Robin McKinley's Blog, page 104

There Is Hope, continued

 

GEEZUM FRELLING RATBAGGING CROW IT'S COLD.  COOOOOOOOLD.  We've had this super-mild winter when after last year we're all jumping at shadows* and going AAAAAAUGH, was that a snowflake?  It hasn't been.  But February has come in with teeth.  And ice giants.  And a hard bleak ridgy landscape that looks like a dress rehearsal for when hell freezes over.  And a wind that leaves lash marks on your skin.  My hands, wrapped around leads, even in gloves are too cold.  And hellhounds vary from manic to petulant.  First it's WOWIEEEEEEEE, WATCH ME CLIMB A TREE LIKE A SQUIRREL** and then it's MAKE IT GO AWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY and then it's, if you're not going to make it go away, take us HOOOOOOOOOOOME.***  This evening when I took them out before bell ringing we got back in plenty of time for me to have another bootless glower at Grandsire Triples† because none of us could stand it out there.††

            I almost didn't go to practise.  Well, no, I thought about almost not going.  And I'd even forgotten that I'd announced last week that I was going to Forza again this week.†††  But while SHADOWS is still moving, it was not moving today with the free and gallant gait it had been yesterday. ‡  So I thought about staying home and keeping working.  I also thought about not having to go anywhere else in this weather.

            But I'd programmed myself too well.  I found myself putting my jacket and shoes back on, and stuffing my bell-method books (and my knitting) in my little knapsack, and trudging off to fetch Wolfgang. Ugggggh.

            And then . . . there is hope.  I almost bottled out of the Grandsire Triples (which the Scary Man cheerfully called for and beckoned to me) thinking that since I'm having such trouble with these bells and I'm safer on six, and it was minor last week that was finally the first thing I'd done right, maybe I should just ring six for a bit and leave triples for later.  But I grasped my rope and clenched my teeth . . . and the Grandsire was not a total drooling foozle.  I had to be fetched out of a hole twice, I think, by the Scary Man shouting in my ear, but I managed to see quite a bit of what I was doing.  There is hope.  THERE IS.

            Although I'm still intimidated out of my tiny feeble mind by the sheer scope of the abbey.  We rang rounds on eighty-four, because the abbot rings a little, and this gave him a chance to pull on a bell rope, and I almost died of terror.  Rounds, for pity's sake, McKinley!  It's only rounds!  The bells going 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9 up to eighty-four and then over again!  NOTHING to remember!  All you need is the most primitive bell-handling skill!  But it's rounds in a GIGANTIC room and I feel bizarrely vulnerable as if there are leopards in the shadows.‡‡  I feel all sort of wavery and reed-like, out in the middle of the floor like that—I'd grabbed the eight, just for variety, since I've been ringing exclusively round the front.  Which—the front few bells—happen to stand relatively near the wall at that end of the room—the rest of the ropes career out into the middle of nowhere.  It's not like you lean against the wall—on the contrary, ringing too close to a wall in a tiny ringing chamber is pretty uncomfortable—but it's there.  You know there isn't room for any leopards behind you.  We rang rounds for, dunno, maybe three minutes by the end of which I was howling silently:  please stop!  Please stop!  Please stop!

            I am pathetic.

            I am also going again next week.  

* * *

* . . . you should forgive the term 

** Chaos, who, as we know, has no attention span and after four and a half years of wearing a harness instead of a collar, cannot reliably remember to pick both front feet up to have it put on, remembers EVERY TREE he has ever chased a squirrel into.  This is, as you may believe, a lot of trees.  And a tree at whose feet he almost caught a squirrel he has to be dragged past moaning.^  I am particularly afflicted by two of these exceptionally trying trees at the moment.  

^ Like you have to drag him past his girlfriend.  The border collie.  Who bites.+  I have to put him on short lead and frog-march him past her gate, while he moans.  She loves me, he says.  Moan.  She does really.  Moan.  It's her way of showing affection.  Moan. 

+ Mongo does NOT bite.  He wouldn't DREAM of biting.# 

# Except curtains, sofa cushions, electric flex, etc. 

*** The corollary to this is and GET THESE HORRIBLE COATS OFF US.  Darkness, as usual, is the more stoic.  Chaos, who feels the cold much worse, prances like a hackney pony the whole time, with a wild butt-swing that would get him marked down if he were a hackney pony, and tries to rub his coat off on walls and bollards and hedgerows and anything else he can get alongside.  STOP THAT.  Our one tentative breakthrough on the subject of winter warmth is that when I put them in the car I drape two bits of old blanket over them, one bit per hellhound.  They seem to have figured out that if they lie down without the standard pacing and clawing first, their blankets stay on and they stay warmer.  My mastermind hellhounds.  Maybe intense cold has a wits-sharpening effect?^ 

^ Not on me.  It has a bunker-mentality effect on me.  Not unlike make it go AWAAAAAAAAAAY. 

† I know the frelling line.  Knowing the frelling line is not the problem. 

†† TMI warning: avert your eyes NOW. 

            Neither of my hellhounds is prompt about the bodily-functions business.  Chaos does have a crap almost immediately, but he will have two or three more over the course of an hour's walk.  Darkness unloads about ninety percent of his delivery in one colossal lot . . . but it takes him anything up to half an hour to feel moved to do so.  And they stop for a pee every five feet, or do if I let them.  Forever.  If I walked them six hours, fourteen hours, ninety hours, they would still be peeing every five feet (if I let them).  Anyway.  Usually this is not a problem:  in two hours of sprinting over the landscape there is time.  Last few days, while the morning hurtle is merely a bit extra brisk, the evening hurtle is yaaaaaaah get on with it you have FIVE MINUTES.  

††† I'd also forgotten Forza's bell practise was going to have visitors this week.  The Royal Loyal Grand Panjandrum and the chief abbot.  The chief abbot looked more or less like a normal priest.  Possibly his frock was more flowing than standard but that may just be that he is a tall abbot.  The Royal Loyal was wearing a gigantic Seal of Office around his neck.  I keep forgetting about the English and their 800 year old traditions to go with their 800 year old abbeys.  The what?  And he was wearing what?  But it's worse than that.  Today's the something anniversary of the Queen swimming the English Channel or bungie-jumping off the Forth Bridge or the day she dropped the Black Prince's Ruby down the loo during an especially tedious reception, or something really important.  So in honour of this significant global event and since we had visitors someone had brought a couple of bottles of (cheap) fizz—no, really—and about halfway through practise we all gathered around the tower captain who gave a little speech about whatever^ which ended with everyone raising their glasses and intoning, To the QUEEN.

            I am not joking. 

            I love England.  I love the landscape, the public footpath system, the cider, the sausages, the bell towers, the ringing, the roses, the National Trust, the V&A museum, the double decker buses, the fact that there is a train system even if it's going to pieces, and many of the people.  I don't, theoretically, even mind the percentage of your earnings they take away from you because I believe, for example, in socialised medicine.  I object a lot to what they do with your money (for example, they are currently trying to destroy the socialised medical system as they have already destroyed the trains), but that's another story.

            I do not love the monarchy. 

