Gillian Polack's Blog, page 235
August 22, 2011
gillpolack @ 2011-08-22T21:02:00
Main meals until Friday are aromatic chicken with spiced coconut milk and jackfruit sauce, on a bed of nicely steamed rice. This is not exciting for four meals in a row, but it does mean that even if I get more unwell (as I appear to be doing) and busier (as I also appear to be doing) I get one really nice meal each day that just has to be heated. Also, I have the stuff of breakfasts (cheese, much cheese). Two meals that require no thinking whatsoever. Planning! Also, within minutes of being done.
gillpolack @ 2011-08-22T11:07:00
I have books! I now have well over over half the books I bought while I was away. One box may arrive tomorrow, because two out of my three Leeds boxes arrived today (fortunately the postie knew about me and books, as they were labelled for the wrong flat). Actually, I think it's four Leeds boxes, but haven't got a reply from the university in Wales that has the fourth, and I don't know if they need more money from me or not).
It's just as well I put the BDs away (photographing everything en masse is no longer going to happen - there wasn't room!) for now I have 2 nice new big stacks of books, waiting for me to read them. Most of them are Medieval, though I have a Chabon, a Chadwick, a Clute and a Lansdale. Quite a few are for current research of various kinds, so I shall just work my way through them one by one and then put them away.
Today's haul was 20 volumes. Add the Aurealis and other work to that and it will take me until at least the end of next week before they are all away. It's going to be a very good fortnight! Four books a day (except when I'm in Sydney) plus writing plus teaching. Lots of the things I love.
The four books a day are probably my just desserts, too, because I was pointing out that the vast majority of writers and editors need to read thoughtfully and a great deal, to improve their craft knowledge. My craft knowledge is going to include Medieval mariners manuals, science fiction, historical fiction, other fiction, archaeological reports, Medieval food, Old French saints (the life of one), Medieval medicine, the matter in manuscript facsimiles (three!), war and marriage and women and the harrowing of Hell. My poor, poor students.
It's just as well I put the BDs away (photographing everything en masse is no longer going to happen - there wasn't room!) for now I have 2 nice new big stacks of books, waiting for me to read them. Most of them are Medieval, though I have a Chabon, a Chadwick, a Clute and a Lansdale. Quite a few are for current research of various kinds, so I shall just work my way through them one by one and then put them away.
Today's haul was 20 volumes. Add the Aurealis and other work to that and it will take me until at least the end of next week before they are all away. It's going to be a very good fortnight! Four books a day (except when I'm in Sydney) plus writing plus teaching. Lots of the things I love.
The four books a day are probably my just desserts, too, because I was pointing out that the vast majority of writers and editors need to read thoughtfully and a great deal, to improve their craft knowledge. My craft knowledge is going to include Medieval mariners manuals, science fiction, historical fiction, other fiction, archaeological reports, Medieval food, Old French saints (the life of one), Medieval medicine, the matter in manuscript facsimiles (three!), war and marriage and women and the harrowing of Hell. My poor, poor students.
August 21, 2011
gillpolack @ 2011-08-21T21:10:00
Now that I've read my four (and a sixth) books for Aurealis, I'm up to my own other reading. Review books and dissertation books and books for the Beast. Except that I'm not doing them tonight. Tonight is a writing night. Except I don't want to write, I want to nurse my cold (or whatever it is that I have been coming down with for days).
The bad news for my cold (or whatever it is I've been coming down with for days) is that there's someone waiting for my share of Beastliness. This is how to get me to work. It won't stop me whingeing, but it will mean I pull my weight. The Beastliness will be fun once I find my reading glasses and settle down to it.
I meant to write an interesting post tonight, but I mislaid my interesting brain. Sorry!
The bad news for my cold (or whatever it is I've been coming down with for days) is that there's someone waiting for my share of Beastliness. This is how to get me to work. It won't stop me whingeing, but it will mean I pull my weight. The Beastliness will be fun once I find my reading glasses and settle down to it.
I meant to write an interesting post tonight, but I mislaid my interesting brain. Sorry!
gillpolack @ 2011-08-21T11:21:00
One thing I will do with the Aurealis Awards is give you a book count. You get to know how many books I have read in a given week. This week it's four.
I am quite mean and won't tell anyone except the other judges what books they are or what I think of them.
