Gillian Polack's Blog, page 47

gillpolack @ 2014-12-04T17:20:00

I've progressed to a migraine that allows me to read, so I'm catching up on essential reading before the next storm hits. This gives me an excuse to reflect on the sheer number of novels I've read this month which have narration (some in first person some in third) by two different characters, alternating, and how few of them actually differentiate the voice and the perspective to match the characters and nuance the story. If this is the new black (or even an old black that's been chosen a bit too often) then I really want a few more writers to reconsider.

I have just an hour of madly reading left, before the evening dissolves into matters Medieval. There will be only one narrative voice for matters Medieval and it will be mine. If someone would kindly do some handwavium and make the thunderstorms move on so that this is possible, I'll be most grateful.

gillpolack @ 2014-12-04T09:53:00

I started the day with an "I can't see" migraine and with my neighbour deciding that her urgent 8 am chat had to be held outside my bedroom window.

I can now see again (mostly) but am easily turned to grump. All this will pass with the next thunderstorm, and is definitely better now that another neighbour has stopped drilling into a wall. I'm going to be a bit of a pain to be round for a few more hours, though, because my body doesn't enjoy being a confluence of aches.

This particular migraine was predictable, because it's the natural meeting point for my hormonal shift, a thunderstorm, some rather warm weather and the new lack of buses in my vicinity*. The fact that it's only as bad as it is and not wildly worse is the good side of it and shows how terribly carefully I dealt with yesterday. This morning therefore is, despite my lack of vision, just the after-effects.

Since yesterday's order was so very messy, today's wishlist includes good news from the universe (for good news is overdue) and finishing with 2 more Aurealis books. It also includes much work on the Beast and some regrets that I can't make it to Sydney this weekend for the Freecon. All this must wait, however, until my vision is clear. Soon, I hope. In the meantime, my neighbour has gone from my window and the drilling has stopped and I have lots of water to drink**.


*I had to walk 3/4 mile in 33 degrees, carrying books (I was teaching!). There used to be a direct bus, for times like that. Mind you, there used to be a bus from my place to the hospital. And from my place to... until September this year there were buses. Now there aren't because they've improved the services. The people who have decided that no busses are the way to go for people who live where I do are employed by a firm called ACTION.

**In fact, the heavy-duty painkillers and etc are kicking in and I'm getting better as I type. But I'm still grumpy!

gillpolack @ 2014-12-02T22:49:00

I blame the weather and a friend who occasionally forwards particularly daft tweets by the Australian Liberal Party. The Libs are currently in government, for those who need the clarification ie my fellow-Australians. I make the clarification because you can't tell that they're in government from their tweets.

I spent a happy five minutes analysing tonight's tweets to see if they were really as foolish as I thought and they look as if the election is 6 weeks away and they're the underdog and playing dirty tactics and bringing out every scrap of laundry and adding some fake grime to it, just so's they won't lose. And yet... they're just over a third of the way through their term. There is no election in sight (why does this fact make me want to burst into tears? must be the heat). No wonder I took to offering them helpful suggestions and educative comments on Twitter.

I've stopped now. I explained to an amused onlooker that I shall return to writing fiction. Fiction has the advantage of being more credible.

gillpolack @ 2014-12-02T11:31:00

I am back in the land of the post-cortisone, and will actually feel it tomorrow. Very much looking forward to this! Today is the day when my body demands its sleep catch-up, which means tomorrow is when I hit the ground running.

In other not-really-news, Christmas is already just a bit too intrusive in the local shops. It appears I have nearly four weeks this year when I must avoid supermarkets as much as I possibly can. Some years are more in-your-face-Christian (and unrepentantly so) than others, and this is one of them. Thanks to friends, avoidance is mostly possible. Hopefully there will be market on Sunday and then one giant shop in a week or so and then I shall remain entirely oblivious for I SHALL NOT VENTURE.

I'm thinking of a trip north on 22 December (despite the overwhelm factor) to buy last minute chicken and to watch the lighting of a menorah, for Chabad says it's going to light one in Belco this year and the thought of a Chabad menorah in Canberra amuses me. I've already got all my Chanukah stuff for myself though (except for the cooking side) so this excursion would be solely for its wild entertainment value. I don't actually want to meet the Chabad rabbi, for I suspect we have little in common besides our religion - I just want to see what 'secular' Canberra makes of Chabad and whether the doughnuts disappear in record time. If they hand out disposable menorahs, I want to see the looks on peoples' faces (for disposable menorahs are not something that mainstream Australia often encounters). Also, I want my doughnut and my menorah if these are there. (And I really do want to get some chicken feet and frames - I have plans for a chicken-turkey bouillon for the Boxing Day period). I find it a tad curious that the city that can't do food for Passover (when Passover is important) can do 2 public lightings of candles for Chanukah - it's not Jewish needs being met here. It has a whiff about it of "Let them eat cake."