^ The Heroic Deeds of the Plumber 

‡ Maybe Fiona would like to relocate and open a YARN STORE in New Arcadia? 

‡‡ There's that word again.

The Great Gimblefurzle Search

 

So a few weeks ago I decided I didn't have enough livestock and I wanted a . . . gimblefurzle.  Gimblefurzles are the dead easy end of the class . . . um . . . critteriornati, very popular, as you may know, among people with neither money nor sense, who may suddenly take it into their heads that (for example) a full complement of hellhounds, more houseplants than windowsills and 4,012 rose-bushes in a garden the size of a picnic table* IS NOT ENOUGH things that need fussing and feeding.  They may have taken on this implausible theory on account of Recent Traumas.  Possibly the idea of a gimblefurzle first arose while a recent trauma was unfolding** and an almost-subliminal part of the attraction of a gimblefurzle*** was the idea of naming it† after some aspect of the trauma, something to prove that the trauma has been assimilated and moved on from.†† 

            So, because I haven't got enough to do, I started researching gimblefurzles in those moments between paragraphs when I'm trying to divert my thoughts from the prospect of jobs washing windows and spray-painting fenders in factory assembly lines.  It turns out that my friend Cwyllog has been keeping various critteriornati, including gimblefurzles, most of her life:  her parents were also critteriornati enthusiasts and she grew up cleaning their cages and grating their carrots (and chasing mealworms down the back of the refrigerator when the lid didn't get put on properly ewwwwww).   So I having mentioned my potential new assault on insanity and more critters, she laughed a lot because she is rude, and then she was all over me with useful info†††.  Drat.  I wouldn't have minded if she'd commited herself to convincing me that they're tricky and whimsical and need lots of specialised kit.  No!  she said.  Easy!  Spectacularly easy!  You should totally get one!  Gimblefurzles are also gruesomely photogenic, and there are (conservatively) 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 photos of gimblefurzles out there waiting for you to press that google button, poised and ready to destroy self-control and rouse the Must. Have. reaction in the susceptible.

            My case was becoming severe.  And then it turned out that gimblefurzles are not quite as readily come by as their reputation as small, cheap, cute and dead easy to keep and keep healthy might have led you to expect.  There are half a dozen pet shops that sell some critters as well as food, toys and cages that look like plastic castles within my I-have-ME-and-I-don't-drive-any-more-than-I-can-help-it-even-to-ring-bells range and while there were rumours at two of them the only gimblefurzles I managed to see were mythological abstracts that looked more like small extrusions of plastic castle wall than gimblefurzles.‡

            But then Cwyllog, who thinks I'm fun to watch, applied her (superior) google-fu to the problem and discovered a critteriornati specialist store in Fantootlington, which is not impossibly far from here.‡‡ 

            I believe it was at this developmental stage that Fiona and I were having a parallel conversation about her coming down just for a face to face schmooze since I haven't got enough of a fresh accumulation of doodles‡‡‡ to be worth her professional time.  With a breathtaking lack of subtlety I emailed her:  how would you like to come down, drive to Fantootlington, and investigate the critteriornati store with me? 

           What? she said.  

            Fortunately Fiona is also easily amused.  She agreed. 

            And today was the day.  I told you I was going to have an adventure today.  Yes.  This was it.§  The Ornamental Creature Centre was not quite what either of us was expecting:  it's a long narrow twisty crowded series of rooms with stacks of cages with little things wittering about in them.  But the critters themselves looked clean and cheerful so I was willing to overlook the fact that the place was giving me claustrophobia and the walls had clearly not been redecorated since Queen Victoria's reign.  I had however checked both on their web site and by email that they did have gimblefurzles in stock and . . . yes!  There they were!  Awwwwwwww!

            So I went up to the counter and said I wanted a gimblefurzle.  Great, they said.  Now, will you be wanting the 1,000,000 cubic metre plastic castle or we have a special this week on the 2,000,000,000 cubic metre casino with the working slot machines and roulette wheels that really spin to keep your gimblefurzle amused?  Only £3748.  A bargain.  And it has underfloor heating so you won't have to buy a separate heater.

            Heater?  I said.  1,000,000 cubic metres?  I have a two-gallon crate§§ that a friend who's had gimblefurzles all her life says is plenty for one gimblefurzle.

            No no no no no no no, said the clerk.  Totally inadequate.  And as well as the heater you will need an air filter because gimblefurzles' beauty is based on their having been increasingly overbred—the clerk opened her eyes very wide at this point and may have said something uncalled-for about the currency of my friend's information—and are now fragile little things unsuitable for life in this world.  As well as the air filter you will need agarwood oil for the cistern, a partridge in a pear tree which you can buy at our sister shop just down the street, and an assortment of silken pillows, which you must change daily and handwash in our special Gimblefurzle Delicate Soap—the last rinse must be in distilled water—and you aren't expecting to feed it on grated carrot and mealworms, are you?  That is so last century.  No, Cooking for Your Gimblefurzle is volume seven of the Complete Guide to Gimblefurzle Care, which you may care to glance over, if you buy the casino we will let you have it for £490, and we include a small tin of truffles at no extra charge. . . .

            I didn't bring a gimblefurzle home.

            I am very unhappy.§§§

            And Cwyllog is breathing fire and smoke and may be on the next flight over here.#   Possibly with a gimblefurzle in her pocket. . . .    

* * *

* Ah, but Third House has empty ground. 

** Not to say erupting, exploding, or going BANGBANGTHUDWHAMBANG 

*** Or possibly two.  They're small. 

† Or them. 

†† Us writers like symbolism.  So, no, not Evil Ratbag and Thick As A Brick.  Possibly Yaaaay and Wahoooo. 

††† And as I write this she has unearthed and cleaned out her old gimblefurzle cage and is browsing thoughtfully through her local yellow pages.  The great drawback to Cwyllog on this occasion for me is that she lives 4000 miles away.  Rats. 

‡ I don't CARE if they're cute if I need a magnifying glass to SEE one! I said to Cwyllog.  She said, they grow. 

‡‡ I've rung handbells there. 

‡‡‡ Yet 

§ The part that worked is that Fiona left her frelling satnav^ in her glovebox and I navigated by, you know, paper maps.  Not even Google.  The sort of thing you buy in a bookshop.  And we got there.  And we got home again. 

^ The day we took it along to find the art supplies store it kept trying to make us turn into fields and down roads that had been fenced off and other manifestations of technological hilarity. 

§§ from a previous life 

§§§ The one thing that has gone right today is that Fiona came back with me and knitted in a soothing manner while I plunged despairingly back into SHADOWS . . . which went bizarrely well.  It might be transfigured gimblefurzle deficit, but I prefer to think that Fiona is Good Luck.  Or maybe it's the knitting. 

# Which would almost make this whole anti-comedy of fallacy and delusion worthwhile.

 

I'm in it for the journey

 

I've felt that I've made kind of a lurch forward, singing, this week.  I'm not spending as much time practising as I would like because I'm a little absorbed just at the minute* in work.**  But I've been aware that whatever Nadia did to me last week about dropping my breath deeper down and farther in had in fact come home with me rather than staying behind in the Teacher Magic Room and waving and saying 'see you next Monday.'***   It is very odd because once you are doing something† it tends to be 'well, why weren't you doing this before?  It's not like it's quantum physics.'††  Why should it be so hard to remember to breathe?  Blerg.