Anyhow, that's it for Aurealis until this evening (having done my morning's reading) and now I get to write my very own bad fiction! It might even be my very own good fiction. I've been doing thinking and drafting this week and it's about time I worked through some of my notes and turned it into novel. This is all tricky stuff - interwoven with what's already there. This is because my mind refuses to work in a straight chronological fashion on this work, even though it's narrated in a straight chronological fashion. It's like working on an embroidery, doing one colour and then another and the whole thing looks many shapes before it makes a whole.
This afternoon is all about Conflux, so I might have to get a move on. I don't want to get a move on. I want to chat all over the internet and annoy people. This is because I've discovered the concept of a day off, but I haven't quite worked out how to do realise this concept. Maybe this holiday I'm taking around Jewish New Year will do the trick*.
Do I always put vital information in my footnotes? Quite possibly. Now I wend novelwards, to put vital information in my fiction.
*Or maybe not, since during it I'm now giving a seminar on Medieval Masculinities and emotions and modern fiction writing for the Monash Medieval and Renaissance Seminar. By 'now' I mean that we discussed it at Leeds and it is on the calendar.
I am quite mean and won't tell anyone except the other judges what books they are or what I think of them.
Anyhow, that's it for Aurealis until this evening (having done my morning's reading) and now I get to write my very own bad fiction! It might even be my very own good fiction. I've been doing thinking and drafting this week and it's about time I worked through some of my notes and turned it into novel. This is all tricky stuff - interwoven with what's already there. This is because my mind refuses to work in a straight chronological fashion on this work, even though it's narrated in a straight chronological fashion. It's like working on an embroidery, doing one colour and then another and the whole thing looks many shapes before it makes a whole.
This afternoon is all about Conflux, so I might have to get a move on. I don't want to get a move on. I want to chat all over the internet and annoy people. This is because I've discovered the concept of a day off, but I haven't quite worked out how to do realise this concept. Maybe this holiday I'm taking around Jewish New Year will do the trick*.
Do I always put vital information in my footnotes? Quite possibly. Now I wend novelwards, to put vital information in my fiction.
*Or maybe not, since during it I'm now giving a seminar on Medieval Masculinities and emotions and modern fiction writing for the Monash Medieval and Renaissance Seminar. By 'now' I mean that we discussed it at Leeds and it is on the calendar.
August 20, 2011
gillpolack @ 2011-08-20T18:47:00
I'm thinking about books again. Or still. Right now, though, I'm thinking that a lot of people send me books with bits of paper in.
Most of these bits of paper are not useful to me, but are a part of the industry's way of handling review copies. They include all the book's details in an easy package in case I were writing the sort of piece that required those details. I've written these one-pagers: they have publication information and cover notes and the nice words others have said. I've seen them used in some reviews and articles, too: a ready source of information for an over-pressured writer who has a limited space to report on far too much books and not nearly enough time to do the job properly. I used to read them with glee, because they tell me a fair amount about a publisher and about how they're presenting the book to the public. Now I just glance over them (for I still want to know these things, but they no longer have the fascination of the new) and then move on.
Sometimes (especially with self-published books) I accumulate a small stack of character sheets, or personal suggestions on when or how I should write anything I might write about the book, of miscellaneous data about the book's inception and the author's life. Maybe I should collect these for a year or two and then write about them as a cultural artefact. It seems wrong to even think this, however, because my writing wouldn't be about the book that encased them, but about what writers and editors and publishers think needs saying when they send those books those books into the wilderness that is my desk.
I don't read these pages for reviews or for critical essays, or even, let me be honest, when I'm judging for an award. When I'm writing or thinking about a book, I'm writing about that book and not the publicity person's sense of where it would sell or the views of someone else concerning it*. I don't want to know if someone I may or may not have heard of, may or may not be on drinking terms with, has said, "This is the best book since Sliced Bread**." I just want to know the story, the characters, the writing. I want the book to talk to me. Why would I evaluate using a piece of paper when I can read the whole thing? It's a major part of why I adore books, after all, the fact that they're so very wonderful in and of themselves.
I was trying to explain this at a crit group a while back. How I was very happy to read a friend's draft novel and talk about its strengths and weaknesses, but I wasn't happy to spend my free time reading complex tables of contents and appendices and character charts and world timelines and technical detail concerning spaceships and moon rising times and who wears what colour in hats and why the writer thought this particular book ought to be written***.
This is always the way I have worked. I read GBS for his prologues, but I got to know his plays first. And it's a good way to approach books - read them for themselves and what they say and how they say it.
