Gillian Polack's Blog, page 186

gillpolack @ 2012-05-13T20:52:00

I've already done worst of my catch-up! I've been home just three hours and it's zero degrees outside and I've crossed 6 things off my "Aargh, must do tonight or else!" list. I'm going to make a cuppa and sit down in my wonderfully warm dressing gown and do nothing at all for an hour (except maybe eat persimmons, since Sydney gave me multiple kinds of heritage carrots, plus some persimmons, just as icing on the marvellous weekend cake) and then I'll contemplate doing the things I need to do if the rest of the week is going to work properly. Or I could sleep. Or I could sleep *while* I eat persimmons and do other things. All things are possible in tonight's world of marvellous efficiency.

While I remember, tomorrow there'll be a new BiblioBuffet article up. I won't have time for extensive posting tomorrow, so I'll let you know now that it will be here: http://www.bibliobuffet.com/bookish-dreaming and that it's something I promised David McDonald (who has no idea I've already written it - should I be nice and tell him, or should I wait and see if he notices?)

gillpolack @ 2012-05-13T19:23:00

I'm back from Sydney and it's cold. I had a lovely weekend, though, celebrating the successes of friends.

My bus got in early (and we had the funniest driver on all the Murray's fleet again - I love it when he's the driver - he makes wild jokes about rotting hands and always gets us in early) and I'm halfway through three different tasks already. The massive dedication to task completion is because Evil Gillian ran off with Jack Dann's Aurealis last night. I have proof!





Now I must redeem myself and catch up with all my work. I won't answer the door, however, just in case it's Jack wanting his award back! (I read Ghosts by Gaslight the other week - totally gorgeous anthology.)

PS The proof of my evilness comes from the cameraphone of jack_ryder

gillpolack @ 2012-05-11T07:30:00

And now for the other post:

23rd February, 2008. 7:10 pm.

My mind is dwelling in deep places today. I'm thinking about issues of trust and how far you can let someone into your life before expecting them to take some responsibility for their actions in relation to you. It struck me that this is something I need to write about and it might belong with my ghosts. This is either going to be a very funny novel or a deeply pensive one. It might end up both.

I've been on the verge of writing it for over a year. I've done most of my worldbuilding (all those map-thoughts for Canberra, exploring cinema food in the 40s - all that stuff) but even when I had a good idea of my characters' lives, they hadn't come alive for me. When that happens I sit back and I wait.

The first thing that happened when I sat back this time was that I changed one of the main point of view characters. I need someone with ghosts for a whole part of the narative stream, otherwise the ghosts my characters meet are only interesting supernatural beings and are in danger of being plot devices. I need ghosts to resonate more deeply than that.

We all carry particular burdens and some people carry the burdens of the deaths of others. I don't mean that these people are murderers, I mean that they live with a constant feeling of work unfinished, or of missing someone, or of not having done something when the time was right, or of being observers at a time when distance hurt. I think the only ghost I carry of someone who I was able to say a proper goodbye to is that of my father. This is why I want to write about ghosts, to be honest: I need to understand my own.

The trust thing is a different matter, but it is most definitely related to the fears that bring forth ghosts for some people. As you have probably realised, I've been thinking for a long time about racism and sexism and how the disabled can be victimised or made helpless, and how people with mental health conditions are often excluded from perfectly normal decision-making and activities. One of the big barriers for any of these groups (and for a bunch of others) is trust. How much can they tell people about who they are, and still be treated as themselves and as full human beings? Think of Showboat, and the complete change to a couple's existence when the woman has to admit to being of mixed race. Trust honoured and used well is one of the biggest gifts a human being can give another, and trust abused is one of the most frightening.

That trust abused doesn't have to be on a grand scale to be frightening. It can be someone making a decision for someone else because of an unexamined assumption that the person isn't capable because they're in a wheelchair or on medication. I see that a lot in my work. I get it a bit from my health conditions. At the heart of it is an assumption about what society is and how people ought to work together. When societies become scared, this type of trust is one of the first victims.

