by Alinta Thornton

About writing, going to Clarion South, and other random stuff.

< Previous    next > Current entry

November 2003

Saturday 1 November 2003

Submitting

I realised all of a sudden that Oceans of the Mind's Australian writers edition's closing date is today, and that I have a suitable story - the one that was rejected the other day. I gave it another once-over for a bit of tightening (cut 40 words from an 800-word story).

I also found the perfect title for it, that had eluded me until today. I have trouble with titles - it either comes straight away, at first draft stage, or I agonise and agonise, and this one was the latter.

Rob's boomerang policy has worked great for me to date. If I get a rejection, I shrug and send it off somewhere else. So far I've never had to submit a story more than three times, and some only once. I look at some stories I've written as experience. Even if someone did publish it, it'd do me no favours.

All the stories I've had published so far I've been proud of, and I don't want that to change.

Sunday 2 November 2003

Caves have no food!

I joined a caving group in the UK in a desperate attempt to find out the answer to the burning question for my novel: what can you eat in a cave?

You gotta love the Internet. In one day, a caving specialist answered my plea for help

She said this: "In terms of edible life in a cave, I'd say there is very little, if any at all. Bats are possibly edible, but would their population be enough to sustain life for 10 years? I doubt it, and remember that bats eat outside of the cave so think about the effect of the darkness caused by the comet will have on their populations as the bugs that bats feed on will die down due to the amount of vegetation reducing.

"Cave creatures tend to be very small such as cave shrimp only a few centimeres long at most. The largest animals that i've come across, (and only in a display cabinet) were olms about 15cm long, but I dont think they'd make good eating."

Damn. Though I love the word olm, and plan to use that.

The novel is referenced to 11,000BC around the Black Sea area, but this is never made specifically clear, and is really only a guideline for me rather than a real setting. It's a fantasy earth-like land, where Gods are real and speak to you.

I have done so much research on this, I must have read thousands of pages of archeology and sociology, all to create a world that is texture-rich and that feels as though it could be real. In the same way that mediaeval fantasies are based in those times but not meant to be thought of as actually set in a certain year or place in reality.

The most interesting stuff is about the Goddess cults at that time, which they're starting to find out was pervasive and fairly non-violent right throughout southern Europe.

But the caves have me beat, I've really made a rod for my own back. They're dark, they have no food, and you can't survive in them without light and food, plus my characters don't want to venture outside, where there are floods, darkness, cold and general mayhem.

So... I have to bite the bullet and invent some special cavey type things, making it very clear that it's not Earth. I had hoped to leave that a little fuzzy. One good thing anyway: I can stop my mad searching for edible cave beasties, and start inventing. Much easier.

Comets

I've spent a few hours reading loads of legends about the coming of comets, and found a remarkable similarity between them, as you'd expect if they were describing real events. You need to go back to find first hand accounts, because there haven't been any major ones witnessed in modern times (thank goodness). Some of the things I looked at drew a rather long bow, linking them to the disappearance of Atlantis and whatnot, but the original texts are gorgeous:

"By quickly lowering his head the sun avoided the first arrow shot at him; but the second and third had attained his body in quick succession, when, filled with fury, he seized the last and launched it back upon his assailant. And the brave Citli laid shaft to string never more, for the arrow of the sun pierced his forehead. Then all was dismay in the assembly of the gods, and despair filled their hearts, for they saw that they could not prevail against the shining one; and they agreed to die, and to cut themselves open through the breast."

Matt, my new best bud

Matt sent me an email saying he prefers Tanglehound to The Collector, for its complexity of ideas. For this reason, I plan to unreasonably adore Matt forever more. Yes, I like The Collector, and it's way more polished than Tanglehound, but Tanglehound expresses an idea about time I've been thinking about for years, and I have a real fondness for it even though it's not as well executed as I would have liked. Plus, it took years to write where The Collector came relatively easily in a couple of months.

Go Matt! (See you at Clarion, bud).

Cosima to win, yay

Cosima, Cosima. She has such a great voice. But it isn't quite well trained enough, and the strain is really showing. Her voice sounds really husky and hardly a patch on what she can do.

I want her to win, I really do, I hope she pulls it together. She's so much better than the other two finalists.

Shannon looks embarrassed to be there, has no control over his voice - it's only good when he's yelling - and can't deliver a performance.

Guy has great control, but he always sounds the same. He's prone to overdecorating songs with coloratura, not that he'd know that's what it is, and he does it inappropriately. He sang Climb Every Mountain tonight, can you believe it. Apparently Christina Aguilera sings it, shows you how in touch I am that I didn't know, but he totally murdered it. To my horror, the audience loved it. I have no idea why at all, so clearly I'm very out of touch.

He murdered several top notes, and the judges not only gave him a standing ovation, but they didn't mention the fluffs or say, what were you thinking, Climb Every what????

Shannon sang ok, but he didn't really pull off Hey Jude. It sounds like a simple song but it has some curly key changes, and a big range, which he doesn't have.

Cosima rocked, even with her done-in voice, and the judges hated it. What do they have against her, I wonder?