            So anyway this week I've been breathing down into my abdomen and supporting all this noise I'm making.  And it's been fun.†††

            And then last night . . . I had no voice.  What?  What happened?  This Your Instrument is Your BODY is SO WEIRD.  Cheez.  I did whack myself silly last night over SHADOWS since I had a guest post, but one of the great things about singing‡ is that it's so different.  There is certainly the absolute-energy level that you have to stay aware of, especially when you have ME or any of its many grisly relations, but generally you get an instant boost as soon as you shift to a different activity.‡‡  And I opened my mouth last night and . . . this tiny little squeaky sound crept out. . . .

            I was better again this morning, fortunately, and I sang like mad while brewing tea and getting dressed and taking the indoor jungle outside again‡‡‡ and writing cheques§ and, of course, hurtling.  I was back to breathing from my gut and making a reasonable amount of noise.  But what frelling shut me down?  I was talking to Nadia about it (of course) and because I swear singing is more Freudian than any mere human analyst could intimidate you with, it may have been some reflective business between the bit of Maggie's story I'm revising, where she's trapped in a situation she sees no way out of, and the way I was feeling just before I made the decision to quit my bell tower.  But the way your/my voice pursues its own view, I said it's almost like having another critter about the place—two hellhounds and a singing voice.  I don't know how professional singers do it:  Nadia says, as she has said before, that it's about the level you can attain when you are off the wall, melting down and/or in doolally extremis—that if you find you can't rely on producing x level even under contrary conditions, then you can't be a professional singer.§§

            Yes.  I get that.  And fortunately I don't have to worry about professional standards.  But the journey is still the journey, whether you're hoping to open at the Met next year as Rosina or Orfeo or merely to be in the amateur choir singing for a little local wedding in two months, and I'm in it for the journey. 

* * *

* Did you know there are 43,200 minutes in a 30-day month?^  Sounds like plenty, doesn't it?  Part of the reason I'm so bad at maths is that numbers are so misleading.  43,200 of anything sounds like a lot. 

^ I know.  Calculators and the internet make this kind of thing really cheap.  Remember the old 'when I was your age I had to walk to school seven miles in the snow and alligators'+?  My generation's version of this is 'when I was your age, if I wanted to know how many minutes were in a month I had to sit down with a pencil and paper and figure it out.' 

+ Special snow-proof alligators.  They prefer mountainous country where they sled around on their bellies.  

** As of tonight I'm a page ahead of my daily count.  But I'm having an adventure tomorrow which is going to suck up a few hours.  But it will be worth it because I will come home inspired.^ 

^ And speaking of inspiration.  I am slowly and limpingly starting doodling again.  Actually, the truth is, doodling—like singing—has become one of those things I do to cheer myself up.  Both activities use a lot of the same creative engagement muscles that story-telling does but at a slightly different level and strain—a bit, perhaps, like going for a nice brisk five-mile walk with some hellhounds instead of running a marathon with 1,000,000 fitter, better trained and more competitive people than you.+  You get your blood moving and your endorphins elevated and a few calories burnt off toward that chocolate you want to have this evening, but you don't feel like you died and when you try to get out of bed the next morning you don't wish you had.  But between the dreadful rush toward the climax of quitting the New Arcadia tower that I was theoretically earning bell fund money for and cramming the second draft of SHADOWS through to send in the end of last month, I stopped doodling for public disclosure.++

            But life goes on and the official doodle pen is once again raised.  The new schedule is that I plan to get another batch out the end of this month and EVERYTHING but the fancy one-offs+++ done by the end of March. 

            At that point I'll take a deep breath focus on the fancy stuff.++++  

+I can't face touring for a lot of reasons.   

++ Although I'll probably post some of them one of these days just . . . because.#  Jousting Tulips.  Woven Hellhounds.  Six Knives in Search of Washing-Up Liquid.  Three Apples Just Sitting There.  The Thing That Lives Under the Sofa.  (Several of these.  Things That Live Under the Sofa.)  

# Because the blog is a time-engulfer and almost ANYTHING eventually gets pressed into service. 

+++ One of the not-so-tangential reasons I'm thrilled with my ribbed legwarmer(s) in its new utterly straightforward and unconfusing yarn is that it suggests that I will manage to knit the two squares that people have already paid me for.  That was one more crisis of confidence at a time I didn't need any more crises, even little ones, when I was trying to use the snooty aristocratic variously-coloured and –threaded yarn and didn't seem able to keep my knits and my purls in neat little rows.  The yarn I'm going to be knitting the squares in is very very plain.  

++++ Just by the way . . . wheeeee.  I'm looking forward to these. 

*** I not infrequently feel that if I looked carefully around the edges of Nadia's studio I would see a whole series of little curled up Better Singing Selves belonging to all her students. 

† I won't say right but let's say less wrong or moving in the right direction 

†† I am very glad singing is not like quantum physics. 

††† I've also been trying to learn the vocal line to Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring.  It being Bach and all I wasn't exactly surprised that it's more complicated than it looks.  Have I told you that the Muddles are singing for another wedding in April?  Which I am going to try to make it to?  They're doing Jesu, the first part of the Vivaldi Gloria, and the Bach-Gounod Ave Maria.  I'm used—and Nadia says that's how she knows it too—to thinking of this last as a flashy soprano solo, so I'm hoping they'll just give it to Griselda and the rest of us can sit back and listen comfortably. 

‡ Or doodling 

‡‡ The absolute-energy level, however, rules how long the boost lasts. 

‡‡‡ Yes, I assume I will have to bring it in again tonight. 

§ Possibly one should not sing while writing cheques, but I think probably they went to the right people. 

§§ She also says the difference between what you think you sound like on a good day and what you think you sound like on a bad day is not nearly as audible to your audience as you believe.  Words to live by.  I'm only a choir singer.

My First Goat and the best-selling paperback, guest post by HorsehairBraider

 

When I was 18 I moved to a small horse and goat farm and began a life-long adventure of learning about goats (and horses, and making cheese). They did not pay me; I worked for room and board, but out of kindness I was told that when one of the does kidded I would get her kid for my very own. 

Now how exciting is that? My very own goat, my own milk and my own cheese – I was really looking forward to the prospect. My goat would come from a Saanen doe the farm had. Her name was Zephyr, and she was pure white. Saanens are a Swiss breed. The very first livestock purebred registry in the whole wide world was started in Switzerland, for goats. Zephyr had been bred to a buck for freshening, or coming in to milk. This is not always done every year, because some does will "milk through" or just keep producing milk, but for some their production starts to drop off and so they are sent to a buck for breeding, then milked another three months and dried off for the last two months before kidding (for it takes about 5 months between breeding and kidding). That gives the doe a break and allows her to prepare for her new kids and her next lactation, because of course that milk is really for her kids, not us. We just share.  

