Theodora Goss's Blog, page 47

On Gratitude

Recently, several friends have told me about medical problems they're having, or their family members are having. Hearing about those problems has made me grateful for a number of things.

First, for my own health. I've had one medical problem in my life: appendicitis. I still remember the resident telling me that the surgeon was going to make the smallest scar possible, so I could still wear a bikini. (I never wear bikinis.) Otherwise, I've been ridiculously healthy. Oh, I'm tired, and over the last few weeks I seem to have gained five pounds, but those are things I can take care of. Blood pressure and cholesterol and those sorts of things are well within normal range.

Second, for my daughter's health, and for my daughter in general. I wonder, sometimes, how I ended up with such a brilliant, beautiful child. Sometimes, I admit, I worry about that beauty. She's used to strangers stopping in the street and remarking on how beautiful she is. (Hair the color of copper, and eyes like rain.) But she makes robots and writes stories and wants to be a paleontologist, and she's most of the way through the Harry Potter series. Those are more important than beauty, I think. (Her rock collection is getting ridiculous.)

Third, for the education that allows me to pursue the profession I love – writing, and teaching about writing. It's taken me a long time to get my degree, but I'm grateful to have it, and to be able to do work that I find intellectually fulfilling. Even though sometimes I get tired of grading papers. But when you teach, every day is different, and you spend your time talking about ideas, and you interact with students – and I like students very much.

Fourth, to have a life that is opening up in front of me, like a set of double doors opening to a landscape in which you can see woods and fields, and a road running through them, and in the distance mountains. And you don't know where the road will lead, but you know that at least there will be adventures.

I don't feel grateful all the time – there are days when I don't feel grateful at all. When I just feel tired and angry at the world, and I could go around knocking people's hats off. (If they still wore hats.) So I'm writing this to remind myself, because I know there are friends of mine who have been in much more difficult situations, and I do know, despite any grumbling, how very fortunate I am – to be in a position to make the life I want to live happen. Many people never get that opportunity.

Once, after telling a friend of mine the problems I was having, I said that despite them, I felt very fortunate – that my problems were so much smaller than most people's. He became angry with me, I suppose because he thought I was somehow avoiding them. But that wasn't it at all. I was simply being grateful. I think gratitude is a very useful emotion to have. It puts things into perspective.

Another friend of mine and I decided recently that we were going to try to changes our lives, and support each other through that effort. Part of that effort, for me, will be getting back to dance. I haven't been to a dance class for two weeks now, because I've been so incredibly busy. But it's time to go back.

So I will spend part of the weekend looking like this:

And I will spend another part of it sleeping. And I will spend another part of it trying to catch up, because I'm still terribly behind. Blame it on the defense. But you know, it was worth it – to be Dr. Goss, and to see that road stretching in front of me, even though I have no idea where it will go.

Cool Projects

I've been thinking about what I really want out of my creative life, my life as a writer. There are all sorts of things I want: to write the stories that come to me, to say the things I want to say. To have people read and enjoy what I write. To participate in a writing life, go to conventions, spend time with writers and editors and publishers. I'd even like (if you're listening, universe) to make money.

But what I really want is to do cool projects. Yesterday, I saw a link on a facebook post by Ann VanderMeer to this wonderful video:

Below the video on YouTube is this explanatory note:

"Myster Odd: a short film in celebration of the release of the ODD? anthology series from Cheeky Frawg Books, edited by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer. Volume One is available now as an e-book through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Wizard's Tower Press, and Weightless Books."

The film is by Gregory Bossert, whom I met at the World Fantasy Convention.

Talk about a cool project, the video and the anthology series and the conjunction of the two. What cool project am I going to be able to work on next? I don't know. At the moment I'm working on a story that I've been asked to write for an anthology, and I need to work on publicity for The Thorn and the Blossom. (Now that was a cool project.) And then I have a poetry anthology to put together, probably over winter break. And then what? I suppose the next step is the novel. So I do have cool projects, don't I? I mean, more than most people, and I've been very lucky to have those opportunities.

