Gillian Polack's Blog, page 209
February 8, 2012
gillpolack @ 2012-02-08T15:32:00
Back to class today! The first half hour was spent with admin issues, since government funding has changed (again! but we're totally fine for this term, and possibly next) and government rules have changed and many explanations were necessary. We're in a transition period, and then the admin staff change again. When the new people come, they'll see out the term and then sort out what they want to do. It was worth spending time explaining this, because all the changes have been accepted without any feel of unease by the students.
For me, the only change until the new staff arrive is that my term is a week shorter and I get an excursion with my students on the last teaching week. This gives me three weeks for solid writing of dissertation instead of two, and about the same pay packet, so it all works well. I suspect my students will worry about the extra holiday closer to the time, so there will be a project taht those willing can undertake during the longer break.
The excursion is to the National Gallery and there will be manuscripts, so I introduced my class to the basics of manuscript production. They were fascinated by the difference between a codex and a scroll. Next week I shall take along some show and tell and we'll talk about the hands they'll see. The last week before the excursion we'll talk about the actual works they'll look at.
To match, I'm teaching them some writing techniques (re-teaching for some of the students) that they might encounter if they read the literature on display. I started with alliteration, of course, even though there is nothing terribly alliterative in the exhibition. This is the fourth time I've taught alliteration - the class loves it, but finds it forgettable. Not sure what I will do next week or the week after, but I have *days* to work this out.
My Wednesday classes so often entail throwing out the class plan in favour of interesting subjects that have arisen...
For me, the only change until the new staff arrive is that my term is a week shorter and I get an excursion with my students on the last teaching week. This gives me three weeks for solid writing of dissertation instead of two, and about the same pay packet, so it all works well. I suspect my students will worry about the extra holiday closer to the time, so there will be a project taht those willing can undertake during the longer break.
The excursion is to the National Gallery and there will be manuscripts, so I introduced my class to the basics of manuscript production. They were fascinated by the difference between a codex and a scroll. Next week I shall take along some show and tell and we'll talk about the hands they'll see. The last week before the excursion we'll talk about the actual works they'll look at.
To match, I'm teaching them some writing techniques (re-teaching for some of the students) that they might encounter if they read the literature on display. I started with alliteration, of course, even though there is nothing terribly alliterative in the exhibition. This is the fourth time I've taught alliteration - the class loves it, but finds it forgettable. Not sure what I will do next week or the week after, but I have *days* to work this out.
My Wednesday classes so often entail throwing out the class plan in favour of interesting subjects that have arisen...
February 7, 2012
LGBT Month
I wish I had more time in my day and more energy in my life. I plan to take a break between editing and class preparation and dealing with virus and to read Cheryl Morgan's thoughts on LGBT Month. If women's history is badly known, LGBT history is appallingly so. I was hunting Medieval resources a couple of years ago and the view of scholars seemed to be just how little we know and how much was obscured because of the nature of potential sources. This means I know almost nothing. I am *never* happy with a state of ignorance.
Cheryl's thoughts are worth a look. The first piece is a report on a speech she just gave: http://www.cheryl-morgan.com/?p=12836 The second is a report of a workshop in London: http://www.cheryl-morgan.com/?p=12839
Cheryl's thoughts are worth a look. The first piece is a report on a speech she just gave: http://www.cheryl-morgan.com/?p=12836 The second is a report of a workshop in London: http://www.cheryl-morgan.com/?p=12839
gillpolack @ 2012-02-07T18:38:00
In two days I shall be over the virus. I'm almost over the tooth. This has been decided. It is non-negotiable. In the space of those two days, I shall teach (twice), read books (three times), run one batch of messages, and do I-forget-what-else. Yes, I am noble and self-sacrificing. Pity my students, however. I have my voice back and I'm over the worst of it, but I am at the self-pitying misery when I want to be better NOW.
