Hiding from Reality*

The ME has been more-than-usually bad since the end of last September, initially for reasons I don’t think I can make into an entertaining blog post.  But I haven’t had to double down on anti-ME obstinacy in a while, & obstinacy as a survival mechanism is a (you should forgive the term) dead bore, & makes me cranky.  Crankier.**  One of the more creative ways I’ve been saying nyah nyah nyah to the ME is by writing the occasional blog post again.  I don’t flipping like social media any more—I was never very far into it, there are too many BOOKS that need reading to want to spend much time panning for pebbles in torrents of sludge***—although I should perhaps remember that news sells newspapers, & even if it’s the NEW YORK TIMES or the GUARDIAN, they may not be viewing the situation as I would, never mind the riffs & gargoyles social media can whack you out on. 

I’ve kicked like fury over my entire professional career about not owing my readers anything but the books, but I acknowledge the wish to know the person behind books you’ve particularly liked†, or in some cases the books you’ve particularly not liked, but we’re not going there (again) right now, & since I have comprehensively bailed on social media, the blog . . . well, it’s the thing I can do to say, yeah, I’m also a person, not just that weird artefact an author, who lives in Scotland with her dog & forty million books.††  It actually cheers me up, writing the blog, telling myself yeah, I’m also a person, not just the thrasher-out of too many of the wrong words†††, & the desperate single arbiter of the right words.‡

It was only last week, when I was befuddledly failing to finish the next blog post, that it occurred to me the reason the ME keeps daily re-grinding me into hamburger is the result of the first Tuesday last November.  I’ve never paid any more attention to the real world than I can get away with‡‡ but even the Haven of Fiction‡‡‡ has been overwhelmed by recent events. ɸ   Now, as a lot of you know, when you turn your computer on & look at the headlines s(t)(c)reaming in . . . however I hope most of you don’t have the ME spike-&-crash evil waldo.  Mostly I’ve just been in denial, but while the headline-registering adrenaline spike is usually pretty WHAM immediate, the timing of the crash varies, influenced, as it may be, by the current level of Jigsaw Frustration ɸɸ or whether I have a clue about what happens next in story-in-progress ɸɸɸ or how many demon-possessed baby seagulls we saw on our last CHAAAAAAAAARGE Ω. 

So it’s taken me a little while to realise that the reason why I never seem to recover from all that evil waldoingΩΩ is . . .

The real world.  How pathetic is that, & I call myself a fantasy writer.

& now I’ve written yet another blog post & I still haven’t told you that approximately the first thing I did, the morning of the first Wednesday of last November, as soon as I recovered a little from the paralysis of shock, is seize THE COMPLETE SHERLOCK HOLMES, which I haven’t read in, oh, forty years or so.

Now maybe I will finally start telling you about the real Haven of Fiction, next post.  Don’t expect any this-week’s headline titles however.

* * *

* They confirmed that raging jerk for Defence Sec?  This is beyond the elasticity of my brain—just as the November election results made all my hard wiring pop.  & now we have Mt McKinley again—I get extra points for preferring Denali, don’t I?—and diversity quotas are why that air crash happened??  POP POP POP.  & it goes on & on.  I’m so out of my real-world depth here—what am I wading in?  Hot lava?—I can’t even, I can’t even, I can’t even . . . ^

^ Although I’m all over the Mexican president’s+ suggestion of North America being rebranded as ‘Mexican America’.  Hey, it worked in 1607.  & it then makes some sense to call that big body of water Gulf of America.

+ The new female Mexican president

** A frightening thought.

*** which is not to say that the links friends who are more plugged in than I am send me don’t frequently make me laugh, since my friends mostly know what does make me laugh, & for which I am grateful, because there are days when laughter feels like something that happens to other people. 

Although of course there are occasions when some deliberately provocative link makes me blow up & splatter, but I usually get over that stage, clean the ceiling, wipe the dog off & change my clothes before I respond.  On bad ME days a nice involuntary explosion has its therapeutic side.

