Gillian Polack's Blog, page 11
February 15, 2016
gillpolack @ 2016-02-16T09:44:00
Last week was more than somewhat busy and just a little bizarre, so there are significant updates and I forgot to tell you them.
First, my eye has had its three-monthly check and it's stable and back to 95% of its normal. We now know all about what happened and, despite the severity of last year's interesting episode, it's fine. There are things that would be theoretically possible to do to help prevent it again if I lived in someone else's body but, alas, I live in my body, so all I can do is try to prevent it. Having said that, there's not a high likelihood of it happening.
I'm still not at all happy with the people who treated me as lesser because, for a bit, I couldn't read certain kinds of files. I especially missed judging the Aurealis Awards. I won't be volunteering for them next year, however. Life is too short for bunfights over capacity. If I can read ten books in a day (as I did yesterday) I do not need to be forever explaining that it's a file type that's the issue and I do not need the sense of being useless that always, always comes with those discussions. (And I didn't really read 10 books yesterday - I read just under 90 articles.)
I got a hair cut last week, and it was a mistake. The hairdresser didn't understand curly hair and tried to chop it all off at the back (shortest hair I've ever had) and tried to make the front hair a bit funky. The thing about curly hair is that it doesn't respond to this kind of styling. It does what it does. I'm launching books (Jason Franks' wonderful Sixsmith series) on Saturday and I'm hoping it will grow out enough so that the front doesn't stick out everywhere, as it's doing today. The back is so short that it depends on the shape of my head to look OK. Most of my head is an odd shape, but it seems that the back of my head looks fine. From the back, I look OK, then. No white hair (which is odd), very, very short hair (which is odd, but at least comfy for summer) and lots of neck. From the front I'm all white hair and sticking-out clumps of almost-curl and odd face-shape. I'm thinking of finding a suitable t-shirt for the launch (instead of something smarter) and making my hair stick out intentionally and just admitting life goes funky sometimes.
We have bushfires (not bad ones, but bad enough to affect me) so I'm not going to the Canberra Show this weekend. They have woodchopping and cats and judging of all kinds of things and, this year, they have Dr Who showbags. I'm very sad I can't go! But I got to the multicultural festival on Saturday (some piccies on Facebook) which is one more of the two February events than I managed last year.
My Wednesday students are wonderful, but you already knew that. And I forget the rest! This is because the rest was depressing and I'm determined to work through the bad things and leave them behind. I'm especially going to leave behind people who develop cliques and play exclusion games rather than play in a big pond with the rest of us. This means the only thing I shall be miserable about in the near future is having no Dr Who showbag.
I need a cuppa now (I have super-fresh Sri Lankan tea sample bags from the multicultural festival and I'm thoroughly enjoying every cup for as along as they last, which is probably 3 more days) and read many more articles.
First, my eye has had its three-monthly check and it's stable and back to 95% of its normal. We now know all about what happened and, despite the severity of last year's interesting episode, it's fine. There are things that would be theoretically possible to do to help prevent it again if I lived in someone else's body but, alas, I live in my body, so all I can do is try to prevent it. Having said that, there's not a high likelihood of it happening.
I'm still not at all happy with the people who treated me as lesser because, for a bit, I couldn't read certain kinds of files. I especially missed judging the Aurealis Awards. I won't be volunteering for them next year, however. Life is too short for bunfights over capacity. If I can read ten books in a day (as I did yesterday) I do not need to be forever explaining that it's a file type that's the issue and I do not need the sense of being useless that always, always comes with those discussions. (And I didn't really read 10 books yesterday - I read just under 90 articles.)
I got a hair cut last week, and it was a mistake. The hairdresser didn't understand curly hair and tried to chop it all off at the back (shortest hair I've ever had) and tried to make the front hair a bit funky. The thing about curly hair is that it doesn't respond to this kind of styling. It does what it does. I'm launching books (Jason Franks' wonderful Sixsmith series) on Saturday and I'm hoping it will grow out enough so that the front doesn't stick out everywhere, as it's doing today. The back is so short that it depends on the shape of my head to look OK. Most of my head is an odd shape, but it seems that the back of my head looks fine. From the back, I look OK, then. No white hair (which is odd), very, very short hair (which is odd, but at least comfy for summer) and lots of neck. From the front I'm all white hair and sticking-out clumps of almost-curl and odd face-shape. I'm thinking of finding a suitable t-shirt for the launch (instead of something smarter) and making my hair stick out intentionally and just admitting life goes funky sometimes.
