Good morning. I finally feel human again. Or at least, reasonably so. How about you?
Since today is a catch-all type of day, I figure I’ll do a catch-all kind of post, of Things I’ve Been Wondering Lately. I wonder about a lot of things and I suppose this is my chance to share the joy.
* I finished reading The Guns of August and immediately wanted to know more about the First World War. I’ve got a couple books about Tannenberg and the Eastern Front during WWI (I needed to do this for character research for the YA). I guess the clearest thing coming through, when reading about war, is what a waste it is. A monumental, colossal waste. I wonder why people in power are so fond of it?
* Not just that, but I’ve been seriously wondering lately about economic issues. I’d wonder why capitalism always wants to have a huge base of “cheap” (read: as close to “slave” as possible) labor, and those who profit from that cheap labor are usually rich and spend a lot of money ensuring the supply of cheap labor–but then I think of other economic systems that rely on a mass of cheap labor, like Stalinist Russia or even modern China. It makes me wonder if cheap labor is a political question instead of straight economics.
* And the more I read about economics, the more I realize that it IS a political question, because the intersection of money and power is political. Or to put it another way, if you don’t have enough money or control over your production, you probably yearn for revolution and social progress a lot more than if you have a whole fortune to lose if you have to start paying your workers decent wages.
* Which makes me wonder about imperialism too. Is a condition of empire to have a huge poverty-stricken underclass to provide that cheap labor?
*Why in the bloody blue blazes are they saying it’s going to be in the mid-nineties tomorrow? What the hell is going on here?
* Education is something I stand firmly behind. But the current norm in schooling isn’t education, it’s indoctrination. And then there’s the problem of funding–schools and libraries, if you look at the money spent on them and their staff, are just not a priority in America. (Neither, apparently, is healthcare or the eradication of poverty. See above.) Is it different in other places? Where would I find the stats on that?
* I wonder if trees are singing in math. You know, look at their branches, and the mathematical expression of regularity the branch structures have, and yet they are also flexible complex systems interacting with the world around them. They have to be singing. But it’s probably in math.
* I hate math. My second-grade teacher always told me I wasn’t any good at it. I believed her for years.
* Why aren’t more people really interested in wolverines? I mean, these creatures are fascinating. Although they are weasels. That is a strike against any creature. Not as big a strike as belonging to the rodent family.
* I realize a lot of people love cute little mice. But I HATE rodents. Mostly rats. It’s the beady little eyes and the naked little tails. How can one think anything with a naked tail is cute? GAH.
* The more I think about it, the more I think politics functions on the same principle (though with different social processes) as inner-city gangs. I once read somewhere that people still function in tribes, and they don’t care too much unless someone from their tribe (the group of thirty to fifty people they really know) is affected by something. Political parties seem to function just like gangs, which are really just violent tribes, or confederations of violent tribes. More on this when I finish reading Islands in the Street.
* I’m about to announce the Sooper-Sekrit Projekt.
* I wonder why the sky is a different blue in winter–a thin blue–than in summer, when it’s deep and hazy? And spring blue, washed with rain, is different yet. Is it light refraction and temperature and humidity changes? Or is it what I think in my heart of hearts, that the sky is speaking to the earth below?
* Oh, and I need a glossary if I’m going to write the second Steelflower. *headdesk*
For right now, that’s a little bit of what I’m wondering. Scary, ennit?
If you can’t tell, this is another long jag of sleeplessness. The horror of insomnia really only reaches a crest on the third night, since after that the world takes on a hue of unreality divorced from all but the most scorching event. The second night, where I’m at, is terrible in its own way and usually only bearable with doses of Mahler’s Fourth.
Don’t ask me why. Mahler just gets me through the rough patches. At least a particular part of the Fourth. I tried Beethoven’s Ninth once on a second night and was almost done in.
I’m only partially joking.
The second night is when you think you might conceivably be able to sleep, and to have that chance snatched away is cruel, cruel. To endure hour after hour of the silent world, feeling your dry hot eyes protest at the work they’re asked to perform, to think that if you just hold out another quarter-hour blessed slumber might result…it’s an exquisitely awful torture devised by the makers of Tantalus.
I’m hoping I won’t see the third night. Night 3 of an insomnia jag is terrible.
