Gillian Polack's Blog, page 315

gillpolack @ 2010-04-16T19:42:00

Today has been about getting big stuff done. It's also a moderate to high pain day. This means that today has also been about coffee with chicory and about balancing acts. If I can do just a few more hours work, I'll be fine for tomorrow. I have to clear my desk before I can join the Jane Austen Festival tomorrow (and give a talk) and take Sunday afternoon off. If the pain is still bad when I get home tomorrow, I shall take tomorrow night off too. Either way, letting work build-up so tha...

gillpolack @ 2010-04-15T12:35:00

And, in my other world, I'm trying to sort out the relationship between Saint-Gilles and Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert. Saint-Guilhem has better stories, which I knew already, and they both have their saints and both saints are pretty cool. I'm more interested in the geology, right now, and just how the various pilgrim routes touched them. I think I need a geological map. I'm getting the main 12th century text on the subject, which will help, and I have one volume of the earlier printed edition...

gillpolack @ 2010-04-15T12:09:00

This is by way of an explanation because it appears that I'm in trouble for making my previous post. I have on one of my stacks of papers a rather large colour media kit about a new book. It contains apostrophes that are not used correctly. These few sheets of glossy paper are the actual item that prompted the post yesterday. So unless you produced that media kit, the post was not specifically prompted by anything you said or did.

That kit was a trigger. I wasn't targetting a specific p...

gillpolack @ 2010-04-14T16:06:00

I've been getting a lot of publisher blurbs and media packs recently. My big lesson from them? I find I can't take so seriously the Famous Editor whose latest anthology is advertised with apostrophes in the wrong place.

It's dreadfully easy to put extra apostrophes in. I've found myself doing it, despite the fact that I know the rules and teach the rules. It's a copycat thing. I see "it's" so often, incorrectly used, that something in me doubts my own knowledge and I put it in my own text, ...

gillpolack @ 2010-04-13T16:03:00

I was pulling together my comments on zombie ancestry and discovered that I made most of them in 2008. My brain must have been pretty much on hold between then and now.

I started off with vast screeds of heated argument (and I've entirely mislaid the major one, where I was exceedingly sarcastic about many peoples' notion of historical nutrition), but by the end of it I simply said to students and on my blogs: "Consider carefully: do you assume that people did stupid things because they lived ...

gillpolack @ 2010-04-13T12:49:00

I've decided it's time to collect evidence of my Zombie Theory of History into a notebook. This is partly so I have Evidence should anyone dare to disbelieve, but mostly so that I can give the theory to a character. If any of you come across anything that might belong in that notebook, I'd be happy to hear about it. In return, if I find anything particularly juicy, I'll be sure to report on it.

For those who missed the theory when I originally propounded it, you can find a previous post on ...

gillpolack @ 2010-04-13T00:03:00

More fuel for my Zombie Theory of History (which I think I shall develop and use in my next novel, because I really, really can't write a scholarly article about it):

"Vegetables soon sour, and corrode metals and glazed red ware, by which a strong poison is produced. Some years ago, the death of several gentlemen was occasioned at Salt-hill, by the cook sending a ragout to table, which she had kept from the preceding day in a copper vessel badly tinned."

This is from the same source as the poma...

gillpolack @ 2010-04-12T22:53:00

I was preparing for my stint at the Jane Austen Festival this weekend and I came across several recipes for pomatum. Should I ruin dreams of time travel and Regency romance? Or should I be nice?

Last time I was nice I got into big trouble, so here's a recipe for putting foul stuff in your hair so you,too, can attract members of the opposite sex.

"Hard Pomatum.
Prepare equal quantities of beef-marrow and mutton-suet as before, vising the brandy to preserve it, and adding the scent; then pour ...

gillpolack @ 2010-04-11T20:21:00

I have a migraine and I don't care, because Jessa Crispin is going to read Life Through Cellophane. (Me? Addicted to Bookslut? Absolutely not. I can stop reading it whenever I want to. Truly.)

gillpolack @ 2010-04-11T14:06:00

Today has mysteriously turned into the day of the slow edit.

I have a backlog of work because of the increasing loss of energy in my last few years. Today I picked up something I had started editing before the exciting events of late January and thought "I reckon I can polish this off." It still needs a tough outside gaze because it was an intensely internal narrative and deals with difficult themes ( yasminke , it's the one you checked for Jewish magical accuracy, Secret Jewish Women's Busi...