by Alinta Thornton

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

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October 2003

Thursday 2 October 2003

The Clarion list is pretty lively, everyone chatting away making jokes, planning to go out to dinner, all based on something that's happening months away.

I keep thinking it should be here now, and at the same time, I want it not to happen… because David Hartwell will see my first drafts. Sigh.

Lovely rejection

Got a lovely rejection from Lady Churchill's today for my Tante Lini story, saying they loved it but not the framing story (a page and the beginning and another at the end). They'd like to see a rewrite, if I do one.

Hmm. What to do with that? I sent it to Anne and Zara to see what they think.

Friday 3 October 2003

Zara said it would be fine, and that the point of the story is the two different Germanies, the one in Becky's memory and the one she's learned about. I think she's right and will rewrite it along those lines.

Sunday 5 October 2003

Anne said she thinks the beginning won't work without the framing story, the carpenter will get unpinned from the rest of it and lose its importance. I think she's right - but I don't want to get rid of him as she suggests.

On the other hand, maybe I need to work in the stuff from the framing story somewhere - so the impact of the link to modern day is retained.

It's so important to choose what feels right after you've listened to opinions of others.

Monday 6 October 2003

I sent the new version of Tante Lini off to Lady Churchill's last night. I got a nice note back from them saying they are putting together the current issue and won't read it for a while. Damn. Missed out.

It's lovely to be treated so warmly by the editors. Makes a nice change from some experiences.

Friday 10 October 2003

Nominated!

Oh wow, I just got home from Canberra to find I was nominated for a Dark Animus award. I know it's not a huge award, like Aurealis or anything, but I didn't even nominate myself – the editor did!

It's for Kathleen, Furnished with Bees, the same story that got me into Clarion, though it was rewritten in between. The mag is coming out in November. When I tell non-SF friends what it's about (banshee, eating hearts, rotting while alive) they shudder and look at me sideways. No doubt thinking, eww, who is that woman?

I'm damn proud of that story, just because I have never read horror, but on reading it Rob Hood, horror writer of utter grossness and disgustingness, said "Ewwwww."

What a blast. Cat and Rob are also nominated… they have heaps of awards already, so I reckon it's my turn. (Wishful thinking, but never mind).

I haven't written a word all week… I was working in Canberra on a job and had no time or energy. However I have been thinking about the plot of the second half of Apulder.

It needs a total rework because the first half has changed so much since the initial plot. Hell, the first plot was just the crappy end of a short story, originally. Hah! Thought I could write that in 2500 words... and now it's a 60,000 opus that's only halfway through.

My problem is to weave all the storylines together convincingly. Hmm. I've never done it, and I have a WHOLE new respect for all the novels I've read, even those that don't do the climax well.

A book panic

During the week I read Kim Wilkins' book Autumn Leaves, because she's a tutor at Clarion. I was prepared to read it whether or not I liked it, to become familiar with her style and approach. It'll help when she's giving comments to know where she's coming from.

Well… it's wonderful. I read it in two sittings, the plane and the hotel that night.

Since I only brought that one book for the whole four days, I panicked. Nothing to read! No bookshop at the government building I was working in. Nowhere to get a fix!!!

I asked at the hotel, and the nice girl at reception looked at me blankly. "I don't know. They'd all be closed." I knew that couldn't be right, and I knew that she had to be a non-reader. Any reader would know exactly where to buy books even if it was 6pm in Canberra.

I hopped in a cab and said find me a bookshop or a large open newsagent, and lo, after a bit of circling, there was one only three blocks away. I bought some magazines and a murder mystery. Phew. Of course then I didn't have time to read, and only got through the mags, but at least I had the reassuring heft of the unread novel in my bag.

People have already started to share their arrival times for Clarion. Times, not just dates, for crying out loud! I'll meet you in such and such a cafe at X o'clock, wearing so and so. Why? It's 12 weeks away.

Oh my God, it's 12 weeks away! Roughly 94 sleeps. Not that I'm counting.