One of the reasons I have done the activism thing is, in fact, because of the biggest cause of fear and hurt in society usually being trust abused. I feel very strongly that it's the responsibility of each and every one of us to find out where we're going wrong and to deal fairly with others. A higher level of trust in a society means a lower level of fear and hatred. It's that simple.

There are ways in which abuse can be minimised - through education, through legislation, through enough money to provide neutral assistance for people with physical disabilities so they're not dependent on friends or neighbours for everyday needs. I know I retired from all this because of my health, but I keep thinking that the issues are too important and that one day I'm going to have to go back. Maybe this novel is the beginning of me going back.

Right now, though, I want to examine those issues at a very personal level. Not my personal: my characters'. What happens after divorce, or instance? Do the changes in life you experience when you retire mean you have to learn how to defend yourself against well-meaning invaders of your quiet places? What happens to a 12 year old girl when she is thrust out of the family circle of caring? When can you admit to being different without friends thrusting you away or making decisions for you or reading the life you've always led as suddenly unstable?

Trust issues at a personal level lead to judgements. We all make judgements. How far do we let people into our lives? How far can an individual abuse that acceptance into our lives without doing anything they feel is wrong?

I don't want to go down the heavy racism path. I want to think about less well-trodden ground. I won't go into it here - I need to work out just how far any character will let anyone else into their life and what the effects are. I feel incredibly mean, because this is going to hurt them. The ghosts are going to be fun and delight by comparison with death by a thousand needling doubts.

So I have my stable of ghosts. And I have some very big issues for my main characters to deal with. Now I have to be patient and let it all come together.

I can't write until it has all come together. If I do, then the book will be all about issues and not about telling a story. Waiting - for me - is what shines enough light in the deep places so I can find the stories there.

gillpolack @ 2012-05-11T07:29:00

You're getting two memory posts, to last you through my time-away-from computer. If you won't miss me, you can simply ignore them, of course. One post is serious and one a trifle less so. This is, of course, the one of high seriousness. It must be: it has footnotes (footnote 4 is evidence of this).

16th February, 2008. 7:56 pm. Introductions - with footnotes

I promised introductions. Never let it be said that I renege upon my promises(1).

I'm going to take the closest book to hand, as deciding between all my books is too challenging. The closest book to hand is The Compleat Cook and A Queen's Delight, which is a facsimile of a seventeenth century pair of cookbooks.

The Compleat Cook opens "To make a Posset the Earl of Arundels way."(2) So there is a character involved. The only things we know about this Earl of Arundel are that his posset recipe was recorded before 1655, that he has a particular way of making posset and that, since the posset contains sack and ale, he presumably drank alcohol. We know that he was not averse to dairy food. This is as much as we know about many characters from the opening two paragraphs of books.

Let me add another character to the mix, since there are two in this first recipe. The Earl of Arundel's posset simpered over a fire(3), and thus obviously had a personality of its own. My possets never simper.

If this were a speculative fiction novel or a work of historical fiction rather than a cookbook, all these elements would be important to understand the world or the character of the Earl. They would appear at various times in various guises throughout the novel. The simpering posset would probably be the chief protagonist(4), which makes a change from werewolves and vampires and elves.

Alas, it is a cookbook and we don't get to know Arundel any better. Nor does he get to save the universe with his simpering posset(5).

This leads to an obvious truth: genre counts. The implications of an introduction are genre-linked and that affects the way we read any introduction. We're not looking for the adventures of the Earl and his simpering posset when we read The Compleat Cook. We might be looking up how to roast oysters or how to make the Jacobins(2 again) Pottage or even how to make poor Knights(6). I read the recipes for what they tell me about the people involved and their lives, but that's me as historian, not me as casual reader.

This is where I ought to be clever and do a link to those earlier posts. You know, the ones where I tried to convince you that the way the introduction is set up talks the reader into regarding the book in a particular way and reading it looking for certain traits? Instead I'll just point out that a Baron Munchausen style tale about the Earl and his posset might well start off with this recipe. Instead of being the stuff of the novel proper, however, it would be a kind of aperitif.

