DRAG, the Series: Challenge

I have decided to leave this series of posts, intentionally, in a very draft form. This owes to the upheaval of the past month of my personal life, yes ... but it also feels fitting, as the entire point of this discussion of drag is about construction and challenging assumptions. To smooth it all into coherent, long prose might obscure the various parts, and thoughts, I have put into this, and they perhaps should stand out starkly. In honesty, much of what I say is just intros to the links embedded. And so, here is this series. Unfinished. Challenging - to me, in one sense, and to the audience in another. Seems right ...


The thing about most offputting entertainments and art forms throughout history is this: they *mean* to be offputting. To a certain audience. Ugliness, cacophany, discomfort in art are a direct challenge, always, to prevailing assumptions. And right now, for a western-centric culture out to homogenize the world, a culture which has dressed men the same for upward of 200 years, there can be little wonder that one of the most popular challenges is the industrial-scale insurgency of drag

I’m not doing drag to give you makeup tips. This has always been a political statement.
RuPaul Charles

Nancy Pelosi ... YOUTUBE CLIP OF HER FROM RDR



There is no one way to be gay ... or drag, or masculine, or feminine, or a particular age, or republican, or spiritual. More specifically: there is no wrong way to be any of these things, or any others.

I do Goth wrong. In my life, the very essence of nonconformity has been ... showing up at a tattoo convention and having a triple piercing removed. "You went to a tattoo festival and got yourself UN-maimed," my brother said, and it was a revelation to me. Or wearing sky blue and glitter lipgloss to a Type O Negative show, or putting together a 40s-vintage ensemble, but wearing forest green lipstick amongst otherwise "authentic" hair and clothing and period-perfect makeup.

We. All. Contain. Multitudes.



People have been weird since we've been people: truly, independently, fiercely weird. We have also been "people" for more than three hundred thousand years - not merely hairy little tool-users who put the dead away systematically or even ritually - but engaging in trade, and even processing pigment from stone.

Using pigment to permanently mark ourselves.

Pigment is at the heart not only of art, but of self-decoration. And even self-decoration performs double-duty - many people are aware that eyeliner dates back thousands of years, but fewer realize its practical application, in reducing visual glare in a very sunny region. The principal of dark patches on the face to improve bright-light vision survives today, quite prominently.



Our attachment to our tools and our expressions is the basis for the very concept of sin.



Fishy aesthetic versus Acid Betty, Dirt Woman, Divine (both glamorous and un-"pretty", using symbols of the former and co-opting the latter to invent something new)...

Perhaps especially during the 1970s and 1980s, punk and drag had a lot in common, and RuPaul's early days show a grungy, harder-edged New Wave image.



This post "UNDER CONSTRUCTION" and I'll publish it anyway ... this post is a challenge. Ooh, how meta.

Tools

There are times it frustrates me when people say they are atheists because of what people have done in the name of religion. PEOPLE do dunderheaded things in the name of all sorts of things, and though religion does have extreme examples, there are also extreme idiots (Richard Dawkins) screaming passionately about their atheism. He's as dangerous as any other zealot; and that is the issue: zealotry in human hands is the problem. Not G-d.

To withdraw belief in G-d because of human behavior honestly bewilders me.

It's like me and not having kids.


I never had children because I never experienced the bone-deep desire - the *urge* (so named because of its *urgency*)  to have a child.

This seems to me the very best of reasons never to have them. There have been other thoughts on the matter that have been a part of my life, but at bottom it's the simple absence of need to procreate or adopt, to be a parent, that has been ultimately responsible.

So I can see, very easily, the absence of need for G-d ... and for faith.

But many of the atheists I know once HAD faith - and lost it, because of other people. They experienced disillusionment and shame in religion, because of the jerks who espouse it (whether their own or not) and decided against G-d, because of man.

I suppose this is overwhelmingly arrogant: but this bewilders me.


Anything hideous ever done in the name of religion came about by the hands, and the tongues, of human beings.

Religion is a tool. It can be a poor tool, misused, No doubt about it. So can science and history; my blog is filled with examples of the wrongheaded invocation of history, the way we think it's some sort of plotline leading ever-onward to betterment, and how that must mean humanity now is the best humanity history has ever seen, because: history equals evolution.

Which: no.

So I ABSOLUTELY concur, that there are a hell of a lot of people out there blunting their blades, hammering with a tool meant to cut through confusion, or mistaking the philosophy and questioning of faith for final, firm truth.

But the idea that we then throw out all the tools, instead of sharpening or learning how to use them (for those interested in what those tools have wrought, or could) ...

