Historical Notions - and a Bit About Horses

J, this has some fascinating equestrian detail - had to think of you.  An excellent piece for historical novelists who write about horses, and some thoughts on hewing to popular "wisdom" as an author in this genre.  Topple the orthodoxy!

Irritating Query Research

I'm going to paraphrase a quote from an agent bio found tonight as I was trying to work on queries.

She wants stories told with an honesty that can only come from the heart of the storyteller. 

Apart from being a bit purply-prosaic, this agent's blurb is maddeningly non-specific as to genres she represents.  It does, however, wax not-at-all-helpful with the encouragement to excite her with the following undefined requirements:  "artful" storytelling, a "unique" voice, and "a new perspective" ...

How is an author supposed to know what this agent finds "new", "unique", or "artful" (something I'd prefer to stay away from, as "artful" is to me a term limited to the coy romantic stylings of young Victorian heroines I find repellant)?  My voice as expressed through Clovis is without question unique - but I get the sense from the schmoop here it would hardly appeal to an agent hunting through her submittors' hearts.

I've said it before and I'll say it again:  we as writers owe a great deal of work and research to our submissions, and gratitude to agents, along with a modicum of respect for submission guidelines.  But agents and agencies owe us the courtesy of *clarity* in those guidelines.

Sheesh.

Love is Stronger Than Death

Image:  Huffington Post

Thank you, Mary.  You make me wish I didn't stay away from church on Mother's Day because the sermons always patronize my failure to reproduce.  Bless you.

Space Coolness

Twelve shot in New Orleans today, at a Mother's Day parade.

But human beings also do this:



Even Bowie must be geeking on this one.

The small lyrical changes are fascinating ... but the images and the personal intimacy are heart-catching and magnificent.  THIS is *art* ... and I can't even aspire to such beauty.  I don't even want to, I'm just grateful we are capable of such immensity.

The Horse Guards

The History Girls (I seem to have missed out on the trend of giving my blog a "Girl" name ...) have a very neat litle piece of London history here today.  Instead of a palace ghost - the ghost of a palace.

Hey, did everyone here know that Henry VIII did more than marrying to excess?

Weight and Curve

A bit more on regency fashion, and the reality of curves versus the fantasy thinness of fashion plates.  We really didn't invent ANYTHING in this generation - not even the ridiculously thin body ideal.  Indeed, look at the columnar human imagery of early medieval sculpture, the long and slender lines of men and women.  Long and lean comes and goes ... as does compact and curving.  The more things change.

The most interesting thing, to me, about all this talk of bums, is that the LESS textile lumped around it to exaggerate its shape, the MORE the natural curve of a woman's body becomes provocative.  The wedding dress photo I posted on yesterday's musings about the behind and about fashion clearly shows this phenomenon.  Bustles and bumrolls do more to HIDE the actual body beneath them than to emphasize them.  There's nothing erotic about a farthingale.  But a light drape of fabric, unaccompanied by corsetry, bustling, and petticoats ... is incredibly suggestive.

Ado Annie

Look it up, kids – she’s singing my song.

The one way in which I align with the expectations of people who think that being “just a secretary” is an ambitionless state without honor is that, through much of my life and career, I have not been what anyone would call an overachiever. My job, as much as I love it, is at the end of the day a means to an end. It isn’t who I am. I didn’t dream of becoming a secretary when I was a kid – but then, I didn’t dream of becoming an astronaut, artist, politician, nor corporate go-getter either. I was interested in *life*, not the means by which to pay for it.

Certainly, being a professorial family, we were not over-endowed with the means to pay for a lot of things when I was growing up. We didn’t suffer penury, but we were not wealthy – and didn’t especially aspire to be, either. Okay, maybe mom. But she took care of herself. She was the investor, of my parents, the one driven by certain financial motivators – and she took care of that. But my expectations were not set on wealth … and so, for a long time, my expectations of myself in a job weren’t exactly exalted either. You work, you do okay, you get paid, fine.