I'd like to do more. I'd like to be able to be creative more often, but I do have a job, and a commute, and a child to take care of. The ordinary parts of my life take a lot of time. (If I still owe you something, I'm so sorry. I owe so many people so many things at this point. And I'm getting sick.  I mean really actually sick: I've been sneezing all day.)

Oh yes, and I need to turn In the Forest of Forgetting into an ebook. (Would anyone be interested in an ebook version? Would you?) Just in case you don't remember, that's my short story collection, published back in 2006:

But what keeps me going, especially when I'm this tired, when the Advil doesn't seem to get rid of the headaches, when I feel overwhelmed by my ordinary life and have barely any time to devote to the extraordinary one I'm trying to create for myself, is the thought that there are so many cool projects out there. So many things to do. Because in the end, the cool projects are what count. Not the conventions, or how many people asked you to sign books, but what you actually accomplished.

I'm going to go rest, because I need it, desperately. But I have a story waiting to be written, and poetry waiting to be collected, and all sorts of things that I want to do. Those are the things that keep me going.

Small Adventures

Yesterday, I had a series of small adventures. I think small adventures are important, when you can't have large ones. (And I'm far too busy for large ones right now.)

While walking back to my office from my final class of the day, I ran across a book and bake sale, everything $1. So I bought three books and three cookies: a book called Women Artists in History: From Antiquity to the Present, since I know very little about women artists in history and I feel as though I should know more; Huysmans' Against Nature, since I don't have a copy; and Ann Patchett's What Now?, based on a graduation speech she gave at Sarah Lawrence, since that's exactly the question I'm asking myself nowadays. That was the first adventure. (I told you these are small adventures, right? But even small adventures count for something.)

About a month ago, I had bought a ticket to Boston Ballet's Romeo and Juliet. After buying those books and cookies, I went back to my office and finished some work, then went to the bookstore and bought myself a book on writing memoir and a collection of A.S. Byatt short stories. (Little Black Book of Stories, which I'm looking forward to reading.) So by that point I had five more books than I'd had at the beginning of the day. But I was really waiting for time to go to the ballet.

At about 6:30, I took the T to the Common, then walked up Washington Street and stopped in a restaurant called Bina, where I had a brie and apple sandwich, and a cappuccino. I also bought myself a tiramisu truffle for later.

Then, I went to the Boston Opera House, which is one of my favorite theaters. And there it was: Romeo and Juliet, choreographed by John Cranko (who is always amusing), with the gorgeous Prokofiev score. I had a wonderful seat, and the ballet was perfect. And I got to watch people during the intermissions. And I bought myself Pinot Grigio in a plastic cup.

Afterward, I walked back to the T and took it out to the suburbs. But where I changed from the green to the red line, I saw a band playing in the subway station. It was called Me vs. Gravity, and the members were four teenage boys. They looked like this:

And you know what? They were good. Here is their one and only video (so far) from YouTube:

Yes, I want to live in the country. But there are adventures that happen only in cities, and I do appreciate those. I actually missed a train because I wanted to listen to them. Then, I hurtled through the darkness, over the Charles River (which is about where I ate my truffle), past Harvard, out to the last station, and then down the dark highways.

I want the large adventures, and in between them I want rest. And a home to rest in. But in the meantime, I have the small adventures.

(There is nothing quite so clarifying, I find, as spending time with genuinely high art: ballet, opera, the sort of art you see in a museum. I don't know why that is, or why popular art, which I love, doesn't give me that sensation of mental clarity.  But high art does it for me: like being in the Alps.)

A Magical Life

The first thing I should mention is that at Goodreads, you can enter to win a free copy of The Thorn and the Blossom.   You can enter until November 30th, so go sign up!  Because you never know, and if you don't sign up, you can't win.

The second thing I should mention is that I just don't feel like writing today. This past week I've been through one of the worst experiences in the world: being terribly hurt by someone you thought was a good friend. Someone you'd been there for and supported, even when it was incredibly difficult to do so. Someone you'd respected and cared for, until suddenly you couldn't respect him anymore. And you started wondering if you'd known him at all.