Sunday 12 October 2003

Plot Master of the Universe

Today Tony and I spent an hour working through part two of Apulder Sweet. He is the Plot Master of the Universe. Within five minutes of any movie he can tell you what's going to happen - he's seen so many movies in the course of his work that every plot in the world has gone through his brain.

I can't believe how easily it came to him, I just told him what all the different strands were, the themes and major conflicts. I need a scene in which they all combine into one big climax, I told him, and bang, there it was. What a relief! He gets a big credit in the introduction, that's for sure.

Now it seems obvious - isn't that always the way. In hindsight, the right answer does seem obvious. I see that with my work. "Of course that's how it should be", is what I aim for with every design I do. It only seems obvious afterwards though.

It's funny, I can do much the same with most books and movies, and these days I try to guess in detail what the plot will do to exercise myself. But when it's your own, it's so much harder.

Caves and stuff

Now all I need to do is figure out exactly how the tribe is going to survive inside a cave system for 10 years, with darkness and acid rain, floods, and so on outside due to the comets' impact.

Things that live in caves that you can eat:

• mushrooms and other fungii
• lichen
• salamanders and cavefish in underground streams
• crabs
• moss
• bats? can you eat bats? If so, yerk
• lots of little crunchy beetles, mmm, yum.

Not much of a diet is it? The vitamin D thing is a problem too, with no sunlight. Inuit manufacture their own, Zara tells me, but I can't see why this tribe would have evolved for that, since they have plenty of sun normally. There are some foods that have D in them, I think castor oil might be one, according to my brother in law Patrick, who's into health and nutrition.

I'll have to find out or they'll all die. And what about vitamin C? Caroline says fig trees might manage to survive in the cracks of caves... I'll have to verify that. In ten years of no sunlight they may not bear fruit.

I did find very cool diagrams of cave systems though, which got me very excited about separating them into two groups in two adjoining caves. I could have fun with the results of that socially.

I may not be producing any words this week but writing is still happening.

Monday 13 October 2003

More novel

I'm totally inspired by having the rest of the novel all plotted out, chapter by chapter. No doubt I'll change it again, but it's something to work with. I know what I need to do.

How exciting! I feel for the first time that I'll actually finish it.

I wrote 2000 words today, an action-packed sequence where they're mountain climbing, and I'm drawing on a movie I saw about climbing Everest, and my memories of climbing mountains in Tasmania as a child.

Woo hoo, no research for this bit.

The cool group

For probably the first and only time ever, I was asked to officially join 'the cool group'. Though by definition, if they asked me it probably isn't cool (with apologies to Groucho Marx).

The idea was to cluster "us girls" together in one of the apartments at Clarion, but the organisers cleverly put the kybosh on that. I would too if I were them - helps prevent cliques, which are very likely in the setup we're going to have, with three six-room apartments. I was sorry though, it was a really attractive idea. Ah well. At least I can die knowing I was cool for a moment.

Thursday 16 October 2003

Weird post-modernist abstract week

I've had an invitation to write a story for a magazine. I'm a bit hazy about it, to tell the truth... it's a zine from Brisbane, called Run Panic Bight, about which I know little. Here's an excerpt from their site:

"And finally, we understand, and affirm, that there are gaps within and between everything. That it is necessary to contradict one's self. That it is impossible to understand anything, including ourselves', in their entirety, because they don't have any. We prefer, most of the time, the vague to the definite, the abstract to the concrete, dreams and divination to science, scripture to literature, the ocean to puddles, piddles, and bath-tubs.

We are hoping to form a structure and we want you to be a part of it: a neural network, of which you will become a node. We are hoping to develop a plane of consistency, a plan for invisibility, and we require your assistance. Pass me your scalpel please."

Anyone who got that, please speak up!

The issue I'm writing for is called "Between Space", and the idea is I write something, and another writer writes something. We then swap stories and finish each other's story as if it were our own second draft. They both get published next to each other. I'm not entirely sure what if anything this is supposed to achieve, but I bet it's something deeply post-modern or whatever. In any case, I think it might be fun. The whole thing has to be finished, including the other writer's second draft, within two weeks.