And in other news... There really isn't any. It's improbable, but my life is quiet. Except that Women's History Month is coming and this year* is all about writers and artists (and maybe a musician or two) speaking about writers and artists and musicians.
Oh, and I have determined that Clara Butt singing Land of Hope and Glory (the coronation arrangement) is the Sound of Steampunk. I now want sounds for other fiction, but for some reason I can't get Clara Butt's voice out of my poor beleaguered brain. This can't be because I insist on playing the piece to everyone who drops in to see if I'm OK. No, it can't be that at all.
*On my blog, not the official theme.
And in other news... There really isn't any. It's improbable, but my life is quiet. Except that Women's History Month is coming and this year* is all about writers and artists (and maybe a musician or two) speaking about writers and artists and musicians.
Oh, and I have determined that Clara Butt singing Land of Hope and Glory (the coronation arrangement) is the Sound of Steampunk. I now want sounds for other fiction, but for some reason I can't get Clara Butt's voice out of my poor beleaguered brain. This can't be because I insist on playing the piece to everyone who drops in to see if I'm OK. No, it can't be that at all.
*On my blog, not the official theme.
February 6, 2012
gillpolack @ 2012-02-06T16:13:00
I'm working on old things when I ought to be working on new. This is because I have too much work to do and am too unwell to do good new work, so I'm taking refuge in tidying up old things for a couple of hours. I can't not progress with things, because this year is too pressed to not progress. Anyhow, I keep coming across phrases "the chief protagonist" and the "chief narrator" and my mind says "in a cookbook, there would be a chef narrator." Not just in a cookbook, either. I need to write a novel with a chef narrator, who turns everything into recipes. This may be the fever speaking, but I suspect it is a deep inner desire.
On writing historical fantasy
I wrote this four years ago and came across it just now, while working on something else. I thought it deserved a reprise. This might be because I came across the same problems recently. Just might be. Why do some writers assume that their own culture is universal? I suspect the answer is 'insufficiently questioned privilege' and I ought to, one day, run a check on this.
1. Don't use a cuisine that comes from another continent a thousand years into the future. Don't use tools that come from another continent a thousand years into the future. Don't use farming or building techniques that come from another continent a thousand years into the future. Don't use armour, weapons, horses that come from another continent a thousand years into the future. Unless there is good reason.
2. Don't try to write in Ancient Greek or Old Norse unless you have *really* good reason. The best use of dead languages is sparse, to demonstrate concepts that English lacks and to demonstrate the differences in cultures. Another good use is in a polyglottal society where there are misunderstandings and where you can milk drama and understanding from that understanding ("You fool, I wanted a goat, not a new boyfriend.").
Words thrown in just to show you've done a bit of homework can be really annoying. They're more annoying to historians if you use the modern form of the language rather than the correct form for the time.
Mind you, this isn't really crucial it's like whether you call 6 legged dairy animals 'fonta' or 'cows'. If you set everything up well enough then a reader will forgive the language thing and if you don't then they'll use it as a way in to complain. Brilliant writing trumps all.
3. Don't call the majority culture and religion by the modern name and continually refer to said majority culture as if it were unusual in that place or time. Work out what is normative for that culture and use descriptions that reflect this. For example, don't set something in Rome in the 16th century and have everyone explaining that they know nothing about Catholics and describing every second person they meet as a 'Catholic' and then giving hints to rites and rituals that they can't know about because they've said they aren't Catholic and don't know these things.
Even an outsider in a country will soon see everyone else as normal and have to work out who they are in relation to that place and time.
When I lived in France I was Australian. When I lived in England I was Australian. When I live in Australia I am Jewish Australian. When I was in America, I was Jewish and my accent was inexplicable. In France no-one cared a jot about me being Jewish (except for that guy in rural Normandy who showed me the local secret monolith, but he was an exception) and were more interested that I spoke French than in my nationality. In Britain everyone tried to work out who I knew of their friends who had migrated. In America everyone Jewish tried to work out how we were related (overall, I have known more of the British friends of friends than I have discovered US distant cousins, for the record). We all make judgements about insiders and outsiders and borderpeople and those snap opinions are brilliant to indicate place and person in fiction unless they're misused, in which case they destroy the sense of place and time in the work.