We have bushfires (not bad ones, but bad enough to affect me) so I'm not going to the Canberra Show this weekend. They have woodchopping and cats and judging of all kinds of things and, this year, they have Dr Who showbags. I'm very sad I can't go! But I got to the multicultural festival on Saturday (some piccies on Facebook) which is one more of the two February events than I managed last year.
My Wednesday students are wonderful, but you already knew that. And I forget the rest! This is because the rest was depressing and I'm determined to work through the bad things and leave them behind. I'm especially going to leave behind people who develop cliques and play exclusion games rather than play in a big pond with the rest of us. This means the only thing I shall be miserable about in the near future is having no Dr Who showbag.
I need a cuppa now (I have super-fresh Sri Lankan tea sample bags from the multicultural festival and I'm thoroughly enjoying every cup for as along as they last, which is probably 3 more days) and read many more articles.
February 14, 2016
gillpolack @ 2016-02-15T13:43:00
I was reading an a article on English citizenship and tax status in the 17th century and particularly sorting out what 'sons of strangers' were. This was partly for my book, but also partly because I thought it might help me understand the late 17th century status of a family that married into mine in the early 19th century.
it turned out to be very important for the book, because it gave me a hinge of a plot point.
It also gave me something surprising.
It's been clear for a while that the main reason for the claim that England was free of Jews between 1290 and Cromwell was because many historians have wanted this to be the case and have ignored evidence. It's a popular belief and if one doesn't address one's popular beliefs, one reinforces them through research, sometimes with intent, but usually out of ignorance. This is by way of background to me noting that a person given the freedom of London (full citizenship) had it revoked in 1596 because it was determined that he was the son of someone not English ie he had some rights because he was born in England, but there was some doubt as to his status.
What was of interest to me was his name. I think it quite possible that someone who was an adult in 1596 and was called Menasses Bloome was Jewish. The question is whether this influenced the choice to deny him those civic rights he was fighting for? The other question is, when did his parents move to England. Not after 1576, I'm guessing, since he was an independent adult at the time of the decision (had to be, to be awarded freedom, as far as I know). And the other, other question is whether this was part of how Jews were 'othered' later on ie why English birth wasn't sufficient for Jews at a later period when it was sufficient for many other groups. First I'd have to establish that Bloome was definitely Jewish, and that may be difficult. Still, it's a datum to consider, Menasses Bloome and also a date to consider, 1596.
None of the other names in the article were as interesting from this point of view, and the basis of the article was the case made in 1603 for free rights for a child of Scottish parents born in England.
Anyhow, one more piece in a big puzzle.
it turned out to be very important for the book, because it gave me a hinge of a plot point.
It also gave me something surprising.
It's been clear for a while that the main reason for the claim that England was free of Jews between 1290 and Cromwell was because many historians have wanted this to be the case and have ignored evidence. It's a popular belief and if one doesn't address one's popular beliefs, one reinforces them through research, sometimes with intent, but usually out of ignorance. This is by way of background to me noting that a person given the freedom of London (full citizenship) had it revoked in 1596 because it was determined that he was the son of someone not English ie he had some rights because he was born in England, but there was some doubt as to his status.
What was of interest to me was his name. I think it quite possible that someone who was an adult in 1596 and was called Menasses Bloome was Jewish. The question is whether this influenced the choice to deny him those civic rights he was fighting for? The other question is, when did his parents move to England. Not after 1576, I'm guessing, since he was an independent adult at the time of the decision (had to be, to be awarded freedom, as far as I know). And the other, other question is whether this was part of how Jews were 'othered' later on ie why English birth wasn't sufficient for Jews at a later period when it was sufficient for many other groups. First I'd have to establish that Bloome was definitely Jewish, and that may be difficult. Still, it's a datum to consider, Menasses Bloome and also a date to consider, 1596.
None of the other names in the article were as interesting from this point of view, and the basis of the article was the case made in 1603 for free rights for a child of Scottish parents born in England.
Anyhow, one more piece in a big puzzle.
