Monday, May 25, 2015
OMG - Like a Woman
You have to know you have got. a. lush. case. when watching a RuPaul's Drag Race clip show gets you choked up because you just love Latrice Royale THAT. much.
Friday, May 22, 2015
Peculiarities
It’s a boring old truism that one of the jobs of a writer is to spend some level of mind-time, *all* the time, on finely observing people, the world, and experience and quantifying these things for themselves so they can eventually steal these considerations, then cannibalize and synthesize them within stories.
It’s a fascinating fact that this self-consuming manufacture comes out of our minds into really cool stories, plays, movies, poems, the texts of graphic novels, and all the genres and forms my wee and paltry little brain has slighted or forgotten. The recent reading of H. G. Wells has provided a master class in tension and character, and the ridiculous as well as the finer points of a society we’d like to pretend was consigned to a dustbin 103 years ago … And all in what, at bottom, is the straight
forward and simple story of two people who get married. If I reduced Marriage to its plot, nothing could compel most people to read it. It would not be possible to baldly explain his wit; and yet, phrases from throughout the work have stuck with me, and may do so for a long time to come.
THAT is awfully good writing.
Now and then, I contemplate regurgitating those things on which I spend my own mind-time day by day. I consider blogging the experience of my commute home, or the way the rain fell yesterday – not from the sky, but from a single oak tree, shuddering from what unknown cause I could not imagine – or the absorbing and yet ugly sensations of what it is like to suffer from prolonged, untreated eczema intentionally, at its height and in preparation to meet a new doctor.
Most of the time, I either turn away from writing these minute observations or vignettes. Illness and injury are my stumbling blocks, and I am all too likely to tarry on the details there, because honestly this sort of experience engages me – probably unhealthily – but there it is. Usually, though, I go in real time, writing my moments or those I witness, letting the words mean something in their course, and letting them go as they pass. Not unheeded, but unrecorded. Some considerations need no more memorial than that we know they *are*, that life has been witnessed. Maybe a prayer, later on. Maybe oblivion, though the moment becomes part of that great swath of memory whose details are invisible, but exist even so.
All caveats intact (though Marriage is nowhere near so awfully uncomfortable as The Cone, it has its share of problematic philosophies), I spent every page – indeed, almost every paragraph, through many long passages – dying to know What Comes Next. What would happen, what decision might be made? Marriage___ may be the deepest exploration of (mostly) two characters I have ever read, and certainly it does expend copious philosophy in the bargain. The latter may be less gripping, but I never put it down, as it were. I read every word, and committed many to memory on purpose.
I honestly recommend it pretty widely – and people who know me know I am rarely to be found spouting about my reading. Either because I have this intimacy issue with my reading, or because in my childhood I was often amusedly chided for sharing in exhaustive detail every last story that crossed my path, *sharing* a book is all but imposible for me except in the most personal of circumstances. And yet – for my readership here, the writers, the history lovers, the random one-offs – I hereby recommend a book. Its language is sumptuous and wonderfully slightly-foreign. Its story is ordinary, and yet keeps you wanting more throughout. Plain as it is, it’s also an astoundingly limber piece of literature. A drawing room comedy; a Sagan- or Tyson-esque musing on science, religion (and the lack of it) and philosopy; a scathing social critique and/or satire at moments; a road novel; a romance. It’s the most acute rendering of a young girl’s mind I’ve ever seen an old man render, and at points an evocation of family relationships par excellence.
Yes. There is recourse to the term half-breed in one act of this saga, which is queasily unforgiveable, and the gender and Semitic politics have aged badly. Indeed, the recurrence, for a while, of the term Eugenics is not clearly pejorative, which is giddy-making in the extreme.
No good-guy here wears a purely white hat; even if there aren’t really any black-hats on hand. And it’s not as if we’re above such problematic currents in any writing today … Perhaps, in a way, it’s worthwhile to read flawed fiction in any case – warts and all.
***
For those of my readers who are writers: do you write down your vignette moments? Do you blog them? (Or share them in the vomments at Janet Reid’s blog?)
I wonder sometimes whether it’s economy or callousness on my part, that I let go so easily of the screeds, scenes, and letters I write half-in-my-sleep; that I sacrifice moments which excite me one hour, but I lose because time gets away from me?
How much of what you think to put on your own blogs/sites do you think better of later, or for one reason or other file away unpublished – invisible, but there, like those experiences we all observe … ?
It’s a fascinating fact that this self-consuming manufacture comes out of our minds into really cool stories, plays, movies, poems, the texts of graphic novels, and all the genres and forms my wee and paltry little brain has slighted or forgotten. The recent reading of H. G. Wells has provided a master class in tension and character, and the ridiculous as well as the finer points of a society we’d like to pretend was consigned to a dustbin 103 years ago … And all in what, at bottom, is the straight
forward and simple story of two people who get married. If I reduced Marriage to its plot, nothing could compel most people to read it. It would not be possible to baldly explain his wit; and yet, phrases from throughout the work have stuck with me, and may do so for a long time to come.
THAT is awfully good writing.
Now and then, I contemplate regurgitating those things on which I spend my own mind-time day by day. I consider blogging the experience of my commute home, or the way the rain fell yesterday – not from the sky, but from a single oak tree, shuddering from what unknown cause I could not imagine – or the absorbing and yet ugly sensations of what it is like to suffer from prolonged, untreated eczema intentionally, at its height and in preparation to meet a new doctor.
Most of the time, I either turn away from writing these minute observations or vignettes. Illness and injury are my stumbling blocks, and I am all too likely to tarry on the details there, because honestly this sort of experience engages me – probably unhealthily – but there it is. Usually, though, I go in real time, writing my moments or those I witness, letting the words mean something in their course, and letting them go as they pass. Not unheeded, but unrecorded. Some considerations need no more memorial than that we know they *are*, that life has been witnessed. Maybe a prayer, later on. Maybe oblivion, though the moment becomes part of that great swath of memory whose details are invisible, but exist even so.
All caveats intact (though Marriage is nowhere near so awfully uncomfortable as The Cone, it has its share of problematic philosophies), I spent every page – indeed, almost every paragraph, through many long passages – dying to know What Comes Next. What would happen, what decision might be made? Marriage___ may be the deepest exploration of (mostly) two characters I have ever read, and certainly it does expend copious philosophy in the bargain. The latter may be less gripping, but I never put it down, as it were. I read every word, and committed many to memory on purpose.
I honestly recommend it pretty widely – and people who know me know I am rarely to be found spouting about my reading. Either because I have this intimacy issue with my reading, or because in my childhood I was often amusedly chided for sharing in exhaustive detail every last story that crossed my path, *sharing* a book is all but imposible for me except in the most personal of circumstances. And yet – for my readership here, the writers, the history lovers, the random one-offs – I hereby recommend a book. Its language is sumptuous and wonderfully slightly-foreign. Its story is ordinary, and yet keeps you wanting more throughout. Plain as it is, it’s also an astoundingly limber piece of literature. A drawing room comedy; a Sagan- or Tyson-esque musing on science, religion (and the lack of it) and philosopy; a scathing social critique and/or satire at moments; a road novel; a romance. It’s the most acute rendering of a young girl’s mind I’ve ever seen an old man render, and at points an evocation of family relationships par excellence.
Yes. There is recourse to the term half-breed in one act of this saga, which is queasily unforgiveable, and the gender and Semitic politics have aged badly. Indeed, the recurrence, for a while, of the term Eugenics is not clearly pejorative, which is giddy-making in the extreme.
No good-guy here wears a purely white hat; even if there aren’t really any black-hats on hand. And it’s not as if we’re above such problematic currents in any writing today … Perhaps, in a way, it’s worthwhile to read flawed fiction in any case – warts and all.
***
For those of my readers who are writers: do you write down your vignette moments? Do you blog them? (Or share them in the vomments at Janet Reid’s blog?)
I wonder sometimes whether it’s economy or callousness on my part, that I let go so easily of the screeds, scenes, and letters I write half-in-my-sleep; that I sacrifice moments which excite me one hour, but I lose because time gets away from me?
How much of what you think to put on your own blogs/sites do you think better of later, or for one reason or other file away unpublished – invisible, but there, like those experiences we all observe … ?
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
The Thing About Reading
… specifically, the thing about reading multiple works by one author – is that, unless they’re exceptionally good, you learn their go-to strategies. If you’re smart and/or fortunate, you begin to feel your own. It’s not always repetition of words per se, but this is certainly a matter of the linguistic patterns on which we depend.
I have some suspicion that my tendency toward overwrought clauses and loquatiousness comes from some fear of simplistic repetitiveness (and very definitely from a family full of Impressive Speakers – for good or ill), but I also have decreasing illusions about the patterns I do have. Some readers go bananas dealing with my parentheticals or dash interruptions … I pretend to try to keep ellipses to a minimum, but know all too well I use them more than most writers ever would.
An acquaintance online once identified my “voice” unerringly by dint of recognizing my tendency to overuse the word “just.” Ever since, I’ve been overly aware of its presence whenever I type it; yet it’s hardly alone in calling me out. I have an extreme problem with “actually” which, even aware of the problem, I have not reformed. Adverbs generally, one of those tools of our language so many publishing professionals would love to see banned and which therefore I defend and adore like the contrarian I am, are a pretty easy identifier. Too many writers use them in pointless ways; and none of us needs the padding. Yet they are a limber and lively part of our tongue, and it would be a great pity to kill them off wholesale thanks to those who use them poorly.
Ahem.
There’s one writer whose mass of termonological tics render every character’s voice identical, no matter their setting, mood, education, or demographics. The tics transcend character voice and insert an all too literal authorial voice which, because it spans dialogue, exposition, action, and all elemenets of novel upon novel upon novel upon novel, is distracting; unwelcome. It’s cumbersome and even maddening. Yet, because I’m a stubborn ass, I won’t put down a given novel – but will edit it in pen.
This is justified both by the fact that some works are re-run reads for me, and I want to be able to read one, ever, without having to mentally correct it all over again, tiny mental rants bursting forth over and over on every page spread. Oh, and by my smug-assed presumption that (hopefully …) it makes ME a better writer.
Learning from someone else’s mistakes.
I’m not as prescriptivist as I once was, and indeed have come to love the quivering weirdness of the written word, as it synthesizes the spoken, or thought, or comveys a story in simple ways, or dresses up in beautiful words and parades around making a magnificent spectacle of itself. If it does this by breaking rules, or breaking what people THINK are rules, all the better.
Still.
If it does this encumbered: writing sucks. If it’s shackled to an author’s own preconceptions or prejudices, ignorance (writing creatively, without research, is wonderfully valid, but writing in wilful blindness is not; see also, the geological unlikelihood of William Golding’s island for Lord of the Flies, on which we are nonetheless stranded and harrowed and broken down … versus any tale populated by lazily caricatured Mary Sues, none of which I will name for charity’s and safety’s sake) … it’s going to enchain an audience, rather than enfold and transport them.
And so it is, having just finished a cycle of reruns I will not repeat for years yet, I choose to finally spew a bit about the patterns____ repetitions thrust through my suffering wee and paltry little brain of late:
Oh my, that felt good – if unseemly.
I may even be able to read one of these books ever again.
Just not within the next decade … or two. Actually. ()—and and and and. BOOP!
(Please feel free to initiate drinking games making fun of MY myriad tics and pretentions. All I ask is you comment and tell me about them, so we can all have fun. Cheers!)
I have some suspicion that my tendency toward overwrought clauses and loquatiousness comes from some fear of simplistic repetitiveness (and very definitely from a family full of Impressive Speakers – for good or ill), but I also have decreasing illusions about the patterns I do have. Some readers go bananas dealing with my parentheticals or dash interruptions … I pretend to try to keep ellipses to a minimum, but know all too well I use them more than most writers ever would.
An acquaintance online once identified my “voice” unerringly by dint of recognizing my tendency to overuse the word “just.” Ever since, I’ve been overly aware of its presence whenever I type it; yet it’s hardly alone in calling me out. I have an extreme problem with “actually” which, even aware of the problem, I have not reformed. Adverbs generally, one of those tools of our language so many publishing professionals would love to see banned and which therefore I defend and adore like the contrarian I am, are a pretty easy identifier. Too many writers use them in pointless ways; and none of us needs the padding. Yet they are a limber and lively part of our tongue, and it would be a great pity to kill them off wholesale thanks to those who use them poorly.
Ahem.
There’s one writer whose mass of termonological tics render every character’s voice identical, no matter their setting, mood, education, or demographics. The tics transcend character voice and insert an all too literal authorial voice which, because it spans dialogue, exposition, action, and all elemenets of novel upon novel upon novel upon novel, is distracting; unwelcome. It’s cumbersome and even maddening. Yet, because I’m a stubborn ass, I won’t put down a given novel – but will edit it in pen.
This is justified both by the fact that some works are re-run reads for me, and I want to be able to read one, ever, without having to mentally correct it all over again, tiny mental rants bursting forth over and over on every page spread. Oh, and by my smug-assed presumption that (hopefully …) it makes ME a better writer.
Learning from someone else’s mistakes.
I’m not as prescriptivist as I once was, and indeed have come to love the quivering weirdness of the written word, as it synthesizes the spoken, or thought, or comveys a story in simple ways, or dresses up in beautiful words and parades around making a magnificent spectacle of itself. If it does this by breaking rules, or breaking what people THINK are rules, all the better.
Still.
If it does this encumbered: writing sucks. If it’s shackled to an author’s own preconceptions or prejudices, ignorance (writing creatively, without research, is wonderfully valid, but writing in wilful blindness is not; see also, the geological unlikelihood of William Golding’s island for Lord of the Flies, on which we are nonetheless stranded and harrowed and broken down … versus any tale populated by lazily caricatured Mary Sues, none of which I will name for charity’s and safety’s sake) … it’s going to enchain an audience, rather than enfold and transport them.
And so it is, having just finished a cycle of reruns I will not repeat for years yet, I choose to finally spew a bit about the patterns____ repetitions thrust through my suffering wee and paltry little brain of late:
- Beginning. Every. Other. Sentence. With the word AND. It’s not a rule I give a crud about, but please quit flogging me with *unneccesary* and’s, and interminable riffs of this.
- Peppering single sentences with and, and, and; and and—and and. Paragraph-long sentences formed with these.
- “And then,”
- “Of course”
- “Suddenly” and "Immediately"
(If there is any better way to slow the pace than constant repetition of these two descriptors: I don't want to learn it.) - “Utterly”
- “Now”
- “That”
- “Which”
- “In sum”
- "Slowly”
(Even I, adverbial defender that I am, can hardly identify an instance in the entire literary world where this is honestly a necessary descriptor; and, even if it’s important to specify, there are so many more interesting words than this one.) - Stating the rules of the world even as deep as the END of a novel, by which point we really know these rules, authorial voice, we really really do and would beg you to stop explaining.
- Doing this even in the briefest of unnecessary clauses. You’re treating your audience like idiots. Seriously, stop it.
- Describing characters’ extreme attractiveness at every possible moment of a scene. Extra bonus points OFF if you insist upon detailing every point of an ensemble in doing this. Every time.
- All the characters are attractive. Even the extras. EVERYONE is attractive, and beauty equals goodness – even if the goodness is merely angst-ridden, terminally melodramatic evil. Hooray for pretty!