Which leaves me the question: what do I do with the character list that fell out of the book I was reading, just now?
* Well, mostly not, an evil genie entered me a few days ago, for which I blame owlfish, and I may very well be writing a review that discusses other reviews of that same book, but this is an exception, not the rule.
** By a very famous writer whose name everyone forgets. Source of many of the misbegotten mixed-up quotes and failed metaphors in my life.
**There have been others, but I can't be bothered making a complete list. My favourite was a recipe, but that was included by error and I had to return it.
Most of these bits of paper are not useful to me, but are a part of the industry's way of handling review copies. They include all the book's details in an easy package in case I were writing the sort of piece that required those details. I've written these one-pagers: they have publication information and cover notes and the nice words others have said. I've seen them used in some reviews and articles, too: a ready source of information for an over-pressured writer who has a limited space to report on far too much books and not nearly enough time to do the job properly. I used to read them with glee, because they tell me a fair amount about a publisher and about how they're presenting the book to the public. Now I just glance over them (for I still want to know these things, but they no longer have the fascination of the new) and then move on.
Sometimes (especially with self-published books) I accumulate a small stack of character sheets, or personal suggestions on when or how I should write anything I might write about the book, of miscellaneous data about the book's inception and the author's life. Maybe I should collect these for a year or two and then write about them as a cultural artefact. It seems wrong to even think this, however, because my writing wouldn't be about the book that encased them, but about what writers and editors and publishers think needs saying when they send those books those books into the wilderness that is my desk.
I don't read these pages for reviews or for critical essays, or even, let me be honest, when I'm judging for an award. When I'm writing or thinking about a book, I'm writing about that book and not the publicity person's sense of where it would sell or the views of someone else concerning it*. I don't want to know if someone I may or may not have heard of, may or may not be on drinking terms with, has said, "This is the best book since Sliced Bread**." I just want to know the story, the characters, the writing. I want the book to talk to me. Why would I evaluate using a piece of paper when I can read the whole thing? It's a major part of why I adore books, after all, the fact that they're so very wonderful in and of themselves.
I was trying to explain this at a crit group a while back. How I was very happy to read a friend's draft novel and talk about its strengths and weaknesses, but I wasn't happy to spend my free time reading complex tables of contents and appendices and character charts and world timelines and technical detail concerning spaceships and moon rising times and who wears what colour in hats and why the writer thought this particular book ought to be written***.
This is always the way I have worked. I read GBS for his prologues, but I got to know his plays first. And it's a good way to approach books - read them for themselves and what they say and how they say it.
Which leaves me the question: what do I do with the character list that fell out of the book I was reading, just now?
* Well, mostly not, an evil genie entered me a few days ago, for which I blame owlfish, and I may very well be writing a review that discusses other reviews of that same book, but this is an exception, not the rule.
** By a very famous writer whose name everyone forgets. Source of many of the misbegotten mixed-up quotes and failed metaphors in my life.
**There have been others, but I can't be bothered making a complete list. My favourite was a recipe, but that was included by error and I had to return it.
August 19, 2011
gillpolack @ 2011-08-19T18:06:00
Today was an even quieter day than yesterday. I've done some work and will do some more work, but am a bit under the weather (that was a Spring pun - genteel laughter permitted) so am taking it slowly.
This morning's work was all novel. For those who must know, it was working out scenes that included shutters, repressive looks from ineffective priests, wimples and personal beauty, and the sad state of the wax on a quite specific writing tablet.
This afternoon's was a bunch of stuff for Conflux, plus starting reading for the Aurealis Awards (on which I won't be reporting back and none of the books will be reviewed by me - if your book is in the SF novel category, don't ask me about it etc - I know everyone already knows all this, but it's worth repeating) and I have just moved into my evening work, which is the Beast.
Actually, it's the Beast and more novel and maybe a bit more PhD stuff, because I need to get these things done, regardless of the shape of the body and under the weather is not actually high pain or worrying symptoms. I shall work slowly through things, however, and get stuff done very gently.
This morning's work was all novel. For those who must know, it was working out scenes that included shutters, repressive looks from ineffective priests, wimples and personal beauty, and the sad state of the wax on a quite specific writing tablet.
This afternoon's was a bunch of stuff for Conflux, plus starting reading for the Aurealis Awards (on which I won't be reporting back and none of the books will be reviewed by me - if your book is in the SF novel category, don't ask me about it etc - I know everyone already knows all this, but it's worth repeating) and I have just moved into my evening work, which is the Beast.