Two weeks!!

They've told me the topic, which was randomly chosen, for another obscure reason I don't get at all. (Hey, call me pre-post-modern). It's "Can we speak another language?" Shouldn't present too many difficulties, although it is a well-worn SF trope.

I looked up the other writer on the net and found a story she'd written. It's lovely, dreamy and introspective, literary, meandering. Hmm. Kind of opposite to most of my stuff. This could be interesting!

Tony and I spent an hour dreaming up a quick plot.. .it's not especially original but if I write it from the alien's point of view that could be interesting.

I went off and wrote a first draft, I started at 9.30 and finished at 1.30am, and then only because I have to go to work in the morning.

Saturday 18 October 2003

Maybe I can write a story a week after all?

I finished the story this afternoon and sent it off. That must be a record! It's made me much more comfortable that I might be able to pull off six stories during Clarion. Much.

Woohoo!

The story is a familiar trope, a bunch of human explorers crash land on an alien planet and run out of food and oxygen.

The sentient aliens on this planet are plants... and the story is from the aliens' point of view, highlighting the miscommunication and language issues so that it relates to the set topic. Hopefully that will carry the main interest because the plot is bog standard. For a non-SF magazine that's probably okay.

And with any luck, the rewritten story by author 2 will bear not much resemblance to the original, so I can still sell the original one to an SF magazine.

Tanglehound gets reviewed

James Cain at Dark Animus reviewed Fables & Reflections 5 for Aurealis Express newsletter. The issue contains my story Tanglehound, a story close to my heart.

It had a troubled birth - I began it five years ago when I hadn't been writing long, and it's had about 20 total rewrites, including a line and structural edit by Terry Dowling about three years ago.

At a certain point I decided I'd had enough. While the idea is still stronger than the execution, I haven't the heart to rework it. Anyway turns out I was harder on it than I should be, Lily C at Fables bought it as soon as she saw it, and it only had two rejections before that.

James said: "and Alinta Thornton had me thinking with an unusual story, 'Tanglehound'. I must admit the punchline of Alinta's tale hit me about half an hour after I read it."

At least it stayed in his mind so that he did realise what had happened. And unusual is right. Not your normal SF trope, apart from the fact that it relates to time.

Sunday 19 October 2003

Good evening, Mrs Thornton

I'm writing. OK, well I'm not actually writing, as such. I'm checking email, and playing isketch, and generally doodling around, as you do, feeling like I should be writing, because here I am in front of the computer, with no interruptions, and it's ages until Australian Idol starts (Oh yes, folks, I am a serious addict. Tragic. Cosima to win, yay!)

Finally, I start to actually write something. And it's working, it's sort of okay writing that I may not even need to delete tomorrow.

And that's when the phone rings. Hello Mrs Thornton, how are you this evening Mrs Thornton? Right. Marketing. No one calls me Mrs Thornton, not even my violin students back in the days when I taught violin. Only marketing people. Dead give away. Sorry, not interested. Click.

Get back to isketch. Play another round, get myself worked up ready to write and ... ring ring. Mrs Thornton? How are you this evening Mrs Thornton. I'm ringing on behalf of Novotel, would you like a night for two for only $29? No, really, no. It's only $29, Mrs Thornton, no obligation at all. I'm just NOT interested, okay? Right. Bye.

This happened four more times. FOUR. I'm over it.

So... here's what I'm gonna do: follow some of the excellent suggestions on ZeFrank's web site:

Marketing at Clarion

Now, I happen to know one of the Clarionites is working at the moment to fund his trip to Clarion. As a telemarketer. I'm not sure if I should name names... Chris... Don't worry. I won't hold it against you personally, or anything. But then, while we're at Clarion, and you're in your room writing, I may just call your mobile, and say "Good evening Mr Barnes, how are you this evening Mr Barnes? I'm calling on behalf of..." Then I'd wait a few minutes, so you're back into writing again, and repeat.

Nah Chris, before you quiver in fear, I'm kidding. I think.