So, how we introduce our characters helps our readers work out how they're going to tackle our stories. Which is fine.

Except that some of us intentionally set up one type of novel then undermine readers' expectations. That's another issue entirely. The point is that the genre the reader thinks they're reading helps them work out just how much the need to discover about the character from the opening sequence. A writer who is charming and thoughtful will lead the reader in the right direction. Some of us are neither charming nor thoughtful, of course. In other words, how a character is introduced is not always linked to genre. Just mostly.

(1) Unless I have really good reason, of course. I'm dutiful, not stupid.

(2) That punctuation is not mine, before you editors jump up and down screaming. One day I'm going to look at 17th century apostrophes and find out what happened to them. There's a secret cache in the Vatican, I suspect. Either that or a lost genizah, containing nothing but punctuation marks.

(3) If you don't believe me, I can type out the whole recipe.

(4) I have lots of footnotes. This is proof that I'm taking this series of posts very, very seriously.

(5) If any of you decide that it's important to write fiction starring a simpering posset, I promise to link to it, especially if it also has a scene where the Earl of Arundel bends over that simpering posset and smiles significantly.

(6) Which I always thought meant sending a rich knight to war, but turned out to be a fabulous version of French Toast, with cream and nutmeg and rosewater.

gillpolack @ 2012-05-11T07:18:00

There won't be much posting from me over the next few days. I'm simply going to be away from my computer an awful lot and don't yet have that netbook replacement. This is good. It means I get to read essential books and to have meetings and to do lots and lots of teaching. Work, but not computer work.

I'll post where I can, just so that you know I'm hale and living the life. I'll do one last memory post in a few minutes, as my farewell-to-memory-posts.

I've made a cupcake to celebrate my blogversary in Sydney, BTW, so the week shall end in fine style. Next week begins in even finer style, as I cheer on the wonderfully talented folks who have been shortlisted for the Aurealis Awards. Also, I get to see my Sydney publisher. And my order is completely backwards, for that is not the way it's actually happening.

gillpolack @ 2012-05-10T22:10:00

Tonight one of my students worked out what medieval bogans were, which made me realise I haven't posted teaching highlights for yesterday. This is a shame, for yesterday we wrote cyanide cake stories, wild harvested feijoas and wrote stories inspired by this week's budget. The rest you'll have to invent for yourselves: yesterday was a long time ago.

gillpolack @ 2012-05-10T13:11:00

I'm starting to gear up for book-coming-out ( I meet most of the Momentum people tomorrow!) and I realised that I've been caught up in how difficult this last year has been. It's about time I remembered just how amazing and wonderful this last year has been.

This time last year I was in the final stages of getting ready for the UK/France. brisingamen then interviewed me in London at the BSFA and I fell in love with the BSFA. I kept on falling in love with its members at the masterclass. That was a heck of a week.

The next week, of course, was Leeds. Not only did my conference paper get good questions and much support, but I made a whole heap of new friends (who are reading this right now, poor souls) and re-discovered just how amazing owlfish and a_d_medievalist are. Also fjm , though that was prior to Leeds. In between London and Leeds I spent some gorgeous time with Elizabeth Chadwick and snuck a day in her library, to advance my time travel novel.

Then was York and more friends and more meetings and more work and then Paris and the same. When I finally got to the south of France, I discovered that the location for my novel was as perfect as a location can be, for William-my-epic-hero turned out to have a sense for beauty as well as his other manifest virtues.

My last day of the trip was full of quite different people to the ones I had been expecting, but no less wonderful. And that one month made up for a lot of the difficulties preceding.

