Delia Sherman's Blog, page 14
December 2, 2010
Clarion 2011!!!
The Clarion application period is here! It's time to dig out those promising first drafts and start rewriting them. Because, if you get in, you get to work with some of the most inspiring teachers and best mentors in the business. If you don't, well, then you've finished a story and put yourself out there, and there are many people out there who've gotten into Clarion the second (or third) time they've tried. There's no downside.
Here's the description Clarion sent to post. I suspect some of you know some of this information already, but for those of you who you don't, I'll quote the whole thing:
Clarion is widely recognized as a premier training ground for aspiring writers of fantasy and science fiction short stories. The 2011 writers in residence are Nina Kiriki Hoffman, John Scalzi, Elizabeth Bear, David Anthony Durham, John Kessel and Kij Johnson. Each year 18 students, ranging in age from late teens to those in mid-career, are selected from applicants who have the potential for highly successful writing careers. Students are expected to write several new short stories during the six-week workshop, and to give and receive constructive criticism. Instructors and students reside together in UCSD campus apartments throughout the intensive six-week program.
Application period: December 1 – March 1. Applicants must submit two short stories with their application.
Workshop: June 26 – August 6, 2011. http://clarion.ucsd.edu
Here's the description Clarion sent to post. I suspect some of you know some of this information already, but for those of you who you don't, I'll quote the whole thing:
Clarion is widely recognized as a premier training ground for aspiring writers of fantasy and science fiction short stories. The 2011 writers in residence are Nina Kiriki Hoffman, John Scalzi, Elizabeth Bear, David Anthony Durham, John Kessel and Kij Johnson. Each year 18 students, ranging in age from late teens to those in mid-career, are selected from applicants who have the potential for highly successful writing careers. Students are expected to write several new short stories during the six-week workshop, and to give and receive constructive criticism. Instructors and students reside together in UCSD campus apartments throughout the intensive six-week program.
Application period: December 1 – March 1. Applicants must submit two short stories with their application.
Workshop: June 26 – August 6, 2011. http://clarion.ucsd.edu
Clarion 2012!!!
The Clarion application period is here! It's time to dig out those promising first drafts and start rewriting them. Because, if you get in, you get to work with some of the most inspiring teachers and best mentors in the business. If you don't, well, then you've finished a story and put yourself out there, and there are many people out there who've gotten into Clarion the second (or third) time they've tried. There's no downside.
Here's the description Clarion sent to post. I suspect some of you know some of this information already, but for those of you who you don't, I'll quote the whole thing:
Clarion is widely recognized as a premier training ground for aspiring writers of fantasy and science fiction short stories. The 2011 writers in residence are Nina Kiriki Hoffman, John Scalzi, Elizabeth Bear, David Anthony Durham, John Kessel and Kij Johnson. Each year 18 students, ranging in age from late teens to those in mid-career, are selected from applicants who have the potential for highly successful writing careers. Students are expected to write several new short stories during the six-week workshop, and to give and receive constructive criticism. Instructors and students reside together in UCSD campus apartments throughout the intensive six-week program.
Application period: December 1 – March 1. Applicants must submit two short stories with their application.
Workshop: June 26 – August 6, 2011. http://clarion.ucsd.edu
Here's the description Clarion sent to post. I suspect some of you know some of this information already, but for those of you who you don't, I'll quote the whole thing:
Clarion is widely recognized as a premier training ground for aspiring writers of fantasy and science fiction short stories. The 2011 writers in residence are Nina Kiriki Hoffman, John Scalzi, Elizabeth Bear, David Anthony Durham, John Kessel and Kij Johnson. Each year 18 students, ranging in age from late teens to those in mid-career, are selected from applicants who have the potential for highly successful writing careers. Students are expected to write several new short stories during the six-week workshop, and to give and receive constructive criticism. Instructors and students reside together in UCSD campus apartments throughout the intensive six-week program.
Application period: December 1 – March 1. Applicants must submit two short stories with their application.
Workshop: June 26 – August 6, 2011. http://clarion.ucsd.edu
November 28, 2010
To All Those Who Have Added Me
Welcome--and thank you very much. I'm flattered and pleased--and a little afraid that you've been lured here under false pretenses. You see, I don't post much about writing. Mostly, I do play reviews (I don't go to a lot of movies) and travel posts. Sometimes I complain about my WIP. Sometimes I burble about a book I love. As I prepare to teach a 6 week course in writing fantasy for children this summer, I will probably post some ruminations about writing exercises and process, but really, unless somebody pushes the right button, I'd rather talk about writing than write about it.
The Pitmen Painters
After almost two weeks back home, we had not yet seen a play--a state of affairs that clearly could not be allowed to continue. And Ellen found tickets for The Pitmen Painters on TDF. So last night, after bidding our latest houseguests a fond good-bye and scarfing some tofu and kale with oyster sauce stir-fry, we wrapped ourselves against the wolf-wind that howls down Riverside Drive and headed downtown to the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre (which is a lovely small theater, by the way, and one of my favorites).
The Pitmen Painters is based on a Real Life Story. In 1934, the Worker's Educational Association in Ashington, Northumberland hired an MA in Art History from Durham University to teach them Art Appreciation. Since they'd never heard of Michelangelo or Rafael, wouldn't know chiraoscuro if it bit them on the nose--never, in fact, seen many pictures of any kind--his usual teaching method of showing slides of Famous Paintings and lecturing about them wasn't going very far. So he got them to appreciate art by making it themselves--by painting scenes from their lives and showing them to the group, which would then discuss them.
They got quite famous, the Pitmen Painters. They did group exhibitions in Newcastle and London and Henry Moore took an interest in them. I don't know how many men were actually in the group, but five of them seem to be responsible for the bulk of the surviving paintings, which are now collected in the Woodhorn Colliery Museum. These five men, and their teacher, Robert Lyon, are the heart of Lee Hall's play. So are any number of cool ideas about Art, Class, and Socialism, with nods to War, Poverty, and the Place of Woman In the Early 20th Century as appropriate.