- Describing by fancy maker, pattern of drapery/upholstery fabric, age and theme of bric-a-brac, country-of-origin of rugs, ostentatiously tasteful paint color, and at all times most-expensive-possible materials comprising every possible corner of a room in which one single scene should take place in five minutes, but which I have to read about for six pages, because – these characters are conspicuously well off, get it? THIS IS WORLD-BUILDING, GET IT? (This author, not incidentally, happens to be obscenely wealthy, and I could give a hang less how they choose to (clearly) decorate their own personal home. Get on with it. This is not story.)
- Describing by artist or composer, and with exhaustive critical opinion, every overwrought piece of music with which the author has mentally scored, scene by scene, every single instant of a novel. I don’t give an aching damn what you were listening to while you wrote this, and once you’ve done this eighteen times in a single novel, I know you are just showing off how much you think you know about music, and it’s just as boring as when that one guy does it in a bar so he can prove how he is too good to hang out in bars and is really a wildly overeducated, intelligent, super sensitive snob I knew I didn’t liike in the first place and now find completely insufferable in the second place.
- Constant. Racist. Descriptions. CONSTANT. If anyone appears anywhere in any of these works, who is not whiter than a sheet of modern copy paper, they are: dumb, superstitious, and *strictly* present as accessories to the white people’s stories.
- No, seriously.
- The actual, explicit worship of the very words “white” or “pale” are impossible to ignore. And this is not a 19th century novelist whose attitudes can be glossed over. I mean, this writer makes The Ax and the Vase look progressive, and Ax doesn’t even contain diversity.
Oh my, that felt good – if unseemly.
I may even be able to read one of these books ever again.
Just not within the next decade … or two. Actually. ()—and and and and. BOOP!
(Please feel free to initiate drinking games making fun of MY myriad tics and pretentions. All I ask is you comment and tell me about them, so we can all have fun. Cheers!)
Monday, May 18, 2015
Precipice
The WIP is at that sweet spot stage where I’m giddy as a schoolgirl
getting to know it, shyly gazing at its characters and treading a little
deeper into its world and generally having quite a crush on it … and
*just* beginning to formulate more acute interests in it, which will
direct research for a while.
This stage, of course, has curtailed my usual blog reading and writing, but I suspect a general wellbeing ensues, without readers gnashing their teeth and tearing their hair with less of my blather to consume. Russia and Ukraine, for their parts, are certainly barfing all over my stats; still getting hundreds of bots every day cruising in here, so at least there *are* hits showing up – even if most of them happen to be horsefeathers.
It’s an interesting time for a writer, this period of a new work – and a downright entangling time for me.
On the one hand, I’ve had this novel in mind since very very early indeed in the going with The Ax and the Vase; it came up during research for that, and the captivation I had for the subject has never diminished. Indeed, through the querying periods for Ax, it wasn’t rare I wished that could all be over with, I’d be agented and be able to get on with this work.
It hasn’t worked out quite thus, but on with the WIP I am in any case.
When we meet someone who excites us romantically, there are phases of being, and if a relationship ensues, changes come fast and furious. It’s all very exciting, even as it’s giddy in some ways that remind us of our vulnerability.
It’s hard, that is to say, to read Janet’s blog (and commenting community – such as I can these days) about How Long It Takes to write a novel, and not think both, “I’m working so much faster than I did on the first one” and “Yeah, but faster than a decade is still hardly market-speedy.” Hard not to be excited—and, at the same time, remember my experience with Ax.
I’m a confident cuss. But that has done its damage, and as much as I know this book is different (in good and publication-necessary ways), there absolutely IS some temptation to stick with the liberty and freedom of just never becoming a published author (nartist/freedom links).
But back to “that stage” …
I was once told by an ex, “I am quakingly aware of my capacity to fall in love with you.”
That’s where I am right now. I’ve been swept off my feet. I’ve had the second look, more deeply apprasing prospects with my new crush. I’ve started to figure out the fit, and some of the surprises too. The unexpected things are happening – both binding me more tightly to the work, and blindsiding me with expectation-bending surprises that change the prospects entirely.
This WIP – born of Ax though it indubitably is – has never been a sequel, never even been tightly tied to The Ax and the Vase.
And yet, the extent to which it is turning out to be unalike is still a breathtaking vista.
I knew the fundamentals would be not merely different, but outright foreign (figuratively … literally) to Ax. One was first-person from a single POV, told by the possibly unreliable narrator of His Own Glorious Destiny. One was an overwhelmingly male story. Story of power, story of success, story of a bunch of men in the late-antique North. Story of the building of a nation.
Myth, really.
Ax is a ripping yarn, and its central facets are those I’ve come to fear are in fact its stumbling blocks as a debut property.
So – a novel in omniscient voice, a novel featuring more women’s voices than men’s – a novel in which slaves (decidedly marginalized, in Ax) play integral roles … a novel of riots and terrors and unrest and failures …
I knew it would be another proposition.
What didn’t I know … ?
I honestly didn’t know how far I might shift from the character who first enticed me, whose story I thought I needed to tell.
I knew the POV would become more flexible, even inclusive.
I didn’t know just how much #WeNeedDiverseBooks would get into my blood, and amplify characters I didn’t really realize the novel was about.
Its’ been many years since I first sketched what still is the opening scene of the WIP. I couldn’t resist it; needed to get one little yaya out, needed to let that breath exhale – and, indeed, it was about all there was to any kind of draft *writing* (as opposed to research, which cropped up as I was researching Ax itself), until this year.
What is interesting is that, in writing that first scene (a Grand Guignol setpiece of a labor and delivery) – I researched and chose a name … and included a fictional character. There was a face, even back then, on a figure who didn’t necessarily need to exist so early on.
And she is becoming so much more than a supporting character.
I know her hair, I think I have heard her voice (no, seriously – on TV – I heard someone speaking with her timbre).
She’s not alone in surprising me; or perhaps bringing to the fore things I might hardly have suspected, but had somewhere in my wee and paltry little brain.
And that’s the thing. It’s in my brain; even if, to me, it seems external, almost mystical – the idea is mine, if only by right of conquest.
More ideas will show themselves, particularly as I get into more research – little surprises about the way the world worked, the food my characters ate, the color and pomp and dust around them.
And so: exciting times. Even as they’re indubitably weird times.
This stage, of course, has curtailed my usual blog reading and writing, but I suspect a general wellbeing ensues, without readers gnashing their teeth and tearing their hair with less of my blather to consume. Russia and Ukraine, for their parts, are certainly barfing all over my stats; still getting hundreds of bots every day cruising in here, so at least there *are* hits showing up – even if most of them happen to be horsefeathers.
It’s an interesting time for a writer, this period of a new work – and a downright entangling time for me.
On the one hand, I’ve had this novel in mind since very very early indeed in the going with The Ax and the Vase; it came up during research for that, and the captivation I had for the subject has never diminished. Indeed, through the querying periods for Ax, it wasn’t rare I wished that could all be over with, I’d be agented and be able to get on with this work.
It hasn’t worked out quite thus, but on with the WIP I am in any case.
When we meet someone who excites us romantically, there are phases of being, and if a relationship ensues, changes come fast and furious. It’s all very exciting, even as it’s giddy in some ways that remind us of our vulnerability.
It’s hard, that is to say, to read Janet’s blog (and commenting community – such as I can these days) about How Long It Takes to write a novel, and not think both, “I’m working so much faster than I did on the first one” and “Yeah, but faster than a decade is still hardly market-speedy.” Hard not to be excited—and, at the same time, remember my experience with Ax.
I’m a confident cuss. But that has done its damage, and as much as I know this book is different (in good and publication-necessary ways), there absolutely IS some temptation to stick with the liberty and freedom of just never becoming a published author (nartist/freedom links).
But back to “that stage” …
I was once told by an ex, “I am quakingly aware of my capacity to fall in love with you.”
That’s where I am right now. I’ve been swept off my feet. I’ve had the second look, more deeply apprasing prospects with my new crush. I’ve started to figure out the fit, and some of the surprises too. The unexpected things are happening – both binding me more tightly to the work, and blindsiding me with expectation-bending surprises that change the prospects entirely.
This WIP – born of Ax though it indubitably is – has never been a sequel, never even been tightly tied to The Ax and the Vase.
And yet, the extent to which it is turning out to be unalike is still a breathtaking vista.
I knew the fundamentals would be not merely different, but outright foreign (figuratively … literally) to Ax. One was first-person from a single POV, told by the possibly unreliable narrator of His Own Glorious Destiny. One was an overwhelmingly male story. Story of power, story of success, story of a bunch of men in the late-antique North. Story of the building of a nation.
Myth, really.
Ax is a ripping yarn, and its central facets are those I’ve come to fear are in fact its stumbling blocks as a debut property.
So – a novel in omniscient voice, a novel featuring more women’s voices than men’s – a novel in which slaves (decidedly marginalized, in Ax) play integral roles … a novel of riots and terrors and unrest and failures …
I knew it would be another proposition.
What didn’t I know … ?
I honestly didn’t know how far I might shift from the character who first enticed me, whose story I thought I needed to tell.
I knew the POV would become more flexible, even inclusive.
I didn’t know just how much #WeNeedDiverseBooks would get into my blood, and amplify characters I didn’t really realize the novel was about.
Its’ been many years since I first sketched what still is the opening scene of the WIP. I couldn’t resist it; needed to get one little yaya out, needed to let that breath exhale – and, indeed, it was about all there was to any kind of draft *writing* (as opposed to research, which cropped up as I was researching Ax itself), until this year.
What is interesting is that, in writing that first scene (a Grand Guignol setpiece of a labor and delivery) – I researched and chose a name … and included a fictional character. There was a face, even back then, on a figure who didn’t necessarily need to exist so early on.
And she is becoming so much more than a supporting character.
I know her hair, I think I have heard her voice (no, seriously – on TV – I heard someone speaking with her timbre).
She’s not alone in surprising me; or perhaps bringing to the fore things I might hardly have suspected, but had somewhere in my wee and paltry little brain.
And that’s the thing. It’s in my brain; even if, to me, it seems external, almost mystical – the idea is mine, if only by right of conquest.
More ideas will show themselves, particularly as I get into more research – little surprises about the way the world worked, the food my characters ate, the color and pomp and dust around them.
And so: exciting times. Even as they’re indubitably weird times.
New Release!
The recent lull around these blog parts, while I’ve been working on the WIP and generally losing myself in the extreme bliss and satisfaction (hee) that is my enviable life, has seen a shortage of me yipping around, pointing out neat archaeological things and geeky historical clothes (or writing screds about same) … and also a shortage of my linking to neato books you can buy.
And, at this 200th anniversary year of the Battle of Waterloo, I have been noticeably short on links to the many articles and posts looking into the events leading thereto.
AND, I’ve been remiss in ushering you, dear readers, toward wonderful literature touching on this subject.
It is with apologies for the lax housekeeping here that I offer up forthwith the wonderful news that Tom Williams’ latest, “Burke at Waterloo” is available now! Yes, even on the west side of The Pond. Take a peek (the Look Inside function is available) and see if it’s not worth a full read. Like me, he has hopes of ever having to work in the insurance industry again; and making a dream come true by reading a book means bonuses all ‘round!
Some time soon, I’ll be back with my usual gritching about historical terminology or gooping about my best-pets-in-the-history-of-ever, or perhaps a shoe style I’m drooling over or something about my dad sure to make you laugh and cry. And definitely stay tuned for the bit about the squirrels, because that is going to be epic.
For now: hooray for reading!
And, at this 200th anniversary year of the Battle of Waterloo, I have been noticeably short on links to the many articles and posts looking into the events leading thereto.
AND, I’ve been remiss in ushering you, dear readers, toward wonderful literature touching on this subject.
It is with apologies for the lax housekeeping here that I offer up forthwith the wonderful news that Tom Williams’ latest, “Burke at Waterloo” is available now! Yes, even on the west side of The Pond. Take a peek (the Look Inside function is available) and see if it’s not worth a full read. Like me, he has hopes of ever having to work in the insurance industry again; and making a dream come true by reading a book means bonuses all ‘round!
Some time soon, I’ll be back with my usual gritching about historical terminology or gooping about my best-pets-in-the-history-of-ever, or perhaps a shoe style I’m drooling over or something about my dad sure to make you laugh and cry. And definitely stay tuned for the bit about the squirrels, because that is going to be epic.
For now: hooray for reading!
Things I Need to Accomplish Tonight ...
- Trim my hair
- Update my incoming mail server
- Sort mail
- Order heartworm pills
- Glue a couple pair of shoes with loose bits
- Call my mom - hopefully share a crossword puzzle
- Catch RuPaul's Drag Race at 9:00
Things I have accomplished: trimming my hair. Woot.
I think I'll go for the heartworm pills next. YUM.
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
Saturday, May 9, 2015
Puppy Smell
The cocka-poo we adopted when I was in middle school, I used to call Mufferstinker. Sidney was my Stinky Tuscadero (though someone once told me, when she was like eight, that she smelled like a puppy; and it was true, most of her life). I always used to tell her, "I like your stink" because - I did.
Penelope came inside from a morning playing in her yard. She smells like sunshine. The soft metallic scent of her blood, warm from playing, and her breath. The grass.
Through winter, Pen really has little odor. Carolina Dogs are very clean, and she doesn't have the sebaceous musk Siddy always had.
For those of us who love our dogs for themselves, who need the heartbeat near us, who appreciate they're animals, who appreciate the excuse to remember we are animals ourselves ... puppy funk isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's a warm, seasonal scent right now: summer is coming! It's homey, in a way. It's part of her, part of being a dog-lover; I know there are some who consider it unpleasant or a sign of dirtiness (my *home* does not smell like dog; even her bed isn't a stinky spot).
For me, puppy-stink is one of the silly, secret privileges of the baby girl I am blessed to care for.
I like her stink, too. She gots good stink.
(For his part, Gossamer smells like honey bread baking. It's amazing.)
Penelope came inside from a morning playing in her yard. She smells like sunshine. The soft metallic scent of her blood, warm from playing, and her breath. The grass.
Through winter, Pen really has little odor. Carolina Dogs are very clean, and she doesn't have the sebaceous musk Siddy always had.
For those of us who love our dogs for themselves, who need the heartbeat near us, who appreciate they're animals, who appreciate the excuse to remember we are animals ourselves ... puppy funk isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's a warm, seasonal scent right now: summer is coming! It's homey, in a way. It's part of her, part of being a dog-lover; I know there are some who consider it unpleasant or a sign of dirtiness (my *home* does not smell like dog; even her bed isn't a stinky spot).
For me, puppy-stink is one of the silly, secret privileges of the baby girl I am blessed to care for.
I like her stink, too. She gots good stink.
(For his part, Gossamer smells like honey bread baking. It's amazing.)
Tuesday, May 5, 2015
Collection
The Arrant Pedant on whether we can empirically "prove" grammar. "Just because something is doesn't mean it ought to be." An excellent rule for life in general, kids. (This is one of those times I wish my dad were here, so we could talk about this interesting article. He'd have liked the AP, I think. But I hope I'll be dead before new-kulur replaces the proper pronunciation of nuclear.)
NatGeo takes a look at the unexpected brain science behind London cabbies' "The Knowledge" test. Turns out? Intensive learning changes your brain. Neat!
Fellow Reider Brian Schwartz has a great post on not letting a phone run you. I'm late to link it, but love it!
Jeff Sypeck's poetry inspired by the gargoyles of the National Cathedral itself has inspired music. How cool must THAT be!?