Isn't that the very last word in Luddite behavior? "It's of no use to me and it scares me, so HULK SMASH!" ... ?



Again: yes. The tools of religion have hurt many people. So have the tools that created the thing we call culture, or advancement. Innovation requires tools.

For me, it is an innovation of the highest order to grow spiritually.

I tried to do that without tools, without a congregation, without inspiration. I ended up making up a lot of religious tools for myself. Offerings, prayers, little personal rituals.

And it got me to a point where I felt I wasn't really that good an innovator, and I needed the help of something outside my own wee and paltry brain.

I reached for religion. My church.

There I found the literally-angelic voice that perhaps inspired me most, but I also found Miss B., with whom I sat at yesterday's services. She was the first who ever welcomed me in the congregation, and she is the very, joyous definition of Christian fellowship. Not because we sit around quoting bible verses at one another. But because she saw me alone as a guest, and made me a member, as fully and as lovingly as education and confirmation and that bishop who laid hands on my head.

Religion, for me - as filled with ritual and script as my church is - is far less about dogma, and so much about communion: the communion of souls. Of just nice PEOPLE. Of congregation. Coming together, and sharing the sunshine yesterday. That is a religious act as profound as the eating of an intincted wafer.

I may still not be the craftsman, with my tools, that (oh, say) Jesus, who was a carpenter, was. But I am part of a team now, a crew, a congregation. Of people I honestly do love, though I spend little time with them of late. And appreciate and respect.

I found the phrase, "Okay, we're past the angelic robes and the beard and the penis, and we're onto something BIGGER!" one day over lunch ...

Faith and hope and growing spiritually? Yes, go big.

Why try for faith, without exultation?



What else is faith for but to bring us together as human beings, and what else, at bottom, does ANY religion foster? Even those religions we condemn as perverted - geared toward exclusion as much as inclusion - geared toward WINNING, and punishment of sin - still require one heart and mind to link to another, and another.

We're only human. We don't always do that well. We don't do it well in business or in study, in reaching goals or explaining them. It's not religion's fault.

And human behavior is human behavior - and flawed, as often as it is beautiful - in the pursuit of whatever it is we do to connect ourselves to others.

An ass in a choir robe is just as much of an ass once the robe is doffed and hymns are suddenly to blame for all that is wrong in the world. The robe didn't sin, neither (perhaps) did the hymn. They were there before disillusionment, and they'll be there after.



If I am a poor painter, I don't blame the brush; not even the paint. It lies within me to learn, or not. Perhaps it lies within me to know I'm a better writer than I am an artist.

But it's not the tools' fault, if I don't sell paintings for stunning pricetags.

Big Job, Little Job - Soft Nights and Soft Cats

Today was one of those days with The Big Job to do.  In this case, that was a fairly sophisticated and elaborately-constructed confection of Excel and PowerPoint, balancing across the chasm of (thank goodness I have these) two large monitor screens, and basically both sticking out their tongues at me, taunting me.  Unfortunately for these particular Excel and PPT data, I appear to be a reasonably quick study, and the were unable to daunt me entirely.  Four or five pithy and specific questions fell out of the job - but, considering its scope and importance (and the urgency for it - all this was before eleven a.m.), that's pretty good brevity in the unanswered-questions-about-incredibly-involved-numbers department.  Better still, I'm very definitely gaining comfort with a process and with information that, only three weeks ago, I had never seen before.

As old as I am, it appears I am still capable of learning, and it's gratifying not only to "get it" but also to know that my coming to understand these things *makes me more valuable*.

A week or so ago, in one of those hallway-chats with another admin, she said to me, "They have you working on things that are way beyond your job description."  She wasn't pooh-pooh'ing it nor complaining on my behalf, the way we kind of do with office friends, she was just expressing surprise at how much I'm taking on.

I've been part of a slow-starting project which will cross not only all of the business lines at our employer, but also includes a number of departments participating in an initiative.  Not a great deal has happened there, but it's already introduced me to folks and groups I wouldn't know (yet anyway) otherwise, and it's showing me to those people.  Never a bad thing - for me individually, nor for my boss and my group, whom I represent.

I'm also working on this sophisticated update work, which will be a regular task going forward.  Less visible, but ongoing - and so, just as valuable and in (usefully) different ways.

There have been times since leaving my last job, one of a significant majority within my career which was focused on financial services, that I've thought about the opinions Certain People might have about my move.  The industry I've come to is heavily populated with regular guys - you don't see a lot of suits, you don't hear so much self-conscious corporate-speak.  We distribute stuff.  One of the areas of greatest focus in my work now is the fleet.

