Things about stuff
1. I have started Packing For Real. Nine boxes of books so far, three and a half bookcases to go. Plus the DVDs. I am feeling like packing is ... pretty much under control? And am very pleased with the clever, clever me of 2008 who hoarded all these cardboard boxes for reuse. Me of 20-whatever is going to be shaking her fist at me of 2012, but I don't think I'm going to have room to store them all again for next time.
2. Books! I have been trying to read things that would be happy/fun/etc., so last week I read Gwen Raverat's Period Piece: A Cambridge Childhood, a memoir about growing up as a granddaughter of Charles Darwin at the end of the 19th century. Then I read Goliath, the concluding volume of Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan trilogy, and had the very odd realization that Dr. Barlow, the lady boffin, was also Gwen's cousin Nora who was never allowed to go out of doors barefoot.
The other entertaining connection I made was recognizing an anecdote from Period Piece which was related--virtually word for word--in Bill Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life. I quite enjoy this ephemeral sense of being well-read. *g*
3. I have been continuing to read more short fiction (by which I mean, more than none), and it all gives me the very strong sense that I am not a natural writer of short fiction. It's not just a general sense of "I don't think I can DO this", although that is an element. It's also a sense of "Why on Earth would you do that much worldbuilding and character development and then not write a novel?" So. That's my set of biases making themselves obvious.
Now, off to submit some short stories....
2. Books! I have been trying to read things that would be happy/fun/etc., so last week I read Gwen Raverat's Period Piece: A Cambridge Childhood, a memoir about growing up as a granddaughter of Charles Darwin at the end of the 19th century. Then I read Goliath, the concluding volume of Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan trilogy, and had the very odd realization that Dr. Barlow, the lady boffin, was also Gwen's cousin Nora who was never allowed to go out of doors barefoot.
The other entertaining connection I made was recognizing an anecdote from Period Piece which was related--virtually word for word--in Bill Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life. I quite enjoy this ephemeral sense of being well-read. *g*
3. I have been continuing to read more short fiction (by which I mean, more than none), and it all gives me the very strong sense that I am not a natural writer of short fiction. It's not just a general sense of "I don't think I can DO this", although that is an element. It's also a sense of "Why on Earth would you do that much worldbuilding and character development and then not write a novel?" So. That's my set of biases making themselves obvious.
Now, off to submit some short stories....