It took me until I was thirty to realize how much I *cared* about my work. Strange to think how many years ago that was, too – it doesn’t feel like a decade and a half – but then, what does a decade and a half feel like? (It looks like hell, but that’s another post/kvetch …)

Age thirty was about the time I had spent three or four years worming my way into the entire works of the agency I worked for at that time. I took on a lot there. Learned over a dozen software packages. Became the entire company’s go-to for tech issues when our Tech guy was unavailable (and I was amazingly good, too, now that I think of it – being the luddite I am now! … huh). Created, edited, produced, and all but wrote our newsletter – complete with all those yummy, delicious sales stats our guys loved to show off publicly. I got myself Life/Health licensed and was on the way to some securities certifications, too. I took on responsibility for all our orphan clients, and over the course of my tenure there I was assistant to at least four different folks, some of whom were founding partners. This was where I worked that amazing day the Dow first topped 10,000. This was where I encountered one of the best managers I ever expect the privilege of working with. She saw what I was good at and what I enjoyed, and maximized both those things in a balance that paid off DEARLY for our employer. I still have such respect and gratitude for her, though I haven’t seen her now in 15 years.

I got to be well enough liked that I got professionally felt up. “Do you know an admin who’d like to get paid what you might think is megabucks … ?”;

I still remember calling my dad that night – “dad, was this guy asking what I think he was asking?” “Yes, that’s pretty much international code for ‘would you like this job?’”;

To this day, I honestly could not identify what I ever did for this particular client that got his attention and made him offer me a job, but I didn’t stay with that outfit more than four months anyway. The fact was, it was the single worst job I ever had, and when I walked out the door the daily notice of the stock price was plummeting, and I cannot pretend that seeing their name in ugly WSJ headlines didn’t fill me with gleeful schadenfreude.

But that job – the salary I thought was megabucks at that time, and the first time I ever got to put “executive” in front of my “admin” – changed things for me profoundly. My next job paid better, and was itself a great gig. I became indispensable across the largest national division out of four. Over my time there, I taught all the other divisional admins how I did my job. I loved my team (most of whom I never had the opportunity to meet) and they loved me. I also got vice presidential bonuses – every quarter. But it was the nineties. Times were different …;

Even going unemployed for eight and a half months after 9/11, I never lost my home. And was blessed with a temp gig after that, which I was able to promptly parlay into full time (a manager who saw the benefits of advancing his people; he was known for running something of a nursery for promising contributors). From that, I promoted myself two more times, finally spending five and a half years with that employer, over the course of four positions. By age 40, in the space of ten years, I had improved my financial standard of living by forty percent. I was proud as hell of that – could quote statistics, for the longest time, of the relative movement of my career from “can we afford toilet paper?” while I was married in the Midwest to owning my own home and having a car I’d actually chosen, not had handed down to me.


***


And so it is that I came to my new job – now three years old almost, unbelievably – with a bit of a “thing” about how good I am. I hated my last gig – the last thing they needed, wanted, nor knew what to do with was a secretary with a fully functional brain (that one manager was impressed with me – and OUTRAGED when they laid me off – but they laid him off in turn, and we’re both probably very well out of that place). By the time they severed me, I’d been looking for work already for over three months. I still remember that, too. The case of bitchface our executive had, as if my being fired by her somehow offended her. Whatever, lady, you abandoned our group a year before I did. (Bloody COBRA. Stuff your bloody COBRA.)

And here we are.

Things being what they have been, it’s not surprising I suppose that this past year-almost has seen some difficulty. Last summer was the litany of losing Siddy, being in a wreck, having a cancer scare (and all that in one WEEK), and so on. Then sustained frustration with myself at work owing to lawyers and life itself, not to mention debilitating horror at what lawyers can do to a somewhat decent living, hard-earned. A good amount of trouble with certain relationships. Life, life, life, life.

Every time I think things are getting better, ONE mistake crops up and turns out to be visible to the wrong people. Last night, I sent that whole list of “here is what is done” and found out this morning that item one – a crucial bit having to do with someone’s expense reimbursement – was NOT done, and I had mistakenly relied on technology which never did its job.