It's impossible for me not to believe that some of my acquaintances see this move as being downward in a way that doesn't answer to the actual content of my job, my satisfaction with it, the people, or the executive-ness of those I support.  There is this culture in the US, that “white collar” is superior to … well, anything else, in some ineffable (indefensible) way, but:  I just don’t see that.  Not least, because – frankly, how many people even WEAR white collars anymore?  The only people I’ve seen in that old standard, “professional dress” for the past fifteen years have been women.  Oh, we had ‘em at That One Place – but it wasn’t as ubiquitous a conformity of suitedness as you might have found just a few years before I worked at “the second-highest administrative tier of one of the largest financial services firms in the nation.”  Not by a heck of a shot.  It’s all Polos all the time almost anwhere you work now, and if grey flannel was drab, lord deliver me from khakis …  Heh.  (It’s a mighty fine thing I do not go man-shopping when I am at work.)

Anyway – as to the content of my job, which I would consider to be a pretty important factor in any job, let it be said that I see no kind of diminishment in the fact that the information I work with is about trucks instead of servers.  There is nothing intrinsically elite about the hardware of a computer - and, though the computers for which I supported a team to mess with 'em were destined to move our nation's economy ... well, now the trucks I work with have a bit to do with our economy as well, frankly - and I'm much more deeply involved in their particulars than I ever could be in those humming bits of hardware I never even saw.

I see "my" trucks now.  All the time.  Not twenty-four hours ago, I was eyeing one of our drivers on the freeway, making sure he was behaving.  It gratifies me that my favorite places to eat are supplied by people I know, with products I can get behind, that I get to eat well every day at work, that sometimes I'm the real, human voice a person gets when they call our company with a problem or a question.

Yet there is zero doubt in my mind there are people (both those I have worked with, one or two I share blood with, and some I just "know" to one degree or another) who imagine I've moved down in the world.

Yeah, well, this "down" and crucial set of duties I've enjoyed digging into more deeply over the past five months.  It comes with people I respect every bit as much as anywhere else I've ever been, and intriguing little perks too.  There's an aspect of comedy at my office not available anywhere else I've *ever* worked (how many cubes in your cube farm house gigantic glass jugs of wine sitting alongside big jars of minced garlic and giant cans of anchovies, all of which are funny enough - but have recently been befriended by a few pretty sizeable cans of what looks like butane? Party!).  There are the occasional treats left for us to enjoy - not just catering after a meeting, but that one day it was a full crate of breads, or the more-hazelnut-than-cocoa-version-of-Nutella stuff someone had at their desk with a generous supply of sampling spoons.

There is the fact that, seriously, the meat where I work now is easily twenty times better than the stuff at my last job that, even when they tried so hard to make it palatable, seriously was like enough to make the Baby Jesus cry.

That's not small potatoes, kids - you should pardon the expression (not like you get any choice, right?).

Even the fact that the toilets don't flush at me before I've even had the chance to get in the dadgum stall, and I now don't have the tiny, momentary psychic stress EVERY SINGLE DAY of wondering whether the idiot things would do it again - that's one less constant, tiny damned stressor in my life.  All to the good, thank you very much.

I have no more to apologize for in where I work today than I ever had to apologize for in being a secretary at all, is what I am saying.

Not the only point on my mind, though (inevitably).


I haven't taken a lot of time to just REVEL in this job change.  At first – well, it was the holidays and I felt bad about leaving my last job (that was so hard) and I’d been in the habit of lying about even looking for a job for so long maybe the stealth just clung to me.  I know I didn't want to go all gooey and "oh I have this shiny new thing in my life" (again).

But ... I haven't really reveled in a lot of the shiny new things in my life, over the past two years.

Gossamer was easy, and I still revel in his shiny little pearl-grey butt.  Penelope, as everybody knows, didn't kick off a period of easy-as-pie New Puppy Love.  As much as I love her, our honeymoon period was perfumed with poop more than pina coladas, or whatever it is The Kids Today enjoy on their honeymoons (I never really did one of those).  So - the new job, I didn't want to get too excited.  The whiff, in particular, of being a complete snot to my former coworkers, whom I still miss very much, seemed very much inappropriate, professionally.  So I kept the teenage-girl-with-a-new-crush thing tamped down.

I've kept a lot of excitement tamped down, is what I'm saying.  Not wanting to jinx things, or concentrating on other things, or just not wanting to be an insufferable braggart about insert-my-blessing-here.

Seems to me, though there are still and always reasons not to be a shrill little LOOKIT ME drama queen about it, I should perhaps review this policy of constraint on those causes for jubilation I am blessed with.  It's not natural for me, and ... well, you know, three years and counting without a vacation proper – two years of stress and fear since Sweet Siddy La’s death – Mr. X being squillions of miles away.