If someone has lived a long time in a place, the place's norms become part of their norms and they often focus on a set of similarities or differences that fit their own stereotypes. And each country and each group within that country has their own way of doing this. Work out the norms for the groups and countries you're writing about, then work out how your characters fit into this norm and how they would express this relationship. Don't stick to current modern stereotyping, unless you're writing a current modern stereotyped novel.
4. If you want an outsider to describe things (which is a good technique) make sure they *are* an outsider or give them an amazingly sophisticated background (20 years abroad, for instance or much education and a contemplative brain) so they have an excuse for observing and describing. Give your bridge character good reasons (and the right background) for describing things as an outsider insiders talking as if they are outsiders hurt my brain.
What's funny is that some of my favourite young adult novels use the outsider/insider thing wonderfully, simply because teens are quite capable of being strangers in their own living room. Most adults, though, prefer to live comfortably and won't question 99% of what's around them unless there is good reason (how we get the political leadership we don't really want).
5. It's not necessarily how much you know about the culture in your book/story; it's how you work with it. Margo Lanagan very seldom gives detail. She writes emotions so perfectly that all her writing reads as if an insider wrote it. So you may not need to do 30 years work to get the culture right if you get inside the core of the story and understand the POV characters.
6. Think about how your favourite books work in our culture before you depend on them as sources. If I read another piece of fiction that takes the Holy Blood, Holy Grail universe and assumes it's our own, I might scream. Likewise with ancient history and either Homer or Troy or the Bible or even The Last Days of Pompeii.
We get our understanding from popular culture a lot of the time, and this is cool. It's not cool to write your fiction from it (unless you're writing it intentionally, or as fanfiction which the book currently in my mind was not). Question it. Work through it and build your own understanding and your own society and think about food and economics and people and how they live and work together in that place and time.
7. The big thing about writing historical fantasy is that it's not an easy way out. It's just as intellectually difficult as historical fiction. It's the favourite reading genre for a whole host of historians, too, and we will notice when the writer has not engaged their brain. We will also appreciate it when the fantasy world you have created *works,* even if it's not historically accurate. My fiction is historically accurate when that's appropriate and evilly inaccurate when that suits what I'm writing. Whichever I choose, though, I do a lot of homework. I need to respect myself, and never feel about my own fiction what I felt when I finished that book this morning.
1. Don't use a cuisine that comes from another continent a thousand years into the future. Don't use tools that come from another continent a thousand years into the future. Don't use farming or building techniques that come from another continent a thousand years into the future. Don't use armour, weapons, horses that come from another continent a thousand years into the future. Unless there is good reason.
2. Don't try to write in Ancient Greek or Old Norse unless you have *really* good reason. The best use of dead languages is sparse, to demonstrate concepts that English lacks and to demonstrate the differences in cultures. Another good use is in a polyglottal society where there are misunderstandings and where you can milk drama and understanding from that understanding ("You fool, I wanted a goat, not a new boyfriend.").
Words thrown in just to show you've done a bit of homework can be really annoying. They're more annoying to historians if you use the modern form of the language rather than the correct form for the time.
Mind you, this isn't really crucial it's like whether you call 6 legged dairy animals 'fonta' or 'cows'. If you set everything up well enough then a reader will forgive the language thing and if you don't then they'll use it as a way in to complain. Brilliant writing trumps all.
3. Don't call the majority culture and religion by the modern name and continually refer to said majority culture as if it were unusual in that place or time. Work out what is normative for that culture and use descriptions that reflect this. For example, don't set something in Rome in the 16th century and have everyone explaining that they know nothing about Catholics and describing every second person they meet as a 'Catholic' and then giving hints to rites and rituals that they can't know about because they've said they aren't Catholic and don't know these things.