Ah well. Silly to even care, I know it.

Monday 3 November 2003

Freedom, a lovely thing

Oh boy,the freedom of not worrying what's really in caves. I planted a lovely new stone called limstone, that lights up in the dark, which handily grows all over the cave systems in Lamullay. It's going to let them grow limited amounts of not very palatable food as well.

Thank Christ it's a fantasy novel, or I'd have to change the entire second half of the book.

I have appalling sinus problems today, half my face is throbbing with intense pain despite the codeine I threw down my gullet. So no writing tonight.

Tuesday 4 November 2003

My wall

I have my wall covered with pictures. One day I'll take a photo and upload it here, if I get around to it. I have pictures of people who match my idea of each character in Apulder, found from laborious searching on the web. To get the right kind of faces I needed tribespeople from Nepal, modern westerners don't look right.

On one sheet of A4 I have the picture and a character sketch, in some cases two pictures, one of them as a teenager and one grown up. I also have maps of caves, a picture of a cave skylight, which is where the big climax will happen, and so on.

If I ever find myself wondering, what would Kauro do now, I look at her picture, and I know.

Cosima gone... sob

Cosima withdrew from the competition last night. I was surprised, but not shocked. Her voice was in trouble and I did wonder how she would manage with the recording and touring, and how she'd avoid wrecking her voice totally. It was the right decision for her voice, for the recording company, and for her career.

But I'm sad. She was by far the better singer. Now boring Guy or weak-voice Shannon will win.

Shannon also annoyed me intensely by saying he should win because "I'm the most Australian competitor". What's that supposed to mean? If there were an Aboriginal contestant, should they win automatically? I mean, 40,000 years counts for more than his family's puny maximum of 200, right?

Sinus problems still here today, though instead of a giant mallet hitting my face repeatedly it now feels more like a normal size hammer, even with codeine.

Books I should have read

Looked at John Savage's list of must-read books. I was thrilled to find out I have read nearly all of the top-shelf list (23 out of 30) though many don't currently reside on my bookshelf, alas.

Wednesday 5 November 2003

No writing, still

Nope. The hammer on the side of my face is still there, plus all bits of my head and face hurt like buggery: eyes, cheeks, teeth, jaw, neck, ear, oh god the ear, even the muscle behind my ear.

I sat down to write but nothing doing: creative juices have gone for walkies.

The Revognase

So instead I'll go to bed and finish Lucy Sussex's book The Revognase.

It's a YA fantasy, and I'm the wrong person to review it, since I'm an AA (Ancient adult). I will anyway though! It's a pacy read, with plenty of action. Lovely details, truffle pigs that will hunt strange rift-objects, thieves guild that doesn't think it should ever be broken into, soothsayers whose sooths work, and so on.

The only thing missing for me is a character to identify with. The boy we meet at the beginning has a bit part, he's not a major part of the action, though later on he has important little pieces of business. Each new character takes up the strange object and interacts with it, which is cool for the plot but we don't get to know any one character.

In a longer novel that would be okay, in a short one like this... well I didn't get involved. But maybe that's because I'm an AA.

Dinner with herd of cats and a grumpy chick

Trying to organise the NSW Clarionettes into a dinner venue, ideally the same one at the same time, but it's proving hard. I'm so grumpy, due to that big old hammer repeatedly smashing the right side of my face, I nearly sent off a bitter email to that effect, then remembered just in time, oops, it's not my Clarion buds, they're all trying to get it to work as well. It's just me feeling grumpy due to pain.

I used up all my make-nice reserves at work. I gave warning to Tony as well, if I snap, it's not you...it's officially my fault. Just duck. Please.

I'm sure the dinner will be fun when we finally get it together, that is if my specialist EVER comes back from wherever it is he went this week, and gives me new drugs. Grrr. So I can send my angelic twin along.

Thursday 6 November 2003

Thinking is writing, right? Right?

While I'm not writing, I'm writing in my head. I'm at the traffic lights, or daydreaming someplace, and I picture my characters going into the cave mouth for the first time. How are they feeling? Most of their friends and family have just been killed, big comets are smashing into the earth, and they've got to the cave just in time. You'd be what? Angry... upset... in denial...in shock.. strangely cheery.. frozen. Depending on your personality.

Most people would be focussing on just getting somewhere safe, and keeping their feelings in check until later, but maybe one or two don't have that kind of control. It's not always who you think it would be either.

Hmm. Food for thought. Which of my characters would crack? So you see, a day not writing is rarely a day not writing, even if words don't go down on the page.

Mallets

The invisible demon with the mallet seems to have gotten bored today, just in time for the specialist to ring with an earlier appointment. I still need new drugs so I'll go. I think it was the five gallons of echinacea I drank yesterday that helped, I was thinking a boosted immune system can't hurt.

On the same theory I've drunk a bazillion glasses of fresh fruit juice, eaten loads of fruit and veg than usual, and stayed away from alcohol, sugar, meat etc. Also did a bunch of yoga yesterday and Tony massaged my neck which is sore from hunching up with pain, what a lovely man.

