Shanna Swendson's Blog, page 141

Back to Work

I got back on track with the writing yesterday, actually producing new words, and then scenes started playing out in my head. Yeah, I'm back! Though I might not make much additional progress today because I'm back to choir and children's choir tonight. I doubt there will be much actual musical activity in children's choir because they'll be hyper from the holidays and just starting to settle back into a normal schedule. We may play musical chairs for half an hour. And maybe a few rounds of the snowman song, though there is that one kid who finds it traumatic. I'll just tell him that Frosty's magic hat came along and brought all the snowmen back to life.

I took a walk to the library this morning, mostly to find a reference (that they turned out not to have), but I also decided to make a start on reading the books likely to end up on the Nebula ballot. When I looked at the list of recommended books, I noticed that Rebel Mechanics wasn't on the list for the Norton Award (the one for children's and YA books). However, there aren't a lot of books on the list, and most of them have just one recommendation. The one with the most was actually published as an adult book, so I don't know what the guidelines are.

At any rate, if you happen to be a SFWA member and feel inclined to add it to the list, I'd be grateful, and I hope you'd consider nominating it. Since it was recognized by the Texas Library Association, I figure it has some merit and might even stand a chance. However, I'm not really in the "cool" crowd in that organization, so I need all the support I can get.

In other news, I had a vivid dream last night about taking harp lessons. Maybe this is something I should look into. I'd have to get a harp first, but the Irish Festival is coming up, and there's usually a vendor there. Not a big concert harp (well, not yet), but a small, portable Celtic harp would be nice. Because I need more hobbies.

2015 in Review

That new mattress topper may not have been such a good idea, after all. It makes the bed so comfortable that it's hard to get up. At least the featherbed became uncomfortable by morning because I ended up lying in a pit where the feathers were either displaced or compressed (the reason it had to be shaken every morning). Maybe once I get accustomed to the new bed, the novelty will wear off.

While I didn't do any world changing yesterday, I did manage to get to the must-do items on the to-do list, which included re-reading the part I've already written of the book in progress so I can dive back into it. That means writing resumes today. I took far too much time off.

Because I was taking time off, I never did a year-in-review post. Work-wise, it looks like I had a strong start, pushed through the summer, then slacked off in the fall. I wrote a book and got started on a book, plus wrote several synopses for a book proposal. I had three books published.

Reading-wise, I was in a real slump. I only read about two-thirds of my usual number of books. However, I did have a couple of really long books on the list, as well as several reference books that involved not only reading, but taking a lot of notes. I also had a few books that didn't make it onto the list because I didn't finish reading them. I devoted a fair amount of time to them before deciding not to bother. And I was also trying to weed out the Strategic Book Reserve, so I have a stack of books by the nightstand where I read one or two chapters and decided they weren't for me. I suspect I read a lot more than I gave myself credit for, since I only log books I finished.

Much of my reading for the year was re-reading Terry Pratchett, mostly because I was on so many related panels at WorldCon and wanted a refresher course. After flipping back through my log, I think my favorite new-to-me book that I read this year was Alias, Hook by Lisa Jensen. Otherwise, nothing really jumped out at me as "you must read this" material.

It was also a low year for movies, as the only ones I saw in the theater were Cinderella, Inside Out, The Minions, Spectre, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens (unless I'm forgetting something). I saw Cinderella and The Force Awakens twice at the theater.

On TV, we said farewell to Haven and Continuum, which both got actual endings that I found satisfying in a bittersweet way. There must have been something that ended in the spring that I've forgotten (did Parks and Recreation end last spring?). I didn't start watching much new stuff in the fall, though I did start catching up on The Expanse and like it so far. This summer's fun new show was Killjoys. In general, the ongoing shows had a bad habit of taking harsh turns to the dark, usually for the worse. I've joked about the Writers Guild suicide pact.

Wow, it seems like I didn't enjoy a lot this year. But I took a real vacation to a place I want to go back to. I went to a lot of conventions, including one in a brand-new place that I enjoyed a lot. I took a lot of long walks. I sang a lot, getting beyond what used to be a crippling case of stage fright to be able to sing a bucket-list solo in a major choral work. I got to see one of my favorite composers conduct a world premiere of a brand-new work (along with one of my favorite older works). I did a lot of knitting and baking. Maybe you could say that I was doing stuff instead of reading or watching stuff. I should continue that, though I need to include more writing in the mix.

So, here's to another year of doing stuff.

