3/31/2008

Last day of pre-Script Frenzy discretionary time

I doubt I'll have much time during April, so today I took advantage of wanting to attend a session of this script-critiquing group I go to occasionally to add in a visit to the Art Gallery of NSW. There I nourished my soul by looking at lots of art. I had been wanting to see the Archibald Prize works, but they were charging eight dollars to get in, and I figured I could wait until the exhibition toured to Wollongong.

My two favorite things (on this visit, at least) were a scroll depicting a hyakki yako (or "parade of the object goblins") and a picture entitled "Ogre chanting Buddhist prayer" (see graphic, which, since the thing dates from 1864, I'm assuming is in the public domain). It instantly became my very favorite painting* ever (an honor it will retain until displaced by another).

The script critiquing was an interesting experience. It was my turn, to the extent these things are formalized in this group, to present stuff for critiquing. I submitted two 10-minute (or so) plays. One, the group loved (which gratified me, as I've always been rather fond of it myself). One, they so didn't love (which surprised me, as it got short-listed for the Sydney Short & Sweet play festival a couple of months back — go figure).

All in all, a very artsy, I-wear-black-all-the-time kind of day. Even though I wasn't wearing any black at all — and, indeed, tend to avoid the complètement-noir look. (Oh! An untranslated French phrase! Now I am so artsy I cannot be standing myself.)

*Actually, it seems to be a woodcut, but if it's hand-colored, is it a painting or a print?

3/30/2008

Pre-Frenzy!

Today Margaret and I met up with some of my fellow Script Frenzy buddies (whom I hadn't met before — I'm a big fan of the Internet, not least for things like this). We had a fun afternoon talking writing and popular culture ("Can you make some sort of rudimentary lathe?") and food and some of the various ins and outs of life. I was very happy to make this sort of connection with some new writing buddies, and it was a teriffic lead-in to Script Frenzy.

And that, of course, is the real fun of things like Script Frenzy and NaNoWriMo. Not so much the deadlines, nor the self-challenge, nor even the fact that you have a lot of words written at the end. But the fact that you know there are dozens and hundreds and thousands of people all over the world doing the same thing, and every single one wants every single other one to succeed. There's something quite magical in all that, quite powerful. Quite fun.

3/29/2008

Earth Hour at our place

Tonight was Earth Hour, an originally Australian, now global, initiative to get everyone to turn off their lights (and nonessential appliances, I would assume) for one hour. The object of the game is not only to save power but to raise awareness of the issues around climate change, and to nudge people into getting involved.

At our place, we dutifully lit a couple of candles, and turned all the lights and most of the appliances off at the wall. We ate cookies. Houston and I had a beer (Cooper's Extra Strong Ale, which we recommend). We goofed around and talked and even sang a little bit. We watched the amazing thunderstorm that was flashing and crashing all around us, and which delivered a bonus of hail. We ate more cookies nom nom nom. (Yes, we made the Cookie Monster noises.) The hour seemed to pass quite quickly.

Then, when the hour was accomplished, we turned the lights back on, turned the computers back on, resumed our work.

It's nice when the people in a family like each other enough to consider it a treat to turn off the computers and other media and goof around and eat cookies together.

Nom nom nom!

The Pen Poem Relay has a group on Facebook

Here's the link. For details about the relay, go here.

The Relay apparently gets underway officially tomorrow (the 30th). I think the relay is a fascinating idea and that the ideas (freedom of expression and linguistic diversity, not to mention location-independent artistic collaboration) are vitally important.

3/28/2008

Seeking warmth!

Autumn stalks me. Tonight is decidedly chilly. Extremely chilly. Chillingly chilly. And our house has no thermal inertia whatsoever: whatever temperature it is outside, it is inside (I exaggerate a little, but only a little; worse yet, we rent, so there's nothing we can do about it). I hate being cold; even the possibility of it makes me so anxious I literally can't sleep.

I used to use a rubber hot-water bottle, but too many of them split catastrophically without warning (no visible signs of cracking, for example). One time I was badly scalded. So I swore off rubber hot-water bottles.

I currently use a wheat pack. But they stay warm for, max, about 20 minutes to a half hour. And even the lavender ones smell funny. Grainy. Oaty. I love horses but not enough to want to have that barn atmosphere in my own home.