Monday 20 October 2003

Right of reply from big bad telemarketer

Ooh, now I'm chuffed. Someone read my blog!!! <jumps for joy> even if it is a dreaded telemarketer. Chris reckons if he did leave his mobile on, and if I did phone him while he was writing, he'd just have to stutter or quote Barbra Streisand or get all husky until I stopped. <rubs hands in glee> Can't wait for that one.

Karen is spending a lot of time worrying about the fact that everyone seems to know each other... but it only looks that way. For the record, I know Cat and Zara very well, they're in my writing group (Thorbies). I've slept with Cat (no, not the way you think), gotten drunk together and I have heard the story of her weird hallucinations at least 8 times, and each time more interesting than the last. Zara and I have gotten a little drunk together, merry, I guess you'd say, and we laugh a lot, and even describe food in the same way, I mean, I've never met anyone else who describes the taste of Wagu beef as round, while chicken is blunt. How about that?

I've met Chris (see Magic Casements entry above), James, who was kind enough to publish a story of mine in Dark Animus, and some of the others have most probably met me (I'm so terrible with names). A few have met me at a con and instantly forgotten me/said something rude/gotten drunk with me.

However, there are several I don't know at all: Karen, Paul, Andrew, Bren... I'm so looking forward to meeting them. I guess at the end of six weeks in each other's pockets we'll either be good buds or hate each other's guts, or both.

Things to wear

In addition to mentally packing for Clarion (see 1 September), I am now planning my fabuloso Clarion wardrobe. Since it will be horrendously hot, and my bod is built for Danish winters, this will consist primarily of anything that allows maximum air flow-through while protecting others from the terrible sight of said bod. With a built in airconditioner.

In other words, I have NOTHING TO WEAR.

I have no idea what to do about it...and it's obsessing me night and day. I walk past clothes shops and think, could I wear that to Clarion? I see a girl in the street with a cool tshirt and think, what about that for Clarion? It's so stupid, I can see to put my mind at rest I'm going to have to get the drobe sorted, packed and maybe even sent to Queensland, like by next week or something. I'm starting to get why people swapped arrival times. This is really a strange experience.

How fast do roots grow anyway?

I even found myself thinking this morning, I need my roots done (yes folks, that gorgeous red isn't mine, I'm sure you're totally amazed to find out it's really once-were-blonde). But if I do that, how far will they have grown out by the time I go to Clarion? I tell you, I'm totally off the wall with this. No one will care. They'll all be thinking about their stories (or their own wardrobes, or dreading Alinta's middle of the evening telemarketing call).

Still, I have worked out the best date for Davina to treat my roots so it'll be not too red and not too grown out. If she's not free that exact day, I'll just have to kill myself. Or not go to Clarion. Whichever is least painful.

Oh yeah, and Cosima is still in Australian Idol... yay.

Tuesday 21 October 2003

Salespeople in shops

Their favourite evil trick is to automatically hate the first thing you try on. Oh no, ma'am, that one's not very flattering. Then they praise the next one, and because they were "honest" the first time, you get sucked in. These days I take no notice of them at all. If I have any doubt, any doubt at all, I leave it in the shop. If I hear any of the following, ditto:

• they'll stretch (=your shoes will hurt like buggery)
• it'll go nicely with an overblouse (=your bum looks fat)
• they just need a bit of an iron (=they don't hang very nicely)
• they'd look nice with some shoulder pads (=your bum looks fat)
• you could wear it with a slip (=it clings to your gigantic stomach)
• that'd be nice for the weekend (=you look like a slob in that)
• that colour is so fashionable this year (=you look like you're terminally ill in that)
• if you take those trousers up they'll hang fine (=they cling to your big fat thighs)
• do you have some nice high heels you could wear with that? (=that looks terrible with the flatties you always wear)
• those are a bit short in the crotch (=your bum looks enormous in that)
• that looks lovely on you (=I want my commission)
• I've got one of those (=I really want my commission).