NatGeo takes a look at the unexpected brain science behind London cabbies' "The Knowledge" test. Turns out? Intensive learning changes your brain. Neat!
Fellow Reider Brian Schwartz has a great post on not letting a phone run you. I'm late to link it, but love it!
Jeff Sypeck's poetry inspired by the gargoyles of the National Cathedral itself has inspired music. How cool must THAT be!?
Monday, May 4, 2015
The IMPORTANCE of Costume
One of the things about the clothes we wear, even people who aren’t obsessed with fashion or looks, is that for most of us, some events or feelings actually imprint themselves upon what we are wearing at the moment something happens. How many men do you know who have a “lucky” pair of shoes or shirt or the like? How many women wear some particular outfit because it was what they wore when they got a particular job or met someone or just had a great day the first time they took it out, and it still makes them feel like a million?
I am not even sure where its box is right now, and will never so much as fit an arm in the thing again; but my wedding dress is one of those artifacts of my life I’ve never found a way to “give up” … Not least because giving it to any relative of mine would bring with it the knowledge that I was a rotten bride and my marriage broke up, but also because I’m not close “like that” with any of my cousins, and my nieces don’t appear to be stacking up (ahem) to the same build I had (chest-less), and my style in 1993 probably isn’t to either of their tastes anyway. But that dress was made for me – literally built ONTO me, over the course of a day – by a friend I still consider deeply dear to my heart. It is a thing of gorgeousness, and its fate – preserved in a box, never to see the light of day – seems largely inescapable. Who would wear it? I can’t bear to cut it into crafts projects. It is the only garment in my life I ever expect to be one-and-done, so to speak; worn only one time and literally never again.
But even lesser things have their psychic cachet. I can tell you exactly what I wore to work on the first day of my last job; one, because Cute Shoes remarked on it to me as the first clue I had some style. And two: because it was the dress I was wearing when I was laid off, on a gorgeous day in spring, from the previous job – and that dress deserved better than that. It got it; I had hated previous-job anyway, and been looking for months before I won the layoff lotto at an employer that “never” did that. Except that one time.
Today, I wore a dress with an odd mix of emotional ghosts attached. It’s a tasteful number in beige and white, just longer than the knees, sleeveless but conservative, an empire waist with a tie, and a little pattern from there up. It made as good a choice as possible, during the heat of an August day, when I had to go to traffic court: and found myself served with a half-million dollar lawsuit.
The lawsuit is over, and at about the moment that happened, last year, I purchased my Prius – getting rid of a *car* freighted with too much emotional weight – and somehow this dress, the thing covering me at the moment I experienced the greatest horror and cowering fear in all my life, does not bring with it the latter emotional recall, but only its own light color and comfortable wear. Yet I can’t wear the thing without knowing its history.
I color that history now with gratitude – because that ordeal IS over, and I am intact. And it feels GOOD to know that, to remember the fear, to have that in the past. And the dress looks nice, its lightness speaks of spring and of summer, its conservative and flattering lines give me a power-boost at work, and the memory of the people who have said it is a nice dress feels good too. Even my MOM liked this dress. It’s a good dress.
And memory is good, and keeping myself honest, and being grateful – these are all important.
Some days, it can feel important just to look slick. Looking slick in comfort: bonus points.
But memory is always there. Of the important things – and the less-so. The day you were wearing the comfy jeans you like, walking alone on an autumn day, kicking leaves. The boots you had on once when you almost slipped on ice, and didn’t – whether they really saved you or not, you’ll always think of them as Good Boots, and you’ll have them repaired if you can, rather than tossing ‘em and buying new when the leather stresses or the laces go or a grommet on an eyelet comes loose. We can develop actual gratitude even for clothes, if the serve us well.
This is why the disposable clothing industry is sad (even aside from its implications for our natural resources).
I have a little jersey jacket. They’re wonderful, little light cardigans that can stretch a sleveless top’s seasonal functionality, or take us from chilly morning to warm afternoon with no changing or little fuss.
This one, I happened to buy the last time I saw Mr. X.
I’d arrived in the town where we were meeting, and it was early afternoon, and I didn’t “need” to check in immediately, so before I got to my hotel, I stopped at a Ross Dress for Less, and bought a couple things. A long blue sundress with beading around the neck; this little taupe cardi with a bit of a peplum and a nice drape.
The thing about jersey – particularly lightweight jersey – it’s a very flat fabric. If it develops a hole or even a run, there is little that can be done. And what heroic measures would even the best seamstress take with a $12 garment already three years old?
This little jacket is great, I use it all the time, through three-quarters of the year. It’s flattering, goes with many things, and stretches any number of outfits’ utility and versatility.
And it has a little hole in the back, in the peplum, in a broad stretch of fabric that wouldn’t lend well to mending even if I had the skills. A patch would be bulky and unsightly – and, indeed, any bulk over a weak spot could actually create weak spots in its own perimeter. This fabric is THIN.
And the jacket has had three years already – in a variety of garment generally manufactured to last six months or less. This is actually part of the design/making of disposable clothes. They’re meant to be ditched. Not fixed. Just replaced. There’s another cardigan jacket out there just as good; there are fifty; a hundred. This is meant to be tossed, replaced by new.
This is something I wore three YEARS ago, when last I saw the man who ruined me for all the other ones. When last I saw the friend in this world who knows me better than even my oldest. When last I saw his laughter, heard it, MADE it. He’s touched those sleeves, put his arms around the back of this jacket. Felt how soft it is, even as I have a hundred times since, without him.
There’s really no way, even with the finest needle, to pick that hole and pull it back together. It’s small, but it is a hole. It can’t really be fixed.
And yet. And yet. I resist throwing the thing away. It keeps me JUST warm enough, it looks good in front still.
If only I didn’t know it had this flaw. This unfixable, and un-hide-able, flaw.
I am not even sure where its box is right now, and will never so much as fit an arm in the thing again; but my wedding dress is one of those artifacts of my life I’ve never found a way to “give up” … Not least because giving it to any relative of mine would bring with it the knowledge that I was a rotten bride and my marriage broke up, but also because I’m not close “like that” with any of my cousins, and my nieces don’t appear to be stacking up (ahem) to the same build I had (chest-less), and my style in 1993 probably isn’t to either of their tastes anyway. But that dress was made for me – literally built ONTO me, over the course of a day – by a friend I still consider deeply dear to my heart. It is a thing of gorgeousness, and its fate – preserved in a box, never to see the light of day – seems largely inescapable. Who would wear it? I can’t bear to cut it into crafts projects. It is the only garment in my life I ever expect to be one-and-done, so to speak; worn only one time and literally never again.
But even lesser things have their psychic cachet. I can tell you exactly what I wore to work on the first day of my last job; one, because Cute Shoes remarked on it to me as the first clue I had some style. And two: because it was the dress I was wearing when I was laid off, on a gorgeous day in spring, from the previous job – and that dress deserved better than that. It got it; I had hated previous-job anyway, and been looking for months before I won the layoff lotto at an employer that “never” did that. Except that one time.
Today, I wore a dress with an odd mix of emotional ghosts attached. It’s a tasteful number in beige and white, just longer than the knees, sleeveless but conservative, an empire waist with a tie, and a little pattern from there up. It made as good a choice as possible, during the heat of an August day, when I had to go to traffic court: and found myself served with a half-million dollar lawsuit.
The lawsuit is over, and at about the moment that happened, last year, I purchased my Prius – getting rid of a *car* freighted with too much emotional weight – and somehow this dress, the thing covering me at the moment I experienced the greatest horror and cowering fear in all my life, does not bring with it the latter emotional recall, but only its own light color and comfortable wear. Yet I can’t wear the thing without knowing its history.
I color that history now with gratitude – because that ordeal IS over, and I am intact. And it feels GOOD to know that, to remember the fear, to have that in the past. And the dress looks nice, its lightness speaks of spring and of summer, its conservative and flattering lines give me a power-boost at work, and the memory of the people who have said it is a nice dress feels good too. Even my MOM liked this dress. It’s a good dress.
And memory is good, and keeping myself honest, and being grateful – these are all important.
Some days, it can feel important just to look slick. Looking slick in comfort: bonus points.
But memory is always there. Of the important things – and the less-so. The day you were wearing the comfy jeans you like, walking alone on an autumn day, kicking leaves. The boots you had on once when you almost slipped on ice, and didn’t – whether they really saved you or not, you’ll always think of them as Good Boots, and you’ll have them repaired if you can, rather than tossing ‘em and buying new when the leather stresses or the laces go or a grommet on an eyelet comes loose. We can develop actual gratitude even for clothes, if the serve us well.
This is why the disposable clothing industry is sad (even aside from its implications for our natural resources).
I have a little jersey jacket. They’re wonderful, little light cardigans that can stretch a sleveless top’s seasonal functionality, or take us from chilly morning to warm afternoon with no changing or little fuss.
This one, I happened to buy the last time I saw Mr. X.
I’d arrived in the town where we were meeting, and it was early afternoon, and I didn’t “need” to check in immediately, so before I got to my hotel, I stopped at a Ross Dress for Less, and bought a couple things. A long blue sundress with beading around the neck; this little taupe cardi with a bit of a peplum and a nice drape.
The thing about jersey – particularly lightweight jersey – it’s a very flat fabric. If it develops a hole or even a run, there is little that can be done. And what heroic measures would even the best seamstress take with a $12 garment already three years old?
This little jacket is great, I use it all the time, through three-quarters of the year. It’s flattering, goes with many things, and stretches any number of outfits’ utility and versatility.
And it has a little hole in the back, in the peplum, in a broad stretch of fabric that wouldn’t lend well to mending even if I had the skills. A patch would be bulky and unsightly – and, indeed, any bulk over a weak spot could actually create weak spots in its own perimeter. This fabric is THIN.
And the jacket has had three years already – in a variety of garment generally manufactured to last six months or less. This is actually part of the design/making of disposable clothes. They’re meant to be ditched. Not fixed. Just replaced. There’s another cardigan jacket out there just as good; there are fifty; a hundred. This is meant to be tossed, replaced by new.
This is something I wore three YEARS ago, when last I saw the man who ruined me for all the other ones. When last I saw the friend in this world who knows me better than even my oldest. When last I saw his laughter, heard it, MADE it. He’s touched those sleeves, put his arms around the back of this jacket. Felt how soft it is, even as I have a hundred times since, without him.
There’s really no way, even with the finest needle, to pick that hole and pull it back together. It’s small, but it is a hole. It can’t really be fixed.
And yet. And yet. I resist throwing the thing away. It keeps me JUST warm enough, it looks good in front still.
If only I didn’t know it had this flaw. This unfixable, and un-hide-able, flaw.
Saturday, May 2, 2015
Research, RuPaul, and Affectation
When I was twelve or so, I first ran across the term “affectation” as a somewhat pejorative description of a girl putting on linguistic or gestural airs to Act a Certain way. As my reading widened, the term came to apply to affecting habits by men or women, with a little less insult freighting the description, but still generally seeming to indicate artificial behavior as a negative. “She affected a girlish lisp but seemed no younger for it” or “He affected to carry a walking stick” were the broad-stroked outlines of affectation.
Many of us today, especially Americans today, despise affectation – and yet, for all my own history of Valspeak and its signature (incredibly irritating) rising inflection, as a crotchety old lady, I find younger women and girls now no less affected, and just as irritating. The current iteration, in spoken language, favors either wildly raspy voices or nasal and juvenile sounding voices which remain immature in sound and vocabulary well past the sell-by date on “I’m a liddle gurl” pretension. This was plenty common in my own generation, and earlier in the twentieth century, but as a prejudiced old bat, it FEELS like it’s worse now, and “women today have lost all concept of the allure of a lower and modulated voice.”
My generation, of course, entertains the delusional affectation that we’re not getting old, rendering the concept of ageing gracefully all but risible (and I include myself). Every generation has its elaborate fictional lifelong scripts they live by, destinies shaped by prevailing assumptions, and those shaped by rebellion against them too.
Anyway. So affectation is considerably awful, in this day and age. Its reflection of artificial values, and empty aspirations *blah blah blah blah and so on*, pathetic pop culture, distended market interest in body image, consumer *blather blather blather ad nauseum* and … you get the point.
Behavior other than the authentic = bad.
But. Has any one of us ever in life met an ‘authentic’ person? Honest, sure. Even trustworthy. But almost every human for something north of six THOUSAND years now has been subject to some influence or other that has little to do with the natural world. Civilization – and animal behavior – are incompatible and always have been, and what people have ever succumbed to unfettered expression with their words, behaviors, and bodies, have ALWAYS been punished for it, even as we view artificiality with suspicion.
So most of us agree: crapping in public is Not Done. But eating is acceptable. And yet you can’t have one without the other. Looked at for more than five minutes, the standards we’ve cemented over the millennia begin to appear arbitrary, even as we can’t imagine (quite) letting go of them.
We judge the affectation of, say, a monarch so rarefied that for them to scratch their knee is unthinkable, as almost embarrasingly inhuman. Ironically: unworthy, by dint of the very centuries’ sanctioning of overweening position and antiquated political systems. Embarrassing.
And so, we snort, we wipe our noses, we move on with life, glad we’re not stuck in royal protocol … yet ever-fantasizing about silly constructs like “fairy tales” and obessing over Kate Middleton’s dresses.
Affectation is awful. And *aspirational*.
It’s difficult to even comprehend the idea of a world in which touching the ear is offensive, or speaking above the most rigidly-learned modulation. To imagine trying to live without sneezing, yawning, sighing in boredom – unthinkable. Who trains themselves out of these simple things? How can it even be done?
There are few of us living today who can stop and imagine living without the presumption that human feeling is universal. The presumption that a living, feeling person will act in X way given Y to endure, or suffer, or enjoy, is unfathomably deep in us, and yet a moment’s study betrays how wrong modern assumptions can be. Even the concept of individuality is not fundamental.
And it’s the job of a historical fiction author to convey, even in compromised terms, worlds like this. Minds without modern expectations. Relationships, communities, homes, and landscapes not framed by Norman Rockwell or even Titian or Picasso. To completely reframe character within different contexts.
This is where RuPaul comes in.
Here’s a guy who’s made quite a career in affectation, and people only love him for it. He has stated pointblank more than once, wearing a dress really isn’t his favorite thing in the world. Yet few of us – men or women – do it a whole lot “better” (modern presumptions firmly in place). The transformation of which he’s capable, and for which he’s made megabucks, is arresting.
And completely affected. You knew that would be coming, so it’s out of the way. Done.
The year I was so sick I missed New Year’s, I stayed home for days on my couch, so dizzy I could not read nor walk nor focus on anything closer to me that at least ten feet away, and I watched TV. Specifically, RuPaul’s Drag Race on Netflix (sadly, they don’t carry the show anymore). At first, I thought it would be light and funny and get my mind off the illness – with pretty colors and things to look at I wouldn’t have to contemplate in any depth.
I’ve seen every single season, and most of them several times over, thanks to the magic of cable TV’s perpetual reruns. It never gets old (and the editing is the most hilarious on TV).
RuPaul presides over this show, decidedly NOT taped in HD, and filtered on top of that – and so sits in the shining, golden haze of her wigs, cool, alluring, and utterly remote. Topping seven feet no doubt in those shoes, airbrushed to imaginary, unattainable perfection, she is packaged and presented as a goddess of transformations, and the dozens of minions over the past several years are a panoply of breathtaking talents, all offering up to her their charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent (one of the show’s million catch phrases – and it spells a word, y’all).