I don't want to use a heating pad or electric blanket, partly because I don't want yet another electric cord draped around our bedroom to reach the appallingly inconveniently located outlet, partly because I don't want to use something so environmentally dubious as yet another electric appliance, and partly because having something draped around one as one sleeps that's connected to 240 volts is a little disconcerting when you think about it.

What I dream of is a hot-water bottle that is made of something a bit less perishable than rubber. Not a wheat pack. Nothing that needs electricity.

Any suggestions?

3/27/2008

An encouragement, all things considered.

Mud and Glass ended up being longlisted (as in, one of the top 34 or so out of 165 manuscripts) for the Orbit/Queensland Writers Centre Manuscript Development Program. While it would have been nice to actually be one of the winners, I can't really complain about being in the top 20 percent of manuscripts. Not only does it validate my ability to actually write a novel-length work of some standard, it puts my synopsis and partial before the eyes of a major publisher, which can only be a good thing. That, and the acceptance of "I'm Too Loud" (see below), are a pretty generous helping of affirmation — more than I'm used to! Oh, I feel so full! *pats stomach*

I'm getting a short play critiqued on Monday at a crit group I go to in Sydney from time to time; let's see how badly deflated I am when I get home from that!

3/26/2008

No surprises here.





Which Mythbuster Are You?
created with QuizFarm.com
You scored as Jamie

You are Jamie, quite possibly the wisest Mythbuster. You prefer caution more often than not because you realize the potential of the experiements you do. But, you have a lot of fun doing it, sometimes setting you off in an evil little giggling fit.


Jamie


70%

Kari


40%

Grant


35%

Adam


20%

Tory


20%


Poem relay — a fascinating and inspiring idea!

PEN International, "a worldwide association of writers with 145 centres in 104 countries...[that] exists to promote friendship and intellectual cooperation among writers everywhere, to fight for freedom of expression and represent the world conscience of literature" (quote from their main site), is running a project to promote awareness of what condition freedom of expression is in — specifically, in China.
Celebrating Linguistic Diversity and Carrying the Torch for Freedom of Expression in China
The poem 'June' by imprisoned Chinese poet and journalist Shi Tao is relaying around the world, country to country, language to language, until it reaches Beijing for the Olympics in August.

PEN Centres around the world have translated 'June' to over 60 (and counting) of the world's languages.

When the poem arrives at a new location, you can read and hear a new translation.

The PEN Poem Relay begins in Taiyuan, Shanxi, China, the poet Shi Tao’s hometown. On March 30, the poem arrives at Greek PEN Centre (at the same time the Olympic Torch arrives in Panathinaiko Stadium in Greece).

Here's the link to find out more: www.penpoemrelay.org. It's got a map of where the poem is, links to listen to it in the languages it's been translated into as it goes, background information on the poet and his situation, information on PEN International, ways to get involved, profiles of other writers in prison in China, and updates ("dispatches") on the project and related issues.

Go have a look!

3/25/2008

Is anything different?

Now that I've had a speculative-fiction story accepted for publication, that is? Yes. Yes, it is. I no longer fear quite so badly that I'm just fooling myself about being able to write.

Family and friends (particularly Clarion buddies) have been very congratulatory, and not one of them has acted surprised that I actually got a story accepted.

Work on the current story, however, is proceeding slowly. A title change is helping the focus of the story a bit, and I'm finding the premise really fun and quite amusing. But, oh, how draining it is to come up with a plot that's even a little bit not-what-everyone-will-be-expecting....

3/23/2008

Easter dinner — a celebration!

I made a sumtpuous feast for Easter dinner: an enormous hunk of heavily peppered roast beef (with the accompanying heavily peppered gravy), steamed asparagus, mushrooms fried in butter and cinnamon (surprisingly good), ricotta and roast-garlic mashed potatoes, and my famous roast sweet potatoes with red pepper/capsicum, pecans, honey, and pepperoni. Houston opened a nice bottle of wine. Chocolate for dessert.

We were celebrating not only Easter (a joyous holiday in itself!), but the fact that this evening I got word that my story "I'm Too Loud" will be published in AntipodeanSF in July. You read it here first: my very first speculative-fiction publication. It made it a bit hard to actually sit still and eat the sumptuous Easter feast. (Although that didn't stop me, really, in the end.)

Happy Easter!

May renewal, confidence, and joy find you and remain with you this Easter season and beyond!