So I was shopping for Clarion, and couldn't find anything to wear except "it'll go nicely with an overblouse" and "that's such a fashionable colour this year".

I ended up in a fabric shop buying Valentino and Armani fabric to have made up by a lovely lady called Santa. That really is her name (it means Saint in Italian). Can you imagine going to school in Australia called that?

A lot of nothing

Today I wrote absolutely nothing. I spent the day (when not shopping) as follows:

• hosing down clients from trying to change the design I was working on completely, even though the project is nearly finished
• getting the next client to agree to the project plan
• designing a new piece of software for customer inquiry staff to use across a financial institution
• watching Dr Who and Star Trek from last night.

I haven't heard a thing from my writing partner. She hasn't even sent her first story for me to work on. I hope she's doing it at all.

Maybe I'll write a few words now, that would make me feel a lot better.

Saturday 25 October 2003

Displacement theory

A ray of understanding punched me in the face. All the obsessing about clothes, rooms, who's meeting whom at what time at the airport, all that: it's displacement of anxiety about the stuff we're talking about much less: the writing.

Will I be able to write stories on demand? Will they cut it? Will my class-mates laugh hysterically at the dumb stories I produce, or will they gasp in delighted awe (not)?

Will I die of embarrassment when David Hartwell or Nalo Hopkinson reads a first draft of something? Am I wasting six weeks of my life, missing out on holidays with my husband for about a century, spending thousands and risking public embarrassment, for nothing?

I think I'll start worrying about those things, and forget all the other stuff which isn't at all important. The rooms, the aircon, the outfits, whether to bring a torch (!)... none of it matters a jot.

I did do something sort of like this in my early twenties. I was a musician, already with a degree in music and a couple of years as a professional violinist, when I went to Japan for three months to study with Dr Suzuki, of the Suzuki method fame, which I was teaching at the time.

I left Tony in Australia, and it was for twice the time, on the other side of the planet, and phones in those days were extraordinarily difficult in Japan. A blue phone for this area, a pink one for inter-regional, and yellow for international, or something like that, and I never did seem to work out where the right phone was. You also needed some kind of arcane card to operate them, and it took weeks to work out how to phone home, so we communicated mostly by letter.

Added to that, I couldn't speak Japanese very well, just enough to hold a basic conversastion, which tended to desert me completely under stress. And it was winter, which in the Japanese alps is a very big deal indeed. My apartment was minus 22 centigrade, and right next to the tiny kerosene heater it rose to the dizzying heights of minus 15. I slept in all my clothes. Once I put a frozen bottle of coke (that had frozen just by sitting on the kitchen bench) in the fridge to thaw it out, and it worked.

Actually it ended up costing me nothing, I think I even made a profit, because I taught English to the staff of a local hotel at some exorbitant rate ($150 per hour, if memory serves), and it cost a lot less to live there than that as long as I ate Japanese food and didn't try to eat meat (which was $100 for one tiny chop) or fresh vegetables and fruit ($15 for one apple).

Instead I ate noodles, tofu, fish and lots of tinned and preserved fruit/veg. I never want to see another pickle as long as I live. I had a huge sack of fresh mandarin/tangeriney things whose name I forget which was the only fresh fruit I could afford. The bag had 200 of them and they kept really well in my apartment at -22C.

For a small bunch of people, the Japanese have a funny idea what "small" means. Once I went to get rice and asked for a "chisai" bag, meaning small, and got a 20kg bag. No, no, I said, thinking I used the wrong word, a small bag; a not-big bag. Yes, came the reply; this is a small bag. Oooookay then. The sight of me trying to get it home on the back of my bike in the snow must have been interesting.

Anyway, the point is, I did that and it was on the face of it harder - further away, with no contact with my family and friends, and not speaking the language very well - and it was great. There were times when it was all too much and I felt overwhelmed, but it was a fantastic experience. Learning from Dr Suzuki is something I wouldn't trade for the world, he was totally incredible and inspiring, and the other students were fabulous as well.