Who knows if it's all that that did it, or whether my body just got over it? You get a feeling of being in control anyway, so it's gotta be good.

Friday 7 November 2003

Obsessed

I'm obsessed with my face. It no longer feels like a watermelon with way too much watermelon inside. But it still hurts, a lot.

The specialist freaked me right out today:

Him: the good news is, you don't have cancer. Or polyps. Or an infection.

Me: huh?

What do you mean, don't have cancer? I didn't even realise it was a possibility, hell, I missed months of fruitless worrying there. Think of the mileage!

Of course, the upshot is there's nothing actually wrong, according to the medical definition of wrong, which means "something that's in the medical text book that I can name".

Which means the drugs he's giving me are probably not going to do much. Geez. Gotta stop obsessing.

Anyway. I really enjoyed having the periscopy-thing shoved up my nose and through to my ear. Not. Also loved waiting an hour and a quarter (got to read quite a bit of The Lovely Bones, much to the disgust of the kid screaming up and down the room in a futile effort to get my attention).

It seems the dust from having the ceiling sanded is the culprit. Tony has to clean all dust and crap from the house, I'm officially exempted forever more. What a shame.

Yippee!

Yippee, because the classes at Clarion start at 2pm every day. I was so dreading having to get up early every single day. I am a major night owl, I prefer to sleep between 1.30-2 and 9.30-10, though I rarely get to.

How on earth will Zara and Cat cope, earlybirds both? I get Zara emails written at 5am, I'm not kidding. And Cat catches a train that leaves the station with an hour beginning with 6am. Bleah. At that time of day I can barely speak, no joke.

My plan is to read stories in the morning, then write in the evening. I am totally over the moon about this.

Saturday 8 November 2003

Digital heaven

Today is my birthday, and Tony gave me the coolest present - a gorgeous 5 megapixel digital camera, which also takes up to an hour of video.

I spent time today fiddling with it, and so I've uploaded a picture of my Apulder character wall. It's so clear and detailed, you can see how I ripped the paper and all the dirty marks on the wall behind.. at least you could before I resized it for the web. Here's tiny section of the photo so you can see how sharp the image is, without having to download 3megs of photo. It's not a zoom-in, I just cropped the larger picture.

I also made a short movie but it's a huge file and the content isn't all that interesting.

What fun I'll have with my new toy at Clarion!

Sunday 9 November 2003

Birthday heaven

What a gorgeous birthday party that was... a few friends in a lovely restaurant. We went to Beaches at Balmoral, and the food was amazing. I talked Chris into trying escargot for the first time (don't think of them as snails). I had to promise to give him my scallops if he didn't like them, but he ate them with relish. Esperanza and he gave me a gorgeous amethyst bracelet with matching drop earrings. She looked tired from her recent trip to Atlanta for her new job - four days travelling for two days of conference. Sheesh.

Mike came, sans Janne. He gave me a fantasy book I haven't read yet but have heard good things about, he is great at thinking of presents. Anne and Caroline hiked up from Woollongong and gave me a fabo idisk storage thing, no bigger than a keyring and it holds 128mb of data. I am over the moon with all of these.

The food was delicious, very traditional - Beef Wellington, strawberry/chocolate fondue, not tricksy, just great dishes cooked with respect. Yum. A lovely sunny day with (it must be said) a tad too much breeze. A short stroll on the promenade established the breeze was too cool for our skimpy party tops and we beat a retreat to respective cars.

A lovely afternoon, the only sad thing was a few people who couldn't make it, esp Zara, Jamie and Emma who had come down with lurgies.

Of course as soon as I got home I whacked the pictures onto my computer and put them on here. I'll get over it soon.

Apulder gets going again

Woo hoo, I wrote 800 words tonight, the scene were they crawl into the cavern and watch the beginning of the comets falling. They reach the shelter cavern and Han has a terrible nightmare.

It's not that these scenes are hard to write. They're not - just climbing some rocks and crevasses and a dream sequence with blood and death in it.. .a cinch. It's just that I'm losing momentum, it's hard to sustain over such a long time.

Writing a novel is officially:

Ancient houses

Watched a program on SBS tonight called Meet the Ancestors, which is a very cool program about experimental archeology. In this one they excavated a 10,000 year old house in Northumberland, which was then joined to Europe by a land bridge where the English Channel now is. They then built a house to see what it would have been like, and blow me down, it's not too different from what I have in my book, except theirs was round and mine is not.

It seems settled settlements were around that far back; all the time they're pushing back the boundaries. I find it fascinating.

Wednesday 12 November 2003

Monty Python lives

I've been in Canberra again this week, joy oh joy, so once more no writing. Sigh. I write so much better when it's daily.

So instead, I'll tell you about the conversation I had with the Virgin flight attendant this evening.

Me and my colleague Elisa arrived at the Canberra Virgin counter just before 5pm for a 6pm flight, and we spotted a 5pm Sydney flight on the board.

Me: We're booked on the 6pm flight to Sydney. Is there any chance we could make that 5pm flight instead? <Thinking, probably not>.