Personal safety and jam tomorrow
I'm finding it slow but very important to develop my own subjective sense of how women compromised and navigated places and social situations to remain safe. It's such a big part of women's lives today (I do not walk through certain carparks at night, I do not travel at night alone at all unless I can walk quickly enough, I carry my keys in my hand if I must, I do not walk through clumps of lingering drunk guys and so forth) and I was even more so in the late 17th century, with the burden of civil war still upon England and France. My sorting of this is going to take a while longer, but it looks as if I'll understand enough to compromise my women's lives magnificently. Everything they do will be despite the world, and most of it won't feel extraordinary to them.
The other thing I'm sorting is just how very, very wrong most novels get 17th century magic. I keep thinking about things I know and realising that knowing them isn't the same as understanding them which isn't the same as internalising them to the level one needs to write effectively from. I now have a thought to ground myself with, should I go astray which one of the critical tools I use personally to achieve understanding.
My memory code for magic is Salem and Boston. Not the 1692 trials. Earlier. By the time of my novel (1682) Massachusetts (especially Boston) was the place where witches operated according to English pamphlets. "We have no witches in England anymore, but Boston isn't so fortunate," is the kind of feeling I was reading. This led me to a whole lot of thought about a whole lot of things, several of which are critical.
The obvious thought is a jam-tomorrow thought. Jeanne Favret-Saada did a study of modern witchcraft in the pre-bocage in France. I visited the area and chatted with the locals and they all said "She's wrong. We don't have that kind of thing here. You want..." And I want to the next area and chatted and they told me the same thing. They added there (in the Norman bocage) at the best witches were all from the Berry region. When I read 17th century material there is a lot of talk about witches and they're always known and they're always somewhere emotionally close (such as Boston, Mass.) but out of reach ie they're safe to talk about because no-one's going to meet them. This is terribly important for my women, because when they travel, they might be travelling into jam-tomorrow in their mind, or they might not, and the actual places that witches and magic in general are counted only sometimes overlap with the popular places where there is supposed to be magic. I could do an overlay map r find one that someone else has done, but right now, jam-tomorrow is what I need for my novel. Or rather, I need "witches in Massachusetts."
It just struck me that a modern equivalent of this is probably the deadly Australian continent in the eyes of the US. S often US documents show a greater fear of Aussie spiders than of local gun deaths.
I was going to talk about some of the other consequences of the magic side of reading, especially for women travelling, but I need a cuppa and I need to read 2 more thingies before lunchtime. I looked at my month's schedule last night and I have some reading to catch up on.
The other thing I'm sorting is just how very, very wrong most novels get 17th century magic. I keep thinking about things I know and realising that knowing them isn't the same as understanding them which isn't the same as internalising them to the level one needs to write effectively from. I now have a thought to ground myself with, should I go astray which one of the critical tools I use personally to achieve understanding.
My memory code for magic is Salem and Boston. Not the 1692 trials. Earlier. By the time of my novel (1682) Massachusetts (especially Boston) was the place where witches operated according to English pamphlets. "We have no witches in England anymore, but Boston isn't so fortunate," is the kind of feeling I was reading. This led me to a whole lot of thought about a whole lot of things, several of which are critical.
The obvious thought is a jam-tomorrow thought. Jeanne Favret-Saada did a study of modern witchcraft in the pre-bocage in France. I visited the area and chatted with the locals and they all said "She's wrong. We don't have that kind of thing here. You want..." And I want to the next area and chatted and they told me the same thing. They added there (in the Norman bocage) at the best witches were all from the Berry region. When I read 17th century material there is a lot of talk about witches and they're always known and they're always somewhere emotionally close (such as Boston, Mass.) but out of reach ie they're safe to talk about because no-one's going to meet them. This is terribly important for my women, because when they travel, they might be travelling into jam-tomorrow in their mind, or they might not, and the actual places that witches and magic in general are counted only sometimes overlap with the popular places where there is supposed to be magic. I could do an overlay map r find one that someone else has done, but right now, jam-tomorrow is what I need for my novel. Or rather, I need "witches in Massachusetts."
It just struck me that a modern equivalent of this is probably the deadly Australian continent in the eyes of the US. S often US documents show a greater fear of Aussie spiders than of local gun deaths.
I was going to talk about some of the other consequences of the magic side of reading, especially for women travelling, but I need a cuppa and I need to read 2 more thingies before lunchtime. I looked at my month's schedule last night and I have some reading to catch up on.