Like Clarion, we had group lessons where I would play, Dr Suzuki would teach and others were allowed to comment as well when he asked them to, and it was fine. On the other hand, I was much more proficient at the violin then that I am now at writing.

So perhaps the worries I have relate mostly to the fact that I don't yet feel I'm on top of my craft, and if that's the case, well I'm just being silly. After all, the whole point of going is to learn that same craft. Yep, I feel a whole lot better now that I've sorted that out.

What I want from Clarion

What I'm hoping for, in no particular order, is to:

• learn heaps about writing
• get rid of any bad writing habits I have
• immerse myself in writing for six weeks without any work distractions
• have a great time with other likeminded people
• meet some wonderful tutors and learn heaps from them
• write six short stories that I can sell.

It'll also be great to have a hiatus from working, kind of a sabbatical. I'm probably never going to be anywhere long enough to get long service leave, that's not how the world seems to work any more.

Thanks from Damien Broderick

I tried out the new "search inside a book" feature on Amazon.. it's amazing. It searches the full text of 120,000 books and you can view the page it's on. How on earth did they pull that off? The sheer magnitude of the task! All those books, imaged and fully searchable, when they must have been originally done in all kinds of various software. Wow. Anyway, naturally enough I put in "Alinta" to see what would happen. (Modesty itself, me).

And blow me down if Damien Broderick's book doesn't pop up, Transcension. About two or three years ago he emailed me and asked some questions about playing the violin. He liked my response so much he asked if it was okay to just put that straight in the book, and I said of course. To my great surprise, there it is, on page 57, with a lovely thank you at the end. How nice!

Ha ha Zara

I'm reading Zara's blog... and hee hee! She opened isketch at work, the naughty minx. Everyone knows you shouldn't play pictionary online during work hours. It played music at her and got her into trouble. Let that be a warning... turn your sound off! Luckily it won't work at all in my office, something to do with the firewall, and it's just as well because it's so very addictive.

Azzz T6X JUEWOPQ;MNJkjlggrajp. That's courtesy of my cat Oscar, who reckons it's dinner time now.

Sunday 26 October 2003

Thorbies writing group day

I love Thorbies writing group day. Some of us come nearly every time, some come reasonably regularly, and a couple of people come every so often. All up there are 10 members:

• Cat
• Rob
• Zara
• Nathan
• Anne
• Emma
• Roland
• Mark
• Ian
• and me.

It's a good group. When I joined in 1998, it was held at Cat's place in Thorby St, (hence the name). These days it's held at my place, since Cat moved to Woollongong.

Everyone brings food, I make popcorn and coffee, and we gossip and eat about as much as we review. Sometimes there are so many stories we can't gossip much, but mostly we have between three and six stories or chapters of novels. People come even when they haven't a story, which is great, because they can review and gossip.

We email stories ahead of time so we all have enough time to read them properly and consider. Some people can respond instantly but most like time to reread and think it over. It really improved the responses when we started doing that.

We have a crowning ceremony for people who've had something accepted for publication or won a prize in a competition. Publication is kind of abstract, so it's cool to have an official appreciation moment. We have three cheesy crowns from $2 shops, kids tiaras; one with jewels, one fluffy one and one pink dainty one. We do a fanfare and everyone cheers and claps, and it feels great when you get one.

The range is wide too - some people have had little or no publication, others - well, Rob - has had a bunch of novels published, and all places between. I like that about it. Everyone is good at critiquing and offers a different perspective on things.

No one holds back (especially Cat!). We all offer our honest opinions, usually couched in a tactful way. Most of us are pretty tough, we see the difference between our stories and ourselves and have learned not to take it personally. Though sometimes it can be disheartening, better to hear it from Thorbies than get the story rejected over and over without knowing why.

This week I presented the first draft of Rockfall, and the consensus was that it's too hard to understand. Cat didn't understand it at all, and while others did understand some of it no one got it all. Everyone felt it was too distant in tone. So, a rewrite!

I still haven't heard from Run Panic Bight. Maybe my story made the other author run in a panic!