I could use some reason to get happy.


Pharell, of course, is all very well - but that song only lasts a couple of minutes, and I am no Lupita Nyongo and I know it.  I just need a little seat-dancing.   A little open-windows-going-down-the-road-with-good-driving-music.  Eine kleine nachtmusik, even.  The year has finally realized it's time to provide what my dad always joyously described as "soft nights" (I can hear his satisfied, deep intake of breath now, his low, gruff voice filled with a warm smile).  With luck - I'll get to those unbearably lovely nights in June with more reason to be thankful than I deserve.

We'll see.

For now, moment by moment.  With my great job.  My headache-inducing chart data.  And one non-poopy puppy and a pearl grey cat.

My Conference

It's coming!  New digs this year; I'll be very interested in this.  And new timing; it used to be the sessions began Friday and went through Saturday, but this year it'll be Saturday/Sunday.  I'm excited, and very intrigued by some of the opportunities these changes may bring!

Wrongers

A short observation about a trend of which the Stupid Naming Business is only one representative symptom:

The older I get, the more I find people essentially telling me "You're doing it wrong" about, basically, life itself.  It appears to be related to my never having remarried, had kids, done the thing we're all "supposed" to do, so there gets to be more and more instruction for me the farther down the road I get.  What's interesting is that this isn't coming from my family (nor from X), but from friends and mere acquaintances.  There's been a sharp, clear, and precipitous drop in people's estimation of my competency since I (successfully, not for nothing) passed forty.  (Subtext here:  "alone" - because that's means something is broken somehow, and I guess I must be presumed to have done the damage.)

One or two of these happen to be the sort who find opinionated people (and being opinionated) invigorating or bracing.

The older I get, the less "invigorating" opinions are to me.  I prefer courage, conviction, and energy spent on being interested and interesting.  By a stunningly wide margin.


***


There is a LOT about me that seems to set people on edge.  Women who use the term secretary non-ironically freak people out.  Middle aged women living on their own bug people.  I never liked the idea I was getting to people simply by existing, but the longer I do it the more palpable other people's discomfort over my perceived failures (non-conformity, thank you) becomes.

Oddly enough, I'm a bit like Douglas Adams' money:  "On the whole, it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy."

But my movements increasingly concern people who have no say (and no stake) in my lifestyle.  And sometimes, THEY get to ME.  What a lot of wasted, and yet far too eagerly generated, negative energy.

RavenCon

This weekend was not good for me in the direct, applied way JRW's conference is, but even if only for the Wordsmith's workshop, I got a lot out of it for my writing.  I'm histfic, of course - not fantasy nor sci-fi - but the disparity in genres can be thin enough to become irrelevant.

I don't tend to do a lot of writing exercises, but the 55-word story was one of a bunch we did yesterday, which limbered up the muscles.  Equally as stimulating was the fact that I was lucky enough to attend with Leila.  It was she who gave me the 60-page cut late last year, and it was in a brainstorming session she and I were having I found at least two characters to cut entirely.  The 'smithing workshop also inspired me to tighten the opening scene right to a key event which should not be delayed by any intervening scenes.

So great stuff, and more inspiration than domestic sanitation or much of anything else this weekend.  Heh.  The house is a sty, but I did get some hand laundering done, and there are still socks and underwear enough to get me through the week.  Maybe even a few bits of actual clothing too, of course.

Inevitably, I kept comparing RC to JRW, and of course JRW is my nearest and dearest authorial event.  BUT, though RC needs to build in small improvements in timing/transition, and I'm dying to see attendance improve over the next couple of years, there are actually some things JRW could pick up from RavenCon.  Such as:  the workshops.  JRW doesn't offer the short bursts of creativity like that, and it was invigorating to actually *write* at an event which, for me, centered so much on that aspect.  It doesn't have to be innovative stuff; we worked on The Six Word Story before taking five for the 55-er, and it's not like The Six Word Story or flash fiction is widely unknown, but writing exercises survive because, even for contrarians like me, tools are worth picking up sometimes.

Plus, as a break from fairly static Q&A panels, they provide a great deal of relief.  I was entertained by everyone's work, surprised by the pieces we read, inspired, pleased.  The laser focus on *language* was incredibly appealing.  More than anything, having an active role in a session, which we tend not to do apart fro Q&A at JRW, was hugely engaging.

For me - for my writing - engagement is so deeply important.