Even an outsider in a country will soon see everyone else as normal and have to work out who they are in relation to that place and time.
When I lived in France I was Australian. When I lived in England I was Australian. When I live in Australia I am Jewish Australian. When I was in America, I was Jewish and my accent was inexplicable. In France no-one cared a jot about me being Jewish (except for that guy in rural Normandy who showed me the local secret monolith, but he was an exception) and were more interested that I spoke French than in my nationality. In Britain everyone tried to work out who I knew of their friends who had migrated. In America everyone Jewish tried to work out how we were related (overall, I have known more of the British friends of friends than I have discovered US distant cousins, for the record). We all make judgements about insiders and outsiders and borderpeople and those snap opinions are brilliant to indicate place and person in fiction unless they're misused, in which case they destroy the sense of place and time in the work.
If someone has lived a long time in a place, the place's norms become part of their norms and they often focus on a set of similarities or differences that fit their own stereotypes. And each country and each group within that country has their own way of doing this. Work out the norms for the groups and countries you're writing about, then work out how your characters fit into this norm and how they would express this relationship. Don't stick to current modern stereotyping, unless you're writing a current modern stereotyped novel.
4. If you want an outsider to describe things (which is a good technique) make sure they *are* an outsider or give them an amazingly sophisticated background (20 years abroad, for instance or much education and a contemplative brain) so they have an excuse for observing and describing. Give your bridge character good reasons (and the right background) for describing things as an outsider insiders talking as if they are outsiders hurt my brain.
What's funny is that some of my favourite young adult novels use the outsider/insider thing wonderfully, simply because teens are quite capable of being strangers in their own living room. Most adults, though, prefer to live comfortably and won't question 99% of what's around them unless there is good reason (how we get the political leadership we don't really want).
5. It's not necessarily how much you know about the culture in your book/story; it's how you work with it. Margo Lanagan very seldom gives detail. She writes emotions so perfectly that all her writing reads as if an insider wrote it. So you may not need to do 30 years work to get the culture right if you get inside the core of the story and understand the POV characters.
6. Think about how your favourite books work in our culture before you depend on them as sources. If I read another piece of fiction that takes the Holy Blood, Holy Grail universe and assumes it's our own, I might scream. Likewise with ancient history and either Homer or Troy or the Bible or even The Last Days of Pompeii.
We get our understanding from popular culture a lot of the time, and this is cool. It's not cool to write your fiction from it (unless you're writing it intentionally, or as fanfiction which the book currently in my mind was not). Question it. Work through it and build your own understanding and your own society and think about food and economics and people and how they live and work together in that place and time.
7. The big thing about writing historical fantasy is that it's not an easy way out. It's just as intellectually difficult as historical fiction. It's the favourite reading genre for a whole host of historians, too, and we will notice when the writer has not engaged their brain. We will also appreciate it when the fantasy world you have created *works,* even if it's not historically accurate. My fiction is historically accurate when that's appropriate and evilly inaccurate when that suits what I'm writing. Whichever I choose, though, I do a lot of homework. I need to respect myself, and never feel about my own fiction what I felt when I finished that book this morning.
gillpolack @ 2012-02-06T15:09:00
The ill-luck of Saturday continued in today's mail. My body corporate problems are still problems. The manager is as perplexed as I am, since we both went through all aspects of payments in fine detail, two quarters running. We're going to give it one more run-through to see if it can be solved before Drastic Measures are Taken. I suggested payment in cash as a suitably drastic measure. It would so foul their systems up, though, and I don't want to do that. I just want to pay, regularly, and not get in debt.
This year is the Year of the Unfinances, quite obviously. Other people get breaks, I get broken systems. Also broken teeth. (And, as icing on the cake, a mild infection.)
Next week will have neither. This is decided.
This year is the Year of the Unfinances, quite obviously. Other people get breaks, I get broken systems. Also broken teeth. (And, as icing on the cake, a mild infection.)