† Although I’m not sure how many of my favourite, or anyway most influential^ authors I would actually want to sit down with for a cup of tea???  Tolkien & I would not get along.  Kipling & I would really not get along.  Mary Ann Evans, aka George Eliot, unfortunately sounds like kind of a pain in the rear, & I dislike Dickens the man so much I get really cross^^ every time I am again forced to realise that he tells great stories.^^^  I could go on.  Some other post perhaps.

There is Peter Dickinson, of course.  He was very nice to have a cup of tea with.  SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGH. 

& before I fall into the pit of lachrymosity^^^^ let me say that I read THE EDUCATION OF AN IDEALIST recently, by Samantha Power, who, for those of you who are trying to remember which fantasy series involving dragons she’s responsible for, no, she was Obama’s UN rep during his second term, & this is a memoir.  I’d be happy to have a cup of tea with her any time.  Dragons optional.

^ remember how old I am;  my influences are Precambrian.  Not a lot of wokeness around in those days. 

^^ or one might say cranky

^^^ Mostly I think it shows when the author is a jerk, even if they have major plot chops & a writing style to worship.   

^^^^ Nope, this is a real word.  You can look it up. 

†† At last count.^

^ Still failing to decide which books go on my new shelves, & which books stay on the floor in rearranged piles, &, if these books are going on those shelves, what do I do—?+

+ I’m getting very tired of the stepladder in the middle of the front hall.  BUT I STILL HAVEN’T DECIDED WHICH BOOKS GO ON THE NEW SHELVES OVER THE SITTING ROOM DOOR.

††† Story-in-progress is RUNNING LONG.  AAAAAAAAAAUGH.  Sigh.  So what else is new.  A friend in publishing I was moaning to about this said, Is it maybe a series? 

I stared off into space for a luxurious moment or two.  Whereupon there was a loud flapping of wings & a feathery whacking up longside the head with a snarling in my ear:  PEGASUS II, you feckless twit.^  Erm.  Yes. 

No, I said to my friend.  No, I don’t think so.

^ Please note I have now answered several times that YES OF COURSE I AM GOING TO WRITE PEG II.  It’s been a bad decade & a half, okay?  These things happen.

††† AAAAAAAAAAAAUGH revisited.  I know people—other writers—who send out their drafts to 1,000,000 first readers for consideration & response, & I . . . this is another of those I can’t even I can’t even moments.  I hear my stories, the rhythm & pacing in particular are totally aural, & if some other bozo is talking?!?  SHUT.  UP.  Although it would be nice, when all your characters are yelling at you, & they’re yelling contradictory things, if you had someone else to ask for suggestions.  Except that I’m sure that anyone I asked would merely yell some entirely new intractably contradictory thing . . .

Now, what is that squeaky humming sound?  Tinnitus or a very small dragon?

‡‡ I have an accountant.  I have a tiny little scrap of beleaguered brain labelled for answering accountant emails & doing what they tell me.

‡‡‡ I can’t say that writing the stuff is exactly a haven, but it sure as flaming doodah is distracting. 

ɸ  Oooooh!  A trade war!  What a great idea!  That’ll totally solve global economic problems!!  Roll up, roll up & watch the fun!

ɸɸ I’ve told you I’ve morphed into a jigsaw addict, haven’t I?  The embarrassing sins of old age.  I’ve just finished one & am sorting the next one, & I’m all, Sort faster!  Sort faster!  I must put some pieces together NOW!!!

ɸɸɸ Since this is the second draft, I’d better have a clue

Ω ‘Walking’ doesn’t really come into it.

ΩΩ Small Fascination of the Day:  waldo is apparently only slang for a remote-controlled gizmo over here in the UK?  It doesn’t show up in either of my American dictionaries.  Although it comes from a Robert Heinlein story, which is why the only waldos I recognise are evil ones.  Robert Heinlein would have voted for Chump.