The good-but-small news is that I have a new post up at the History Girls. it's about the multitudinousness of the Middle Ages. (And yes, I worded that carefully solely so that I could type 'multitudinousness.' My ambition is mostly made of daft stuff rather than stern stuff. No, I don't know if I've spelled it correctly. I can say it ten times in rapid succession, and that is my yardstick for success today. By the end of the tenth time, I have a US accent for it's much easier to say quickly with a US accent.)

The bad news of today is really bad. Rocky Wood has died. Anyone who has been involved or interested in Australian horror will know what this means. It was a tragically young death, and he was an awesome guy who changed so much for so many.

Tracing progress and telling stories: keeping readers informed

Just over a decade ago I had an intense discussion with the editor of my first novel. We were talking about The Art of Effective Dreaming, which was going to be my second novel before Rita and Ike and Katrina effected the first block of gross interference. The editor's name was Tamara and she told me, adamantly, she didn't want word counts. I was giving her my progress reports in terms of numbers of words completed since we had last spoke and she said very firmly that she didn't want to hear them. It took me a while to train myself out of telling her, each time we met, how many words I'd written and how close I was to my target.

I'm deadline-person. I love word counts and targets because they help me see where I'm at. They're not dry to me. In fact, they give me clues as to what I should be doing at a particular stage. If I'm in the middle section of a novel, I have to watch for sag. If I heading towards a certain point, I need a bit more excitement to waft past. It's not a numbers game, it's how I measure where I am on the path and how long before I have to finish that particular journey.

But that's me. I have the whole novel inside me. Anyone reading the same count from the outside doesn’t see what I'm seeing, which is why Tamara said what she said and why she was right and why I only occasionally announce word counts.

I'm still counting words. In fact Jennifer Fallon gave me a lovely little Excel sheet to make it as easy as easy to count, to know where I am at, to measure it against my deadlines and fit it into my other work. Every day I write novel, I fill in the spreadsheet for that particular one and I can see if a few months of research rather than writing has affected progress and I can see where I’m up to and I can recalculate the plot trajectory and I'm happy.

It's taken me until now to see just how wise of Tamara this approach was. By switching off from the number count, Tamara could focus on the writing. By not having to pay attention to weekly numbers, she could look at what counted. And she did. She’s a marvellous editor. She knew I was deadline-person so me getting her anything on time wasn’t an issue. Her looking at the story was the issue.

Right now, publishing word counts are very trendy. I have half a dozen writer-friends announcing word counts every day. What this means, in reality, is that about 40 writer-friends are counting their words and then a bunch hit my inbox or Facebook. That’s why I’m seeing the wisdom of Tamara at this precise moment.

All the writers who are measuring publicly by numbers are writers from whom I (previously) had a clear vision of language and style. If you’d asked me why I liked their work, I could have told you, without hesitation. In fact, I did tell people. “You want to read such-and-such a book because it exactly fits what you need this week.”

This morning is I read a number from a rather good author who has a distinctive style and who has much verve and I didn’t see the style or the verve. In fact, I thought “I have no idea what this book is about.” The numbers had overtaken any excitement about the story or about the writer’s style. I know that this many thousand words have been written, but I don’t know what the novel is. I don’t know why I should want to read it, even though it’s coming out next year.

In that one case I went to my shelf and hauled out a previous novel by that writer to remind myself of his style. In all the rest, I noted to myself “I’m happy for the word count, but...”

I’ll worry about getting enthusiasm for the book when it comes out. I’ll have to, for the numbers have separated me from the excitement: there’s a giant curtain now between me and these novels. The authors will have to work extra hard at their reveals when the time comes, for any readers like me are now cheering the numbers on, not the story.

It’s a bit ironic. A good documentary turns engineering into story. It’s why we watch about bridges being built and mountains being moved. Here are a whole bunch of writers turning story into engineering. Very few of us read novels to rejoice in the engineering.

gillpolack @ 2014-12-01T08:05:00

Tomorrow I'm back to normal work, thank goodness. A lot of little things got done with this last week's particularity, but I have withdrawal symptoms from work.

