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On arrival
in Canberra, I got his polar opposite.. slowed down to 10k for a speed
bump. What a laugh.
On the weekend
went to Chris Barnes' place for a BBQ, chilled out with lots of fantastic
food and great company, it was raining which made it feel cosy. Absent
were Zara, who was 'writing' (actually, filing), and Tony, who was miserable
with flu.
Life
in the land of cancer
Mum starts
her radiotherapy today, so I hope that goes well for her. I hear it makes
you tired, and she has six weeks of it to undergo.
My life is
teetering quietly back towards some kind of equilibrium. I have my notebook
back, my laptop is working, I am writing, albeit very very slowly, I am
reading, albeit very sporadically, and my mum is much better.
I feel as
though I've lived about two years in the last three months.
Wednesday
7 April 2004
Well...I
did a Zara last night. I started work on my Kelli's Mum and the Hugdoll
story. This consisted of the following activity:
- find notes
in now-found Clarion notebook
- read notes
- dig out
huge bag of critiques from Clarionites, sort them into piles
- take the
hugdoll stories out of the pile, put the others back
- look at
them.
Note, I did
no actual writing. Yeah, yeah, I know, these activities had to happen
before I can begin work. Just.. I didn't do any writing.
I'll do some
tonight, I swear.. unless Paul and Chris come back with comments on Kiss
of Death, in which case I'll finish that up and submit it, thus preventing
me from starting Hugdoll again.
I feel strangely
reluctant to open the story. I think it's because I also have to revisit
the stressed, overloaded, freaked out, haven't-slept-well-for-weeks, completely
insane week-4 me who wrote the story. But it has to happen sometime, and
I'm SO not ready to begin working on my novel yet.
I did print
out the novel, I have forgotten heaps of it and the feeling of whole-novel-in-the-head
that you need when writing one has well and truly gone.
To move
over vast territories and dare to love silly things
Oh my god.
I just read half of Ray Bradbury's book Zen and the Art of Writing
over lunch. Apart from being a zingy writer, making it a great read, he
had some things to say.
I mean, Things
To Say.
None of them
are things you haven't heard before, but for some reason they spoke to
me today.
I hope I'm
not breaking copyright if I quote from it here.
How
long has it been since you wrote a story where your real love or
your real hatred somehow got onto the paper? When was the last time
you dared release a cherished prejudice so it slammed the page like
a lightning bolt? What are the best things and the worst things in your
life, and when are you going to get around to whispering or shouting
them?
What
do you want more than anything else in the world? What do you love,
or what do you hate? Find a character, like yourself, who will want
something or not want something, with all his heart. Give him running
orders. Shoot him off. Then follow as fast as you can go. The character,
in his great love, or hate, will rush you through to the end of the
story. The zest and gusto of his need, and there is zest in hate
as well as in love, will fire the landscape and raise the temperature
of your typewriter thirty degrees.
...I began
to make lists of titles, to put down long lines of nouns. These
lists were the provocations, finally, that cause my better stuff to
surface. I was feeling my way toward something honest, hidden under
the trapdoor on the top of my skull. The list ran something like this:
THE LAKE. THE NIGHT. THE CRICKETS. THE RAVINE. THE ATTIC. THE BASEMENT.
THE TRAPDOOR. THE BABY. THE CROWD. THE NIGHT TRAIN. THE FOG HORN. THE
SCYTHE.THE CARNIVAL. THE CAROUSEL. THE DWARF. THE MIRROR MAZE. THE SKELETON...
...I began
to run through those lists, pick a noun, and then sit down to
write a long prose-poem-essay on it. Somewhere along about the middle
of the page, or perhaps on the second page, the prose poem would turn
into a story. Which is to say that a character suddenly appeared and
said, "That's me", or "That's an idea I like!"
And the character would then finish the tale for me.
I leave
you now at the bottom of your own stair, at half after midnight,
with a pad, a pen, and a list to be made. Conjure the nouns, alert the
secret self, taste the darkness. Your own Thing stands waiting way up
there in the attic shadows. If you speak softly, and write any old word
that wants to jump out of y our nerves on to the page... your Thing
at the top of your stairs in your own private night.. may well come
down.
How
to feed the muse: read poetry every day of your life. Poetry is
good because it flexes muscles you don't use often enough. Poetry expands
the sense and keeps them in prime condition. It keeps you aware of your
nose, your eye, your ear, your tongue, your hand. And above all, poetry
is compacted metaphor or simile. Such metaphors, like Japanese paper
flowers, may expand outward into gigantic shapes. Ideas like everywhere
through the poetry books, yet how rarely have I heard short story teachers
recommending them for browsing. [He goes on to explain how many stories
he has written are based on poems]
...You
say you don't understand Dylan Thomas? Yes, but your ganglion
does, and your secret wits, and all your unborn children. Read him,
as you can read a horse with your eyes, set free and charging over an
endless green meadow on a windy day.
The Feeding
of the Muse..[is] the continual running after loves, the checking
of these loves against one's present and future needs, the moving on
from simple textures to more complex ones, from naive ones to more informed
ones, from nonintellectual to intellectual ones. Nothing is ever lost.
If you have moved over vast territories and dared to love silly things,
you will have learned even from the most primitive items collected and
put aside in your life.
...By
living well, by observing as you live, by reading well and observing
as you read, you have fed Your Most Original Self. By training yourself
in writing, by repetitious exercise, imitation, good exmaple, you have
made a clean, well lighted place to keep the Muse.
Who
are your friends? Do they believe in you? Or do they stunt your
growth with ridicule and disbelief? If the latter, you haven't friends.
Go find some.
...I
went back to collecting Buck Rogers. My life has been happy ever
since. For that was the beginning of my writing science fiction. Since
then, I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space
travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs
and leave the room.
I remembered
my grandfather, my sister, and various aunts and cousins, in the coffins
and gone forever in the tombyards where the butterflies settled like
flowers on the graves and where the flowers blew away like butterflies
over the stones.
[Yeah, I know, this last is not writing advice, but it's so very beautiful.]
Damn, I'm
so inspired now, I want to go write. Now.
Thursday
8 April 2004
A new
story
Of course,
I did write last night. I wrote a first draft of a story called "Love
in the Land of Words", and for the first time, it felt like the
story just poured out.
I read it
back, and oh my god, nearly all my normal errors were absent. Probably
I have new ones. But no failure to show instead of tell; no repeated words
and phrases, no too-similar sentence structures, no absent motivations
and feelings (at least I think not).
Man, it felt
good. I sure hope it happens again.
Of course,
it doesn't have a plot or an SF twist, just characters in a situation,
as per usual. A plot? Nah, that would be asking waaaay too much. Kick
self: remind self that even Nalo has trouble plotting. Instruct self to
bloody well relax already.
But I do
have the bare bones of a great story. Ah... the pleasure.
Here's a
sample:
With
only language to support us, we float on a tide of words, made solid
on a screen, whisper thin. The alphabet is so tiny a thing. How can
two people be connected solely by a thread of letters?
I think if
I had read Ray Bradbury's little book a year ago, I would have not received
the message the way I did yesterday. I have tools now, and I was ready
to hear it.
Hrmph. That
sounded too new age for words, must stop immediately.
Looking forward
to Easter, in which I plan to Do Nothing Much. Mooching, pottering, hanging..
that type of thing.
Oh. And writing.
I probably
won't post until next week. See you then.
Thursday
15 April 2004
Easter
relaxation
I spent a
lot of Easter in bed, sleeping. I think I was fighting off the flu and
a bunch of stress, it was lovely. Also caught up with friends, went to
dinner, and did quite a bit of writing... as per the plan.
On Monday
we got sashimi and scallops from the fish markets and ate in the garden,
which was lovely.
Then I utterly
wrecked the day by flying to Canberra and holing up in a hotel room.
Writing
Got reviews
back from Chris and Paul about Kiss of Death. Paul hadn't seen it before
so his review was fresh, and he pointed out something that was entirely
obvious once I read it: the throughline of the story isn't clear. Is it
really about Deirdre taking revenge, or a tale of lost love reunited,
or escape from Hell, or what? The answer is, "what". It's about
Deirdre losing her mojo, and how she gets it back.
The fact
that six different readers had six different ideas about what the main
point is tells me that I need to revise the story.
Oh, and Paul
wants another sex scene in there. I'm
pleased, I mean if I wrote terrible sex he wouldn't ask that, but on the
other hand, how to write a scene that is sizzling enough to show that
a succubus, for God's sake, wants not to steal her target's soul, but
keep on having sex with him instead? It's quite a challenge, and I'm not
entirely sure I'm up to the task. On the other hand, Chris read it for
the second time and it still worked for him, so maybe I am underestimating
my talents.
Land of
Love is still going forward, I have written more of it and I have
planned out an ending I think I like.
My next story
has to have no sex in it at all. This is getting to be a bit of a pattern.
Life in
the land of cancer
Mum had a
revelation this week: her veneer bedside table let all the radio frequencies
from her clock radio through to her brain and that's what gave her cancer.
She's swapped it for her solid pine one and feels "amazing"
now.
She feels
better, so I'm glad, but it breaks my heart to hear her talk this way.
Once upon a time she would have scoffed at this (I mean, how does she
think radio frequencies get through the wall in the first place?). She's
so much more emotional and her reactions seem less mitigated by critical
judgement.
Friday
16 April 2004
My new
whiteboard toy
I have this
nice new whiteboard above my desk and I feel very special now. On it,
I have each story I'm writing/thinking about. Under each one I have the
Kim Wilkins structure diagram, showing the Ahah point and the Catalyst
for the end point. Next to that, I have "What this story is ABOUT".
And finally, the main theme/s.
This is extraordinarily
helpful. Looking at it, I realised that the story for Hugdoll basically
is this: Mum wants what daughter has; Mum gets (most) of it. The conflict
is all psychological. And now I understand exactly why David Hartwell
said it wasn't a story yet.
I found I
was in fact able to sum up Apulder Sweet, but what the story is
about isn't quite what I originally thought I was writing. It's now this:
A young
man becomes Maegan in the service of the Goddess, and gives up his chance
to marry. He is forced to sacrifice those he loves for the greater good.
He must decide whether to commit an atrocity against his nature or doom
his tribe to certain destruction.
I can sum
this up as: the Terrible Choice.
The theme:
why good men commit evil deeds.
Myths
I've just
started Joseph Campbell's The Hero of a Thousand Faces. It's not
exactly an easy read, but it's very interesting. I heard so many mentions
of it at Clarion that I thought I had better put it on my list.
Life in
the Land of Cancer
Last night
mum was thinking about her will. She already has one but she wanted to
know if I minded if she left something to her new grandson, to be born
in July. Of course I didn't mind, I told her. It's her money to leave,
after all, and why wouldn't she want to give some to her only grandchild?
She's very
talkative, making a lot more mistakes, but it's as if she wants to say
everything she can think of while she still can. Sentences are interspersed
with many "Yeah"s, as she pauses to collect herself, and it's
strange. Both my mother and not my mother simultaneously.
Mum said
she likes having the extra time to organise things, make peace, tie up
ends. She's grateful to have that chance rather than just going under
a bus or dying overnight the way my father did.
Incredible
that she can be grateful about a thing like this. My mum really is extraordinary.
She's such a generous spirited person: she was asking me to call a friend
to offer some advice about something since he seems so down at the moment.
At a time when many people would just be thinking about themselves.
Writing
Sunday
Tony is going
to the Logies in Melbourne this weekend. I went a couple of years ago
and it was hilarious fun. Highlights: the press literally elbowing me
in their haste to photograph Georgie Parker on the red carpet; the gossip
in the ladies room (Sandra Sully, my lips are sealed); the dresses; and
watching all those high-profile people suck up to each other.
But I'm happy
to not go again. Which means I get all of Sunday to myself, and I plan
to spend most of it writing. Weeeeee, a whole day writing! No wonder Zara
likes it so much.
I'd like
to get Kiss of Death finished for the 30 April deadline for Consensual,
and also Hugdoll, which I plan to submit at the end of April as
well, though perhaps that's a taller order.
It's hard
to not write Land of Words, since my head is full of it just now.
I hope I manage to leave it alone until the others are done.
Monday
19 April 2004
Kiss of
Death
I revised
Kiss of Death yesterday, and now it's 7000 words long, 2000 more
than the Consensual guidelines stipulate. Grrr. The deadline is only 11
days away, so I'm going to have to make some hard decisions.
I added a
new sex scene at the end, as suggested by Paul; also some more characterisation
for Etta and Nick, all of which have improved the story. However, it's
still too long for its story. I dont' want to cut either the 1500 AD scene
or the scene in London entirely. So... it's chopping words. That will
make it tighter in any case.
This story
has been painful to write, but it's okay, because I'm back in the groove.
Writing the new words is coming easily now.
Conflux
Looking forward
to going to Conflux next week, seeing the Clarion gang and everyone else.
I shopped yesterday for a suitable piece of jewellery to go with my seventies-ish
outfit for the Masquerade, and spent WAY too much money.
The saleswoman
there was flinging clothes, scarves, shoes and stuff at me, all of them
from Paris, all of them gorgeous, and I came out considerably poorer.
Ah well. I will wear the jewellery many times, I'm sure, not just for
the Masquerade.
Tuesday
27 April 2004
Conflux
and Clarion
I am totally
and utterly wrecked at the end of Conflux weekend. I flew down already
pooped on Friday night after several solid days of running workshops for
a client, which are intense-focus long days for me. The first night was
a blast, seeing all my Clarion buds, or most of them. The two Karens weren't
in the bar, and Zara was off somewhere else, but most of us were there
and it was very cool hanging out. The only person who didn't come down
for the weekend was James.
It was kind
of weird though, being with everyone in a situation where we weren't living
in close proximity and lots of other people we like were there too, getting
in between us. Several people brought their partners, as well. But life
has to move on. It's never going to be Clarion again, it will be something
new, still with strong bonds but not the same.
I was pleased
that there were no awkwardnesses, and we hung out just as comfortably
as we always did. By Saturday lunchtime though, everyone else at the con
was saying, "Don't mention the C-word". Hmm. Ah well, tough
luck.
Fried
brains.. hmm... tasty
Cool to know
that hardly anyone else has written anything (except Claire, who's just
a machine), and most haven't gotten back into reading yet either. Our
brains have fried! I feel much better about my pathetic hard-won output
now (one 5000-word SF erotica story to show for two months).
Stephen Dedman
and Elaine Kemp were there, editors of Consensual, and firmly said that
my story should not exceed the 5000 limit. I went back to my room and
ruthlessly cut out the whole of the 16th century flashback stuff. It gets
to the sex quicker anyway, appropriate in an erotic story.
Panels
The panels
were mostly ho-hum, as panels usually are. People show up half expecting
the others to do the work, and talk off the cuff. What people say off
the cuff is much the same as what they'd say at the bar, except they're
confined to the one topic. I wish they'd have more one-person talks, or
even panels where the participants prepare materials beforehand.
The Greg
Benford talk on global warming was very cool indeed, in which he proposed
a thin lens the size of North America positioned at the LeGrange point
(a million miles in from the Earth towards the Sun), to lower the temperature
of the sun's rays on earth.
Parties
But the highlight
of the weekend was, as always, the partying. Saturday night a few Clarionites
(described by one person as "your Clarionship"s), congregated
at a particular room party. We all piled in to the corridor and sat limbs
tangled, laughing at Andy speaking English with a major French accent,
and Paul telling horrible stories involving bodily fluids, and taking
"incriminating" photos of people drinking beer, and.. well you
get the picture.
By 3am Sarah,
Andrew, Paul, me and a few others were still in David Cake's room. David
was sound asleep on the couch. The rest of us just shot the breeze. About
4am we got hot chips sent up, and kept on. Eventually it was so close
to breakfast that we decided to wait for the restaurant to open at 6.30,
but at 5am I decided I had to sleep. I went to bed about the same time
as others were rising for the dawn service.
Didn't surface
until 2pm...went to a panel or two, then had another sleep.
I woke to
find my laptop had utterly fried, again. The lead shorted I think, and
I had no way of getting my story out from it.
Sunday night
was the Masquerade. I went in a 70s outfit: black flared pants, black
wrap top with a drapy tie, black crystal choker, and my hair up in a pile
on top of my head, 70s style. I thought it a little over the top but then
when I arrived revised that opinion. The other outfits were wild.
Some people
had actual costumes: Ming dynasty, Egyptian princess, mediaeval, Obe Wan
Kanobi, aliens, and Paul in a Pakistani merchant's outfit. Others followed
the supposed theme, like me, and wore a retro dancing outfit. Wendy in
an 80s mini, Peter Lyons in a cool punk outfit, someone whose name I forget
in a gorgeous 50s evening dress and chignon, with elbow length gloves,
Kim Wilkins in a flapper dress, etc.
An amusing
moment with someone whose face I didn't see, so I don't know her name,
but she had dressed as anti-matter. A kind of weird alien ant-y look,
she had a hood and over her face black opaque stockings so you couldn't
see her at all.
I said, "Cool
outfit", and she replied very seriously, "It's only a stocking
you know. Anyone could do it." It
was all I could do not to laugh.
Yuri wore
a perfectly ordinary cape to the Masquerade, which disappointed me enormously.
Last year he was famous for wearing only a tissue, just the one, over
his penis. This year he was heard to remark he hadn't brought a costume
last year so he improvised. He didn't think it went down all that well,
so he wasn't going to dress up. Damn, I was so looking forward to seeing
how weird it really got.
We danced
for hours. Highlights included Chris McMahon dragging me round the floor
in a loopy tango, and Sean McMullen doing an impromptu breakdance.
Heather
Gent (top), Trevor Stafford and me
(Photo
courtesy Claire McKenna)
We finished
with a group rendition of the Time Warp... how cool to dance it with people
who actually know how it goes... and finally Vienna. Hilarious, waving
our arms portentously in the air, emoting, "The feeling has gone
only you and I, It means nothing to me! This means nothing to me! Oh,
Vienna!"
Gawd. It's
such a ludicrously pretentious song and we hammed it up big.
Room parties
followed, and I didn't sleep until about 4am.
Gossip
Gossip was
a bit thin on the ground. Robert Stephenson and Bren did not have a showdown
after their recent set-to on Eidolist, as some people thought they might
(and apparently he was unaware she was a woman, though why that makes
a difference I really don't know).
At one stage
I inadvertently sparked an unfounded rumour, after Trevor and I were massaging
each other in the bar. What's up with Trevor and Alinta? people were asking.
Answer, for the record: absolutely zero, folks, just a massage. Check
out the evidence at left - taken by Claire at a point where Heather Gent
just couldn't resist muscling in on the act.
Erk..
Rydges...
The only
downside of the weekend was the crap hotel: Rydges Lakeside. I've never
liked it, but staying inside it for three days almost non stop was horrible.
It has a lot of dust and chemicals and crap air conditioning, so my sinuses
(and those of many others) instantly flared up. Lips were chapped, faces
were dry, eyes were itchy and red. Also it's daggy as all getout, the
food is shocking, and a beer is 7 bucks for a Coopers.
But overall,
I had a blast!
I even started
a new story last night when I got home, so I'm quite pleased with myself.
Laptop
of doom
That gremlin
came to visit again, this time shorting out my laptop lead and frying
it. My Kiss of Death story is in there and the final version is not on
my storage key, so I hope like hell that Dell can fix it properly fast.
I am extremely
glad that I bought an extra year's warranty for the laptop and the full
cover on-site service option. It was the definitely worth the extra I
paid to get it.
Thursday
29 April 2004
Writing
I began work
on Kelli's mum and the hugdoll last night, only because my laptop
is still fried and I can't get access to Land of Words. Make mental
note to backup to my storage key more often, dammit.
Reading through
all the Clarionborg comments, I found a way through, but I am still not
feeling like writing it. I found myself wanting to procrastinate a lot,
and since I'm such an expert at that... well I did write two pages, but
that was all.
I have news
that finally the Between Space anthology is to publish, supposedly
next week. I'm not holding my breath for my contributor copy going on
their past performance though. Looking forward to seeing what Misbah did
with Rockfall immensely.
Laptop,
laptop, I want my laptop!
Which
weirdo?
Today I took
the "Which
weirdo man of colour are you?" test that Nalo
Hopkinson added to her blog.
I am Little
Richard. Waaaay cool. Though I must do something about that hair.
Friday
30 April 2004
Laptops
and writing
Yay,
I have my laptop back. TJ from Dell arrived yesterday and in
two shakes of a pair of pliers it was fixed. Why they can't just sell
the power leads at Dick Smith's is beyond me.
So I have
exactly one day in which to finalise Kiss of Death.. yikes.
I'm still
utterly wasted from Conflux. I am officially over the hill, I mean if
you can't party all weekend and bounce back in a day or two, you are oooollllld.
Sob.
Mind you,
the fact I've stayed up late most nights writing hasn't really helped.
Emails
and voice
Zara listed
all the benefits of email in her blog
at the ungodly hour of 6.15 this morning. I'm inspired to counter them.
- Yes, you
can choose when to look at your email. But you may have no idea something
interesting/important has arrived, so you are slave to it... checking
it regularly or missing stuff.
- Yes, we
don't know who it is on the phone, but we do on email. But, like me,
you can get caller ID and know. No ID, it's no one you want to speak
to. Answering machines are like the delete key. You can (gasp) take
it off the hook, fail to answer, turn the volume down, ignore it, just
like email.
- Yes, email
lets you consider what you're going to say. But it lacks spontaneity,
intimacy and dialogue. It's one thought at a time, not an exchange.
- And thinking
so hard about what you're going to say makes you somehow less than you
really are as a person. You edit yourself, take care, present only your
most considered thoughtful face.
- Tone and
pace are missing, mood is (largely) missing.
- Intimacy
is missing. Yes you can be intimate on email, but nowhere near as much
as you can when you talk with someone.
- You can
say more in ten minutes with voice than you can in an hour on email,
no matter how fast you type.
- Email
can't deal with complex discussions. You can't tell if someone is wants
to change the subject or is pausing to expand on a thought.
- Yes, email
lets you review what was said. But sometimes, the things you say (even
on pre-considered email) are really best left unrecorded.
- And finally:
control over communication? I can't see it ever happening, even with
the best technology. You're still a human being, with all the usual
foibles (or in my case, with a few extra). If you write a slightly wrong
word, the communication is misinterpreted, and sometimes you have no
idea that it's been misinterpreted due to the lack of feedback. In some
respects you have less control over the effect of your communication
via email than you do via voice.
- So there.
;-)
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