3/22/2008

Significant, alarming, and humiliating productivity slump

Okay, so there I was, sitting proudly atop a second finished novel (at least to first-draft stage), thinking, Wow, isn't this great, most people don't ever even finish one novel and here I am with two, I'm so cool, I'm so productive, now let me get to work on the dozen other projects that have been waiting for this moment.

Well, a week has gone by and I've written a grand total of — let's check the wordcount log, hmmm — 1,300 words. In six days (to be precise). That, to put it in the vernacular, sucks. Is it that my story synapses are in recovery phase? Is it that I'm just bone lazy? Evidence suggests the latter.

The good news is, I've gotten caught up on a lot of other things: State Emergency Service business, critiquing stories for friends, doing the dishes on a regular basis, finishing learning the purple-belt form at my karate school, going to the archery range, making the religious observances incumbent upon me at this time of year. The bad news is there's no denying that 1,300 words a week make me so not Ms. Professional Writer. I've got to start cranking out more words. It's not that I don't like what I'm writing; I do. (Even if nobody who's prepared to sign a check agrees at the moment.) In fact, the story I'm currently working on is heaps of fun. I just, well, I'm...uh...it's — I'm bone lazy.

3/21/2008

Good Friday

Now that I live in a country where Good Friday is a legal holiday, I find it's a bit easier to observe the day with solemnity. I used to have to go to work, hungry and cranky, and try to keep in mind just what the day actually means for Christians. The good news about the entire continent of Australia slowing down and closing up for the day is that one is compelled to have a quiet, homebound, meditative day. The bad news is that this hasn't really stopped the secularization of the Easter weekend, when candy figures prominently, as it does in the States. (Margaret has agreed that it is inappropriate to have candy on Good Friday, and is happy to make that observance. On Easter, though, we will all indulge, I reckon.) Sadly, another facet of Easter here is that a lot of people take vacations and the road toll goes way up.

We, though, are staying home today. The weather is encouraging this: chilly and rainy. I'm hungry at the moment, of course, but I'm making a loaf of bread: meatless, simple, made by my own hands (with some help from the bread machine, which is kneading the dough while I type; I hope this does not negate the virtue).

In other news, I'm getting ready for Script Frenzy. Like NaNoWriMo, and run by the same mob, it's a light-hearted writing contest — in this case, 100 pages in 30 days (April 1 to 30). I'm doing my best to finish other writing projects and catch up with all the housework before April starts....

3/18/2008

Being outdoors can be a very good thing on a day like today.

One of my very favorite places in all the world is the archery range on the slopes of Mount Keira in Wollongong. (That's Mount Keira, there in the photo. You can see it very clearly from the archery range — in fact, you can't miss it, even if you're a bad archer.) I've been a member of the archery club there for several years. I absolutely love archery, but it's not something I do as often as I would like to. (Really, when one is prioritizing for life in 2008, being able to shoot an arrow is way, way down the list of necessary life skills and family activities. I suppose, if one is being sensible, one realizes that it's a good thing family life does not necessitate the shooting of arrows these days.)

This morning, though, I had a spare block of time and used it to go shooting. The weather was unbelievably fabulous, I had the entire range to myself, I even improved my shooting over the last time I'd been. Life is good. Archery is good. (You can look at a remarkable collection of archery documents, including some from as far back as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, at The Archery Library.)

3/16/2008

NEWS FLASH!

The first draft of Mud and Glass is complete at 100,000 words.

3/15/2008

A very scattered day, but on the whole a good one.

Today, after a workout at the gym, I went to Reconciliation (a.k.a. Confession, for you pre-Vatican II Catholics out there). There were tons and tons of people waiting to get shriven, and it took about an hour before my turn came up — I didn't mind, really, as it was some very welcome quiet time to actually sit and think about things for a change. While the average time in the confessional was between two and three minutes per person, this particular priest and I got on like a house on fire (a little infernal humor there — the confessional itself was hotter than hell and I felt really sorry for him stuck in there listening to one penitent after another), and we ended up chatting for several minutes. I would have felt worse about making everyone wait while we spoke of this and that, but the other confessional had opened up in the meantime, and the backlog of perdition to be expunged had lessened quite a bit. Perhaps the priest was just a little relieved to have a bit of human interaction — I'm not a lifelong Catholic, nor a particularly traditional one, so I don't have that conception of distance and hierarchy that many Catholics my age and older tend to have. In any event, it was a very personal, warm, beneficial instance of the sacrament, and I felt positive about the whole thing. Which was nice.