February 10, 2016
gillpolack @ 2016-02-11T10:41:00
A friend has died. Another friend, I must say, for there have been too many deaths this year. Today I want to remember Salmah, though, for today i realised that we'll never have that meet-up we planned.
Some friends don't need to be in my life everyday. I keep in touch with them and whenever we catch up, there is no feeling of time lapse. The problem with this is that I assume that I will get my trip or she'll get her trip and that we'll have that conversation. Salmah will make me her amazing noodles and I'll teach her another cake recipe. She won't be wearing jeans anymore, because the last picture of her I saw she was very elegant and dignified, but I will always think of her in jeans, for she wore them with aplomb and argued with anyone who told her that Muslim women had to be more modest. She would explain the differences in different parts of the Muslim world to them and she would explain where she came from and she and I would make a unity of modern people who nevertheless maintained their religion. There were always people who'd argue with one of us and tell us what we ought to be. She's one of the friends who taught me that I didn't have to do what the idiots thought. That it's possible to be strong, independent, modern and still follow one's own customs.
There are some people whose loss echoes around the world. Salmah is one of these people. She didn't waste a second of her existence, but it was cut far too short. And we were both too patient about that meet-up. We promised it to each other thirty years ago.
Some friends don't need to be in my life everyday. I keep in touch with them and whenever we catch up, there is no feeling of time lapse. The problem with this is that I assume that I will get my trip or she'll get her trip and that we'll have that conversation. Salmah will make me her amazing noodles and I'll teach her another cake recipe. She won't be wearing jeans anymore, because the last picture of her I saw she was very elegant and dignified, but I will always think of her in jeans, for she wore them with aplomb and argued with anyone who told her that Muslim women had to be more modest. She would explain the differences in different parts of the Muslim world to them and she would explain where she came from and she and I would make a unity of modern people who nevertheless maintained their religion. There were always people who'd argue with one of us and tell us what we ought to be. She's one of the friends who taught me that I didn't have to do what the idiots thought. That it's possible to be strong, independent, modern and still follow one's own customs.
There are some people whose loss echoes around the world. Salmah is one of these people. She didn't waste a second of her existence, but it was cut far too short. And we were both too patient about that meet-up. We promised it to each other thirty years ago.
February 4, 2016
Teaching voice
I'm working on voice this semester with my Wednesday class. The wonderful thing about an ongoing group (this is my tenth year with them) that meets for forty weeks in a year is that it's possible to take some serious learning quite slowly.
I have intensive methods of teaching voice, that bring it out quickly and effectively, but in this instance I'm using voice as a vehicle for teaching a bunch of other skills and understanding. This means it's going to be a slow process and I'll probably use every single one of the twenty weeks of the first two terms just to get through the first stages. And, of course, voice isn't the only thing we're learning.
We're starting by examining recent influences on my students' idiolects. Actually, we started with US/English spelling of worse taht end in ise/yse/ize/etc, but they didn't know that was linked with voice - this will come together later, when they piece together their choices, in their writing.
The official step one, then, was understanding that there are regional and culture-specific languages. I used a lovely diagram that I got from a rather brilliant linguist I encountered on Twitter (If you want to find it and her, she was the IndigenousX representative until today and her tweets can be found over the last week - just look for @IndigenousX ). It explained everything from pidgin to creoles and dialects for Australia.
Prior to this diagram I used French, for that's the language I studied these things in and was thus able to explain clearly. I'm very happy now that I have a local handout - and very grateful. I got to explain a whole bunch of things about Australian English that really aren't generally known (but ought to be). And I was able to put Creole and Kriol and Aboriginal English and Aboriginal languages other than English and Creole and Kriol into a personal context that my students could understand.
From there we talked about where we learn our languages from. My students' homework is to find out what words and phases and twists of speech they use that are particular to them (from their background) rather than shared across Australia. One my my students has to watch Taggart, for he's of Scottish origin but hasn't ever stopped to analyse dialects. Others have forgotten the English of their childhood, whether it was from Fiji or Malaysia and are revisiting it, just to see if it has left legacies. We have the Melbourne/Sydney divide covered and the US/British (for one student has English as a Second Language, but was taught US English).