There are some mighty fine moments in this play--when the men go to London to see an exhibition of Chinese scroll painting and argue about perspective and tradition and how art is about transformation, I nearly cried. And there are some rousing speeches about class and education and socialized medicine and selling out. While it was going on, I enjoyed it thoroughly, mostly because of the very fine cast, who were all in the original production. Christopher Connel, as Oliver Kilbourn, the most committed (and possibly the most talented--although I confess I liked Harry's streetscapes better) artist of the group, was particularly fine, partly because of his almost supernaturally deep and resonant voice, but mostly because he could go from funny to nearly tragic in a heartbeat without falling into bathos.
Yet, in the end, I have to say that The Pitmen Painters doesn't quite work. Its characters aren't so much individuals as they are types of the struggling lower classes. The speeches on socialism and art and self-expression and feeling tip into the inspirational as the same points get repeated in different ways. The ringing paeans to the glory of art began to sound slightly defensive and maybe even desperate in the face of the horrors of WWII and the rigors of life in post-war Britain. Still, it's immensely good-hearted (like Billy Elliot, which Lee Hall also wrote), nicely-structured, both funny and moving, and it's about how art can set you free. While I was watching it, I loved it. It wasn't until I started to think about it afterwards that it started to unravel. And it certainly made me think.
The Pitmen Painters is based on a Real Life Story. In 1934, the Worker's Educational Association in Ashington, Northumberland hired an MA in Art History from Durham University to teach them Art Appreciation. Since they'd never heard of Michelangelo or Rafael, wouldn't know chiraoscuro if it bit them on the nose--never, in fact, seen many pictures of any kind--his usual teaching method of showing slides of Famous Paintings and lecturing about them wasn't going very far. So he got them to appreciate art by making it themselves--by painting scenes from their lives and showing them to the group, which would then discuss them.
They got quite famous, the Pitmen Painters. They did group exhibitions in Newcastle and London and Henry Moore took an interest in them. I don't know how many men were actually in the group, but five of them seem to be responsible for the bulk of the surviving paintings, which are now collected in the Woodhorn Colliery Museum. These five men, and their teacher, Robert Lyon, are the heart of Lee Hall's play. So are any number of cool ideas about Art, Class, and Socialism, with nods to War, Poverty, and the Place of Woman In the Early 20th Century as appropriate.
There are some mighty fine moments in this play--when the men go to London to see an exhibition of Chinese scroll painting and argue about perspective and tradition and how art is about transformation, I nearly cried. And there are some rousing speeches about class and education and socialized medicine and selling out. While it was going on, I enjoyed it thoroughly, mostly because of the very fine cast, who were all in the original production. Christopher Connel, as Oliver Kilbourn, the most committed (and possibly the most talented--although I confess I liked Harry's streetscapes better) artist of the group, was particularly fine, partly because of his almost supernaturally deep and resonant voice, but mostly because he could go from funny to nearly tragic in a heartbeat without falling into bathos.
Yet, in the end, I have to say that The Pitmen Painters doesn't quite work. Its characters aren't so much individuals as they are types of the struggling lower classes. The speeches on socialism and art and self-expression and feeling tip into the inspirational as the same points get repeated in different ways. The ringing paeans to the glory of art began to sound slightly defensive and maybe even desperate in the face of the horrors of WWII and the rigors of life in post-war Britain. Still, it's immensely good-hearted (like Billy Elliot, which Lee Hall also wrote), nicely-structured, both funny and moving, and it's about how art can set you free. While I was watching it, I loved it. It wasn't until I started to think about it afterwards that it started to unravel. And it certainly made me think.
The Pitman Painters
After almost two weeks back home, we had not yet seen a play--a state of affairs that clearly could not be allowed to continue. And Ellen found tickets for The Pitmen Painters on TDF. So last night, after bidding our latest houseguests a fond good-bye and scarfing some tofu and kale with oyster sauce stir-fry, we wrapped ourselves against the wolf-wind that howls down Riverside Drive and headed downtown tot he Samuel J. Friedman Theatre (which is a lovely small theater, by the way, and one of my favorites).
The Pitmen Painters is based on a Real Life Story. In 1934, the Worker's Educational Association in Ashington, Northumberland hired an MA in Art History from Durham University to teach them Art Appreciation. Since they'd never heard of Michelangelo or Rafael, wouldn't know chiraoscuro if it bit them on the nose--never, in fact, seen many pictures of any kind--his usual teaching method of showing slides of Famous Paintings and lecturing about them wasn't going very far. So he got them to appreciate art by making it themselves--by painting scenes from their lives and showing them to the group, which would then discuss them.
They got quite famous, the Pitmen Painters. They did group exhibitions in Newcastle and London and Henry Moore took an interest in them. I don't know how many men were actually in the group, but five of them seem to be responsible for the bulk of the surviving paintings, which are now collected in the Woodhorn Colliery Museum. These five men, and their teacher, Robert Lyon, are the heart of Lee Hall's play. So are any number of cool ideas about Art, Class, and Socialism, with nods to War, Poverty, and the Place of Woman In the Early 20th Century as appropriate.
There are some mighty fine moments in this play--when the men go to London to see an exhibition of Chinese scroll painting and argue about perspective and tradition and how art is about transformation, I nearly cried. And there are some rousing speeches about class and education and socialized medicine and selling out. While it was going on, I enjoyed it thoroughly, mostly because of the very fine cast, who were all in the original production. Christopher Connel, as Oliver Kilbourn, the most committed (and possibly the most talented--although I confess I liked Harry's streetscapes better) artist of the group, was particularly fine, partly because of his almost supernaturally deep and resonant voice, but mostly because he could go from funny to nearly tragic in a heartbeat without falling into bathos.
Yet, in the end, I have to say that The Pitmen Painters doesn't quite work. Its characters aren't so much individuals as they are types of the struggling lower classes. The speeches on socialism and art and self-expression and feeling tip into the inspirational as the same points get repeated in different ways. The ringing paeans to the glory of art began to sound slightly defensive and maybe even desperate in the face of the horrors of WWII and the rigors of life in post-war Britain. Still, it's immensely good-hearted (like Billy Elliot, which Lee Hall also wrote), nicely-structured, both funny and moving, and it's about how art can set you free. While I was watching it, I loved it. It wasn't until I started to think about it afterwards that it started to unravel. And it certainly made me think.