RuPaul HIMself appears at least once every episode decidedly out of drag, and each one ends with a judging, a ceremonial in which SHE makes a new appearance each week, magnificent and made-up, glittering and … “perfect” … There is a runway walk to showcase the week’s eye-popping dress and wig and makeup, then a few minutes’ marvelously Hollywood-fake-nice emceeing where she introduces the judges du jour, and then she takes her seat at the center of the panel and rules with an iron fist, a tongue in cheek, and the most eerily polished personal deportment this side of a royal court, seriously. Even on the rare occasion she takes a queen to task for something, the flare-up presented has the sheen of protocol, the fairy-tale monarch enacting the off-with-their-heads archness that does not so much as crack the heavily shellacked shell of the persona; indeed, only adds to the …
Affectation.
The more I watch RuPaul, the less I see the human, the private life, the man for whom this is decidedly a living, and for whom life is lived on a farm with a longtime partner, a private life beautifully and blankly unavailable to millions of viewers. It’s a work of art, and it’s kind of magnificent, thinking about all the unseen-ness or not.
As Marilyn Monroe was a persona worn, perhaps almost to excess, by a woman with intelligence and agency of her own, and deep vulnerabilities she actually used to fuel the machine of a career centered on affectation … so is RuPaul the product of the collective gaze, more than the real reflection of a man making a hell of a living looking like few women in the world can even aspire to.
(My apologies for the preceding sentence; this blog is largely unedited, and certainly not beta-read.)
Over the past couple of weeks, watching Rusie Q in her magisterial grandness, the very carriage of her head a lesson in imperiousness and royal dignity, the more I am thinking of the rarefied nature of affectation, and how IMPORTANT it is for certain characters. How it informs an entire existence – where animal humanity is locked away and hidden – where protocol’s demands are met, and with aplomb, but life as lived is a separate thing; and not, perhaps, a greater one.
Writing a world in which no voice should ever be raised, where bells are not rung to get attention, in which religious and court demands come above all things, the example of RuPaul in drag is perhaps hardly obvious, and yet I am inspired by the vision, by the transformative nature of the demands of the Supermodel of the World’s role. Watching the performance, the work, the absolute dedication is instructive, even if I will never directly use an ounce of it. The very angle of that sculpted chin is evocative. And that is enough.
Creative artists, writers, and those we work with, are fond of saying you never know where inspiration lies.
It’s impossible to convey in toto just how random, and true, that really is.
Many of us today, especially Americans today, despise affectation – and yet, for all my own history of Valspeak and its signature (incredibly irritating) rising inflection, as a crotchety old lady, I find younger women and girls now no less affected, and just as irritating. The current iteration, in spoken language, favors either wildly raspy voices or nasal and juvenile sounding voices which remain immature in sound and vocabulary well past the sell-by date on “I’m a liddle gurl” pretension. This was plenty common in my own generation, and earlier in the twentieth century, but as a prejudiced old bat, it FEELS like it’s worse now, and “women today have lost all concept of the allure of a lower and modulated voice.”
My generation, of course, entertains the delusional affectation that we’re not getting old, rendering the concept of ageing gracefully all but risible (and I include myself). Every generation has its elaborate fictional lifelong scripts they live by, destinies shaped by prevailing assumptions, and those shaped by rebellion against them too.
Anyway. So affectation is considerably awful, in this day and age. Its reflection of artificial values, and empty aspirations *blah blah blah blah and so on*, pathetic pop culture, distended market interest in body image, consumer *blather blather blather ad nauseum* and … you get the point.
Behavior other than the authentic = bad.
But. Has any one of us ever in life met an ‘authentic’ person? Honest, sure. Even trustworthy. But almost every human for something north of six THOUSAND years now has been subject to some influence or other that has little to do with the natural world. Civilization – and animal behavior – are incompatible and always have been, and what people have ever succumbed to unfettered expression with their words, behaviors, and bodies, have ALWAYS been punished for it, even as we view artificiality with suspicion.
So most of us agree: crapping in public is Not Done. But eating is acceptable. And yet you can’t have one without the other. Looked at for more than five minutes, the standards we’ve cemented over the millennia begin to appear arbitrary, even as we can’t imagine (quite) letting go of them.
We judge the affectation of, say, a monarch so rarefied that for them to scratch their knee is unthinkable, as almost embarrasingly inhuman. Ironically: unworthy, by dint of the very centuries’ sanctioning of overweening position and antiquated political systems. Embarrassing.
And so, we snort, we wipe our noses, we move on with life, glad we’re not stuck in royal protocol … yet ever-fantasizing about silly constructs like “fairy tales” and obessing over Kate Middleton’s dresses.
Affectation is awful. And *aspirational*.
It’s difficult to even comprehend the idea of a world in which touching the ear is offensive, or speaking above the most rigidly-learned modulation. To imagine trying to live without sneezing, yawning, sighing in boredom – unthinkable. Who trains themselves out of these simple things? How can it even be done?
There are few of us living today who can stop and imagine living without the presumption that human feeling is universal. The presumption that a living, feeling person will act in X way given Y to endure, or suffer, or enjoy, is unfathomably deep in us, and yet a moment’s study betrays how wrong modern assumptions can be. Even the concept of individuality is not fundamental.
And it’s the job of a historical fiction author to convey, even in compromised terms, worlds like this. Minds without modern expectations. Relationships, communities, homes, and landscapes not framed by Norman Rockwell or even Titian or Picasso. To completely reframe character within different contexts.
This is where RuPaul comes in.
Here’s a guy who’s made quite a career in affectation, and people only love him for it. He has stated pointblank more than once, wearing a dress really isn’t his favorite thing in the world. Yet few of us – men or women – do it a whole lot “better” (modern presumptions firmly in place). The transformation of which he’s capable, and for which he’s made megabucks, is arresting.
And completely affected. You knew that would be coming, so it’s out of the way. Done.
The year I was so sick I missed New Year’s, I stayed home for days on my couch, so dizzy I could not read nor walk nor focus on anything closer to me that at least ten feet away, and I watched TV. Specifically, RuPaul’s Drag Race on Netflix (sadly, they don’t carry the show anymore). At first, I thought it would be light and funny and get my mind off the illness – with pretty colors and things to look at I wouldn’t have to contemplate in any depth.
I’ve seen every single season, and most of them several times over, thanks to the magic of cable TV’s perpetual reruns. It never gets old (and the editing is the most hilarious on TV).
 |
| Image: Wikipedia |
RuPaul presides over this show, decidedly NOT taped in HD, and filtered on top of that – and so sits in the shining, golden haze of her wigs, cool, alluring, and utterly remote. Topping seven feet no doubt in those shoes, airbrushed to imaginary, unattainable perfection, she is packaged and presented as a goddess of transformations, and the dozens of minions over the past several years are a panoply of breathtaking talents, all offering up to her their charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent (one of the show’s million catch phrases – and it spells a word, y’all).
RuPaul HIMself appears at least once every episode decidedly out of drag, and each one ends with a judging, a ceremonial in which SHE makes a new appearance each week, magnificent and made-up, glittering and … “perfect” … There is a runway walk to showcase the week’s eye-popping dress and wig and makeup, then a few minutes’ marvelously Hollywood-fake-nice emceeing where she introduces the judges du jour, and then she takes her seat at the center of the panel and rules with an iron fist, a tongue in cheek, and the most eerily polished personal deportment this side of a royal court, seriously. Even on the rare occasion she takes a queen to task for something, the flare-up presented has the sheen of protocol, the fairy-tale monarch enacting the off-with-their-heads archness that does not so much as crack the heavily shellacked shell of the persona; indeed, only adds to the …
Affectation.
The more I watch RuPaul, the less I see the human, the private life, the man for whom this is decidedly a living, and for whom life is lived on a farm with a longtime partner, a private life beautifully and blankly unavailable to millions of viewers. It’s a work of art, and it’s kind of magnificent, thinking about all the unseen-ness or not.
As Marilyn Monroe was a persona worn, perhaps almost to excess, by a woman with intelligence and agency of her own, and deep vulnerabilities she actually used to fuel the machine of a career centered on affectation … so is RuPaul the product of the collective gaze, more than the real reflection of a man making a hell of a living looking like few women in the world can even aspire to.
(My apologies for the preceding sentence; this blog is largely unedited, and certainly not beta-read.)
Over the past couple of weeks, watching Rusie Q in her magisterial grandness, the very carriage of her head a lesson in imperiousness and royal dignity, the more I am thinking of the rarefied nature of affectation, and how IMPORTANT it is for certain characters. How it informs an entire existence – where animal humanity is locked away and hidden – where protocol’s demands are met, and with aplomb, but life as lived is a separate thing; and not, perhaps, a greater one.
Writing a world in which no voice should ever be raised, where bells are not rung to get attention, in which religious and court demands come above all things, the example of RuPaul in drag is perhaps hardly obvious, and yet I am inspired by the vision, by the transformative nature of the demands of the Supermodel of the World’s role. Watching the performance, the work, the absolute dedication is instructive, even if I will never directly use an ounce of it. The very angle of that sculpted chin is evocative. And that is enough.
Creative artists, writers, and those we work with, are fond of saying you never know where inspiration lies.
It’s impossible to convey in toto just how random, and true, that really is.
Sunday, April 26, 2015
Project Gutenberg Rocks, and Other Stories
Character is one of England's noblest and most deliberate products, but some Englishmen have it to excess.
My lunchtime reading of late has been H. G. Wells. We all know ABOUT his work – we all know about The Time Machine and Moreau and The Invisible Man, anyway – or we all know the movies – or know there *are* movies, but can’t remember whether we’ve seen them or not …
But how many of you have read H. G. Wells? Until this past couple of weeks or so, I can say, I had not.
I started with an anthology on Project Gutenberg – The Hidden Door and Other stories, and have come upon an unexpected gem in The Marriage. Hidden Door shows a wonderful range, and, unfortunately, not a tiny little tidbit of deeply hideous racism**, intentionally or not embedded in the most gruesome story of the bunch. Some of these pieces are on the pedestrian side, and some – from the vantage point of the twenty-first century – may feel been-there/done-that for some readers looking for adventure. The final one misses a truly intriguing opportunity, but is still interestingly conceived. The Star, I would say, is in many ways the star of the show – an asteroid-coming-at-Earth prototype, the journalistic remove of which ends up delivering rather a remarkable blow in the end.
The Marriage – which I haven’t finished reading yet, but is a GOOD enough read I feel the need to babble about it – is another example of the literature we now view as antique, which has a wonderful nimbleness of language and irresistible wit. It’s even funnier than the dog in Lady Audley’s Secret - and at greater length. Written in 1912, when the man and his career were seasoned and confident, the characterization of a twenty-year-old female character is remarkably good (less remarkable, perhaps, is how assured it is – but I’ve read male authors’ feminine voices before which, though clearly written with all the *assurance* in the world, were more difficult to believe), and the family dynamic is recognizeable and alive, not entirely the relic of a forgotten and dusty old fusty English age.
Wells at this point in his life was philosophical and experienced, and he brings that to bear in support of the humor and plot at work in Marriage. I am absorbed and cannot wait to see where Wells goes.
(S)he had over her large front teeth lips that closed quietly and with a slight effort after her speeches, as if the words she spoke tasted well and left a peaceful, secure sensation in the mouth.
**I also don’t want to give short shrift to the point above, about racism. It’s a trick of our culture, 100 or more years later, that a white woman with tons of privilege and a different point to make, can breeze by a point like that and get away with it – but even if I meant to make a different point, the world is still not one in which it’s reasonable to gloss over bigotry as if it were not there.
“The Cone” is the story in which That Word we all know too well is prominent. The description of a particular character of color, as well as the omniscient voice’s judgement of quite a number of races, detailed with highly squeamish results, is difficult to reconcile to the biographical facts of Wells’ stated outlook on prejudice and racial tyranny. Yet I can’t write this prose off, as a reader, with the old “It was the mindset” dismissal that lets me concentrate on something else in the face of virulent details. When people like me fail to observe things like this, we give ourselves the excuse not to see them in life, and … we don’t live in a world where that is a tenable position. There is no defense for dismissing the past, in a present in which the same problems exist; to answer #BlackLivesMatter with #AllLivesMatter as if that puts paid to the devaluation of an entire class within the “all” of our society.
The more I face the privilege I possess, even as the rarefied and perhaps irrelevant exercise in personal creativity that is writing a novel in which not everybody is white and well-fed and well-off and unthinkingly, unblinkingly secure … the more I understand that one facet of this blog – particularly if I gain any success – is to deal with the subtext and the offstage workings that I DON’T, perhaps, write about.
It is unfortunate that, in my recent attempts to deal with this issue, I’ve couched it entirely in the ME ME ME ME ME ME ME context of MY novel not selling, and hoping to do better with one that contains more diversity. I see the problems there. I see problems in myself I may never have the courage to write about publicly. But I also know that this blog is only one voice, and my voice in the world, the one I want to have heard, is that of an author. And so, knowingly – even if incorrectly – the content here is filtered that way. This may be detrimental. Maybe some day, I’ll have the courage to put down the mirror and stop making everything about my own reflection. In the meantime, I am learning.
Quote
We seem to be going through a period of nostalgia, and everyone seems to think yesterday was better than today. I don't think it was, and I would advise you not to wait ten years before admitting today was great. If you're hung up on nostalgia, pretend today is yesterday and just go out and have one hell of a time.
--Art Buchwald
It's the Bit About DNA Testing ...
... that really makes me curious about this story about Henry VII and Elizabeth of York's marriage bed ...
Being a product of my generation and my culture, this is going to give me nightmares about black lights and gross hotel rooms.
Being a product of my generation and my culture, this is going to give me nightmares about black lights and gross hotel rooms.
Weekend
I went to an Administrative Professionals conference on Friday, and to a writing/geeking/gaming/entertaining family-friendly, costume-filled con on Saturday. Yesterday, I saw the BEST Darth Vader I've ever seen in my life - and an hour later, I saw him out of costume, standing and holding his tiny daughter on his shoulder, and she was wide-eyed and sweet and tired, and it was kind of OSUM.
Friday, I saw butterflies.
Friday, I saw butterflies.
Thursday, April 23, 2015
Peek Inside the Mind ... Authorial Choices and Offstage Action
In contemplating (and, essentially in practice, actually) giving up on actively supporting Ax, the WIP has all along been the compensation; yet I honestly had not counted on just how much it has occupied me emotionally (a good thing). Even depending upon it – “take me away from all this, make me forget!” – its yeoman response to my need to WORK has been surprising. Perhaps I’m unaccustomed to being able to depend on anything. Perhaps I was holding back on hope and enthusiasm, either unseemly as I mourn the loss of the first work (for now), or just because the disappointment is so present it hardly seems worth getting hopes up once again.
Ah, but there it is. Hope is hard, but in me it’s harder yet to kill. I’m a cussed thing in this way.
The WIP – let’s call her Wippy, just because I want to (any title is still probably months away; right now, I don’t even know whether the end is where it ends) – is getting wonderfully energetic. Ending or no, the order of things is falling into place, and I’m in discovery mode, learning what I’ll need to learn, to flesh out the hints and tempting bits already waiting.
