Anyway, lots of work to do today -- I'll try to check back in later if I can, but in the meantime, go enjoy Strange Horizons. A fabulous issue this week, with the debut of a new ongoing comic by Rachel Hartman (author of those cool medieval articles and the fabulous Amy Unbounded). Also an alien porn story (well, it's really erotica, see, 'cause there's character development -- really. Trust me.), a great interview with China Mieville (who wrote the awesome Perdido Street Station), new art, poetry, a review -- just a jam-packed first-of-the-month issue. :-) I haven't been doing the week-by-week recaps here, so if you've missed any fiction in the last couple of weeks, you should definitely go back. Last week's story was one of my favorites so far. I so love my magazine...
And if you love my magazine too, maybe you'd like to work on it? We have a new job opening -- reviews editor! Lots of free books! What more could you ask than to spend a couple hours a week thinking about sf/f?
I did end up going to that hip-hop class Monday night (good for me!). It was a lot of fun, but a little sad, I have to say. Leaving aside the fact that I am terribly out of condition and was gasping for breath before we were even halfway through (I can't remember the last time I engaged in a full hour of aerobic activity), I was still the worst dancer there. This sadness is compounded by the fact that I was the only non-white person in the room. In a hip-hop class. They were *all* (including the cute little blond girls) better than me. Most pathetic. But I think I'll go back. Maybe today even.
Tuesday I got up early, did all my grading, went in to classes fully prepared...and all went well until we got to 3:30. I came home for dinner before going back for my 6 o'clock workshop...and I just couldn't bring myself to get out of my chair and go back to campus. Couldn't do it. Not at all, not a bit. Instead I watched the season premiere of Buffy. I would tell y'all all about it, but Karina would kill me, since they're months behind us in Australia, and she takes her Buffy seriously, she does. Is it my fault that Australia is a backward country? Hmmm? But we'll pass over it gracefully for now, only noting that it was a pretty damn kick-ass episode.
I then spent the rest of the evening, some of the night and all of the next morning reading a fantasy novel, Michelle West's The Uncrowned King. Kirsten recommended these to me -- the first two books in the series are fine, not thrilling, but the others since (I've read two so far) are very satisfying if you like that big-fantasy-novel-complicated-plot sort of thing. I do. And as the books go on, she seems to be developing a more lyrical style; really, these are more reminiscent of Kay's stuff than anyone else's work I've read, I think. So if you like Fionavar, you may want to try them. Start at the beginning and be patient. I think Hunter's Oath is the first title.
Then I did some BW work (I'll be done soon, I swear I will), and made some curries for dinner, and went into campus for a conference committee meeting. We're gearing up for the actual conference now, Oct 26-27, so it's starting to get a bit hectic. No worries, though -- I'm one of the people in charge of food, so the food will of course be fabulous, and if the food's good, everyone goes away happy, yes? Then we had a faculty-student mixer at a pub, which was fun, followed by Paul and Marcia coming over, supposedly for Star Trek + dinner. Sadly, we did not succeed in taping Star Trek, so we're postponing that 'til it runs again on Sunday; instead, we played Cosmic Encounter, a fun game I used to play a lot in college, complicated by the fact that I didn't remember the rules so well. (If anyone out there knows the game, drop me a line? I have some questions to ask!)
Which takes us to now; I'm going to do some more BW work, and then some SH work, and then run into campus to get some money because tonight is Poker Night! Some of the grad students are coming over; it's Fall Break at the end of this week (basically two days off), so everyone's in the mood to goof off at night (even if we're frantically catching up during the day).
Kevin arrives for a visit tomorrow. Eep.
I was still bouncy enough when they left (around 1?) that I stayed up for a while doing e-mail and then reading. I'm reading this fantasy novel called Prophecy (sequel to Rhapsody), which to be honest, is really poorly written a lot of the time. But the scope of the world is fascinating, and somehow carries me along enough that I can ignore that clunkiness of the prose. It's particularly startlingly bad in contrast to the other book I'm reading, Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, which is just gorgeous, line-by-line. Of course, his book has basically no plot, so in that way, the books are kind of opposites. Although they both spend a lot of time world-building, in really different ways...
P/M are going to come by and pick me up soon and we're going to run to the Indian grocery store. I'm out of various spices, including the ones I need to make my Sri Lankan curry powder. Very sad. But soon to be remedied, and maybe while I'm there I'll pick up some mango juice. Yum yum. And perhaps some of that orange candy that my little sister likes so much. Not that she's here, but I can eat it in honor of her. :-) A samosa wouldn't go amiss either.
Then back to do some more work. I did get some work done this morning -- did I mention that we're thinking of doing a print-on-demand Best Of Strange Horizons book with Wildside Press? We're putting together a manuscript now; I'm hoping to finalize that next week. Not sure what Wildside's production schedule is like, and we haven't really talked contracts yet, so no guarantee that it'll happen. But it'd be awfully nice to have a little SH book in my hands at Christmastime... (well, a big book -- if we do it with them, it'll be a big heavy hardcover thing).
I also got in the last stories for Bodies of Water -- which may be changing its title! I'm less pleased by the new title, and still hoping to talk them out of it, so I'm not even going to tell you what it is until that's decided. Theoretically, we make final decisions on stories next week. When that happens, I'm going to have a flurry of work -- a bunch of rejection and acceptance letters, followed by line edits on all the accepted stories. There may be a few late nights in my future. It'll be okay, though.
I'm hoping this afternoon (if my stamina holds up) to actually get back to another project that's been languishing -- SH t-shirts and mugs. It got held up because we're trying to redo the design (which is held up further by my ignorance about computer design stuff), but I think we're close to finalizing the new design. And then we'll have more t-shirts! And mugs! Very exciting...
Okie...I should go shower and dress for the M/P, so I'm not still in pyjamas when they arrive. Hope y'all had a good week, and that you're having a lovely and non-stressful Friday. Happy weekend!
Mostly, we just hung out. Went to Cucina for lunch but didn't really leave my apartment otherwise. Watched tv. Hugged a lot. We hadn't seen each other in four months; the longest we've ever gone. We're neither of us so reconciled to this change, but we're working on it. What can ya do?
P/M coming by tonight to watch Star Trek; I should get off my ass and take a shower, maybe make some dessert. I had these plans to make apple crisp, but never quite got around to it. It sounds pretty good now, though.
Talk to you later...