So I've been thinking about what you do in a situation like that, how you handle it. Because I think we reveal ourselves most in times of hurt and anger, in times of stress. And I think the only thing we can do, in times like those, is forgive and let go. To forget the hurtful things that were said, to remember the wonderful things. The friendship, the affection, the laughter. The private references that no one else is going to understand. The talking about stories, the trading of music.  What the two of you had together that neither of you will ever have with anyone else.

And you move on and remind yourself how fortunate you are: to have an incredible community of friends all over the world, to be able to pursue the creative work you love, to have a book coming out in January.

I've been thinking a lot about the future, and where I want it to take me. And it seems to me that, for the first time in a long time, the future is wide open. I've finished the PhD, so I have the credentials I'll need to teach at the university level, and I'm publishing regularly. It's scary too because I don't know where the future will take me yet. I don't know where to go from here. But I have a feeling, just the beginning of a feeling, that I'm headed somewhere – I don't know where yet. It's as though I'm waiting for an indication, some sort of sign. Is that silly? And yet it's worked for me before.

I do know one thing: I want a magical life. I was thinking about that when I saw an article on this house under a hill in Wales:

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Isn't it beautiful? I don't necessarily want a house under a hill, but I want to live differently. I don't know where I'll find that life yet. I'm not even sure what it's going to look like – I just know how it feels when the magic happens. But I'm sure I'll get there.

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Two Nice Things

This is going to be a short post because I'm very, very tired. I still haven't caught up on the sleep I lost traveling to and from the World Fantasy Convention. But I wanted to mention two nice things I found when I got home.

The first is the October issue of Realms of Fantasy, with my Folkroots column "The Myth and Magic of Narnia."

The second is a reminder that a story of mine, "Christopher Raven," will be available in Fantasy Magazine on November 14th.

I feel as though, in the last couple of months, I've been through a sort of trial by fire, and the question is, what do I do now? What projects do I go on to? Or to I take some time, watch episodes of Being Human? Just sit? Of course I still have a great deal to do, stories I owe people, a poetry collection to put together, publicity for The Thorn and the Blossom. So I can't really just sit. But I do need some time to rest, consider where I'm going next.

I do worry, sometimes when I'm so tired, that the world holds no more magic in it. That what lies ahead is just work and more work. But that can't be true. I refuse to believe that.

So, I'm going to speak to the Powers that Be directly.

Dear Powers that Be:

I know from of old that you're very, very good at making wonderful things happen. That even when things have seemed all wrong, you have been steering me in the right direction. So I'm asking you now, because I'm so tired – take me to the place I'm supposed to be, all right? And if it's someplace wonderful, all the better. (I trust you: I think it's going to be someplace wonderful.)

That's all for now. Hope all is well in Asgard or Olympus or whatever.

Over and out,

Dora

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Goodbye, San Diego

Somehow, I had forgotten that I'd bought a banquet ticket, so I didn't bring a dress for the banquet. Luckily, I always travel with an LBD (Little Black Dress), so I did in fact have a black dress to wear with black ballet flats. I imagine Audrey Hepburn might have worn something like it.

On Sunday morning I checked out, then went to the art show and bought something I'd been thinking about buying all weekend: an engraving of a sort of wood fairy figure by Ruth Sanderson. I like buying things from artists that are unusual: not their usual stuff, the most finished, the most expensive. But strange, small things like limited edition engravings, which is what this is. I don't see it anywhere on her website, or I would point it out to you. At the moment, it's sitting on my dresser, safe and sound. I always worry about how to get art back from conventions without bending it.

And then I walked around for a while, talking to whoever else was walking around the dealer's room. Here is the dealer's room, by the way:

I was especially pleased to be able to meet Damien Walter and Nancy Holder, both of whom I knew of, but had not met in person. And I was also pleased to run into the lovely Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman, and Karen Bovenmyer. The only time I felt underdressed for the banquet was when Myke Cole stopped by and said hello, elegantly in uniform.

Then it was time for the banquet. I was lucky to be at a table with Kit Reed and her husband, Charles Tan, Paula Guran, Maria Dahvana Headley, and Ben Loory. I had to leave early, but I took this picture as I snuck out the door. It's Neil Gaiman giving his Guest of Honor speech.

