To all the people who have to make endless calls, trying to get on executives’ calendars – look, I get it. We all have our scripts to follow. Mine is “time is at an extreme premium” when you call me – and that is not a joke. Yours is “I’d just like to get a few minutes with him to introduce him to our company and what we can do for yours.” You have to do this over and over again with the same unresponsive people, and if you think I don’t know that, you underestimate my ability to recognize your phone number on my caller ID. I know exactly when you call, I know you do it on a repeating schedule. I GET it.
Most of you recognize that I am The Gatekeeper, and you behave accordingly, attempting to schmooze me (pointless) or tell me “He said he’d meet with us” (it worked ONE time, when I was new, and man do I have those guys’ numbers – and they will never, ever get in with my boss, ever) or actually behaving with friendly professionalism (the only viable approach). I entertain these varying gambits with exactly the responses they deserve, always professional, but pretty much hermetically sealed against the jerks who try to get one over on me, and impervious to anything but friendly professionalism. The ones who recognize, we’ve all got our scripts to follow: that, basically, we’re all in this together.
Make it unpleasant for me, and I will return the favor by making “progress” outright impossible for you.
So don’t refuse to speak with me when, instead of asking you “would you like to go to voice mail?” I say “Is there anything I may do for you?”
Don’t fail to realize that, if you want calendar time, I’m the person to ask for it; not my boss.
Don’t try to bypass me by snubbing me with a “Just put me in voicemail” and then leaving a message for my boss which (a) starts out with about twenty seconds of egregiously badly recorded music and (b) then segues into “I am so and so and I am FIGHTING to get a meeting with you.”
It turns out that the music was the Fighting Illini fight song – actually a commendable-ish piece of personalization, not that it actually changes the calendar any – and the “fighting” message was an allusion to that. So, okay, so he didn’t intend to make me look bad.
But this guy has been calling for a long time now, and my boss and I both recognize the number when it comes in now, and he’s never tried to talk with me, never left a message, and – cute as the personalization is – it doesn’t TELL US ANYTHING.
If he’d ever once actually attempted to speak with me like a all-growed-up professional, he could have introduced his company and himself, he could have gotten some information to me (and, that way, possibly to my boss – or, perhaps, even someone else more relevant to his needs), he might conceivably have made some sort of progress. Instead, what we have is enough weeks of calls from the same number that my boss and I both know a number is endlessly pinging us – and nothing else. No skin off of us, but it doesn’t make a GOOD first impression. And zero net effect for our fighting friend.
Who, to be honest, isn’t fighting all that hard, and who is strategizing his battle not. at. all.
It’s impossible not to be brought to mind of querying and trying to get an agent.
We all have our scripts to follow, and whether I personalize or not goes by the wayside if I make a lot of noise, without ever conveying the least bit of information ABOUT MY NOVEL. Or even that it is a novel. Or why I think it’s relevant to Agent X, Y, or Z. Or even make it clear that what I am attempting to do is to query something.
I called myself The Gatekeeper above, and would imagine most of my readers who are writers or agents (they do crop up!) would agree, the gatekeeper analogy in querying/publishing does nobody any favors.
But querying is a professional communication, we all agree on that. And to conduct professional communication in the way my fighting foe above has done would be unthinkable.
(Even now, I suspect Janet Reid, Jessica Faust, and hundreds of other agents are/would have to disagree – they probably do get EXACTLY this approach, from geniuses who’ve found the office number, and wish to treat agents to their honeyed words directly, bypassing slush with their pristine and special snowflakes. We’ve heard about it, and there are countless agency sites exhorting that authors NOT call them directly for a reason.)
It is for ME, and for all my wise and wonderful authorial readers, this would be unthinkable. Of course.
It seems so basic to me – yet I have worked in a fairly stereotypical office setting or another for nearly thirty years. Not all authors do, nor could stand to. And so baseline assumptions for effective professional communications are not there. And, given the creative nature of our product, we may think a creative approach is best in getting it out there.
That can work. But even the most unexpected innovations in getting our work out there, in the successful cases, still maintains essential professional respect. It doesn’t involve stalking agents to find out their alma mater and subjecting their voicemail to extreme lo-fi (do the kids know what low-fidelity means anymore, by the way … ?) fight songs. It involves getting attention without demanding it personally and invasively. Maybe by canny support in service of self-published work that stands the test of marketing success and the expectation of future revenue etc. Maybe in the unique voice of an unexpected character, translated into a simple, ordinary query. Maybe in a hundred ways I can’t think of because I am stodgy and dowdy and doing things the old way.
Not by calling incessantly for weeks, with no message.
Not by FIGHTING for time un-earned, while providing no reason it should be given.
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Wednesday, March 25, 2015
If I Had My Druthers
Please accept my apologies for a late post from Monday ...
Monday mornings that start off rolling are the best beginning for a work week. I had a mental note or two coming in, only a minor glitch or two firing up, and a good, solid four hours of steady work to keep me going in the a.m. There were also two fresh new rejections (both of them expected, so the sting was minor); one on a query sent only yesterday, and one only a couple or three weeks old.
IF I HAD MY DRUTHERS
I honestly wonder, as I consider shelving (as distinct from “drawering”, which would imply entirely giving up hope) Ax____, whether it is right or wrong to do so. It’s hard to be open to the possibility of putting away a work I know is GOOD, even if I have begun to consider that it may not be the work that can launch my second career, but I am trying to allow the idea to be … okay. At the same time, yes, querying is a numbers game and this could just be my origin myth, the tale of the super-author in the making, the cred that makes my own arc as worthwhile as (insert respected/much-rejected author’s name here) – and as Clovis’ own.
That latter is tempting, and honestly I would hardly stop to think about “quitting” (for NOW) on Ax, except that … I feel like I’ve run out of lists to plunder, research resources to take advantage of. Options. I feel like I’ve queried every agent who even mentions histfic without dotting their eyes with little Regency romance hearts or … yeah, mentioning that it’d be nice to see something other than some white European king for a change.
Hilary Mantel did spectacularly well with Wolf Hall and Bringing up the Bodies, but … Hilary Mantel also wasn’t a debut novelist in the first place, and was writing and publishing on a different continent from my own in the second place. She had twenty years’ catalog of performance behind her. She also found a way to write about the perennially-blockbuster Tudors without quite treading old ground. And now she also has TWO Man-Booker prizes to her credit.
Not a platform I can claim to stand on. Though I’ve got a story that not only doesn’t tread old ground, but illuminates a huge swath of the history of the West *and* even some of the very reasons #WeNeedDiverseBooks today, it isn’t. Diverse. And nobody’s heard of Clovis I on this side of The Pond (a *selling* point that gets in its own way, Catch-22 style [an appropriate problem for an author named Major?]). It’s not MG, YA, or NA; there isn’t a single dragon, pneumatic beauty, or magically-engendered neurosis in it. Game of Thrones readers might dig it, but I’m not comping that and don’t have compelling plans to garner that audience nor proof I could.
And but.
And but.
And but.
Ten years I’ve spent with this novel, now. Learning from it and LOVING it, though that may not shine through given my dry and pragmatic statements about killing darlings and it being a product and oh-so-professional detachment. I LOVE Ax and the Vase, it has been both one hell of a good story to be part of, and iet means the world to me. It is a manifestation of something my dad talked about all his life (“somebody should write a book” was a stock phrase in my house growing up), and he died before I ever began to write. I have no doubt he’s rooting for it, and there is a minor, sentimental strain in wishing I could publish a book I know he’d probably have enjoyed immensely on its own merits … and been inexperessibly proud to know I wrote. (Heck, at that, half the dead folks in my family would probably like this book; those who have gone before me gave me the very voice in which it’s expressed, after all.)
I am to this day entranced by the story, to the point that actually feeling it’s ready, it’s finished, is still exciting – just to know I have done this thing, that I made it, I have something to do with something this great.
I’m proud of my work.
Even if I let it go for now, there’s no doubt I’d try to get it out there as a follow up. (It is a prequel of sorts to the WIP; they are as unalike as they are inextricably linked.)
Lord, just thinking and writing about it, I gnash and resist with a fury the idea there’s no agent out there who could (… who would …) do anything with this book. It’s a bloody good read, it’s a ripping yarn.
If only I could find some hidden stash, somewhere else to turn.
In the meantime, I must turn to the WIP. If I have missed some dozens of agents who would do my work proud, somehow or other I’ll find ‘em – and beware, agents.
This isn’t quitting. I’m just turning slightly to one side … for the moment …
Monday mornings that start off rolling are the best beginning for a work week. I had a mental note or two coming in, only a minor glitch or two firing up, and a good, solid four hours of steady work to keep me going in the a.m. There were also two fresh new rejections (both of them expected, so the sting was minor); one on a query sent only yesterday, and one only a couple or three weeks old.
IF I HAD MY DRUTHERS
I honestly wonder, as I consider shelving (as distinct from “drawering”, which would imply entirely giving up hope) Ax____, whether it is right or wrong to do so. It’s hard to be open to the possibility of putting away a work I know is GOOD, even if I have begun to consider that it may not be the work that can launch my second career, but I am trying to allow the idea to be … okay. At the same time, yes, querying is a numbers game and this could just be my origin myth, the tale of the super-author in the making, the cred that makes my own arc as worthwhile as (insert respected/much-rejected author’s name here) – and as Clovis’ own.
That latter is tempting, and honestly I would hardly stop to think about “quitting” (for NOW) on Ax, except that … I feel like I’ve run out of lists to plunder, research resources to take advantage of. Options. I feel like I’ve queried every agent who even mentions histfic without dotting their eyes with little Regency romance hearts or … yeah, mentioning that it’d be nice to see something other than some white European king for a change.
Hilary Mantel did spectacularly well with Wolf Hall and Bringing up the Bodies, but … Hilary Mantel also wasn’t a debut novelist in the first place, and was writing and publishing on a different continent from my own in the second place. She had twenty years’ catalog of performance behind her. She also found a way to write about the perennially-blockbuster Tudors without quite treading old ground. And now she also has TWO Man-Booker prizes to her credit.
Not a platform I can claim to stand on. Though I’ve got a story that not only doesn’t tread old ground, but illuminates a huge swath of the history of the West *and* even some of the very reasons #WeNeedDiverseBooks today, it isn’t. Diverse. And nobody’s heard of Clovis I on this side of The Pond (a *selling* point that gets in its own way, Catch-22 style [an appropriate problem for an author named Major?]). It’s not MG, YA, or NA; there isn’t a single dragon, pneumatic beauty, or magically-engendered neurosis in it. Game of Thrones readers might dig it, but I’m not comping that and don’t have compelling plans to garner that audience nor proof I could.
And but.
And but.
And but.
Ten years I’ve spent with this novel, now. Learning from it and LOVING it, though that may not shine through given my dry and pragmatic statements about killing darlings and it being a product and oh-so-professional detachment. I LOVE Ax and the Vase, it has been both one hell of a good story to be part of, and iet means the world to me. It is a manifestation of something my dad talked about all his life (“somebody should write a book” was a stock phrase in my house growing up), and he died before I ever began to write. I have no doubt he’s rooting for it, and there is a minor, sentimental strain in wishing I could publish a book I know he’d probably have enjoyed immensely on its own merits … and been inexperessibly proud to know I wrote. (Heck, at that, half the dead folks in my family would probably like this book; those who have gone before me gave me the very voice in which it’s expressed, after all.)
I am to this day entranced by the story, to the point that actually feeling it’s ready, it’s finished, is still exciting – just to know I have done this thing, that I made it, I have something to do with something this great.
I’m proud of my work.
Even if I let it go for now, there’s no doubt I’d try to get it out there as a follow up. (It is a prequel of sorts to the WIP; they are as unalike as they are inextricably linked.)
Lord, just thinking and writing about it, I gnash and resist with a fury the idea there’s no agent out there who could (… who would …) do anything with this book. It’s a bloody good read, it’s a ripping yarn.
If only I could find some hidden stash, somewhere else to turn.
In the meantime, I must turn to the WIP. If I have missed some dozens of agents who would do my work proud, somehow or other I’ll find ‘em – and beware, agents.
This isn’t quitting. I’m just turning slightly to one side … for the moment …
Sunday, March 22, 2015
Indignant Otter
Now I need a Quizzical Puppy Face and an Affronted Puddy Face to complete my set!
Image courtesy of Mojourner.
Image courtesy of Mojourner.
Saturday, March 21, 2015
Today *Would* Be the Day ...
... to find a bunch of agent interviews, blogs, and agency site exhortations saying "DON'T GIVE UP!"
Hm.
Hm.
Highly-Critical Mass
Okay, ironic beard boys. When Kevin Spacey is making fun of you in an E-Trade commercial featuring a nice looking woman walking with her bearded boyfriend, suddenly finding herself eyeing the clean-shaven fella stepping out of a doorway?
Your little ironic beards are done. Leave 'em to the men who wear their faces that way for reasons that have nothing to do with proving their coolness, or being fashionable. Please.
Your little ironic beards are done. Leave 'em to the men who wear their faces that way for reasons that have nothing to do with proving their coolness, or being fashionable. Please.
Collection
It's been some time since I linked any updates on Richard III's exhumation and reburial and so on, so here's The History Blog's latest on this week's upcoming (Thursday, 3/26) ceremonies for those who've also been somewhat sporadic in keeping up. As always, good links included, and nice details.
Medieval People of Color looks at (please pardon the pun) a different kind of diversity in this post, with well-known paintings recreated for the blind . This is the sort of idea that begs the question, "How come we never did this before? Have we done this before ... ?" And it's true - sometimes the fascination and beauty in art are in the small details. An interesting exhibit not only for the visually-challenged; looking at classics in a new way.
The British Museum (and its blog) examines nudes in ancient Greek art "as an expression of social, moral, and political values." Today, it's covering nudity that perhaps most reflects my country's and culture's social, moral, and political values ...
Kim Rendfield hosts Marina Julia Neary, who tells us about life behind the rusting curtain, and whose title alone, "Saved by the Bang" (for a novel touching on Chernobyl) has me itching to see just how much I can balance on the TBR pile ... Oh dear! Side note, the discussion of spelling of her given name is a neat look into
Passion of Former Days has French kisses (vintage (not scandalous!) French postcards). With original notes, as sent at the time. Ooh la la!
Keep an eye peeled in 100 days for Tom Williams' next outing, Burke at Waterloo!
Medieval People of Color looks at (please pardon the pun) a different kind of diversity in this post, with well-known paintings recreated for the blind . This is the sort of idea that begs the question, "How come we never did this before? Have we done this before ... ?" And it's true - sometimes the fascination and beauty in art are in the small details. An interesting exhibit not only for the visually-challenged; looking at classics in a new way.
The British Museum (and its blog) examines nudes in ancient Greek art "as an expression of social, moral, and political values." Today, it's covering nudity that perhaps most reflects my country's and culture's social, moral, and political values ...
Kim Rendfield hosts Marina Julia Neary, who tells us about life behind the rusting curtain, and whose title alone, "Saved by the Bang" (for a novel touching on Chernobyl) has me itching to see just how much I can balance on the TBR pile ... Oh dear! Side note, the discussion of spelling of her given name is a neat look into
Passion of Former Days has French kisses (vintage (not scandalous!) French postcards). With original notes, as sent at the time. Ooh la la!
Keep an eye peeled in 100 days for Tom Williams' next outing, Burke at Waterloo!