Kevin was sick, and so I caught his illness on top of my lingering one. That's my theory, anyway, and my excuse for being a lazy slob the last several days. I did do some work on...Friday, was it? Some day last week. But most of yesterday I spent reading Prophecy and napping. Enterprise was pretty good, though. The whiny Translator chick was particularly whiny, but at least she was aware of it, and there appears to be hope that she'll be less whiny in the future.
This morning I've been catching up on commenting on student poems; about ten more to go and I'll be all caught up. Yay! I'm behind in lots of things at the moment -- luckily, just a little behind in lots of things, which I think is better than being lots behind in one. It gives me more opportunities to feel satisfied as I finish the tasks and check them off my list, anyway. A whole bunch of story critiques to do this afternoon, along with some theory reading, and a brief analysis of what's going on in a rather disturbing incest memoir, The Kiss. I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to write about, but I'll call Jenn and she'll tell me. :-) I like having smart friends.
I did get some rather annoying e-mail this morning; a note from a conference person (this pop culture conference in Rhode Island) saying that they'd lost my abstract for months, which was why they hadn't gotten back to me, but that they would like me to present, if I can make it out there in three weeks. Argh. I can't, as it turns out. Very irritating. I mean, vaguely gratifying that they did accept my abstract, but mostly irritating.
On the plus side, Marcy is going to take the revised version of "Wild Roses" for Ripe Fruit. I do think I like the original better personally -- it reads a little cleaner, and I think it's the version that I'll put on this site after the story's in print. But I don't *dislike* the version she'll be taking, so that's okay. I'll just put a note on the story on-site saying, "A version of this appeared...etc." That seems very literary, doesn't it? :-)
Okie, back to work. Go read Strange Horizons, munchkins. This week, we have a fabulous article by Bryan Clair, on steganography. Just listen to the first paragraph: "This may seem to be an ordinary beginning to an ordinary article. It is not. There's a secret message hidden here, in this very paragraph. It's not in view, and its source is modern. But the art of hiding messages is an ancient one, known as steganography." Hee hee. How cool is that? Were you one of those kids who liked to try to figure out the secret codes in pirate stories? I was! Did you know that the Elvish stuff in The Hobbit is a simple substitution cipher? Lisette and I used to send messages back and forth in Elvish in high school -- how geeky is that? I love this stuff...Bryan always does such cool articles for us.
We also have a great witch story by Sarah Prineas, "Water, Green River, Daybreak", a "Gothic Romance" poem by Dave Whippman, and a review of Steve Brust's Issola, the ninth Vlad Taltos book. (I really liked the first few I read in this series but somehow never went back to finish them; I really ought to. He's a good writer.) Oh, and there's a new music gallery, on The National Space Society CD -- music to inspire future star-geeks. :-)
Kevin: "Given the number of geeks online, I'm sure you've already received a ton of e-mail about this, but Tolkien's elvish is definitely not just a cypher. He was quite a linguist, and seems to have gone to some trouble to invent a real language (which, if I remember right, seems to most closely resemble Finnish). Anyway, looking quickly at google turns up: http://www.elvish.org which has many more details."
Jed: "I'm sure many other geeks will have written you to say this, but I think what you had in mind wasn't so much Elvish as Dwarvish....Only it turns out I'm wrong. A bunch of people on the Web note that the pretty Elvish script is Tengwar, and the runes (used for engraving) are Cirth, but both are Elvish; the Dwarves apparently never developed writing of their own, and just adopted the Elvish Cirth. In real life, the Cirth are loosely based on Anglo-Saxon "futharc" runes (see http://www.sil.org/computing/fonts/Lang/Runic.html for some fonts) and other related runes (perhaps Viking?)."
And I just gotta say -- they're both wrong. Much as I love my geeks, they overcomplicate things sometimes. Well, they're maybe not wrong, exactly. But my essential point is that there *is* a one-to-one corespondence between English and the runes on Thror's Map (in The Hobbit), and Lisette and I figured that out in high school and wrote messages to each other back and forth in the runes, and my 50th anniversary edition of the book actually has a page detailing this correlation:
"This is a story of long ago. At that time the languages and letters were quite different from ours of today. English is used to represent the languages...Runes were old letters originally used for cutting or scatching on wood, stone, or metal and so were thin and angular. At the time of this tale only the Dwarves made regular use of them, especially for private or secret records. Their runes are in this book represented by English runes, which are known now to few people. If the runes on Thror's Map are compared with the transcriptions into modern letters, the alphabet, adapted to modern English, can be discovered..."
So the point is that Tolkien goofed up, and they came up with a good cover story for it -- that for some reason, although the elvish and dwarfish elsewhere in the book isn't translated to English (though the common language that the hobbits speak is), the elvish/dwarfish runes *are* translated to English runes.
Oof. More than you ever wanted to know, yes? More interesting to me are the first lines of both K and J's letters, that attempt to disclaim their own geekiness by implying that they are only lesser geeks among the many that throng the net. But since they're the only two that bothered to write to me about this -- I guess we *know* just how geeky they are, yes?
I love geeks. :-)
Yesterday was sort of a hard day. I stayed up too late talking to Jed (somehow we got on a long discussion of which f/sf authors shouldn't be missed, that eventually led to my getting out of bed and going to my bookshelves...) and went short on sleep. Not a good plan on a Tuesday; I woke up around 8 and just worked straight through the day until I collapsed in my rocking chair at 10:30 p.m. I only paused for half an hour to have tea with Peter, and that was necessary crisis counselling -- I had gotten a rather nasty critique (it didn't mean to be nasty, I think, but it was very personal, and rather than criticizing the writing in that Karina piece, it spent half a page attacking gay and poly relationships...sigh...) and I wasn't doing so well. Peter was fabulous and helped me put things in perspective, as did Pam on the ride home after workshop. I'm okay about it now. This is Utah, after all.
Anyway, back to work; amazingly, I may actually try to write something today. I have a little BW work to do first; we're going to have the penultimate list meeting today, and I need to do word counts on all the stories we're considering. I should also send out rejection letters on the batch that didn't make the last cut; we're down to about 25 stories now, which means I have about ten letters to send. The not-fun part of the job. At least I can tell all these authors that they did write really good stories...that's something, no?
I'm going to California tomorrow; I'm leaving after classes and will be gone 'til Monday. Will probably be able to update, but it might be a little quiet. Just wanted to warn y'all.
Have a good day, munchkins. Wish me luck with the piece I'm writing!