If I can (on this last day of oddness) catch up with a batch of paperwork and maybe read an Aurealis book or two, I'll consider myself in a respectable position. By 'respectable' I mean that all the various piles of papers that float around my place may actually be of manageable size. Also that if I do just enough (ie wild amounts) on my last day of abnormality, there will be hardly any left at all. Today, then, is dedicated to paperwork and emails and bill-paying and messages, except for late this afternoon when a friend is dropping in.

Tomorrow it's the Beast, it's my fiction, it's chasing people who haven't replied to me about key matters, it's work as usual. Hopefully this will mean I get to do regular posts again, and that I can sort the last bits of my new website (Jean Weber has made me a new website!) and my reports in here will start to be interesting again.

Still, this odd little time out means that my Chanukah pressies are all ready and my place isn't such a bomb heap and my teaching rocks are all clean and that they've had the essential sort and are awaiting final identification and labellings (and not as many of them need either as I thought). 90% of the specimens from my kitchen bench are in the teaching box, too, for this is where they now belong. I have just a few shards n an unreachable corner and if I can get into that over summer, there will be much tidiness and much less dust.

And all this is quite minor compared with the fact that I have identified one of my big pain triggers. It's a complicated one and may take a while to unwind and detach, but the fact that I know what it is means I can talk to the doctor and we can sort strategies. With any luck, this is the last of the ones taht trigger large chunks of pain everyday.

It's exceptionally wonderful to see this light in the tunnel. It's astonishing to watch each layer peel off and find the precise triggers for this symptom of that and reel it in gently and analyse it and put it aside and gradually it as not-part of my daily life. It's taken years, though, as many of you know. I've moved from a point where some people wanted me to give up on everything to where I can honestly say "This is not going to interfere with work - I may enjoy life and accomplish bunches and it's OK to feel good about ymyself." I may not be able to dance again (that's to find out still), and I certainly wont be able to do interesting bushwalks or take up competitive weightlifting, but I am already up to the stage where I can say "I need to write this book" or "I must teach this class" and I don't have to give up everyday life to do these things.

I'm thinking about what it means. The biggest thing it means is that I'm lucky. The same chronic illnesses I have have far more debilitating everyday side effects (and, in fact, have had in the past) and they can kill. I've lost friends and even some family, too, for even the best of folk can be deluded about chronic illness and assume that it's more controllable than it is, or that one is attention-seeking or just won't pull oneself together and walk out of the slough.

I'm alive, I'm competent and the levels of everyday impossibility are still diminishing. Despite hurting like heck and having had an interesting week and having had to do computer rescue twice yesterday, I'm more than a little happy.

gillpolack @ 2014-11-29T06:30:00

Still triaging.

My computer monitor has died of old age. It must have been nearly a decade, which is quite respectable for a monitor, and my back-up one is effective. It's much smaller, though, and my eyes are not enjoying the change. Give me a couple of days to get used to it.

My mother is here and it's lovely. She brought with her many things, and I am now the delighted owner of my great-grandmother's synagogue cushions. This is the great-grandmother who fled Kishinev after the pogroms, so it's quite a daunting synagogue cushion when you think about it. It's a lot more recent than the pogroms- maybe 1940s. Possibly 1950s, if she only acquired it towards the end of her life. I think late 40s early 50s, from the fabric, but I'll check with a friend who's better at fabric than I am, and find out.

Whenever there was a bomb threat and all the seats had to be checked (synagogues get bomb threats - it was simply a part of my childhood) the seat-checkers would come across this cushion. I knew that, as a child, waiting outside the shul. This was the first thing anyone would see when they opened that particular seat. This cushion and Mum's were my personal emotional security against bombs. This one has been since I was very tiny: I can't remember a life without it. What a strange burden for a soft cushion to carry.

I am also now the proud owner of a book that inspired something rather important for Secret Jewish Women's Business, which is one of the novels I recently contracted. You will hear about both in due course. In the meantime, anyone who visits is welcome to admire the book, for it's a book worthy of admiration. It has some significant differences to its alter ego in the novel, but there's one extraordinary aspect of it that's identical.

For anyone hoping to read that novel soon: you have to wait eighteen months. (This is one of your "Insert evil laugh here" moments.)