But back to my first goat. 

As luck would have it, I was left in charge of the farm while everyone else went off for a few days, and sure enough, Zephyr kidded one night while I was there all by myself. 

My first clue about it was this shrieking noise coming from the goat pen. I rushed out to find a tiny little pure white goatling staggering around and making enough noise to be heard for a mile, valiantly trying to follow her mother Zephyr who was determined to have nothing to do with her. There she was – she was here. This was MY goat, and her mother would not let her nurse! 

Now, it's absolutely vital that a new-born kid get a drink of colostrum, the first sort of milk that a goat produces. Colostrum* is packed with nutrition but even more importantly it transfers vital immunologic defense to the new kid. All the antibodies the doe can produce against local bacteria and disease is in this very thick milk. The kid can only absorb this effectively in the first twelve hours of life and then after that it really does the kid no good as far as immunity goes. Somehow, I was going to have to get colostrum into this kid, who I had quickly determined was a doe kid or doeling. 

First I tried tying Zephyr to the wall and holding her as still as I could while the kid learned how to nurse. Watching a kid learn how to nurse exasperates me to this day, 35 years later. Helping does no good; the kid will clamp her mouth shut as tightly as she can the moment you touch her, unless of course she's decided to scream instead. And just when you get her latched on to the nipple she will immediately let go and bump her nose hopefully against the doe's hock, or grab a clump of hair and suck on that. Despite these agonizing set backs, the kid finally got her first meal. 

Unfortunately by that time Zephyr, who had never had such a horrid experience in her life, came up with the brilliant idea of simply dropping down in a limp heap to the ground. Have you ever tried to pick up an adult goat who has gone limp? It's like trying to pick up a Hefty lawn bag filled with 150 pounds of water. As an exercise in futility it has few rivals. 

As I look back over my years of experience now, I shake my head at my old self – these days, I would have all sorts of strategies to deal with this situation. In the first place I would have realized that Zephyr had had a difficult birth and was in a lot of pain, and the pain was interfering with her natural instincts. These days, I would treat her for her pain. But I did not know this. All I knew was that I had a little six-pound goat on my hands and that I was going to have to feed her, somehow, without the cooperation of her mother. 

This was going to be a real problem, I reflected, as I took my new goat into the house. (Why are you looking at me like that? Don't you take goats into your house?) For one thing, goats never leave their kids alone even when they to go the bathroom… and if you do go to the bathroom, and the kid can not see you, she will immediately leap up and start screaming and crashing into things. Ask me how I know. So leaving her all by herself was out of the question; I was certain she would kill herself in her frantic attempts to find me if I left her. And that was a real problem, because the other thing was, I needed to go to the store to buy things like a baby bottle to feed her with, and I was real sure they were not going to let me bring a goat into the store. 

I was pretty stumped; here I had this tiny live thing, who I was determined to keep alive, and yet society had decided I could not just bring her with me. As I stared at my very own goat, my very first one, I desperately wanted her to live. That's when her name occurred to me: Zoe, which means life. I wanted Zoe to live. 

This farm was situated on the outskirts of Salt Lake City, Utah, which some may know is the home and heart of the Mormon church. The local Mormon women at this time were all quite fecund, so I was bound to be able to find a baby bottle at just about any store. In fact most young Mormon women at that time were all pregnant and had a toddler or two. I sort of stood out, because most young women my age were already pregnant. 

Aha. The light went on. 

I hitched up the horse (oh yeah, see, back then I had to drive a carriage because a driver's license for a car was still six years in my future) and found a box to hold my new little goat next to me, and I drove to the store. I went over my plan in my head, took a big breath, and put it into action. 

Not one person batted an eye as I walked into the store holding my new baby goat. In fact I drew admiring smiles, because I had very carefully first wrapped her up in a beautiful pink baby blanket, with the flap folded down over her cute little face to signal that she was asleep. Holding her tenderly in my left arm, I pushed a shopping cart around the store with my right, while gathering up the various items I would need to take care of my goat. Luckily Zoe was still pretty full from her first meal and was happy, although probably a little puzzled, to rest in my arms in this very strange position for a goat. She did not make so much as a peep. 

I have to say I was feeling pretty smug as I pushed my cart up to the check-out line. It was starting to look like I was going to get away with this. But suddenly Disaster loomed in the form of a sweet lady bearing down on me, head cocked to one side while she said "Awwwww…" There was nothing I could do. She lifted up the flap of the blanket. 

You know, I did not realize a person could turn that color. I was also pretty surprised at how far a person's eyes can go out. Right at the time though I was busy inflating my chest with air so I could explain… something… or… I really had no idea what to say. No idea. Because, where do you start? 

But luck was still with me. Without saying a word, the lady dropped her hand to her side, turned and walked swiftly out of the store. I nearly collapsed with relief. To this day I have no idea what was going through her head, but if she happens to read this, I sure hope she accepts my apologies. The fact that she did not scream or tell anyone I had a goat meant that I got the stuff I needed, and eventually got my goat raised up into a beautiful adult. 

Now I tried very hard to look up this next thing but my Google-fu is weak, and I can't find any confirmation for this. But I could just swear… I mean, I know it was not written that year, but that would have been the hard back anyway, and this was a paperback, and so that would have been a while later. I can't say for certain, and I know my memory could be playing tricks on me, but still I'm pretty sure… that the best-selling paperback book in the racks at the check-out counters was "Rosemary's Baby".

* * *

* Everyone almost certainly already knows this:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colostrum  The point is that most mammals produce colostrum but some animals, including the standard farm animals, DON'T pass any immunological defense through the placenta (as humans do) so it is EVEN MORE CRUCIAL that something like a goat gets its colostrum.

 

Editors and editing, a demented view

 

I've just run myself into the ground on SHADOWS, it's after one o'clock in the morning and I haven't started the BLOG yet.  What a good thing I'm not getting up early tomorrow to ring bells. . . . *

Piankatank

I'm curious about the three drafts in a row. Knowing that the second draft was just delivered and immediately starting on the third, where does the editor come in? I sort of assumed that the second draft went to the editor to review and then once there is input from the editor you worked the next draft.

Good question.  In an ideal world, yes, you turn in your manuscript more or less at whatever stage you want some editorial input** and then you wait till you've had your input and you consider it before you embark on your next draft.  That's in an ideal world.  And some writers do work like this—indeed some want input from friends, colleagues, their agent, their editor, almost from the first sentence***, some want it when they feel stuck, some want it at a given stage—like at the end of a second draft—whatever.  Whatever works.

            Me, I don't want it at all.  Ahem.  This is a character flaw.  It's all very arteeeeeeestic and romantic that I Can Only Listen to The Story, but it's also a great big fat failure because I'm still only mortal and it would be a good thing if I could use more of what other (intelligent) people tell me.  But mostly what other people tell me—even when they're right—comes over as static on the line.  SHUT UP, WILL YOU, I'M TRYING TO LISTEN TO THE STORY.   