Like, I actually can't figure out if Jed is Gryffindor or Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff; I can see arguments for all three. Kevin is almost certainly Ravenclaw, as is David...I think? Roshani is probably Gryffindor...although she might actually be Slytherin, now that I think of it -- it's not that she's not a nice person, but she does have a little ruthless streak in her (as does my middle sister). Kirsten is either Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff, I think. Lisette is Gryffindor; there's a reason we were friends in high school. :-) Anyway, much goofiness. Fun.
In other news, I recently received copies of two new anthologies that have
stories of mine; that's always exciting. Erotic Travel Tales
is even prettier than the scan suggests; it's sort of a muted cover, very
classy in a titillating sort of way. :-) Actually, now that I look at
my copy, it's similar, but actually a different cover; the woman's legs
are tilted together in my cover, odd. The Mammoth book is just huge; I
haven't been in one of these collections before, and I'm sort of glad they
only gave me one copy, since it takes up a bunch of shelf space. Both
stories are reprints; the travel book has "Season of Marriage" (I can't
believe how many places that story has appeared now :-), and the Mammoth
book has "The Survey". I wrote that story years ago, but I somehow only
got around to sending it out recently. Glad I did, though -- it's fun
collecting erotica anthologies like this. :-)
I'm really getting a little anxious about Herotica 7; it's all done, just waiting to go to the printer. I wanna see it. I wanna, I wanna. :-) I had expected that it would be out this year, safely a year away from the publication of BW next summer; now I'm afraid that they'll come out close together, and all of you lovely readers who might have bought both will decide you can only afford one. You wouldn't decide that, would you? No, of course not...
I have about an hour and a half this morning; I think that's plenty of time to pay bills, do dishes, pack and get ready for school. I'm not sure how to work the timing of this afternoon; my flight's at 6:50, I finish on campus at 3:45. I think I can just come home on my own, have the cab get me around 4:30, and go -- it's about a half hour to the airport during traffic time. But what if traffic is really bad? What if the lines are insanely long? I think I'm going to be paranoid and have them get me on campus at 3:45; we can swing by my apartment, pick up my bag, and then hopefully be at the airport by 4:30. A little paranoia never hurt anyone, right? Right?
I got to the airport ridiculously early; no worries, though. Just sat and read a very very fluffy Tanya Huff novel, whose name I can't remember. The fluffiest thing I've ever read by her. Fun, but -- she can do better. Still, it was nice reading; I found a little corner of carpet, right next to the window, shaded by a big plant. People gave me funny looks on occasion, but in a kind of charmed way. I guess when everyone's feeling a little stressed about flying and such, it might be reassuring and amusing to see that geeky girls continue to be geeky girls despite it all.
It pretty much felt like any normal flight except that they checked my ID three times before I got on the plane; they made me take my laptop out of my bag at security; they needed my itinerary at the security checkpoint (I had an electronic ticket -- good thing Kev warned me about that), and there were armed guards in camouflage with big old machine guns on their backs in the hallways. That last one made me feel distinctly less safe. I asked one of them if I could take a picture, but he said no.
I did do some work on the computer while waiting; I put on my headphones, listened to Enya's Watermark, which felt particularly appropriate for such a grey and rainy day, and revised the Strange Horizons internal FAQ. I realized recently that we really did need some sort of internal history and set of answers to questions for our new staff (we hired several recently, including fellow journaller Samantha Ling), so I wasn't just repeating myself all the time (and they weren't just wandering around in a bemused fog). It's pretty much done at this point; I just need to put it on the web so it'll be easier for them to access. Satisfying. Little history of the magazine, etc. We'll be doing a briefer external version too, I think, once this is up. After that, I went back to reading.
The little lakes are really rather pretty, as you're climbing up into the
sky. Sorry the photo's a bit blurry -- not sure if that can be avoided
when shooting through a moving airplane window. :-)
Jed met me in San Jose, and we went for Indian food at Pasand, then back to his place. Pleasant evening. Friday, he stayed home and worked there; I can't remember quite what I did -- possibly caught up on backlogged e-mail. Read some comic books, goofed off. I needed to. That evening, we drove up to the South Bay and met an old friend of his, Jessica. I have to admit, I was a little nervous -- usually, I'm pretty good with meeting new people, but Jed had had a certain fondness for this one, back in his college days, and....I dunno. I guess I just wanted her to like me. :-) We had Ethiopian food at Cafe Colucci -- yum yum. Their doro tibs were particularly good. Some tasty tej (they make it themselves, and it's nicely spiced) and good conversation. I liked her, and I think she liked me. She reminds me a little of another of Jed's friends, but Jed can't see the resemblance, so perhaps it's just me.
They dropped me at David's, and I think I pretty much collapsed. Tired munchkin. Saturday, I went up to Berkeley. I was supposed to meet Karen at Au Coquelet, but we crossed wires somehow and didn't meet up. Still, I had a nice time there, drinking their (good) chai, and reading essays from The Business of Memory, a very interesting book, and one I recommend to anyone interested in writing nonfiction, especially memoir. Then a stop by Other Change of Hobbit, where I picked up the next Michelle West massive tome, and the sequel to Diana Wynne Jones's Dark Lord of Derkholm, which is just a silly book. Also picked up LeGuin's The Telling, not realizing until I got to Cafe Elodie and settled down to read it that this was the one I'd just read. Sigh. I had gotten it confused with Tales of Earthsea somehow. I read the Michelle West instead, for many hours, with a grilled panini sandwich, and then later with chocolate cake. I did stop to write several pages of a nonfiction piece I'm handing in to class today, "History Lesson", a combination of memory and ethnographic history, which drew heavily on the research I did last spring.
Around four, back to Au Coquelet, stopping to pick up flowers for M'ris, who was having a celebration of sending out a novel, Reprogramming. I want to finish a novel, dangit. She's written three! I also passed along The Telling -- I decided it was a fortuitous error on my part. :-) Dinner with the gang, back to David's where he watched baseball and I read more West. Mmm...
Finished the West in the morning, wrote a few more pages. Tea with Tim and Heather, then Karen stopped by very briefly to give me my Christmas/birthday/etc. present. I was blown away -- look what she made me:
A quilt. A fabulous, jewel-toned quilt with velvets and silks and
dragons. It is so very very lovely. I am astonished.
Dwell on the quilt a moment, please. Then continue.
David dropped me down at Jed's; we hung out, ate leftover Ethiopian (yum), watched a Whoopi Goldberg comedy, talked. So nice. In the morning, he took me to the airport, and I diligently wrote several more pages over chai before getting in the very long security checkpoint line. Then I read the Jones book all the way home -- delightful.