The Pitmen Painters is based on a Real Life Story. In 1934, the Worker's Educational Association in Ashington, Northumberland hired an MA in Art History from Durham University to teach them Art Appreciation. Since they'd never heard of Michelangelo or Rafael, wouldn't know chiraoscuro if it bit them on the nose--never, in fact, seen many pictures of any kind--his usual teaching method of showing slides of Famous Paintings and lecturing about them wasn't going very far. So he got them to appreciate art by making it themselves--by painting scenes from their lives and showing them to the group, which would then discuss them.
They got quite famous, the Pitmen Painters. They did group exhibitions in Newcastle and London and Henry Moore took an interest in them. I don't know how many men were actually in the group, but five of them seem to be responsible for the bulk of the surviving paintings, which are now collected in the Woodhorn Colliery Museum. These five men, and their teacher, Robert Lyon, are the heart of Lee Hall's play. So are any number of cool ideas about Art, Class, and Socialism, with nods to War, Poverty, and the Place of Woman In the Early 20th Century as appropriate.
There are some mighty fine moments in this play--when the men go to London to see an exhibition of Chinese scroll painting and argue about perspective and tradition and how art is about transformation, I nearly cried. And there are some rousing speeches about class and education and socialized medicine and selling out. While it was going on, I enjoyed it thoroughly, mostly because of the very fine cast, who were all in the original production. Christopher Connel, as Oliver Kilbourn, the most committed (and possibly the most talented--although I confess I liked Harry's streetscapes better) artist of the group, was particularly fine, partly because of his almost supernaturally deep and resonant voice, but mostly because he could go from funny to nearly tragic in a heartbeat without falling into bathos.
Yet, in the end, I have to say that The Pitmen Painters doesn't quite work. Its characters aren't so much individuals as they are types of the struggling lower classes. The speeches on socialism and art and self-expression and feeling tip into the inspirational as the same points get repeated in different ways. The ringing paeans to the glory of art began to sound slightly defensive and maybe even desperate in the face of the horrors of WWII and the rigors of life in post-war Britain. Still, it's immensely good-hearted (like Billy Elliot, which Lee Hall also wrote), nicely-structured, both funny and moving, and it's about how art can set you free. While I was watching it, I loved it. It wasn't until I started to think about it afterwards that it started to unravel. And it certainly made me think.
November 27, 2010
How to Survive A First Draft
Yesterday, a Young Relative who is writing a novel sent
![[info]](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1380442897i/1319734.gif)
ellen_kushner
and me a heartfelt plea for advice. She'd been going along swimmingly, she wrote, sailing through words and pages and scenes, using "My Shitty First Draft" for a mantra when her internal editor got fractious, pretty much making it up as she went along. And then she was asked to write a synopsis, realized that she didn't know exactly what happened next, began to flail and splutter, and could we please, please, throw her a life-preserver, because she was going down for the third time and hated every single word she'd written and was finding it very hard to imagine it was all ever going to turn into a novel anybody would want to read.
Sound familiar to you? It did to me. And to Ellen, who wrote her an encouraging and relative-like letter.
This is what I wrote.
Welcome to the wonderful world of writing a novel. Seesawing is NORMAL. We all do it, to one extent or another. Once you've written a novel (or two, or three) you learn (or your partner and friends learn) to recognize the symptoms before they become acute, and apply hot tea and soothing noises to avoid an acute flare-up. Or not. We all hate them. They suck--energy, confidence, time. But they happen.
The most telling sentence in your screed is "(well, except for a little bit yesterday which was OK.)" It (where "it" is getting sentences to make sense and say things you want them to which make the story move forward--let's call it "flow") hasn't flown the coop. It's just become subsumed in your uncertainly about What Happens Next. This is a pain, a dark night of the soul, and the moment that ultimately divides Writers Who Will Finish A Novel from Writers Who Won't. You just have to figure out how to get through it.
Ultimately (as you know, because you said so, very clearly), you need to figure out how you do it yourself. But there are things you can try.
1) Don't write a synopsis until you're ready to. And when you're ready, do what Ellen says. [Which was: "Don't give up on your synopsis. Write it as a 2-paragraph overview - as you would a 250-word review of the existing book, glossing over details. Seriously; pretend you're a reviewer who's reading the finished perfect work - or a kid blogging about her favorite book 2 years after it's come out."--excellent advice, which I intend to take myself, as soon as I'm ready to write a synopsis of my current First Draft in Progress]
2) Try writing the Good Parts Version. This is defined as "All the Stuff I know has to happen and I feel like writing, more or less in this order, but we'll see."
3) Bull on through regardless, throwing words at the wall in the hope that some will stick. One member of my writing group, when writing her first draft, writes scenes that seem to happen in Real Time, in which the characters sit around cooking dinner or mending harness while talking about the weather or the crops or their love lives for PAGES AND PAGES, which is fun for us to read, but not ultimately useful to the plot or the structure of the novel, in the course of which she will write [FLOUNDER], which is obviously exactly what she (and her characters) are doing. She doesn't rewrite them until she's finished the draft, at which point they either disappear or get so completely rewritten that maybe only the setting and one line of dialogue survive from the original. She finds writing them immensely useful, though, however seemingly inefficient, for getting to know characters, for creating an atmosphere or details of her world.
4) Talk the next part through with someone. You need someone who will ask you a lot of questions, who will make bad suggestions so that you can contradict them, who is not at all invested in your taking their advice if it doesn't work for you.
Whatever you do (and I'm sure there are other things I've never tried or thought of), get that shitty first draft done. You can't fix something that doesn't exist. You can't rewrite a faulty text that's still mostly in your head. You can't experience the thrill of making a recalcitrant scene or section work by changing a paragraph, cutting a sentence, adding the perfect line of dialogue if you haven't written the clunky version first. Do whatever it takes. That's the prime function of NaNoWrMo, which is designed for those who like to know that they are not alone in their suffering. If you're a page-count junkie, set yourself a daily goal (me, I'd rather type naked on Riverside Drive). If you like timed tasks, make a rule that you have to write for a certain amount of time a day, whether you're enjoying it or not (that's what I do). Sometimes I start writing, "This scene has to have these characters in it, and it would be nice if somebody mentioned the 800 Gorillas in the corner in the course of it, and maybe the Hero could cry, and how on earth am I going to make that happen? Well, he's scared of mice. No, I don't need to know where the mice come from. . . ." Etc, etc, until I'm writing an actual scene, which may or may not bear any relation to the scene I started out describing because some days are like that. Do something else entirely. But keep writing. Please.
ellen_kushner
and me a heartfelt plea for advice. She'd been going along swimmingly, she wrote, sailing through words and pages and scenes, using "My Shitty First Draft" for a mantra when her internal editor got fractious, pretty much making it up as she went along. And then she was asked to write a synopsis, realized that she didn't know exactly what happened next, began to flail and splutter, and could we please, please, throw her a life-preserver, because she was going down for the third time and hated every single word she'd written and was finding it very hard to imagine it was all ever going to turn into a novel anybody would want to read.Sound familiar to you? It did to me. And to Ellen, who wrote her an encouraging and relative-like letter.