DABDA
There may be five stages of grief - but many of us linger on one stage or another. Denial is popular, Anger is overwhelming, Bargaining is a cruel temptation ... Depression may be more powerful, even, than anger. Acceptance is the elusive one.
I'm considering it right now.
The Ax and the Vase is a great novel.
It's been my teacher and my child, something that ushered me into the world of an author, as opposed to a writer. I'm proud of it, and it's a hell of a read.
But. It doesn't seem to be a a viable product.
It's been a couple of months now since any agent even requested a read, and - good as it is - frankly, I just believe it's got an uphill battle in store in publishing, and ... if my plan is to be published, I have to provide the best possible material.
Ax is ITS best possible self, but it is not a market mover right now.
I haven't entirely decided to retire it; the fact that there are more agents to query is either a problem or a tempation.
But work on the WIP has become compelling, and though my faith in what Ax IS is unshakeable, if I'm not realistic about the industry, I'm not its best steward. And that's what I want to be. So I'm thinking it may be best to concentrate elsewhere. I'm opening myself to that possibility.
Anyone who's read me much knows I'm not very precious about my darling, special work, but they also know how much it means to me to have this consideration on my mind. My commitment to Ax is not minimal, nor is my confidence. But the odds are speaking to me, and I can't pretend not to hear. That would not serve Ax and would also hobble the WIP and the rest of my works.
This way of thinking has come on me a little suddenly - but, thank heavens, it's also coming at a time when my excitement about the WIP is building. I can't say there's no intentional connection there, either. If I have the WIP to sustain my hope, letting go of Ax would be ... not less difficult. But possible.
And so - I am considering possibilities. Feedback welcome, but most of my readers here at the blog have not been beta readers of the novel itself, so I understand if the comments stay quiet or theoretical. :)
Sigh.
I'm considering it right now.
The Ax and the Vase is a great novel.
It's been my teacher and my child, something that ushered me into the world of an author, as opposed to a writer. I'm proud of it, and it's a hell of a read.
But. It doesn't seem to be a a viable product.
It's been a couple of months now since any agent even requested a read, and - good as it is - frankly, I just believe it's got an uphill battle in store in publishing, and ... if my plan is to be published, I have to provide the best possible material.
Ax is ITS best possible self, but it is not a market mover right now.
I haven't entirely decided to retire it; the fact that there are more agents to query is either a problem or a tempation.
But work on the WIP has become compelling, and though my faith in what Ax IS is unshakeable, if I'm not realistic about the industry, I'm not its best steward. And that's what I want to be. So I'm thinking it may be best to concentrate elsewhere. I'm opening myself to that possibility.
Anyone who's read me much knows I'm not very precious about my darling, special work, but they also know how much it means to me to have this consideration on my mind. My commitment to Ax is not minimal, nor is my confidence. But the odds are speaking to me, and I can't pretend not to hear. That would not serve Ax and would also hobble the WIP and the rest of my works.
This way of thinking has come on me a little suddenly - but, thank heavens, it's also coming at a time when my excitement about the WIP is building. I can't say there's no intentional connection there, either. If I have the WIP to sustain my hope, letting go of Ax would be ... not less difficult. But possible.
And so - I am considering possibilities. Feedback welcome, but most of my readers here at the blog have not been beta readers of the novel itself, so I understand if the comments stay quiet or theoretical. :)
Sigh.
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
Collec.
In an abbreviated collection of one, this link is for all my Star Wars fans out there - and most especially for Cute Shoes. Again courtesy of Jed, and so funny my dog was hilariously transfixed, watching me watch the clip. OSUM.
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
Walkin'
Even on a good day, her strength is enough my back is strained holding on. But today - today, she's been good. And the light has leached out of the sky silently, soft and easy, colorless moment left behind. Twilight is truly over, but either night is paused delicately or I can't believe it's here, and the trees still reach up, and out, and are the only shapes that matter.
Other than the yellow girl, the smudge of muscle and light just ahead. Tugging, but gently.
Tonight wasn't a night I talked with her a lot. Just taking in our neighborhood, our route, our walk, our evening exercise.
The tap of her toenails on the pavement. It really isn't honestly dark out; headlights and black silhouettes notwithstanding. Muzzy, garish red light of the signal up ahead; too much, but beacon of home.
Early in our circuit, on the way down the hill, the breezes were dying as we descended below them a little, and the sun had left enough behind I saw the message on the asphalt THE END IS NEAR. Not a trashy grafito, and amusingly accurate as to its own longevity; some kid had sprayed it right on the road. Funnier than threatening, I arc my body to read it as we go. And then we just go.
Signal growing closer, and the house is rising, dark against the light of busier places to the north, and there is my maple. It reaches up - maples never shrug, never sag and reach down or bow to the ground. They twist a bit, in my neighborhood; a local peculiarity, the slightest screw-turn in their trunks. Why they grow that way around here - never have understood. I may be the only person left in this state who even knows it, and therefore makes a point of seeing it.
My big branches - this beauty, and the kitchen, they sold this house. Fifteen years in a few months. Hard to believe. And more than half the mortgage, thanks to the magic of refi. The maple really is mine now, in some file cabinet - or file drive - somewhere those things matter.
The new neighbors have put out candy-colored playthings for the kids in the yard. It's beautiful. That holly is gone, away from the front porch, now naked and open. The St. Patrick's flag in the nighttime breeze.
And home. Tugging home.
Other than the yellow girl, the smudge of muscle and light just ahead. Tugging, but gently.
Tonight wasn't a night I talked with her a lot. Just taking in our neighborhood, our route, our walk, our evening exercise.
The tap of her toenails on the pavement. It really isn't honestly dark out; headlights and black silhouettes notwithstanding. Muzzy, garish red light of the signal up ahead; too much, but beacon of home.
Early in our circuit, on the way down the hill, the breezes were dying as we descended below them a little, and the sun had left enough behind I saw the message on the asphalt THE END IS NEAR. Not a trashy grafito, and amusingly accurate as to its own longevity; some kid had sprayed it right on the road. Funnier than threatening, I arc my body to read it as we go. And then we just go.
Signal growing closer, and the house is rising, dark against the light of busier places to the north, and there is my maple. It reaches up - maples never shrug, never sag and reach down or bow to the ground. They twist a bit, in my neighborhood; a local peculiarity, the slightest screw-turn in their trunks. Why they grow that way around here - never have understood. I may be the only person left in this state who even knows it, and therefore makes a point of seeing it.
My big branches - this beauty, and the kitchen, they sold this house. Fifteen years in a few months. Hard to believe. And more than half the mortgage, thanks to the magic of refi. The maple really is mine now, in some file cabinet - or file drive - somewhere those things matter.
The new neighbors have put out candy-colored playthings for the kids in the yard. It's beautiful. That holly is gone, away from the front porch, now naked and open. The St. Patrick's flag in the nighttime breeze.
And home. Tugging home.
Monday, March 16, 2015
Today in American (Not Necessarily United States) History
Many American readers will have heard of the Native American called “Squanto” (Tisquantum – or the rage of manitou: an encompassing spiritual rage, something like “divine wrath”), but may not be able to tell any of his story. Fewer will know the name Samoset – and, possibly, fewer still may be familiar with Massaoit. Yet these three men make up a seminal part of the history of Native and European relations in our country, and the history is not always what we think.
On March 16, 1621, a lone man came unarmed into the village of the Europeans, and greeted them in their English language …
This piece is LONG, but it may be the most excellent *storytelling* link I have put up in ages. This is what makes history exciting, frustrating, beautiful and awful, and endlessly intriguing. Give it the time. It is worth the read, if only to learn what invasive species can do even beyond fell intent.
Side note … Even Smithsonian Magazine still can’t seem to bring ourselves to describe Native history in its own terms or on them (watch for anachronistic terms like “suburban” and, of course, New England, in the discussion of ancient settlement in the region), but the history is still tantalizing and should be considered, even if we’re still at it by faulty methods. (It does, for a while, call the region Dawnland, a translation for its natives’ name for their land, and includes good information about local lifestyle and politics, though still necessarily from European sources.) Side side note … there’s a bit about handkerchiefs I know my brother will appreciate. Heh.
On March 16, 1621, a lone man came unarmed into the village of the Europeans, and greeted them in their English language …
This piece is LONG, but it may be the most excellent *storytelling* link I have put up in ages. This is what makes history exciting, frustrating, beautiful and awful, and endlessly intriguing. Give it the time. It is worth the read, if only to learn what invasive species can do even beyond fell intent.
Side note … Even Smithsonian Magazine still can’t seem to bring ourselves to describe Native history in its own terms or on them (watch for anachronistic terms like “suburban” and, of course, New England, in the discussion of ancient settlement in the region), but the history is still tantalizing and should be considered, even if we’re still at it by faulty methods. (It does, for a while, call the region Dawnland, a translation for its natives’ name for their land, and includes good information about local lifestyle and politics, though still necessarily from European sources.) Side side note … there’s a bit about handkerchiefs I know my brother will appreciate. Heh.
Sunday, March 15, 2015
Be Where Tides of March
A few random thoughts is my favorite new online crack addiction. Today's special? A whole slew of puns and in-jokes about some guy named Gaius. In a word - OSUM.
Saturday, March 14, 2015
#WeNeedDiverseBooks
There is a movement in publishing which has gathered a great deal of momentum just in the past six months, and which is gratifying to see - and which I have DECIDEDLY failed (with The Ax and the Vase, that is) to participate in. Ax is not only about a royal white dude, but it's self-absorbedly told in first person POV, *and* includes a long and inextricable subplot about, essentially, hating and punishing homosexual behavior.
I've talked about it before, and don't defend these things in their essence. Ax is the story that made me tell it, and (failings and all) it still captivates me, and it's a great novel. I didn't think, when falling into the story, about its demographics, and have wrestled with my own culpability as an author since.
The WIP happens once again to be about a royal princess, but (a) this novel will be told, at least, from the point of view of a woman, and (b) takes place in world by far more cosmopolitan than an ancient Frankish stockade. At least two major characters are people of color, and the issue of how one of these must die is one I am dealing with at great mental length these days, because it echoes, for me, the insensitivity of a White Dude King killing off the gay man in his ranks, and there is concern not only for my ethical expectations, but also the genuineness of the world. I shy away from political correctness in dealing with any story, and yet there is a definite need to "redeem" myself from some of the constraints my original first-person novel brings with it, no matter how good it is.
There is also the concern of my being a white person of undoubted privilege and freedom, and the extent to which I exoticize diversity, as opposed to presenting it properly. I couldn't even bring myself to add to the community response at Janet Reid's recent post about diversity; they do too good a job there for me to improve on it. I just know I want to participate in #WeNeedDiverseBooks - in the right way for who I am and what we all want to accomplish.
How to do that ...
The WIP is bringing with it, every day, more exciting opportunities in its story, its research - its *characters*.
Wish me luck ...
I've talked about it before, and don't defend these things in their essence. Ax is the story that made me tell it, and (failings and all) it still captivates me, and it's a great novel. I didn't think, when falling into the story, about its demographics, and have wrestled with my own culpability as an author since.
The WIP happens once again to be about a royal princess, but (a) this novel will be told, at least, from the point of view of a woman, and (b) takes place in world by far more cosmopolitan than an ancient Frankish stockade. At least two major characters are people of color, and the issue of how one of these must die is one I am dealing with at great mental length these days, because it echoes, for me, the insensitivity of a White Dude King killing off the gay man in his ranks, and there is concern not only for my ethical expectations, but also the genuineness of the world. I shy away from political correctness in dealing with any story, and yet there is a definite need to "redeem" myself from some of the constraints my original first-person novel brings with it, no matter how good it is.
There is also the concern of my being a white person of undoubted privilege and freedom, and the extent to which I exoticize diversity, as opposed to presenting it properly. I couldn't even bring myself to add to the community response at Janet Reid's recent post about diversity; they do too good a job there for me to improve on it. I just know I want to participate in #WeNeedDiverseBooks - in the right way for who I am and what we all want to accomplish.
How to do that ...
- Avoid exoticization - turning someone's entire culture into a Hallowe'en costume (or, even worse, a sexy Hallowe'en costume) to dress up my book.
- Avoid appropriation - imitation is not always the sincerest form of flattery; sometimes, it's just a reductive presumption, and can lead to a loss of perspective. Not good for writing about something.
- Don't impose myself on a character or a culture - researching a world to build it, without demolition in order to reface it. Storytelling is not a wasteful home design show out to impose a fresh new face on an old house, it's an exploration of structure and style which should be true to intent. I don't jam 21st-century feminists into my works, and I don't fetishize the worlds into which I want to bring my readers.
- Follow the story. If the characters are allowed "their own truth" so to speak, everything will work better. I love to be led, as an author.
- Keep #WeNeedDiverseBooks and the great diversity and voices *in tune* all the time. I find inspiration in Twitter all the time for this, connections and perspectives not only keeping me honest about my privilege, but affecting the way I live and write, and how I think about approaching everything.
- FIND THE HISTORY. There are more and more people every day seeking to illuminate sources beyond the powerful white men. Researchers are amazing people, and they share - it would be madness not to take advantage of that, as a writer.
The WIP is bringing with it, every day, more exciting opportunities in its story, its research - its *characters*.
Wish me luck ...
Collection
Mark Chappelle, one of my first friends on Twitter, has some thoughts on being a packrat ... and being an emotional packrat ...
History Extra looks at the crucial components of the phrase and the concept of being "better equipped than ever before" to study the royal dead in England, but the questions the whole idea raises reach well beyond the U. K.
Heard about that skull found still inside its ancient Geek helm at Marathon? Gary Corby takes a good look at the facts.
Finally, a quote for the day:
History Extra looks at the crucial components of the phrase and the concept of being "better equipped than ever before" to study the royal dead in England, but the questions the whole idea raises reach well beyond the U. K.
Heard about that skull found still inside its ancient Geek helm at Marathon? Gary Corby takes a good look at the facts.
Finally, a quote for the day:
I pity the man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the cloth will starve in the process.
--Benjamin Harrison
A Simpler Time
I’ve reached that age where, with a certain chauvinism and privilege, the memory of youth and childhood appear to me “a simpler time.” This isn’t couched in the presumption that my childhood was better than YOUR childhood, if you are of a different age – nor that my childhood could beat up your childhood on the playground. It’s not even a reflection of technology and so on. It probably IS the result of responsibility; we all think in those terms, I think. And (assuming I have gained any), there is the influence of increased knowledge, and emotional experience, always mucking up the works in life.
My kid-dom in the seventies, and teen years in the eighties, weren’t an exceptionally halcyon period. I didn’t like either stage of life very much at the time, and have zero yearning to return. Yet it wasn’t bad stuff, my youth and childhood. There were bullies, but they never physically harmed me, and if they scarred me much emotionally – well, it still led to who I am now, and I like that person pretty well, so though I can remember them it’s not with feeling.
Much was forbidden, especially in the very much younger years, and I was one of those kids always griping of boredom. I didn’t love going outside to play, and though I did love reading, when I read about agents and other writers’ PASSIONS for it, devouring Proust and so on from the earliest ages – I won’t lie, a lot of what I read for a good long stretch was MAD magazine anthology books, and as much as I liked The Secret Garden and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s stories, I couldn’t say with any accuracy that they changed my life or have a tearfully cherished place in my heart. My reaction when given the first NOVEL I ever read, was resentment that there were no damned pictures. Seriously – it didn’t mean maturation and getting older (that attainment that meant finally gaining every privilege denied to the very young), it meant my parents were trying to bore me to death.