I feel better -- smiling and rested and happy. It was nice to go away, and nice to be back too. :-)
David tells me that the guns were probably submachine guns or automatic rifles. I dunno -- they were big and scary and in the hands of kids at least a decade younger than me, as far as I can tell. Sigh. I don't know that I'd trust myself with a gun that big, much less somebody else...
I really stopped by to give y'all a list -- we've finally made the final decisions on the new book -- which also has a new title, Wet: More Aqua Erotica. I hope to get more excited by the title by next summer when I'll be doing promotions. I *am* excited by many of the stories in the book (not quite all, but that's to be expected when four editors are involved, eh?). Here's the final line-up, in no particular order:
I am chugging along merrily on Wet -- as I told you last night, the final list is set, and I've sent out almost all the notices. There are a few rejections lingering, but they're phone or snail mail things. I think all the e-mail ones are done. I hope. Some day I want to edit a really fat book, so I can send lots of acceptances! :-) Jed gets to send something like 52 acceptances a year...of course, he also sends far more rejections than I do, so I guess it's fair.
It's really nice having one of Jed's stories in the book, especially since it came in at the last minute. He had submitted a story for the first book that made it all the way to the final cut -- and then got cut. :-( Then he submitted a story for this book, that also made it all the way to the final cut, and then got cut, only for its resemblance to another story we were taking. I thought I was doomed to never buy one of his stories (very sad, as I *like* his stories) -- but then in the last week before decisions were made, he managed to turn around, research, and write an entirely new story, which the New York people loved. Yay, Jed! I know he thinks he should have done it even earlier, but my definition of professionalism involves doing things *on time*, not necessarily early. :-) Although I'll grant you, you don't want to do it in the nick of time, every time. You start to develop a reputation...
When I'm feeling a little better, I need to get up off my butt and go to the grocery store and then come home and make cookies. Cookies! They're for a graduate conference committee meeting tonight; we're going to be telling the new moderators and volunteers what they'll be doing, and volunteers need to be fed. It's the first rule. I volunteered to make cookies (since I'm on the food committee), and I'm planning on: white chocolate/cranberry cookies, chewy chocolate-coconut cookies, and simple lemon sugar cookies. Mmmm... It's sort of a gray day so far; perfect for baking. If I have time, I may make raspberry jam bars too.
Of course, I do also have some other work to do today -- a few essays to read, some research on dinner options for the conference, a meeting with a caterer to taste the food. It's a very food-ish day today, in various ways. I can live with that.
There's one more exciting thing happening today, but I'm going to wait until it actually happens before I tell you about it. Stay tuned... :-)
11:45 -- Strange Horizon is now downloadable -- woohoo! Check us out at Fictionwise...
:-) :-) :-)
I've actually been a busy little bee this morning; it's only 9:20, but I managed to take that little SH internal faq thingie and make it into pretty web pages -- it's much more usable now than it was as a text file. I like functionality, I do.
Plans for today -- I might actually make some SH t-shirts and mugs. No, really. I realize I've been saying that for at least months now, and possibly years -- well, maybe one year. But my to-do list has gotten very short. The only other thing on it is doing _Wet_ line edits, and while I'll grant you that that's a big task, it's also not one I'm going to try to do all of today. If I do three stories today, three tomorrow, three Sunday, and three Monday, I'll be all done. That's not so painful, right? Though somehow it never seems to work out that way.
I also need to go by Cucina and look at some menus; I'm in charge of organizing a little dinner for the conference next weekend. Maybe they'll have samples for me to taste. Yumyum. :-)
I have some plans for cooking today too; a little mellowness over a fire will be good after all the crazy activity of the last week -- final selections on the book! downloadable Strange Horizons! Eek! I'm thinking of doing a lovely gumbo, from Epicurious. I actually bought some crab, which I love muchly but have never learned how to cook. I've been intimidated by it, for some strange reason -- but no more! Today, I will defeat the crab...it will not defeat me! How's that for a battle cry?
I know, pretty sad. Maybe I just better go back to editing.
But look, I did a backup! Yay, me!
(this entry has been brought to you by the exclamation point :-)
I've been having a rather erratic afternoon and evening -- computer work punctuated by reading a memoir and tv-watching, most recently The Birdcage, with the fabulous Robin Williams. I'm very fond of that man. He's probably not lacking for women willing to have his baby, huh? Gosh, it'd be interesting, having a kid that funny... Anyway, it's been a much-needed antidote to the book I'm reading, The Refuge, a story that switches between the narrator watching a bird refuge being drowned as the Great Salt Lake rises, and the same narrator watching her mother dying of cancer. Oof. Also a little hard to take for all the Mormon elements; I mean, they're interesting, but I have to admit that I find some aspects of the culture a little...creepy, I guess. Young women having many babies, for example. Infinite diversity in infinite combinations. I sometimes start to understand where Spock was really coming from. It's sometimes more of a prayer than a philosophy; a reminder to the self, and a hope for some help in enduring the bewildering otherness of...well, of others.
I'm not making so much sense, am I? That's okay -- I'm pretty sure I made sense yesterday, and possibly the day before.
This morning was interesting; I went to a workshop on academic publishing. Mostly not relevant to me -- the focus was on publishing your dissertation as a book (which you ideally do in the humanities before you come up for tenure review, at the start of your seventh-year in a tenure-track position). My dissertation will be a creative work, this set of linked short stories, probably, and I'm certainly not planning on waiting six years after doctorate to publish the darned thing. Not sure I'm going to wait until doctorate. Heck, in my long-range plans, I have the rough draft finished by the end of this summer. Are you laughing at me? I can hear you laughing...
What *was* interesting about the workshop was a) hearing what the university press world was like, and b) realizing that the essay I wrote last week, the mix of Sri Lankan history and personal memoir, could in theory be expanded into a slim book, possibly the book I work on after the short stories. That wasn't the plan. Are books supposed to just appear out of nowhere and bop you on the head like this? It's a little dizzying.
M'ris, you have more experience with books than I do -- is this how your books started? My first one, that was sort of accidental. And the one I'm working on now...well, it crept up on me, a gradual accretion of short stories that all seemed to be talking to each other when I wasn't looking. I can live with that -- I'm not sure I can handle the shock of a short essay suddenly blossoming into a book.