I did everything I was supposed to do–no caffeine after noon (though I desperately needed Motrin AND chocolate), a walk in the late-afternoon sun to convince my circadian, a small snack before bed to keep the tummy happy, deep breathing and a half-hour of quiet before retreating to bed.
No dice. Akhmatova summed up insomnia thus, in a translation now lost in a book I left behind in the trap of my first marriage:
Both sides of my pillow
are already hot
And I think that’s a great, very poetic way to put it. Dammit. Exactly.
Both sides of the world are already hot. Time for some valerian tea. It might not knock me out but at least it will tranquilize me. I could probably try reading some Cussler from the Muffin’s collection. If that prose doesn’t send me into fits of somnolence, I don’t know what will.
I’m kidding about the Cussler. Really. Some things even I won’t do. I’ll probably go back to Christopher Fry’s The Dark Is Light Enough or Emer Martin’s Breakfast in Babylon, both of which have kept me company until dawn several times. Under no circumstances will I touch Sylvia Plath, Janet Fitch’s White Oleander, or Siegel’s Like The Red Panda, which will almost certainly do me in if they get to me tonight.
See, that’s part of insomnia too–at least for me. The prescriptive use of literature, along with wariness of the pitfalls. I once read Kerouac’s description of Mexican junkies (wasn’t it Tristessa? I think it was, should find that book) on a third night and wasn’t Quite Right for a couple days even after I started sleeping again.
Anyway. Valerian tea and prescriptive literature. What do you read when you need comfort?
6K on Weasel Boy today–yesterday–today. I have not, alas, been to sleep yet. I’ve polished an essay too, filled out paperwork, and really wanted to get some shuteye since I have to put in serious work on the Sooper-Sekrit Projekt. Which is a serialization that will go live in June, if you really want to know, and that’s all I’m saying just yet.
I’m exhausted but I can’t sleep, despite the comfort of The Chair. You would not believe what I went through to get Scotch Gard on this thing. I know I shouldn’t have gone with light beige microfiber, but seriously, the only other option was leather and that I won’t do.
Oh, and about The Chair: it’s the Furuvik series, the Kviarp chair. Unfortunately it doesn’t show up on the Ikea website, for some weird, weird reason. But seriously, I know it exists because I am parked in it right this moment and the back support is heavenly.
Another thing that is heavenly? Clive Owens. In mini-movies put together by BMW and directed by peeps such as Ang Lee and Guy Ritchie. (Sadly, the Ritchie one has Madge in it.)
Now, I have a yen for Clive Owen. I will see just about anything that man does. I realize I am interested in the character he plays and how pretty he is (I am not COMPLETELY shallow) but hey, I have hormones like everyone else. I’m allowed a few moments of appreciation of a very, very fine work of art, right?
There are others, including a wrenching one about a war photographer and…well, it may just be a marketing ploy on BMW’s part, but holy cow the directors did a good job and I find Clive bloody stunning.
Yes, Selkie, I’m blogging about it. You were right.
Anyway, I’m thinking Tuesday is going to be a blur of exhaustion. So I’m going to bid adieu. I’ve got another vampire attack to get Weasel Boy and his fair lady shaman through.
You know, some nights, even though I can’t sleep, it’s still pretty cool just being me.
Well. I sent the first draft of the YA off and am working on Weasel Boy this morning. I got the beginning for the second in the YA trilogy and have to tear myself away from writing it because the Sooper-Sekrit Projekt (soon, my dears, you will be able to Know All) will be taking up my afternoon–AFTER the new chair is delivered.
You see, for five or six years now I’ve been writing while sitting cross-legged in a papasan chair, with the laptop balanced on a footstool in front of it. (Well, a footstool and this little thing, which is from Levenger, referred to in our house as “that company that sells crack to writers.” I could spend HOURS on one of their catalogs…) The only drawback to this is a certain amount of pain, both lumbar and thoracic, because there’s no back support at all. Still, I’ve held off getting anything else because a. I can’t afford it and b. a certain amount of my creative process is the sitting cross-legged and I couldn’t find a chair that I could sit in that way and write.
The Selkie loves Ikea. The colors, the regimented order, the options. She has since infected me with the adoration, and this past weekend I initiated C.H. (our friend Make_me) into the fold. Which was my second trip to Ikea last week, because earlier in the week I was able to get out while the Teen was watching the kids and pop out there…and while I was there last week I found THE CHAIR.