Next week will have neither. This is decided.
gillpolack @ 2012-02-06T13:57:00
Today is BiblioBuffet day. For your reading pleasure, I present a selection of speculative fiction from Pyr. I wrote that article long enough ago that my pile of to-be-reviewed books is catching up with itself. This is not a bad thing. It keeps me out of mischief.
February 5, 2012
gillpolack @ 2012-02-05T13:16:00
I've been exceptionally daring and made a list to last the whole of this week. This might be because term begins, and it might because I owe a couple of articles. It might be because I'm supposed to be doing the bulk of research for Chapter Six of my dissertation before early March. There's other stuff, too.
So what am I doing today? Nothing. It's Sunday. I'm spending an hour with a friend soon and watching DVDs most of the rest of the day. I'm going to the library and having a cuppa. I've already eaten much watermelon. I'm calling it recovery time from a bad day yesterday and relaxing time before a busy fortnight ahead.
Also, I have to ring the dentist tomorrow to move on all these procedures and I really need the quiet time. From tomorrow until the end of May looks pretty busy.
So what am I doing today? Nothing. It's Sunday. I'm spending an hour with a friend soon and watching DVDs most of the rest of the day. I'm going to the library and having a cuppa. I've already eaten much watermelon. I'm calling it recovery time from a bad day yesterday and relaxing time before a busy fortnight ahead.
Also, I have to ring the dentist tomorrow to move on all these procedures and I really need the quiet time. From tomorrow until the end of May looks pretty busy.
February 4, 2012
gillpolack @ 2012-02-04T16:45:00
More people seem to get the idea that I love books and enjoy writing about them. This is good. It's also true.
What is not so good (but, alas, equally true) is when I get sent press release material with no indication what it's for. Does my brand-new correspondent want me to talk about the press release (for I'm entirely capable of writing two thousand words analysing press releases, and will no doubt do so in due course), read the book, review the book, analyse it scientifically or linguistically, find all the historical errors and hold them up to grim daylight, congratulate the writer on being published, interview them in one of my round-table sessions?
If you're inclined to write to someone like me (rather than to the publication I work for) then you might want to brave my column first, or my blog, or my biography. It helps to know what I review and how I approach books. It helps me, anyhow, if you know. Also you might wish to give me a couple of words that maybe suggest what you're writing about. If you just send me the publishing data about the book then I will be bewildered.
I should stop complaining. I only get one of these emails a fortnight. Most times I simply assume that the author/editor/publisher meant to put a few words in about how they admire my work as a reviewer and wondered if I'd be interested in seeing this particular book and that somehow those few words were forgotten. I write them my standard "I read everything but only review when I have something to say" regardless of what's in the letter. Today, however, a poor author received a plaintive "What were you really after?"
From the emailed description, I couldn't even tell if it was the sort of book I'd be interested in. If she had written me a small note, I could have seen her style and understood a bit more about her relation to the book and I would have had enough information to make an informed decision. And so I sent her a supportive but confused email. This is because I have a sore throat and a very big week has roller-coasted me and I am short on empathy.
Sharyn reminded me (in a very good blogpost on spoons and chronic illness) that this exhaustion is not in my mind. Still, I feel a bit guilty about my response. Just because my week has been full of 19 hour days (gallivanting with my mother during the daytime and then working at night and in the early morning) and I am short a tooth and all the consequences of this are hitting me today, doesn't mean that I shouldn't have admitted that I rather suspected the writer was asking me for a review.
The moral of the story is that you should not assume that reviewers know what you are thinking (because this writer might have been simply alerting me to the book's existence - my default position is to assume reviews are preferred, but I could be wrong). Also, you should definitely assume that they are at the exhausting end of a tough week and will totally appreciate a few words of explanation. If they aren't at the exhausting end of a tough week, then they will also totally appreciate a few words of explanation.