Since then, my life has been dross... And that's a baldfaced lie. The minute I got back, I broke into book fever, because the Conflux food history book had to come out. Hundreds of fans, eating together, leading to a book. I still love that thought. And then we had a gorgeous launch at Conflux and a most beautiful final banquet. And then there was the nice email from Momentum (which means I will have had a book published each year for four years and have finally stopped claiming I'm not a writer) and after that, the Women's History Month celebration, with all those amazing thoughts from writers and editors and others.

And throughout it all, I have written my BiblioBuffet column and a bunch of other things. last week I counted up the published words I had for the last twelfth months and they scared me, so I uncounted them again.

In matters of less note, I keep discovering myself as a quoted source (mainly from this blog) for rare words. I may not use them often, but apparently I use them exactly. Online dictionaries say so!

If I weigh all these against the bad things of the 3 months, the eye problem, the burglary and the impossible (and impossibly expensive) teeth fade, as they should. Although, I admit, all in all, my life is more like a carnival than it ought to be.

gillpolack @ 2012-05-09T17:54:00

One last entry and then I'm going to do real work. I now understand short stories much better, but still only write them on occasion. The invitation below remains open. My library is a lending library, and happily so (books like to be read, it calms their spirits).

15th January, 2007. 11:04 pm.

These last few days I have been thinking about eternal presents in the minds of critics and writers. Not the giving kind*, the existential kind. And not really an eternal present. And now I'm getting myself confused before I even begin.

Let me start again.

I used to read short stories about as much as I read novels. I have recently returned to short stories, largely because I started writing them again and I can't write something I don't read lots of. Even if I only write one short story a year, I have to learn what other people do and how they do it. So I not only read, but I read about what other people read. Lots of lists and descriptions and analyses. Reading the thoughts of others on their reading as a bit depressing. Of the short story readers and writers, only a very few people seem to read older stories and be developing a deeper context for their writing than the past ten years. And *that's* what I meant by 'eternal present'. We live in a small pond and think our ripples have vast impact because our contexts are so very limited.

In my dream world writers and critics don't develop just an understanding of how short stories are written now, or an understanding of one genre, but a deep understanding of short stories over time.

As usual, I have a code to remind me about this. My code for the need to read older short stories is "Ring Lardner" because a short story of his introduced me to point of view. Henry James made me realise the importance of the unreliable narrator. By 'introduced' and 'realised' I mean that they made me stop and think and reconsider what writing can achieve.

Shorter pieces can be magic learning grounds for technique. Not just any short story, though. Ones that once shocked. Ones that endure. They open writers' eyes to what is possible. I feel like quoting Robert Browning on the need for a man's reach to exceed his grasp - it's much easier to reach out when you've see what *can* be done.

Anyhow, this week I decided to fight a personal war against the eternal present. I've added to my short story collection. I bought speculative fiction anthologies and collections of stories from the 1940s to the 1980s. And I already have volumes by Maupassant and Joyce and a bunch of others. Anyone in Canberra who wants to borrow them is welcome. I can give you coffee when you return them if you want to share the joy of reading stories with different cultural contexts.

If you want to know what this sort of wide-ranging reading can give to your prose, just read Lucy Sussex's latest anthology. One reason her writing is full of shade and colour is her reading. I love seeing where she has taken something into herself - it comes out as something that is purely hers and is an important aspect of her particular writing voice. You don't have to know where her thinking has come from - the stories are better stories because she is well-read and thinks things through.

Time to climb off soapbox, perhaps. And my reading today included Sophie Masson and Terry Pratchett, which is not relevant to anything except me enjoying life.

* though if anyone feels the need to give writers and critics presents eternally, few of us would object.

Blogversary Open Question Time

I thought it might be fun to have a question post to last you until next Wednesday night. I thought it might also be fun to revive the rules from question posts as they existed five to six years ago. I had quite forgotten I once had such rules! This means I've plagiarised myself, to give you the exact rules and the (updated) potted biography.

For the next week you can ask me whatever question you want. If your question takes more than a quick answer or touches on matters too private then I will apologise nicely. Otherwise, anything goes. If a question's offensive I might get sarcastic. Or I might not. Both the size of my feet and the length of a piece of string have already been demanded, so if you want to stir, you'll have to explore new ground. I'll be round on and off, so there may be some delays in me answering.