Alas, my calm was shattered a bit later in the afternoon, when some gormless, feckless, witless jerk pulled out in front of me and caused me to squeal my tires — they (the tires) actually smoked on the pavement. He was very apologetic, as well he should be, for I very easily could have killed him, and I didn't want even his death on my newly absolved soul.

When I got home, I bit the bullet and decided this was my day to meet the obligation I had undertaken from the Australian Red Cross to doorknock in my neighborhood and request donations. This combined two of the things I hate most in the entire world: talking to strangers and asking people for money. But I had agreed to do it, so I did it. It was not fun. And our neighborhood is almost entirely vertical. So I guess I got a second workout into the bargain, which is probably a good thing, despite how it felt at the time. Interestingly, the first person to ask for a receipt (I offered one to everyone, but most people said not to bother) had a Buddha statue on her porch — I couldn't help thinking there was a dissonance between practicing nonattachment to material things and wanting to take a tax deduction for one's charitable donations. But hey, none of my business, really. She donated, and that was a good and generous thing to do. I also noticed at one house, in a plastic shopping bag just inside the door, a leather whip. One does not ask, and one is happy not to.

After that, it was time to put up the whiteboards I'd bought earlier in the day. Our three lives are now so intimidatingly complex that we've had to adopt a whiteboard system to keep straight who is supposed to be where, what messages have come in, and what should be purchased on the next trip to the supermarket. In the process of putting up the boards, I noticed on the packaging what is now my absolutely most favoritest our-lawyers-made-us-say-this warning message I have ever, ever seen:
CAUTION: Do not ingest or inhale magnets. Attraction of magnets in the body may cause serious injury and require immediate medical care.

What I like the most about this warning message is the assumption that one would, as a matter of course, ingest (or inhale!) not one, but TWO magnets. And they're not small, either.

Then we ate a nice magnet-free dinner of my concoction (with some help from Old El Paso, an ever-reliable brand when one is in a bit of a rush), and dashed out of the house to hear a concert by the Illawarra Choral Society, which Houston used to conduct but does not anymore.

Now we are home. I have not written one word today on the novel. And it's so, so close to completion. If my soul were still dirty I'd be consumed with self-loathing. But I'm squeaky clean, so it's a bit harder to wallow in negativity. I should probably go to Reconciliation more often. It seems to be good for me.

3/14/2008

Taking things apart to see how they work

My family and I went tonight to see a production of David Williamson's persistently popular play The Club (here is a study guide, if you're so inclined). I enjoyed the performance, but what really floated my boat was spending the whole two hours analyzing the structure, pacing, energy levels, character-interaction mechanics, blocking, wordplay, and other bits and pieces, tricks and trades. I sort of can't help it. I've always been happiest behind the scenes, seeing how things worked, making them work. (I have a friend who, whenever she hears me commenting on the television program we happen to be watching together, says in a bemused way, "You can't ever just relax and watch something, can you?" Alas, no.)

Incidentally, while I was googling around looking for a study guide on The Club, I found a site selling essays on works of Australian literature (and, presumably, other subjects as well) to anxious and amoral students. The domain name? Ready? www.cheathouse.com. I kid you not. And no, I'm not going to give it the added boost of linking to it directly. Houston was appalled at the absolute hide of naming a cheating site something so, well, forthright. Me, I find it refreshing in its own sordid kind of way. I also find it funny that their web site is full of typos and grammatical errors. Mm, you'll always come across as erudite and punctilious by downloading our papers to hand in as your own inspire and guide you when you're doing your own, completely original work.

3/12/2008

Grrr, grrr!

Fists clenched. Teeth gritted. Eyeballs glaring. Aggressive noises that suggest savage determination.

For tomorrow I will undertake to finish the last chapter of Mud and Glass, also known as The Novel That Would Not Accept Its Destiny. Its destiny is to be written by me, and finished by me, and by God it's going to accept its destiny if I have to ram said destiny down its electronic throat.

It means I will need to write about 4,000 words during the course of a very busy day, so I may not get it entirely done. But at least I can get it so close to done that the rest is just a formality.

The fists, by the way, are of steel. The glaring eyeballs are those of the tiger.