Little Changes

Happy New Year! I took the holiday weeks entirely off (other than some work-related reading) to try to recharge, and now I'm actually eager and excited about getting back to work. As usual, I started with all kinds of grand plans and intentions about basically changing the world today, but then sanity prevailed and I set reasonable goals. I'll merely change the world by the end of the week, instead.

Today started with two big changes. Well, small changes, but it's funny how small changes can make a difference. I had to make an emergency Target run before church yesterday because my bedside lamp keeled over. It was a ginger jar style, and the part that held the bulb socket on disengaged entirely and fell down into the jar, leaving the socket and bulb dangling over the side. Since I got this lamp in eighth grade, I figured I could replace it. The shade was still good, so I found a new lamp base that I didn't entirely hate at Target. It's very different, but it's growing on me. I thought in the store that it was too modern for my rather Victorian bedroom, but in the setting it has a kind of Art Deco retro look that works. It's higher than the old lamp, though, so it took some fumbling around to turn the lamp on this morning. The usual arm angle no longer worked, which meant I had to pry my eyes open to find the switch.

And part of that was because of the other change: I replaced my featherbed with a memory foam mattress topper, since Target had those on sale. I'm a side sleeper, so I need something with a bit of squish to it on my mattress. I realize that you can now get mattresses designed that way, but I'm holding off on mattress purchases until I figure out and change my living situation. I liked the featherbed on top of the mattress, but it's getting older, so it's less fluffy. The main problem with it, however, is that you have to take the whole bed apart to make the bed. The featherbed has to be fluffed out every day, and that means taking off the covers and the bottom sheet, shaking out the featherbed, and then remaking the whole bed. As a result, I seldom made the bed, but I still had to go through the process before bed at night because the featherbed isn't comfortable unless you fluff it up. The guest bed at my parents' house had a memory foam topper, and it was comfortable, so when I found one on sale, I gave it a shot. It was really comfortable, but it's lower than the featherbed, which made it even more difficult to grope for the new, higher lamp. But the big difference was that making the bed involved pulling the covers up. The day tends to go better and my house gets and stays cleaner when I make the bed, so this could end up having a ripple effect. I'll have to get used to how flat and square the bed looks now, though.

As for the rest of my holiday, I saw the new Star Wars (twice) -- more on that later. I spent more time than I planned with my parents at Christmas because of the nasty storm between there and my home that took two days to get past so my way was clear. Fortunately, my house wasn't in the area affected by the tornadoes, and we only had one scary tornado warning at my parents' house, but that turned out to be on the other side of town and was radar-only, nothing actually on the ground.

I may have overdone the socializing during the holiday weeks, with so many parties, to the point I snuck out of last night's choir party early because I'd just hit my limit. This week goes back to almost my normal schedule of activities, aside from yoga class. And that means it's time to get back to work. I have a book to finish, some publicity to work on, and so many other things I want to accomplish.

So, time to get to work!

Happy Star Wars Day!

It's Star Wars day today for me. Meanwhile, I'm still processing last night's Haven series finale. Star Wars better not make me cry because I've been fighting some kind of cold/allergies thing (not nearly as severe as what I had last month), and crying makes my nose start running again. I finally got that stopped after Haven last night. All these Christmas movies aren't helping matters.

But I have done my Christmas shopping. I need to mail my brother's gift (just across the state, so I have time), but otherwise, the "busy" part of the season is over, so I can take it easy. Tomorrow may be my movie marathon night -- fuzzy pajamas, hot cocoa, and The Holiday. Maybe Love Actually, too. It's been ages since I watched that.

Anyway, continuing my Star Wars-related posts, I have to present my unpopular opinion that I didn't totally hate the prequels. I'll admit that they work much better with liberal use of the fast-forward button and they should have been much better than they were, but there are things I like about them. I enjoyed them when I saw them and came home from the theater excited about Star Wars again.

To be totally honest, though, there's a part of me that likes to pretend that no movies other than the original exist. What I loved in that was the sense of fun and spirit of adventure, and to some extent that got bogged down in complicated mythology, family relationships, and all that. I like to try to forget everything that came before and after (within the movie chronology) and just enjoy that first movie for the fun space romp it is, without processing who's whose dad or sister or whatever and what the Force really is (it's magic, basically -- as I said, it's a fairy tale with spaceships, lasers, and robots).

If the new one can get that feeling back, I'll be happy. Now I need to go put on my Star Wars socks and my Star Wars t-shirt and get ready to wait in line to get a good seat.