Next week we're going to discuss their findings and find out how their idiolect can be used consciously in their writing.
At this stage, they still don't quite believe that they have unique speech. That's going to take a while to sort. People who use language totally differently all too often assume that they don't. Or people obliterate their wider styles or cover them up with language notions their teachers have given them. I've already done a lot of stripping back with this group - they haven't been writing classroom English in their creative texts for a while. This is why I can sneak a touch of linguistics and a bit of cultural anthropology into teaching voice.
When people tell me that voice can't be taught, I wonder at what methods they use. There are so many approaches to teaching voice. This approach is what will serve this class best. They need a lot more than a writing voice that will make beautiful and unique fiction. They also need life skills. In this case the life skills are partly increased literacy and partly increased cultural literacy.
And this is how I spent yesterday morning. This term is light in teaching terms (long story - and not a cheerful one) so I'm very happy for my Wednesday class.
I have intensive methods of teaching voice, that bring it out quickly and effectively, but in this instance I'm using voice as a vehicle for teaching a bunch of other skills and understanding. This means it's going to be a slow process and I'll probably use every single one of the twenty weeks of the first two terms just to get through the first stages. And, of course, voice isn't the only thing we're learning.
We're starting by examining recent influences on my students' idiolects. Actually, we started with US/English spelling of worse taht end in ise/yse/ize/etc, but they didn't know that was linked with voice - this will come together later, when they piece together their choices, in their writing.
The official step one, then, was understanding that there are regional and culture-specific languages. I used a lovely diagram that I got from a rather brilliant linguist I encountered on Twitter (If you want to find it and her, she was the IndigenousX representative until today and her tweets can be found over the last week - just look for @IndigenousX ). It explained everything from pidgin to creoles and dialects for Australia.
Prior to this diagram I used French, for that's the language I studied these things in and was thus able to explain clearly. I'm very happy now that I have a local handout - and very grateful. I got to explain a whole bunch of things about Australian English that really aren't generally known (but ought to be). And I was able to put Creole and Kriol and Aboriginal English and Aboriginal languages other than English and Creole and Kriol into a personal context that my students could understand.
From there we talked about where we learn our languages from. My students' homework is to find out what words and phases and twists of speech they use that are particular to them (from their background) rather than shared across Australia. One my my students has to watch Taggart, for he's of Scottish origin but hasn't ever stopped to analyse dialects. Others have forgotten the English of their childhood, whether it was from Fiji or Malaysia and are revisiting it, just to see if it has left legacies. We have the Melbourne/Sydney divide covered and the US/British (for one student has English as a Second Language, but was taught US English).
Next week we're going to discuss their findings and find out how their idiolect can be used consciously in their writing.
At this stage, they still don't quite believe that they have unique speech. That's going to take a while to sort. People who use language totally differently all too often assume that they don't. Or people obliterate their wider styles or cover them up with language notions their teachers have given them. I've already done a lot of stripping back with this group - they haven't been writing classroom English in their creative texts for a while. This is why I can sneak a touch of linguistics and a bit of cultural anthropology into teaching voice.
When people tell me that voice can't be taught, I wonder at what methods they use. There are so many approaches to teaching voice. This approach is what will serve this class best. They need a lot more than a writing voice that will make beautiful and unique fiction. They also need life skills. In this case the life skills are partly increased literacy and partly increased cultural literacy.
And this is how I spent yesterday morning. This term is light in teaching terms (long story - and not a cheerful one) so I'm very happy for my Wednesday class.
February 1, 2016
gillpolack @ 2016-02-02T17:07:00
Time is inside out today. I have the current Canberra virus and everything is a bit swirly. I can eat (unlike most other people with the virus) but not much and not often and I had a 24 hour break. I'm just as large after 2 days of this as I was before, so there is no benefit to me in being ill except that time passes strangely. Five minutes ago it was 11 am and 2 minutes before that was 9 am. I keep trying to remember to drink much water, so I get a water bottle and sip and then time passes and I've lost it. I now have five water bottles in various places. I'm trying to remember where they are so that I can drink them all and be delightfully hydrated.
I've done stuff today, but it slips out of my mind and gets lost in those swirls. I wrote a history Girls post on food history (because that is so much the right topic to write on when one has a gastro virus), which you can find here if you need more reading in your day. I've watched some TV. I've done some small things. I've talked to my mother. It was my mother who made me realise what I was doing with the water. How could I possibly be dehydrated when I'd started all those bottles?