Virgin Counter Staff Member: No, I'm sorry. It's closed.

Me: OK. Is there another flight we could take that leaves before the 6pm one?

VCSM: Yes, there's one at 5.15.

Me: Great, we'll take that one then.

VCSM: <totally deadpan> It goes to Melbourne.

Me: <raising eyebrows> Er, we still want to go to Sydney actually. Is there one earlier than 6pm?

VCSM: There's one at 5.30.

Me: Oh good, are there seats on that?

VCSM: It goes to Adelaide. <Again, totally deadpan>

Me: <count to ten, take deep breath> Maybe I'm being too specific, or too general, or something. We still want to go to Sydney. We'd like to get on a flight to Sydney that leaves before 6pm if possible.

VCSM: No, there aren't any.

Me: Okay.... just book us on the 6pm then please.

Me: <mutters to Elisa>: no, we'll just take any flight that leaves before 6pm, doesn't matter where it's going.

Elisa: yeah, Tahiti looks nice.

I mean geez. She was more like some badly designed web site than a real person. And she wasn't trying to be cute. That really was her answer.

Conductors have a hard life too, who knew?

I watched some of a program on Edo de Waart last night, the outgoing conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. He said it's really lonely, no one speaks to you, a couple of people maybe at the end of the performance and then it's back to your empty house (he was divorced at the time). The city (San Francisco, in this case) was closed to him, he saw it only from the outside.

He comes to a table in the canteen and there's a sudden silence, and everyone gears up to have him there. There's one bass player he likes in the Radio National orchestra, who talks to him first (Think of it! The cheek!). But he has to be careful how friendly he is back because he doesn't want others thinking this guy is sucking up to him.. "I know how it can be, I used to play in an orchestra myself". But he really appreciated this guy being friendly, making the first move. How terribly sad.

There's also all that travelling, it wreaks havoc on family life, much as for actors or singers.

He said Australia is an easy place to live, it's easier to do anything, and he's learned that you don't have to do something productive at every minute of the day! You enjoy life in Australia, he said with a big smile.

I felt bad about all the things I said in this blog... then I remembered that this was my reality, while his is equally valid. It brutalises both sides, and the magic is on both sides too.

Thursday 13 November 2003

Run Panic Bight resurfaces

Hmm, those lovely squishy, malleable deadlines they have over at Run Panic Bight. Total silence for weeks, then "rewrite this story by Sunday."

My writing partner, Misbah, has sent her story. It's 3800 words (for a 1500 word limit) and an utterly utterly strange style (for me). What a challenge. No doubt she'll be challenged too.

And hrmph, they lost my story. No matter, it gave me time to give it another look before sending it again.

Interesting.. rewrite another author's story as if it were my own. How bizarre the results are going to be!

Friday 14 November 2003

She is dark and mulling.

OK, so here's the thing. How much do I rip apart Misbah's story? I'm supposed to finish it as though it's my own, but of course it isn't my own. I would never ever have written this. Not that it's bad, far from it. It's just not my style.

Here's the beginning of my story Rockfall, that I sent to Misbah:

Round-Juicy felt the world move and was afraid. The earth had never shifted this way before. What did it mean?

She decided to ask Thick-bark, she swam gracefully towards him. Her slender trunk swayed as her roots propelled her easily through the moist earth.

She kept a polite distance; too close and his leaves might shrivel. <Thick-Bark>, she signalled. <What made the earth move?>

His dark leaves waved slightly in reply, pointing at something a long way away. <That.>

The thing seemed to be a big, oddly-coloured rock, bigger even than Old-Grand.

<Fell from the sky>, Thick-Bark told her in his usual clipped fashion. <I saw.>

<Another rock?> she exclaimed. <We have enough already.> Round-Juicy had heard Old-Grand tell how LifeGiver made the rocks fall to the ground from the cliffs above them, trapping the people inside the world. Round-Juicy had always thought it a little fanciful. Now she wondered if it were true.

And here's the beginning of Misbah's story, Terraforming Lily:

She wore a dress. A yellow dress. A pretty dress. Not a beautiful dress. It covered her up though. She talks about the future and how it will come to save her. I don't think she knows much about the future. She likes everything to be futuristic though I don't think she has any conception of the present. She is a party with no-one invited.

She is thin and thinking. She has her tenses mixed up. Like this. My friend come over yesterday. But maybe its all connected with her obsession with anything to do with the future. She says if she wasn't a computer programmer she would be a conservationist.

She can be difficult to talk to. She is funny. She isn't a computer programmer, really she works in a plant nursery and is a writer. She tells people she is a programmer just to see their reaction when they look at her in her strange clothes. She beds seedlings. She tucks seedlings into their beds. Snipping and binding and tying them. She is their protectress. See her snipping the baby plants that were once the seedlings she tucked into their beds. She is very happy with her plants. They have grown strong and healthy. All her fingers are green. She grows plants in her not very beautiful dress.

You see my problem, right? I think the publication, and Misbah, have given me total carte blanche to do whatever I want. But that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. I could:

1. edit it lightly in keeping with the original spirit
2. edit it heavily, but still in keeping with the original
3. rewrite it as my own story using the same events and characters, and some of the flavour, either a little
4. or a lot.