As a relevant aside, I have now realised that when someone emails me the cover blurb as part of the book's description, I immediately assume the book is not for me. This is nothing to do with the quality of the volume and everything to do with disliking being told what to think. Publishers always send me cover blurbs, but I mostly ignore them. It's harder to ignore when it's the first paragraph of an email. I'd rather know that it's set in the same town the writer grew up in, in rural US or that it's based on an inspiration the writer had while playing with a purple rubber duckie - anything that personalises it. Anyhow, if the book is 'awe-inspiring and exciting' or 'the best novel of the year' or 'a work of genius', then it doesn't need me to evaluate it.
Not that I need this. What I need is a "Dear Gillian - I would like you to consider my book for your column. It's about... It will be released on.... It is my first, second thirty-third novel..."
What is not so good (but, alas, equally true) is when I get sent press release material with no indication what it's for. Does my brand-new correspondent want me to talk about the press release (for I'm entirely capable of writing two thousand words analysing press releases, and will no doubt do so in due course), read the book, review the book, analyse it scientifically or linguistically, find all the historical errors and hold them up to grim daylight, congratulate the writer on being published, interview them in one of my round-table sessions?
If you're inclined to write to someone like me (rather than to the publication I work for) then you might want to brave my column first, or my blog, or my biography. It helps to know what I review and how I approach books. It helps me, anyhow, if you know. Also you might wish to give me a couple of words that maybe suggest what you're writing about. If you just send me the publishing data about the book then I will be bewildered.
I should stop complaining. I only get one of these emails a fortnight. Most times I simply assume that the author/editor/publisher meant to put a few words in about how they admire my work as a reviewer and wondered if I'd be interested in seeing this particular book and that somehow those few words were forgotten. I write them my standard "I read everything but only review when I have something to say" regardless of what's in the letter. Today, however, a poor author received a plaintive "What were you really after?"
From the emailed description, I couldn't even tell if it was the sort of book I'd be interested in. If she had written me a small note, I could have seen her style and understood a bit more about her relation to the book and I would have had enough information to make an informed decision. And so I sent her a supportive but confused email. This is because I have a sore throat and a very big week has roller-coasted me and I am short on empathy.
Sharyn reminded me (in a very good blogpost on spoons and chronic illness) that this exhaustion is not in my mind. Still, I feel a bit guilty about my response. Just because my week has been full of 19 hour days (gallivanting with my mother during the daytime and then working at night and in the early morning) and I am short a tooth and all the consequences of this are hitting me today, doesn't mean that I shouldn't have admitted that I rather suspected the writer was asking me for a review.
The moral of the story is that you should not assume that reviewers know what you are thinking (because this writer might have been simply alerting me to the book's existence - my default position is to assume reviews are preferred, but I could be wrong). Also, you should definitely assume that they are at the exhausting end of a tough week and will totally appreciate a few words of explanation. If they aren't at the exhausting end of a tough week, then they will also totally appreciate a few words of explanation.
As a relevant aside, I have now realised that when someone emails me the cover blurb as part of the book's description, I immediately assume the book is not for me. This is nothing to do with the quality of the volume and everything to do with disliking being told what to think. Publishers always send me cover blurbs, but I mostly ignore them. It's harder to ignore when it's the first paragraph of an email. I'd rather know that it's set in the same town the writer grew up in, in rural US or that it's based on an inspiration the writer had while playing with a purple rubber duckie - anything that personalises it. Anyhow, if the book is 'awe-inspiring and exciting' or 'the best novel of the year' or 'a work of genius', then it doesn't need me to evaluate it.
Not that I need this. What I need is a "Dear Gillian - I would like you to consider my book for your column. It's about... It will be released on.... It is my first, second thirty-third novel..."
February 2, 2012
gillpolack @ 2012-02-03T09:41:00
The postie just came, bringing me two unbelievably cool review books. One is abut the Conte du Graal and the other about Medieval translation. They are destined for BiblioBuffet, and I'm so looking forward to working on them!
