gillpolack @ 2015-05-08T15:09:00
Discussion from yesterday is still happening. Some of it isn't comfortable, which is to be expected. I'm not being as gentle as usual with people who want me to explain Judaism 101 (Yiddish is a Germanic language, Jewish is not a language, Yes, Virginia, there are Jews in Australia) But I think that my post-after-next for the History Girls may well be the Esther Abrahams one. I found the book on her that
murasaki_1966
gave me, so I don't have to rack my memory for things I ought to know. My next history Girls post is by popular request and is about the Middle Ages. But first, I have to do an intro to my article for Aurealis (Aurealis the magazine, not Aurealis the award). I'll let you know when it comes out, I think, for it's about Cordwainer Smith and I'm not certain it's possible to have too much Cordwainer Smith.
What else am I doing with a virus-filled day? Having strange dreams, of course, for I have a virus. It's moving quickly and I feel a lot better now that I felt this morning. I'm sleeping it off.
I've done some paperwork, of course, for a day without paperwork is a day without hours. And I haven't lost my cool again. Once a week is enough, really.
I just got tired of being diminished by people who then congratulated themselves for being supportive. And I was doomed to a virus, and didn't know it. The last straw was seeing the look of self-congratulation on the third person's face. It wasn't about supporting me, it was about feeling good. At that point I decided that my friends can find other ways to feel good, and that putting me down (albeit through innocent error) was going to be struck off the list.
Another of the things that have struck me this week is that I've been a Medievalist too long. I'm a very surprised by the number of people who want the number of the Beast (aka its ISBN, so they can order it). This book has more advance orders, I think, than my most recent novel has sales. Maybe than any of my novels have had sales. It depends on how one counts the numbers, and I won't have precise numbers for ages. Still, the Beast has been in various top 100 categories on Amazon.uk several times and we're still weeks away from publication (though the volume has been sent to print!).
No wonder publishers keep wanting NF set in the Middle Ages!
Fiction is so much easier emotionally. If people don't like my fiction, they don't like it: no worries. If people don't like the Beast because they contest this or that element, then there is engagement. I feel this with all NF, but with something this big and with this much emotional baggage, I feel it in spades. This means my surprise that it is getting off the ground even before it's published is tempered by the fact that people will be arguing with me about it for every convention to come. Continuum in June is the end of my Beast-Free life.
Also, so many novelists are reassuring me of their eternal friendship right now. Please, continue doing so, for it amuses me.
It appears that an extraordinary number of novels using the Middle Ages are in the works. It appears that a half dozen (which is my calculation of 'so many' given it's in a twenty-four hour period) writing friends have forgotten that I've always been this person and that my door is always open for short questions and that I even have question time on this blog. It's cupboard love, but it's from people who were friends before the realisation of the Beast hit them, so it's kinda sweet.
Years ago I did some work into how writers approached specialists and I realised that there were issues. So many writers don't know what to ask or how to ask or even what specialists actually did. I'm different, because I'm both. When I ask someone "What's your PhD on?" I don't do it out of courtesy, I do it out of interest. When I talk about fiction over diner, it often includes my own. Years ago I wrote a brief article, on request, for a US writing group on how to ask the right kind of question. All this has been built into my experience and life, so I'd forgotten that I have a whole new bunch of writing friends, who don't know that this is part of me. All they know is that I am approachable and that I have a useful book coming out. That's why I'm amused. It's all come full circle.
The timing is not good, however. If I don't get that academic job within a few months, this will be one of the parts of my life that has to go. My life has always been darkly ironic, and I would like it to turn into sunshine and lollipops and rainbows, please. Irony is amusing, but I can't eat it.
murasaki_1966
gave me, so I don't have to rack my memory for things I ought to know. My next history Girls post is by popular request and is about the Middle Ages. But first, I have to do an intro to my article for Aurealis (Aurealis the magazine, not Aurealis the award). I'll let you know when it comes out, I think, for it's about Cordwainer Smith and I'm not certain it's possible to have too much Cordwainer Smith.What else am I doing with a virus-filled day? Having strange dreams, of course, for I have a virus. It's moving quickly and I feel a lot better now that I felt this morning. I'm sleeping it off.
I've done some paperwork, of course, for a day without paperwork is a day without hours. And I haven't lost my cool again. Once a week is enough, really.
I just got tired of being diminished by people who then congratulated themselves for being supportive. And I was doomed to a virus, and didn't know it. The last straw was seeing the look of self-congratulation on the third person's face. It wasn't about supporting me, it was about feeling good. At that point I decided that my friends can find other ways to feel good, and that putting me down (albeit through innocent error) was going to be struck off the list.
Another of the things that have struck me this week is that I've been a Medievalist too long. I'm a very surprised by the number of people who want the number of the Beast (aka its ISBN, so they can order it). This book has more advance orders, I think, than my most recent novel has sales. Maybe than any of my novels have had sales. It depends on how one counts the numbers, and I won't have precise numbers for ages. Still, the Beast has been in various top 100 categories on Amazon.uk several times and we're still weeks away from publication (though the volume has been sent to print!).
No wonder publishers keep wanting NF set in the Middle Ages!
Fiction is so much easier emotionally. If people don't like my fiction, they don't like it: no worries. If people don't like the Beast because they contest this or that element, then there is engagement. I feel this with all NF, but with something this big and with this much emotional baggage, I feel it in spades. This means my surprise that it is getting off the ground even before it's published is tempered by the fact that people will be arguing with me about it for every convention to come. Continuum in June is the end of my Beast-Free life.
Also, so many novelists are reassuring me of their eternal friendship right now. Please, continue doing so, for it amuses me.
It appears that an extraordinary number of novels using the Middle Ages are in the works. It appears that a half dozen (which is my calculation of 'so many' given it's in a twenty-four hour period) writing friends have forgotten that I've always been this person and that my door is always open for short questions and that I even have question time on this blog. It's cupboard love, but it's from people who were friends before the realisation of the Beast hit them, so it's kinda sweet.
Years ago I did some work into how writers approached specialists and I realised that there were issues. So many writers don't know what to ask or how to ask or even what specialists actually did. I'm different, because I'm both. When I ask someone "What's your PhD on?" I don't do it out of courtesy, I do it out of interest. When I talk about fiction over diner, it often includes my own. Years ago I wrote a brief article, on request, for a US writing group on how to ask the right kind of question. All this has been built into my experience and life, so I'd forgotten that I have a whole new bunch of writing friends, who don't know that this is part of me. All they know is that I am approachable and that I have a useful book coming out. That's why I'm amused. It's all come full circle.
The timing is not good, however. If I don't get that academic job within a few months, this will be one of the parts of my life that has to go. My life has always been darkly ironic, and I would like it to turn into sunshine and lollipops and rainbows, please. Irony is amusing, but I can't eat it.
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