Then, of course, I read the book (a blue hardback with dustcover I am fairly certain I still have, and in mighty good condition – unless I gave it to my elder niece …). It was called “War Work”, which was an extremely unfortunate title to proffer to young-me. I found the very word War a complete drag (reasons I am a Trek nerd and not Star Wars – seriously), and where my parents, especially my mom, undoubtedly associated the WWII story with certain halcyon days of their own, all I heard was “this is a story about war, something that interests me precisely not at all.”
Of course, the novel was about a bunch of kids many thousands of miles and nicely protected continents removed from actual wartime, and involved playing games and the small hurts and so on of the characters and the times.
As I’ve said before here– the fact is, I generally feel like I fall short in the “passionate reader” aspect which is pretty strongly emphasized in the industry I aspire to. I don’t have moist stories to share about the first time I ever heard Charlotte’s Web read to us in school, though it certainly affected me, at least at the time. (My readerliness falls short in so many ways.) I can’t pretend I was outlining my own career nor plans as an authoress, indeed, before my mid-thirties. And we see how I have progressed there … ahem.
Back when things (and my brain) were simpler, the prevailing assumption was still that a girl child grows up and gets married, and husbands provide the breadwinning function. Yet even by the time I got to middle school and high school, that was changing. For a while, it was, “women CAN work” … and I was all, “Well, who needs THAT!?” – and then it pretty much became apparent that we were all going to have to work, aspirations or no. I was not excited by this aspect of social change, but let it be said I was never really into the whole wife-and-mother thing either. It’s just that I was an underachiever, I did LIKE boys, figured for (perhaps too long) sooner or later I’d find one who could feed me well enough, and nothing much shone forth in the firmament, leading me toward some magical calling.
Once high school had worn on for a couple of years, I began to realize the inevitable – not only that I was probably going to have to work for a living, but that the likelihood of being able to do so by simply being admired by millions and made independently wealthy thanks to my beauty and (acting) talent was vanishingly slim. I still majored in theater (or Theatre/Dance, as the also vanishingly slim department at the school I unfortunately chose as a non-launch-pad for this career) in a ditch effort to get some program to do that work for me, but knew well enough that I’d probably have to get a job.
Job, for me, meant “secretary” – and still does, though my level of commitment has arisen somewhat.
I took typing at age seventeen, in a horrible room at the back of the school filled with Selectrics and a punctilious teacher with little use for my brains and creativity (ask me about the jobs where that was the case too! not.), and managed to get out of there with the necessary skill set to feed myself if the right rockstar didn’t come along.
Of course, he did, but he ended his rock starring career in support of our marriage, which I promptly discarded. There were conversations during our bliss, as to whether we could afford toilet paper or not. I can’t even say “we were rich in love” because I was a nasty little vain shrew (back then), and money wasn’t even my problem.
Things, already, weren’t very simple anymore. And didn’t get moreso from there.
One of the biggest ways life is no longer simple lies in the fact that there is only one soul to manage the whole thing. From kitty litter scoops to mortgage payments and some sort of social life, there’s nobody to share it with. Nor, as when my childhood was so *delightfully* simple, to depend upon without thinking. Anything gets put off? That’s me without gas in the car or a slipping credit rating, or no heat because – no oil. Or hungry cute furbabies, subtly bonking around metal bowls, because mommy’s distracted. Aww. My life’s not actually all that complex, Batman – but heck if even the smallest detail can be left to somebody else.
It scarcely leaves time for the dazzling gorgeousness of Authoressial glamour, I tellya. And I am nothing if not heart-stoppingly glamorous. Just ask the cat.
So of course there’s a fantasy, that publication will somehow change things around here.
I don’t want to be Rowling, or King. Yet I’m well aware the old dreams I joked about, of “midlist glory” are frankly kind of dangerous, second-career-wise.
Yeah, I’ve always got typing. But typing isn’t paying for refinishing my kitchen floors, or vapor-sealing the basement. The joke about glamour – look, I picture myself talking at colleges and JRW_____ events and even churches and doing signings, hopefully. I like the idea of my bespectacled, turtlenecked nerd-chic portrait, and working to support my books. I *love* the idea of some fourteen-year-old kid falling for the story, and studying the history, then maybe turning around and telling more stories of their own – because they read me, once upon a time (har). I can’t wait to get scared that nobody showed up at that bookstore where I’m shilling, and even more scared because lots of people did.
I can’t wait for things to get MORE complicated. Unexpected. Unusual. Even frustrating, whatever the frustrations may be between advance and paying-out, another novel, and royalties. I can’t wait to cross the ocean, even if only vicariously flying on the leaves of my book, as it’s sold in Europe – and, hopefully, maybe even beyond. If I ever got to GO where I write about – Istanbul, Ravenna, the Channel Islands (oh yes, I have a third book in mind, once Ax and the WIP are out) … dang, that’ll be something neat.
And I hate flying, y’all.
Lay on the complications; childhood gave me much to be grateful for, but life’s not done yet, and I’m not persuaded my simple, safe youth and childhood are the be-all and there’s nothing left to seek. Let’s find out what sort of kinks this second job will bring on once it’s PAYING, at last.
Simple was so seventies. Show me the coming years. Show me the future …
My kid-dom in the seventies, and teen years in the eighties, weren’t an exceptionally halcyon period. I didn’t like either stage of life very much at the time, and have zero yearning to return. Yet it wasn’t bad stuff, my youth and childhood. There were bullies, but they never physically harmed me, and if they scarred me much emotionally – well, it still led to who I am now, and I like that person pretty well, so though I can remember them it’s not with feeling.
Much was forbidden, especially in the very much younger years, and I was one of those kids always griping of boredom. I didn’t love going outside to play, and though I did love reading, when I read about agents and other writers’ PASSIONS for it, devouring Proust and so on from the earliest ages – I won’t lie, a lot of what I read for a good long stretch was MAD magazine anthology books, and as much as I liked The Secret Garden and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s stories, I couldn’t say with any accuracy that they changed my life or have a tearfully cherished place in my heart. My reaction when given the first NOVEL I ever read, was resentment that there were no damned pictures. Seriously – it didn’t mean maturation and getting older (that attainment that meant finally gaining every privilege denied to the very young), it meant my parents were trying to bore me to death.
Then, of course, I read the book (a blue hardback with dustcover I am fairly certain I still have, and in mighty good condition – unless I gave it to my elder niece …). It was called “War Work”, which was an extremely unfortunate title to proffer to young-me. I found the very word War a complete drag (reasons I am a Trek nerd and not Star Wars – seriously), and where my parents, especially my mom, undoubtedly associated the WWII story with certain halcyon days of their own, all I heard was “this is a story about war, something that interests me precisely not at all.”
Of course, the novel was about a bunch of kids many thousands of miles and nicely protected continents removed from actual wartime, and involved playing games and the small hurts and so on of the characters and the times.
As I’ve said before here– the fact is, I generally feel like I fall short in the “passionate reader” aspect which is pretty strongly emphasized in the industry I aspire to. I don’t have moist stories to share about the first time I ever heard Charlotte’s Web read to us in school, though it certainly affected me, at least at the time. (My readerliness falls short in so many ways.) I can’t pretend I was outlining my own career nor plans as an authoress, indeed, before my mid-thirties. And we see how I have progressed there … ahem.
Back when things (and my brain) were simpler, the prevailing assumption was still that a girl child grows up and gets married, and husbands provide the breadwinning function. Yet even by the time I got to middle school and high school, that was changing. For a while, it was, “women CAN work” … and I was all, “Well, who needs THAT!?” – and then it pretty much became apparent that we were all going to have to work, aspirations or no. I was not excited by this aspect of social change, but let it be said I was never really into the whole wife-and-mother thing either. It’s just that I was an underachiever, I did LIKE boys, figured for (perhaps too long) sooner or later I’d find one who could feed me well enough, and nothing much shone forth in the firmament, leading me toward some magical calling.
Once high school had worn on for a couple of years, I began to realize the inevitable – not only that I was probably going to have to work for a living, but that the likelihood of being able to do so by simply being admired by millions and made independently wealthy thanks to my beauty and (acting) talent was vanishingly slim. I still majored in theater (or Theatre/Dance, as the also vanishingly slim department at the school I unfortunately chose as a non-launch-pad for this career) in a ditch effort to get some program to do that work for me, but knew well enough that I’d probably have to get a job.
Job, for me, meant “secretary” – and still does, though my level of commitment has arisen somewhat.
I took typing at age seventeen, in a horrible room at the back of the school filled with Selectrics and a punctilious teacher with little use for my brains and creativity (ask me about the jobs where that was the case too! not.), and managed to get out of there with the necessary skill set to feed myself if the right rockstar didn’t come along.
Of course, he did, but he ended his rock starring career in support of our marriage, which I promptly discarded. There were conversations during our bliss, as to whether we could afford toilet paper or not. I can’t even say “we were rich in love” because I was a nasty little vain shrew (back then), and money wasn’t even my problem.
Things, already, weren’t very simple anymore. And didn’t get moreso from there.
One of the biggest ways life is no longer simple lies in the fact that there is only one soul to manage the whole thing. From kitty litter scoops to mortgage payments and some sort of social life, there’s nobody to share it with. Nor, as when my childhood was so *delightfully* simple, to depend upon without thinking. Anything gets put off? That’s me without gas in the car or a slipping credit rating, or no heat because – no oil. Or hungry cute furbabies, subtly bonking around metal bowls, because mommy’s distracted. Aww. My life’s not actually all that complex, Batman – but heck if even the smallest detail can be left to somebody else.
It scarcely leaves time for the dazzling gorgeousness of Authoressial glamour, I tellya. And I am nothing if not heart-stoppingly glamorous. Just ask the cat.
So of course there’s a fantasy, that publication will somehow change things around here.
I don’t want to be Rowling, or King. Yet I’m well aware the old dreams I joked about, of “midlist glory” are frankly kind of dangerous, second-career-wise.
Yeah, I’ve always got typing. But typing isn’t paying for refinishing my kitchen floors, or vapor-sealing the basement. The joke about glamour – look, I picture myself talking at colleges and JRW_____ events and even churches and doing signings, hopefully. I like the idea of my bespectacled, turtlenecked nerd-chic portrait, and working to support my books. I *love* the idea of some fourteen-year-old kid falling for the story, and studying the history, then maybe turning around and telling more stories of their own – because they read me, once upon a time (har). I can’t wait to get scared that nobody showed up at that bookstore where I’m shilling, and even more scared because lots of people did.
I can’t wait for things to get MORE complicated. Unexpected. Unusual. Even frustrating, whatever the frustrations may be between advance and paying-out, another novel, and royalties. I can’t wait to cross the ocean, even if only vicariously flying on the leaves of my book, as it’s sold in Europe – and, hopefully, maybe even beyond. If I ever got to GO where I write about – Istanbul, Ravenna, the Channel Islands (oh yes, I have a third book in mind, once Ax and the WIP are out) … dang, that’ll be something neat.
And I hate flying, y’all.
Lay on the complications; childhood gave me much to be grateful for, but life’s not done yet, and I’m not persuaded my simple, safe youth and childhood are the be-all and there’s nothing left to seek. Let’s find out what sort of kinks this second job will bring on once it’s PAYING, at last.
Simple was so seventies. Show me the coming years. Show me the future …
Friday, March 13, 2015
Quick Hello
There is material waiting to get up on the blog, even a perfectly lovely post all written - however, as it would take me a few minutes to hunt down links and format and get everything done, the blog loses out, these days, to query research and other types of networking. I have some burning thoughts even still waiting for formulation, so things aren't dead around here (just ask the 400-500 bots coming to visit every single day now ... and what the heck is that? It's like the time LeVar Burton retweeted me in my stats these days, but it's all Russia and France - and who knew France was so infested with bots?). Just not prioritized. I haven't even been able to comment on Janet Reid's nor Jessica Faust's blogs lately, though I'm at least reading the posts and getting lost in increasingly arcane food in jokes.
Just wanted to say to everyone - don't forget PI DAY tomorrow! 3.14.15 - and celebrate twice, at 9:26 and 9:26, if you're feeling extra fancy. "Mmm. Pie."
Since we don't have time for a real collection post, do enjoy Two Nerdy History Girls' two recent posts: one on using shampoo safely in your own home! and another (with video!) featuring NOT Princess Leia making a new dress from an old.
Okay, ciao for now. See you all soon (bots and all - sigh).
Just wanted to say to everyone - don't forget PI DAY tomorrow! 3.14.15 - and celebrate twice, at 9:26 and 9:26, if you're feeling extra fancy. "Mmm. Pie."
Since we don't have time for a real collection post, do enjoy Two Nerdy History Girls' two recent posts: one on using shampoo safely in your own home! and another (with video!) featuring NOT Princess Leia making a new dress from an old.
Okay, ciao for now. See you all soon (bots and all - sigh).
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
Archival
I learned somewhat early in my career, but have also always had an innate predisposition for, archiving everything. The good news is, at some point I also learned the value of purging archives now and then, but there are things I keep forever. My journals date to 1981 or so, and there is a cache of pay statements from my dad’s career which goes to his hiring at the university where I spent some good times growing up. Those make for fascinating financial forensics or history – and, indeed, though it’s incomplete and incoherent, I’ve got similar documentation from my own hundred and fifty or so jobs past and present.
At some point within the past several months, I even came across the wooden pencil box my dad made for me when I was a kid. He built it on the same specs as the paperboard ones all my friends had – long enough for pencils and a ruler, and later on for compass and protractor. He made it when I was young enough that the inside of it is entirely coated in crayon markings, the test palette for coloring I did before I went off to grade school. Inside this box, still redolent of ancient crayon wax, is the folded archive of notebook papers of notes sent between my friends and I in high school, for which I promised to be the official recordkeeper.
One can hardly say I fell short in my duties. Some of the notes are still folded into the triangular “footballs” we used to play with, or the little rectangles with pull tabs with which it was once de regeur to fold notes in class. I haven’t looked at these in thirty years, but I did put the box away. Somewhere safe. One shudders to think what may be made of my various gripes and crushes, as shared at age fourteen, once I am dead and some poor sot gets the job offire-bombing disposing of my possessions. By then, I expect it will be a stranger or two clearing my house for sale; this isn’t so much sad to me as it is queer (in the sense we once used, before that word took such a trip through disparagement-land and back and probably back again.
I do contemplate from time to time what to do with the journals (also neglected now for a couple decades at least). The boys I liked in 1985 or dreams of kisses never shared are perhaps best not left to my nieces in the estate, and even I don’t actually care anymore. Perhaps best to give those a read (“some time” as we are so heedlessly prone to promise ourselves) and consign them to a bin, if not to a flaming farewell, and save posterity the trouble of pondering how pretty that one curly-headed boy’s eyes were, or what so-and-so did that embarrassed me in Chemistry. I spent many years losing touch with some of the folks populating those old pages; it seems fit I should lose touch with the memories; purge the archives and make room (or just let lie fallow) what space they occupied.
At work today, I picked up one of those “I’ll manage this to-do pile some time” stacks, and had an easy few minutes sorting and actually dealing with most of it. The rest wasn’t difficult, merely lightly tedious, and there’ll be a bit more in case I get bored tomorrow. Heh.