            In my ideal world I don't turn my manuscript in till I've done as much on it as I can, or anyway nearly.  Even I recognise the need for someone else's view of a story which I, by this point in the writing process, know too well or anyway from too close a distance.  I need someone who doesn't know the story as well as I do (including all the parts I decided to leave out, like the revolving door and the doorperson's uniform) to tell me what I need to put back in.  Or that the intensity of scene A needs to be balanced a little better by some relief of tension in scene B.  BEAUTY's editor asked me to shorten the beginning so that Beauty arrived at the Beast's castle sooner.  SWORD's editor wanted a little more about Harry feeling dislocated or disoriented or homesick—she took to her new life a little too well.  And so on.

            Mostly I'm not edited that much.  I am very lucky that—mostly—what I turn in as finished copy is acceptable.  If I had to make huge changes to satisfy my publisher and get me paid . . . I probably wouldn't be a professional writer. 

            The last few books I've had to hustle for one reason or another—mostly to do with scheduling and money.  This puts a strain on my editor as well—is she going to have a book for this or that list or isn't she?—and the compromise we've perhaps almost inadvertently reached (although Merrilee might whap me up longside the head for that remark) is that I turn in, for example, a second draft, so that she can judge if I'm far enough along to finish when I say I'm going to finish—and she can then hold a place in the schedule for it.†  I may be a good writer who can (mostly) get away with a light editorial hand . . . but my sense of time sucks pond scum.  And even if she does say 'yes, you're on' (and please the gods she will about SHADOWS) she'll send me some notes . . . which I probably won't do more than glance at at till I finish the third draft.  I listen to the story, you know?  And then I'll check that I've already fixed everything on her list—or not.  If she's found something I've missed—and she found stuff in both CHALICE and PEGASUS in recent memory—I'll go back and tinker.  I'll be going back and tinkering anyway.  But by the end of the third draft the story is stable.  I can afford to listen to other people about it.††  It's also busy hardening into its final shape—see:  can't make huge changes—but I can still tweak and smarten.†††

            Mostly.  Usually.  I hope . . . 

* * *

* This is actually dangerous.  Heretofore having to get up at a (comparatively) respectable hour once a week has kept clawing me back toward some brief, glancing relationship to normal life.  One seventh of my mornings looked rather like other people's mornings.  Now . . . I may split off from John Donne's mainland and float away forever.^ 

^ After all, he was specifically only talking about men.       

** Of course you don't abuse the privilege.  Any editor (and any agent) has lots of other authors they also have to respond to and work with, and we're all big boys and girls and self-motivated and sensible.^ 

^ Hahahahahahahahahahaha 

*** But see previous footnote 

† Remember publishing is a business.  And the widgets it sells are books.  It needs x number of new widgets per season to produce its hoped-for sales figures.^ 

^ Of course books are not widgets and publishing is insane . . . 

†† I can't really explain this.  Static on the line is as good a metaphor as any.  Or it's like walking a narrow path in a high wind and somebody comes running up behind you and gives you a shove.  I know it's not supposed to be like this.  Intelligent thoughtful reader response should be helpful and welcome.  Um.  Well.  —This is also related to my extreme aversion to reading reviews.  I've talked about this before:  very few critics are writing from a perspective that has any relationship to mine or is of any use to me in (for example) explaining why something doesn't work and why I shouldn't do it that way again.  The good reviews tend to be pleasing but alien (I did?  The story what?  Oh) and the bad ones just make me want to tear my entrails out.  (The bad ones that are factually incorrect make me want to tear the reviewer's entrails out.)

            Although a good review that also gets it pretty well makes my YEAR.  And it does happen.   Mmmmmm. 

††† And given the time pressure, if she does decide we can cram SHADOWS through for spring '13, I may receive final editorial notes on the third draft more or less simultaneously with the copyeditor's queries.  ARRRGH.  This creates a brief, hair-raising, high tea-and-champagne-consumption period which includes bloodshot eyeballs, shaking hands and insomnia.

A Few Pages After the First

 

No.  Not quite.  Nearly.  Tomorrow.  I know I said that yesterday.  Well, I'm more caught up than I was yesterday.  It still seems to me going well.  I can risk saying that (I hope) because I know there will be days between now and the rmmph of March when it is not going well, when I am not a writer, I never was a writer, and I'm starting my retraining as a mechanic* in the next uptake.**  Which is to say I know I'm going to be paying for good days whether or not I admit to having them so why not admit it?  See:  wrestling alligators, below. 

Stardancer

I learned how hard it is to make a story. . . . I did learn to take something in the range of horrible/okay and shove it around into okay/pretty okay, even if I didn't think it was anything I'd want to read. It's HARD. I'd never realized before how much work it was, even for those gifted people in my classes who did "hear" their stories right off. Drafts and voice and tweaking and word choice and why is that character there again? 

Thank you.  Yes.  It's HARD.  This is why The Urge to Kill people who offer to split the money with you if they give you their Great Idea and you do the dull stupid labour of writing it up because the idea is the hard part and besides you already have the name and the publishing contacts, is pretty overwhelming.  Fortunately most of these offers come by post/email.  Back in the days when I went to more live things and people used occasionally to offer this blithering asininity to my face civilised restraint was more difficult.

            But.  Yes.  It's like wrestling alligators.  WHY IS THAT CHARACTER FOLLOWING ME AROUND?  GO AWAY.  YOU DON'T BELONG IN THIS STORY.  Er.  Do you?  What have I missed this time?  Writing is also brilliant and fascinating and enormous fun . . . but those alligators bite hard.  And the regeneration of major body parts is tiring and demoralising and takes time, which you probably haven't got.  

EMoon

It's downright scary sometimes how much your process is like my process…the whole thing about each character's voice, each book's voice, each book's vocabulary, so sometimes I can't hear the word I need–none of the first/second/third choice words works in that sentence and I can spend hours digging through dictionaries hoping to find the one right one. The stuff I have to write down (revolving door, uniform, etc.) that has to come out later because who cares, it doesn't matter only some of the details DO matter and I don't know which ones until the book's done or nearly done. 

Scary?  Hmm.  I find it exactly the opposite—this seems to me so obviously the way stories must break into storytellers' brains, get heard/figured out, get written, that I find it far more unsettling when I hear about some other writer's entirely different process.  Those people who write out complete outlines—story arcs, what happens in each chapter, characters' names, descriptions and relationships—people who create files on different aspects of story and characters before they ever settle down to write the story part of the story—that's scary.   I went through a period when I was a teenager of (mostly) secretly reading everything I could get my hands on on how to write—secretly as one pursues any vice, or any unadmitted longing—and some of the advice clings round me still in cold, sticky, cobwebby sorts of shreds.  I absolutely believe in 'whatever works' but . . . brrrr for the file-keepers.

            I mostly don't write down stuff that will come out later.  I tend to have faith that if I've left something out it'll clamour to get into the next draft.  Certainly stuff does come out, but not usually the revolving door and the doorperson's uniform.  But I do keep some notes as I go, and sometimes the marginal notes to the notes to the notes (to the notes) get a little cramped.  

* * *

* jaccairn

Also, MOT – I think I remember that yours is due sometime this month, It's the sort of thing that might slip your mind when you're so busy. 