And... (final drum roll) I have my missing teaching box. One of the important elements in world building is geology. I now have a special box of geological specimens (for Mum was a geology teacher) with which to teach this. It includes rocks from some very interesting places, and it includes some very interesting rocks indeed. Mum and I have to go through and see what we can label, for we were more enthusiastic than diligent when we put it together. I also need to put something protective on the box, for it's an old biscuit box and the labels are peeling off.

I'm awake at an early hour for the same reason I was up impossibly late: because of cortisone. I got nearly four straight hours of sleep last night, though, and the simple thing I did to fill in the wired-but-brainless time was make enough cherry filling for many tarts for the Chanukah period. I've frozen the filling in bags so that I can unfreeze just enough for visitors on a given day. This means that I save several hours work at a time when I won't have several hours. This is opposed to right now, when I am time rich and brain poor.

I also have turkeys in the freezer for such a time, unexpectedly. Mum and I went shopping to see if we could sort something else entirely (so many things are possible when one has a parent with a car!), and I checked the freezers just in case the supermarkets had discounted for post-Thanksgiving. We don't actually do Thanksgiving here, and Black Friday means bushfires. This means discounting turkeys was a stupid thing for anyone to do, but some years, some supermarkets... so I checked.

I got 6.8 kg of perfectly good turkey for $40*. I shall unfreeze it in 2 batches, and have umpteen different turkey dishes (including soup-base) all summer. I can't do anything with it now, but it's something I can cook in the background, while I work. I'll do one of them soon, however, for that means I can do them at a time when certain other things have to be postponed.

But how do I want to cook my turkey? I don't know. What I do know is that I'm exhausted and hyper at once (because of cortisone) so this morning is perfect for marketing, especially since I have someone to make decisions where I can't (which is a rarity). This is fortunate, because it's market morning! And there'll be thunderstorms Monday, so I'll get things to go with the turkey, start unfreezing one of them and roast it then turn the carcass into soup while the weather isn't too warm. Some of those turkey meals will be eaten next week and the week after!

And by this post you can know that even when things go wrong, they're not necessarily bad. The moment I can get much sleep (which will happen in a few days) I shall be able to deal with the world. As it is, I'm doing all kinds of things that enable world-dealing at that time.


*for those US friends who wonder at this price being a special, the normal price in the same supermarket is $20-30kg

gillpolack @ 2014-11-27T17:51:00

Side effects of everything interesting is that I've had to triage my work. Some things get put off until next week, with appropriate apologies. Some things can't and get done regardless. Some brainless things that need to be done over the next few weeks have been brought forward, for they are easy and take little energy. This means I won't have an impossible-catch up when I'm past this interesting period, for I will have freed up some time from the future.

This is the life of a writer/teacher/researcher! Things have to happen, regardless. Today I have about four more things that cannot be postponed past today. When they're done, I'll be much less stressed. The most difficult one is 9/10 done. So I'm getting there, incoherently and slowly.

This is the price of getting well. It's just as hard as staying ill, but it has benefits at the end. My shoulder is healing wonderfully and my walking looks as if it will return, BTW. And all the Big Things Wrong are not there any more. Years of work is paying off. I just have to be strong and not say "I can do everything" for a few weeks. Then I'll be able to do everything again! (Well, maybe not folkdance - it looks as if my knee is going to heal enough to walk and etc, but not to do interesting dances, drabbit. And even the walking may take a couple of months.)

In the fun side of news, I've been MindMelded. Comment there or comment here (but best to comment there - you let the wonderful people of SFSignal know how good their work is that way): http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2014/11/mind-meld-the-best-book-openings/

gillpolack @ 2014-11-25T12:08:00

I'm playing with cross-posting. If it works, you'll get a repeat of most of this post (not this intro - just the body). If it doesn't, then drawing board and Jean and I will have a conference.



The weather hit me yesterday, but also so did medication for other things. Since some of the medication was cortisone, I managed to get a lot of reading done, late into the night. I suspect this might happen again tonight. My shoulder is already in significantly less pain, though (I tore something weeks ago and it was pulled every time I woke up and thus not repairing properly) and my feet are foot-sized. We’ll know tomorrow how it’s affecting my walking. Hopefully it is and I can sprint to class! Or at least walk briskly and without pain. I did my pain for the week yesterday, and am all over it, thank you.