My mother lives in Los Angeles in a house by the ocean, and I had promised her that we would spend some time walking on the beach, eating Mexican food, and shopping. So that's exactly what we did. She came down in her truck (bought because she's making extensive renovations to the beach house, before starting extensive renovations to the mountain house, since she always seems to be renovating something), and we drove first to the beach so I could say hello to the Pacific, and then to Old Town, where we walked around the shops until dark and had dinner at a Mexican restaurant. Then, I had to catch my flight, so it was back to the hotel to change, and onto the plane. Once again I was extravagant: I upgraded myself to one of the seats with more space – an aisle seat in an empty row. So I had three seats to lie down on. I was able to sleep for about four hours, I think. And then it was morning and landing in Boston, where once again I was extravagant and took a cab to the university, so I could prepare to teach and meet with students. I don't recommend socializing a full day in San Diego, flying across the country at night, and working a full day in Boston. Tonight, I'm completely exhausted. But it was worth it. I met so many people there that I won't see again until the next convention, whichever one that is. (Readercon, for most of them.) I miss them all, my writing community, although I'm discovering that I can see many of them on Google Plus. (Which I've just joined, although I don't quite understand it yet. But here is my profile.)

I returned to the remains of an early snowstorm: trees fallen, power lines down, although luckily I have heat and electricity. But I do miss the palm trees and blue sky of San Diego. So here is my final photograph, me in the San Diego sunlight, by one of the hotel fountains. As relaxed as I remember being in a long time.

And although I missed the World Fantasy Awards, I just want to say a particular congratulations to my Clarion classmate Nnedi Okorafor, whose novel Who Fears Death won the World Fantasy Award in the novel category. Even at Clarion, it was obvious that Nnedi was going to be a wonderful and important writer. And so she is.

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Writers in the Sun

It's sunny in San Diego.

Yesterday, I spent the morning writing, and then had a wonderful lunch with Juliette Wade and Charles Tan. I attended an afternoon panel on the year in fantasy with panelists including Ellen Datlow and Jonathan Strahan. But mostly I sat in the sun, talking to people, including Elizabeth Bear, whom I hadn't talked to for a long time. I learn so much from coming to conventions like this one, just by listening to what's going on.

And then I had dinner with Robert Redick at a Mexican restaurant in the old town. Robert and I were in college together at the University of Virginia, both in the English Department. We had a great time talking about writing and our careers. I talked about where I'm going next, now that I've finished my Ph.D. Because you know, I don't quite know. In a way, I want to sit quietly somewhere and just wait for what comes to me. Wait for a sense of where I'm supposed to go next. But my life doesn't allow for a lot of quiet sitting or contemplation. At least not right now.

Then we went to an especially good panel on fairy tales with Holly Black, Patrick Rothfuss, and Delia Sherman. And then, I was so tired that I went to bed. There is something exhausting about socializing so much. When I write it out like this, it doesn't seem as though my day was particularly full. But it involved a lot of walking around, a lot of randomly meeting people, sitting down with them, talking for a while, so that I don't remember now exactly whom I talked to. Jeffrey Ford at one point, and Rose Lemberg from Stone Telling, and Jessica Wick from Goblin Fruit, and many other writers and editors.

Honestly, I would be doing more if I weren't so tired. There are events I'm missing, people I'd like to see that I may not run into. But there's still time today, at the banquet. I'm too tired this year to be as active as I'd like to be. But that's all right. This is my world, and it will be here for me when I recover from this very difficult year of finishing my dissertation.

Tonight I fly home, and tomorrow morning I head straight from the airport to the university, where I have a full day of teaching ahead of me. It's going to be exhausting. But it was definitely worth it, coming to San Diego. When I get around other writers, I learn about what they're doing, how they're living. They give me a sense of my own possibilities, how I could live my life. Now I just need to rest for a while, recover some. And thing about those possibilities for myself.

Here are some pictures from yesterday morning.