Today I had to choose which of two possible Germanuses was the son of Matasuentha (for the novel – as always, I make zero pretense to being an historian, and this in particular is a specifically arbitrary authorial prerogative). One of these men, early in the seventh century, had a daughter who married Theodosius, son of the emperor Maurice. This Germanus rescued Theodosius in 602, during a food riot in Constantinople, but later may have been involved in a conspiracy to set himself or Theodosius on the throne; Maurice branded him a traitor, but Germanus survived until Phocas usurped the throne and Maurice, along with all his family, were executed late in 602.
The other candidate as Germanus, son of Germanus and Matasuentha, was husband of Charito, the daughter of Maurice’s predecessor Tiberius II Constantine. Tiberius was said to be so good a man the people did not so much as deserve his rule, and he died after three years as Caesar in the East, in 582. He disappears from the record after marriage to Charito, yet there exists the possibility he and the Germanus above are one and the same; this makes for some tantalizing story possibilities, but the seventh century is off my list and male characters have so far not been at the core of Wippy, and so these possibilities must wait for some other author to deal with them, I think.
Any “choice” I make at this stage in the writing—and given Germanus’ minority and the unlikelihood I will stretch Wippy across a century (or more)—is more theoretical than a practical part of the novel, mechanically or creatively, but I want to know the child I will write about, even if I don’t write about him as a man.
And so we choose the husband of Charito, and because I am a child of a certain decade, I will inevitably view her as a tiny hoochy-coochie girl with ponytails on top of her head (… or not …). A boy who grows up to be associated with a ruler beloved for his benevolence. A boy who marries … and then disapears.
Ah, but there it is. Hope is hard, but in me it’s harder yet to kill. I’m a cussed thing in this way.
The WIP – let’s call her Wippy, just because I want to (any title is still probably months away; right now, I don’t even know whether the end is where it ends) – is getting wonderfully energetic. Ending or no, the order of things is falling into place, and I’m in discovery mode, learning what I’ll need to learn, to flesh out the hints and tempting bits already waiting.
Today I had to choose which of two possible Germanuses was the son of Matasuentha (for the novel – as always, I make zero pretense to being an historian, and this in particular is a specifically arbitrary authorial prerogative). One of these men, early in the seventh century, had a daughter who married Theodosius, son of the emperor Maurice. This Germanus rescued Theodosius in 602, during a food riot in Constantinople, but later may have been involved in a conspiracy to set himself or Theodosius on the throne; Maurice branded him a traitor, but Germanus survived until Phocas usurped the throne and Maurice, along with all his family, were executed late in 602.
The other candidate as Germanus, son of Germanus and Matasuentha, was husband of Charito, the daughter of Maurice’s predecessor Tiberius II Constantine. Tiberius was said to be so good a man the people did not so much as deserve his rule, and he died after three years as Caesar in the East, in 582. He disappears from the record after marriage to Charito, yet there exists the possibility he and the Germanus above are one and the same; this makes for some tantalizing story possibilities, but the seventh century is off my list and male characters have so far not been at the core of Wippy, and so these possibilities must wait for some other author to deal with them, I think.
Any “choice” I make at this stage in the writing—and given Germanus’ minority and the unlikelihood I will stretch Wippy across a century (or more)—is more theoretical than a practical part of the novel, mechanically or creatively, but I want to know the child I will write about, even if I don’t write about him as a man.
And so we choose the husband of Charito, and because I am a child of a certain decade, I will inevitably view her as a tiny hoochy-coochie girl with ponytails on top of her head (… or not …). A boy who grows up to be associated with a ruler beloved for his benevolence. A boy who marries … and then disapears.
Pet Post II - The Electric Gossamer Boogaloo
Between the resident fuzzly poobahs, Penelope has historically taken up much of the pixel space around this blog, since she and Gossamer the Editor Cat came along. He came first, but she made her splash, and got me barfing up words in excess from the beginning. Goss has his own fame and fans, of course, but let it not be said I have more attention for one kid over the other.
Still perhaps the nicest cat I ever expect to know in my life, Gossamer’s major claim to drama in his kittenhood was the stupid froth about his name – long since buried by SMART people who appreciate all the cultural resonance of his sobriquet, and who dig the reasons I could not call the boy Velvet, for Maud’s sake. Since then, self-training as cats tend to be, and limited as his trick-doing interests and abilities are by design, he’s more interesting in more low-key ways than Penelope.
But interesting he is; I find myself constantly engaged by the little grey guy. He’s still a forgiving puss; gets stepped on by his lummox/person once or twice every week, but never holds it against me (though his rubbing up against me is often the cause). His eyes, if anything, grow greener and greener as he matures; his own fake-birthday will be May Day, and he will be three too, as is Pen-Pen.
At three, and especially this season, as he sheds and slims down again to his non-winter coat, he’s still the smallest cat I have ever had. Still the nimblest, too – and cats as a genre are not exactly clumsy things (though that one cat of mine sometimes had to pull The Fonz “I meant to do that” after a slip). He’s the lightest thing on his toes I’ve ever seen, and his leaps still look as perfect and smooth as old slow-motion falls filmed then run in reverse.
And, of course, I am obsessed with his toes. His front paws are the cutest I have ever seen (and Smikey Cat had some formidably sweet mitts on him), and that back leg with the lightning bolt on it still has the funniest way of kicking out when he is going at a kitten-trot. He’s the most herd-able cat I’ve ever seen, too; it’s rare he won’t go where I need him to, but he does hate the rare occasions I need to close him behind a door to, say, move furniture or things like that.
The longer we live together, the more he curls up on me physically. With summer, this may change again, but as of now he still likes to climb onto my hip or my back and knead and hang out. This weekend, when my back was bugging me, he somehow knew how to be precisely the right heat, and right weight, and curled up on my tailbone, helping me out with the soreness. And there are times he seems to know JUST where to knead, which is the best thing ever.
It’s impossibly sweet, of course – an animal actually resting on you like that. He does it when Pen is allowed on her corner of the bed on a Saturday or Sunday sometimes, and all I can think is – if this is being a Pathetic Old Pet Lady, I am lucky in my pets. Pen has learned her territory, and Goss cedes his own roaming spots to settle down on mama herself. Or if I have a weekend nap, he tucks in behind my knees, like I’m his fort, hiding and warm and quiet as can be.
Last time I had friends over, he literally walked over them to get to me at one point; when he was a little ‘un he used to do that about as much as he’d be friendly to others, but it had been a while since he so pointedly preferred me in front of others. I didn’t pretend that wasn’t a bit gratifying; but am glad, too, he’s a nice little fellow to my friends and especially my mom and stepfather.
Like most of the cats I’ve had (he’s the fourth), he uses his voice seldom, but it’s a sweet sound when he does, and he still make sleepy-kitten noises if I pick him up from a nap or the like. His purr box is quiet, too, but he uses that frequently. And he drools when he’s getting really good pettin’s or kneading; some things do not change.
His editorial demands have become more sophisticated; as a three year old, of course Gossamer is no longer satisfied with simple ax-wielding, and demands diversity, as well as a wider point of view to buffer against unreliable narration. He’s a benevolent dictator in this, but a great little helper with the keyboard. Indeed, I have to cede the laptop to him from time to time (… if not cede the laptop to neglect, in favor of attention to him).
As Janet has observed, his tolerance for dog stories is constrained, but he doesn’t demand feline characters necessarily. Just a good story; and I try to oblige.
He’s encouraging regarding the work in progress.
But he does say it’s dumb I keep calling it Wippy. He has a thing about stupid names; go figure.
Time for a Penny Post
When Gossamer and Penelope first came into my life, there was a pretty regular stream of posts about their development and ours as a little community, with the occasional nod to making these points relevant to publish, but mostly just the indulgent and frustrated emotional responses of a pet owner and Virginian dealing with that ultimate trial: CHANGE.
My dear old Sweet Siddy La was the absolute finest in mellow, sittin’-at-your-feet dogness. She knew my dad a little when she first came around, and he approved of her. He tole me when I got her, “Don’t you feed that dog from the table, don’t you let her get fat.” She got the occasional treat (she loved pizza crust), but I never forgot what he said, and she did eat pretty healthily. To her last months on earth, you could see the shape of the muscles in her legs. And she had beautiful legs.
Lolly was a wonderfully “well behaved” dog, as defined by a bit of fulsomeness in the greeting department and a tuggy deportment on walks, but never causing messes in the house and always calming down fairly readily.
Miss Penelope, by comparison, has always seemed like a handful. For one, she’s still only three; not even the age *yet* that Siddy was when I was blessed to take care of her. For another, she is just a very different dog. Massively energetic, terrifyingly intelligent, skittish where Sid was calm and oblivious to storms (the one area in which Sid would lose composure. aww.). Penelope was untrained when I got her, and fed off the faintest energy from me with exponential emotional results. If I was upset, Pen was beside herself; if I became excited, she was rendered utterly uncontrollable.
And yet, from the beginning, she submitted to me in ways Siddy never did (and never had to). Pen was still juvenile when we came together, with all the dependence and the lack of discipline that comes with. I’d sworn I would not adopt a puppy, knowing the limited time I have to commit to training and so forth – and there she was. My dog. My baby, scared, confused, lunatic dog. And I loved her.
I despaired of time ever passing and her ever Being Like Sid (I never would have admitted it then, least of all on those terms).
But I reveled in her incredible trainability, and especially the fact that she would take command not only from me, but from others who came around; my friends and family.
It wasn’t long before she behaved almost as if she had a button – the alacrity in her obedience is still so speedy and so emphatic it’s as endearing as it is comical. She binds me to her, and I am overjoyed that she and I can communicate. She still thinks, “Oh! Mom told me to sit, so I will do that, then I will lie DOWN, then I will give her BELLY, because that is even more than she asked for, and I want to give my ALL!” – and we’re working on “that’s not sit” in the gentlest way, still. But “back” she has down to a tee, which is unbelievably handy for us both, and “stay” she’s getting better at though still likes boundary testing.
But in non-command behavior is her magic.
Siddy, right out of the box as they say, had some of the subjective behaviors one most wants in a pet. She would no more touch my food even if I weren’t in the room than she would poop in the house. I never had to teach her – and, after perhaps one incident of “HEY THIS DOG IS DIFFERENT” with Penelope getting tentative at my supper, she really didn’t require teaching on the point of food heirarchy either. Siddy was far more aware of her food surroundings, indeed, than Penelope is – a single molecule of anything people-edible going astray was instantly claimed and cleaned up by that Hoover of a Good Girl, but Penelope misses a surprising amount. She’s getting better, but actually drops even her own kibble and forgets about it from time to time. I drop a piece of it and tap my toe to indicate she should pick it up, she’s so het up about feeding time she can miss after three tries. Into each life, a little kibble must fall.
Gossamer’s even worse. But I do get a warm mommy smile at my Pen, when she is oblivious to tiny morsels available for the pickin’.
Penny turned three-ish on her made-up birthday, April Fool’s day. And it’s been during the past month or two I’ve been watching more changes in her, more maturity. She’ll never settle down, quite, but her ability to greet visitors with less wee-ing and tungsten-clawing (all well-intentioned love and submissiveness, but no more appealing to most contemporary humans) has markedly improved. Though perhaps markedly is the wrong word to use …
In her own space and on her own time, Pen has always been a pretty mellow kid; prone to bursts of energy, and occasionally instigating, or being insitgated into kerfuffles with, Gossamer. But generally a dog – lying around and not being a complete drama queen about every last instant of her existence.
But seeing her regulate herself a bit at social moments is – well, I won’t say exciting. It’s just nice.
One of the best parts is this: Penelope is in her own skin, and she’s comfortable there. Her home, her dogmommy, her semi-pal Gossamer. She’s got this thing, y’all, she doesn’t have to freak about it alla time.
She’s home. It’s a good place for us both.
“How many Virginians does it take to change a light bulb?”
Five. One to actually do the job. Two more to stand off to one side, tut-tutting about how much better the old light bulb was, and fretting with semi-religious fervor about the implications of a new bulb. And two more to write the history of the original bulb with maps and Civil War footnotes.
My dear old Sweet Siddy La was the absolute finest in mellow, sittin’-at-your-feet dogness. She knew my dad a little when she first came around, and he approved of her. He tole me when I got her, “Don’t you feed that dog from the table, don’t you let her get fat.” She got the occasional treat (she loved pizza crust), but I never forgot what he said, and she did eat pretty healthily. To her last months on earth, you could see the shape of the muscles in her legs. And she had beautiful legs.
Lolly was a wonderfully “well behaved” dog, as defined by a bit of fulsomeness in the greeting department and a tuggy deportment on walks, but never causing messes in the house and always calming down fairly readily.
Miss Penelope, by comparison, has always seemed like a handful. For one, she’s still only three; not even the age *yet* that Siddy was when I was blessed to take care of her. For another, she is just a very different dog. Massively energetic, terrifyingly intelligent, skittish where Sid was calm and oblivious to storms (the one area in which Sid would lose composure. aww.). Penelope was untrained when I got her, and fed off the faintest energy from me with exponential emotional results. If I was upset, Pen was beside herself; if I became excited, she was rendered utterly uncontrollable.
And yet, from the beginning, she submitted to me in ways Siddy never did (and never had to). Pen was still juvenile when we came together, with all the dependence and the lack of discipline that comes with. I’d sworn I would not adopt a puppy, knowing the limited time I have to commit to training and so forth – and there she was. My dog. My baby, scared, confused, lunatic dog. And I loved her.
I despaired of time ever passing and her ever Being Like Sid (I never would have admitted it then, least of all on those terms).
But I reveled in her incredible trainability, and especially the fact that she would take command not only from me, but from others who came around; my friends and family.
It wasn’t long before she behaved almost as if she had a button – the alacrity in her obedience is still so speedy and so emphatic it’s as endearing as it is comical. She binds me to her, and I am overjoyed that she and I can communicate. She still thinks, “Oh! Mom told me to sit, so I will do that, then I will lie DOWN, then I will give her BELLY, because that is even more than she asked for, and I want to give my ALL!” – and we’re working on “that’s not sit” in the gentlest way, still. But “back” she has down to a tee, which is unbelievably handy for us both, and “stay” she’s getting better at though still likes boundary testing.
But in non-command behavior is her magic.
Siddy, right out of the box as they say, had some of the subjective behaviors one most wants in a pet. She would no more touch my food even if I weren’t in the room than she would poop in the house. I never had to teach her – and, after perhaps one incident of “HEY THIS DOG IS DIFFERENT” with Penelope getting tentative at my supper, she really didn’t require teaching on the point of food heirarchy either. Siddy was far more aware of her food surroundings, indeed, than Penelope is – a single molecule of anything people-edible going astray was instantly claimed and cleaned up by that Hoover of a Good Girl, but Penelope misses a surprising amount. She’s getting better, but actually drops even her own kibble and forgets about it from time to time. I drop a piece of it and tap my toe to indicate she should pick it up, she’s so het up about feeding time she can miss after three tries. Into each life, a little kibble must fall.
Gossamer’s even worse. But I do get a warm mommy smile at my Pen, when she is oblivious to tiny morsels available for the pickin’.
Penny turned three-ish on her made-up birthday, April Fool’s day. And it’s been during the past month or two I’ve been watching more changes in her, more maturity. She’ll never settle down, quite, but her ability to greet visitors with less wee-ing and tungsten-clawing (all well-intentioned love and submissiveness, but no more appealing to most contemporary humans) has markedly improved. Though perhaps markedly is the wrong word to use …
In her own space and on her own time, Pen has always been a pretty mellow kid; prone to bursts of energy, and occasionally instigating, or being insitgated into kerfuffles with, Gossamer. But generally a dog – lying around and not being a complete drama queen about every last instant of her existence.