This is also the time of year when it’s wise to deal with personal archives – bills and so on, and particularly tax items. Lacking an office (and motivation), I had gone YEARS without filing, but having the giant desk and new, more capacious file cabinet, I took a nice fat bite out of that issue a couple months ago. More awaits (it always does, doesn’t it?), but the beast is not so terrible, and time to file is – well, upon us. And there’s a literal pay day of sorts in it for me, when I deal with that. Refund season is nice; though my dad taught us not to lend much to Uncle Sam interest free, I still seem to do it, and still carelessly let it feel like “extra” money when the funds are deposited.
‘Tis the season for spring cleaning, and shoving the couch around isn’t enough. (I have my eyes on taking a day or two off to deal with the BASEMENT. Though my mom keeps sighing that she needs to think of something to do with my grandmother’s bedroom furniture, which is down there, that small set of items is the least of my subterranean organizational concerns, and I’m happy for it to live there for the forseeable time being. Or something.)
All this, of course, will make it EASIER TO DO MY RESEARCH (which, let’s not pretend, I have done in the past on a postage-stamp desk, if I bothered with my desk at all). It’s all very writer-excusey, of course – “I’ll start my diet Monday” – but what piddling I’ve done of late on the WIP has largely been theoretical scene-smithing, not applied science. And I actually love research.
Fortunately, one good deed breeds another (or something like that), and the glow of accomplishment seems to beget more accomplishments. The office being organized and more or less lacking in lurking To-Do’s and unmanaged pieces of paper *does* make using that glorious desk for the old unpaid job all the easier. And spring is beginning to sprung in my brain (or something …).
Stay tuned. Some day, I may even come up with a title and be able to discuss something other than “The WIP.” You just stay tuned; it’s going to get right down exciting around here.
At some point within the past several months, I even came across the wooden pencil box my dad made for me when I was a kid. He built it on the same specs as the paperboard ones all my friends had – long enough for pencils and a ruler, and later on for compass and protractor. He made it when I was young enough that the inside of it is entirely coated in crayon markings, the test palette for coloring I did before I went off to grade school. Inside this box, still redolent of ancient crayon wax, is the folded archive of notebook papers of notes sent between my friends and I in high school, for which I promised to be the official recordkeeper.
One can hardly say I fell short in my duties. Some of the notes are still folded into the triangular “footballs” we used to play with, or the little rectangles with pull tabs with which it was once de regeur to fold notes in class. I haven’t looked at these in thirty years, but I did put the box away. Somewhere safe. One shudders to think what may be made of my various gripes and crushes, as shared at age fourteen, once I am dead and some poor sot gets the job of
I do contemplate from time to time what to do with the journals (also neglected now for a couple decades at least). The boys I liked in 1985 or dreams of kisses never shared are perhaps best not left to my nieces in the estate, and even I don’t actually care anymore. Perhaps best to give those a read (“some time” as we are so heedlessly prone to promise ourselves) and consign them to a bin, if not to a flaming farewell, and save posterity the trouble of pondering how pretty that one curly-headed boy’s eyes were, or what so-and-so did that embarrassed me in Chemistry. I spent many years losing touch with some of the folks populating those old pages; it seems fit I should lose touch with the memories; purge the archives and make room (or just let lie fallow) what space they occupied.
At work today, I picked up one of those “I’ll manage this to-do pile some time” stacks, and had an easy few minutes sorting and actually dealing with most of it. The rest wasn’t difficult, merely lightly tedious, and there’ll be a bit more in case I get bored tomorrow. Heh.
This is also the time of year when it’s wise to deal with personal archives – bills and so on, and particularly tax items. Lacking an office (and motivation), I had gone YEARS without filing, but having the giant desk and new, more capacious file cabinet, I took a nice fat bite out of that issue a couple months ago. More awaits (it always does, doesn’t it?), but the beast is not so terrible, and time to file is – well, upon us. And there’s a literal pay day of sorts in it for me, when I deal with that. Refund season is nice; though my dad taught us not to lend much to Uncle Sam interest free, I still seem to do it, and still carelessly let it feel like “extra” money when the funds are deposited.
‘Tis the season for spring cleaning, and shoving the couch around isn’t enough. (I have my eyes on taking a day or two off to deal with the BASEMENT. Though my mom keeps sighing that she needs to think of something to do with my grandmother’s bedroom furniture, which is down there, that small set of items is the least of my subterranean organizational concerns, and I’m happy for it to live there for the forseeable time being. Or something.)
All this, of course, will make it EASIER TO DO MY RESEARCH (which, let’s not pretend, I have done in the past on a postage-stamp desk, if I bothered with my desk at all). It’s all very writer-excusey, of course – “I’ll start my diet Monday” – but what piddling I’ve done of late on the WIP has largely been theoretical scene-smithing, not applied science. And I actually love research.
Fortunately, one good deed breeds another (or something like that), and the glow of accomplishment seems to beget more accomplishments. The office being organized and more or less lacking in lurking To-Do’s and unmanaged pieces of paper *does* make using that glorious desk for the old unpaid job all the easier. And spring is beginning to sprung in my brain (or something …).
Stay tuned. Some day, I may even come up with a title and be able to discuss something other than “The WIP.” You just stay tuned; it’s going to get right down exciting around here.
Saturday, March 7, 2015
Low Self-Esteem
The one time in my life I can ever remember not only agreeing with George Will, but actually shouting in acclamation at the TV at something he said, was during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. He said something along the lines of, “They say she has low self-esteem, but if anybody ever had more self-esteem than they have earned, it is Monica Lewisnky.”
One of the more stunning (and I mean that in the literal, brain-numbing sense of the term) effects of low self-esteem is that *everything* becomes about the sufferer. They are so wildly and giddily unimportant to the world, that the world positively revolves around the void. They ostentatiously and melodramatically observe their unimportance, enshrined as it is in the hearts of every person they’ve ever met. They refer to it and nothing else in any conversation, and occasionally crop up “surreptitiously” in order to ask whether their unimportance has been noted and catalogued for a random day. They go away so they can eat worms, and then React to every possible imagined hint that their absence has exacerbated the notice of others, to their unimportant detriment.
If the sufferer has an object of romantic interest, unrequited is best. That way, they can assume the extremely over-acted skittishness they display with such ostentation every time they chance to be exposed to the beloved has caused her or him to loathe the sufferer.
If the sufferer has a friend, they have the boon of a sympathetic ear to listen to the minutest and most extensive questioning regarding their every imagined shortcoming and failure – with the extra bonus round of reassurance, all of which will simultaneously confirm the sufferer’s utter centrality to the universe itself, by virtue of time and (insert giddy sigh here) attention, and have no effect whatever on the actual problem. The actual problem being, the sufferer is insufferABLE, thanks to this monomaniacal religion of self-doubt, to which all must pay homage and worship.
Another unfortunate effect of low self-esteem is that it sucks people into the vortex of this all-powerful unimportance. The void is one of personality and pleasantness, unfortunately – and yet, any soul with the slightest compassion is at risk of being bonded to the void, merely by “being there” even only once. The void knows how to attract pity and attention, and placating the void is the ultimate pitfall. Having succumbed to the impulse, the sufferer of low self-esteem will do all he or she can to exploit it and trap passersby, ultimately using this vacuum of personality and pleasantness to suck in any chance pity and attention, with the aim of transforming it into inextricable bonds.
Raise your hand if you’ve ever found yourself with a significant other in this way.
I thought so.
Ever work with one? The person about-to-be-fired every hour of every day? The one you have to escape with increasingly repetitive ruses that “I think my phone is ringing” or “Oh! Meeting in five mintues!” or the rhetorical throwing-up-of-hands that is “gosh, I wish I could say something useful” or, when turning around and typing even while they’re still looming at you, instant-messaging someone to please save you. And then pretending you just got called … um … over THERE. Somewhere. Else. Where you can’t be followed, gosh, sorry, coz it’s about that confidential, um, stuff, we’re doing. Bye.
The amount of mind time humanity is forced to spend on the terminally unimportant is staggering. We staunch the fatal flow of self-esteem with niceties, vague friendly gestures, or the dread night out with drinks, yet still the hemorrhage is unending – yet the sufferer never dies.
The true pain of it is that the empty fulcrum of the universe, sometimes, is actually attached to someone you want to like – if only it were possible to get past their overwhelming unimportance and awfulness. Sometimes, it’s possible to see the heart beyond the bleeding wound, and to honestly wish you could staunch it. Sometimes you’re just with someone so much, or related to them, or honestly think they are redeemable, and can’t give up hoping.
The only cure for low self-esteem, of course, is healthy self-esteem. And who needs that? That places perspective on a person accustomed to the conundrum of being the most important thing in the world, by virtue (hah) of being the worst thing in it. Perspective is for boring people, people who don’t get attention, people who go through life without DRAMA and excitement – oh, and attention. Mmm, attention.
So it’s little wonder, every now and then, those swirling a vortex have happy dreams of providing some sufferer the singular attention of a sledge to the brainpan (specifically aimed at the mouth). Ah, sweet dreams.
Thank goodness for puppies and kittens. And weekends all our own.
People. Can’t live with ‘em. Can’t punch them in the neck and live without ‘em.
One of the more stunning (and I mean that in the literal, brain-numbing sense of the term) effects of low self-esteem is that *everything* becomes about the sufferer. They are so wildly and giddily unimportant to the world, that the world positively revolves around the void. They ostentatiously and melodramatically observe their unimportance, enshrined as it is in the hearts of every person they’ve ever met. They refer to it and nothing else in any conversation, and occasionally crop up “surreptitiously” in order to ask whether their unimportance has been noted and catalogued for a random day. They go away so they can eat worms, and then React to every possible imagined hint that their absence has exacerbated the notice of others, to their unimportant detriment.
If the sufferer has an object of romantic interest, unrequited is best. That way, they can assume the extremely over-acted skittishness they display with such ostentation every time they chance to be exposed to the beloved has caused her or him to loathe the sufferer.
If the sufferer has a friend, they have the boon of a sympathetic ear to listen to the minutest and most extensive questioning regarding their every imagined shortcoming and failure – with the extra bonus round of reassurance, all of which will simultaneously confirm the sufferer’s utter centrality to the universe itself, by virtue of time and (insert giddy sigh here) attention, and have no effect whatever on the actual problem. The actual problem being, the sufferer is insufferABLE, thanks to this monomaniacal religion of self-doubt, to which all must pay homage and worship.
Another unfortunate effect of low self-esteem is that it sucks people into the vortex of this all-powerful unimportance. The void is one of personality and pleasantness, unfortunately – and yet, any soul with the slightest compassion is at risk of being bonded to the void, merely by “being there” even only once. The void knows how to attract pity and attention, and placating the void is the ultimate pitfall. Having succumbed to the impulse, the sufferer of low self-esteem will do all he or she can to exploit it and trap passersby, ultimately using this vacuum of personality and pleasantness to suck in any chance pity and attention, with the aim of transforming it into inextricable bonds.
Raise your hand if you’ve ever found yourself with a significant other in this way.
I thought so.
Ever work with one? The person about-to-be-fired every hour of every day? The one you have to escape with increasingly repetitive ruses that “I think my phone is ringing” or “Oh! Meeting in five mintues!” or the rhetorical throwing-up-of-hands that is “gosh, I wish I could say something useful” or, when turning around and typing even while they’re still looming at you, instant-messaging someone to please save you. And then pretending you just got called … um … over THERE. Somewhere. Else. Where you can’t be followed, gosh, sorry, coz it’s about that confidential, um, stuff, we’re doing. Bye.
The amount of mind time humanity is forced to spend on the terminally unimportant is staggering. We staunch the fatal flow of self-esteem with niceties, vague friendly gestures, or the dread night out with drinks, yet still the hemorrhage is unending – yet the sufferer never dies.
The true pain of it is that the empty fulcrum of the universe, sometimes, is actually attached to someone you want to like – if only it were possible to get past their overwhelming unimportance and awfulness. Sometimes, it’s possible to see the heart beyond the bleeding wound, and to honestly wish you could staunch it. Sometimes you’re just with someone so much, or related to them, or honestly think they are redeemable, and can’t give up hoping.
The only cure for low self-esteem, of course, is healthy self-esteem. And who needs that? That places perspective on a person accustomed to the conundrum of being the most important thing in the world, by virtue (hah) of being the worst thing in it. Perspective is for boring people, people who don’t get attention, people who go through life without DRAMA and excitement – oh, and attention. Mmm, attention.
So it’s little wonder, every now and then, those swirling a vortex have happy dreams of providing some sufferer the singular attention of a sledge to the brainpan (specifically aimed at the mouth). Ah, sweet dreams.
Thank goodness for puppies and kittens. And weekends all our own.
People. Can’t live with ‘em. Can’t punch them in the neck and live without ‘em.
Collection
The generous and talented Elizabeth Chadwick had a post (with great excerpts!) wishing Henry II a happy birthday. Good reading, go enjoy ...
The Arrant Pedant is staying busy on the blog these days - today, we have another deconstruction of grammar itself, but also an extremely illuminating look at the careless use (and production of) statistics. On online grammar errors supposedly exploding by 148% in under a decade. This is an excellent look at something way beyond grammar - it's how businesses and special interests create a scare for their own benefit. We should never forget just how many sources have reason to manipulate our expectations. And anyway - Arrant Pedant makes for more good reading, so again, go enjoy ...
The History Blog's own post and, as always, its well chosen links to other articles and sources, takes a look at the stone tool found in Oregon under sixteen millennia of ash. This is the New World, y'all. Exciting! (Also featured - an archaeological selfie. Those guys really like shots of their left hands holding things ...)
The Arrant Pedant is staying busy on the blog these days - today, we have another deconstruction of grammar itself, but also an extremely illuminating look at the careless use (and production of) statistics. On online grammar errors supposedly exploding by 148% in under a decade. This is an excellent look at something way beyond grammar - it's how businesses and special interests create a scare for their own benefit. We should never forget just how many sources have reason to manipulate our expectations. And anyway - Arrant Pedant makes for more good reading, so again, go enjoy ...
The History Blog's own post and, as always, its well chosen links to other articles and sources, takes a look at the stone tool found in Oregon under sixteen millennia of ash. This is the New World, y'all. Exciting! (Also featured - an archaeological selfie. Those guys really like shots of their left hands holding things ...)
Thursday, March 5, 2015
Pummy
One of Penelope's more recent nicknames is Pummy. I've always called her Pen-Pen, which may or may not be the echo of someone I know whose child's name has a first syllable she doubles up in much the same way - or may just be the way human linguistics works, especially with diminutizing nicknames. So Pen-Pen, when spoken quickly, begins to sound like Pempem, which can begin to sound like pumpum ... and there you go.
Pummy was just sitting at my knee here at the couch, facing perpendicular to the front of it, chest near the end of the furniture. She turned her head round to look at me - a pretty steep angle, almost Exorcist steep, and looked up. And had her chin on the arm of the couch.
Seriously, y'all cannot imagine the levels of adorableness it is necessary to be able to tolerate, in this house. I'd have photographed her, but the true effect would have been lost. Her head pointed upward, ears at full-unfurl, a shadow over her face, but enough light on the gloss of her eyes and her shiny black lips and nose to gleam softly. And her CHIN resting on the ARM of the COUCH.
It's untenable, that's what it is. I can't ten either of 'em, and Gossamer the Editor Cat uses it *KNOWINGLY* and still it works, the crass little PR man.
And now Pen is lying down, and her chin would be on her foreleg - but NO, her ROPE TOY is there, and could that even possibly be more hilariously, more endearingly, more winsomely sweet? I ask you.