So there is no news today. Except that my course on writers and worldbuilding (using all that research and all those writer interviews) has been cancelled. If anyone asks me why I'm not offering it in Canberra as a full-length course, it's because Canberra writers aren't interested. I'll need to move elsewhere, I'm afraid, if I want to teach term-long advanced writers courses. I find this sad, and that's only partly the virus speaking.
I've done stuff today, but it slips out of my mind and gets lost in those swirls. I wrote a history Girls post on food history (because that is so much the right topic to write on when one has a gastro virus), which you can find here if you need more reading in your day. I've watched some TV. I've done some small things. I've talked to my mother. It was my mother who made me realise what I was doing with the water. How could I possibly be dehydrated when I'd started all those bottles?
So there is no news today. Except that my course on writers and worldbuilding (using all that research and all those writer interviews) has been cancelled. If anyone asks me why I'm not offering it in Canberra as a full-length course, it's because Canberra writers aren't interested. I'll need to move elsewhere, I'm afraid, if I want to teach term-long advanced writers courses. I find this sad, and that's only partly the virus speaking.
January 30, 2016
gillpolack @ 2016-01-30T19:25:00
We have a very strange weather system swirling around us. It's the same one we've had for a few days, but teh storms are more severe. The good news is that I'm getting through it as well as friends who are less weather sensitive (Hairy lemons are my friend, as are warm bubble baths, stretching, regular resting and, last night and tomorrow morning, super hero TV). My right eye is loving it and dancing and making life even more interesting.
I used the weather system to read the final book by Pratchett, which I had to do but really didn't want to. And I've dealt with many, many emails. Only 20 left on my must-do-before-Monday list. Yesterday I wrote some novel. And today I wrote 1500 words that are likely never to see light of day, but that had to be written. Of the 27 things I intended to do by the end of the month (the list from 2 days ago, not the list from 1 January, which was more like 480 things) I've only got 7 to go. I won't get them all done, alas, but I'll come close, despite the weather.
Right now, though, the weather has overcome me. I really should have found a friend to spend the afternoon and evening with, but the weather has got to everyone. We should be sitting in a group, in front of a silly movie, drinking hot chocolate and making rude comments. Since I can't do that, I shall have a bubble bath. If I can get 3 more things done tonight, after the bath, that will do.
When i started this post the weather and I were tied, but right now the weather is winning the race. It really is very strange weather.
I used the weather system to read the final book by Pratchett, which I had to do but really didn't want to. And I've dealt with many, many emails. Only 20 left on my must-do-before-Monday list. Yesterday I wrote some novel. And today I wrote 1500 words that are likely never to see light of day, but that had to be written. Of the 27 things I intended to do by the end of the month (the list from 2 days ago, not the list from 1 January, which was more like 480 things) I've only got 7 to go. I won't get them all done, alas, but I'll come close, despite the weather.
Right now, though, the weather has overcome me. I really should have found a friend to spend the afternoon and evening with, but the weather has got to everyone. We should be sitting in a group, in front of a silly movie, drinking hot chocolate and making rude comments. Since I can't do that, I shall have a bubble bath. If I can get 3 more things done tonight, after the bath, that will do.
When i started this post the weather and I were tied, but right now the weather is winning the race. It really is very strange weather.
January 29, 2016
gillpolack @ 2016-01-30T00:36:00
The good things in my day were nice: grocery crisis averted and got to see the first two episodes of Legends of Tomorrow. The not-good things outweighed the good by a factor that was far too great, however. Over a dozen things went wrong, some bigger than others.
Par for the week, now I think about it. Thank goodness for the couple of good things each day and for time with friends every few days. It means I got through.
My weekend includes more of the same, except for Sunday morning which ought to be good.
And my tomorrow consists of finishing everything that didn't get finished yesterday and today. Yesterday and today the universe ran gross interference. Everything that went wrong took an hour to sort and make right. I could have just let things go and sulked, but right now, with so much uncertainty in my life, I thought it was better to sort things immediately. Some would have spiralled out of control if they weren't sorted. So much is sorted and I'd better get to and do some of those other things that now have really tight deadlines and hope that they, at least, will behave.