I tried again today. Tech thus far has stayed mum on its part of the bargain. This time, though, I did some confirming, some follow up – things are done.

And thus – the Conversation. As Top Boss put it the first time we had this chat – there is fear I am overwhelmed. “It’s not a problem with attitude nor aptitude.”;

Surprisingly, my response to this concern is not to admit the problem. It is to over-own, as one of my coworkers puts it, and to try to pretend away the sheer volume and try to take on MORE.

My mom, and dad too, were he here to read this in any way those of us still tramping the dirt of life as we know it could recognize, would probably scoff, even if only inwardly, at this idea. Diane is Bart Simpson. Diane is good, but she’s never been THAT good.

My own response to my own responses is enormously skeptical. I know I only do what is most necessary.

The problem is that I have become a person for whom it is necessary to be perceived as NEVER offloading. Anything. At work. (Heh.)

My standard phrasing on our chat software is “What can I do for you?” I’ve given at least one manager a complex, because I say that and he gets all guilty that he only ever chats me when he needs something from me.

But – I mean, dur, that’s what they pay us all for. Right?

My standard phrasing in email is, “if there is anything I may do or provide.”;

Now, let’s get this bit straight right here – I am not this interested in just doing, doing, doing. HOWEVER. I am PAID to do, do, and do.

What I am not paid to do is to fail at doing.

Which means … I actually need to learn to say no.

Mamma knows – and Mojourner can testify – this is not something I am naturally programmed for, when it comes to authority. (Moj learned how to do it early – heh – but as much of a pain of a girl as I’ve always been, actually refusing anyone I perceive to be superior to myself (a surprisingly high percentage of the population, some days) is damned near impossible.) At the bottom of my stylishly-soled feet, at the bottom of my whitening roots – I am still the little brown-haired girl who desperately cannot take power. And so, oddly enough, I take ON … too much?

Top Boss was clear, today. I need to put people off, I need to push back.

Oddly enough, I’ve actually done that a couple of times lately. It made me half sick with guilt, too. I hate asking ANYONE else to do my job.

Top Boss himself, actually, has headed me off personally – asking that one “what can I do for you” manager to take on some of the logistical planning for the huge events we have coming next week. It makes sense.

But my little, shy, brown-haired core is terrified it means I haven’t been good enough. I’m actually near tears of frustration just typing it here. I feel like a disappointment. It’s a pretty sick feeling, because – again – I know how disappointing I actually *am* deep down inside where nobody sees past all the fakery of professional alacrity.

There’s a gratification in competence, and I am surprised by my own pretty much every time. Because I know how happy I would be to go home, curl up on the couch with a good book or a particularly bad movie, and perhaps never work again, if only I had the option.

Intellectually, I know most of us feel that way, at least some of the time. But I also know, believe deep in myself, that “everyone else” is better than I am, if only by some variable degree. “Everyone else” had some thoughts, when they were younger, about what they wanted to “be” to “do” … Everyone else earned some position or other legitimately, and is pushing to improve. I’m not interested in “improving” – as defined by getting out of my current job. I happen to LOVE my job, and what I do. I also know how much everyone else hates the work I do – and so I am loath to give it to anyone else, ever.

It isn’t so much greed – “This job is MINE, and you cannot have it (and it is thin at one end and thick in the middle – oh, wait …)” – as it is, “I know how sucky my job is and I would never give it to anyone else, plus I don’t think it’s sucky, so let me do that.” The number of times, especially given the extremely virtual nature of my team, I have had the conversation “I do NOT want to ask you to do my job!” is incalculable.

For a while there, taking it all on was do-able.

But this past number of months … it’s more than one job, anymore. Need to learn to “push back” as Top Boss put it. Need to learn how to measure scope and set other people’s expectations. Need to put people off.

That’ll be a trick. I’m just a girl who can’t say no.