This is what I wrote.
Welcome to the wonderful world of writing a novel. Seesawing is NORMAL. We all do it, to one extent or another. Once you've written a novel (or two, or three) you learn (or your partner and friends learn) to recognize the symptoms before they become acute, and apply hot tea and soothing noises to avoid an acute flare-up. Or not. We all hate them. They suck--energy, confidence, time. But they happen.
The most telling sentence in your screed is "(well, except for a little bit yesterday which was OK.)" It (where "it" is getting sentences to make sense and say things you want them to which make the story move forward--let's call it "flow") hasn't flown the coop. It's just become subsumed in your uncertainly about What Happens Next. This is a pain, a dark night of the soul, and the moment that ultimately divides Writers Who Will Finish A Novel from Writers Who Won't. You just have to figure out how to get through it.
Ultimately (as you know, because you said so, very clearly), you need to figure out how you do it yourself. But there are things you can try.
1) Don't write a synopsis until you're ready to. And when you're ready, do what Ellen says. [Which was: "Don't give up on your synopsis. Write it as a 2-paragraph overview - as you would a 250-word review of the existing book, glossing over details. Seriously; pretend you're a reviewer who's reading the finished perfect work - or a kid blogging about her favorite book 2 years after it's come out."--excellent advice, which I intend to take myself, as soon as I'm ready to write a synopsis of my current First Draft in Progress]
2) Try writing the Good Parts Version. This is defined as "All the Stuff I know has to happen and I feel like writing, more or less in this order, but we'll see."
3) Bull on through regardless, throwing words at the wall in the hope that some will stick. One member of my writing group, when writing her first draft, writes scenes that seem to happen in Real Time, in which the characters sit around cooking dinner or mending harness while talking about the weather or the crops or their love lives for PAGES AND PAGES, which is fun for us to read, but not ultimately useful to the plot or the structure of the novel, in the course of which she will write [FLOUNDER], which is obviously exactly what she (and her characters) are doing. She doesn't rewrite them until she's finished the draft, at which point they either disappear or get so completely rewritten that maybe only the setting and one line of dialogue survive from the original. She finds writing them immensely useful, though, however seemingly inefficient, for getting to know characters, for creating an atmosphere or details of her world.
4) Talk the next part through with someone. You need someone who will ask you a lot of questions, who will make bad suggestions so that you can contradict them, who is not at all invested in your taking their advice if it doesn't work for you.
Whatever you do (and I'm sure there are other things I've never tried or thought of), get that shitty first draft done. You can't fix something that doesn't exist. You can't rewrite a faulty text that's still mostly in your head. You can't experience the thrill of making a recalcitrant scene or section work by changing a paragraph, cutting a sentence, adding the perfect line of dialogue if you haven't written the clunky version first. Do whatever it takes. That's the prime function of NaNoWrMo, which is designed for those who like to know that they are not alone in their suffering. If you're a page-count junkie, set yourself a daily goal (me, I'd rather type naked on Riverside Drive). If you like timed tasks, make a rule that you have to write for a certain amount of time a day, whether you're enjoying it or not (that's what I do). Sometimes I start writing, "This scene has to have these characters in it, and it would be nice if somebody mentioned the 800 Gorillas in the corner in the course of it, and maybe the Hero could cry, and how on earth am I going to make that happen? Well, he's scared of mice. No, I don't need to know where the mice come from. . . ." Etc, etc, until I'm writing an actual scene, which may or may not bear any relation to the scene I started out describing because some days are like that. Do something else entirely. But keep writing. Please.
November 21, 2010
Sweater Quest
I knit, from time to time. I've committed the odd (and I do mean odd) baby hat. But I'm not a knitter. I was taught to make mittens, but that was in another century and I've completely forgotten how. I have a pattern for a tea cosy small enough to fit my favorite pot, and I've made a knitting date with my oldest friend, who is a knitter, to hold my hand (metaphorically speaking) through the parts of the pattern I can't read (like, all of it). But I love reading about process, and I think Adrienne Martini is a bright cookie and a demon writer. So I picked up Sweater Quest: My Year of Knitting Dangerously knowing I was in for a good time, but not really expecting anything more.
Boy, was I wrong.
I haven't finished it yet (I tend to slow down a lot when I'm really enjoying something. I also hoard my chocolate-covered cherries. It's a thing.), but I've read enough to know that this isn't just another "How I spent a year doing something really difficult and how it changed my life" book (think Julie and Julia). This is a meditation on what it means to be a teacher and free-lance writer with a husband, two children, and a cat who attacks knitted things (aka a very busy working woman) spending time she doesn't really have knitting a fiendishly difficult Fair Isle sweater. Also a meditation on feminism and why people knit and internet communities and obsession and, oh, yeah, the history of knitting.
Now, the cool thing about this is that a Fair Isle sweater is built out of lots of different colors repeated in small mathematical units to make a beautiful and harmonious pattern. Which (unless I am much mistaken) is exactly how this book is structured. All the paragraphs about Martini's daily life, about Alice Starmore (who designed the sweater), about Women's Work and first wave feminism, about the difference between Continental and English knitting, about the on-line community of knitters, build chapter by chapter into a beautifully argued whole. I'm not entirely sure yet what the whole is, but I'm definitely seeing the pattern, and it's a beaut.
It's also really well-written and funny and charming and smart, smart, smart. Plus, the book as sweater. That's a metaphor that can really make me feel warm and cozy.
If you want to see a picture of the sweater at issue, "Mary Tudor sweater" is the second suggestion Google gives you on its pop-up menu. And Sweater Quest is the second entry on the list.
Boy, was I wrong.
I haven't finished it yet (I tend to slow down a lot when I'm really enjoying something. I also hoard my chocolate-covered cherries. It's a thing.), but I've read enough to know that this isn't just another "How I spent a year doing something really difficult and how it changed my life" book (think Julie and Julia). This is a meditation on what it means to be a teacher and free-lance writer with a husband, two children, and a cat who attacks knitted things (aka a very busy working woman) spending time she doesn't really have knitting a fiendishly difficult Fair Isle sweater. Also a meditation on feminism and why people knit and internet communities and obsession and, oh, yeah, the history of knitting.
Now, the cool thing about this is that a Fair Isle sweater is built out of lots of different colors repeated in small mathematical units to make a beautiful and harmonious pattern. Which (unless I am much mistaken) is exactly how this book is structured. All the paragraphs about Martini's daily life, about Alice Starmore (who designed the sweater), about Women's Work and first wave feminism, about the difference between Continental and English knitting, about the on-line community of knitters, build chapter by chapter into a beautifully argued whole. I'm not entirely sure yet what the whole is, but I'm definitely seeing the pattern, and it's a beaut.
It's also really well-written and funny and charming and smart, smart, smart. Plus, the book as sweater. That's a metaphor that can really make me feel warm and cozy.
If you want to see a picture of the sweater at issue, "Mary Tudor sweater" is the second suggestion Google gives you on its pop-up menu. And Sweater Quest is the second entry on the list.
November 17, 2010
Plantation Life
There are many things that are plentiful in Southern Louisiana. Cane fields, live oaks, Spanish moss, fried foods, hot sauce, glasses of ice tea, processing plants (oil and sugar), egrets, pick-up trucks, little tin-roofed houses with deep front porches, pines, cypress, churches (Catholic and Evangelical). Plantation houses.
Once upon a time, most of the land on either side of any bayou belonged to plantations. Some of them were the 10,000 acre behemoths with their own sugar mills and hundreds of slaves and the elegant Big House of legend and song. Many more of them were relatively small, their houses small and neat, their fields right up close behind. Driving down Route 182, mostly we saw the latter, set far back on their lots among the liveoaks, looking withdrawn and uncertain amid the more modern brick ranches and clapboard split-levels surrounding them. Most of them are private homes. Some are B&B's. We wanted to sleep further east, closer to the airport for our flight on Friday, so we opted for La Bocage, in Darrow, Louisiana.
That was an adventure, too.
La Bocage was bought in 2008 by a wealthy doctor who apparently comes from southern Louisiana but lives in Houston, Texas. For the past 20 years, he's been collecting New Orleans furniture, antique rugs, French porcelain, Waterford bowls, crystal chandeliers, French clocks, and Napoliana, all of which was languishing in a warehouse until he bought La Bocage. At the time, the house was suffering from rising damp, falling plaster, and mold. Now, it's as tight and bright a restoration as any I've ever seen. He's thought of everything--Lucullan bathrooms with steam showers, Wifi, comfy mattresses. A 1910 Steinway that's been rigged as an electronic player piano that spews out light-popular musak every waking hour, with a huge flat-screen TV above it, framed in gold curlicues.
Our room came with a bottle of wine and a high tea of cheese and fruit and little quiches and salted nuts, after which the manager, Irina (who is from the Ukraine), took us on a tour of the house. We saw many golden curlicues. Also a secretary desk with scenes of Naploean's Finest Battles inlaid in pewter, brass, and ivory, small equestrian statues and busts, a Tiffany clock embedded in the gilded wheel of Athena's war chariot, a pair of blindingly bright Baccarat crystal chandeliers with little floral pendents, and some of the most, er, curious modern paintings of harlequins and immodestly clad showgirls it has ever been my fortune to see. At intervals, Luba (who is also from the Ukraine, and much more recently than Irina, whose English was excellent) would find us with news of some domestic emergency. The couple in the Chinese Room, who had been closeted all day arguing, were checking out early. The clock guy was calling to confirm a morning appointment. The bride's aunt called to be sure Irina photographed her on the red sofa in her wedding dress. The bride and the groom arrived, exhausted, and just wanted to go to their room. In the midst of all this, we crept upstairs to test out the steam shower (it was sublime) and do a little light reading and repack everything so we could leave early Friday morning.
I will draw a veil over the awkward communal breakfast the next morning--just us, a young man and his girlfriend who were in town for the game, and the bride and groom, who looked to be about 20. Suffice it to say that neither Ellen nor I found Luba's accent as funny as they did, or found anything to complain about in her excellent (and very European) biscuits and omelettes. I swannee, I was surprised at those children, I really was.
After bidding Irina and Luba a fond farewell, we set off for Laura Plantation in Vacherie. Now, that was something like. It's a lovely house, long, low, with a deep gallery all the way around, green walls, faux-wood-grained red doors, blue accents--a typical Creole plantation house, in fact, very different from the white-pillared stiffness of the English houses. For four generations, Laura was run by women--officially as well as actually. Lest you think this was altogether a good thing, the first woman who ran it, Elisabeth, was the kind of person who thought her son soft because he refused to hit the slaves hard enough and routinely ignored the clause in the Code Noir that forbade slave owners to separate a mother and her children. Her daughter, however, seemed to have picked up her mother's strength of mind without her inhumanity, and was accounted a reasonable mistress as well as a shrewd businesswoman. The whole history of the place, recounted by our very well-trained and professional guide, was the stuff of a sensational novel, woven through with duels and men of ungovernable temper and autocratic women and children running off to France and getting hauled back again, all in the name of family and duty and profit.
And now, what's left is a pretty house, a stand of banana trees boasting 20 different kinds of bananas, some truly horrifying slave cabins, even expanded, as they had been, under the reign of German family who bought the plantation from the eponymous Laura in the early 20th century, a couple of brick cisterns, some rabbit hutches and hen coops, and a lot of photos and documents saved by Laura, who lived from 1850 to 1963 and wrote a memoir of her family. Which we bought and Ellen read on the plane home, and I'm going to read, too, very soon now.
And that's it, really. I'm glad to be home, although there's a daunting amount of stuff piled up that needs to be taken care of one way or another before the end of the month. I've taken a lot of notes about Le Code Noir and 19th century sugar cane and who gets to define what "getting along fine" means in a former slave culture, and how the air smells near a sugar refinery. And now I'm going more or less underground so I can get the final draft of Freedom Maze done and dusted, so it can finally, finally see the light of day.
Once upon a time, most of the land on either side of any bayou belonged to plantations. Some of them were the 10,000 acre behemoths with their own sugar mills and hundreds of slaves and the elegant Big House of legend and song. Many more of them were relatively small, their houses small and neat, their fields right up close behind. Driving down Route 182, mostly we saw the latter, set far back on their lots among the liveoaks, looking withdrawn and uncertain amid the more modern brick ranches and clapboard split-levels surrounding them. Most of them are private homes. Some are B&B's. We wanted to sleep further east, closer to the airport for our flight on Friday, so we opted for La Bocage, in Darrow, Louisiana.
That was an adventure, too.
La Bocage was bought in 2008 by a wealthy doctor who apparently comes from southern Louisiana but lives in Houston, Texas. For the past 20 years, he's been collecting New Orleans furniture, antique rugs, French porcelain, Waterford bowls, crystal chandeliers, French clocks, and Napoliana, all of which was languishing in a warehouse until he bought La Bocage. At the time, the house was suffering from rising damp, falling plaster, and mold. Now, it's as tight and bright a restoration as any I've ever seen. He's thought of everything--Lucullan bathrooms with steam showers, Wifi, comfy mattresses. A 1910 Steinway that's been rigged as an electronic player piano that spews out light-popular musak every waking hour, with a huge flat-screen TV above it, framed in gold curlicues.
Our room came with a bottle of wine and a high tea of cheese and fruit and little quiches and salted nuts, after which the manager, Irina (who is from the Ukraine), took us on a tour of the house. We saw many golden curlicues. Also a secretary desk with scenes of Naploean's Finest Battles inlaid in pewter, brass, and ivory, small equestrian statues and busts, a Tiffany clock embedded in the gilded wheel of Athena's war chariot, a pair of blindingly bright Baccarat crystal chandeliers with little floral pendents, and some of the most, er, curious modern paintings of harlequins and immodestly clad showgirls it has ever been my fortune to see. At intervals, Luba (who is also from the Ukraine, and much more recently than Irina, whose English was excellent) would find us with news of some domestic emergency. The couple in the Chinese Room, who had been closeted all day arguing, were checking out early. The clock guy was calling to confirm a morning appointment. The bride's aunt called to be sure Irina photographed her on the red sofa in her wedding dress. The bride and the groom arrived, exhausted, and just wanted to go to their room. In the midst of all this, we crept upstairs to test out the steam shower (it was sublime) and do a little light reading and repack everything so we could leave early Friday morning.
I will draw a veil over the awkward communal breakfast the next morning--just us, a young man and his girlfriend who were in town for the game, and the bride and groom, who looked to be about 20. Suffice it to say that neither Ellen nor I found Luba's accent as funny as they did, or found anything to complain about in her excellent (and very European) biscuits and omelettes. I swannee, I was surprised at those children, I really was.
After bidding Irina and Luba a fond farewell, we set off for Laura Plantation in Vacherie. Now, that was something like. It's a lovely house, long, low, with a deep gallery all the way around, green walls, faux-wood-grained red doors, blue accents--a typical Creole plantation house, in fact, very different from the white-pillared stiffness of the English houses. For four generations, Laura was run by women--officially as well as actually. Lest you think this was altogether a good thing, the first woman who ran it, Elisabeth, was the kind of person who thought her son soft because he refused to hit the slaves hard enough and routinely ignored the clause in the Code Noir that forbade slave owners to separate a mother and her children. Her daughter, however, seemed to have picked up her mother's strength of mind without her inhumanity, and was accounted a reasonable mistress as well as a shrewd businesswoman. The whole history of the place, recounted by our very well-trained and professional guide, was the stuff of a sensational novel, woven through with duels and men of ungovernable temper and autocratic women and children running off to France and getting hauled back again, all in the name of family and duty and profit.
And now, what's left is a pretty house, a stand of banana trees boasting 20 different kinds of bananas, some truly horrifying slave cabins, even expanded, as they had been, under the reign of German family who bought the plantation from the eponymous Laura in the early 20th century, a couple of brick cisterns, some rabbit hutches and hen coops, and a lot of photos and documents saved by Laura, who lived from 1850 to 1963 and wrote a memoir of her family. Which we bought and Ellen read on the plane home, and I'm going to read, too, very soon now.
And that's it, really. I'm glad to be home, although there's a daunting amount of stuff piled up that needs to be taken care of one way or another before the end of the month. I've taken a lot of notes about Le Code Noir and 19th century sugar cane and who gets to define what "getting along fine" means in a former slave culture, and how the air smells near a sugar refinery. And now I'm going more or less underground so I can get the final draft of Freedom Maze done and dusted, so it can finally, finally see the light of day.
November 16, 2010
Bayou Backroads
Four days we were in Louisiana. Four days, but about a week's worth of experiences.
You've probably picked up, somewhere in the blogosphere, that Neil Gaiman celebrated his 50th birthday in New Orleans with a flotilla of friends and family, among whom
ellen_kushner
and I were honored to be included. The bash took place at Rosy's Jazz Hall, an old warehouse, I think, deserted after Katrina and transformed into a performance/wedding/party space of great charm and coolness. The food, catered by Green Goddess, was excellent, the wine free-flowing, ditto the conversation. Everyone had gotten all gussied up, even those who don't usually gussy, and I'm almost sorry I didn't bring my camera. But I wasn't there to take pictures, I was there to talk, which I did until I was hoarse. And to dance, which I did--with Ellen and Susan Straub and Alisa Kwitney--even though the band wasn't really a dance band and you couldn't hear the singer, which was a pity because he was working so very hard.
He should have had the sound system the Malfacteurs at the Blue Moon in Lafayette had, is alls I'm sayin. Or the pipes of one of their singers--a young woman, looked about 14, but was probably older, about 4 foot nothing, with big brown eyes and a Louise Brooks bob and a blue cotton shirtwaist and one of those buzz-saw country voices that makes every lyric sound tragic. Probably an acquired taste, but I've sure acquired it.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Thursday was devoted to eating everything in New Orleans convivial meals and a little light shopping. As always, The Court of the Two Sisters, where the Big Brunch was held, was very lovely, but the food was stodgy, as one would expect from a steam-table buffet. There sure was plenty of it, including boiled shrimp and remoulade sauce, so I can't really complain. Also bread pudding and ambrosia, which effected me like a Southern madeline. I flashed back to lunches with Mama and Godmother Alma and Cousin Nancy Jane, listening to the Organ Recital of family medical woes, trying to ignore the faces my little cousin Delphine was making at me across the table. Those were the days.
Thursday night, we ate at Bayonna, which was wonderful. Duck breast and wild rice and pickled cabbage, O my! With a celestial pumpkin tart for dessert. After bidding about half the party guests, who had had the same idea for dinner, goodbye, we rolled back to the hotel. Next morning we rose bright, though none too early, packed, and ate one last New Orleans breakfast at the French Market Friday morning before heading to the airport to pick up a car for our drive into Bayou Country.
We had many adventures. The first was the taxi to the airport, driven by a gentleman called Cowboy, with the hat and an attitude towards things like speed limits and other drivers to prove it. We arrived at the airport, shaken, not stirred, and collected the keys to the reddest, smallest Chevy I've ever seen. "Cop magnet," Ellen said, but luckily her Cassandra-ing didn't pan out, probably because the car had no pick-up and shook like a blanc-mange when you took it over 70. We pootled determinedly to Lafayette, where we met my cousin and her husband for lunch at Prejean's--the cajun/creole restaurant to end all cajun/creole restaurants, crawfish and shrimp and crab and catfish cooked twenty ways from Sunday, with a heavy preference for fried, sauced, stuffed, and (in the case of my cousin's dish) all of the above. I have to say, I enjoyed the company more than the food, being very fond indeed of my cousin and her husband.
Our second adventure was The Blue Moon, a Cajun music venue in Lafayette, where we went with some old friends of Ellen's from KRVS public radio in Lafayette. I love Cajun dancing. Back in the 90's, Ellen and I used to go to Johnny D's in Somerville every Monday to jitterbug and two-step and waltz. When we dance together, I lead, but I learn more when I'm following. And I learned a lot last Friday night. Gotta say, for Cajun dancing in the middle of Louisiana, what you want is an old guy (who aren't that much older than I as they used to be), been two-stepping with everybody and her sister since he was 15, knows how to make his partner look like she knows what she's doing, even when she doesn't. Being mannerly, they're ask strangers to dance so they won't feel left out. Boy, did I have fun. One guy (chunky, white-haired (what there was of it), puckish grin) danced with me 6 times, and then proposed--in French. I told him I needed to ask my husband's permission--because this is rural Louisiana, after all, and I had no desire to get into a whole political thing on the dance floor, and it made him laugh. If I'd had proper dancing shoes, I would have danced all night. I also wouldn't have had a crop of tolerably painful blisters next day, but never mind. I enjoyed myself hugely.
The third adventure came Saturday, when we drove down Route 182, through New Iberia and Baldwin and Jenerette looking at the scenery and the cane fields and the little wooden houses roofed in tin of the poor, well away from the actual and faux plantation houses of the prosperous. We stopped in Jenerette, where, in 1994, we'd eaten the best catfish ever at a little roadside place called Miss Lil's Kitchen, across the way from the Jenerette Museum. The museum was closed, but Miss Lil's was still there, looking pretty much as we'd seen it last, 16 years ago. We ordered the catfish from Miss Lil's son Floyd, who'd been away at college, and he said his Mama had been talking, just the other day, about two ladies stopped by a while back, working on a book. "She does that," he said. "She talk about somebody, they show up." He got her on the phone for us, and Ellen chatted with her a bit. She loves us and blesses us and is going to call. We're going to send her a copy of Freedom Maze, with thanks for the catfish and the hospitality and the window into what it's like to stay just where you were born your whole life, making the best of what nobody said was a difficult situation, though it clearly was.
The fourth adventure was after lunch, when we stopped by the side of the road to take pictures of the cane and the railway (which looks like it's been there for a while), then got ourselves well and truly stuck in a ditch--right front wheel mired in loose gravel, left rear wheel dangling in mid-air. Ellen was just reaching into the back seat for her phone to call AAA when a white pick-up made a u-turn, stopped, and disgorged two very large men, who wanted to know if we were OK. "Feeling a little sheepish," I said. "I was until 5 minutes ago," said Ellen. They laughed and sat on the trunk, which didn't help. Then more cars stopped, and suddenly, there were 6 large men gathered around our little red tin can, lifting and pushing and telling Ellen when to give it the gun, and before we knew it, the car was out of the ditch and the men were gone. It was like the fairies had rescued us, and gone away again before we could even thank them properly.
And that's all I'm going to write about today, because this post is getting endless. I'll tell you all about the plantations tomorrow.
You've probably picked up, somewhere in the blogosphere, that Neil Gaiman celebrated his 50th birthday in New Orleans with a flotilla of friends and family, among whom
ellen_kushner
and I were honored to be included. The bash took place at Rosy's Jazz Hall, an old warehouse, I think, deserted after Katrina and transformed into a performance/wedding/party space of great charm and coolness. The food, catered by Green Goddess, was excellent, the wine free-flowing, ditto the conversation. Everyone had gotten all gussied up, even those who don't usually gussy, and I'm almost sorry I didn't bring my camera. But I wasn't there to take pictures, I was there to talk, which I did until I was hoarse. And to dance, which I did--with Ellen and Susan Straub and Alisa Kwitney--even though the band wasn't really a dance band and you couldn't hear the singer, which was a pity because he was working so very hard.He should have had the sound system the Malfacteurs at the Blue Moon in Lafayette had, is alls I'm sayin. Or the pipes of one of their singers--a young woman, looked about 14, but was probably older, about 4 foot nothing, with big brown eyes and a Louise Brooks bob and a blue cotton shirtwaist and one of those buzz-saw country voices that makes every lyric sound tragic. Probably an acquired taste, but I've sure acquired it.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Thursday was devoted to eating everything in New Orleans convivial meals and a little light shopping. As always, The Court of the Two Sisters, where the Big Brunch was held, was very lovely, but the food was stodgy, as one would expect from a steam-table buffet. There sure was plenty of it, including boiled shrimp and remoulade sauce, so I can't really complain. Also bread pudding and ambrosia, which effected me like a Southern madeline. I flashed back to lunches with Mama and Godmother Alma and Cousin Nancy Jane, listening to the Organ Recital of family medical woes, trying to ignore the faces my little cousin Delphine was making at me across the table. Those were the days.
Thursday night, we ate at Bayonna, which was wonderful. Duck breast and wild rice and pickled cabbage, O my! With a celestial pumpkin tart for dessert. After bidding about half the party guests, who had had the same idea for dinner, goodbye, we rolled back to the hotel. Next morning we rose bright, though none too early, packed, and ate one last New Orleans breakfast at the French Market Friday morning before heading to the airport to pick up a car for our drive into Bayou Country.
We had many adventures. The first was the taxi to the airport, driven by a gentleman called Cowboy, with the hat and an attitude towards things like speed limits and other drivers to prove it. We arrived at the airport, shaken, not stirred, and collected the keys to the reddest, smallest Chevy I've ever seen. "Cop magnet," Ellen said, but luckily her Cassandra-ing didn't pan out, probably because the car had no pick-up and shook like a blanc-mange when you took it over 70. We pootled determinedly to Lafayette, where we met my cousin and her husband for lunch at Prejean's--the cajun/creole restaurant to end all cajun/creole restaurants, crawfish and shrimp and crab and catfish cooked twenty ways from Sunday, with a heavy preference for fried, sauced, stuffed, and (in the case of my cousin's dish) all of the above. I have to say, I enjoyed the company more than the food, being very fond indeed of my cousin and her husband.
Our second adventure was The Blue Moon, a Cajun music venue in Lafayette, where we went with some old friends of Ellen's from KRVS public radio in Lafayette. I love Cajun dancing. Back in the 90's, Ellen and I used to go to Johnny D's in Somerville every Monday to jitterbug and two-step and waltz. When we dance together, I lead, but I learn more when I'm following. And I learned a lot last Friday night. Gotta say, for Cajun dancing in the middle of Louisiana, what you want is an old guy (who aren't that much older than I as they used to be), been two-stepping with everybody and her sister since he was 15, knows how to make his partner look like she knows what she's doing, even when she doesn't. Being mannerly, they're ask strangers to dance so they won't feel left out. Boy, did I have fun. One guy (chunky, white-haired (what there was of it), puckish grin) danced with me 6 times, and then proposed--in French. I told him I needed to ask my husband's permission--because this is rural Louisiana, after all, and I had no desire to get into a whole political thing on the dance floor, and it made him laugh. If I'd had proper dancing shoes, I would have danced all night. I also wouldn't have had a crop of tolerably painful blisters next day, but never mind. I enjoyed myself hugely.
The third adventure came Saturday, when we drove down Route 182, through New Iberia and Baldwin and Jenerette looking at the scenery and the cane fields and the little wooden houses roofed in tin of the poor, well away from the actual and faux plantation houses of the prosperous. We stopped in Jenerette, where, in 1994, we'd eaten the best catfish ever at a little roadside place called Miss Lil's Kitchen, across the way from the Jenerette Museum. The museum was closed, but Miss Lil's was still there, looking pretty much as we'd seen it last, 16 years ago. We ordered the catfish from Miss Lil's son Floyd, who'd been away at college, and he said his Mama had been talking, just the other day, about two ladies stopped by a while back, working on a book. "She does that," he said. "She talk about somebody, they show up." He got her on the phone for us, and Ellen chatted with her a bit. She loves us and blesses us and is going to call. We're going to send her a copy of Freedom Maze, with thanks for the catfish and the hospitality and the window into what it's like to stay just where you were born your whole life, making the best of what nobody said was a difficult situation, though it clearly was.
The fourth adventure was after lunch, when we stopped by the side of the road to take pictures of the cane and the railway (which looks like it's been there for a while), then got ourselves well and truly stuck in a ditch--right front wheel mired in loose gravel, left rear wheel dangling in mid-air. Ellen was just reaching into the back seat for her phone to call AAA when a white pick-up made a u-turn, stopped, and disgorged two very large men, who wanted to know if we were OK. "Feeling a little sheepish," I said. "I was until 5 minutes ago," said Ellen. They laughed and sat on the trunk, which didn't help. Then more cars stopped, and suddenly, there were 6 large men gathered around our little red tin can, lifting and pushing and telling Ellen when to give it the gun, and before we knew it, the car was out of the ditch and the men were gone. It was like the fairies had rescued us, and gone away again before we could even thank them properly.
And that's all I'm going to write about today, because this post is getting endless. I'll tell you all about the plantations tomorrow.
November 15, 2010
Old Road Maps of Louisiana
Our trip to Louisiana (which I will tell you about, promise. Because there were Fun Adventures, plus dancing!) really galvanized me to start the final draft of my much-drafted middle-grade double-historical, The Freedom Maze (due out next year from Big Mouth Press, the children's division (!) of Small Beer). I took many pictures of slave cabins and spinning wheels and New Orleans half-tester beds and many notes of roads and bridges and useful facts about sugar cane. (Did you know 19th C. sugar cane was shorter and more fragile than modern sugar cane? They crossed it with bamboo so it would stand up to heavy rain better. But I digress.)
Anyway, I find myself in dire need of a road map of Louisiana, vintage 1960. Does anybody out there know where I could find one, just to look at? Or own one I could ask questions about? I just want to know what route Our Heroine's mother would have taken to drive from New Orleans to, say, Jenerette, LA (which is more or less stands in for my fictional town of Oakwood). I'm guessing some combination of 182 and 631, but things have changed so much since rte 90 was built that it's impossible to tell what it was like around there before. I know it was possible to drive from New Orleans to the bayou country in 1960--I did it with my mother. But I wasn't paying much attention to roads at that point.
Anyway, I find myself in dire need of a road map of Louisiana, vintage 1960. Does anybody out there know where I could find one, just to look at? Or own one I could ask questions about? I just want to know what route Our Heroine's mother would have taken to drive from New Orleans to, say, Jenerette, LA (which is more or less stands in for my fictional town of Oakwood). I'm guessing some combination of 182 and 631, but things have changed so much since rte 90 was built that it's impossible to tell what it was like around there before. I know it was possible to drive from New Orleans to the bayou country in 1960--I did it with my mother. But I wasn't paying much attention to roads at that point.