All this is vague largely because the details are not really interesting. It's the overall "Waah, my life is full of woe!" that's interesting and that's only interesting because of the huge pile-up of various stuffs.
Par for the week, now I think about it. Thank goodness for the couple of good things each day and for time with friends every few days. It means I got through.
My weekend includes more of the same, except for Sunday morning which ought to be good.
And my tomorrow consists of finishing everything that didn't get finished yesterday and today. Yesterday and today the universe ran gross interference. Everything that went wrong took an hour to sort and make right. I could have just let things go and sulked, but right now, with so much uncertainty in my life, I thought it was better to sort things immediately. Some would have spiralled out of control if they weren't sorted. So much is sorted and I'd better get to and do some of those other things that now have really tight deadlines and hope that they, at least, will behave.
All this is vague largely because the details are not really interesting. It's the overall "Waah, my life is full of woe!" that's interesting and that's only interesting because of the huge pile-up of various stuffs.
January 28, 2016
gillpolack @ 2016-01-29T14:09:00
This is one of those classic Australian years where the one season runs through the gamut of the McKellar poem. We have rain here in Canberra and terrific thunderstorms and everyone I know who is even a little weather sensitive is paying for it, bigtime. Even the friends who normally don't even notice these things are cancelling recreational activities and being miserable. We have no fires here, though: Tasmania has them. Geelong has floods. So friends and family are dealing with very different circumstances depending on where they live. And this is the Australian summer. Nothing new here.
My good news is that I've done all but 3 hours work on the book on history and fiction writers and in 2 weeks time I'll do the final bit of work (for right now things are being finalised in the UK) and then it will move to production. Every publisher has their processes and every time I learn it anew.
I get the edits for Secret Jewish Women's Business very soon, I'm told, and apparently they're not heavy. This is because I was deeply unhappy with it and asked friends for beta opinions. When the wonderful (and patient!) Milena Benini gave it a seal of approval, I decided it was down to a final edit and did that, then sent it to my publisher. This is why it only took light edits now. Thank you, everyone involved, for it's much easier for me to write a strange novel than one that almost fits within genre constraints. There were reasons for this novel to be a bit more normal, and you'll see them when you read it.
So, in three weeks, the worst of both will be done, with luck. And next week teaching begins. And I've done a bit of new writing, because Anne of Green Gables made me realise some terribly important things about how we manifest gender. Important to me - something other people know all too well. That's the thing - it's not enough to know intellectually, one has to understand. it's not at all enough that my friends are very wise: I have to start developing my own wisdom.
I do not know how the story of an abused orphan learning how to look enough like everyone else to pass in a small society helped me internalise, but it did, and I am very grateful to LM Montgomery for this. It's a bit unexpected, though. I was expecting that Joanna Russ would do what LM Montgomery did, but it was my childhood I needed to reconfigure to understand, not my teen years. In theory, reconfguring one's understanding is easier if there are books that walk one through when one is a child, but we lack enough of those books still, and even if we had a squillion of fabulous narratives about diverse children's lives, we'd have to process them internally, and there's no knowing what will trigger learning for a given individual. I've now put Anne Shirley in the novel, for this reason and for about three others.
My good news is that I've done all but 3 hours work on the book on history and fiction writers and in 2 weeks time I'll do the final bit of work (for right now things are being finalised in the UK) and then it will move to production. Every publisher has their processes and every time I learn it anew.
I get the edits for Secret Jewish Women's Business very soon, I'm told, and apparently they're not heavy. This is because I was deeply unhappy with it and asked friends for beta opinions. When the wonderful (and patient!) Milena Benini gave it a seal of approval, I decided it was down to a final edit and did that, then sent it to my publisher. This is why it only took light edits now. Thank you, everyone involved, for it's much easier for me to write a strange novel than one that almost fits within genre constraints. There were reasons for this novel to be a bit more normal, and you'll see them when you read it.
So, in three weeks, the worst of both will be done, with luck. And next week teaching begins. And I've done a bit of new writing, because Anne of Green Gables made me realise some terribly important things about how we manifest gender. Important to me - something other people know all too well. That's the thing - it's not enough to know intellectually, one has to understand. it's not at all enough that my friends are very wise: I have to start developing my own wisdom.