I used to get historicalish questions. They were from writers who were worldbuilding and gamers who wanted to run checks (or who were worldbuilding). I don't any more. I miss them!

If no-one asks questions then I won't do the open post again. I say this every time, but the last two times people mainly asked questions to make sure I did a post again, so this time I'm more serious about it.

In case you don't know me well and have no idea what sort of questions you might want to ask me:
I am Jewish;
I am Australian;
I am an historian;
I was ten years in the public service;
I was twenty years in the women's movement;
I'm happily middle-aged (fifty-one, in case it worries you not to know);
I'm a published writer (both fiction and non-fiction - my most recent book is all about food history and SF fans) though rather unimportant in the leagues of published writers;
My first PhD was in matters historiographical and is very obscure (as PhDs are except the one I'm currently doing, which is terribly important and of GREAT WORLD SIGNIFICANCE since it includes time travel);
Most of my history is Medieval (but not all) and most of it is social and cultural rather than political;
I consult with writers about how to transfer history to fiction (not as easy as it sounds) and stuff. Lots of stuff.

I'm sure there's more to me than that, but that's all I can ever think of.

gillpolack @ 2012-05-09T17:10:00

Today's memory is from 2007:

7th July, 2007. 4:33 pm.

Winter has days that are full of dreaming. When the weather isn't quite so sharp and the rain is gentle (rain! we have rain!) and there is a big cup of mocha harar with cream right in front of me, I just want to drift off into a series of imaginary worlds.

Today, though, I'm thinking about how we depict world transitions in speculative fiction. The technical side of drifting into dreams. I'm thinking of one writer in particular who creates movement between worlds that reads exactly like waking up from sleep. You know the moment where you realise that the beautiful story you thought you dreamed was nothing more than a series of rough transitions for which the story provided justification? I do not admire this writer's work. It's lazy and the laziness leaves a bad taste. Coffee with creamer rather than coffee with cream.

Charles de Lint leaves a warm and soft taste. His milk is rich and full and fresh and his coffee has just been ground. I've been reading one of his anthologies (yay for Sydney bookshops!) and was struck by how sweetly his tales move from a normal state to a state of heightened reality. When Sophie visits Mabon the move is almost prosaic. She goes to sleep and she is there. Likewise, other characters do what they need to do and are there. Simple. Logical. The stuff of fairytales. The pragmatism of his approach makes the different worlds more real. They're part of the natural order. It's easy to forget that fairy tales often have the simple and the logical at their heart.

All this makes me wonder if I like CS Lewis because I love the idea of walking past the lamp-post into the woods, or wandering past ponds and thinking of where they might lead. I don't like what he does to Susan and I pretend I don't understand the religious imagery, yet I still return and return to his books. Whatever else he did right or wrong, the sense of movement from one world to the next is near-perfect in the Narnia series.

Gates and bridges and holes in hedges are all common ways of moving the reader from one world to another. There are so many wondrous options that it's a crying shame when transitions are badly designed or badly written. It makes me think that some writers just don't undertand the relationships between their worlds and how people live within them.

We have rather good cultural models for transitions, too. Think of the gaping jaws of hell in the Gospel of Nicodemus. Think of Thomas the Rhymer.

Thomas is my personal favourite. Walking a path and ending up somewhere strange is very close to my heart. The track tells me as much about the world as it does about the links of one world to another. I'm not going to explain that. I'm going to leave you with a quote, instead:

'O see ye not yon narrow road,
So thick beset wi' thorns and briers?
That is the Path of Righteousness,
Though after it but few inquires.

'And see ye not yon braid, braid road,
That lies across the lily leven?
That is the Path of Wickedness,
Though some call it the Road to Heaven.

'And see ye not yon bonny road
That winds about the fernie brae?
That is the Road to fair Elfland,
Where thou and I this night maun gae.'