Well, it's just an idea. I'm not sure anyone would read it. I don't know that I have enough memoir to balance all the history that would end up in it. I'm not sure it'd be a worthwhile book. And maybe I need to be a lot older to write it properly, and need to spend a lot more time in Sri Lanka. Though I could theoretically address that last objection by just going there. Anyway, it's a thought. If I hadn't dragged myself out of bed early to be virtuous and go to this workshop, I might not have had it. Instant karma, huh?
While walking in to the workshop yesterday, I collected some leaves. I'm planning to collect more in the next few weeks, beautiful leaves to press, ready for whatever artsy project takes my fancy. I have lots of rose petals, in many colors, but I wish I'd collected more of other kinds of flowers this summer; pansies would be nice, for example, and I even had some growing -- just didn't think of it. Oh well; next year, I guess. No rush.
This is a set of poem coasters I just finished making; it's a belated
birthday present for my little sister. I'm pretty happy with how they
came out; hope she likes them. It's her favorite of my poems,
"Fringes". Not
the most sophisticated of poems, but it has a certain charm, and expresses
pretty well a particular kind of sense I have sometimes, about my life,
and the path it's taking. I like the poem...and I like better that she
likes it. She's turning into such a wonderful adult; it's so interesting,
watching both my sisters turn into beautiful, strong, kind people. My
parents and I don't always get along, but I have to give them credit for
some pretty decent parenting in some respects...we all turned out fairly
sane, and, I think, happy. I think that's not so easy, to give that to
your kids. Not as easy as we might wish it were, or feel it ought to
be...
A mellow work day planned; so far, I've finished my three line edits for the day (!), and read a little bit of Refuge. I ought to finish the book this afternoon, and then perhaps I can read something more cheerful this evening. I have such a huge stack of books waiting; I think I need to impose a moratorium on book buying until I've whittled down the stack. But it's tough, when such yummy books keep coming out...
I also have the first set of stories from my undergrads to read through and mark up. I'm not grading them; I didn't grade the poems either, and am slightly dreading the end of the semester, when I'll have to give them all final grades on their creative writing. I suspect a goodly component of the grade will be based on their effort and participation, and some more on progress over the course of the semester -- I'll honestly be happy if I feel that I can base the whole grade on that, because it makes me intensely uncomfortable to actually grade a beginning writing class. By what standard do you judge their work? There's such a wide range of writing competence in the class...and none of them do everything well, but some of them do at least one thing beautifully. We'll see; maybe I'll have a better sense of how to work this by the end of the semester.
Other than that, I'm just going to do more dishes (I have quite a painful stack, filling all the surfaces in my kitchen -- not sure how that happened), and then make a curry this evening. I might call up one of my classmates, Peter, and ask if he wants to stop by for tea or some such; I like him and would like to get to know him better, but there never seems to be time during the week. We're all so crazy...but gods, it's fun. Have I mentioned that I love grad school? Right place, right time...if only all of life felt like this.
I still miss Kevin.
Noon. A bit from the book I'm reading; she quotes an Indian philosopher, Samkhya:
If you consciously hold within yourself three quarters of your power and use only one quarter to respond to any communication coming from others, you can stop the automatic, immediate and thoughtless movement outwards, which leaves you with a feeling of emptiness, of having been consumed by life. This stopping of the movement outwards is not self-defense, but rather an effort to have the response come from within, from the deepest part of one's being.
That's for you, Jedediah. And for me, I suspect.
It's a nice counter to the sad little rejection I received from Asimov's, for "Savariian and the Aliens". Gardner said some nice things about my writing, but the story didn't work for him. This is actually not as bad as it sounds, as I'm pretty sure I want to do some drastic revisions on it before I send it out again. I think it may actually be three stories -- eep. Not likely to get to it anytime soon, I'm afraid.
In other news, the Australian woman whom I was supposed to host for the conference isn't going to be able to make it. I'm a little disappointed; it would have been interesting, I think. But on the whole, I think I'm more relieved not to have a houseguest to feed and chauffeur around this weekend. Would have been okay, but I think there'll be enough stuff to think about that I'll be happy not to have to spend the extra energy. Everyone's gearing up for the conference; I'm still finalizing catering decisions with Cucina (we're renting the place from them Friday night for dinner with the speakers, which I think will be just lovely), but the rest of the food planning is set, I think. Fingers crossed.
I didn't actually read any of my students' stories yesterday; I re-read Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire instead, first curled up in my papasan, then in a nice hot bath, then in bed, under my lovely Karen-quilt. I've been feeling oddly stressed lately; a little panicky and weepy, for no reason that I can figure out. Aside from missing Kev, everything in my life is actually going really well; finances are slowly coming under control, I'm on schedule academically, even the writing isn't doing too bad. I've actually been working out; despite a lingering cough, I generally feel more fit than I have in a long time, and I've been taking my meds regularly. So why the stress? Most confusing. Anyway, I spent yesterday afternoon and evening just goofing off, which seemed to help a little. I did wake up stressed again this morning, but so far, I've managed to subsume it in work. Work good. :-)
I should get back to it too, so my students don't rise up against me tomorrow. I'll talk to y'all later; have a good week, my dears.
Oh -- and go read Strange Horizons! Very strong week, with an article on medieval clothing from the fabulous Rachel Hartman, a review from the very sharp Greg Beatty, a funny little Halloween poem, and a very interesting story from Justine Larbalestier, "The Cruel Brother". I'm very curious to see if we get any flak for publishing this story; it could be controversial. Let me know what you think of it...
Hmm...I thought I could do a coherent entry, but I keep yawning. Maybe not. Had workshop today; history piece got...well, not exactly trashed. They liked lots of it -- just not any of the history. Sigh...
S'okay. But this creative nonfiction stuff is harder than I thought! I'll be glad to get back to fiction in the spring.
Also worked on W (can I use that abbreviation for Wet? Y'all will remember what I mean, no? I still think of it as Bodies of Water in my head) -- we're down to two authors' line edits left, and then I just have to draft an intro (eep!) and send it all off to the copyeditor next week. I can't quite believe it's almost done. They'll send me a check and everything...
And now I really ought to stop procrasting and read/comment on student stories. Yes, I should have finished them Monday. I really have to finish them today, or the students will be justified in their revolution. I'll deserve to be the first one up against the wall... I don't know why it's so easy to put off grading. It's the most procrastinatingest thing in my life -- and yet, I don't really mind doing it. I even kind of enjoy it. But boy, I'd rather go do dishes right now, or even mop the kitchen floor. Very strange.