In other news, the amazing Jean Hollis Weber is creating me my new webpage and it’s up and running. From here on in all but my person blogposts will be on both sites (and are already on Goodreads). I’m also putting up some of my more interesting historical blog posts from various places. I might even put up some articles and short stories and things, if there’s an interest. Let me know what you want to see!

Guest Blogger: Satima Flavell

Gillian and I have been writerly friends for many years – probably about a decade. However, she lives in Canberra, our country’s capital, while I am in Perth, a couple of thousand miles away on the coast of Western Australia. Aussies get used to what we like to call ‘the tyranny of distance’. Australia is about the same size as the USA or mainland Europe, but its population is less than 25 million souls, nearly all of them in towns and cities scattered around the coastline like beads on a rather raggedy pearl necklace. So it’s a great treat for writers and fans in this vast country to go to conventions interstate. I’m lucky – I have relatives in Canberra so I have two good reasons to visit the Capital Territory at least once a year, and catch up with Gillian and other write-minded buddies there.

But in between, there is Facebook. Ah, what did we do before Facebook? It’s so easy to stay in touch, have arguments intense discussions on matters literary, and, of course, to bemoan the fact that it’s a/ almost impossible to get published by conventional means and b/ almost impossible to get our sparkling prose in front of people who will enjoy reading it. Gillian and I have both found blogging to be a good way to stay in touch with readers and prospective readers, and we thought it might be nice to meet each other’s fans by doing a blog-swap.

So here I am, to tell you about my first novel, The Dagger of Dresnia. It’s the first book of a high fantasy trilogy, which will tell those of you familiar with Gillian’s work that we are very different kinds of authors! It took me five years to write and another five to get published. I was rescued from starvation in a garret (well, bed-sit actually, but garret sounds more starving writerish) by Satalyte Publishing. I am delighted to find that Gillian has sold her new novel to Satalyte, so now we are stable mates!

The Dagger of Dresnia, book one of The Talismans is unique in several ways, the main one being that my main character, Queen Ellyria, is not a bright young thing but a middle-aged woman, plagued by family troubles, an obnoxious staff member – and a Dark Spirit. There are lots of younger characters, so there is adventure and romance a-plenty (including a few raunchy bedroom encounters) all underpinned by a set of themes that could probably be summed up as ‘the many forms love takes in our lives’ and ‘actions have consequences’. That’s as far as I took my consideration of themes, but it’s a funny fact that writers are often not aware of the themes in their work until they are pointed out by someone else. In my case, ‘someone else’ was Jaki Arthur, Publicity Manager at Hachette. Earlier this year, I was fortunate enough to be accepted into a one-day workshop on Marketing Development Skills, facilitated by Ms Arthur at the WA State Library. She insisted that recognition of themes was key, as they can play an important part in promotion. She assured us it should be possible to find at least seven themes, and suggested that this is the magic number for marketing purposes.

To my surprise, I found I could break down my two main themes into nine! Here they are:
• The nature of love in its many forms
• The development of intimacy in different kinds of relationships
• The singularising nature of an unusual talent
• Dealing with the consequences of the decisions we make
• Internal conflict
• Family conflict
• Problem teenagers
• Racial conflict
• The potentially healing power of family ties

Strange, but they were there all the time, hidden by my own failure to seek them out.
Although I’m not a historian, like Gillian, I have an abiding love of, and respect for, the discipline. I studied modern history right through high school and did a year of ancient history at university. In almost any course one takes, there will be some kind of historical component, so I also have at least a nodding relationship with History of Music, History of Art, History of Dance, History of Theatre, History of Literature, even History of Agriculture and History of Astrology … there’s no getting away from history. It is embodied in any subject area one undertakes, and what’s more, it’s where our ancestors live. As a keen family historian, that’s very important to me.

For some reason, I’ve always been drawn to late twelfth century Europe and Britain, and although The Dagger of Dresnia is set in an imaginary kingdom in an imaginary world where elves and dwarves abound, Ellyria’s story is recognisably based in the time of another strong woman, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Ellyria’s life is quite different from that of Eleanor, but they have some similar personal characteristics: determination, pride, conflicting emotions and relationships, wanting the best for their children – in short, all the troubles that beset a woman who has many jobs to do and only one pair of hands with which to do them. And a woman in a powerful position must constantly watch her back. My Ellyria, fortunately, has magic to help her smooth out the rough spots.

Should you feel moved seek out The Dagger of Dresnia, here’s your first port of call: