Ostara Feast
It was incredible. First, there was the day celebration with my grandkids, the whole family together in the living room. kkitten42 gave out their Ostara basket's contents and they got candy and toys, both of them being cute and well behaved. I wound up loading a Pez dispenser for Sascha in the happy going-around and Kitten got me a package of pastel-colored candy corn for spring, which is so neat. Strikes me as a really good symbol right now. Spring's for planting, right? Perfect symbolic food to celebrate the Equinox.
Then we all sat together watching Ratatouille in the living room, a wonderful funny Pixar movie. We adults kept noticing the points more Pixar-influenced and more Disney-influenced in the plot and details -- it was a good blend this time. The rats were great. The CGI was incredible. The critic, appropriately named Mr. Ego, was hilarious -- and interesting and spawned discussion. The kids got into the Pez and the toys and the movie and got it on their level. Sascha occasionally narrated and explained to us that there were "Two Mice" on screen (if there were two or more than two of the rats visible) and it was so neat. They really liked it too. We were all laughing together.
Dinner was elegant. She fixed ham and twice-baked Yorkshire potatoes and a bread pudding that was brilliant, it went beyond bread pudding into something spectacular and tasty with all these subtle flavors chasing around being special and gooey and sweet. I don't really do food descriptions justice sometimes. It was stellar. HeraldoftheAbyss and I kept nibbling more bits of it after dinner while we sat around talking about the season and the year to come.
They went through three days of getting ready, moved the office upstairs and the dining room table down into what used to be the office and is now actually the dining room. They brought down an office chair for me so that I could sit at the table. We ate by candlelight and drank good mead with the meal, it went with it perfectly. Sweet mead and ham go together as well as sweet and sour pork or anything like that.
And she gave me the pep talk of my lifetime about my novels and what I can do with them. She hasn't given up on self publishing, she's seriously suggested that I start tossing most of my trunk novels at Lulu while sending out new ones to pro publishers. It's a thought, at least with some of them. I have so many. I'm seriously considering it. But either way -- the big question got settled.
They have been doing everything possible to make it easier for me to write, in very tangible ways. They don't feel shut out or rejected if I go off into a novel and don't come up except for coffee and to mutter wordcount. The conflicts that have raged throughout so many of my living situations are absent -- and I have been here for two years now. We all have. The house is stable and moving forward.
I came away realizing just how much they think of my writing, and that it's nothing like what I feared. The fears are the known. Where I am now is the unknown. How to live when life isn't hell. How to write when my life really is as enjoyable as it can get. What is the one thing that could make my life right now that much better?
My books in print and an excursion once or twice a year to a science fiction convention to sit on panel discussions and do anything from teaching to stand up comedy as long as it's not dull to people who share most of my passions in life anyway and wouldn't find either dull. She suggested my doing how to write stuff the same way I do how to draw, and classes, which are lucrative. They were in art too.
Writing is different. I don't yet have the SFWA card that'd be the credential my students' salable drawings were, though once I have that, well, that could easily turn into good credentials for classes and maybe the umptieth book on the topic.
I've got two possibilities. One I plan to do later, much later. I need more experience at it, and that's the "wrong thing right" one. Or, why the exceptions to the rules make such powerful special effects, cool ways to use them. The other would be Organic Writing, No Additives, No Outlines.
I couldn't actually do better than steering people to the Snowflake Method if they're that sort of writer, starting from the premise sentence and expanding ever outward in longer drafts. Linear organic writing is what I do -- come up with a premise, often no more than a cool opening scene and opening conflict. Then run with it and see who shows up and what goes on, pacing it more or less by how much of it there is and shifting my balance at a turnover point to start focusing on ending it.
I've done some essays on it and I could describe a lot of the elements that go into it, but doing an entire class would also mean tackling the subtopics like description and dialogue and characters and so on. I could do that. Whether I could do it better than other writers already have, I'm not sure -- but I do know I could do it in a way that'd be really useful for people who like writing the way I do. And for the others it'd rapidly weed them out and leave them feeling the way I did when I forced myself to outline. It can be done, but it's a lot more fun doing it my way and it didn't actually come out any better for doing it the less-fun way.
It should have this caveat -- If you hate to do outlines, try this method!
Or maybe "If you always turned in an outline written after you did your story or essay, this book is for you."
As a class... I'd have to think back to the classes that helped me. Mr. Mazurek's class, the freewriting exercises, the weird things like writing in the dark that broke convention. Mr. Tierney's class with its emphasis on readable story instead of perfect spelling and punctuation. "For that, get a dictionary, a thesaurus and a style guide. Use them." He was dyslexic, it didn't even slow him down but he did misspell his own name on the board the first day. That broke the ice of toxic perfectionism better than anything else could have. And David Gerrold's inspirational workshop at the convention in 1984 -- it'd have to have that buoyant feeling, that liberating intensity, that focus that talent is enthusiasm and the rest is just learning the how-to.
I'm feeling energized for the first time in weeks. It's been hard confronting my fears. My biggest was that going ahead with it would make my life turn hard again, would set off conflicts and disrupt my good living situation. But my good living situation is categorically different from the past.
Let's think about the people at the shelter and their attitude toward my writing. My writing and my attitude about my writing, which was really good at the time and much healthier than it was for years afterward, disturbed them. It broke the whole status game. It disrupted class differences. I was not supposed to be a cheerful disabled writer getting ready to sell potential bestsellers. I was supposed to put medical needs and jumping through hoops on a much higher priority than any hope of a future I might have, and I was not supposed to believe in that future so much that I'd act on it.
It would disturb the rest of the clients and they'd be jealous.
I got my book into print though. The gist of that conflict is all over Shelter Stories, which I am not ready to send in. I need the bigger triumph first. I want the pro-published SFWA card status before I ship that one at all, so that the tone of the book, the little guy against all the odds wins out, remains sound and true. Publishing Raven Dance was a good end to it but beyond that, I need to have more success to make that story really make sense.
And make that discouragement sound as ludicrous as it was.
I'm still doing Reculturing. It is an important book. But I am also hearing the siren call of new fiction again. I'm feeling, tonight, as if I do want to start another book fairly soon or at least knock out a story this week and toss it at some listing in Ralan's so that I can start collecting rejection slips again. I liked my rejection slips collection. Once again I've lost all of them, even the really classy little New Yorker one, and I need some more. Maybe this time I'll literally wallpaper the bathroom in them or something.
Heh, maybe that's why I didn't want to do the collage project in The Artist's Way for this week. I don't have the materials any more. I didn't manage to hang onto the rejection for Raven Dance that apologized for not buying my book because the publisher died and the entire company was in probate, so not buying any new books till that was over. Or the really encouraging one from Ted White. Or the memorably nasty one from Marion Zimmer Bradley, or the pleasant, encouraging, professional one that came on my second submission to her when I eliminated soppy cover letters.
I remember them though. That's what matters. I want that again. A good thick stack of them, proof I'm doing it, proof of courage. Because when I do that, the run gets broken up with acceptances and if I get enough of those, they'll give me a SFWA card.
Heh, it reminds me of Andy in The Shawshank Redemption patiently writing once a week to get the prison library funded. Then upping it to twice a week when he got somewhere. That can work. It's been a weird road to get here but I can see where I'm going from this point.
Then we all sat together watching Ratatouille in the living room, a wonderful funny Pixar movie. We adults kept noticing the points more Pixar-influenced and more Disney-influenced in the plot and details -- it was a good blend this time. The rats were great. The CGI was incredible. The critic, appropriately named Mr. Ego, was hilarious -- and interesting and spawned discussion. The kids got into the Pez and the toys and the movie and got it on their level. Sascha occasionally narrated and explained to us that there were "Two Mice" on screen (if there were two or more than two of the rats visible) and it was so neat. They really liked it too. We were all laughing together.
Dinner was elegant. She fixed ham and twice-baked Yorkshire potatoes and a bread pudding that was brilliant, it went beyond bread pudding into something spectacular and tasty with all these subtle flavors chasing around being special and gooey and sweet. I don't really do food descriptions justice sometimes. It was stellar. HeraldoftheAbyss and I kept nibbling more bits of it after dinner while we sat around talking about the season and the year to come.
They went through three days of getting ready, moved the office upstairs and the dining room table down into what used to be the office and is now actually the dining room. They brought down an office chair for me so that I could sit at the table. We ate by candlelight and drank good mead with the meal, it went with it perfectly. Sweet mead and ham go together as well as sweet and sour pork or anything like that.
And she gave me the pep talk of my lifetime about my novels and what I can do with them. She hasn't given up on self publishing, she's seriously suggested that I start tossing most of my trunk novels at Lulu while sending out new ones to pro publishers. It's a thought, at least with some of them. I have so many. I'm seriously considering it. But either way -- the big question got settled.
They have been doing everything possible to make it easier for me to write, in very tangible ways. They don't feel shut out or rejected if I go off into a novel and don't come up except for coffee and to mutter wordcount. The conflicts that have raged throughout so many of my living situations are absent -- and I have been here for two years now. We all have. The house is stable and moving forward.
I came away realizing just how much they think of my writing, and that it's nothing like what I feared. The fears are the known. Where I am now is the unknown. How to live when life isn't hell. How to write when my life really is as enjoyable as it can get. What is the one thing that could make my life right now that much better?
My books in print and an excursion once or twice a year to a science fiction convention to sit on panel discussions and do anything from teaching to stand up comedy as long as it's not dull to people who share most of my passions in life anyway and wouldn't find either dull. She suggested my doing how to write stuff the same way I do how to draw, and classes, which are lucrative. They were in art too.
Writing is different. I don't yet have the SFWA card that'd be the credential my students' salable drawings were, though once I have that, well, that could easily turn into good credentials for classes and maybe the umptieth book on the topic.
I've got two possibilities. One I plan to do later, much later. I need more experience at it, and that's the "wrong thing right" one. Or, why the exceptions to the rules make such powerful special effects, cool ways to use them. The other would be Organic Writing, No Additives, No Outlines.
I couldn't actually do better than steering people to the Snowflake Method if they're that sort of writer, starting from the premise sentence and expanding ever outward in longer drafts. Linear organic writing is what I do -- come up with a premise, often no more than a cool opening scene and opening conflict. Then run with it and see who shows up and what goes on, pacing it more or less by how much of it there is and shifting my balance at a turnover point to start focusing on ending it.
I've done some essays on it and I could describe a lot of the elements that go into it, but doing an entire class would also mean tackling the subtopics like description and dialogue and characters and so on. I could do that. Whether I could do it better than other writers already have, I'm not sure -- but I do know I could do it in a way that'd be really useful for people who like writing the way I do. And for the others it'd rapidly weed them out and leave them feeling the way I did when I forced myself to outline. It can be done, but it's a lot more fun doing it my way and it didn't actually come out any better for doing it the less-fun way.
It should have this caveat -- If you hate to do outlines, try this method!
Or maybe "If you always turned in an outline written after you did your story or essay, this book is for you."
As a class... I'd have to think back to the classes that helped me. Mr. Mazurek's class, the freewriting exercises, the weird things like writing in the dark that broke convention. Mr. Tierney's class with its emphasis on readable story instead of perfect spelling and punctuation. "For that, get a dictionary, a thesaurus and a style guide. Use them." He was dyslexic, it didn't even slow him down but he did misspell his own name on the board the first day. That broke the ice of toxic perfectionism better than anything else could have. And David Gerrold's inspirational workshop at the convention in 1984 -- it'd have to have that buoyant feeling, that liberating intensity, that focus that talent is enthusiasm and the rest is just learning the how-to.
I'm feeling energized for the first time in weeks. It's been hard confronting my fears. My biggest was that going ahead with it would make my life turn hard again, would set off conflicts and disrupt my good living situation. But my good living situation is categorically different from the past.
Let's think about the people at the shelter and their attitude toward my writing. My writing and my attitude about my writing, which was really good at the time and much healthier than it was for years afterward, disturbed them. It broke the whole status game. It disrupted class differences. I was not supposed to be a cheerful disabled writer getting ready to sell potential bestsellers. I was supposed to put medical needs and jumping through hoops on a much higher priority than any hope of a future I might have, and I was not supposed to believe in that future so much that I'd act on it.
It would disturb the rest of the clients and they'd be jealous.
I got my book into print though. The gist of that conflict is all over Shelter Stories, which I am not ready to send in. I need the bigger triumph first. I want the pro-published SFWA card status before I ship that one at all, so that the tone of the book, the little guy against all the odds wins out, remains sound and true. Publishing Raven Dance was a good end to it but beyond that, I need to have more success to make that story really make sense.
And make that discouragement sound as ludicrous as it was.
I'm still doing Reculturing. It is an important book. But I am also hearing the siren call of new fiction again. I'm feeling, tonight, as if I do want to start another book fairly soon or at least knock out a story this week and toss it at some listing in Ralan's so that I can start collecting rejection slips again. I liked my rejection slips collection. Once again I've lost all of them, even the really classy little New Yorker one, and I need some more. Maybe this time I'll literally wallpaper the bathroom in them or something.
Heh, maybe that's why I didn't want to do the collage project in The Artist's Way for this week. I don't have the materials any more. I didn't manage to hang onto the rejection for Raven Dance that apologized for not buying my book because the publisher died and the entire company was in probate, so not buying any new books till that was over. Or the really encouraging one from Ted White. Or the memorably nasty one from Marion Zimmer Bradley, or the pleasant, encouraging, professional one that came on my second submission to her when I eliminated soppy cover letters.
I remember them though. That's what matters. I want that again. A good thick stack of them, proof I'm doing it, proof of courage. Because when I do that, the run gets broken up with acceptances and if I get enough of those, they'll give me a SFWA card.
Heh, it reminds me of Andy in The Shawshank Redemption patiently writing once a week to get the prison library funded. Then upping it to twice a week when he got somewhere. That can work. It's been a weird road to get here but I can see where I'm going from this point.