Snork.  The things some people's blog forum members remember.  Thank you.  Yes, Wolfgang is due this month and I've already booked him in.^  I hope you're impressed.  I'm so impressed I can hardly bear myself.  (I think this is the first year I've ever remembered before the last minute.)  Now I just have to implore the weather gods to be kind since the remains of the bus system between here and Warm Upford is not worth discussing.  Hellhounds and I can perfectly well walk home one day and walk back the next, but not if we're having gales and hail and winged monkeys and so on.  Which we're apparently going to have overnight.  This is all because Peter had planned to go to Oxford tomorrow and have lunch with one of his cousins.  No, no! said the weather gods, shaking themselves out of their long winter slumber, we can't have promiscuous peregrinations!  Where is that blizzard, we know we put it somewhere!  —It hasn't got up to freezing the last three days^^ and now we're supposed to have SNOW.  Ah . . . frell.  Well, my yaktrax have been lonesome so far this winter . . . and snow will certainly keep me at home where I have nothing better to do than work. . . . ^^^ 

^ And he has to pass.  Has to.  In the first place I can't afford a new car this year.  In the second place . . . I still don't want a new car.  I want a new car less and less as I hear friends with shiny new cars talking about the way the computers in new cars run their lives.  And go wrong, of course.  You can learn to ignore that little flashing red light on the dashboard after the third time you've taken it in and paid £100 to be told there's nothing wrong.  Not so much the robot voice continuously telling you to fasten your seatbelt/add grinchflobby fluid to the ziggury system/placate the trolls with ham sandwiches. 

^^ And my chocolate cosmos hate being indoors, so they'll probably frelling croak this year too.  Arrrgh.  Furthermore, my gladiola bulbs arrived today.  Gladiola bulbs are tender.  Mail warehouses are rarely heated.  At least mail warehouses where tender plants are held are rarely heated.  Arrrgh.  Don't these mail-order bozos ever, you know, listen to the weather forecast?  Hey, guys, we're supposed to get three foot of snow tomorrow!  Let's ship all the banana trees!  

^^^ Ajlr

I also wondered what the reaction of the hellhounds had been to the new Amazingly Loud Voice? 

Chaos has always found my singing . . . disturbing.  Darkness has always assumed that it's just another daft human activity.  It is perhaps hard on hellhounds that both at the mews and the cottage their bed is next to the piano/cheap electric keyboard.  Chaos gets up and moves toward me cautiously, staring at my distorted face for clues.  GO LIE DOWN YOU WRETCHED DOG. 

            I'm more worried about the neighbours.  Do you remember—probably nearly a year ago now—I was fretting about singing at the cottage, where my office, with the keyboard in it, has the common wall with my semi-detached neighbour?  (The keyboard itself, plugged into headphones, is silent.)  The wall is floor-to-ceiling with bookshelves, but I can still hear my neighbour climbing the stairs on the other side.  Don't worry, said Nadia, you don't make nearly enough noise.

            I think I probably do make enough noise now.  Ah, the disadvantages of success.  I can still sing while I do the washing-up—it's on the far side from the common wall.  I also sing out hurtling, while hellhounds pretend they don't know me, and my impression is that people are starting to move to the opposite pavement (I used to think this was just a reaction to rampant hellhounds).  Hey, this probably happens to Deborah Voigt too.   I wish it had any effect on aggressive off lead dogs.     

** The GUARDIAN is running a publicity draw to win a full degree Open University course.  Details tomorrow.  The OU is highly thought of so I, who don't have nearly enough to do, had an idle look through their course list.  Their language department is terrible.  French, German, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Welsh (Welsh?^) and Latin and (classical) Greek.  That's it?  

^ Yes, I know, good for them, Celtic languages are struggling for survival, but in the context of only six modern languages offered it seems to me a bit startling.

 

First Pages

 

I have just been figuring out how much of SHADOWS I have to get through every day for the next thirty days.* 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH.**    

* * *

* Yes, I know.  It's already the 2nd of February and February is a short ratbag to begin with.  But I've already told you I'm going to whine for a few days of March because February is indecently short.^  If my editor says 'no' I'll sic Mongo on her.  

^ Ask Frederic in The Pirates of Penzance. 

** In case you're wondering, yes, this does mean that I failed to reach my quota today.  This is of course Very Bad . . . but it's also not at all surprising.  Or catastrophic.  (Probably.)  There are advantages to being old, wizened and cronelike in your chosen career:   your standard errors and pitfalls become familiar, as do ways of coping with same, and less blood and hysteria are spilt. 

I don't know how common this is among the author sorority^ but one of the ways I know a story is ready to be written is that I know the first sentence, the first paragraph, the first page, the first scene.  I know where to begin.  Since my experience of writing is more about channelling or translating rather than some kind of pure feat of creation^^, and that the worst of the job is choosing the EXACT words, including what to write about and what to leave out—the famous getting character A from point B to point C problem^^^—being given a run at the obstacle to begin with is one of the ways I manage to wind myself up enough to begin.  The first few pages of the first draft usually go down relatively straightforwardly and, as I work, which is not fast, relatively fast.  Those first few pages of first draft usually feel—no, must feel—like a nice solid base . . . to start going spluuuuurgh smush GAAAAAH on, later.

In fact my first pages often change pretty dramatically over the three drafts.  I get back to the beginning#, having learnt a lot about the story and characters in writing the previous draft, and realise that while the 'voice' is there it's obscured by a lot of fluff and fuddle.##  This awareness, not to say shock, tends to be most dramatic in stories told in first person, as SHADOWS is.  Yeeep, Maggie would never say that.  And then by the time I've got the first pages sorted (again) so that the book's voice sounds as clear as I can get it at present, that draft is that much stronger because the first pages are . . . that much stronger.  There's a lot leaning on the first pages.  If I haven't got the first pages, I probably can't write the book. 

So I'm back at those crucial first pages again now.  And this is the last draft.###  Every frelling word needs to be right.  I'm going to get words wrong because I can only write as well as I can, and I'm only too drearily mortal.  But I need to get about 99% of the words right in the first half dozen pages.  I can slip to 95% later on. 

One of the peculiarities of this business of hearing the story's voice is recognising it as different from your own.  Well, duh.  But it makes the translation/channelling/word-choice that much hairier, because you can't just go for saying or describing something the best, whatever 'best' may be, you can.  You have to do it with, and within, the story's voice.  There are times when I CANNOT think of another word for this or that~ that fits in the story's voice.  I can only think of how to say it in my voice.  Arrrrgh.  (So I highlight it, and keep going.)  And I've given myself—or no, I haven't, the frelling Story Council has given me—a trammel and a trickiness, this book:  first person narrator, seventeen years old, in an alternative-modern world.  (At least she's a girl.)  What I think of as my semi-forsoothly style, so any of my high-fantasy third-person-narration books, including PEGASUS~~, is the easiest base line for me the struggling scribe—although even semi-forsoothly varies from book to book because no book's voice is like any other book's voice.  The bright sharp individual edge of a first person narration is a lot of fun, as is trying, an especially taxing exercise in these alt-mod stories, to ride the frelling slang till it settles down enough I start understanding it—but it also means that great swathes of my own vocabulary and my own way of expressing things are gone.  Speaking of 'yeeep'.