One very nice piece of news before I go. You remember that I told you about this charming book I was reading, Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder, by Lawrence Weschler, about the Museum of Jurassic Technology, which is more of a meta-commentary about museums than it is an actual museum? I think I told you about it anyway. Wonderful book; much fun and terrific illustrations. Well, the MacArthur genius grants were announced today, and Mr. Wilson got one for the museum! How cool is that? Now I want to go back down to L.A. and visit the place before all the money turns it into something different (which I'm sure would be equally exciting, but not the same, y'know?). If you're in L.A., then just go!
It's kind of a cute story, though. Kids' story, fun to write. Vaguely Aiken-ish. I think I could write silly descriptions of houses for hours...
...They all lived together in a great big house. It was so big, that you
might as well call it a castle, though it wasn't made of stone. It was
made of good strong wood, and had nine stories. Each story had nine
windows, and there were nine steps leading up to the next story. On the
first story were the nine bedrooms (so that in the case of an emergency,
they could get the babies out quickly), and each bedroom had its own
window looking out into the wide wide world. On the second story, there
was a kitchen, with a great big dining table with nine sides (a nonagonal
table, as they say), and many many chairs, some soft, some hard, and all
of them just right for the person sitting in them. On the third story,
there were nine bathrooms -- some of the cousins thought it would have
made life easier if there were a bathroom on every floor, but the house
was built the way it was built, and there wasn't a thing they could do
about it now. They were nice bathrooms, though -- each one a different
shade of greeny-blue, with mermaid mosaics on the bottoms of the tubs, and
fluffy white clouds painted on the ceilings.
On the fourth story, there were nine offices, for when the older
cousins felt like getting some work done. On the fifth story, there were
nine craft rooms, one each for: spinning, weaving, sewing, knitting,
carpentry, leatherwork, glass-blowing, candle-making, and
fun-things-you-can-do-with-glitter. The middle cousins were especially
fond of these rooms. On the sixth story (safely away from the offices)
was the playroom, with nine carpeted pits, each full of wonderful things:
balloons, building blocks, balls, bubbles -- there were quite a few things
that started with the letter 'b', though none of the cousins were sure
why. On the seventh and eighth floors was the library, with ninety-nine
shelves holding at least nine thousand books. And on the ninth floor, the
very top floor -- there was a garden...
Anyway. I need to do some prep for classes today, and then go finish grading. Longish day today; classes 'til 4:30, then come home for dinner and then go back to campus for a reading; we're having a rapid-fire scary reading. I need to write something. I'll worry about that later. All the things which actually scare me do not seem like fit subjects for scary/funny poems. A little irritating. Ah well...
The conference was entitled "Expanding the Interdisciplinary Conversation", and was a joint humanities graduate conference. There were ten of us on the conference committee -- five or so from English (because it started in our department, and we're the largest of the humanities departments on campus) and a few from Communication, and one each from History, Philosophy, and Languages/Lit. No one from Linguistics this time around -- maybe next time. We had about a hundred people attending (possibly more, since there were seventy or so people at each keynote speech, and I'm not sure how much overlap there was), with a couple from Canada, and one from Australia! An international conference... (Karina, the Australian girl was from Melbourne, from Monash University. :-) She was here studying sexuality and gender in the LDS church...) Also people from Colorado, Maryland, Ohio, and elsewhere. Some of our long-distance people sadly cancelled due to fear-of-flying, but I suppose that was to be expected. A couple of academic conferences have had to just cancel recently because so many people were afraid to fly. I don't really understand it, but what can you do? Humans are irrational, and I certainly have my own neuroses.
The only real problem with it all is that for the last several days I've not gotten enough sleep, and I'm now moderately ill again. Very weak, sore throat, wobbly muscles, etc. Nuisance. I'm taking today off, doing no work whatsoever. But that really just means academic work; I can't stand how messy my place has gotten, so I've been doing small housekeeping tasks. The dining room, living room, bathroom, and sunroom are now back to civilized states. The bedroom shouldn't be too bad, but my kitchen -- oh, I'm scared of my kitchen. Massively overflowing trash, and gross stuff growing in my sink. Ick, yuck.
I may go back to reading again. The sunroom is such a pleasant place to read in; I have one of those viney green office plants that just grew enormously over the summer, so it had a big puddle of vines and leaves reaching down to the floor. I bought little hooks a few days ago, and have now got it trailed up along the ceiling and down the walls and bookshelf. I moved my papasan chair around so it's now facing the windows and books and plants, so the sunroom is more of a divided space; half a work-space, half a pleasant reading nook. Lovely. I sat there for hours this morning, finishing the last of the Michelle West big fantasy novels (quite good!) and drinking some new Stash tea. I had gotten David some of the Exotica line for Christmas a year or two ago, and when I tried them at his place, I really liked them. So I just ordered some Exotica Reserve and some Assam Breakfast -- only a little pricey, and oh, so tasty. :-) Shmuel, you might like the Reserve; it's a tasty blend of stalwart teas. I find that I really prefer the hearty teas -- even a Darjeeling is a little delicate for me, ditto Earl Grey, and as for all those frail little green teas -- well, maybe with sushi. Otherwise, give me a nice cuppa strong tea with milk and sugar, the way tea was meant to be drunk. I knew the Brits were good for something...
Hmm...I seem to have developed the hiccups while writing this entry. I think M'ris may be contagious, though mine don't seem as brutal as hers. Usually I can get rid of 'em by just sipping a big glass of water, as continuously as possible -- I think it changes my breathing patterns enough to interrupt the hiccups? Anyway, I'm going to go try it now, since this is annoying and is starting to make my stomach muscles (such as they are) hurt. I'll leave you with this fabulous little tree; I was walking to the conference to set up breakfast (they put me in charge of food -- clever people :-), and even though I was late, I just had to stop and take a couple photos of this tree, its leaves gone -- just bare branches and tiny crab-apples, reaching to the sky.
I got a charming e-mail this morning from the director of graduate studies
in my department -- it went out to the whole department, and among other
lovely things it said, "Those of you who attended last weekend's inaugural
Humanities Graduate Conference won't need to be told how impressively
well-organized and successful it was....the entire event should be a
source of pride to the department, the college and the University of Utah
as a whole."