The writer now goes to sleep on the eve of battle.

3/11/2008

Heavy times

The good news is — good newses are — that I got to see our wonderful friends Richard and Suzanne and their three wonderful children this weekend, and I got to teach an SES media course, which was both fun and lucrative. The bad newses are that I'm utterly exhausted from a full day of driving, a full day of teaching, then another full day of driving topped off by a further two hours of teaching at my own local SES Unit. (Which is not lucrative, but is indisputably rewarding, if you see my distinction.) The main consequences of my being utterly exhausted are that I haven't gotten any writing at all done yet today, I didn't go to karate class, and I keep making typos as I try to do this blog entry. Not to mention that I didn't do any dishes or other housework (although I did make dinner for us, which I don't count as housework necessarily because I sort of enjoy it.)

Tomorrow: a renewed attempt at virtue and industry! It's what Lent is all about!

3/06/2008

Asymptotes

The closer I get to finishing the first draft of Mud and Glass, the longer it takes me to write each word. The reasons are complex. Boredom is chief among them, but there's also the problem that there are still too many choices about the ways things could go for the characters. I suppose that's a good thing: I'm right at the end, and the plot is not yet winding down to some sort of inescapable conclusion. That means the reader may still find a surprise or two, even in the last thousand words or so. But maybe it's a bad thing — maybe it means that my plot has been too scattered and fragmented to come together in the end. Because by this time I ought to be rumbling to a resolution, not fooling around with "What if he does this?" and "If she does that, it will explain that chance remark in chapter 8 that I thought was just character development."

Moreover, I'm DYING to get to work on some short plays, and I'm not allowing myself to work on them until I finish the Mud and Glass draft. That is supposed to compel me to finish the damned thing, but, paradoxically, it's slowing me down with resentment and frustration. My inner life is a minefield.

3/04/2008

The headline of a lifetime

My friend Craig writes, "You know, a headline writer can work an entire career and never get to do a gem like this."

Skywalkers in Korea Cross Han Solo

He's right, you know. It's a winner. The article is fun, too.

3/03/2008

I do, actually, come from Sussex County, New Jersey.

Here's the rundown on what it's actually like to come from Sussex County, New Jersey. I must refer to the county, rather than any specific town, as there are no towns large enough in the entire county for you to have actually heard of them. I sort of thought life there was relatively normal, but when I see its idiosyncracies lined up in a row like that (and, truth to tell, it's not an exhaustive list), I realize I had kind of a strange childhood and early adulthood.

I miss it, though. I miss the mountains and trees and the deeply quiet nights. In a way I miss things taking just a bit of extra trouble to obtain, due to the fact that the nearest store was five miles away and the nearest town of any size at all was another seven or eight past that. It made you plan, and think, and consume mindfully. (Australia is good that way, too — at least most parts of it: while right in the middle of the big cities things are there for the plucking, in the rest of the country, mindfulness is still the go.) I miss warm, warm rooms on cold, cold days. I miss utter solitude. I do not miss all the times bats got into our house.

3/02/2008

The weekend off

Because my brain hurt after 33 days of writing, within which I had exactly one non-writing day (so, strictly speaking, 32 days of writing), I took yesterday and, as it turned out, today off. During that time, I did heaps of laundry, mowed the lawn, made tons of food (including, ohhhhhhh, the blueberry muffins of my dreams — beautiful, buttery, American-calibre blueberry muffins, ohhh, recipe available on request), did tons of dishes (and am not even caught up yet), went with my family to Sydney to see a very funny play (Implausible People; you should go see it), read lots of blogs, helped my kid with some homework, drank some wine, watched some cricket (although I don't always pay attention as I should), mended some frayed clothing, slept a fair bit — in short, a lot of the things I hadn't been doing during the previous 33 days.

I'm assuming that tomorrow I'll be back to work — I do, after all, have to finish the book and a couple of short plays, all of which have competition deadlines I want to meet. But even more than that, I want to get most everything caught up during March because April is Script Frenzy, the dramatic counterpart to NaNoWriMo. Whee! More deadlines! But NaNoWriMo was so much fun (in a warped sort of way; check my November 2007 archive for details), I want to apply it to scriptwriting, which I love even more than novel writing. At least, today I love it more, because I have an unfinished novel. At some point in April, when I have two finished novels and one unfinished play, I may reverse that.