So.  Anyway.  I've done about half my necessary word-count today, but that's not actually too bad.  I've got several pieces of important slang imperfectly heard for two drafts nailed at last.  I tend to 'hear' slang the way I 'hear' characters' names, and especially when these are not words or names I know, it can take a lot of repetitions before I finally have what I need~~~. 

Onward.  Tomorrow I will catch up.  By the end of tomorrow I will have accomplished the full page count for day two, as if day one had . . . behaved.  —This sentence originally had the word 'schedule' in it but . . . that word and I have a matter/anti-matter relationship and I have a book to write.    

^ Or even fraternity 

^^ I wish.  I'd love to feel that I was in control.+ 

+  Yes.  I would write a sequel to SUNSHINE.  And I would have finished PEG II this year.  No, wait, I would have finished the one volume version two years ago.  No, wait . . . it was an ELEMENTALS AIR short story. . . . 

^^^ NO WE DON'T WANT TO KNOW IF IT'S A REVOLVING DOOR OR WHAT THE DOORPERSON'S UNIFORM LOOKS LIKE OR HOW MANY STEPS THERE ARE ON THE STAIR(S) OR WHAT THE COLOUR OF THE CARPET IS OR HOW MANY DOORS THERE ARE ON THE CORRIDOR OR HOW MANY GOBLINS WAITING IN THE LINEN CUPBOARD.+ 

+ An estimate of the goblins will do.  

# Remember that I tend to write three drafts serially:  first draft, beginning to end.  Second draft, beginning to end.  Third draft, beginning to . . . please the gods, end.  I will go back and make notes or minor changes for consistency mid-draft, but mostly I keep going, and what I absolutely do NOT do is get bogged down rereading and tinkering.  For me this is death and disaster.  The story tells itself to me in flow and motion.  My first priority is to keep it moving.  I will read through the final draft after it's FINISHED and tinker then. 

## This time around this is reminding me of Nadia saying, at my first lesson, that she can hear what my voice is, and that we're going to let it out of prison.  The most extraordinary thing about leaving New Arcadia has been the live metaphor of my throat/voice/speaking up for myself—and singing.  Nadia has always been able to get noises out of me I can't get out of myself, but this week I swear I'm twice as loud as I was a month ago—before the sore throat closed me down.  Twice as loud even when it's only me reminding myself to relax my tongue and jaw and to let the air all the way in and to engage. 

            Wheeeeee. 

### I hope. 

~ Of course I am also afflicted with Menopause Brain. 