But seeing her regulate herself a bit at social moments is – well, I won’t say exciting. It’s just nice.
One of the best parts is this: Penelope is in her own skin, and she’s comfortable there. Her home, her dogmommy, her semi-pal Gossamer. She’s got this thing, y’all, she doesn’t have to freak about it alla time.
She’s home. It’s a good place for us both.
Monday, April 20, 2015
Collection
Congratulations Colin Smith, on being PUBLISHED! By an agent! At this amusing post singing the praises of The Perfect Agent on the BookEnds Literary Agency blog.
Gary Corby points out the interesting and useful fact that The Silk Road was not the beginning of European silk trading. Super handy for him, writing about ancient Greece; and, in that vein, it's also an instructive look into the way historical fiction authors make decisions about what we use and don't from popular sources.
For more on silk, this time its strategic role in WWII, and a wider look at the ingenuity - and national *importance* - of fashion under restrictive conditions, please read Celia Rees' post at The History Girls. It's a great piece of perspective on how we got where we are - and who we once were, compared to who we are now. This is another of those examples of how fashion is more than frivolity and its depth of importance for us as human beings.
Jeff Sypeck has me DYING of Teh Internets, because the idea of someone reading a writer's work and creating music from it is more wonderful a form of interaction and inspiration than I even hope for. But now I'm totally hoping for something like this, some day.
Kim Rendfield posts about the complexities of slavery in a very different time from antebellum America - a world where someone might sell themselves into slavery and freedom had no Railroad. In Ax, I didn't examine slavery in any depth, though it is depicted throughout. In Wippy, I'll be taking a much, MUCH closer look at the institution as it was inherited from Rome, and practiced in Gaul and Constantinople. A slave is a major character. I'm leaving the environs Ax shared with Kim Rendfield's works, but she's not escaping my bookmarks!
The History Blog has its usual worthwhile analysis and excellent links about New York's marker for the Wall Street/Pearl Street slave market. Of the 38 markers in Lower Manhattan ... this will be the first acknowledging the role of slaves in building New York City. Interesting, too, are the comments, which reflect a general consensus that Northern states are absolved of guilt in America's slave history. Not so much - and look where it stood. Wall Street.
The History Blog is also revisiting automata - so if that creeps you out, do NOT click here. Yes, boys and girls, it is a creeping BABY automaton. And so much more. Racialized (that is to say, racist) automata - including a deeply disturbing mockup of a Sojourner Truth by no (other) name at all. And an electric cane which may or may not be good for you for some reason or other, though “the effect of a gentle galvanic current on the human organization is not in the present state of electrical and physiological science fully explained.” Um.
Gary Corby points out the interesting and useful fact that The Silk Road was not the beginning of European silk trading. Super handy for him, writing about ancient Greece; and, in that vein, it's also an instructive look into the way historical fiction authors make decisions about what we use and don't from popular sources.
For more on silk, this time its strategic role in WWII, and a wider look at the ingenuity - and national *importance* - of fashion under restrictive conditions, please read Celia Rees' post at The History Girls. It's a great piece of perspective on how we got where we are - and who we once were, compared to who we are now. This is another of those examples of how fashion is more than frivolity and its depth of importance for us as human beings.
Jeff Sypeck has me DYING of Teh Internets, because the idea of someone reading a writer's work and creating music from it is more wonderful a form of interaction and inspiration than I even hope for. But now I'm totally hoping for something like this, some day.
Kim Rendfield posts about the complexities of slavery in a very different time from antebellum America - a world where someone might sell themselves into slavery and freedom had no Railroad. In Ax, I didn't examine slavery in any depth, though it is depicted throughout. In Wippy, I'll be taking a much, MUCH closer look at the institution as it was inherited from Rome, and practiced in Gaul and Constantinople. A slave is a major character. I'm leaving the environs Ax shared with Kim Rendfield's works, but she's not escaping my bookmarks!
The History Blog has its usual worthwhile analysis and excellent links about New York's marker for the Wall Street/Pearl Street slave market. Of the 38 markers in Lower Manhattan ... this will be the first acknowledging the role of slaves in building New York City. Interesting, too, are the comments, which reflect a general consensus that Northern states are absolved of guilt in America's slave history. Not so much - and look where it stood. Wall Street.
The History Blog is also revisiting automata - so if that creeps you out, do NOT click here. Yes, boys and girls, it is a creeping BABY automaton. And so much more. Racialized (that is to say, racist) automata - including a deeply disturbing mockup of a Sojourner Truth by no (other) name at all. And an electric cane which may or may not be good for you for some reason or other, though “the effect of a gentle galvanic current on the human organization is not in the present state of electrical and physiological science fully explained.” Um.
Saturday, April 18, 2015
The Knee Bone's Connected to the Mop Bone
The laundry was too late.
Saturday is house cleaning day, and tonight I have a date with myself - it is high time I squired myself out in some impractical shoes, with age-inappropriate hair and too much makeup - and so today for the first time in a while, house cleaning is on a schedule. I need to be done by five so I can do something about my nails, then shower and primp and spend far, far too long pampering myself into a sense that I am cute and worth seeing, and get out of here.
The thing about cleaning is, one thing leads to another. It's not another thing leads to one thing. You have to do some things first, some things last (painting your face works the same way, come to think of it - you can't put on mascara THEN do foundational stuff; they call it that for a reason).
In the case of my home, I have to make the bed, then dust, then vacuum. Making the bed, you see, kind of raises dust and pet hair. Dusting itself may result in a bit of fallout to the floor. So there is an order.
And today, I started the laundry after 2:30. And I need SHEETS. In order to make my bed.
You see the problem. (If you have not run screaming from this boring post!)
And so I pause to say hello. "Hello!"
Wash cycle should be winding up - and then there must be drying.
The good news in all this is: one, I've gotten all the trash out of the house and the cat litter part is done. And, two - I can do the kitchen and bathroom scrubbing pretty much any tie I want. And if I get those things done - they're DONE! And yay for getting gross toilet cleaning OUT of the way.
Off I go again. Happy Saturday, everyone!
Saturday is house cleaning day, and tonight I have a date with myself - it is high time I squired myself out in some impractical shoes, with age-inappropriate hair and too much makeup - and so today for the first time in a while, house cleaning is on a schedule. I need to be done by five so I can do something about my nails, then shower and primp and spend far, far too long pampering myself into a sense that I am cute and worth seeing, and get out of here.
The thing about cleaning is, one thing leads to another. It's not another thing leads to one thing. You have to do some things first, some things last (painting your face works the same way, come to think of it - you can't put on mascara THEN do foundational stuff; they call it that for a reason).
In the case of my home, I have to make the bed, then dust, then vacuum. Making the bed, you see, kind of raises dust and pet hair. Dusting itself may result in a bit of fallout to the floor. So there is an order.
And today, I started the laundry after 2:30. And I need SHEETS. In order to make my bed.
You see the problem. (If you have not run screaming from this boring post!)
And so I pause to say hello. "Hello!"
Wash cycle should be winding up - and then there must be drying.
The good news in all this is: one, I've gotten all the trash out of the house and the cat litter part is done. And, two - I can do the kitchen and bathroom scrubbing pretty much any tie I want. And if I get those things done - they're DONE! And yay for getting gross toilet cleaning OUT of the way.
Off I go again. Happy Saturday, everyone!
Thursday, April 16, 2015
Collection
First off today, welcome and thank you to JEN Garrett, my 34th follower! Yay!
Next - I'm a bit late with the link, but yay more, for a tribute to writer Leonard Nimoy's birthday.
Megan Sayer has a lovely post about hope. It's hard. But, I've found, sometimes it's even harder not to.
Agent Carly Watters has good advice/encouragement - for the pre-published debut author. Just when I cool it on querying, of course (but she doesn't do my genre, so it's all right by me).
And now, a three-fer from The History Blog:
Scratch any archaeologist (but not on the lower back, their legs will never stop kicking) and you'll hear a midden story. This one may be a little adult for some readers (I'd call it NSFW), but it's still interesting history! Hint: sex toy. Yeah, we didn't invent those in the 20th century either.
Out of the toilet and into ... oh, wait. The sewer. Italian family finds 2500 years of history while looking for a broken sewer line. Man, it's boring when my toilet backs up. You know, by comparison. aaaaaaannnnd I'm okay with that. (Also with my parents not lowering me into the, erm, bowels of our home when I was twelve.)
And last, but least gross (though possibly disconcerting! and that is a pun!), 18th century Swiss automata. I'll embed the punnish clip below ...
Next - I'm a bit late with the link, but yay more, for a tribute to writer Leonard Nimoy's birthday.
Megan Sayer has a lovely post about hope. It's hard. But, I've found, sometimes it's even harder not to.
Agent Carly Watters has good advice/encouragement - for the pre-published debut author. Just when I cool it on querying, of course (but she doesn't do my genre, so it's all right by me).
And now, a three-fer from The History Blog:
Scratch any archaeologist (but not on the lower back, their legs will never stop kicking) and you'll hear a midden story. This one may be a little adult for some readers (I'd call it NSFW), but it's still interesting history! Hint: sex toy. Yeah, we didn't invent those in the 20th century either.
Out of the toilet and into ... oh, wait. The sewer. Italian family finds 2500 years of history while looking for a broken sewer line. Man, it's boring when my toilet backs up. You know, by comparison. aaaaaaannnnd I'm okay with that. (Also with my parents not lowering me into the, erm, bowels of our home when I was twelve.)
And last, but least gross (though possibly disconcerting! and that is a pun!), 18th century Swiss automata. I'll embed the punnish clip below ...
Friday, April 10, 2015
The Dull Ache ... and Something Else ...
Of my readers who are also writers, a question: has any one of you who is going or has gone the querying route to publication ever received a request for pages or a full more than a week after an initial query? I never have.
It’s been a few weeks since my last query – and so, regardless of all those agents’ timelines now commonly stretching to three months for theoretical viability (“will try to respond within” or “if you don’t hear within twelve weeks, no means no”) – I essentially view EVERY submission I’ve put out there as a done and dead deal.
Which is why this contemplation that Ax is not a viable product right now is my ever-growing expectation.
It’s a good novel, The Ax and the Vase. Of that I have no question. But a novel and a product are two different things; and the publishing industry is a business in need of PRODUCTS. To sell. I can polish a piece of gold till it shines (and it does) but if the kind of bauble it is is out of style, it’s out of style no matter how gleaming.
So I have this precious thing *I* still find beautiful, and which can be appreciated by many – but not a *market* … and so, increasingly, I find myself pushing it less, and focusing on another piece, not even close to ready to polish yet. Still in the making.
It’s difficult not to think of the years I have invested in Ax. We all know, I’m a Thoughtkiller, not shy nor squeamish about “killing my darlings” and open to professional feedback to make my work the best it can be.
Even so. Abandoning something I’ve worked on so long, putting it away as a “maybe once I sell the next one, this one may follow another year” – or, heart-crunchingly, putting it away with the possibility it will never sell at all …
That is painful.
I once married a man I knew was A Good Man. I knew those were thin on the ground, and I recognized (and still do) so much that is fine and good and worthy and fun and loveable. Beloved Ex was, and is, a marvelous property, and the fact he’s not with someone even still kind of kills me. He’s a catch, and there are so many women who deserve the heart that beats in that man.
And I loved him. And I married him.
And love is no reason to marry someone. I love him still: and yet, my life is full enough, and fulfilling – even without Beloved Ex participating daily.
You marry someone not because he’s a treasure, nor beautiful, nor fun or sexy or any of the rest of it – but because life, without them, would be *less*.
The point is: I know a good thing when I see it. And I inherited a tendency from my mother: I sometimes grip things because I know they’re precious.
I married a man I truly did love, but a very big part of the marriage was acquisitive. It was nothing on which to build a lifetime, and the mistakes we both made drew blood. We may be friends now. But there were many years we were nothing to each other, and there resides even in our old bond not only the memories, but the damages. I wasn’t the only wounding party. But I know my part was, *in* part: a matter of greed.
Ax is another treasure I know for what it is. I know how good it is, I love it, I MADE it – and that didn’t draw blood exactly, but it occupied years of my life. I can admit, I have been greedy to see it succeed. Greedy.
As life tips past what we call Middle Age (yeah, I look fine and am healthy; yes, people like to think Middle Age lasts into their sixties; but I’m pushing fifty, and frankly don’t expect 100 years – I am decidedly getting past “middle aged”), the prospect of losing *years* of such work as the intimate, intense, and exultant craft as writing …
It’s really kind of heartbreaking.
Losing all that. Wasting it … ? No. Not waste. But not being able to share it.
The loss is giddy enough to make me somewhat sick.
My life is FILLED with good friends, good music, good food, and the two best pets any person could hope to be blessed with. I have a nice home, a spiff car. My mom is near – and, as far as they are, my brother and nieces and their mom are not truly *distant*. There are so many ways now to be with those we are not near to. My paying job is constantly fulfilling, and I honestly love it, and its people. There is so much to be grateful for.
Yet.
Writing Ax has, as I suspect any fool can see, has been a balm to me through the years Mr. X has lived half a world away. I’ve hated having no partner. But I’ve had this thing – this “second” job – this work I have poured my heart and mind int. This work which has returned the favor by expanding my life itself, by making even fuller a blessed existence which was more than I ever should have dared to ask in the first place, and by teaching me so much more than its business and process.
It’s also been, in some way – both a tribute to my grandma and my dad. Dad, because he missed my writing it. Because he never knew I would make such a thing as this great book. Because, honestly, I think he’d have really LIKED it. And my grandma because … I am her namesake.
If I’d not been The Louise of my generation – there would have been no Clovis. A reverse etymological progression.
The prospect of losing this almost-memorial effort, this thing I have done, which has sustained and enriched so much of my wee and paltry little life …
It’s really kind of heartbreaking.
And yet …
And yet.
There is the WIP.
The energy, and the transportive experience of writing – of experiencing creation first in the learning/exploration/discovery of research and then in experiencing *what it is* to CREATE something. To *make* something, and know it both for your own and for the inspiration that it is. To understand that it is possible to both bleed a thing, and still somehow see it as an object so nearly-miraculous that to claim it for your own is almost hubris.
To write.
The bouyant power of … making … of creativity – that elemental, ineffable thing that comes from within but is sparked with something so much more than we are in and of ourselves.
It is … compensation.
There is no art without pain, they say.
But, Christ Lord. I have to believe: it’s worth it
It’s been a few weeks since my last query – and so, regardless of all those agents’ timelines now commonly stretching to three months for theoretical viability (“will try to respond within” or “if you don’t hear within twelve weeks, no means no”) – I essentially view EVERY submission I’ve put out there as a done and dead deal.
Which is why this contemplation that Ax is not a viable product right now is my ever-growing expectation.
It’s a good novel, The Ax and the Vase. Of that I have no question. But a novel and a product are two different things; and the publishing industry is a business in need of PRODUCTS. To sell. I can polish a piece of gold till it shines (and it does) but if the kind of bauble it is is out of style, it’s out of style no matter how gleaming.