Reading, Writing

If you spend much time in any writing community, a lot of themes repeat themselves.  Tips and truisms about process, inspiration, taking care of yourself - taking care of your writing.  One of those things any writer learns to say as early as "dada" is "read, read, read."  The best inspiration to write is to read.  (Experiencing life, of course, and thinking about that, is not bad either; but reading is way up there.)  The TRICK about reading, though, is that not all reading is created equal.  Looking at the work of an author I know, or admire, or finding a subject which enflames my interest - that inspires me to write.  But not all fiction does; not all history does.

Reading Parke Godwin can leave me almost beside myself - both because I become so absorbed in his characters, his headlong and acutely engaging plots, and because these things make my amygdala just ITCH.  As reading a sexy story will get most people a bit randy - reading a GREAT story will get a writer terribly creative.  And my great will not be Leila's great, or Kristi's great, or Godwin's perhaps, or anyone else's.  What crawls around that secret, dangerous part of my brain in which a story exerts its pull on me is entirely mine, entirely unique.  Even if the same story inspired someone else - someone even a lot like me - what would come of the inspiration will always be singular.

I'm often struck, in the context of being an author, by the way similarities play out SO differently amongst us.  It's a human game.  X and I, for instance, started off with a very similar set of perspectives and expectations - a certain kind of youth, a certain level of sensitivity, melancholy, and values - and ended up coming to rather apparently different conclusions.  On paper, in a way, it makes no sense a woman like me should gravitate to someone super into video games, or votes republican ...  Then again, on paper, the last boyfriend before him should have been "perfect" and I didn't manage to provide that guy excesses of respect nor patience.  So people go.

So I'm always fascinated when I find one of those "kindred spirits" (particularly writers) who loved Godwin, or had a similarly formative experience of Mary Stewart's Merlin growing up.  Because it takes only minutes to find the nuances which separate our experiences.  The way I gravitated to one character, and they fell in thrall to another.  The way I wanted to read about the particulars of the women most of all, but they wanted to read the nitty gritties of magic.  The way I learned from - but hated - battle scenes, but someone else was noticing anachronisms, or the interesting routes the author explains in the Notes.

Clovis' story, for one, could have been told in so many different ways - but I could only tell it in mine.

Sometimes, I can read another work, whether fiction or non-, on a subject I feel I know very well (my ancient Frank is hardly the only one of those) and be completely surprised at the focus - or the conclusions.

This kind of conflict, and this kind of dynamic, of course makes for incredibly amusing arguments among historians (or archaeologists, or paleontologists, or people at work, or kids on a schoolyard) - and yet, if we lose sight of how fascinating the turns are which give rise to our differences, we won't be able to tell a story well anymore.  I always find myself entertained - but fascinated - when I see conflicting theories at work.  This team working on a system of skids, moving giant pallets of weights, to research how Stonehenge might have been raised - and that team, working from the standpoint that some manner of roller of *course* was the way it was done - energize me.  I may be convinced one way or another, but I *must* hear both their plans, their reasons.  This woman saying "there were clam gardens in use for centuries" in the face of archaeological scholarship saying that is a Salish myth.  This child, asking why things don't work better than they do - why life must be hard, in some particular way - and saying how it could be easier.

I wish, instead of ONE person 

being REALLY sick 

that we ALL 

could just be a LITTLE bit sick 

and it would all be better ...

If we didn't disagree, we would be dead.  And if nobody ever looked at the other side:  we could not be writers.  Nor *storytellers*.  Then we'd be nothing but a pack of dogmatists, propagandists.

And, even saying that:  I believe even dogma has its place.

Gives the rest of us something to subvert.  And to study, in intrigued - and perhaps even detached - interest.

Wishing Life Away

With X as far away as he is ... even having a beautiful home, the best dog in the history of ever, some family - and a job I love ... it is hard, sometimes, not to wish this part would give way to the part where he and I are not so vastly separated.  I realize, he's hardly the first example of this.  All my life, I have spent waiting for the "next part".

An interesting aspect of this is the way it reflects the incredible sense of entitlement and expectation of my culture.  I grew up in a United States in which, by virtue of my birth and education, I presumed it was my right to reach a certain level of socio-economic success.  Heck, it wasn't even so clear a thing as a "right" - it was just this manifest destined given; the spoken *and* implicit evolutionary presumption of American development:  and of my middle class echelon.

The eighties didn't help - nor did the dents in the economy we took with trickle-down and in the 90s.  I simply assumed - for YEARS - I was "paying my dues" and the day was coming I would be more than comfortable.

As it turns out:  I am.  But not because I deserve it "more" - and certainly not because I worked hard for it, for a long time.  I learned how, yes.  I've become a highly accomplished and responsible grownup (even if I refuse to "mature").  But it took *many* years, and is even still a developing tendency.  In my nature, I am an underachiever.