I'm not sure what I want to do yet. Will mull over it before I begin. I'm hesitant! The sacredness of someone else's story. Funny, I spent years as an editor where I gave it not a second's thought, but that was different. It wasn't fiction.

'She was thin and thinking'? No way can I keep that. So in truth, the first option is gone already <grin>.

I picture Misbah sitting at her computer somewhere in Australia, thinking similar thoughts. Though I guess they'd be far more lyrical thoughts than mine (cough):

She is dark and mulling.

See, it doesn't work. It doesn't make any sense. Maybe Misbah has English as a second language? It is a syntax error. Or perhaps that's unfair, oh hush my mouth, and she did it on purpose. She is lithe and writing.

Oh dear.

She is punch-drunk and stopping.

Saturday 15 November 2003

Rewriting

Okay, so overnight I have thought about how to approach this. Something strikes me as odd. We were both given the theme, "Can we speak another language?" Misbah's story deals with plants and people, just as mine does. I can't help thinking that's not a coincidence.

I wonder why she chose such a similar theme?

In any case, my decision is this. Her writing's strength is lyricism and style. Mine is narrative and point of view. So I will take my strengths to her story, and try to retain her strength in the process.

In other words, I'm going to rewrite her story as though it's mine, using a narrative structure, while retaining as much as I can of her writing style.

But thin and thinking? OUT.

Rewritten

Well, it's now 2am and I've finished a first draft of Terraforming Lily. Phew. It's very different from Misbah's draft, but still it's the same story. It's now my version of the same story. I've probably stuffed up my sleeping for the next week, but I had to get to the end, and there was a dinner party between the first half and the second. Which was fun, and made me get up from my chair, which is good.

Thin and thinking is out. It's in chronological order. There's a little more structure so I hope you can work out what's happening a bit better. I took out some lovely stuff that just didn't do anything for the story. I added in some stuff, esp a boyfriend in the shape of a very cool flower called tapervine. Look it up and check out its shape!

I'm going to bed now, although what I want most in the world is for it to be say 9pm so I can keep going.

Sunday 16 November 2003

Rewritten again

This is both exhilirating and exhausting. I'm enjoying the richness of Misbah's language, adapting it to the outer extreme edge of my style. At present that's Tante Lini, the most literary and introspective thing I've ever written. Misbah is twice as literary as that again. Her paragraphs are poems, and don't follow logically on to the next. Some things have nothing to do with anything, but just sound good.

She also mixes tenses and point of view (between first and third). So at any point it could be past first person, present third person, or whatever.

So, I've created a strictly chronological flow, and kept the switch of tense to a defined point. I've retained the weirdness of what actually happens in the story, because that's very cool, but I've created some foundation for it earlier in the story, and given the character some motivation in the shape of the boyfriend.

The other odd habit Misbah has is switching the sentences so that effect precedes cause. I'm not sure that's on purpose, but even if it is, it works better for me when it's logical. Even though one main point of the story is "mixing up the tenses", most people's brains can't cope with it. It makes the reader work way too hard.

Lord only knows what she's doing to mine! It doesn't bother me.. it won't be my story any more, in the same way that this isn't her story now. How peculiar this is.

I've certainly learned something from this. The main thing is the rich detail she uses that makes the sentences sing, and the characters feel more alive. I'll definitely try to bring that into my future writing.

The other thing is never to try to write a story in two days. I have really busted myself, merely because Misbah was late. I loath last minute panics, the pressure, the fear that if I only had another week to let the story simmer it would be better on the next rewrite. It nearly always is, after all.

Nathan is coming over as a rescue mission this evening to give it a sanity read, bless him. He's particularly good at putting things in the right order, so he'll be invaluable. If he says it flows okay, I'll rest easier.

And AGAIN

Man, I'm so over this story now. Nathan had a look, ate some organic roast chicken, and pronounced that the story was kind of weird, and that he accepted on page 1 it would meander around and not really get to the point, since it's a literary story and that's what they do.

He's right of course. But he did offer some ways to make that better, and so did Zara, and I did nearly all (except the ones that meant a complete rewrite). It's cut 500 words out of it, which is all to the better, though many of those were probably the bits Misbah liked best.

Have to keep reminding myself this isn't her story any more. It's mine.

I did chuckle though, the things Nathan particularly liked were all my original things. That was pleasing. He had an unerring eye for the phrases that weren't mine, originally Misbah's, that I'd wanted to take out but hadn't the heart to remove. He has a good eye for the thing that doesn't belong. For example: "she was a party with no one invited". It belongs in her story but not in mine. There were a couple more that I ummed and ahhed about as well. The whole section about necks, for instance. It'll have to go.

Have to keep reminding myself this isn't her story any more. It's mine.

Off to Canberra in the morning, so that's the end of this (I hope).

Monday 17 November 2003

And AGAIN, DAMMIT!!