How I Learned to Avoid Star Wars Spoilers

One more day until I see new Star Wars, and I'm trying not to get too excited. I guess it's a combination of not wanting to get burned again after the prequel experience and wanting to recapture the impact of the first one. I haven't been rewatching the older movies. I haven't sought out the various trailers -- I saw the one that was before the James Bond movie and I've seen TV ads, but I'm not watching repeatedly to analyze. I didn't read the review in today's paper other than to see that the local critic gave it a B+.

I learned the hard way about this with The Empire Strikes Back. For kids of the late 70s-early 80s, this was the most anticipated movie ever. When Darth Vader escaped from the Death Star, it was pretty obvious that there would be a sequel, but for a while there was no news about it. Alan Dean Foster's novel Splinter of the Mind's Eye came out as a sequel, and we all pounced on it, then were surprised when it turned out that the sequel would be something else entirely (according to Alan, when he wrote it before the first movie came out, they were thinking that would be the sequel, but everything changed when it was a smash hit).

I was living in Germany when Empire was released, so although it came out in May, we didn't get it at the base theater until early November -- Veteran's Day weekend. That made it difficult to avoid spoilers, especially if you were so eager to find out what happened that you were seeking them out. Oddly enough, the novelization was condensed and excerpted in one of my mom's women's magazines, and I eagerly read that, though the editing job on it was bad enough that it just made me more confused. Once school started in the fall, one of my friends had an extra copy of the full novelization because both sets of grandparents had sent it to her. I'd read it several times before I saw the movie. I also got the soundtrack months before I saw the movie.

So by the time I saw the movie, I pretty much had everything but the visuals memorized. I was familiar with the dialogue, I knew the plot, and I knew every music cue. That made the movie an odd experience, to be new and familiar at the same time. When you already know the lines, it's hard not to be painfully aware that this is a script being spoken by actors. I wouldn't say I was disappointed. It just wasn't the experience I wanted it to be. It wasn't until years later when the Special Editions came out and I saw the movie again at the theater that I was able to really appreciate that movie. I did learn my lesson, and I avoided all information about Return of the Jedi and the prequels before seeing them.

That November viewing does make this movie's December release a little less odd for me. I've stood in line in the cold to see a Star Wars movie, even though these have always been summer things. Actually, though, the line turned out to be unnecessary -- my dad had learned that they'd added a previously unannounced morning show at the Vogelweh theater, so he dragged us out early on Saturday morning for the early show, and the theater was almost empty because so few people knew about it. I saw it again Monday night when I went with a group of friends, and we did have to wait in line to get seats for that one.

We already have tickets for tomorrow, so the line will be to get seats, and I don't know how early we'll wait. Some waiting is kind of mandatory, just for the experience of it. It's not a Star Wars movie if you don't have to line up.

The Reluctant Star Wars Fan

Since it's Star Wars week, I guess I'll continue that trip down memory lane.

As big a fan as I became, I was actually dragged into it rather reluctantly. Although the movie was released in May, we didn't see it until Labor Day. I was vaguely aware of it from reading Newsweek (yes, I was a strange child who read Newsweek), and what I'd read didn't intrigue me that much. I really hated that one poster that had Luke's shirt wide open and gave him a big, muscular chest and that really sexed-up Leia, with the plunging neckline and skirt slit up the thigh. My impression was "half-naked people fighting in space."

My dad had Labor Day off, but, for whatever odd reason, I still had school. My parents used the day to rent a steam cleaner and steam clean the carpets (my family knows how to enjoy a holiday). The rugs were still damp when I got home from school, and my parents got the idea of going to a movie so we'd be out of the house while the carpets finished drying. My dad had heard about this Star Wars thing at work, that it was basically Cowboys and Indians in space, like the old Saturday serials. I put up a protest. At the same theater, there was a Cinderella movie, The Slipper and the Rose, playing, and I wanted to see that. I even offered to go see it alone while the rest of the family saw Star Wars. I was overruled.

This was the Dark Ages before the age of the multiplex. There were maybe five or six movie screens in all of Lawton, Oklahoma, at the time, and the new theaters were the "twin" cinemas with two screens. That meant it was a really big deal that Star Wars had been held over all this time. Even that long after release, the movie sold out, and there was a long line.

My objections died pretty much the moment the music started and that scroll came on the screen (I later made a point of memorizing it), and I was utterly sold when the Star Destroyer came overhead. By the end of the movie, I was obsessed. I remember riding home in the car, using the window crank handles to operate the car's lasers to shoot down TIE fighters. I went to school the next morning eager to tell all my friends the whole story of this fabulous movie. I got the novelization in a school book order and read it so often that I practically had it memorized. I had Star Wars sheets on my bed, Star Wars posters on the wall, and it became the key bonding ingredient for most of my close friendships from that point until college -- no matter how awkward the initial introduction, once Star Wars came up, you could tell who you'd get along with.