But my refusal to depend on someone else (on a man - or, as much as possible, on my parent(s)) made it an inevitability; I had to sink or swim.  There were no other options; and I found that sinking caused dependencies I turned out to be unfit to tolerate.  So I had to swim.  And I was probably past thirty before I really learned much about how to do this very well.

So, a late bloomer.  The desserts of the kind of entitlement I grew up permeated with.

As proud as I am of the life I've been put in stewardship to live:  I still don't feel I deserve my comfort and success.  Even knowing how many people would pooh-pooh just how "successful" I call myself (she doesn't even have a smart phone - or cable - or a DVR - or a Mac, nor any iDevice of any kind! she drives a car she's paid off, and wears "pre owned" clothing from eBay and thrift stores!), my sense of how abundantly blessed I am is almost embarrassing when I allow myself any perspective at all.  I pay my bills.  I am down to almost no remaining credit debt, and hope to be able to pay it off 100% within two months from now.  I am more than adequately entertained, and materially - even with a couple leaky faucets and floors I dream of having beautifully refinished - is as comfortable as I could dare to ask for.  And, apart from my privilege and education - nobody gave this to me but my blessed ancestry and myself.  The autonomy both resulting in *and* resulting *from* what has been given me is never, ever lost on me.  I am grateful for this perhaps above all other blessings not tied up in the people I love.  And the people I love are deeply entwined with these gifts.

This is the privilege I come from:  that life is so sure to be rich in material and personal blessings, I can wish away the now until my mid-forties, pining away for the "next part" - that part which will be so comfortable, so good, so full of wealth "I can't wait" to get to it ...

This is both the rapture - and the trap - of being a white, middle-class American (of a certain age ... of a certain privilege).

Adverbial Adversarial

A terrifyingly large segment of the publishing industry is flatly, inflexibly *against* the use of (existence of?) adverbs.  It's one of those things I've never understood.  Sure, "I am angry," he said angrily is a poor piece of writing.  But adverbs came into existence in our language for a reason.  They do a job which sometimes can't be done another way as neatly.  Ahem.  "It isn't necessarily so" does not mean the same thing as "It isn't so" - sometimes, adverbs provide important content.

I was really happy to see this, is my point.  It's funny I happened to find this in my Twitter stream just this morning, because I'd been thinking of a post just like the one I'm writing last night before I went to bed - so it's nice to see that no less an entity than Harper Collins chose to Tweet it.

Kevyn Aucoin (RIP) said one that there are NO absolute rules for a makeup artist.  Not one.  Many artists and experts have acknowledged that exceptions make most rules.  I tend to be of this opinion about writing - there is no subject which MUST never be touched - no rule which must never be broken - no way of doing things we must not, cannot try.

In high school, one of my best teachers said we were never to use the words "things" or "stuff."  I refer you to the final sentence in my paragraph above, regarding my adherence to this rule.  Mrs. V. was wonderful and amazing - and the purpose of rules is to teach us something.  But if we never move beyond what we learn in class, our writing will never gain depth beyond what is taught us.  Sometimes, learning must be done by other means than instruction-by-pedagogue.  Several of us chose to respond to Mrs. V. by trying to find ways to use the phrase "stuff of life."  It was the only defense against totalitarianism by someone we loved, and who let us rebel against her in this way because she was no moron.  Her rule did something important for the kids who needed it.  For those of us who pushed at her with a smile ... we learned another way.  And, in my case, I like to think I moved well beyond the need for limiting my concern to the use of elementary terminology.

Adverbs don't just make a sentence memorable, they change its meaning. Sure, there are many times when a more precise verb can narrow the gap in understanding—but some verbs can't be fine-tuned any further. A sigh is just a sigh, but anyone who has ever been in love knows how important it is to distinguish between when she sighs happily and when she sighs otherwise.

This is the role and value of adverbs.  We have adjectives for a reason - modification is *necessary* to our tongue.  True every bit as much of verbs as it is of nouns.  Nouns are not the only parts of speech which can own character so particular it needs to be explicated.  Verbs are not by nature so much more descriptive of themselves than nouns--so it is unfair to deny them the companionship, or support, of adverbial modification.

Less, yes, is always more.  But our language - maybe all language - comes with descriptors for a reason.  Cooking without basil might well ruin dinner tonight.  Likewise, paring creative writing down by removing an entire class of descriptiveness - of *creativity* - lessens what can be done with words.

Why any writer, editor, or agent really wants to see that - I've never properly understood.