~~ Despite the rabid gremlin infestation of other aspects of PEGASUS. 

~~~ CHARACTERS MUMBLE.  And since I'm mostly a ghost in their world saying 'would you repeat that please' doesn't work.  At best they probably stare at me and wonder what the cold patch in the room is.

There Is Hope*

 

I was climbing through eight hundred years and forty-six thousand miles of church history this evening, which is the system for gaining access to Forza's ringing chamber, and thinking, you could want to join this tower for its scenic approach alone.  Or possibly as an exciting addition to your fitness programme.  I dragged myself through the last arrow slit, which is at the top of a spiral staircase so tight that even the outsides of the steps are only long enough for Flower Fairy feet, and collapsed fainting on the floor . . . next to Charlotte, who, by her gasping breaths, had clearly only just arrived before me—and who is also a visitor.  Maybe you get used to it.  Maybe the members have a secret lift. 

            I had spent a good bit of today telling myself briskly that I was going to Forza tonight** and that it was just another tower and the years, the miles, the thirty-seven bells and the Rhode-Island-sized ringing chamber*** are all incidental.  Then I got there.  I suppose the fact that your first view of it, every time, is from the floor with a red haze of oxygen deprivation and lactic acid build-up clouding your vision, may have a demoralising effect.  I lay there tonight thinking, well, I did bring my knitting . . . †

            And I did not get off to at all good start with a bell rope in my hands.  Which is to say I once again made a drooling foozle of Grandsire Triples.  ARRRRGH.  It was so drooling a foozle that even standing behind someone ringing it accurately I still couldn't see what was frelling going on.  I'm going to develop a complex.  I can ring it perfectly well †† in other towers.  But put me in an 800-year-old abbey with a ringing chamber you need satnav to negotiate and I lose my mind.†††  ARRRRRRRRRRRRRGH.  If there had been a sword I'd've fallen on it.  You'd think in a ringing chamber the size of Rhode Island there would be at least one sword hanging on the wall somewhere, wouldn't you?  But nooooooo.  Just peal boards,‡ notices,‡‡ and handbells.§  So I crawled away and hid in a dark corner.‡‡

            I was hauled back out again by a call for plain frelling hunt on ten.  I can't do ANYTHING on ten.  Ten is too many, even when it's just plain hunt.  The thing about ten is that you have to hold up and wait, every frelling blow, because there are so many other bells in the row to ring before it's your turn again.  So it's bong and then you stand there with your arms over your head thinking you could have got half a row of knitting done while you're waiting§§, and then it's bong again.  Also there's always a bit of necessary speed control adjustment—not only do you ring more slowly going out than going in, you also ring closer over smaller bells and with more of a gap over bigger bells.§§§  When there are ten of the frellers all of this is very exaggerated, which makes it additionally difficult for notable foozlers like me. 

            And then . . . it wasn't too bad.  I was actually getting the hang of the holding-up-and-WAAAAAAAITING thing.  I tied up my rope at the end without having a last despairing look round the walls for a sword.

            I hung around watching people ringing things I should to be able to ring, but probably can't at Forza.#  And then finally, at the very end, I was offered a rope of my very own again, to ring bob minor.  Dear miserable gods of ringing and disgrace, I OUGHT to be able to ring bob minor.  I ought to be able to ring bob minor dead, drunk, asleep, and suffering severe lactic acid overload.##  

            And, indeed, I did ring it, despite being alive, sober, awake and maybe a little lactically acidulated.  I also did despite the fact that someone else was going wrong, this being the true sign of knowing a method, being able to hold your line when other people are failing to hold theirs.  I was not ringing it beautifully, but I was ringing it—and I was ringing it in one of Forza's horrible queues, and since I was on the four I had several### people on each side, which means you need 358.5° vision like a horse (or a robin). 

            So.  Yaay.  There is hope.  I will go back next week.  Note that I am announcing that here in public.  I am going back to Forza for next Wednesday's bell practise.

            And tomorrow I start the third draft of SHADOWS. 

* * *

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand . . . look what arrived in the post today: 

I think I may have heard a rumour somewhere that it was published yesterday

 

* * *

* Maybe. 

** After all I had told the blog I was going to Forza tonight.  

*** Sure it's a small state.^  It's a VERY LARGE ringing chamber. 

^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhode_Island 

†  I have half a leg warmer on my needles.  Maybe even two thirds of a leg warmer. 

†† sometimes 

††† Maybe I have lactic acid build-up in my brain. 

‡ My situation was made somewhat more precarious by the fact that the Scary Man was in charge tonight.  They have a kind of rotating ringing mastership and you don't know till you get there on the night who's going to be beating you with the knotted rope . . . I mean, who's going to decide what methods to ring and who's going to ring them, and whapping you up longside the head when you . . . I mean, who tries to wrest a modicum of order out of campanological chaos.  I confess to feeling a little fragile about ringing admins at the moment but he hasn't done anything to me yet . . . except give me bells to ring and say I'm welcome to come again. 

‡‡ Full peals are these ghastly feats of ringing endurance, and significant ones frequently get painted on a varnished plank—the names of the method and the ringers, the date, and sometimes the time it took, which is usually around three and a half hours—and hung on the wall of the ringing chamber involved. 

‡‡‡ 'On 18 February there will be a sale of all the umbrellas, bicycles,  spectacles, spectacle cases, mobile phones and small children left in the abbey grounds, proceeds to the after-service cake fund, the canons have been complaining about the shop biscuits' 

§ I have no idea.  If I keep going, I'll ask. 

§§ It's almost as bad as that frelling stoplight on the way to Nadia. 

§§§ Yes.  It's horrible physics.  And I don't think you can even get any of the fun quantum stuff out of it.  It's all that unpleasant fellow Newton. 

# I've told you on previous devastatingly humiliating evenings I've spent there:  in the first place because there are SO MANY FREAKING BELLS if you're only ringing six or eight of them, they're in a queue, not a circle, which is maddeningly confusing for those of us who are easily confused and are used to ringing in a CIRCLE,^ and also, I assume again because of the frelling SIZE of the ringing chamber there's something peculiar about the acoustics.  Which in my case is to say I can't hear a thing but a kind of smudgy blast of noise. 

^ Remember that you're always looking frantically around for the next bell to follow.  Your sheer frelling depth perception is off if you're suddenly looking along a line instead of across and around a circle.  

## Gemma was there tonight and said to me after, of course we can ring bob minor.  It's ringing it on only one bell that is challenging.  

### All right, my definition of several is a little loose.

 

SHADOWS?

 

YES. 

DONE. 

I just sent the finished second draft of SHADOWS to Merrilee and my editor.  Pressed that email button.  Zap.

            And I'm so tired I could sleep for a week.  Except I'm not going to sleep for a week. *   I am going to take hellhounds on a long country hurtle tomorrow morning, I am going to order some plants for my garden(s) tomorrow afternoon**, and then I am going to go RING BELLS at Forza tomorrow evening.

            And I will start on SHADOWS' third and final draft on Thursday.  Which I have promised for the end of February.***

            But at this moment I am falling down with tiredness.  †

* * *

 * Well, maybe I can sleep for a week between now and tomorrow morning?  Has anyone figured this out yet?  It's not quite the thirty-six hour day (or thereabouts) we all want, it's just a little bulge off to one side about a little extra sleep. . . .  

** The backlog of plant catalogues with corners of pages turned down has become a bit extreme.  Also I have empty space to fill.  There is nothing more beautiful to a gardener than empty space.  

*** But I've already begun whining for a few days of March because February is so short. 

† But I bet I could sing just a little before I fell down.

SHAAAAAAAAA. . .

 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA  AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAADOWS*.  AND IT'S THE 30TH OF JANUARY.   NO.  IT'S ALREADY THE 31ST.  AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHH. 

* * *

* I did go to my voice lesson.  I told you yesterday, I'm getting even stranger, bent over my computer twenty hours a day^, and I thought it might even be good for me to go get strung out in a different direction, even if SHADOWS is frelling due frelling tomorrow.^^  Also I only just started singing again last week and—I wanted to go.  It's been a slightly dubious week in terms of practise—there's still crud in my throat and all this emotional-aspect stuff makes me kind of jumpy—if you manage to miss with the carving knife you go to A&E, get some stitches and a lecture, come home, mop up the blood, keep the bandage out of the bath, be a little careful of yourself till the stitches come out, and hey voila, there you are.  Another interesting scar.  But when you're trying to patch yourself together from some kind of immaterial wound, where and how you put the stitches in, and what constitutes the kind of bath you should keep your damaged limb out of—and what exactly the limb is—is not so straightforward.  So I've been singing sort of cautiously, and of course I'm wildly out of practise and I have no time.^^^  Also, my voice still keeps disappearing on me—less than it was doing before, but every time it does I'm convinced that this is The End and I'm too old to be reaching for this nonsense anyway.^^^^  Nadia waggled her eyebrows at me in that disbelieving-teacher way and said, now as I remember it we found out last week that the chief reason your voice was dropping out was because you were letting it get cut off from its air supply.  Oh, I said.  Um.

            So she made me frelling breathe for a while, and connect, and all that really annoying stuff you shouldn't NEED to be told over and over and over and over and over and OVER.  But you do, because you're a moron.  And then she ran me up and down some scales and some exercises and kept reminding me to breathe and to connect, and I could actually feel the air sinking down and lying with this lovely rounded, grounded weightiness at the bottom of my pelvis, and every now and then I also remembered to let it out again, and carry my voice with it.  I had already admitted that occasionally this week when I wasn't convinced I still couldn't sing and was therefore producing a self-fulfilling prophesy of squawks and silences, I'd made a few noises that were fuller and freer than what I'm used to . . . and with the teacher-magic she teased them out of me today, and convinced them to bring friends.  I was singing back up at the top of my range again—which I haven't even tried at home since before I was ill, because I have been too busy feeling fragile, convalescent and overworked—and I was loud—me!  Old no-voice me!— the kind of loud your average local amateur choir would be happy to have yelling from its benches—loud the way I don't sing, especially at the top end where my brain is busy saying, no, no, wait, we don't do that.  Nadia stopped me where she did not because my voice was failing, she said, but because my brain was closing me down.

            But.  There's life in the old cow yet.  Mooo.  Yaay.  And I came home again all exhilarated and threw myself into SHADOWS. 

^ That leaves two for hurtling hounds and two for sleeping.  Other crucial activities like eating chocolate can be performed coincidently while typing.  

^^ Later today.  Shut up. 

^^^ And the twenty-fifth hour is for singing practise. 

^^^^ I actually raised this with Nadia today.  How big an embarrassing moron am I being, taking voice lessons at nearly-sixty?  For some reason I've heard like half a dozen times this last week that sopranos lose their voices really early and it seems sort of fated to be hearing this over and over again when I'm convalescent from the throat infection that had stopped me singing altogether—and ten months off my sixtieth birthday.+  And she said, two things:  there's no reason you shouldn't last a good while yet as a choir singer—it's professional sopranos that fold predictably early because of the colossal demands they put on their voices—and you're lucky—you've got all the alto notes too.  If you need to slip down to sing alto, you can. 

            ::Beams::  Good.  On with the voice lessons, then. 

+ And before you answer that, I added, let me say that while this is all contingent on you being willing to teach me, I've already figured out that I'm in it for the journey.  Never mind that thirty years ago I'd've had no voice to train either, all this trying to bind yourself together in a seamless whole to produce a sound is fascinating, even if the resultant sound is nothing much.