Of course, I've never heard the end of it from my parents, who to this day will remind me that I didn't want to see it in the first place and wanted to see that Cinderella movie. I did eventually see that movie on TV years later, and it was rather forgettable, not one of my favorite adaptations. The thing is, Star Wars is as much a fairy tale as any Cinderella story. It's just dressed up in science fiction trappings, with laser swords and spaceships. But structurally, it's a fantasy about a farmboy rescuing a princess and becoming a hero by saving the kingdom. No wonder I loved it.

How Star Wars Made Me a Writer

Time is really flying past me. Not only is Christmas getting frightfully close for someone who has done absolutely zero shopping (gifts are my least favorite part of the holiday, both giving and receiving), but it's really just struck me that there will be a new Star Wars movie this week. I've mostly been ignoring it, not out of lack of interest but because I don't want to get too invested. I'm trying to go in almost as cold as I did in 1977, with no expectations.

Yeah, I'm one of those fans who goes back to 1977 (yes, I'm old), and seeing that movie was life-changing for me. Really. I'm not exaggerating. I very likely wouldn't be doing what I'm doing today if I hadn't seen that movie. I'd always amused myself by making up stories, but there was something about that movie that gave me a burning need to not just make up stories, but to tell them to other people in a way that made them feel like Star Wars made me feel. It flipped some kind of crazy creativity switch in my brain that I haven't been able to turn off since then.

My first efforts at actually writing a story down started as what I guess you'd call Star Wars fan fiction, though by the time I wrote any of it down, it no longer had any resemblance to Star Wars. As you may have noticed, there was kind of a lack of girls in the movie. Princess Leia was awesome, but there was just one of her, and if you were playing Star Wars with the neighborhood kids, there weren't enough female roles to go around. So we had to make up some. One of the characters I came up with was a female fighter pilot who had a very complicated backstory in how she joined the Rebel Alliance -- she was also a princess, from an Empire-friendly world, but she didn't agree with her parents and had been working as a spy for the Alliance from within her home until she got a critical piece of information that she had to pass on, and she knew that once it was out there everyone would know where it came from, so she ran for it, taking her piloting skills (she took private lessons as a princess) with her. This was all backstory, as most of her adventures involved just being a pilot without most people knowing she was a princess. And because I might have been the only girl in America who preferred Luke to Han, Luke was the guy she worked with, hung out with, and would probably end up with (so I felt very vindicated when Leia ended up with Han).

I played with this in my head for years, and over time the Star Wars connections fell by the wayside until she was just a princess from an oppressive world who was spying until she fled to work with the rebels. For a while, she gained a sister when I told a friend about all this and we made up a character for her. I may still have some drawings around from when we designed costumes for our characters (as 12-year-old girls, we had our priorities in order).

Strangely, I never wrote more than the first chapter or so because I hadn't yet learned how to plot. I was good at coming up with situations and characters, but the actual story part eluded me for another ten or so years. I never went back and tried to finish that story, and I don't really have any interest in doing so. It's not one of those old ideas that haunts me. But it may have been the first story I told another person when I shared it with that friend, and it was part of that lightbulb moment that started me on the path to being a writer when I realized that if I wrote down this story, it would be a book, and that would make me a writer.

Crazy Weekend

I have survived the worst (best?) of the holiday craziness. I added up that I went to three parties this weekend, baked three batches of cookies, made one batch of fudge, directed one choir, attended one concert, and sang in one concert. Ahead of me, I just have a few get-togethers with friends and a busy Christmas Eve night, but for the most part, it can now be some peaceful preparation for Christmas. I have some stuff to mail, some shopping to do, and the decorating to finish.

I need to get to the post office today, and I want to take a nice, long walk, but otherwise, I'm not going to push myself. I slept very late and am still lounging around in my pajamas. It's utterly blissful after the weekend I had.

My preschool choir was interesting Sunday morning. As I feared, they made almost no sound. They made more noise while twitching during the prayer right before they sang than they did when they were supposed to be singing. At least they did the motions, so maybe they came across like a signing choir. The way I look at it, for the parents, having their children be that quiet was actually a nice treat. They're never that quiet. We had a microphone close call, though, that reminded me of my first Christmas at this church, long before I was a children's choir director. One of the boys in the preschool choir discovered that he was near one of the microphones and that his voice seemed louder, so he started singing louder to hear himself in the monitors. Then he decided to take advantage of the opportunity to make himself heard in other ways, so he started saying his favorite words into the microphone during the song. Being a four-year-old boy, that amounted to blurting "Poop!" into the microphone.