Wednesday 29 October 2003

Bit of a rant about control and discipline, or why being a violinist sucked so badly

I've been thinking about control this week, mainly because of a post on a music list I belong to, saying how hard it is for kids to learn how to deal with politics in youth orchestras.

Harvard did a survey of job satisfaction a few years ago and orchestral musician came in at the bottom of the list, right above federal prison guard. Why They're Not Smiling: Stress and Discontent in the Orchestra workplace (pdf).

As a former professional player, I'm not at *all* surprised by the second-only-to-prisoners finding. I read a study that was of thousands of UK people, I think it was mostly people in the public service from memory. It found that the more you *feel* you have control over your life, whether or not you actually do *have* that control, the more you are contented with life.

Looks great and sounds lovely from the audience, doesn't it? Peaceful, artistic pursuit that people do for pleasure in their spare time... ah, wouldn't it be nice?

Feudal peasants had more say

In an orchestra you have precisely zero control. It's an autocracy. Even feudal peasants had more say over their daily work than musicians do.

You must appear at the precise time for the rehearsal, you must not take a toilet break except during the official break time, you must be playing when everyone else is, in the same style, in the same part of the bow, using the same interpretation and intonation. You may not offer an opinion or your own interpretation of the music (while a few players, such as leads in the wind section, get solos from time to time, they must still play the way the conductor wants them to).

You must sit next to the person you're told to sit next to, even if you don't like them, and spend six hours a day in close proximity without any respite. You may not ask for this to be changed. You may not talk to each other during rehearsal time (except to exchange a bowing). This can be stretched occasionally - but only with some conductors, and only very occasionally.

You aren't allowed to giggle at something private (only when the whole orchestra is giggling, usually at something the conductor said). You may not read or move around the rehearsal room while another section is repeating something, even if it takes the whole rehearsal, unless the conductor tells you you can take a break. (This affects instruments like percussion and horn more than violins, for the most part.)

You can't even stand up

You can't make a phone call, read a magazine, nothing. You must sit silently and wait until they are finished. You may not rest your arms or stretch when the orchestra is playing, even in rehearsal. You may not stand up, except to check a bowing on the stand in front of you.

You can't take an extra long lunch break (rehearsal begin at 2pm on the dot, you have to be there instrument in hand, ready to play). No going to the toilet outside an official break. Too bad if your child has a school event you want to go to, or you want to see a specialist, or whatever; you have to be there at rehearsal.

You must watch and listen to the conductor, and if you miss an instruction, s/he is free to humiliate you in front of everyone. Your tiniest mistake can be heard by everyone, and may result in the whole orchestra having to repeat something.

The conductor can, and does, shout and abuse any or all of the players, for any reason they feel like, and no one can say anything about it. (If it gets really bad the leader might have a quiet word, and eventually management might sack the conductor, but even in these extreme cases they can stay and stay and stay, causing morale to get worse and worse). You are, in effect, a music making machine.

For that six hours a day, you have more restrictions than a prisoner does.

And no, I'm not exaggerating. Girl Guides' Honour.

Why do they do it?

The restrictions are mostly necessary in order to get 80 people to play as a unit, after all, you're trying to achieve artistic wonderment (eg the parts about being there, playing the same way, etc).

Some of the rest are necessary to impose that discipline and keep order, much as for soldiers in an army.

And some restrictions are just stupid, a product of the overall culture (eg no stretching or standing, and the toilet one is just plain awful.

The conductor as God

The paper I linked to above is mighty interesting, pointing out that the whole orchestra must maintain a normative myth that the conductor is an omnipotent being who knows everything. You must never question him (or her, though that's rare), or offer any opinion.

The most you can do is ask, in quailing tones, Maestro (which is Italian for master), would you like us to play those quavers staccato, or legato? If you're lucky, he won't take offence at your utter gall to even say something to him. If you're not a leader, you better not speak at all. You must act as though he has all the answers and that you know nothing.

They work it so that you don't hang out back stage, he has his own entrance and his own room, and comes on stage separately as well.