And I'll tell you, too:
No. No, it could not.
Pummy was just sitting at my knee here at the couch, facing perpendicular to the front of it, chest near the end of the furniture. She turned her head round to look at me - a pretty steep angle, almost Exorcist steep, and looked up. And had her chin on the arm of the couch.
Seriously, y'all cannot imagine the levels of adorableness it is necessary to be able to tolerate, in this house. I'd have photographed her, but the true effect would have been lost. Her head pointed upward, ears at full-unfurl, a shadow over her face, but enough light on the gloss of her eyes and her shiny black lips and nose to gleam softly. And her CHIN resting on the ARM of the COUCH.
It's untenable, that's what it is. I can't ten either of 'em, and Gossamer the Editor Cat uses it *KNOWINGLY* and still it works, the crass little PR man.
And now Pen is lying down, and her chin would be on her foreleg - but NO, her ROPE TOY is there, and could that even possibly be more hilariously, more endearingly, more winsomely sweet? I ask you.
And I'll tell you, too:
No. No, it could not.
"... ... NEXT!"
I haven't been around here or Twitter a great deal lately, not only because the paying job has involved a major launch this week, of which I was a core part for several areas, but also because it's seemed to me wise to let the page enjoy a little fallow time while I have been querying again.
Not so long ago, I was thinking I might be coming to the end of a resource to find more agents to look into, but more options have cropped up, and I'm quite enjoying the process right now. More than a couple of very interesting agents indeed have bobbed up, the kind I'm surprised and/or kicking myself for not having found sooner; but the nice thing is, it's not like I'm running out of options at a point where I've got a decent head of steam going.
We've also apparently set up a regular schedule of Thursday snowstorms in these parts, and I can't help but feel a bit like Arthur Dent about the whole winter thing in this regard.
But, even coming to appreciate the unique sense of anticipation for change living in a climate with season tends to include, I seem to be hanging in there with the ongoing winter. Whatever is absent, whatever is lacking, in my life, I'm managing to cope with.
Even Thursdays.
Not so long ago, I was thinking I might be coming to the end of a resource to find more agents to look into, but more options have cropped up, and I'm quite enjoying the process right now. More than a couple of very interesting agents indeed have bobbed up, the kind I'm surprised and/or kicking myself for not having found sooner; but the nice thing is, it's not like I'm running out of options at a point where I've got a decent head of steam going.
We've also apparently set up a regular schedule of Thursday snowstorms in these parts, and I can't help but feel a bit like Arthur Dent about the whole winter thing in this regard.
But, even coming to appreciate the unique sense of anticipation for change living in a climate with season tends to include, I seem to be hanging in there with the ongoing winter. Whatever is absent, whatever is lacking, in my life, I'm managing to cope with.
Even Thursdays.
Monday, March 2, 2015
Unexpectedly: This Happened.
I don't get specific about this a lot, but ... the man I love lives four thousand miles away. He's been gone ten and a half years, and though there are plenty of folks who think that means I should love somebody else, I've never round reason to come to this conclusion. He's been suffering depression and any number of other setbacks over the past three years (if not longer), and there is no current plan for him to come home.
He left about a year and a half after my dad died, at a period I was still in mourning.
I have a joyous array of absolutely wonderful friends. My mom is in my town, and she and I get to spend good times together, with my stepfather, whom I love. My home is cheering and more than halfway paid for, and populated by the dearest dog and cat an ageing biddy could ask for. But without Mr. X, my life is ... less. I'm no gothic heroine, I'm not Penelope to his Odysseus. But I have never known anything else to do but love him. Even though I've looked, from time to time.
I can share none of my blessings with him in any way that makes a difference to his life, and the impotence is profound. Indeed, we go through periods we don't even communicate at all, which can be giddily terrifying, on top of the helplessness.
And it was almost at the same moment he left, less than two years after dad died, that my brother took me to a James River Writers conference, and ... life got seriously different.
My life doesn't need saving, but even so writing "The Ax and the Vase" did something like it.
Friday, February 27, 2015
Collection
“I remember when I had my first beer”, “I remember when I invented feminism”, “My diet is morally superior to your diet” and other stories of baffling enragement. The “standing desk” link is a great impression of the psychotic/proseletyzing vim and fervor people insist upon applying to their own choices. The diet link doesn’t say anything I haven’t pointed out before, but is very, VERY well written. Like, I have a little bit of a crush on the author well-written. Also he’s smurt. So go kill a mammoth, have a snack, and enjoy the read. But do it standing up.
Louisa Young takes us on an absolutely wonderful journey into the joys of research at The History Girls, starting with the charming portrait of a little girl and her cat ... and ending with a couple more very like her, and some winsome surprises along the way.
Lauren at American Duchess once again wows us with shoe designs of the early 20th century - the first pair are stunning. The third pair I crave.
Jeff Sypeck asks, “Dante? I’ve never grasped what Americans hope to do with him—maybe because the answer turns out to be 'everything.'”
The Arrant Pedant (ahh, how I love a new post at The AP) discusses Fifty Shades of Bad Grammar Advice. Awesomely. And, in case you're leery of (a) reading anything whatever to do with the Fifty Shades novels or (b) sick of reading snark *about* the novels, this post really doesn't touch (hee) those to speak of, but takes the discussion beyond. As, apparently, Grammerly did in dispensing poor advice about writers from Shakespeare to Hemingway whom they have deemed to employ substandard grammar.
Finally, in a self-referential link, someone finally commented on my post about a particular peculiar behavior of my dear little ur-doggy; it looks like it may be that this *is* a Carolina Dog thing.
Louisa Young takes us on an absolutely wonderful journey into the joys of research at The History Girls, starting with the charming portrait of a little girl and her cat ... and ending with a couple more very like her, and some winsome surprises along the way.
Lauren at American Duchess once again wows us with shoe designs of the early 20th century - the first pair are stunning. The third pair I crave.
Jeff Sypeck asks, “Dante? I’ve never grasped what Americans hope to do with him—maybe because the answer turns out to be 'everything.'”
The Arrant Pedant (ahh, how I love a new post at The AP) discusses Fifty Shades of Bad Grammar Advice. Awesomely. And, in case you're leery of (a) reading anything whatever to do with the Fifty Shades novels or (b) sick of reading snark *about* the novels, this post really doesn't touch (hee) those to speak of, but takes the discussion beyond. As, apparently, Grammerly did in dispensing poor advice about writers from Shakespeare to Hemingway whom they have deemed to employ substandard grammar.
Finally, in a self-referential link, someone finally commented on my post about a particular peculiar behavior of my dear little ur-doggy; it looks like it may be that this *is* a Carolina Dog thing.
Thursday, February 26, 2015
More Snowy Animals
A hawk and a crow came to the great maple in my front yard today, and had what appears to have been a most interesting harangue - on the part of the crow, at least.
My family are unabashedly hawk obsessed; one of the key recurring memories of any road trip from my childhood was mom excitedly pointing them out as we rode along. My experiences with birds since living in this home have been of the more negatively superstitious type, mostly (it's supposed to be bad luck for a bird to get inside; in reality, it's mostly just a mild frustration and a surprising variety of little white poo spots), but more than one hawk has said hello here on the estate. Usually, it's smaller ones, but this magnificent specimen posed JUST long enough to get me squee-ing.
My family are unabashedly hawk obsessed; one of the key recurring memories of any road trip from my childhood was mom excitedly pointing them out as we rode along. My experiences with birds since living in this home have been of the more negatively superstitious type, mostly (it's supposed to be bad luck for a bird to get inside; in reality, it's mostly just a mild frustration and a surprising variety of little white poo spots), but more than one hawk has said hello here on the estate. Usually, it's smaller ones, but this magnificent specimen posed JUST long enough to get me squee-ing.
If Looks Could Cuddle
Goss and Pen haven't actually become the adorable snuggling pals you see in aww-inducing internet photos ...
But they fake it pretty good, don't they?
The secret is, the space heater was right at the end of the couch where they were situated. Radiating heat and a good nap beat out a bonk on the brainpan any day.
But they fake it pretty good, don't they?
The secret is, the space heater was right at the end of the couch where they were situated. Radiating heat and a good nap beat out a bonk on the brainpan any day.
WFH
When the office is closed, it's nice to have a laptop and still be able to accomplish something in between shoveling and such.
It's nice, also, to have a change of personnel.
It's nice, also, to have a change of personnel.
Friday, February 20, 2015
Thank You, G-d, For My Friends
Just spent a nice twenty or thirty minutes on the phone with one of my best friends. She it was who, when we used to go out together, used the fake name "Penelope" (I was "Sabrina"), an alias I can't give her here for obvious reasons. She is V.
V and I have known each other almost as long as TEO and I. Middle school, high school, and beyond. She and her parents came to the church after dad died, and I treasure their coming. She has been there for me and I have tried to be for her, through times neither of us could ever imagine. V has been assailed, over the past ten years, with hideous health problems. I bless the day she met her husband, who is my friend too.
She and I just laughed and laughed, discussing all the (non) attractions of the fact that our high school class are planning a thirtieth reunion.
I love laughing with V. She has a beautiful laugh, and I love *her*. Tonight we were celebratory, for the first time in what seems like a very long time. Her father turned 88 today, her husband cooked a splendid meal for them, there will be cake when they can take another bite again. It is good to hear her relaxed, well, and *happy*.
Thank you, G-d, for my friends. Let me be a blessing to them.
V and I have known each other almost as long as TEO and I. Middle school, high school, and beyond. She and her parents came to the church after dad died, and I treasure their coming. She has been there for me and I have tried to be for her, through times neither of us could ever imagine. V has been assailed, over the past ten years, with hideous health problems. I bless the day she met her husband, who is my friend too.
She and I just laughed and laughed, discussing all the (non) attractions of the fact that our high school class are planning a thirtieth reunion.
I love laughing with V. She has a beautiful laugh, and I love *her*. Tonight we were celebratory, for the first time in what seems like a very long time. Her father turned 88 today, her husband cooked a splendid meal for them, there will be cake when they can take another bite again. It is good to hear her relaxed, well, and *happy*.
Thank you, G-d, for my friends. Let me be a blessing to them.
Thursday, February 19, 2015
Hostile Environment?
Many readers will know the joy and adventure of the break room at work. There is the inevitable miasma of burned (or, what the heck, not burned, but simply foot-scented) popcorn. The scary refrigerator. The crowded configuration of sink/microwave/fridge/ice maker and so on – but trash cans are always well across the room. The stolen food, the leftover food, the occasional present of crumbcake, the odd notices posted, the joy and sheer cameraderie of shared corporate hunger.
The day someone brings fish.
The day someone else brings barbecue, and it smells so good your little wan sandwich makes you get resentful.
Today was a new day. Today was the day … someone brought in a gourmet dish of mustard and creosote for lunch.
It was enough to make the world long for stinky-foot popcorn. Burnt.
The day someone brings fish.
The day someone else brings barbecue, and it smells so good your little wan sandwich makes you get resentful.
Today was a new day. Today was the day … someone brought in a gourmet dish of mustard and creosote for lunch.
It was enough to make the world long for stinky-foot popcorn. Burnt.
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Collection
Anyone who read my earlier post from today would be forgiven for thinking I am in a less than peppy state of mind. The truth is, I'm not feeling as morbid as it might seem; the headline says, "I contain multitudes" and that's no lie.
Yet there seems to be a confluence of sorrow; perhaps the predictable result of the ruthless weather so many across America are enduring. And so, here we go - click on any of these links if you're PMS'ing pretty good and need a cry. Or just if you are curious, 'what made Diane misty today?'
Donna Everhart actually beat me to it by some days, with a useful discussion of writing as a way to channel fear and loss. Her blog is, by the way, an example of the increasing pleasure I take in following people and sites where "don't read the comments" happens to be BAD advice for a change.
Leila Gaskin takes the same topic as mine above and treats it with far more brevity - and poetry. We share the date in this, we two. Sigh.
Finally, Susan Bonifant reminds us - with a truly vivid story - "We were all five-year-olds" ...
Yet there seems to be a confluence of sorrow; perhaps the predictable result of the ruthless weather so many across America are enduring. And so, here we go - click on any of these links if you're PMS'ing pretty good and need a cry. Or just if you are curious, 'what made Diane misty today?'
Donna Everhart actually beat me to it by some days, with a useful discussion of writing as a way to channel fear and loss. Her blog is, by the way, an example of the increasing pleasure I take in following people and sites where "don't read the comments" happens to be BAD advice for a change.
Leila Gaskin takes the same topic as mine above and treats it with far more brevity - and poetry. We share the date in this, we two. Sigh.
Finally, Susan Bonifant reminds us - with a truly vivid story - "We were all five-year-olds" ...
Effed
I emailed a voice mail message to myself at home today.
One week before my dad died, we got cell phones. I recall him, mom, and me in their room, programming the little sneaker-shaped things, laughing at how amazing they were, playing with ring tones and so on, commenting about their appearance.
Dad was in bed that day, and we got the phones because his disease was terminal. Mom wanted to be able to reach out instantly in case of emergency.
We had no idea we had so little time left.
Long after he died, I read somewhere about the Columbia shuttle disaster, and was shocked and perplexed; I had no recollection of this event, and this is not the sort of event one easily misses. It had happened the day I was over at the house, playing with the phones. It’s entirely possible – even quite likely – that we were watching news of it that day. If I claimed to remember, I’d be convincing myself though.
An event I cannot erase, unfortunately, was the epochal broadcast of the Michael Jackson interview with Martin Bashir. This aired the night before he died – and after we did know.
Dad went to the hospital on a Friday afternoon, or perhaps it was morning. I went upstairs to my boss’s boss’s office, a still and stately area of our building, and interrupted a meeting between them. Anything my own boss said was blotted out by her boss, a man I still respect, admire, and am immensely grateful to to this day. He all but insisted upon getting me a car to the hospital. But I drove. I needed that time in the empty space of the cab of my beloved, first car. I needed to have it and the freedom of movement it brought with it, and I had the strangest fear of leaving it, like my purse, at my office – and then what, and then what, was all I could think, though I recognized how kind the offer was even as I refused. I needed the drive.
I needed somewhat less the turquoise Honda or Toyota with the Icthys and “GOT CHRIST” sticker on the back that cut me off on a steeply curved part of the freeway, where I spun out and ended at a standstill, facing east in the westbound lanes, and wondering (to this day, yes) whether that Christian ever knew what they’d done to me. Even just on the practical level.
The rest of the drive was safe, and the hospital was what hospitals are. Dad was in a grey cul-de-sac of the ER, it seems cluttered in my memory, but we were alone at least. Mom left us after a little while – ostensibly to eat or go get someone or talk to people or use that cell phone … but, I think, to leave us alone. Mom doesn’t always work that way, but that day, she did.
And that day, we still didn’t know.
Before she left, the three of us were talking about my boyfriend. We’d only been seeing each other a few weeks – our first date was on my parents’ anniversary, in fact – and he was coming to visit the next day. I was thirty-four, they could see I was smitten, everything was heightened with dad being in the hospital, and this was his first visit. Mr. X.
Mom wanted him to come to the hospital (we’d learned by that point they were admitting dad, they were just waiting for a room). Dad was flat against that. Not the right place. Not the right time. “Another time, Helen.” And he would not be brooked. I was to enjoy our first visit, and a little celebration which had nothing to do with hospitals.
