructed self-image is fueling this ongoing civil war.
I guess I have some ideas after all. Hopefully it'll all come together.
I would really love to hang out here and procrastinate some more, but I think I have to switch to a different mode of procrastination before my guilt catches up with me. If you switch activities fast enough, the guilt doesn't have time to get to you, you see...
I eventually did make it to Borders, stopping to do a tiny bit of shopping along the way (cute blue dress!), and managed to do two hours of work before a cafe event drove me out. (Two guys from the tv station, talking about summer movies and giving out tickets to The Mummy Returns -- for a solid hour.) I sat in the children's section and read Terry Pratchett's The Truth, which was very funny and made me nostalgic for my days of journalism (very long ago -- I used to write theatre reviews for a tiny Chicago paper -- I was the second-string reviewer, so I got to go to such gems as Gilligan's Island: The Musical. It was the one time in my life that I really got to use my full vocabulary of nasty words). I ended up reading that 'til 9:30. Then I came home, checked e-mail, talked to Jed, went to sleep -- having written all of three pages of my history paper. You can guess what I'm doing today, eh?
So today, more history paper. I really am hoping to finish it today, in part because I'd like David to look at it before I hand it in and make sure I having made any egregious history mistakes. Not that he's read the history, but he has a background in the field and figure he can probably find things that I shouldn't be doing. Of course, I haven't asked him if he has time to do this yet. I should do that. I figure if I can give him a draft today, he can probably find some time to look at it by Tuesday, and I can give Anand the finished paper on Wednesday. We'll see.
Then deep in Nabokov tomorrow; I hope to spend the morning at the library reading some secondary source material (skimming, more accurately), then go take my driver's test, then come back to the library for more reading. We'll see. If I fail my driver's test, then I may be mopey. I haven't driven a car since like July or something. Not ideal.
Anyway. Time to start the tea, and disconnect the computer from the net connection so I'm not tempted to keep checking e-mail in between pages of paper-writing. Have a good Sunday, munchkins. Hope it's more restful than mine!
I went over to Susan's yesterday and worked until 6-ish (she was writing a paper on epic poems). I managed to finish 18 pages of the history paper yesterday -- I think I have about 6-10 to go, which I hope to do this afternoon. I would be working on it now, but I'm too busy fretting about my driver's test; I leave in about an hour to go take it (annoyingly far away in Sandy; an hour on the bus. Each way.) I'm been clearing away old e-mail instead of paper-writing, which I think is okay; I'm pretty sure I sprained my brain yesterday. There came a point when I couldn't focus on anything anymore -- not books, not tv, nothing. I spent the rest of the evening talking to Roshani, then David, then Kevin.
Will you still love me if I fail my driver's test? I haven't driven a car since July...
Anyway, too scattered still to concentrate on anything. I'm going to give you a recipe instead, that someone wrote in and requested. I feel a bit guilty for not giving you this long ago, to be honest -- you can't really make Sri Lankan curries without this. Well, some of them. But not any of the meat or fish ones.
1:00 p.m. Didn't pass my test. Sigh. I am too timid a driver -- I didn't do anything egregiously bad, but I was a little too slow, a little too heavy on the brakes, a little too skittish in general. I'll try to practice in the next couple of days if I can find a friend with a car, and then I'll retake the test Wednesday. It really would be nice to get this out of the way before I leave town. We'll see.