Who ever would have thought? (Not my mom …)

Out of the Parking Lots and Back to Where We Park "It"

The blogs I follow seem to have had a focus on bustles and panniers lately.  Here are the Two Nerdy History Girls (well, Isabella to be exact) with a look at bustles and a brief history of the bum through the past 500 years of fashion, as well as an interesting thought about the bum-less columnar looks more popular at the turns of the preceding two centuries (hey, and the one we're in is seeing a great deal of interest in long-line maxi dresses and the vertical draping of the Grecian/Roman look as well ...)

Here is a look, at American Duchess, at why when it comes to petticoats, bigger is not always better!  And here is some bustle lust in the form of the breathtaking Green Acres gown, recently completed and paired with some of AD's beautiful footwear - lots of fun both from the historical and from a steampunked-up perspective, and lushly lovely just to take in the gown even if you haven't been following the blog about its creation from start to finish (which is breathtaking itself).

Work

The days continue to be pretty challenging, but today seems to have been a turning point, or at least one among many which was less painfully out of my control.  For a couple of months, things have been at a level of busy the word only glancingly begins to evoke.  For the past two and a half weeks. the volume's been turned up to eleven - ten and a half hour days, keeping my online status at "busy" constantly, battling a dizzying array of priorities, feeling good just to manage adequacy.

I kicked today's BUTT, though.  Today I scratched off some other people's priorities, as well as a *nicely* significant whack of MY urgent to-do's.  Review of points of contact - done.  Security review - done.  Transactions reconciled - done.  You wanted a meeting?  Done, my friends.  Initial forays into The Next Big Things coming down the pike - done.  Final confirmations for the imminent monster of a big thing already breathing down my neck?  So done, done, done, done, done, done, and done - and updates send to everybody too.  And, to top those things, a nice little "done" checklist for the top boss.  I even dang near managed to take on a print shop job - had it licked by the time ... one of my partners in crime said she was taking it off of my plate.  I almost felt "darn" about losing the thing, having nailed it upon some trial and error.

One of the best things about today was not only getting out on time (no lunch, but no late hour either), but also getting to reach out to a number of my favorite, and most reliable partners.  One of the best, who is coordinating a massive video conference event.  Two of the nicest to work with, for those Next Big Things, through the rest of 2013.  And another arm out, reaching for guidance on how to manage something I've been asking to take on for some months now.  Think we've got the right contact at last, and she even answered my initial entre' before I left the office.

This time next week, I will still be quite exhausted, but it won't be a bad thing.  I'm grateful it's gotten to the turning point now.  And looking forward to the day off I've given myself when the looming thing is finally over.  SHEW.

Non Car Park-chaeologist Speaks

Mojourner has some fascinating thoughts on the recent phenomenon of carparcheaology.  Since he's a pro and I'm an enthusiastic total non-historian, let's let him take it away, shall we?  Enjoy.  Some pretty slick thinking on that dirt-diggin' dude, don't you think?  Well, go tell *him* about it - much as I want comments, he's the one doing the heavy lifting here.

For links to the actual articles about carparchaeology, take a look here and here.

Here here here here here here here here and here is the series of posts on Richard III, with links to better articles following the ultimate progress of that find.

Believe it or not, I haven't begun to cover the incidence of carparchaeology in this blog, either.  Pretty sure I don't have the stamina!  Shew.

Caustic Again

Some of the ... gems? ... the Caustic Cover Critic comes up with are too good not to share.  This week, we start of with some fairly good covers (CCC likes them fine - I have a few issues with the breaking-down of the compound words, myself; this fundamentally tampers with classic titles), but then things morph into the inexplicable, as they are wont to do.

The Day in Twenties

It takes until twenty after six to get out - but then, it took until eight a.m. to get up, and I was two hours late getting in today.  Without a single break all day - for lunch, even for a "short break" (easily accomplished when you're not drinking enough water - and miss breakfast) - it ends up coming out in the wash, actually.  I might have been able to leave sooner.  But mom's training and my own desire to accomplish certain things keep me there, and the worst is beaten down.