I wasn’t anxious for any brooking myself, not least because – good gravy, what pressure to put on a new guy. I agreed to dad’s proclamation that I would follow through with celebration, and he and Mr. X would meet some other time.
The backstory here is that dad wasn’t a big one with the I Will Not Be Brooked thing. He tended to appreciate my mom’s motivations, and if he didn’t he indulged them. She wasn’t a bad planner, it worked out most of the time. But in a hospital gown and in a poor state of health – not the way he planned to meet the new boy. No. Period. Done. No anger, and no flexing of power. Just a blank absolute, baldly laid down, no more drama than that.
Then he had an attack.
When dad had an attack, he called it the dragon. Dad hated that goddamned dragon. Hated it – and, like the brooking thing: dad was not given to hatred.
He told mom to give him an Oxycodone, and she remonstrated, and he cursed that he didn’t care about prescription guidelines, he needed it and he was going to take the pill.
He took it. Mom left. And he and I sat alone, talking about Cicero and Rome and Sulla and Marius.
And then the room was ready. I seem to have left, perhaps to go home and change clothes, because I then recall coming back to the hospital, suddenly filled with family – and we knew. We knew. We knew.
I hate that goddamned dragon.
No memory of the Challenger, but memory of Martin Bashir and spitting, icy, snowy weather. Bitter stuff. Pretty only on the skylights outside dad’s window. Memory of that long-ago neighbor, of my cousin V, of getting dad into the bed. And a morphine shot.
That was the end, then – the prosaic fussings of a man transferring into a real hospital bed out of an ER one. His abject little cotton gown, socked feet. Orderly, nurse, someone giving him the morphine once he was settled. And gone. No more chance, ever again. No return. No more conversation. Breathing, still, as hideously awful as that process had become. But gone. Irretrievable.
His flesh purple and his muscles thin.
Gold wedding band *glowing* in that twilight.
And me and mom and Mojourner. Only us.
Phone calls on that silvery sneaker, at all hours, in the hallway. I must have called Mr. X, told him. He was still going to come. He was still going to come.
We talked about the plans. Nobody else was with us, it must have been so late. No television by then. Only snow, blackness and glaring hospital parking lot lights. And us. We knew – and could not imagine.
Great Xs of snow on those domed skylights. Falling, then slipping away, occluding the light in soft-edged X shapes.
Dad’s skin so soft.
Mom made us both leave. Get some sleep, she enjoined us. I think I did go to bed, because I have this memory that through much of the next day I was wearing the pants I wore to bed. Fortunately, not obviously pajamas. But yes. That exhaustion, that emotional fume, social oblivion. Living, that day, in the sacred space-time of mourning.
Glowing.
Talking with my best friend TEO at some bitter hour of the morning, knees up, pressed against the hallway wall, sitting on the gleaming floor.
Mom spooned him all night. He died where his heart lived; wrapped up in her.
She called us at 4:30 and we came back. It was like, and unlike, the time we spent alone with him sleeping. But he was there still.
Still.
Stilled.
I held his hand, and some residual electricity spasm’d, pulsed. It didn’t feel like magic. It didn’t mean anything. Even still warm. I knew this was a body. With a wedding band glowing on it.
I did not see him after that. Some did, but I held to his wish he not be … viewed. I treasure those who needed that. Some saw him after his eyes had been harvested, head bandaged, Teiresias destined for an oven, mute, and no longer my daddy. I know why they held his hand then.
I’d held his hand already. That was finished.
And then a blur, a rush, the longest day in the world. I cannot talk to you about that day. Must not, it feels like. Too many things.
***
Some time later, my mom handed me a Valentine’s Day card without telling me. It was from dad. Opening that almost killed me.
But there was one treasure.
Dad had left a voice mail, that day – that dark Columbia day – that day we’d all been at the family house, the day he’d been in his own bed, the day we were smiling over those nifty phones. He’d left me his voice. “Hello (phone number)” that gruff, joyous voice of his.
He hadn’t known.
I lost that recording, long long ago.
I don’t need it. Any more than I needed to hold or see his body after it became the domain of orderlies and donations and morgues.
But I miss it.
***
So, today, when my mom left me a recording my email dutifully saved to a file. I sent it home.
"Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. ... Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.”
--Douglas Adams
One week before my dad died, we got cell phones. I recall him, mom, and me in their room, programming the little sneaker-shaped things, laughing at how amazing they were, playing with ring tones and so on, commenting about their appearance.
Dad was in bed that day, and we got the phones because his disease was terminal. Mom wanted to be able to reach out instantly in case of emergency.
We had no idea we had so little time left.
Long after he died, I read somewhere about the Columbia shuttle disaster, and was shocked and perplexed; I had no recollection of this event, and this is not the sort of event one easily misses. It had happened the day I was over at the house, playing with the phones. It’s entirely possible – even quite likely – that we were watching news of it that day. If I claimed to remember, I’d be convincing myself though.
An event I cannot erase, unfortunately, was the epochal broadcast of the Michael Jackson interview with Martin Bashir. This aired the night before he died – and after we did know.
Dad went to the hospital on a Friday afternoon, or perhaps it was morning. I went upstairs to my boss’s boss’s office, a still and stately area of our building, and interrupted a meeting between them. Anything my own boss said was blotted out by her boss, a man I still respect, admire, and am immensely grateful to to this day. He all but insisted upon getting me a car to the hospital. But I drove. I needed that time in the empty space of the cab of my beloved, first car. I needed to have it and the freedom of movement it brought with it, and I had the strangest fear of leaving it, like my purse, at my office – and then what, and then what, was all I could think, though I recognized how kind the offer was even as I refused. I needed the drive.
I needed somewhat less the turquoise Honda or Toyota with the Icthys and “GOT CHRIST” sticker on the back that cut me off on a steeply curved part of the freeway, where I spun out and ended at a standstill, facing east in the westbound lanes, and wondering (to this day, yes) whether that Christian ever knew what they’d done to me. Even just on the practical level.
The rest of the drive was safe, and the hospital was what hospitals are. Dad was in a grey cul-de-sac of the ER, it seems cluttered in my memory, but we were alone at least. Mom left us after a little while – ostensibly to eat or go get someone or talk to people or use that cell phone … but, I think, to leave us alone. Mom doesn’t always work that way, but that day, she did.
And that day, we still didn’t know.
Before she left, the three of us were talking about my boyfriend. We’d only been seeing each other a few weeks – our first date was on my parents’ anniversary, in fact – and he was coming to visit the next day. I was thirty-four, they could see I was smitten, everything was heightened with dad being in the hospital, and this was his first visit. Mr. X.
Mom wanted him to come to the hospital (we’d learned by that point they were admitting dad, they were just waiting for a room). Dad was flat against that. Not the right place. Not the right time. “Another time, Helen.” And he would not be brooked. I was to enjoy our first visit, and a little celebration which had nothing to do with hospitals.
I wasn’t anxious for any brooking myself, not least because – good gravy, what pressure to put on a new guy. I agreed to dad’s proclamation that I would follow through with celebration, and he and Mr. X would meet some other time.
The backstory here is that dad wasn’t a big one with the I Will Not Be Brooked thing. He tended to appreciate my mom’s motivations, and if he didn’t he indulged them. She wasn’t a bad planner, it worked out most of the time. But in a hospital gown and in a poor state of health – not the way he planned to meet the new boy. No. Period. Done. No anger, and no flexing of power. Just a blank absolute, baldly laid down, no more drama than that.
Then he had an attack.
When dad had an attack, he called it the dragon. Dad hated that goddamned dragon. Hated it – and, like the brooking thing: dad was not given to hatred.
He told mom to give him an Oxycodone, and she remonstrated, and he cursed that he didn’t care about prescription guidelines, he needed it and he was going to take the pill.
He took it. Mom left. And he and I sat alone, talking about Cicero and Rome and Sulla and Marius.
And then the room was ready. I seem to have left, perhaps to go home and change clothes, because I then recall coming back to the hospital, suddenly filled with family – and we knew. We knew. We knew.
I hate that goddamned dragon.
No memory of the Challenger, but memory of Martin Bashir and spitting, icy, snowy weather. Bitter stuff. Pretty only on the skylights outside dad’s window. Memory of that long-ago neighbor, of my cousin V, of getting dad into the bed. And a morphine shot.
That was the end, then – the prosaic fussings of a man transferring into a real hospital bed out of an ER one. His abject little cotton gown, socked feet. Orderly, nurse, someone giving him the morphine once he was settled. And gone. No more chance, ever again. No return. No more conversation. Breathing, still, as hideously awful as that process had become. But gone. Irretrievable.
His flesh purple and his muscles thin.
Gold wedding band *glowing* in that twilight.
And me and mom and Mojourner. Only us.
Phone calls on that silvery sneaker, at all hours, in the hallway. I must have called Mr. X, told him. He was still going to come. He was still going to come.
We talked about the plans. Nobody else was with us, it must have been so late. No television by then. Only snow, blackness and glaring hospital parking lot lights. And us. We knew – and could not imagine.
Great Xs of snow on those domed skylights. Falling, then slipping away, occluding the light in soft-edged X shapes.
Dad’s skin so soft.
Mom made us both leave. Get some sleep, she enjoined us. I think I did go to bed, because I have this memory that through much of the next day I was wearing the pants I wore to bed. Fortunately, not obviously pajamas. But yes. That exhaustion, that emotional fume, social oblivion. Living, that day, in the sacred space-time of mourning.
Glowing.
Talking with my best friend TEO at some bitter hour of the morning, knees up, pressed against the hallway wall, sitting on the gleaming floor.
Mom spooned him all night. He died where his heart lived; wrapped up in her.
She called us at 4:30 and we came back. It was like, and unlike, the time we spent alone with him sleeping. But he was there still.
Still.
Stilled.
I held his hand, and some residual electricity spasm’d, pulsed. It didn’t feel like magic. It didn’t mean anything. Even still warm. I knew this was a body. With a wedding band glowing on it.
I did not see him after that. Some did, but I held to his wish he not be … viewed. I treasure those who needed that. Some saw him after his eyes had been harvested, head bandaged, Teiresias destined for an oven, mute, and no longer my daddy. I know why they held his hand then.
I’d held his hand already. That was finished.
And then a blur, a rush, the longest day in the world. I cannot talk to you about that day. Must not, it feels like. Too many things.
***
Some time later, my mom handed me a Valentine’s Day card without telling me. It was from dad. Opening that almost killed me.
But there was one treasure.
Dad had left a voice mail, that day – that dark Columbia day – that day we’d all been at the family house, the day he’d been in his own bed, the day we were smiling over those nifty phones. He’d left me his voice. “Hello (phone number)” that gruff, joyous voice of his.
He hadn’t known.
I lost that recording, long long ago.
I don’t need it. Any more than I needed to hold or see his body after it became the domain of orderlies and donations and morgues.
But I miss it.
***
So, today, when my mom left me a recording my email dutifully saved to a file. I sent it home.
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
Snow Day
My neck of the woods has been south of the many storms buffeting the northeastern coast of the US since the new year, but yesterday we caught in the middle and today I am working from home, which comprises somewhat more than just my job. Between following up on data analysis for possible negotiation of vendor services for a contract, and communications across our business lines to update several owners and executives on collaborative tools, I've been doing a little hand laundering, put away some clean items, and have pulled out a few mending projects that need to be taken care of. That cranberry turtleneck would be a good sweater to have right now ... !
The snow needs to be shoveled, but the sun is out, and I am all too aware the snow will still need shoveling later on. So I haven't done it yet. It's not even eleven, it'll keep.
On a day like this (or like this), the WFH option is good, because I can still be productive - and I can enjoy this office, so conducive to productivity - and still shake out the cobwebs by working in a completely different environment. The commute is a dream, of course - and I won't complain about being able to sleep in past SEVEN (oh, the decadence!) and wear comfy clothes/no makeup. As a day-to-day thing, it's far and away the best to be able to work at my office, but it's a mighty fine thing for safety and efficiency that laptops have come to replace desktops, and people don't HAVE to be there to get things done.
Even if, parallel to the things I'm paid for, a couple of things include laundry.
And snow-shoveling ...
The snow needs to be shoveled, but the sun is out, and I am all too aware the snow will still need shoveling later on. So I haven't done it yet. It's not even eleven, it'll keep.
On a day like this (or like this), the WFH option is good, because I can still be productive - and I can enjoy this office, so conducive to productivity - and still shake out the cobwebs by working in a completely different environment. The commute is a dream, of course - and I won't complain about being able to sleep in past SEVEN (oh, the decadence!) and wear comfy clothes/no makeup. As a day-to-day thing, it's far and away the best to be able to work at my office, but it's a mighty fine thing for safety and efficiency that laptops have come to replace desktops, and people don't HAVE to be there to get things done.
Even if, parallel to the things I'm paid for, a couple of things include laundry.
And snow-shoveling ...
Saturday, February 14, 2015
Balentime's Day and Stale Stuff
Today is Valentine's Day, that special, epoch-turning day of the year when ... Diane rearranges the furniture for spring.
I'm not one of those who get actually bitter about this day, and I don't hate men or wish I had a boyfriend (I'm forty-seven for pete's sake, "boyfriend" is just one of those words that embarrasses me, frankly - even if there were a prospect, I'd have to call him my Love Unit or anything but that (and thank you to Beloved Ex for that term - it's what he used to say we were for each other ... heh)). But when the only man in over twelve years now who's been able to pique my interest lives four thousand miles away and I don't see any replacements on the horizon, it's nothin' doin' for me and pink hearts and roses.
Come to that, it was always pretty much nothin' doin' for me and that stuff; I don't go in for paying ridiculous amounts of money to kill a bunch of flowers.
Valentine's is, for me, just a convenient marker, anymore.
Last week and the week before, I included some of the deeper cleaning flourishes I don't indulge in the weekly housekeeping - scrubbing the tile walls throughout the bath, cleaning the cabinets and walls in the kitchen. This week, I get to poke furniture about.
In winter, the living room closes in, furniture placed closer, cosily. Heat conserved, everything coiled like a cat or dog keeping warm while it sleeps, light subdued, more frequent candlelight, holiday decorations, more rugs - and easy access to a lovely collection of afghans near the couch.
It is on Valentine's day (or, more usually, the nearest Saturday to hand) when this large and long room uncurls again. Furniture shifts wider, nearer the walls, opening up the wide room to light and - soon - to the air. The windows will be able to provide cross-ventilation, the house will look fresh and new when I come home from work.
As it happens, today I've also opened up the guest room - which has increasingly, of late, become my personal answer to a Cape Cod's efficiency of space (that's smallness, my friends) as more and more a bit of a "California Closet". With two closets - presumably built in 1950 for the purpose of a family with two kids sharing a room, perhaps - and a great deal of space ("efficiency" means there isn't excess storage, but also means there are fewer rooms, and all of them larger - my NYC readers need never ask to see pictures, because I don't wish to be murdered!), the "guest" room only rarely used as such is mine all mine, really. It is here non-seasonal clothes go, in one of the closets and a dresser and chest of drawers. It is here my going-out clothes go, fancier dresses and heels I'd never wear to work. It is here I have a new shelving unit, a great little mid-century metal bookshelf enameled to look like woodgrain, filled with all those vintage purses I've collected in the past eight years or so.
Today, I rearranged that room so the open area is straight in front of the door; bed a little off to the side on the far wall, dresser and chest of drawers on the right against the wall. It's a big room, so there's even room for a pair of short side tables in front of the window. A shoe rack. And the purse shelf.