Charles, Juliette, and I sat out in the sunlight.

Unfortunately, the picture of me is refusing to load right now. But look: roses!

Hello, San Diego

I'm sitting in my hotel room in San Diego.  Breakfast just came on a tray: an enormous pile of fruit, with yogurt and a bran muffin.  Orange juice, coffee.  Yesterday, I ate terribly: mostly cereal bars and trail mix.  I think that at some point during the day I ate an apple.  And some cheese.

Now that the dissertation is done, I'm thinking about what I want to do with the rest of my life. And I think that life is going to involve a lot of travel. So I have to figure out how to incorporate travel into my life in a way that is healthy. Yesterday, I woke up at 5:00 a.m. after sleeping for only about three hours. I finished packing, went to the airport (car to subway to airport), caught my flight, and then spent a very comfortable six hours in the air. (The night before, in a fit of extravagance, I had spend extra money switching to a seat by the emergency exit. It had so much leg room, and there was no one in the middle seat, so I could sit cross-legged for most of the flight, reading my magazine, watching decorating shows, making notes for things I need to work on.) I arrived and ran into Nick Mamatas at the airport. We took the shuttle to the hotel, which is charmingly retro. Outside my door there is a balcony with all sorts of greenery growing on it, and there are fountains and pools everywhere. And restaurants, of course.

Yesterday I had my only programming item (at World Fantasy you only get one, unless you're a guest of honor), a panel on mermaids. It went well, I think. And then I spent some time with the wonderful Charles Tan, who had taken a series of planes from the Philippines. His fifteen hours in the air made my six seem like nothing! And we had a chance to sit down and have some actual food (too much and too late for me, but at least it was food) with Mary Robinette Kowal and Liz Gorinsky.

Today I have a light schedule: a telephone call at 11:00 a.m. with the wonderful publicity department at Quirk Books, which is publishing The Thorn and the Blossom, and then an interview at 1:00 p.m. for an online magazine. The thing about the writing life is that it's always different: I'm always going to be working on different projects, flying to different cities. It's an exciting, but sometimes exhausting, life. I'll have to find ways to manage the exhaustion. Today it's by eating fresh fruit and taking it easy. (Confession: I'm typing this in my pajamas. That's how easy I'm taking it today.)

So, I'm going to finish breakfast. And then I'm going to get some work done, and also walk around and talk to people. That's the wonderful thing about going to conventions: all the people you run into (and I couldn't list them all, there are too many – writers, editors, publishers, former students).

Maybe I'll carry my camera around and try to post some pictures tomorrow!

Writing the Book

I promised that I would talk a little about writing The Thorn and the Blossom.

I remember when Stephen first asked me if I would like to work on the project. I was standing outside the Lexington library when my cell phone rang. I sat on one of the walls, talking to him about it. I think we talked for about half an hour. The idea was to write two stories, about 7500 words each, that would fit together like the pieces of a puzzle. Both stories had to work as stories, but together they had to form a larger story, a more complete picture. There are two kinds of stories that can work like that: a mystery, and a love story. I chose to write a love story.

It took a while to iron out the logistics. Stephen and I had talked about the project in the fall, and I did not start writing until the winter. By that time I was also trying to revise the chapters of my dissertation. So my schedule went something like this: revise a chapter, write one story, revise another chapter, write the other story. I think each story took me about a month to write.

The first story was relatively easy, although I had to anticipate the second story while I was writing it. But when I got to the second story, well – it had to be fit around the first story. I had to make sure the pieces fit. So I put the first story in the stand by my computer, and I literally wrote the second story while reading the first story, matching them paragraph by paragraph. Of course, you will get different information in each story. Each is, after all, an individual account, from the point of view of a different person, who knows different things and even perceives the sames things differently. And you won't get the entire story unless you read both versions.

Writing it was a feat of literary engineering.