Actually, it's the Beast and more novel and maybe a bit more PhD stuff, because I need to get these things done, regardless of the shape of the body and under the weather is not actually high pain or worrying symptoms. I shall work slowly through things, however, and get stuff done very gently.
August 18, 2011
gillpolack @ 2011-08-18T22:19:00
Today was a quiet day. I've done some work on my novel and on things Medieval (looking at amulets and charms is work, isn't it?) and seen friends and rested. I rested a lot. I keep blaming the weather, but Tuesday and Wednesday were epic. And tiring. And I'm still mopping up the pieces. I have more pieces to mop up, too and all I want to do is drink hot chocolate and meditate on the shapes and forms of charms and amulets. I don't even know if I want a charm or an amulet for my novel and yet I have this fixation.
Excuse me while I ponder the highly serious matter over hot chocolate. I've talked about making it all day and now I finally have it in front of me, it's getting cold.
Excuse me while I ponder the highly serious matter over hot chocolate. I've talked about making it all day and now I finally have it in front of me, it's getting cold.
August 17, 2011
gillpolack @ 2011-08-17T16:58:00
I have a half hour between meetings. Such a meetingish day! Also so wet. I have walked for about two hours in the rain, and am really relieved that Elizabeth is detouring muchly to save me walking in the rain this evening. So why am I spending my scant minutes blogging when I could be drinking hot tea? It could possibly be because my afternoon meeting was with the Functions Manager and the Head Chef of the Hellenic Club and concerned the COnlfux banquet.
I am so very excited. Stuart (head chef) knows his stuff, asks the right questions, comes up with clever and elegant solutions and has a specialist pastry chef. He understands the concepts behind the banquet as well as the food style and the service. He understands changing flavours over time. In other words, the food is going to be completely wonderful, right down to the final bite. The presentation is going to be spot on and the service timed just-so. Add Talie to the mix and it's going to be such a wonderful final banquet of the series!
(He offered to lend me a cherished book and I was able to say "I have that." I think we might both have been pleased.)
I am so very excited. Stuart (head chef) knows his stuff, asks the right questions, comes up with clever and elegant solutions and has a specialist pastry chef. He understands the concepts behind the banquet as well as the food style and the service. He understands changing flavours over time. In other words, the food is going to be completely wonderful, right down to the final bite. The presentation is going to be spot on and the service timed just-so. Add Talie to the mix and it's going to be such a wonderful final banquet of the series!
(He offered to lend me a cherished book and I was able to say "I have that." I think we might both have been pleased.)
August 16, 2011
gillpolack @ 2011-08-16T23:12:00
Tomorrow night at the CSFG meeting, I'll be bringing in some handy tips for writing Medieval travel and paying Medieval cheap labour. Also other things.
gillpolack @ 2011-08-16T14:10:00
I'm trying hard to avoid work, but it happens anyhow. I've done all but about a half hour of the teaching prep for tonight, and likewise all but about a half hour for tomorrow morning. I've reported in to my supervisor and sorted out everything for a seminar I'm giving at Monash University next month. I have arranged my holiday (about which I'm not warning everyone, remember? this means you have not seen the early part of this sentence) and have determined that honey cake will be available at my place (with pot luck dinner) on Erev Rosh Hashanah (28 September). I have heard back from all the editors I emailed stuff to (mostly "yes, we have your article but we can't actually look at it yet").
I have completely forgotten where I was up to in terms of everything else I was doing. What this means is that I shall write for a bit, then have lunch, then finish those teaching preps and wend my way to university and meet my new students. Tonight is mainly overviews and backgrounds and senses of place and time and holy and weird and what magic and myth mean in terms of the Middle Ages as opposed to, say, the 19th century, plus how to spot fairies. I need to know which of the many subjects we *can* talk about in six weeks that they actually *want* to talk about.
I have completely forgotten where I was up to in terms of everything else I was doing. What this means is that I shall write for a bit, then have lunch, then finish those teaching preps and wend my way to university and meet my new students. Tonight is mainly overviews and backgrounds and senses of place and time and holy and weird and what magic and myth mean in terms of the Middle Ages as opposed to, say, the 19th century, plus how to spot fairies. I need to know which of the many subjects we *can* talk about in six weeks that they actually *want* to talk about.