Tonight I'm in my hotel room in sunny Canberra, and I just finished the last final really truly finished draft of Terraforming Lily. I'm much happier with it now. I've made it more completely mine, and it now has a bit more structure to it again. I also made Lily more sexy, less hesitant about showing herself as she changes.

I was so zonked last night that I decided to be (shock horror!) a day late. I'm never late. Deadline queen, me. But they only gave me three flipping days, so too bad. It just about killed me as it was. I mean, last night when I wrote my blog entry my eyes were sticking out on buggy little stalks, my head was pounding, arms aching, and I had barely said anything to Tony all weekend that wasn't to do with the story. He bore it bravely.

I would never actually write a story like this from scratch, it's too meandering even with a lot of stuff stripped out. But it was fun, if wearing. I felt consumed by it over the weekend.

Thank Christ it's done now.

Tuesday 18 November 2003

Home, sweet you know what

Home again tonight, lordy I'm getting tired of the Canberra hop. No writing today at all, a well deserved rest.

I sat in front of the box doing the ridiculous IQ test thingy, several vodka and cranberry juices helping me on my merry way. Even so I came out the same as always, my whole life it's been within a narrow 3pt range result in both types of test that they use.

Can't say I'm not consistent.

Interestingly, I sucked more at arithmetic, and less at spatial stuff than usual. (The vodka, perhaps?) I do remember getting 99 out of a 100 for a maths exam once because I added up two numbers incorrectly, but got all the differential calculus right, so perhaps that's really true. The reasoning part is fine, but the adding up in the head not so fine?

The average scores across Australia were somewhere in the 107-112 range, while the real average is calibrated (defined as) 100. Presumably, few people in the below 80 range took the test? The second lowest scoring group, just above garbos, was real estate agents! Hah.

It passed the time, anyway. I enjoyed watching people scramble to say how dumb they thought they were and tell stories against themselves. How Australian is that.

Clarion dinner tomorrow night, which I'm looking forward to.

Wednesday 19 November 2003

An insight into my psyche... maybe...

Weebl and Bob is a seriously odd animated cartoon. This month it's
Beef Magic. It makes me laugh out loud, it's so silly.

Thursday 20 November 2003

NSW Clarionettes rock

So we met last night for a lavish Chinese banquet with French champagne, yum. Unfortunately Karen was too busy throwing up to come, poor thing, which is a pity because several of us haven't yet met her.

Amusing moment 1: Wendy walked in and immediately we knew she was One Of Us. She was amazed that we smiled at her without waiting for her to identify herself. But you can just tell if someone's an SF writer in a room full of non-writers, even when they're not wearing their "I speek geek" t-shirt.

Amusing moment 2: me asking the waitress what kind of gin they have. It took 10 minutes and a trip to the bar to establish even what the question meant.

Amusing moment 3: the look on Cat's face. She told us she drinks wine every night, and I said it would wreck her liver, the authorities say you need two alcohol free days a week. She said, nup, need my drinkies every night. I told her I'd visit her in the dialysis machine, a captive audience! What fun it would be to read out things Not To Her Taste (see below).

Like what? she asked nervously.

Hmm, I said.. how about War and Peace? The look on her face was priceless. Then I said, no, something by Sarah Douglass, or someone like that, and her face fell even more. "No, not the broadswords! Anything but the broadswords!"

Everyone was nervous about Clarion (no names):

• will we get on - there were lots of jokes about how we'll hate each other by the end, "this is the last time we'll all be laughing together"
• how on earth will we arrange the cooking and eating thing
• how will the early risers and night owls manage not to kill each other
• will we really be able to produce a story a week!
• is there just the one loo for six people?
• if we're in Karen M's dorm, will we watch so many DVDs that we'll forget to write
• will the tutors notice if we play bingo during class?
• can you get booze delivered to your door daily? (Of course you can, it's a flipping university, right?)
• how will we deal with conjugal visits and single beds, given that the conjugal trailer proposed by Sarah is unlikely to eventuate
• is there anyone else there over 40 (answer, yes - me, for a start)
• exactly HOW sick of each other are we really going to get
• can we plan our explosive blowup arguments for week 4? I mean, if you're going to have one it should be dramatic and interesting, right?
• will we forget the dreaded week 4, the way you do for childbirth? Someone pointed out that childbirth gives you natural opiates to do that with, and someone else said, not to worry, working on that one. Hmm.
• will it just be Big Brother for Writers, with no cameras (or with if Zara's web-cam threats prove to be reality)

It was agreed that a bouncy castle and plenty of blow up dolls would do much to alleviate any tensions (!).

Wendy pronounced herself weary from reading 800 emails on her return from overseas, and that she now has a gestalt of the whole Clarion experience.

We also established, thanks to Zara, that seafood cannot be eaten because they suck up heavy metals in the water. The rest of us smiled, politely thanked her for the info, and stole her scallops and lobster.

Wendy made me feel much better about taking out "thin and thinking" from Misbah's story. That's not literary, she pronounced; it's bad literary. Woohoo! Loving Wendy already.

James held an enticingly nearly finished proof of Dark Animus in his hand, and even let me hold the precious thing in my very own hands for a few seconds. Awwww.