THE CHAIR is low, but it’s wide enough for me to sit cross-legged. It has back support, and out of all the chairs I tested at Ikea it was clearly the winner. Now, there were a couple problems–it only comes in a sort of pale beige microfiber unless I wanted it in leather, which I most emphatically did NOT. (Too sticky.) But I can drape a bedsheet over it to keep it from getting smudged (that is a losing battle, but I could try) or I could Scotch-Gard it like it’s going out of style and hope that works.
And today THE CHAIR will be delivered. Which means I’ll be saying goodbye to my poor papasan.
I am ridiculously excited.
Anyway, since you’re probably bored with my obsessive love for THE CHAIR and all things desk-related, I’ll give a couple linkies and sign off.
Good morning, everyone. Since I’m about to start on a Sooper-Sekrit Projekt as well as a guns-blazin’ edit on Redemption Alley, with wordcount each day on Weasel Boy, it’s official. I’m not even going to have time to breathe. But that’s okay. The living dead don’t need breath, do they? And “living dead” is pretty much how I feel this morning, even after coffee. I feel like I could be in a Romero flick, cocked head, drool, and weird shambling gait included.
So, how about some creepy stuff? Buckle yourselves tightly, dear ones. We’ll start with something small. Something only a little creepy.
Here’s Schiller’s skull. Only, not really. They’ve done DNA testing and it’s not Schiller’s skull, though it was exhumed from a mass grave where the poet was buried and thought to be his. DNA testing has said neither of the candidates for Schiller’s skull are actually his. Neat, huh?
That’s about the last level of creepiness that has some cool attached to it. We’re going to go deeper, into the creepiness that has NO COOL WHATSOEVER.
Now that we’ve stretched out and warmed up, take a look at this publishing scam directed at teens. Yes, for $2500, your teen can become a member of a pyramid scheme/cult! This reminds me of the thing just out of high school, when my young friend got a job selling knockoffs of designer perfumes. Huge bottles of them, and the kids had to work parking lots and mall entrances (running the risk of being in trouble for soliciting without the approval of the property owner) and hand over their earnings to the person who signed them up for the job. In essence, it was pimping perfume. It sounded too good to be true, and truth be told I was kind of glad she did it, because we both needed the lesson. It ended up with her being stranded in California because her car had broke down and they wouldn’t let her come home–but that’s another story.
The creep factor here is way, way higher than Schiller’s skull because these people are targeting teenagers. Ugh. Teen writers: please, please keep Yog’s Law in mind.
Next up the ladder of creepiness is something exponentially worse. How about scaremongering by the Air Force? The absurdity of “throw money and your children at us so we can use and abuse both to guard against fictional terrorists!” is reaching all-new heights. In SPACE!
Now, military recruitment is not and never has been an art of complete unvarnished truth, mind you, but this is an all-new height of untruth. In other words, flat-out, baldfaced, epic lies. Which shouldn’t be necessary to induce people into the patriotic and honorable institutions of the armed forces. Except, well, I’m not sure our armed forces are being used for patriotic or honorable ends.
As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure they’re not. Which just adds insult to injury.
I don’t know why I’m surprised, considering the last (and worst) item on our Creeptastic Parade today. Did you think break-ins by the government stopped with Watergate? You’re wrong. And now arson’s added to the mix as well.
Basically, the story is this: remember the news stories about Republican Party apparatchiks pursuing political “investigations” of anyone in the Justice Department who didn’t toe their political line, or anyone who tried to do their jobs? (Not so incidentally, those jobs might include watchdogging and prosecuting government corruption, something that’s at an all-time high with Rove, Cheney, and Boy Monkey in office?) The news coverage of such things has quietly vanished from the mainstream media. And those political “investigations” have been aided by break-ins, arson, and at least one alleged attempted vehicular assault.
The mainstream media would rather cover John Edwards’s haircut, Obama’s bowling score, American Idol, and Miley Cyrus photo shoots. Arson, break-ins, and vehicular assault by our own government is getting a huge pass.
Yeah, that’s the creepiest thing of all. The Fourth Estate is no longer really our friend, fellow citizens. They’re part of the narcotic drip meant to keep us anaesthetized while the super-rich buy even more power and entrench themselves even further as lords of earth and latifundia.