So I have this precious thing *I* still find beautiful, and which can be appreciated by many – but not a *market* … and so, increasingly, I find myself pushing it less, and focusing on another piece, not even close to ready to polish yet. Still in the making.
It’s difficult not to think of the years I have invested in Ax. We all know, I’m a Thoughtkiller, not shy nor squeamish about “killing my darlings” and open to professional feedback to make my work the best it can be.
Even so. Abandoning something I’ve worked on so long, putting it away as a “maybe once I sell the next one, this one may follow another year” – or, heart-crunchingly, putting it away with the possibility it will never sell at all …
That is painful.
I once married a man I knew was A Good Man. I knew those were thin on the ground, and I recognized (and still do) so much that is fine and good and worthy and fun and loveable. Beloved Ex was, and is, a marvelous property, and the fact he’s not with someone even still kind of kills me. He’s a catch, and there are so many women who deserve the heart that beats in that man.
And I loved him. And I married him.
And love is no reason to marry someone. I love him still: and yet, my life is full enough, and fulfilling – even without Beloved Ex participating daily.
You marry someone not because he’s a treasure, nor beautiful, nor fun or sexy or any of the rest of it – but because life, without them, would be *less*.
The point is: I know a good thing when I see it. And I inherited a tendency from my mother: I sometimes grip things because I know they’re precious.
I married a man I truly did love, but a very big part of the marriage was acquisitive. It was nothing on which to build a lifetime, and the mistakes we both made drew blood. We may be friends now. But there were many years we were nothing to each other, and there resides even in our old bond not only the memories, but the damages. I wasn’t the only wounding party. But I know my part was, *in* part: a matter of greed.
Ax is another treasure I know for what it is. I know how good it is, I love it, I MADE it – and that didn’t draw blood exactly, but it occupied years of my life. I can admit, I have been greedy to see it succeed. Greedy.
As life tips past what we call Middle Age (yeah, I look fine and am healthy; yes, people like to think Middle Age lasts into their sixties; but I’m pushing fifty, and frankly don’t expect 100 years – I am decidedly getting past “middle aged”), the prospect of losing *years* of such work as the intimate, intense, and exultant craft as writing …
It’s really kind of heartbreaking.
Losing all that. Wasting it … ? No. Not waste. But not being able to share it.
The loss is giddy enough to make me somewhat sick.
My life is FILLED with good friends, good music, good food, and the two best pets any person could hope to be blessed with. I have a nice home, a spiff car. My mom is near – and, as far as they are, my brother and nieces and their mom are not truly *distant*. There are so many ways now to be with those we are not near to. My paying job is constantly fulfilling, and I honestly love it, and its people. There is so much to be grateful for.
Yet.
Writing Ax has, as I suspect any fool can see, has been a balm to me through the years Mr. X has lived half a world away. I’ve hated having no partner. But I’ve had this thing – this “second” job – this work I have poured my heart and mind int. This work which has returned the favor by expanding my life itself, by making even fuller a blessed existence which was more than I ever should have dared to ask in the first place, and by teaching me so much more than its business and process.
It’s also been, in some way – both a tribute to my grandma and my dad. Dad, because he missed my writing it. Because he never knew I would make such a thing as this great book. Because, honestly, I think he’d have really LIKED it. And my grandma because … I am her namesake.
If I’d not been The Louise of my generation – there would have been no Clovis. A reverse etymological progression.
The prospect of losing this almost-memorial effort, this thing I have done, which has sustained and enriched so much of my wee and paltry little life …
It’s really kind of heartbreaking.
And yet …
And yet.
There is the WIP.
The energy, and the transportive experience of writing – of experiencing creation first in the learning/exploration/discovery of research and then in experiencing *what it is* to CREATE something. To *make* something, and know it both for your own and for the inspiration that it is. To understand that it is possible to both bleed a thing, and still somehow see it as an object so nearly-miraculous that to claim it for your own is almost hubris.
To write.
The bouyant power of … making … of creativity – that elemental, ineffable thing that comes from within but is sparked with something so much more than we are in and of ourselves.
It is … compensation.
There is no art without pain, they say.
But, Christ Lord. I have to believe: it’s worth it
Writing is an Act of Greed
… all we writers ever want is to know more, to hear more, to see more, of our characters. Our worlds.
Point of View
One of the things you learn in the sketching phase of writing a novel is what the novel is actually going to be. I’ve posted about the liberty I'm feeling, getting out of the first-person singular voice of The Ax and the Vase … and I’ve written much, recently, about #WeNeedDiverseBooks and the failure of Ax to live up to that as an ideal I personally support.
What I haven’t written about is the fact that two of my characters – one a main character, and one a main character at least for the duration of his stay in the pages – do happen to be People of Color.
This isn’t the case out of a desire to “write for the market” (that trap pre-published authors fall into, of picking a trend hoping to cash in on it) – but, frankly (har the franks), sheer boredom at the lack of diversity in Ax … much as I love it.
Perhaps as part of the process of figuring out whether it’s time to (*temporarily* …) shelve Ax in favor of the WIP … perhaps simply because of the first flush of energy in working on said WIP … very definitely owing to a lot of my social media and query-researching exposure to the awareness of the need for literary diversity and the obvious White Liberal Guilt attendant on a novel utterly lacking in anything but White Powerful Male voice (much as I love it …) …
It’s been very exciting to feel the POV of the WIP limbering up, and *opening* up.
I’m not trying to write about fascinating/objectified brown skin and exoticized eyes, but I’m getting to know my main character who is *not* the princess. With getting to know the world itself – the period perspective on everything from the sound and use of a human voice, to emotional relationships and protocol within a court unlike any milieu familiar to a modern mind – comes getting to know a woman living in this place, working in it, making sure she can hold her own and stay in it.
The character’s name is Plectrudis, and she is midwife to the queen in the very first scene (as of *now* … !), and becomes nurse to the child she brings forth, and eventually HER midwife as well. She has all the intimacy and remove of a servant in the most privileged of households, and even as I write about writing about her, I know some of my favorite sketches are already wrong, and I know I can’t see her completely just yet (so I am almost afraid to so much as tell you her name, because the WIP is at the point where EVERYTHING I’ve scribbled is liable to change, and probably should, both as I learn and as the story asserts itself).
But something of her character – and fleeting breaths in her voice – is formed, and these things will only grow.
More exciting still is the man.
I’m still in the precious, protective, deeply-skittish-woodland-creature phase of creation here, so I can say even less of him. But he tapped me on the shoulder this week, and … the resulting sketch was terribly exciting.
I think he may speak.
I think he may get to be more than the object of the feminine and royal gaze of our princess – who was only my original reason for writing the novel, but who can’t sustain being the only thing IN the novel, it seems – and who … perhaps … loved him. At this point, we know only: they *liked*.
He is historical, and that too is kind of thrilling. One of those tantalizing creatures we know existed, but have no information about, but the barest of facts. Primary sources do give him a name, though – which, to me, is almost joyously intriguing. He has a name. We have his name. And he lived, and he breathed. And he is so much more than the mere footnote that moved the princess herself on to the shocking career that was her life.
He was her first shock.
And I think he may speak.
When I first tried to see his face, I didn’t know what color he was, nor any of the workings behind the skin. He did not speak. He was (there is a study in this, my being a female author) entirely the subject of the female gaze.
I saw through his eyes, this week. I have seen almost enough through Plectrudis’s gaze to learn to *look* at the world with hers.
Just cannot wait to hear his voice.
What I haven’t written about is the fact that two of my characters – one a main character, and one a main character at least for the duration of his stay in the pages – do happen to be People of Color.
This isn’t the case out of a desire to “write for the market” (that trap pre-published authors fall into, of picking a trend hoping to cash in on it) – but, frankly (har the franks), sheer boredom at the lack of diversity in Ax … much as I love it.
Perhaps as part of the process of figuring out whether it’s time to (*temporarily* …) shelve Ax in favor of the WIP … perhaps simply because of the first flush of energy in working on said WIP … very definitely owing to a lot of my social media and query-researching exposure to the awareness of the need for literary diversity and the obvious White Liberal Guilt attendant on a novel utterly lacking in anything but White Powerful Male voice (much as I love it …) …
It’s been very exciting to feel the POV of the WIP limbering up, and *opening* up.
I’m not trying to write about fascinating/objectified brown skin and exoticized eyes, but I’m getting to know my main character who is *not* the princess. With getting to know the world itself – the period perspective on everything from the sound and use of a human voice, to emotional relationships and protocol within a court unlike any milieu familiar to a modern mind – comes getting to know a woman living in this place, working in it, making sure she can hold her own and stay in it.
The character’s name is Plectrudis, and she is midwife to the queen in the very first scene (as of *now* … !), and becomes nurse to the child she brings forth, and eventually HER midwife as well. She has all the intimacy and remove of a servant in the most privileged of households, and even as I write about writing about her, I know some of my favorite sketches are already wrong, and I know I can’t see her completely just yet (so I am almost afraid to so much as tell you her name, because the WIP is at the point where EVERYTHING I’ve scribbled is liable to change, and probably should, both as I learn and as the story asserts itself).
But something of her character – and fleeting breaths in her voice – is formed, and these things will only grow.
More exciting still is the man.
I’m still in the precious, protective, deeply-skittish-woodland-creature phase of creation here, so I can say even less of him. But he tapped me on the shoulder this week, and … the resulting sketch was terribly exciting.
I think he may speak.
I think he may get to be more than the object of the feminine and royal gaze of our princess – who was only my original reason for writing the novel, but who can’t sustain being the only thing IN the novel, it seems – and who … perhaps … loved him. At this point, we know only: they *liked*.
He is historical, and that too is kind of thrilling. One of those tantalizing creatures we know existed, but have no information about, but the barest of facts. Primary sources do give him a name, though – which, to me, is almost joyously intriguing. He has a name. We have his name. And he lived, and he breathed. And he is so much more than the mere footnote that moved the princess herself on to the shocking career that was her life.
He was her first shock.
And I think he may speak.
When I first tried to see his face, I didn’t know what color he was, nor any of the workings behind the skin. He did not speak. He was (there is a study in this, my being a female author) entirely the subject of the female gaze.
I saw through his eyes, this week. I have seen almost enough through Plectrudis’s gaze to learn to *look* at the world with hers.
Just cannot wait to hear his voice.
Wednesday, April 8, 2015
Internetworking
So this thing where Janet Reid took Holy Week off blogging to pray, and then on Thursday opened the floor to all her Reiders (not just the usual commenters, but yay for all the lurkers who came forth with a word!), has been days of unexpected reading fun. She's got us networking, and it's bumped up my STAGGERING number of followers (31 to 33 now - yes, hold your breath in awe!) and led to some comments I've been so tickled to see.
I must apologize for being slow to say hello back to Maggie Maxwell. *Waves enthusiastically some more* Thank you for the follow!
Off for a bit of WIPping ... See y'all soon.
I must apologize for being slow to say hello back to Maggie Maxwell. *Waves enthusiastically some more* Thank you for the follow!
Off for a bit of WIPping ... See y'all soon.
Monday, April 6, 2015
*Waves Enthusiastically!*
My thanks to Colin, for being kind enough to add me to the list of bloggy folks at Janet Reid's community - and for my new Reidy follower, Donna Everheart - AND for my new visitors, Lilac Shoshani, Elizabeth Crisp, and Lilly Faye, my first poodle visitor, and a mighty fine canine authoress.
I'm still digging through the links from this past Thursday, but have had Elizabeth in my bookmarks for a while, and I think Lilac is in there too (have certainly hit up her profile before!). Adding Lilly Faye, because who can resist a puppy blog? Not. I!
Now Gossamer's going to ask me why he hasn't got a blog ...
Edited to add AJ Blythe's blog, which I think I've linked to (in any case, I meant to!) coz I loved this post when I first peeked over there ...
I'm still digging through the links from this past Thursday, but have had Elizabeth in my bookmarks for a while, and I think Lilac is in there too (have certainly hit up her profile before!). Adding Lilly Faye, because who can resist a puppy blog? Not. I!
Now Gossamer's going to ask me why he hasn't got a blog ...
Edited to add AJ Blythe's blog, which I think I've linked to (in any case, I meant to!) coz I loved this post when I first peeked over there ...
Sunday, April 5, 2015
Easter Grass
Church was short one Diane today; I've been spotty in attendance since we lost our priest, and I have a thing about being one of those people who only show up at the high holidays. So yesterday, I spent time with my family. Today, I am spending time alone.
Just came in from mowing the grass. It is a beautiful, breezy, and sunny day; and, for me, there is as much (and perhaps sometimes more) worship in the act of maintaining my greatest material blessing apart from my body - in doing something around my home that is for my neighbors too, which going to church is not. And in simply being outside, my happy Yella Dawg watching and berating the mower when it comes too near her, the wind in my hair and using that body which is my first and last material blessing; working it and sweating and waving at occasional passersby.
Coming inside, I visited Janet Reid's blog for the firs time since last Sunday (she was taking time for prayer and worship of her own this week), and saw that she'd opened a forum for the community of her Reiders to get to know each other by posting links to their blogs and sites - and the comments section is nearly 200 responses deep.
And so, now I shall observe the holiday by adding links to my bookmarks, by reading a few individual pieces to add to upcoming Collection posts, by learning a bit about the lurkers, by learning more about those who comment most.
I haven't put up my own link - per usual, a bit late to the party; and there is so much to swim through as it is I can't add to the ocean. Sometimes it is better reading.
And, indeed, it can be instructive. Like writing, the best way to learn how is to READ. So with blogging; curating and cre-ating the most worthwhile content takes understanding what works!
The only thing missing today is pancakes. But, come to think of it, I have the fixin's for daddy's biscuits, so that might work.
And so. Hello to my Reiders. And my readers, too. And blessed weekend to all - whether it was in learning why this night is not like other nights ... or whether it was in contemplating what exactly "fondant" really is, as defined by the good folks at Cadbury ...
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| Image: publicdomainictures.net |
Just came in from mowing the grass. It is a beautiful, breezy, and sunny day; and, for me, there is as much (and perhaps sometimes more) worship in the act of maintaining my greatest material blessing apart from my body - in doing something around my home that is for my neighbors too, which going to church is not. And in simply being outside, my happy Yella Dawg watching and berating the mower when it comes too near her, the wind in my hair and using that body which is my first and last material blessing; working it and sweating and waving at occasional passersby.
Coming inside, I visited Janet Reid's blog for the firs time since last Sunday (she was taking time for prayer and worship of her own this week), and saw that she'd opened a forum for the community of her Reiders to get to know each other by posting links to their blogs and sites - and the comments section is nearly 200 responses deep.
And so, now I shall observe the holiday by adding links to my bookmarks, by reading a few individual pieces to add to upcoming Collection posts, by learning a bit about the lurkers, by learning more about those who comment most.
I haven't put up my own link - per usual, a bit late to the party; and there is so much to swim through as it is I can't add to the ocean. Sometimes it is better reading.
And, indeed, it can be instructive. Like writing, the best way to learn how is to READ. So with blogging; curating and cre-ating the most worthwhile content takes understanding what works!
The only thing missing today is pancakes. But, come to think of it, I have the fixin's for daddy's biscuits, so that might work.
And so. Hello to my Reiders. And my readers, too. And blessed weekend to all - whether it was in learning why this night is not like other nights ... or whether it was in contemplating what exactly "fondant" really is, as defined by the good folks at Cadbury ...