I've dusted the floor to death, and ... turns out, having shifted the couch and TV downstairs, NOW it is time to clean the whole rest of the house. I need to get the bedroom in hand, finish upstairs swiffing, then bring the swiffer and vaccuum down so I can clean floors as I finalize the rest of the furniture. Because I want to clean underneath before moving things into place, there's a whole *process* involved in this redecoration.
And, for a little while, a few weeks - and with the season waning - I'll be able to just enjoy how nice the house is. How everything is where it needs to be, how I have the decks clear and the place is somehow nicer than it was before.
I get stale in an environment that stays static too long. As many people need a new 'do or new chair or new music, I need a new deployment in my house every now and then. (I need to trim my hair, too, come to think of it.) As my treasured TEO looks at her tidily organized linen closet sometimes for a sense of satisfaction and "oh, well that's all right then" ... I need to know this house, frayed as the edges are ... empty as it is, of the man that I love ... or any love that isn't fur-bearing ...
I need to have a new configuration to look at, find comfortable. And to know the dust, literally, has been shaken out. And to look out at the future and see things a different way.
I'm not one of those who get actually bitter about this day, and I don't hate men or wish I had a boyfriend (I'm forty-seven for pete's sake, "boyfriend" is just one of those words that embarrasses me, frankly - even if there were a prospect, I'd have to call him my Love Unit or anything but that (and thank you to Beloved Ex for that term - it's what he used to say we were for each other ... heh)). But when the only man in over twelve years now who's been able to pique my interest lives four thousand miles away and I don't see any replacements on the horizon, it's nothin' doin' for me and pink hearts and roses.
Come to that, it was always pretty much nothin' doin' for me and that stuff; I don't go in for paying ridiculous amounts of money to kill a bunch of flowers.
Valentine's is, for me, just a convenient marker, anymore.
Last week and the week before, I included some of the deeper cleaning flourishes I don't indulge in the weekly housekeeping - scrubbing the tile walls throughout the bath, cleaning the cabinets and walls in the kitchen. This week, I get to poke furniture about.
In winter, the living room closes in, furniture placed closer, cosily. Heat conserved, everything coiled like a cat or dog keeping warm while it sleeps, light subdued, more frequent candlelight, holiday decorations, more rugs - and easy access to a lovely collection of afghans near the couch.
It is on Valentine's day (or, more usually, the nearest Saturday to hand) when this large and long room uncurls again. Furniture shifts wider, nearer the walls, opening up the wide room to light and - soon - to the air. The windows will be able to provide cross-ventilation, the house will look fresh and new when I come home from work.
As it happens, today I've also opened up the guest room - which has increasingly, of late, become my personal answer to a Cape Cod's efficiency of space (that's smallness, my friends) as more and more a bit of a "California Closet". With two closets - presumably built in 1950 for the purpose of a family with two kids sharing a room, perhaps - and a great deal of space ("efficiency" means there isn't excess storage, but also means there are fewer rooms, and all of them larger - my NYC readers need never ask to see pictures, because I don't wish to be murdered!), the "guest" room only rarely used as such is mine all mine, really. It is here non-seasonal clothes go, in one of the closets and a dresser and chest of drawers. It is here my going-out clothes go, fancier dresses and heels I'd never wear to work. It is here I have a new shelving unit, a great little mid-century metal bookshelf enameled to look like woodgrain, filled with all those vintage purses I've collected in the past eight years or so.
Today, I rearranged that room so the open area is straight in front of the door; bed a little off to the side on the far wall, dresser and chest of drawers on the right against the wall. It's a big room, so there's even room for a pair of short side tables in front of the window. A shoe rack. And the purse shelf.
I've dusted the floor to death, and ... turns out, having shifted the couch and TV downstairs, NOW it is time to clean the whole rest of the house. I need to get the bedroom in hand, finish upstairs swiffing, then bring the swiffer and vaccuum down so I can clean floors as I finalize the rest of the furniture. Because I want to clean underneath before moving things into place, there's a whole *process* involved in this redecoration.
And, for a little while, a few weeks - and with the season waning - I'll be able to just enjoy how nice the house is. How everything is where it needs to be, how I have the decks clear and the place is somehow nicer than it was before.
I get stale in an environment that stays static too long. As many people need a new 'do or new chair or new music, I need a new deployment in my house every now and then. (I need to trim my hair, too, come to think of it.) As my treasured TEO looks at her tidily organized linen closet sometimes for a sense of satisfaction and "oh, well that's all right then" ... I need to know this house, frayed as the edges are ... empty as it is, of the man that I love ... or any love that isn't fur-bearing ...
I need to have a new configuration to look at, find comfortable. And to know the dust, literally, has been shaken out. And to look out at the future and see things a different way.
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
Hero
One of the more striking features of human culture is the consistency with which we enshrine scoundrels as heroes. Without fail, literature across the world describes as holy or laudable men whose only acts of which we know are violent, promiscuous, greedy, deceitful, and even almost stupid. What we know of some is only as much as that they supposedly ascribe to a certain faith, or are monarchs, or born of divine forbears. Virtue as many of us prefer to view it is rarely in blazing evidence, but we are always assured, this man is the elect of G-d, the sacred head of his people, the savior hero to venerate.
This isn’t over, of course – see also: Captain Kirk, and the fact that even as a decades-long and sincere fan, my pointing out he was all but a sociopath would draw ire (if not blood) from those who worship him as The Best Captain. We can’t forgive a pretty and demonstrably media-whore-ish newscaster for saying he was in a combat situation on a helicopter once, but venture to point out that Shatner played an overcompensating neurotic and you’re in for trouble.
Of all the things I’ve been concerned about in writing The Ax and the Vase – lack of diverse characters, bigotry in profound disagreement with my own philosophy, writing about the royal guy rather than “real people” – portraying a king with expansionist tendencies on the grandest of scale and someone liable to dropping axes into skullbones as a heroic main character is the least of my qualms.
I hate battle scenes, always have, but have taken that with a wry kind of backward-gratitude as the ultimate demonstration that we as authors do not choose our subjects; they come to us. Meeting the challenges of this work may have been the perfect learning material for me as a novelist, and I’ve never made life too easy on myself.
But Clovis’ extreme ambition and the potential ugliness of his character, viewed *outside* the first-person? These issues don’t get me losing sleep.
Maybe that is the challenge for my readers. Maybe it’s the way I justify focusing on the rich king – he hardly gets to sit on a pedestal, though the POV throughout presents him absolutely straight-faced. The guy is all about glory and his own power, with attention to his faith and his family always filtered through expediency. His love and his conviction may be perfectly genuine, but they always SERVE something beyond the spiritual or emotional.
Clovis is little different from any modern politician or head of state who got there by any means possible, and who gains ever more using every tool available. Other men, negotiation, and the sword – these are all office supplies, and their utilitarian ends are not intrinsically praiseworthy. Nation-building and origin stories are not in themselves honorable, myths not necessarily hagiography.
Was Rome’s ouster from Gaul a moral, a necessary – a GOOD – act? We understand it to be; the story of Clovis’ first great battle, and the execution of the Roman Syagrius, is one of triumph for the Frankish people. But was the triumph of one king, was his consolidation of what became the modern nation of France, a fine thing? We receive a tale of destiny and incredible success – but this is the success of one man, one royal court, one burgeoning country; it does not preclude the possibility any other fate might have been better for Gaul in that generation … or in the many, many generations since.
We receive the tale of the Decline of Rome – sometimes viewed as a wistful inevitability, Barbarians at the Gate and all – sometimes viewed as the triumph of native peoples reclaiming self-hood from an empire. The truth is, one conflict or another, one hero or another, Gaul might have become one under some other king’s banner … or some other faith. Would another outcome have been as magnificent?
Almost surely, if the authors of some alternate history had voices to sing their own praises. And they would have been just as Clovis himself was; expedient, sometimes violent, sometimes lovingly human, always serving some ambition.
This isn’t over, of course – see also: Captain Kirk, and the fact that even as a decades-long and sincere fan, my pointing out he was all but a sociopath would draw ire (if not blood) from those who worship him as The Best Captain. We can’t forgive a pretty and demonstrably media-whore-ish newscaster for saying he was in a combat situation on a helicopter once, but venture to point out that Shatner played an overcompensating neurotic and you’re in for trouble.
Of all the things I’ve been concerned about in writing The Ax and the Vase – lack of diverse characters, bigotry in profound disagreement with my own philosophy, writing about the royal guy rather than “real people” – portraying a king with expansionist tendencies on the grandest of scale and someone liable to dropping axes into skullbones as a heroic main character is the least of my qualms.
I hate battle scenes, always have, but have taken that with a wry kind of backward-gratitude as the ultimate demonstration that we as authors do not choose our subjects; they come to us. Meeting the challenges of this work may have been the perfect learning material for me as a novelist, and I’ve never made life too easy on myself.
But Clovis’ extreme ambition and the potential ugliness of his character, viewed *outside* the first-person? These issues don’t get me losing sleep.
Maybe that is the challenge for my readers. Maybe it’s the way I justify focusing on the rich king – he hardly gets to sit on a pedestal, though the POV throughout presents him absolutely straight-faced. The guy is all about glory and his own power, with attention to his faith and his family always filtered through expediency. His love and his conviction may be perfectly genuine, but they always SERVE something beyond the spiritual or emotional.
Clovis is little different from any modern politician or head of state who got there by any means possible, and who gains ever more using every tool available. Other men, negotiation, and the sword – these are all office supplies, and their utilitarian ends are not intrinsically praiseworthy. Nation-building and origin stories are not in themselves honorable, myths not necessarily hagiography.
Was Rome’s ouster from Gaul a moral, a necessary – a GOOD – act? We understand it to be; the story of Clovis’ first great battle, and the execution of the Roman Syagrius, is one of triumph for the Frankish people. But was the triumph of one king, was his consolidation of what became the modern nation of France, a fine thing? We receive a tale of destiny and incredible success – but this is the success of one man, one royal court, one burgeoning country; it does not preclude the possibility any other fate might have been better for Gaul in that generation … or in the many, many generations since.
We receive the tale of the Decline of Rome – sometimes viewed as a wistful inevitability, Barbarians at the Gate and all – sometimes viewed as the triumph of native peoples reclaiming self-hood from an empire. The truth is, one conflict or another, one hero or another, Gaul might have become one under some other king’s banner … or some other faith. Would another outcome have been as magnificent?
Almost surely, if the authors of some alternate history had voices to sing their own praises. And they would have been just as Clovis himself was; expedient, sometimes violent, sometimes lovingly human, always serving some ambition.
Collection
Jeff Sypeck at Quid plura has several very good shots (and some thoughts and stories about them) taken with the fascinating limitations of a Polaroid Land Camera. The images comprise a really interesting variety, and are beautiful - well worth the click - so enjoy!
Woe is not to me, the Arrant Pedant has a great new post explaining cases, datives, and this wonderful phrase. Read and learn.
Personally? I think American Duchess is wrong, that their new flats aren't quite the modern thing. More options to consider.
Madame Isis once again provides excellent information about authentic eighteenth-century hair styling - and she has some truly lovely candlelit photos of herself modeling some very pretty curls. (She also gives away a secret I've known for many years - long hair does not need to be washed every single day ... even for us modern constant-washers!)
Tom Williams on researching a novel after the fact. I need to do some of that!
And, finally, just because this pic is so good my dear Cute Shoes said it looked professional:
Woe is not to me, the Arrant Pedant has a great new post explaining cases, datives, and this wonderful phrase. Read and learn.
Personally? I think American Duchess is wrong, that their new flats aren't quite the modern thing. More options to consider.
Madame Isis once again provides excellent information about authentic eighteenth-century hair styling - and she has some truly lovely candlelit photos of herself modeling some very pretty curls. (She also gives away a secret I've known for many years - long hair does not need to be washed every single day ... even for us modern constant-washers!)
Tom Williams on researching a novel after the fact. I need to do some of that!
And, finally, just because this pic is so good my dear Cute Shoes said it looked professional:
Sunday, February 8, 2015
Collection
Elizabeth Chadwick responds to a piece by Catherine Armstrong regarding the identities of the Marshall effigies in the Temple Church, London. Chadwick readers and English history buffs/students don't need to be told who the Marshalls were, but if you don't know, take a click (and read Chadwick's series). The fascinating discussion that is history as analytical science, and it shows in a concrete way the relevance and importance of the study of art for costume and equipage.
Also fascinating, if not dismaying, is a very different exchange exposing the politics of archaeology and artifacts. The History Blog explicates the American Institute for Archaeology's call for the St. Louis Society's board's resignation, after they sold documented artifacts. But wait: there's more. Click for the full merry-go-round, with links to direct sources.
The HB also brings us the story of the remains now up for study at Winchester Cathedral, where the pre-Conquest Saxon kings were left to rest in peace, but have not been privileged to do. Now, if only somebody would tell me how to pronounce some of the earliest names, and Ceawlin's too.
Also fascinating, if not dismaying, is a very different exchange exposing the politics of archaeology and artifacts. The History Blog explicates the American Institute for Archaeology's call for the St. Louis Society's board's resignation, after they sold documented artifacts. But wait: there's more. Click for the full merry-go-round, with links to direct sources.
The HB also brings us the story of the remains now up for study at Winchester Cathedral, where the pre-Conquest Saxon kings were left to rest in peace, but have not been privileged to do. Now, if only somebody would tell me how to pronounce some of the earliest names, and Ceawlin's too.
Warm Day
I don't usually start seeing canine carcass out in the backyard like this before spring time, but today it's in the sixties, and Penelope is out there soaking up rays on her tum. Goss the EC and I are inside with research for the WIP.
There will be a grocery run for my breakfast protein goodness and some sort of supper for the week, but that will be a relatively short task, followed by a very short stop at the drugstore. I'm fighting the temptation to go look at paint for my kitchen and bath (the happy yellow cabinets, originally painted to match my Harvest Gold range, now dead and gone, are in for a change, as is the violet blue trim in the badezimmer). I might try to blame Janet Reid and her blog's community for a burgeoning obsession with painting - but the fact is, I seem to be in a season of creative nesting; this house has seen fussing and cleaning the like of which it rarely enjoys - every cobweb is vanquished, the tile has been scrubbed ALL around the bath, even the walls and cabinets of the kitchen have been washed. I've also got ideas about area rugs which are best left unexplored for now.
For now ... the house is quiet but for my loud typing, and a nice weekend has been shared by friends and family so far. Goss's bright pink tongue is glossing up his beautiful white paws in a sunbeam borrowed away from Pen's back yard. There is a big, heavy wrought iron fleur de lys my mom gave me in the window, overlooking affairs, and I am contemplating the best hour for a Sunday afternoon nap. There may be a certain pearl grey helper in on that with me.
For now ... I type, and finish the grocery list, and revel in the fact that I don't "have" to go, but can any time I like. I've got on comfortable shoes and it's bright outside. Punxsutawney Phil may have us in for six more weeks of winter. But today, it is spring, and peaceful, and blessed.
Wednesday, February 4, 2015
Collection
Oh dear, American Duchess has a new custom design ... a beautiful shoe, and certainly exclusive. I'll have to contemplate my options now, with my little gift certificate! It'd be fun to save it for when I'm agented, but I'll need to HEAR from some more agents soon. Ahem.
Several years after a brutal razing, a native mound in Ohio finally gets an archaeological survey. I look forward to learning more, hope there will be continued intelligence here. There IS some further news on the Hopewell Earthworks for which I posted links to a fundraiser almost a year ago.