On TOPIC

Okay, and so the Conference began (for me) today (there actually were some bonus sessions yesterday too), and this is always a major focus for me every year.  This year is my seventh, and by now I know a lot of the Board members (old and new), and even have begun to know many of our partners and guests.

• Michelle Brower, a wildly intelligent, funny, and wonderful agent every writer can dream of impressing, came back for a second year in a row - and she can enjoy at least the infinitessimal relief of ONE attendee not pitching at her this year; last year I got to her, she graciously took my query even though she doesn't do histfic, and was such a brilliant part of the Con I can't complain that she didn't sign me on.
• Kirk Ellis is back, too, which for me is a special bonus not strictly because he does histfic, but centrally because he too is inspiringly smart.
• Jeff Sypeck is one I want to nab in the hallways at some point; he's Karl der Grösse, while I'm Chlodowechus - and, hey, three centuries' division between one ancient monarch and another isn't all that much given "The Dark Ages" and all ...  Seems like a nice guy, from the panel I attended today, which seems to be a contagion with JRW.  Heh.
• The utterly delightful Meg Medina, who interviewed me about my Conference experience - I'll link the vid if it is ever made public (a risk indeed, if JRW allows it).
• Mike Albo, who brought us a nice, short burst of humor and energy to start off the Really Big Show, and who was extremely enjoyable to talk to after lunch as well.
• And my FABULOUS, talented, adored Sarcastic Broads of course!

***


Seven years ago, my brother asked me to go with him to some conference, and the education and inspiration of just that first attendance actually caused me to write my first novel.  It's given me a good sense of both the job and the professional comportment one needs to cultivate, whether going the traditional route like me, or striking out into newer technological publishing and marketing options.  Every year, it reinvigorates me and inspires me - and the thing is just a pleasure in itself.  Attendees (and I include both us paying types as well as speakers, volunteers, and board members and planners; because at JRW's events, there really doesn't feel like there is a divide between any of the participants) are a fascinating and friendly lot, and it's a nice, different, and fruitful social and creative experience.  The support is second to none, and the networking isn't half bad either.

I owe that brother of mine a massive debt of gratitude, because something he first wanted has led me into something I never knew how to do - and he is as surely to credit for The Ax and the Vase as I have always said JRW is ... as surely as Louise Smith and those who recycled her name.  He had the tinder box that finally lit the fire under me, and I am grateful - to him, to JRW, and to Clovis himself, for the past few years.

Bookish Enough

Reading as much as I have, since starting with JRW and the first, misty chapters of Ax, about and by writers and about writing and reading, I have felt for a long time that I am not bookish enough.  I'm a good writer, but I don't seem to have a singlemindedness about either my authorship nor the artifacts-of-life (I also considered some clever use of "artifactual" here) as they pertain to books and quantity of reading.  It's not like I'm wielding a measuring stick here, but it does feel sometimes as if "everyone else does more" ... reads more, owns more books - somehow is "more" entitled to being a writer, by dint of being a reader, than I am.  My boss made a Stendahl reference not long ago, and I was afraid to admit:  I'm not what you'd call well-versed there.  Neither in French lit, nor even in a lot of classics, whatever the nationality.  I tend to be a VERY eclectic reader.  There is a heavy biblical underpinning, of course - I can still get lost in there very easily - and I have read a respectable segment of standard-issue schoolin' lit and also some off-the-path Victoriana and other eras, though I am likely too weak in 20th century standards, and those I have gone at I have refused to remember like a good student.

It all goes back to my contrarianism.  But it also goes to the fact that I simply disbelieve in prescriptivism.  Least of all, for READING - an act which, for me, whorish as it may sound to so many, is not for me a participation in The Arts, but the engagement in entertainment.  Agents who make lists of books one "must" have read - or who name authors one "must" know (and the one who named "Slaugherhouse Five" as perhaps the best book in all history) - to me miss the point of reading, which is ENJOYMENT.  Storytelling is an art, to be sure - but by my lights, it is first and foremost *entertainment*.  This doesn't negate its deeper potential - nor even thematics, spiritual uplift, all the fancy Things and Stuff - but it is, for me, the guiding force.  I am simultaneously intimidated by and disgusted by those who would dismiss another reader for following an insufficient path of literature.  Of all insane arrogance - only stuff popular enough to have become "classic" - or culturally "relevant" enough (to a limited population of the world) to be widely disseminated - is worthy of consideration ...

... and - by far worse - should be made compulsory??


Not even if it did make me bookish enough would I follow that particular tenet.  The path is not primrose-colored enough to stain my tootsies on.