Cloudy and cool today, and I am very glad. Somehow sunshine and heat doesn’t appeal to me right now–I want to do up a pot roast and some mashed taters, and that’s not a hot-day kind of dinner. Not to mention I want to curl up on the floor and stare out the window, and if it’s sunny I feel like I should be outside doing yard work. I don’t precisely mind yard work, but after yesterday’s huge effort to get Strigara in first-draft form ready for an editor to look at it I’m feeling pretty drained.
A lot of Readers have emailed and commented to ask if they can get Serafim at a regular comics distributor, and when exactly the print edition of Steelflower will be out.
* Right now we don’t have a distribution network or anything for Serafim, so the best way to get it is to order through Josh’s website (look for the little “Add to Cart” button on the top) and pay with PayPal. Sorry about that–but you can ask your local comic store about it. If they get enough requests they might stock it! And that would be awesome.
Urk. My brain still feels like a sponge that’s been squoozled dry. So I’ll bid you all a civil adieu and go do the dishes, preparatory to lying on the floor in the living room and staring out the windows at the sky.
Is it wrong, that it sounds like such a good idea?
Argh. Ahoy. I finished the revisions on Strigara to make it a first draft instead of a rough draft. I’m going to give myself a day, then go back to Weasel Boy. And, not so incidentally, the last-batch revisions on Redemption Alley I’m faced with.
I would much rather have a glut of work than be knocking about with nothing to do. But when I finish this sort of rough-draft revision, my brain feels like it’s been scrubbed out and wrung dry. I have to lay on the floor a bit and stare at the ceiling, drooling, until the sponge soaks up enough water to fill out its accustomed outlines again.
You know, when I started this writing thing, I had no idea about revisions. It’s just as well, or I might have done something desperately stupid just to avoid it. It’s not that I don’t like revisions, it’s just that…Jeez. On an 80K book, you will probably write five times that in revisions, between tweaks, false starts, other bridging, fixing structural issues, emailing your editor–you get the idea. Argh.
All of which leads me to: I’m within spitting distance of 70K for the YA on my pass between rough draft and first draft. (Definitions: the rough draft is the very first corpus of the book, the draft NOBODY SEES because it is messy and unfinished. Prettify and fix it up after a short break and you have a First Draft, which will be savaged by your beta and editors. *headdeak*)
The book will end up between 70-80 (closer to 80) and the only bad thing about this part of the process is obsessively reworking pretty much every freaking sentence. Which (can’t you tell?) I’m kind of avoiding for about ten minutes while I write this.
No, I will not write space opera just yet. Quit asking. I know you’ve got plans for me, but the stuff that’s under deadline is the stuff we have to do first.
Jesus. Quit crying. STOP IT. Don’t look at me like that.
Okay. All right. Fine. ONE HOUR of space opera a night. That’s my final say on it.
Don’t hug me, Muse. I’m going to work your a$$ off for this.
Does it make me unfaithful if I usually work on two books at once?
And the next random thing: Indian cricket in cheerleader cover-up. I understand conservatism–really I do–but why is it always directed against women’s clothing/behavior? All these societies who systematically, economically and otherwise, repress one-half their population–and then make that half something that needs to be mutilated or repressed even further to guard the culture’s “virtue”.
That being said, the idea of cheerleaders at a cricket match kind of makes me put my head to the side with an RCA dog “What? Huh?” look. Do the cheerleaders take tea with the teams or the fans?
And because my brain is wired weird, I went straight from Indian cricket to Bollywood this morning.
I took some bellydance a while back, and I’m here to tell you a lot of those moves I’m seeing are HARD. (I know it’s not belly or Eastern or even Egyptian-style dance, but it looks similar to me and makes the same muscles hurt when I try to block it out.) DAMN. That’s some serious dedication and effort right there.
If you haven’t guessed, I love me some Bollywood. (God bless Youtube, where I can get a quick fix without having to go looking for an Indian grocery, where I can buy ghee and random DVDs that might or might not work in my player.) My favorite, though is a Shahrukh Khan flick titled Asoka, a very highly fictionalized account of an emperor who converted to Buddhism. Here’s a little bit of goodness from that film–incidentally, this is one of the Prince’s favorites. He loves dancing around the room to this, and will beg me to rewind it all afternoon so he can hear it again. (The guys on stilts are a particular favorite.)
Now is the time for me to mention I think Shahrukh Khan is totally hawt, right? Anyway, love me some Bollywood and I especially dig sharing. Enjoy this last one, also from Asoka, it’s got subtitles.