This Sunday, we had a near miss. We had the microphones on stands facing the steps where the kids were singing, but there's also a handheld wireless microphone on the communion rail that they use for the children's time or for other things that require someone not wearing a body mic to speak. One of my kids came down from the steps during the song and picked up this microphone and started trying to talk into it, then got frustrated because it wasn't on and didn't make his voice louder. However, he was near enough one of the microphones aimed at the choir that you could hear him saying, "Why isn't this working?" over the sound of the rest of the kids whispering the song. I have no idea what he would have said if the microphone had worked. This is the kid who's notorious for bursting out with "The Wheels on the Bus" at full voice during the communion prayer a couple of years ago. Who knows, maybe the mic should have been on and then he would have actually sung.

So, anyway, today is a day of recovery and rest, and the only things I have going on this week are ballet Thursday night and Star Wars on Friday.

Cookie Madness

'Tis the season to go crazy in the kitchen. Yesterday's distraction was the need to bake cookies. I suddenly wanted a variation on my traditional spritz cookies -- something spicy that would go well with mulled wine. I found a basic recipe with some variations that included one with spice. Then I found another recipe that uses honey for part of the sugar and thought that would be interesting to try. So I started modifying the new recipe, and then discovered that although the proportions of sugar, butter, and flour were similar to my usual recipe, it had no leavening. My recipe has baking powder. I guess it might have had a more shortbread-like texture. But since I know my recipe works, I added some baking powder. I like the results, but it wasn't quite spicy enough, and although the amount of cloves was far less than the other spices, cloves still overpowered the other spices. I think since my usual recipe works, I may go back to that as a base recipe, use some honey instead of some of the sugar, and double the amount of cinnamon.

But today since I don't have a lot of time, I'll just make a batch of the usual, since I'll need it for multiple events this weekend, and then I'll work in a batch of spicy spritz Sunday afternoon so I'll have multiple kinds to bring for the pre-concert dinner at church.

And there are still other variations I'd really like to try to play with.

I've also found a company that makes additional plates for standard cookie presses. Mine requires some modifications, but they'll do those for you. They have a whole set of snowflake plates that I now desperately need (that would be so pretty with sparkling sugar). And they have a fantasy set that includes a dragon and a fairy. So next year, my spritz-making game will be off the charts. I think I also need a steampunky gear plate. I wonder if they do those.

So, off to bake the cookies!

Snowman Death Scenes

I'm done with children's choir for the year, other than them singing in church Sunday. Oh boy, do I hope they sing in church. They made almost no sound when we were practicing last night. I'd been singing along with them as they learned the song, then when they were practicing, I dropped my voice to be just enough for them to hear but not enough to drown them out, and they all dropped to match me. I explained what I was doing and why, that we want to be able to hear them, not me, and I'm singing to help them, not to be heard. It only helped slightly. We did some serious drilling on the words, in case that was the issue. But on Sunday, we may resort to them doing the motions and occasionally making a sound while I sing.

Then for fun, I got out the snowman song. It's a counting down thing, where it starts with six snowmen, then the sun comes out and melts away one snowman, so the designated kid melts, and then it repeats until they're all melted. We actually had six kids, so it was perfect. This song is usually like preschooler crack. They love it. We have to do it over and over and over again. Once they get the hang of it, we get Royal Shakespeare Company-level snowman death scenes. They're out-Shatnering Shatner as their snowmen dramatically melt. It's adorable. But I had one little boy last night who HATED it. He thought it was a sad song because he couldn't deal with the snowmen melting. He wouldn't let his snowman melt. Which was okay. His mom says bugs aren't allowed to be killed in their house. He insists that they be taken outside instead because otherwise he gets really sad. And yet he's perfectly willing to hit and kick people. It's an interesting dichotomy.

Today kicks off my crazy weekend of holiday fun, as there's a party I'll make a quick stop by on my way to dance class tonight. Then tomorrow night I'm attending a Christmas concert. Saturday there's a luncheon followed by an afternoon event and an evening party. Sunday morning my children's choir is singing (or mouthing silently), then Sunday evening there's a concert where I'm singing.

After the concert, there will be a total collapse. Fortunately, I don't have yoga Monday morning or any choir stuff on Wednesday, so I don't have to emerge from the cave again until Thursday night unless I want to.