***


But this post was not intended to be about contrarianism and prescriptivism in personal reading catalogues.  It was actually meant to start on a musing about my home.

Thinking about this defensiveness - that I'm not "enough" of a reader; that I don't have all the right cred, to be a real writer - I was sitting in my living room this weekend, and realizing how truly surrounded I am with books.

Walking into my home, nobody would be struck by the predominance of a traditional "library" atmosphere.  Yet everywhere around me, such a variety of books, all ove the place.  By the front door, on the small table, are some in-progress reads - a Mary Stewart (The Crystal Cave), and a Penman on tap - the bibles, and a Tanakh.  At the other end of the couch, stacked on the small red slate table - the anthologies I picked up at the antique store this weekend, the books I bought at Orca, the first edition of "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" my mom gave me for my birthday (*love!*), The Chronicles of the Tombs (which I cannot recommend highly enough for historians, Victorian curiosity lovers, or people who just dig inscriptions and epitaphs), and several gifts from my brother and family.

In the office, the bookshelves my father built for his and mom's Dream Home twenty-seven years ago are lined two-deep, stacked on top with an antique six-volume history of Virginia, and all my reasearch for Ax lies in there, some of it sidewise on top of lit mags, yearbooks, and at least two dissertations (not mine).  The Will and Ariel Durant volumes are on the small record rack he built.  All my college milk-crates (dressed up, now, with a runner from grandma's house) house ancient journals I really need to burn, and the Texas Instruments calculator (Still in box) dad left behind - and on top of those is another set of miscellany, including books from my childhood, some more gifts from my brother and family, and at least two more yard sale finds.

Still farther across the living room, the complete Agatha Christie (same yard sale, if I remember) and "50 Great Ghost Stories" - still with the bookmark I used in it growing up.  Top that off with a NFS copy of "The Messiah" and "Under the Banner of Heaven" and the votive holders have a nice pile to sit on.

And then there is the bookshelf.  The one I built WITH my dad.  The one where I learned how to use the router.  The one with the "show" books - ones I grew up with - coffee table ones (I haven't even mentioned my actually-on-the-coffee-table coffee table books) - museum souvenir books, college texts including the one my dad gave me when he was a test reader for it "Physics for People Who Think They Don't Like Physics", Tao of Pooh and Piglet too, my Adamses, and a Tutankhamon I remember from grandma's as a child ...  Photo books, art books, design books, even a Vogue drawing volume - and all the religion and philosophy I saved from college days ...  The ancient, delicate, tiny "Sonnets From the Portugese" ... the Cicero text dad read before he died ... and every photo album I have compiled in my life ...

If these aren't enough for anyone's measure of a reader - or of a writer - I don't need to work with them, and will be content with their rejections.  For me, though, they are beautiful.  Pieces of my life.

Whew

I sit here (and that uses - if not abuses - the verb rather loosely), almost horizontal, relaxing upon my Queen's Chair, completely content after a writers' club meeting. I got the house clean last night and this morning, got myself clean, set out the food, and sat in the sun for a little while, not reading nor doing anything but contemplating how handsome a dog I have, as she joined me in my "west wing", a very quiet room, where she got up on her chair/bed and perched front legs on its arm to stand high up and watch out the window. I'd left the front door open today, and she knows, as much as mama likes the sun, that the door standing open must mean Someone's Coming. It means Friends. She was very excited, but not all spazzy and annoying.

I sat, she stood sentry, the sun shone, and they came. Good meeting, great people. I like this group, and we had a good time but also managed a LOT of focus, and got a lot done I think. Laughing all the way.

We comprise young adult, historical, urban fantasy, sci-fi, memoir, and all the varied influences we bring - short stories, blogs, social networking; it's such a variety, and there are only seven of us total. We had six today, and it was a nice dynamic.

And now I sit, the sun slowly setting on a spectacularly beautiful day, the event of my day behind me, and my DVD player not working. Ordinarily, I'd so love to top this off with a few episodes of DS9 or a couple flicks from my collection. I'm not up for a big night out (and can't afford a very great deal anyway, though with friends like mine I could probably manipulate my way to a discounted night of fun), my friend V is not up for a hang-out at my pad, and my mom and stepfather are off for their own evening. So it is quiet, and very relaxing.

Lolly is perched at the window again, ears up, adorably expectant.

This is the gift of down-time. Tomorrow - church. Then reading, I suspect. I'm not up for much outing, and have a whole trove of things to delve into.

Maybe some writing. The group gets my juices going!

A productive weekend. But not overactive. That must be a perfect balance of some kind.

Off to go putter a little. What a nice afternoon.