But you know, even though the story was a technical challenge, I don't think it reads like one. It reads like a story: easily, naturally. The characters sound like themselves. At least, they do to me. To me, they come alive, and I hope they will for readers as well. And I got something else into the story: my way of looking at the world. I have a sort of intuition, which I've had since I was a child, that the world is filled with pattern and order and beauty, although we often can't see it. But that's our fault, not the world's fault. Our human ignorance hides it from us, our mechanical modern lives often obscure it. Most of us can no longer see the incredible beauty of the world. Which means we can't understand rightly. Disease and death happen of course, but they're part of it: they do not negate the underlying meaning.

If we look closely, as an artist or a scientist looks, we can begin to see it. For example, these are monarch butterflies:

Did you know that every fall, they fly 2000 miles south to Mexico, using the sun as a guide? But because the sun changes position throughout the day, they must have something, some sort of mechanism that adjusts for the movement of the sun. And it turns out they do, as scientists have discovered. They have a sort of internal clock – located in their antennae. Isn't that magnificent? If you look closely enough at a butterfly, an ordinary butterfly fluttering from flower to flower in your garden on a summer day, you'll see that it's more wonderful than you could possibly have imagined.

That's my philosophy, my way of looking at the world, and I think it got into the book. I think it gets into my best work. Indeed, I don't think I write well unless there's something of my philosophy in the story, the poem. It's part of what makes for good writing.

It won't interfere with the story, I promise.

After I had finished both stories, Stephen and I began the editing process. The second story was close to done, but the first story needed a few rounds of editing. I added, altered. I made motivations clearer. The character became both more sympathetic and more troubled. When I was finished, we had two stories of about 10,000 words each. One is slightly shorter than the other, but I think that discrepancy works, it fits thematically.

So that's it, that's how I wrote it. I've been showing it off today, and I will have a copy at the World Fantasy Convention, so if you want to see it, come find me. I'm looking forward to seeing what people think about it . . .

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On Enchantment

Yesterday, I watched the first episode of Once Upon a Time. And you know what? I liked it. Here is the trailer:

It was cheesy, in the way television fantasy usually is, but what I particularly liked about it were the fairy tale aesthetics. I think my aesthetic sense was formed by reading illustrated fairy tales. My idea of the perfect house is a castle (just a small one). My perfect dress swishes around the ankles. My perfect garden has a yew maze and a fountain. I always wanted enchantment.

I think we need more enchantment in our lives. It's not unrealistic. Terri Windling and Rima Staines have Dartmoor and its environs to help them, but I think all of us can live in ways that are more magical. It just takes choosing the beautiful and the real. Surrounding ourselves with things we genuinely love.

If you do that, bread and cheese can be enchanted. (Right now I'm eating a harvest bread, filled with nuts and fruit, and blue cheese.) A pottery bowl filled with pinecones can be enchanted. A scarf that you knit from the purest, softest wool can be enchanted. If you can enchant the small things, you can enchant your whole life.

(Of course, writing is a kind of enchantment. With black squiggles on a white sheet of paper, I create worlds. I like the idea of being an enchantress.)

I found some pictures of enchanted places. I thought I would post them here. I'm not sure who took these pictures, so I can't give proper credit where it's due. But here they are:

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What do you think of my enchanted places? Once, when I mentioned that I'd like to live in a castle, a friend of mine said that he thought it would be uncomfortable. But I would rather have enchantment than comfort. (If I had to choose one of these houses, I would choose the first one, although I would want the roof thatched in the ordinary way. The house is a bit too cute for me, as is – too self-consciously cottagey. It needs some mussing up. I think I would be afraid to live in the stone house  at the bottom. Afraid of giants.)

I've been thinking about what my goal should be, now that my dissertation is done. And I think that's it: make my life enchanted.

To start, I'm going to write more poetry, dance more. And create magical spaces around me. We don't live in fairy tales: we live in a reality that often seems dull and ordinary, like the small town in which the fairy tale characters are imprisoned in Once Upon a Time. But even in that small town, they are dramatic, romantic. They look as though they should be in fairy tales. (Have you ever seen people like that? People who, in a cardigan, jeans, and Wellingtons, nevertheless look as though they had escaped from fairyland? I have.) Even in our ordinary reality, we can be more than ordinary. We can be, and make, magic.

I'm going to put that on my to-do list . . .

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