Yay us! :-)
I'm still taking in the fact that it's over, it's really over. By the day of, there were so many tiny details coming together; it's a little astonishing to me that it all worked. Jenn was the one holding all the pieces together, and she just did an amazing job. She sounded rather frayed by the end, but didn't fall apart. I'm so impressed. I'm not sure I would have done so well, creating a conference from scratch, dealing with all sorts of people and their concerns, with tact and consideration. Although everyone pitching in helped, of course. Her fiance, David, (also in the program) was great on the day of, running all kinds of little errands and being one of the general fixers. I love this photo of him struggling with the recalcitrant patio table umbrellas...
Brenda and I spent a while trying to get those open, looking for a hidden
latch, etc., until we finally decided it was just a matter of brute force
-- and force neither of us possessed. David and his manly muscles came
through for us, though. :-)
I should get back to work; today's a day for paper & intro-writing, and I can't really afford to slack off on it. Also a few student things to comment on, but not so much. If I work steadily all day, I should be fine for tomorrow. I have to spend a little time thinking about the class I'm teaching tomorrow -- we're doing structure this week, and I'm not quite sure what's an appropriate amount to give an intro-level class. Flashbacks, certainly, but what else? That's the question... gods, I love my job. I can't believe they pay me to think about this!
2:15. Well, it took a little longer to get to it than I expected -- I had quite a stack of e-mail piled up. But I've finished the first draft intro of W, and sent it out for comments to the Melcher editors and the readers' list. Feel free to hack at it, please -- it's very rough, and I'm afraid a little depressing/scary as it stands. I know it needs lots of work. Still, it's nice to have a draft done; that's sort of comforting.
I'd like to just dive right in and do my American Studies paper (a relatively straightforward reading of filial duty in Charlotte Temple), but I think I should give my arms a break, since I've been at the computer all day so far. I'll do some dishes and mop the kitchen floor, maybe work out a little. That should serve for a nice break from the computer.
And if you're looking for a nice break from your Monday work, stop by SH! We have an Author Focus issue this week, with the focus on the delightful Joan Aiken. If you've only read her famous Willoughby Chase novels, then you're in for a treat, becuase we have a great short piece of hers, "The Rented Swan", along with two poems, an interview and two reviews (one by my own Jedediah, who is a big fan of her short fiction). If you haven't read anything of hers...well, you should. Right now. She's just a terrific writer, and I've loved her novels since I was a little kid. I was always very impressed by the way she mixed politics in with kids' stories; only Lloyd Alexander did it so well, with his Westmark trilogy. Great stuff! Kudos to Susan for putting this issue together!
10:40 p.m. Long working day. I'm going to be underprepared for class tomorrow; I suppose it was to be expected. Still haven't written my paper either, although I have high hopes that if I write an intro tonight, I should be able to whip through the rest tomorrow morning before going in (it's only 4-5 pgs, ds, which is hardly anything)... In the meantime, I'm trying to get at least enough of the reading done as will keep me from being utterly lost tomorrow. I am presently being seduced by Emerson, and thought I would give you a taste:
"Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end, which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book, than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul." -- from The American Scholar, an address given at Cambridge
I had him in college, over a decade ago; it's rather delightful returning to him again, after all these years...
Oh...one more. Then I'll stop, I promise -- from the same essay:
"The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances. He plies the slow, unhonored, and unpaid task of observation....In the long period of his preparation, he must betray often an ignorance and shiftlessness in popular arts, incurring the disdain of the able who shoulder him aside. Long he must stammer in his speech; often forego the living for the dead. Worse yet, he must accept, -- how often! poverty and solitude. For the ease and pleasure of treading the old road, accepting the fashions, the education, the religion of society, he takes the cross of making his own, and, of course, the self-accusation, the faint heart, the frequent uncertainty and loss of time, which are the nettles and tangling vines in the way of the self-relying and self-directed; and the state of virtual hostility in which he seems to stand to society, and especially to educated society. For all this loss and scorn, what offset? He is to find consolation in exercising the highest functions of human nature. He is one, who raises himself from private considerations, and breathes and lives on public and illustrious thoughts. He is the world's eye. He is the world's heart. He is to resist the vulgar prosperity that retrogrades ever to barbarism, by preserving and communicating heroic sentiments, noble biographies, melodious verse, and the conclusions of history. Whatsoever oracles the human heart, in all emergencies, in all solemn hours, has uttered as its commentary on the world of actions, -- these he shall receive and impart..."
I'm not really a scholar, not in this sense. I dabble in scholarship, but my real desires are elsewhere, in creating and building my own fabulous worlds. But I know a few true scholars, and I admire them -- even if they also sometimes drive me a bit mad. And like Harriet Vane at Oxford, I do occasionally feel a strange yearning for that directed life...
"If only one could come back to this quiet place, where only intellectual achievement counted; if one could work here steadily and obscurely at some close-knit piece of reasoning, undistracted and uncorrupted by agents, contracts, publishers, blurb-writers, interviewers, fan-mail, autograph-hunters, notoriety-hunters, and competitors; abolishing personal contacts, personal spites, personal jealousies; getting one's teeth into something dull and durable; maturing into solidity like the Shrewsbury beeches..." -- Gaudy Night, Dorothy L. Sayers
Luckily for Emerson, that is not to be -- I did manage to finish my paper intro last night (around 1 a.m.?), but now have several more pages to write, in theory, in the next 2.5 hrs. Heh. We'll see what happens -- I'm not going to stress too much if I run over time; I may just show up late to class.
But whether or not the paper is completed, something else is -- I just sent off the final manuscript of Wet, revised, proofed, and with only one author bio missing. There *is* one story that we may work on a bit further...but we might not, and if not, then it just goes directly to the copyeditor now, so that galleys may be produced. Ah, galleys. How I do love thee...
How long ago did I start this project? I can't quite believe that it's done; it's out of my hands and in someone else's -- there's be no more major changes. It's just fine-tuning at this point. I'm exhausted; I don't know how people write a book a year, because just editing one has pretty much done me in. I think I'm going to have to limit my editing to no more than every other year, and possibly less frequently than that...I hardly did any writing this summer, and in theory, I could have done lots. Although heartbreak may have intervened in any case, editing or no.
We're more than halfway through the semester, and I'm starting to look forward to the end of it. A month and a half to go -- and then it'll be break, and then it'll be spring, and spring semester should be very nice this year. I *think* I only have to take two classes, a workshop and a lit. class. No teaching, due to my fellowship. Which means in theory, lots of time to write -- that was why they gave me the fellowship, after all. Am I being overly ambitious, to think that I'll have my book drafted by the end of the summer. Maybe...but one needs goals, right? I'm all about goals, these days. When did I become so amazingly achievement-oriented? I remember all those high school credit cards: Does Not Live Up to Her Full Potential. Over and over and over again. I wonder if those teachers would think I was doing so now, or if they would think I still had a ways to go.
Heh. If they could see me procrastinating like this, they would mock me severely. Off to my paper I go!
8:15. 2.5 pages down, 2 to go. Not bad. This is a very straightforward little paper, to the point that I admit a bit of resentment for needing to bother. I've written papers for this professor already; he knows that I can competently trace out the course of such a simple question as he's asked us. On the other hand, it's not bad practice, and really, not so much effort that I should bother being annoyed. It's even kind of fun -- my biggest difficulty is restraining myself from falling into the kind of archaic phrasing that the text uses; I did that with my Franklin paper, and he called me on it. It's very hard to resist, though. How can you not love language like this: "I cannot suppose any thing but attachment to the daughter could carry you such imprudent lengths for the father..." Isn't that charming? It makes me want to write in calm convolutions. "I cannot suppose any thing" -- oh, that's good.
There was a bit in the Emerson I was reading last night where he stuck another word in the midst of 'whatsoever' -- i.e., "what difficulty soever" or "what pleasure soever" -- I didn't know you could do that! I miss words like whatsoever. And thus. I use thus, but not so much as I would like to. And what about thusly? It's a poor, impoverished language we are left to fumble with, is what it is...
4:15. The good news is that Fictionwise now has the September issue of SH up! Go get it! Collect the whole set!
I did also finish my paper and all the reading I needed to do for today, as well as class prep -- I ended up teaching them a rather eclectic mix: flashbacks and other non-sequential narratives, framing devices / voiceovers, unreliable narrators, metafiction. Probably enough to hold them for a bit.
The bad news is that I'm utterly exhausted, coughed my way through my last class, and just cannot face going back to school tonight. I'm going to skip workshop, curl up in my rocking chair with my afghan, eat soup, and watch tv. So there.
So, Halloween today; I'm fond of this holiday. It's one of the lowest-stress holidays, with no family or romantic expectations. It's a holiday that invites you to be goofy. I think I'm going to be Grania O'Malley, the pirate queen. Aarghhh! Of course, I can't do an Irish accent to save my life, so I'll actually be a girl in a bunch of skirts, wearing a dagger, and vaguely looking like she might be a pirate or a gypsy. I still have the buckled shoes that Ellie made me the last time I was a pirate (for Bucconeer), but she also loaned me fabulous striped socks -- I could probably find a similar pair if I went on a sock hunt at the mall, but I don't really think I can justify taking a couple of hours of the workday today to do that. I'll just have to manage with black knee-high socks. I'll be a very unfashionable pirate...at least I have gold hoop earrings, though they're a bit small for the purpose.
Hmmm...how else can I signal 'pirate'? I'm not skilled enough to whip up a fake hook or a treasure chest. I suppose I could do an eyepatch, but I'm not sure I want to bother... really, I'm just too lazy to do a good Halloween costume. That's what it comes down to. :-)
The plan for today: run to grocery store fairly soon, followed by a fair bit of work, then make dinner for Paul and Marcia (possibly others), followed by Star Trek and then Kate's Halloween party. Try to only get mildly toasted, as tonight's a school night...
The work for today: start putting my booklist together. That's the main task. In my third year, I'll have to take an exam on 120 books -- 40 criticism, 40 historical novels, 40 contemporary novels. The plus side is that I get to pick the books; the minus side is that I have to please all five members of my committee as to what'll end up on it. So today I'm planning to put together a very preliminary booklist; Paul recommended that I just put down all the literary fiction I've read, all the criticism, etc. That'll take a little while. He'll help me later with refining it a bit -- then I start taking it to the professors for their individual input. When I think I have a solid set, I hold a formal list meeting, with as many of the professors as I can -- that's when the list gets set in stone. Then I read and read and read. That's pretty much all you do in your third year. Fun, huh? :-) At the end of the year (or hopefully earlier; I'm actually aiming for January 2003), I get to sit in a three-hour oral exam with them on the books...and then do a 72-hr take-home written exam. Apparently some people don't sleep during the period, but I plan to. :-)
I got a nasty piece of hate mail this morning, couched in pleasant language, so that it took me a little while to realize just how hateful it was. It wandered all over the place, but among other things spent a while ranting about literary writing, and how he was glad that graduate school hadn't ruined his writing the way it had clearly ruined mine. This was the nicest part of the letter. The rest was frankly disgusting. But that's not the point -- the point is that I'm a little bewildered by all the fear that I do see among writers that classes or workshops or graduate school will ruin their writing. I guess it's possible that too much of any of the above might drown out your individual voice...and that 'too much' is a very subjective term in this respect. But it seems that the cure should be obvious, and not something that's too hard to implement -- take yourself away from it all for a while and just write. Don't show it to anyone; write to please yourself and only yourself. I think this must be tougher than it seems to me -- I feel like I'm missing something in some writers' anxiety...
Anyway, I'm going to get to work. It'll take me a while to type in the titles and authors of all my lit fic. I feel like I ought to do it in some format that'll easily convert to my Visor, so I can always have it with me. That's what David would do, and probably Jed. :-) But in practice, I know that I'd never keep it updated, so it would lose utility very very quickly.
It's raining off and on -- there's a candle burning cheerfully on my desk, and a cup of tea beside me. Indigo Girls playing on the headphones, steady work before me. I am feeling very grateful for my work these days...if this break-up with Kevin had happened while I was still doing temp secretarial drudgework, I think I'd be in much worse shape than I actually am.
11:00. Okay, so I've finished the first stage -- this is where I can use a hand. The critical and contemporary booklists aren't so tricky; I think I can manage those. What's more difficult is the historical booklist -- which really ought to be renamed the canonical booklist. It's supposed to list the canonical fiction that is a) related to your topic, and b) covers a wide historical time period. Basically, these should all be books at least one of my professors will have already read.
So, with that in mind, here are my current topics of interest: Intersection of cultures; confessional narratives; problems in truth-telling; identity formation; sexuality. They may make me narrow that down later, but we'll let it stand for the moment.
Here's the potential booklist I have so far. At the moment, I'm not trying to narrow it down -- these are just all possibilities. What am I missing? What Literary Authors should be on here? It's remarkably difficult to try to remember what books you've read! Help, please? Please note that where an author has written multiple books, I've tried to pick the one most relevant to my topics -- but it's possible that I haven't read another book of theirs that is more relevant; if so, enlighten me!