The past two weeks have been ten and a half hour days in a long row.  I'd had hopes today would let up, at least normalize, if not be less busy.  No such luck.  The highest of the high opens my day, word from the extremities of my employment, the stratospheric heights have chosen Transaction X for an audit, and I have to provide electronic copies of the documentation.  Not a tricky task, but between the digging, the picky equipment, and the interruptions, it's twenty minutes gone when every minute counts.

The whole day goes like this - including a nasty knock when the calendar I haven't looked at carefully enough comes up with a call for me, with my top boss.  I'm unprepared, but he appears unfazed.  We get through.  I keep pushing.

(And now, as I write, I realize one thing not done was the penning of a note, the sending to the team - an open invitation to do something nice for a couple of our folks.  Sigh.)

Notes to people I need to meet on an upcoming visit.

Orders set, and room notes taken down.

Several consultations with my chief partners in crime.

But I push off a friend for lunch - and do all I can for our attendance confirmations.  An astoundingly time-consuming task, reaching out to dozens of people for personal yea-or-nay when the electronic ones either haven't come, or don't tell the whole story, and neither has word of mouth.  This seems like the bulk of the day.  But there are also updates of to-do's, updates of general calendars, meeting inquiries sent,  all the sleeve-tugging of the day to day.

Travel for my management.  Two trips held; one slightly changed, then finalized.

Series of management trips, set out through November.

A dozen things I can't even remember now.  It's not my worst day, not by a long shot.  Not the hardest, not the most discouraging.  But not easy.  A day where the paycheck is earned.

It takes until twenty to six to get out.  The building is as empty as it needs to be; I can't see the guards, I don't see housekeeping, I am gone.  It's green through the window, and as I step out the grey sky asserts itself, the wind, the first drops of rain falling at the horizontal - not hard, but blown.

My skirt billows wildly, a bohemian confection of georgette and lace, asymmetrical, long.  Beiges around my body, a long soft sweater not quite warm enough for the mid-sixties with rain and wind in the grey.  The parking lot definitely empty.

I've never told anyone, but I can't bear to drive the old way home anymore.  Always take the "long" way now, unable to face stop and go, unable to face intersections, changes in speed limits, too many variables.  I've become afraid, this past year, to drive by anything but what seems somehow easier.  So it goes.

In the car, I want something not liable to make me bounce, to evoke dancing, noise, and dark rooms.  I shift, among the CDs available, over to Whitesnake.  It's cheesy, but the 80s evokes something for me.  Something I like.  It's not too downbeat, but it suits well enough.  By "Cryin' In the Rain" it's on the nose, perhaps, but I can take it.  The rain isn't too bad, I take it slow relative to the other traffic, and whistle my way home.  Whistling is the way I keep my face exercised.  You'd be surprised how well 80s hair bands work for this maintenance.

Home and in.  It might be a fair guess that the house of a single woman, unoccupied but by a cat and a puppy, would be a quiet space - but the radio is on for them, they themselves are life and activity.  Just putting down my bags isn't the silence of peaceful relenting.  The day isn't anything like over.

Pup out of the cage, I put my hands on her back and she's wiggling - grabbing one toy, getting away, exciteable with freedom - with the alpha coming home.  Radio off.  Dinner served.  A short trip to the yard, and I hoist my bags upstairs.

The bedroom is fragrant, still, darkening.  Soft pants, sneakers, cozy sweater dug out of the guest room - it's all spring clothes in my room now.  The weather report, on quietly enough, tells me this is foolish.

Penelope back inside again.  Computer - Windows crash.  I am not up for dealing with this.

Almost too late for the news.  I sit, eschewing windows, on the bare-bones, the quick-launch power side of my laptop.  Can't think about the problems awaiting on the full system.  This will do.  I connect to wireless.  Need to charge the tablet, too.

No ... interesting ... email.

It's already almost eight.  How did that happen?  Time soon enough for bed.  I've learned my lesson, of course - tomorrow I'm up at six no matter how miserable I feel.  Still may be there till after six, but every twenty minutes counts.  Open up Blogger.  It's been 100 minutes since I left work ...

"Hollywood is exploiting an ever-popular cultural phenomenon to sell you something."