Friday, April 3, 2015
For my Fellow Reiders
To my readers from Janet Reid's community: y'all, if I'd seen lima beans here, I'd have instantly passed out. As it is, just cackling laughter (see #2!).
Need a Little Color About the Place
So please enjoy this portrait of Isabella of Portugal. I love her face so much.
Article: Wikipedia.
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| Image: Wikimedia |
Thursday, April 2, 2015
Collection
Mojourner left me a present, so he heads up today's festivities with the best pun I've seen in ages. Bonus points for English history nerdlery! OSUM.
Good laws, I typed 65WPM last time it was tested over a decade and a half ago, and it's taken me 60% of THAT time to get ONE novel done. Donna Everheart is seriously brave and ambitious and talented and stuff, y'all. Also: yoiks!
I've been meaning to link this for a while now - Jessica Faust (and another link from there, if you like) looks at *just* how much of our communication is spent complaining.
Open forum for grammar kvetching at Tom's blog! Go, have fun, comment - knock yourselves out. :)
Finally, The History Girls take a peek at the tattoos of sailors and princes. Neato-spedito - and I had no idea any English king ever had a piece! Click through to find out which one, and what famous lady of society had one of her own.
Good laws, I typed 65WPM last time it was tested over a decade and a half ago, and it's taken me 60% of THAT time to get ONE novel done. Donna Everheart is seriously brave and ambitious and talented and stuff, y'all. Also: yoiks!
I've been meaning to link this for a while now - Jessica Faust (and another link from there, if you like) looks at *just* how much of our communication is spent complaining.
Open forum for grammar kvetching at Tom's blog! Go, have fun, comment - knock yourselves out. :)
Finally, The History Girls take a peek at the tattoos of sailors and princes. Neato-spedito - and I had no idea any English king ever had a piece! Click through to find out which one, and what famous lady of society had one of her own.
Jooshy Fwoot
When I was a “liddle-LIDDLE kid” as we used to say in these yere parts, I loved chewing gum and was positively obsessed with bubble gum. It was around this time such newfangled wonders as Bubble Yum, Bubblicious, and Hubba Bubba were coming onto the market, displacing the wax-paper-and-comic delights of a brick of Bazooka, and well outdoing the old pink tablet in both flavor and bubble-blowability. Already a fan of the powerful FLAVO (*) of green apple anything, these gums were providing joyous opportunities even surpassing the uber-sugar taste of “bubble gum” flavor, and going for grape, strawberry, and (meh) watermelon FLAVOs.
Grape Bubble Yum, y’all. I about died and went to heaven, aged eight and knowing all the pleasure in the world.
And then I turned ten. And the Saga of my Teeth began.
At ten, I was almost as in love with my bicycle as with anything sugar-inclusive. My folks had bought me a REAL bike – a grown-up sized bike, a forest green, brand NEW bike, to replace the secondhand little girls’ bike I’d had as a liddle-LIDDLE kid, and I ran that thing around the block and through the subdivision, learning how to take corners at an angle, loving the giddy sense of letting go of handlebars and just FALLING, somehow safely and unscathed, down a hill, then steering as long as I could still without my hands.
There were times this worked out less than perfectly.
Face down in a landlocked bar of wet sand, lip perforated by my teeth and some tarry-tasting road salad, I still remember sitting in my neighbor’s driveway and unfettered-SCREAMING for “help” after I went down.
I remember the dentist telling us our options for the mess left in my mouth, too, which included this totally brand-new and space-aged thing called bonding.
I prefer not to remember, but do have photographic testimony to, just how poorly sculpted my first set of replacement teeth were. Eesh.
I can still practically FEEL the astonishing sensitivity of exposed nerves, and the effect of this accident had on my eating and drinking habits for years. Suddenly, I wonder whether my inability to ever develop a coffee habit stems from the heat of the drink … but, knowing me, it’s probably just the essential laziness I have always had in the addiction (or behaving like an adult) department. I never could get the hang of coffee, or beer, or cigarettes, or even the evening news.
And then, four years later. Braces.
And I became this strange creature … who couldn’t abide ICE CREAM for like fifteen years, and to this day no longer chews gum. (Much as with coffee and alcoholism, I don’t have the attention span for it.)
So, today, when a goody basket full of treats came my way, it may be somewhat odd that I chose the gum, out of a plethora of cookies and candies and silly desk toys and, I think, a scented candle.
But the gum I chose was Juicy Fruit.
Juicy Fruit was my dad’s gum. It’s kind of an ur-gum – been around since the dinosaurs, has that certain scent that takes a lot of us back, comes in stick form, not giant-gob cushions. Still even wrapped in paper, of all things. And that perfume – for me, the scent of Juicy Fruit is like the scent of Jergens reminding me of my grammaw, or Old Spice slamming me right back to 1983 and the first boy I ever kissed.
Taking it for a little spin, the flavor seems to me somewhat different – a bit more “particular” than the straight up sugar FLAVO I remember it having. But it settles fairly quickly into something close to the old taste. Fascinatingly, I found that for some reason taking a sip of water placed the taste pretty firmly back into what I remembered.
The major changes appear to be font and color. The gum itself is no longer a buff-leaning greyish, undyed lump, but the very specific yellow usually reserved for banana FLAVO candy. Perhaps this influenced my taste buds, perhaps I’m just confabulating, perhaps this is all irrelevancy (just like the rest of this blog!).
I’m trying to imagine my dad chewing yellow gum, and it seems really funny to me. But then, he was not a bubble-blower, and in our house, growing up, “SMACKING” gum was verboten by mom (to whom the same rule neve has applied!), so it’s not like we would have seen. But he would have *known* …
Anyway.
Scent of a man, and a dad at that. Sometimes, English Leather, against the smoothest cheek in history of the world, freshly shaved and giving goodbye kisses. Sometimes, good honest sweat and motor oil or sawdust.
Sometimes, Juicy Fruit (which is pronounced as spelled in the title above, when rendered by liddle-LIDDLE kids endowed with mouths full of it).
(*FLAVO is that curious stuff peculiar to 20th century food innovation, consisting usually of industrially-produced colored salt powders or extruded sugar syrups intended to evoke every kind of unwholesome yumminess from fake-assed-cherry (the very nastiest of FLAVOs, though inexplicably popular) to nacho to strawberry or ranch or the aformentioned banana … which is not the *scent* of another man of the family, but is his favorite of the extruded options.)
Grape Bubble Yum, y’all. I about died and went to heaven, aged eight and knowing all the pleasure in the world.
And then I turned ten. And the Saga of my Teeth began.
At ten, I was almost as in love with my bicycle as with anything sugar-inclusive. My folks had bought me a REAL bike – a grown-up sized bike, a forest green, brand NEW bike, to replace the secondhand little girls’ bike I’d had as a liddle-LIDDLE kid, and I ran that thing around the block and through the subdivision, learning how to take corners at an angle, loving the giddy sense of letting go of handlebars and just FALLING, somehow safely and unscathed, down a hill, then steering as long as I could still without my hands.
There were times this worked out less than perfectly.
Face down in a landlocked bar of wet sand, lip perforated by my teeth and some tarry-tasting road salad, I still remember sitting in my neighbor’s driveway and unfettered-SCREAMING for “help” after I went down.
I remember the dentist telling us our options for the mess left in my mouth, too, which included this totally brand-new and space-aged thing called bonding.
I prefer not to remember, but do have photographic testimony to, just how poorly sculpted my first set of replacement teeth were. Eesh.
I can still practically FEEL the astonishing sensitivity of exposed nerves, and the effect of this accident had on my eating and drinking habits for years. Suddenly, I wonder whether my inability to ever develop a coffee habit stems from the heat of the drink … but, knowing me, it’s probably just the essential laziness I have always had in the addiction (or behaving like an adult) department. I never could get the hang of coffee, or beer, or cigarettes, or even the evening news.
And then, four years later. Braces.
And I became this strange creature … who couldn’t abide ICE CREAM for like fifteen years, and to this day no longer chews gum. (Much as with coffee and alcoholism, I don’t have the attention span for it.)
So, today, when a goody basket full of treats came my way, it may be somewhat odd that I chose the gum, out of a plethora of cookies and candies and silly desk toys and, I think, a scented candle.
But the gum I chose was Juicy Fruit.
Juicy Fruit was my dad’s gum. It’s kind of an ur-gum – been around since the dinosaurs, has that certain scent that takes a lot of us back, comes in stick form, not giant-gob cushions. Still even wrapped in paper, of all things. And that perfume – for me, the scent of Juicy Fruit is like the scent of Jergens reminding me of my grammaw, or Old Spice slamming me right back to 1983 and the first boy I ever kissed.
Taking it for a little spin, the flavor seems to me somewhat different – a bit more “particular” than the straight up sugar FLAVO I remember it having. But it settles fairly quickly into something close to the old taste. Fascinatingly, I found that for some reason taking a sip of water placed the taste pretty firmly back into what I remembered.
The major changes appear to be font and color. The gum itself is no longer a buff-leaning greyish, undyed lump, but the very specific yellow usually reserved for banana FLAVO candy. Perhaps this influenced my taste buds, perhaps I’m just confabulating, perhaps this is all irrelevancy (just like the rest of this blog!).
I’m trying to imagine my dad chewing yellow gum, and it seems really funny to me. But then, he was not a bubble-blower, and in our house, growing up, “SMACKING” gum was verboten by mom (to whom the same rule neve has applied!), so it’s not like we would have seen. But he would have *known* …
Anyway.
Scent of a man, and a dad at that. Sometimes, English Leather, against the smoothest cheek in history of the world, freshly shaved and giving goodbye kisses. Sometimes, good honest sweat and motor oil or sawdust.
Sometimes, Juicy Fruit (which is pronounced as spelled in the title above, when rendered by liddle-LIDDLE kids endowed with mouths full of it).
(*FLAVO is that curious stuff peculiar to 20th century food innovation, consisting usually of industrially-produced colored salt powders or extruded sugar syrups intended to evoke every kind of unwholesome yumminess from fake-assed-cherry (the very nastiest of FLAVOs, though inexplicably popular) to nacho to strawberry or ranch or the aformentioned banana … which is not the *scent* of another man of the family, but is his favorite of the extruded options.)
Thoughts From a Week
Note to self: listening to Melissa Ethridge (and, lawd help us, singing) in the throes of PMS results in Noticeable Kitten Distress. Also: Gossamer the Editor Cat is closed to queries for works concerning women who do things like the way I do. Seeking Celine Dion, James Taylor, and Gregorian Chants at this time.
I know I buy things secondhand and therefore can’t expect the perfect, plastic, out-of-the-box Latest Thing – but … this CD player doesn’t have a volume knob? I missed MP3s, the 21st century, and One Direction, but … there’s some new way to turn up music now? We DON’T turn up the volume now? What’d I miss?
Robert Verdi at six o’clock in the morning. That is a whole lot of look to manage at that hour, y’all.
Pulling clothes off the clotheslines in my basement, watching the pet hair fly up off every item in the lurid light of a naked bulb: “Yep. Allergy season is here.” *Wiggles nose* *A lot*
Penelope is learning to show me her ham bone and her rope toy as distinct items. So far, the Kong remains unnamed. *Cue Zeppelin*
I grew up Southern Baptist and went Episcopalian. I’ve never given anything up for Lent in my life (I always forget it’s even a thing until too late, get distracted by shiny work and life and pets and homeownership), and since my beloved priest left my church, I’ve been only a few times. But Episcopalians are not the world’s most slavedriving dogmatics. Am I lapsed?
(Yeah, pretty much I am. I know.)
Inaugurated the new/old stereo for upstairs with “Yellow Submarine”, the CD my dad bought me when I first got a CD stereo (yeah, all of 17 years ago, that). I always forget what a LONG and what a great album that is.
Note to self: it is perhaps weird to bop to Nowhere Man.
Note to self: bopping to anything at all results in Noticeable Kitten Hilarity. I swear, he’d “Bless your heart” me if he could talk.
“Aw, so pretty” is the new “Bless your heart.” Write it down. Use it often.
I know I buy things secondhand and therefore can’t expect the perfect, plastic, out-of-the-box Latest Thing – but … this CD player doesn’t have a volume knob? I missed MP3s, the 21st century, and One Direction, but … there’s some new way to turn up music now? We DON’T turn up the volume now? What’d I miss?
Robert Verdi at six o’clock in the morning. That is a whole lot of look to manage at that hour, y’all.
Pulling clothes off the clotheslines in my basement, watching the pet hair fly up off every item in the lurid light of a naked bulb: “Yep. Allergy season is here.” *Wiggles nose* *A lot*
Penelope is learning to show me her ham bone and her rope toy as distinct items. So far, the Kong remains unnamed. *Cue Zeppelin*
I grew up Southern Baptist and went Episcopalian. I’ve never given anything up for Lent in my life (I always forget it’s even a thing until too late, get distracted by shiny work and life and pets and homeownership), and since my beloved priest left my church, I’ve been only a few times. But Episcopalians are not the world’s most slavedriving dogmatics. Am I lapsed?
(Yeah, pretty much I am. I know.)
Inaugurated the new/old stereo for upstairs with “Yellow Submarine”, the CD my dad bought me when I first got a CD stereo (yeah, all of 17 years ago, that). I always forget what a LONG and what a great album that is.
Note to self: it is perhaps weird to bop to Nowhere Man.
Note to self: bopping to anything at all results in Noticeable Kitten Hilarity. I swear, he’d “Bless your heart” me if he could talk.
“Aw, so pretty” is the new “Bless your heart.” Write it down. Use it often.
Wednesday, April 1, 2015
Renamed
I've decided. Today needs to be April Twit's Day.
Though ... come to think of it, "fool" doesn't entirely miss the bill.
Though ... come to think of it, "fool" doesn't entirely miss the bill.
Monday, March 30, 2015
New Followers!
Wanted to say hi and thanks to the most recent followers here at the blog - Angie Brooksby-Arcangioli and Colin, friends from the community at Janet Reid's blog, and Gabriela Salvador, of Pour La Victoire.
Thank you for coming!
Oh, and - Colin - happy late birthday! With the way I shy off of Janet's flash fiction contests, I completely failed to give you many happy returns - hope it's been a good start to a smashing year!
Thank you for coming!
Oh, and - Colin - happy late birthday! With the way I shy off of Janet's flash fiction contests, I completely failed to give you many happy returns - hope it's been a good start to a smashing year!
Sunday, March 29, 2015
Collection
Geez, I skip reading The History Blog for a few days, and look what I missed!
... and </scene> on Richard III (for now ... ?). The History Blog's post - and, of course, well-chosen links on the funeral last week.
Talk about VINTAGE jewelry - turns out we've been adorning ourselves since Neanderthal days. 130,000-year-old baubles!
And more treasures - two cels from What's Opera Doc? will go on the auction block on April 9. I'm not sure these aren't just as culturally important as the Neanderthal adornments; talk about a treasure!
... and </scene> on Richard III (for now ... ?). The History Blog's post - and, of course, well-chosen links on the funeral last week.
Talk about VINTAGE jewelry - turns out we've been adorning ourselves since Neanderthal days. 130,000-year-old baubles!
And more treasures - two cels from What's Opera Doc? will go on the auction block on April 9. I'm not sure these aren't just as culturally important as the Neanderthal adornments; talk about a treasure!
Friday, March 27, 2015
Funny Thing Happened On the Way to Slowing Down ...
Uhhhh - I got seven queries out tonight. Holy damn.
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