The paper goes on to say that maintaining this myth of the conductor as God infantilises the players, and boy, it's so true. Ordinary, reasonable people turn all resentful, rebellious and childlike, paranoid and grumpy, passive aggressive.

Yes, there is one major compensation: you're creating a wonderful work of art. For quite some time that makes it all worth while, but many many players get sick of the regimentation. The intense feeling of powerlessness you have has to be coped with somehow.

Making more trouble for yourself

Also you're trained from the beginnning (usually between 3 and 8 years old) to be utterly merciless in critiquing your own playing, comparing it only to perfection. Near enough is absolutely appalling. You wouldnt' want to pay money for a concert where all the musicians played sort of in tune, would you? So every time you play you're listening for the errors, the slight imperfections of tone, the tiny variations of timing and berating yourself for them, hoping no one else has noticed them.

Many many musicians have a lot of pain, as well. Musicians have to contort themselves into positions that just aren't natural, stay there for hours on end every day, repeating ludicrous movements the body isn't designed for. They mostly have pain, most of the time, and it's not done to mention it or do anything about it, though that is changing slowly.

Most orchestra musicians have medical problems which have a severe effect of some kind on performance and on your general health. While I played, I experienced constant pain in the upper back, tension in the neck, leading to severe tendonitis that nearly crippled my left arm. This isn't unusual.

Many go deaf, especially when seated in front of the brass section. I once played in front of the brass for the opera Die Walkure, by Wagner, and the decibel level in there was 140 for over 5 minutes during the ride of the valkyries section, and again for another 5 in act 3. That's much louder than a jet takeoff and it damages your hearing. You can't complain.

That opera goes, as I said, for 5 and a half hours, and the first violins are playing for nearly all that time (there's a blessed passage in act 3 that's all brass for five minutes, and while it's very loud, at least you get to lower and stretch your arms a little).

I dare you

Try holding your arms up in the air that long (no cheating, no breaks, only 20 minutes once every one a half hours). Nup, didn't think you'd last more than 5 minutes. It hurts, even for players used to that kind of thing.

Finally, a lot of musicians have stage fright, though most would never admit to it, and many use a drug of choice to deal with it (usually alcohol, but often other things), after the show of course so as not to dull your timing. Sometimes they take beta blockers, heart drugs that lower your blood pressure, to reduce the feeling of terror.

Like being an athlete, only worse

As the paper points out: "Few other professions combine the physical demands of playing an instrument with the level of training, preparation, and mental activity— not to mention talent—required to succeed as a musician. The closest analogy may be professional sports, yet most athletes do not expect to continue performing professionally until age 65, the typical retirement age in professional orchestras. In few other professions are the practitioners forced to confront their own professional failings so regularly...”

What do you do with all that resentment?

It's not psychologically safe (or safe for one's income) to express the resentment many feel about this situation to the people who have this power over you (conductor, orchestra management, leader, whatever). So it gets expressed through inter-orchestral politics. On top of this, there is such intense competition just to get a place in the orchestra, the people who get there are usually pretty competitive, driven people (not all of them certainly, but quite a few are like this).

So, you have a group of driven, competitive, perfectionist, highly skilled people in a regimented, scary, painful situation with no control whatever over their daily work under the baton of a total dictator.

No wonder arguments break out!

Kind of like finding out that ballet dancers dance the night away on bloody, deformed toes, huh? (They have an equally hard time, by the way).

Feeling glad right now I'm in a job with much more control than that. Love it.

Markets and links

Hey, if you haven't already, check out my links and markets page. I've built up a bunch of market links, mainly for my own use because I keep forgetting which email the note about which anthology was in, and consequently I miss deadlines and forget all about them.

Writing... oh yeah, that.

I've been in Canberra this week, working, and true to pattern, have written nothing (no fiction). Too zonked. I'm getting used to that now, and have (nearly) stopped berating myself for it.

Rejection

Got a rejection today from Agog. Wondering where to send that little story next, it's an awkward length at 800 words. I follow Rob's excellent advice and boomerang them straight out the door as soon as they come in.

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