I do not know how the story of an abused orphan learning how to look enough like everyone else to pass in a small society helped me internalise, but it did, and I am very grateful to LM Montgomery for this. It's a bit unexpected, though. I was expecting that Joanna Russ would do what LM Montgomery did, but it was my childhood I needed to reconfigure to understand, not my teen years. In theory, reconfguring one's understanding is easier if there are books that walk one through when one is a child, but we lack enough of those books still, and even if we had a squillion of fabulous narratives about diverse children's lives, we'd have to process them internally, and there's no knowing what will trigger learning for a given individual. I've now put Anne Shirley in the novel, for this reason and for about three others.
A couple of thoughts on The Art of Effective Dreaming
Today is a bad day that has been redeemed by readers. Several people have this week talked publicly about The Art of Effective Dreaming. This week. Just when I assumed it had lapsed into the half-oblivion of not-quite-new books that don't give the right resonance to last.
In fact people are talking a bit about The Time of the Ghosts as well, but I didn't need reminding of Ghosts. I needed reminding of Dreaming. And besides, Ghosts < is still my new book.
The reason for the title was to hint at the book's origins. It all started with one of my favourite poems of all time and I've said this before and I'll say it again, every time I get this eye-blinking "it worked" moment. I love Prevert and I loved his extended art metaphor in his poem about painting a picture of a bird and I wanted to make an extended novel metaphor of his extended art metaphor and I wanted it to be real enough so that people saw the character and followed her dreams and felt her realities as I depicted them.
Simon Brown saw the folktale side of it. Kyla Ward saw other things. Both of them were right. This is the advantage of writing an extended metaphor. All the other components one puts into a novel fall into the framework very naturally. I put the fairytale and I put the horror and I put the folkish and I put the reality and I put many other things in that novel, all on purpose, for that extended framework was amazingly strong. (These aren't the readers who were talking about it today - their thoughts are earlier.)
It helped that it wasn't just any metaphor. I used a Sleeping Beauty one for Ms Cellophane, and that held some, but not as much and not with as great flexibility of interpretation. Prevert's art metaphor was perfect as it stood and had such wonderful emotional resonance that even though I was not very experienced way back then (because of the whole cursed novel affair, it was written fifteen years ago and published last year, which most of you know) it still worked as a novel.
I need to find another brilliant extended metaphor and try this again, now that I have more writing skills and can do a better job. In fact, ti's what I need for my 17th century novel. It won't be as easy to find the right metaphor without Prevert, though. That poem is exquisite.
I'm open to suggestions. Not of books. Of metaphors as good as Prevert's that are crying for interpretation and expression.
In fact people are talking a bit about The Time of the Ghosts as well, but I didn't need reminding of Ghosts. I needed reminding of Dreaming. And besides, Ghosts < is still my new book.
The reason for the title was to hint at the book's origins. It all started with one of my favourite poems of all time and I've said this before and I'll say it again, every time I get this eye-blinking "it worked" moment. I love Prevert and I loved his extended art metaphor in his poem about painting a picture of a bird and I wanted to make an extended novel metaphor of his extended art metaphor and I wanted it to be real enough so that people saw the character and followed her dreams and felt her realities as I depicted them.
Simon Brown saw the folktale side of it. Kyla Ward saw other things. Both of them were right. This is the advantage of writing an extended metaphor. All the other components one puts into a novel fall into the framework very naturally. I put the fairytale and I put the horror and I put the folkish and I put the reality and I put many other things in that novel, all on purpose, for that extended framework was amazingly strong. (These aren't the readers who were talking about it today - their thoughts are earlier.)
It helped that it wasn't just any metaphor. I used a Sleeping Beauty one for Ms Cellophane, and that held some, but not as much and not with as great flexibility of interpretation. Prevert's art metaphor was perfect as it stood and had such wonderful emotional resonance that even though I was not very experienced way back then (because of the whole cursed novel affair, it was written fifteen years ago and published last year, which most of you know) it still worked as a novel.
I need to find another brilliant extended metaphor and try this again, now that I have more writing skills and can do a better job. In fact, ti's what I need for my 17th century novel. It won't be as easy to find the right metaphor without Prevert, though. That poem is exquisite.
I'm open to suggestions. Not of books. Of metaphors as good as Prevert's that are crying for interpretation and expression.