Goss continues to make friends, now with Colin D. Smith and his pal Sam the Cat. A beautiful feline, Sam is also a urinical artist. Or, at least, a highly talented mapmaker. Hee!
Several years after a brutal razing, a native mound in Ohio finally gets an archaeological survey. I look forward to learning more, hope there will be continued intelligence here. There IS some further news on the Hopewell Earthworks for which I posted links to a fundraiser almost a year ago.
Goss continues to make friends, now with Colin D. Smith and his pal Sam the Cat. A beautiful feline, Sam is also a urinical artist. Or, at least, a highly talented mapmaker. Hee!
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
Round Robot
One of the many evolving wonders of modern technology is JUST how many people you can get holding for each other at one time. Travel is an especially good matrix to get a truly spectacular Round Robot going; one person planning travel for another may be on the line with them while simultaneously on the line with an agent, the agent may be on hold with two entirely different air carriers looking for options … a single call can take well over an hour, easily.
If you’re truly lucky, you may be on hold with Orbitz, who have the most unbelievably suicidal-kitten hold music ever conceived; a short piece, but played on repeat, it begins with all the pathos of a sad, big-eyed cartoon pet in the rain, and ends on plaintive piano notes fading into nothingness, the only emotional response to which is bleak despair. As appropriate as that can be, if you make any part of your living working on travel for others, it feels almost aggressive.
Yesterday I indulged in the foolishness of reporting to work at 8:00 a.m., the actual time I am expected to be in. Usually, I’m a 7:30-er, but, lacking for sleep and unable to cope with it at oh-dark-thirty, I allowed myself that half an hour, with the result that the moment I walked in I was running at top sprint.
Today, I came in at my usal too-early, and had just gotten everything fired up and running when I decided to check an airline website for the status of my boss’s flights, when he emailed me himself to point out the ugh-worthy: first leg delayed an hour and forty six minutes.
This led to an hour and thirty-six minute Round Robot – if you don’t count the follow up discussions, and a second call to get him checked in on the latest edition ticket.
Starting off a day with this sort of thing means the day doesn’t get the chance to drag – at least, early on – which is nice, as when things move along you’re not hating the clock. Still, getting in at 7:30 works better for me in a long run. I don’t like being caught up short right at the start, and an early start often means I’m ahead of obstacles.
It’s also what I’ve become mentally and physically used to, over the past few jobs with flex schedules.
The discipline of early-ness was hard won and now seems to be difficult for me to shake. There was a time (it seems not so long ago, but it’s about a dozen years now) when going in to work at 7:30 was exceptional; the occasion of some special meeting or corporate event. Now, I can hardly see how it’s possible to show up at report-in time and really be effective. It can take half an hour just to get booted up, everything opened and organized, and to put on the day’s work shoes.
Today I got off my desk a series of invoices, processed expenses already spent, shifted risk items and fleet notices and provided titles to Finance. I secured several things that need to be shredded, and sorted a stack of outstanding items and one recall notice. Not bad, and constantly going (even if, sadly, not moving enough!).
I wouldn’t make a half-bad robot myself, some days. Only better.
If you’re truly lucky, you may be on hold with Orbitz, who have the most unbelievably suicidal-kitten hold music ever conceived; a short piece, but played on repeat, it begins with all the pathos of a sad, big-eyed cartoon pet in the rain, and ends on plaintive piano notes fading into nothingness, the only emotional response to which is bleak despair. As appropriate as that can be, if you make any part of your living working on travel for others, it feels almost aggressive.
Yesterday I indulged in the foolishness of reporting to work at 8:00 a.m., the actual time I am expected to be in. Usually, I’m a 7:30-er, but, lacking for sleep and unable to cope with it at oh-dark-thirty, I allowed myself that half an hour, with the result that the moment I walked in I was running at top sprint.
Today, I came in at my usal too-early, and had just gotten everything fired up and running when I decided to check an airline website for the status of my boss’s flights, when he emailed me himself to point out the ugh-worthy: first leg delayed an hour and forty six minutes.
This led to an hour and thirty-six minute Round Robot – if you don’t count the follow up discussions, and a second call to get him checked in on the latest edition ticket.
Starting off a day with this sort of thing means the day doesn’t get the chance to drag – at least, early on – which is nice, as when things move along you’re not hating the clock. Still, getting in at 7:30 works better for me in a long run. I don’t like being caught up short right at the start, and an early start often means I’m ahead of obstacles.
It’s also what I’ve become mentally and physically used to, over the past few jobs with flex schedules.
The discipline of early-ness was hard won and now seems to be difficult for me to shake. There was a time (it seems not so long ago, but it’s about a dozen years now) when going in to work at 7:30 was exceptional; the occasion of some special meeting or corporate event. Now, I can hardly see how it’s possible to show up at report-in time and really be effective. It can take half an hour just to get booted up, everything opened and organized, and to put on the day’s work shoes.
Today I got off my desk a series of invoices, processed expenses already spent, shifted risk items and fleet notices and provided titles to Finance. I secured several things that need to be shredded, and sorted a stack of outstanding items and one recall notice. Not bad, and constantly going (even if, sadly, not moving enough!).
I wouldn’t make a half-bad robot myself, some days. Only better.
Gossamer Love on FB
Some of my Janet Reid loving pals will notice that Gossamer has none of his mommy’s tech-nerd qualms about FaceBook, and visits his friend Jet le Shark there when he can. Today he took a little excursion, and some of the comments have me grinning. The QOTKU herself likes the bright true-red trim in my kitchen, which is gratifying as I can tell you putting vivid trim like that up against surgical white is a JOB and I’ll never forget doing it all by myself, watching DS9 and wearing the same clothes for a week, as my “vacation” before I started my previous job (wow, now approaching five years ago!).
James Ticknor, not only a pal via Janet’s community, but an author I’ve met at James River Writers events, likes the orange lilies behind Goss’s perch. I’m not positive they’re meant to be stargazers specifically, but I do know they’re fake as can be, but darn if they don’t last like crazy, and they won’t poison our little grey pearl-headed boy. Those do grow pretty rampant in our neck of the woods, though, James – late summer and into Indian Summer, keep your eyes peeled and you’ll see ‘em!
Donna Everheart kindly noticed the soft brown of my living room. I did THAT job (also all by myself! Wah!) a bit less than three years ago, when Goss had lived with me less than a month. He was an almost inconceivably good boy while mommy wrought chaos in his new house, and got only the weensy-est dot of paint on one single toe, his right passenger side foot if I remember. The one without the lightning bolt. And he knocked nothing over! While I was painting anyway (some of the things he has destroyed still make me woozy, but we’re talking about his being GOOD so we’ll leave those tales untold).
Janet’s affection for him tickles me to pieces, because her sharing him means I get to share him with a lot of people who’d never have known him without her. I’ve had four cats now, and he is a special little guy, and his little corner of the internet where people know him as Gossamer the Editor Cat is my happy place. If he makes anyone else happy, especially the QOTKU, I’m grateful. I’ll never deserve his unstinting OSUMness – nor Penelope the Publishing Pup’s either. But, as with Sweet Siddy La – I’ll spend our whole lives together trying to.
And now it is time for a walk with the PPP. You know, so she can PP. Hee.
James Ticknor, not only a pal via Janet’s community, but an author I’ve met at James River Writers events, likes the orange lilies behind Goss’s perch. I’m not positive they’re meant to be stargazers specifically, but I do know they’re fake as can be, but darn if they don’t last like crazy, and they won’t poison our little grey pearl-headed boy. Those do grow pretty rampant in our neck of the woods, though, James – late summer and into Indian Summer, keep your eyes peeled and you’ll see ‘em!
Donna Everheart kindly noticed the soft brown of my living room. I did THAT job (also all by myself! Wah!) a bit less than three years ago, when Goss had lived with me less than a month. He was an almost inconceivably good boy while mommy wrought chaos in his new house, and got only the weensy-est dot of paint on one single toe, his right passenger side foot if I remember. The one without the lightning bolt. And he knocked nothing over! While I was painting anyway (some of the things he has destroyed still make me woozy, but we’re talking about his being GOOD so we’ll leave those tales untold).
Janet’s affection for him tickles me to pieces, because her sharing him means I get to share him with a lot of people who’d never have known him without her. I’ve had four cats now, and he is a special little guy, and his little corner of the internet where people know him as Gossamer the Editor Cat is my happy place. If he makes anyone else happy, especially the QOTKU, I’m grateful. I’ll never deserve his unstinting OSUMness – nor Penelope the Publishing Pup’s either. But, as with Sweet Siddy La – I’ll spend our whole lives together trying to.
And now it is time for a walk with the PPP. You know, so she can PP. Hee.
Monday, February 2, 2015
Then There Was the Merovingian *Controversy*
I got into an argument one time with one of my early readers, when we were with our writing group and discussing my query or pitch or synopsis. In the document at hand, the name of the dynasty Clovis founded, the Merovingian, was prominent; and somehow it came out that I never use the word once in the manuscript itself (this was a draft and a half ago, and the word never has appeared in any version), and this reader was irritated. “Well, I’d be annoyed if you told me a book was about the Merovingian dynasty and you never used the word Merovingian even once in the novel! I’d feel you lied to me in the description – I would be looking for it!”
Putting the name of a dynasty still taking its position on the starting blocks – not an assured future, at the time Clovis recounts his tale in first-person – seems a difficult proposition, to me. For one, people in any given period are not prone to saying such things as “hey, we live in the Tudor Dynasty!” or “the Dark Ages” or “the Medieval period, which is going to be defined for us in just a few centuries” and so on. I once lived in The Reagan Era, but I didn’t really discuss it in those terms at the time. Jesus never knew the word Christian.
So many of the ways we define ourselves, and especially our times, are labels applied by those outside the moment. Most of history is described in terms that didn’t exist contemporary to any given period, of course; but, as above, we just don’t live our lives by these contexts most of the time. I’ll cop to living in the twenty-first century, and having been born in The Sixties, but whatever the general-use term is going to be for the periods and places my life happens to coincide with, coined perhaps fifty or perhaps three hundred years from now, I am not privy to and can’t concern myself with.
Clovis, to be sure, was highly concerned with dynasty – and THAT word appears clearly enough in the novel. He sired four surviving princes, and spends not a little of the first act concerning himself with one son who appears sickly, and enthusiastically ensuring brothers when he marries Clotilde. In this theme, I did include much which is apocryphal.
But to put in Clovis’ mouth, “I am the Founder of the Merovingian Dynasty” is just not tenable.
Am I a liar?
Well … I’m a novelist, the whole *point* is fabrication. But another point is authenticity, and that both demands some story where facts are scarce – and forbids foolishness where character is clear. I can’t shoehorn words into a mouth ill-suited to say them, and that is important.
Too, the novel is told first person. This creates a forced perspective it isn’t possible to open up; indeed, I’d tell anyone who ever read it, The Ax and the Vase is told by an unreliable narrator. Perhaps this gives me the excuse for my own fiction; I didn’t think about it when I began writing (indeed, I tried to resist first-person for a long time), but the use of things I as author know are not history has made a good story. It both freed and limited me – I couldn’t very well sit an ancient Frankish king in front of a mirror to gaze upon and lovingly describe his handsome (or not) features, and I had no rose-colored glasses to dote long on the pretty romance with his wife … but I was also free to skip over judgment, negativity, and expectations outside the king’s perspective.
This forced me into the homophobia that kills off a major character by inches, over years.
It also freed me from the fetters of historical perspective. It gave me the unapologetic authority of the king himself, to do as we know he did, and to believe it all correct. It gave me one of the great jokes of the book, in fact. Where history provides Clovis, in his final years, a lament: “Woe am I, that I have no kinsmen” – I have a king chiding his eldest son in sarcasm, following up the plaint with “does victory tickle your scruples, boy?”
It may be I’m the sort of author who’ll tick off some readers, turning things on their heads and playing with history. Certainly (despite repeated attempts by a certain archaeologist to persuade me otherwise) I’m no historian. (This frees me from those niggling rules of the discipline.) I just want to tell a good story, even if that means including legends just because I like them. I do want to tell it correctly, but a thinly-sourced period does have its advantages – especially as I don’t read French, and therefore can say that much scholarship on my subject was unavailable to me.
I may be a cavalier, prevaricating American … but I’m also a pretty good novelist, at that.
Putting the name of a dynasty still taking its position on the starting blocks – not an assured future, at the time Clovis recounts his tale in first-person – seems a difficult proposition, to me. For one, people in any given period are not prone to saying such things as “hey, we live in the Tudor Dynasty!” or “the Dark Ages” or “the Medieval period, which is going to be defined for us in just a few centuries” and so on. I once lived in The Reagan Era, but I didn’t really discuss it in those terms at the time. Jesus never knew the word Christian.
So many of the ways we define ourselves, and especially our times, are labels applied by those outside the moment. Most of history is described in terms that didn’t exist contemporary to any given period, of course; but, as above, we just don’t live our lives by these contexts most of the time. I’ll cop to living in the twenty-first century, and having been born in The Sixties, but whatever the general-use term is going to be for the periods and places my life happens to coincide with, coined perhaps fifty or perhaps three hundred years from now, I am not privy to and can’t concern myself with.
Clovis, to be sure, was highly concerned with dynasty – and THAT word appears clearly enough in the novel. He sired four surviving princes, and spends not a little of the first act concerning himself with one son who appears sickly, and enthusiastically ensuring brothers when he marries Clotilde. In this theme, I did include much which is apocryphal.
But to put in Clovis’ mouth, “I am the Founder of the Merovingian Dynasty” is just not tenable.
Am I a liar?
Well … I’m a novelist, the whole *point* is fabrication. But another point is authenticity, and that both demands some story where facts are scarce – and forbids foolishness where character is clear. I can’t shoehorn words into a mouth ill-suited to say them, and that is important.
Too, the novel is told first person. This creates a forced perspective it isn’t possible to open up; indeed, I’d tell anyone who ever read it, The Ax and the Vase is told by an unreliable narrator. Perhaps this gives me the excuse for my own fiction; I didn’t think about it when I began writing (indeed, I tried to resist first-person for a long time), but the use of things I as author know are not history has made a good story. It both freed and limited me – I couldn’t very well sit an ancient Frankish king in front of a mirror to gaze upon and lovingly describe his handsome (or not) features, and I had no rose-colored glasses to dote long on the pretty romance with his wife … but I was also free to skip over judgment, negativity, and expectations outside the king’s perspective.
This forced me into the homophobia that kills off a major character by inches, over years.
It also freed me from the fetters of historical perspective. It gave me the unapologetic authority of the king himself, to do as we know he did, and to believe it all correct. It gave me one of the great jokes of the book, in fact. Where history provides Clovis, in his final years, a lament: “Woe am I, that I have no kinsmen” – I have a king chiding his eldest son in sarcasm, following up the plaint with “does victory tickle your scruples, boy?”
It may be I’m the sort of author who’ll tick off some readers, turning things on their heads and playing with history. Certainly (despite repeated attempts by a certain archaeologist to persuade me otherwise) I’m no historian. (This frees me from those niggling rules of the discipline.) I just want to tell a good story, even if that means including legends just because I like them. I do want to tell it correctly, but a thinly-sourced period does have its advantages – especially as I don’t read French, and therefore can say that much scholarship on my subject was unavailable to me.
I may be a cavalier, prevaricating American … but I’m also a pretty good novelist, at that.
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