Chris arrived late and disgraced himself by pouring all the remaining French champagne into James's glass without realising it was French. How much did James pay him for that one? :-)

Cat told us the goss on the southerners after infiltrating them, by the sneaky means of holding a joint pre-Clarion party with Sarah. Apparently they are a strange but fun bunch, just like us.

We agreed that it was a big relief to finally be sure that Bren is in fact a girl.

We swapped tales of which stories we'd sent to apply with and why, and Wendy confessed that she's not written a short story in yonks. Not to worry Wendy... just put in a full stop after 5000 words, and you'll be right! <grin> (This from me, the writer of 64000 words of short story, in the form of Apulder Sweet).

Dammit, I forgot to bring my zippy new camera, so there are no photos of this historic occasion.

Mirror Mirror on the Wall, Who is The Best Writer of Them All?

Cat is still firmly in the grip of her latest obsession with Lucius Shepard, the <drum roll> Greatest Writer on the Planet. She declared I obviously have no taste at all because I didn't like Barnacle Bill the Spacer (the short story, not the book as I haven't read any more).

Last month it was still China Mieville, who was at that time the <drum roll> Greatest Writer on the Planet. Who I also didn't take to... maybe she's right? Oh God, what if I Have No Taste? No no, dose of reality, forget it.

Where do you go to my lovely

I feel as though I've already gone to Clarion, I've spent so much time there in my head. I wonder if going will measure up?

Friday 21 November 2003

A missed opportunity

The taxi is pulling up to the building I work in in Canberra, which is near Old Parliament House, and the driver strikes up conversation:

Him: You gotta see the art gallery while you're here.

Me: OK.

Him: No really, you have to go and see it. It has a lot of really good paintings in it you know.

Me: Oh really?

Him: Yes, and I painted some of 'em.

Me: Are you an artist?

Him: Yeah. I painted them 200 years ago when I was here last time.

Me: ... er.. how interesting.

I got out of the cab at that point, so there was unfortunately no opportunity to ask him who exactly he was 200 years ago, so I could go and inspect his paintings, or what it was like in between the last time he was here and this time, or anything.

Saturday 22 November 2003

Do geeks wear gold toenail polish?

I came back from getting my biannual pedicure, and my toes are now painted a fetching shade of gold. You'll be happy to hear I won't do as someone suggested and upload a picture of them. Ewwww.

Went online and stumbled on the Geek Test, which of course I immediately had to take.

Thank God, I came out a Total Geek, and although it's in the bottom 26% of Geekness, it's not nearly as bad as merely having Geek Tendencies, or being just a plain Geek.

Had to laugh - one of the questions was, Do you really want to do well in this test? I had to admit that yes, I did want to do well. Sad.

Aaack, this blog is now googled

You can now find this blog on Google. I didn't submit it, so Google must've done it's clever spidering thing and found me on its own. Not sure I like that, but ah well, it's done now.

I did think about blocking search engine spiders, but never got around to it.

Sunday 23 November 2003

The God of Sinuses hates me

Suddenly, with no warning whatever, my sinus went POW last night, and I was felled. Robbed of a whole evening alone in the house with five hours in which to write. I did manage to squeak out 100 words, but the buzzing in my head got to me.

Tonight I fly to Canberra (only 3 more trips to go, praise be), and in just over a week the Canberra bit of this project is over, and maybe I can become a regular person again.

I'm hoping to meet up with Lily while I'm there (no, not the heroine of my Terrforming story, the editor who lives in Canberra - I'm not actually that crazy). A bright spot in an otherwise work-laden week.

Tuesday 27 November 2003

Travelling on business always sounds so glamorous, doesn't it?

But it most surely ain't. Here's this week's glorious stuff-up. On Sunday I was heading off to the airport for the Canberra hop. It's appalling the way you're expected to travel interstate on your own time. They schedule meetings to start at 9am in another city, and you just have to get there, either Sunday night or a 6am flight. Yech. I mean, I'm happy to work 100% when I'm being paid to, and do some extra hours as well, but that's going too far, I reckon.

Anyway, I'm on the way to the airport, feeling like death, when Tony says, I'll drive you to Canberra so you don't have to fly. Awww. He's so sweet!

No thanks, I said, picturing how he'd be feeling after a six-hour return drive. Shudder. But maybe you mean I don't look well? No, he said, you don't. You shouldn't have to do this.

You're right, I thought, and rang in sick. I hated doing it, because my colleague had to pick up my work and do all the sessions on her own. But it's mediaeval, this not calling in sick thing. It's wrong. You shouldn't have to work when you feel like that.

Problem is, our work isn't really suited to having sick days. If I'm sick, I have to write in the project progress report that the critical path for the whole project is affected because I was sick, and it's embarrassing.

Clients can't believe their projects will be late because I have sinusitis or something. It affects everything they're doing, I'm always on the critical path, and there's rarely anyone who can pick up my work because of the nature of what I do - you have to be intimately familiar with the project to do it.