Catchy, ennit?
Now it’s back to revising. I’m halfway through Strigara now, and should have a workable first draft (not the rough draft) by the end of the week if I take it easy, less if I push it.
I did give the talk on writing a series–it turned into more than I thought it would, and I think I totally blew it by getting off-topic. But the audience was asking questions, so I chose to go in the direction prompted by their questions rather than stick like glue to the subject. I’m pretty sure it was a total bomb.
*sigh*
Anyway, off I go. The house is quiet and I’ll get an hour of work in before everyone wakes up. Sounds good. Happy Monday, all.
I think my body’s fighting off another bug. You know that flu feeling you get when you’re just coming down with something? Not sick enough to take to your bed, or even sick enough to take a decongestant. Just blargh, run-down, body aching, head caught in a vise not squeezing very hard but still there and stuffed with cotton to boot.
Yeah. Like that.
My Friday post is up at Fangs, Fur, Fey; it’s titled That’s Great. Now, Do It Again. It is a reprint of a post I did last June. Sorry about that, but the subject has come back up again and I think it’s useful. Above all, I didn’t want to retype the damn thing.
You’ve been continuously mugged and beaten and robbed blind for the past seven years straight, and as you lay there on the cold, hard economic ground, bleeding and gasping and wondering what the hell happened to your vacation time and your health care plan and your mortgage payment, your attackers scoff and leer and toss a couple of bloodstained nickels on your pulverized face and mutter, here sucker, have some bus fare, and then they cackle and stomp away with all your loot and dignity and hope, back to the White House from whence they came.
What, too harsh? Not really. It’s a lovely feeling, made even more sweetly ironic by the fact that Congress will likely soon shove through another $108 billion in war funds like a giant gallstone through our collective fiscal urethra. Right there, that’s about 500 bucks for each and every adult human in America, baristas and Baptists and NASCAR fans alike.
Do you see? Your “economic stimulus” check is meaningless, an empty gesture, a trifling crumb of recompense after robbing you blind via insane gas prices, infrastructure meltdowns, massive failed wars that aren’t really wars. Thanks for the bogus check, Dubya, now where can I buy a sliver of our missing national dignity? (Mark Morford)
Yeah. I really can’t add much more to that. Except that later on in the article, he links to a study that shows meditation can strengthen empathy. Make you kinder.
Boy, do I ever need that today. I’m feeling like Nix, our third cat–the one who looks like a ferret and is jumpy as a…erm, big jumpy thing. (I almost said coke fiend, but decided that would be Too Much. Oops…) Anyway, I feel like every inch of my skin is too aching and sensitive today, like I’m skittering and jumping from one shadow to the next, trying to find one big enough to hide me from.
Anyway–on the reading front, I read Scott Westerfeld’s Pretties and Specials yesterday too. The series was great. A little deus ex machina-y (what the Selkie and I call magic dingus-y) at the end of Specials, but no complaints. It was great, well-structured, and nicely done. Bravo. Usually when I blaze through a book or two that fast I’m not looking under the hood and tinkering with the engine, which means I’m not being pulled out of the story. I did find some of the luck stuff–like the main character just happening to land inside an anthropological experiment–a bit heavy-handed, but what are you going to do? It’s YA, and short YA at that. All in all, it was a fantastic little series, and just what I needed.
Last but not least, my Mother’s Day present arrived. I’ve taken to buying my own and enthusing over them so nobody has to buy me soap on a rope or a tie or anything, you know. Everyone’s happier that way. This year the kids got me a Garbo box set. I’ve always wanted Queen Christina on DVD. Now I can satisfy my longing for sultry Swedes who just want to be aloooooooone. What an awesome gift.
Heh. Not too many complaints, despite the post title. Oh well, it’s nice to be pleasantly surprised. Also: I scored this at Powell’s last time I went. What a great title, eh? I’m hoping it will live up to it. Even if it doesn’t, the premise is awesome and should provide me with grist for the mental mill.
But first, work today. And a nap. Definitely feeling like a nap.
I almost forgot: Saturday (tomorrow) I will be at Cover to Cover Books from 5-7PM for the monthly Writer’s Mixer. I’ll be presenting on the topic of continuity and character development in a multiple-book series. In case you want to, you know, come by and beat me up or anything.