The Gatsby movie is here - and, whether it is itself trading on the astounding popularity and vintage fashion porn of Downton Abbey or just upping the game for its own purposes, the much-touted fashion tie-ins have gone beyond providing style-keteers such as myself with clothing and shoe design options much improved over the recent box-pleats-over-the-hip-area and seven-inch-plats inexplicable trends, they've started (yet another) conversation.

Here is an in-depth, and extremely good, look at what flapper fashion was, what it wasn't, and some of the many points missed by modern entertainment literally dressed up to sell.  Fascinating indeed is the point that much of what we're having pitched at us is - once again - filtered through The Male Gaze ... a dangerous way to look at flapper era perspective indeed.

Don't be afraid of cherrypicking through some of this link-rich article's branches.  I enjoyed a few, including a critical look at how the latest mania for vintage has sparked a new abundance in cruelty-inclusive clothing.  Very interesting perspective.  It veers for some time into tips on how to wear vintage fur fashionably, but also includes a lot of information on the more ethical points of vintage fur, as well as other options to recycle.

Carparchaeology

This is my word, and you cannot have it.  ;)

But - yeah.  Coming soon to a parking lot near you (should you be in the British isles, anyway) - yet more fascinating excavations.  There had to be an easy term for it sooner or later, don't you think?

Again With the Carparks ...

... seriously - it's like something out of Douglas Adams' improbability physics, the apparent correlation between the parking of cars and fascinating archaeological finds in the U.K.  Crazy.

How long before The Onion does a treatment of this, publishing a popular-science style article about the unique advantages archaeological sites provide for the development of parking areas in the United Kingdom?

Sumptuary Fun

"Ancient Chinese Secret, Huh?"

Is that headline impossibly crass ... ?  Well, ignore it.  Because THIS is the latest coolest thing ever, and it insults precisely nobody's ethnic background, it just proves one more time that human beings didn't come up with almost anything we do very recently.

Agriculture in China dates back 23,000 years.  Amazing!

Also, I want yams now.

How'd We Sound?

The BBC has a fascinating piece on the sounds of history, I need to take a listen at some point.  Some of the debunking looks excellent - the metallic *SCHWING* thing drives me nuts, and indeed it's used for far more than swords.  I've seen it used on little paring knives.  But then, the excesses of foley artists have driven me mad ever since Robert Downey Jr. used THE WORLD'S LOUDEST COLD CREAM in the opening scene of "Chaplin" (1992, apparently).

Quote, Interrupted

“Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted.”
― Jules Renard

This quote cropped up in my random reading this evening, and it struck me negatively for some reason.  I couldn't put my finger on it at first, but quickly realized that, beyond simply reducing an entire universe of communication to a selfish world of useless indulgence, it's fundamentally in error.

Writing is almost never formed in a single, glutting, go.  It is by nature almost nothing BUT interruption.  Few authors, scriptwriters, essayists, working in ficiton or non, in short form, long form, poetry, or even graphic work - nor any other writer - creates an entire piece in one sitting, without revision.  Ever.  For the sake of the reader, writing almost *must* be interrupted, and for the sake of the author's message, story, issue, interest - likewise.  For clarity - interruption.  For entertainment - interruption (who can build tension, perfectly, with nary an edit?).  For every possible purpose - staying on point, getting the story told well, evoking a setting (fiction or non, we're always *somewhere* when we read) - interruption.

Writing is the art of perfecting your OWN interruptions.  Of learning to use them - the down times between having the actual moment to write.  Of winnowing inspiration by the process of editing - learning how to use the interruptions in time, the interruption of revision, the interruption of feedback, refining, polishing.  Writing is the *cultivation* of interruption, in order to write well, to engage.

Talking without being interrupted is just self indulgence.  It isn't writing.  Not good writing.

What Is It With Carparks?

Well, who's to say?  But we do know the Scots' automotive resting spots are as rich in bones as the Brits'.

So weird, though.  Before we know it, there'll be nowhere left to park in the U. K.

05/05/2013 - updating to add this link.