I have a new resolution: I won't take any notice of that, and stay home when I'm sick. It's silly not to. My clients will cope, and if I get really ill because I worked when I shouldn't they won't be there with chicken soup, will they?

And of course my colleague and boss were lovely about it, they know I'd do the same for them, so I tried hard not to feel guilty.

Anyway.

I rang Qantas, to cancel my flight. Only thing is, it's a non-refundable, non-changeable, non-transferable ticket. By dint of some wrangling over the exact wording in the ticket I convinced them they should let me take the flight the next day. Which they did, though they did charge me an extra $66 for the privelege. (Expect your e-ticket wording to change by tomorrow). I was kind of proud of negotiating that, especially given I was so out of it by then.

Only I failed to notice something important - my client had booked the original flight wrong.

Cut to Monday, and there's still-sick me at the Qantas airport check-in desk. Not quite as sick as the day before, and soldiering on. Pumped up with the following drugs:

• nasal wash
• cortisone for one nostril
• different cortisone for the other nostril
• antibiotics
• anti-inflammatory
• 2 double-strength panadeine
• a couple of espressos
• and a sudafed for good measure.

So feeling, well... kind of floaty and out of it. And I had forgotten to bring my flight details.

Qantas desk person: which flight are you on?

Me: The 3.40 to Canberra.

QDP: Er.. no you aren't. Can I have your booking number?

Me: No, sorry... I forgot to bring it. <thinking, that sounds really lame>. I have my frequent flyer card, does that help?

QDP: I'll try that, ma'am. <purses lips to indicate how slack I am. Clicks away for a bit on computer.> No, you aren't booked on that flight.

Me: Maybe it's because I had it changed from yesterday <explain situation>.

QDP: No, you aren't on this flight. <checks the system again> Oh.. you're booked to go from Canberra to Sydney.

Me: <heart sinking> Oh no! But I need to get to Canberra.

QDP: When did you come up from Canberra?

Me: I live here in Sydney.

QDP: Oh? <said with total lack of interest>. Well, I can't change your ticket. You'll need to get the Canberra to Sydney flight. <expression now reads, I'm finished talking to you, go away so I can deal with the next person>

Me: Can I just mention, I am standing in Sydney, and the flight leaves in 40 minutes. How am I supposed to catch a flight that leaves from Canberra?

And why would I want to, when I'm supposed to be in Canberra tomorrow? <feeling even more floaty now, and wondering if I've strayed into a nightmare - I mean, can this really be happening?>

QDP: Well that's the flight you're on. <expression even more clearly reads 'go away'>

Me: Er, that's not actually possible, seeing as I'm standing in Sydney <pointing at ground, to show I'm actually present here>

QDP: Oh. So you are. <looks blankly at me>

Me: So, is there anything you can you do for me? <thinking, would you start helping me to solve this problem, please?>

QDP: You'll need to go to the ticketing desk.

Me: <finally, a helpful suggestion!> Thanks, I'll do that.

Where they did sort it out, thank goodness. But how do you like that? I have a ticket for Canberra to Sydney, so I'd better catch it, even if I'm in Sydney at the time.

Can it get any weirder? What with reincarnated artist/taxi drivers and Virgin attendants who'll send you anywhere as long as it leaves before 6, I'm starting to think travel in Australia is decidedly odd, to say the least.

Wednesday 26 November 2003

Liom comes out of hiding

A spurt of energy that lasted a nanosecond had me writing a new chapter for Apulder. I have to ride the wave of energy, jump on it and write immediately, or it's gone. I was in fine form, in just over an hour I had 2000 words of a new chapter, no problem.

This new chapter is the first from Liom's perspective, and it's interesting - I'm finding stuff out about him I didn't know. I think in future, I'll write a chapter from every character's perspective even if I don't use them, it'll help me to know them better. Do I need to put in another chapter about him earlier in the book, I wonder?

New stuff

A couple of new story ideas are floating about in my head, and I've decided not to begin writing any of them. I'll just write the ideas down, and then I'll have a few ready to go at Clarion.

Can I keep them back until January? I think I should. That way they'll be bursting to go.

I was sitting in a focus group the other day waiting for the site users to finish an exercise. I have to sit quietly and say nothing for about 15 minutes, so I used the time to pin down these ideas I've been having in writing. I know I need:

• a story premise or background, "the idea"
• a character
• in a situation
• with a problem

I have no trouble with the first three, it's the problem that always gets me. It's easy to dream up problems, but picking one that will come naturally out of the character and their situation, and display whatever your main theme is, and resolve satisfactorily, that's harder.

I think I need to develop the character and situation more before I work on the problem. So many times I've started a story, only to find the problem doesn't do anything for the story and have to start again.

Friday 28 November 2003

And for my next trick...

So, we have the reincarnated artist/taxi driver; the Virgin attendant who'll send you anywhere as long it's before 6pm; the Qantas attendant who thinks you can board your Canberra to Sydney flight in Sydney.

And now: Virgin's time travelling.

Scene: Sydney airport. Time: 4.05pm.

Virgin Counter Staff Member: here's your ticket ma'am.