Quettandil

"These are a few of my favorite things..."

2012-02-10T20:02:00.000-08:00

And by "things," I mean "words." Or maybe my favorite things are words. Well, at least a few of my favorite things are.

Hey, you were warned, I told you Quettandil means Word Lover. And not only that, but it's Quenyan for Word Lover. Which means I don't just love words, I love them so much I need a fictional language to express my love. Yeah.

And Melanie had already taken Book Lover in Quenyan, Parmandil.

It's funny to me now that I once thought I loved words in foreign languages, and of course I loved books, but English words weren't anything special. Ha. That was never true. Well... maybe when I was three? I doubt it. I'm still much more interested in foreign languages than in applying my linguistics training to various applications in English, but... that's not the same thing.

Anyway, on to the point.

Last month Shannon Hale did a lovely "These are a few of my favorite words" post. She asked us to give her words we love in the comments, "Words you like the look of, words you like to taste on your tongue, words whose meanings are unique and fun, whatever you like."

I commented several times.

I sort of tried not to. But then I'd comment, and then I'd think of more... I probably just should've collected them all on paper, first, but I was Excited. Asked for my favorite words! What an opportunity! My brain wouldn't turn off. After the commenting I drove down the highway with my voice recorder at hand, to catch the words flitting by.

Ooh, "flitting."

I digress.

Yay, "digress!"

It occurred to me that I really should do my own post about favorite words. Because, I mean, I named my blog Quettandil. And... yeah. It'd not only be appropriate, but also FUN and EASY.

I knew my favorite favorite favoritest words, the awesomest words ever. But reading other people's comments and thinking about it, I remembered there are other fun words too, words I do like the sound or feel of, words I like to play with even if I don't devote entire blog posts to just them and them alone. Er, half blog posts.

I shall start with them and work up to the most awesomest awesome EVAR. (Ironic that in a blog post about favorite words I keep repeating other words over and over, even if they really aren't my favorites... um.)

Actually, I shall start with some fun words that other commenters on Shannon Hale's post got to before I made it to the party (okay, so I wouldn't have thought of all of them without their help, but they are Good Words and I Approve):

Scrumdiddlyumptious (I don't see it in the dictionary, but it ought to be.)

Miffed

Wombat

Serendipity

Pernicious

Specificity

Discombobulate

Conundrum

Snarky

Persnickety

Kerfuffle

Superfluous

Whimsy

Squelch

Laconic ("Once, in flight school, I was even laconic.")

Tintinnabulation

Gesticulate

Genuflect

Mellifluous

Viscous

Indubitably

Fortuitous

Plethora

Ubiquitous

And some great ones people posted after me, so I obviously didn't think of them, but they ought to be included with my favorite words, really I just forgot:

Irk

Abscond

Despicable

Fickle

Words from my voice recorder, after I gave up on commenting: A few of these are ones other people said before me -- the difference is, I love these words so much, I wouldn't mind being repetitious, I'd post them anyway. Either that, or, well, I was driving, and I couldn't remember for sure what had already been said.

Credulous

Swashbuckle

Deleterious

Detritus

Plenary

Irascible (Though it'd be better if the "c" were pronounced like a "k.")

Prodigious

Quibble

Curmudgeon

Crotchety (Especially in that one episode of Babylon 5... "This cannot be a real word.")

Scallywag

Equivocate

Quiescent

Perfidy and perfidious

Sensical (Dictionaries will be adding it any day now, just you wait.)

Twiddle

Prognosticate

Pontificate

Prevaricate

Salubrious

Circumnavigate

Bric-a-brac

Gallivant

Mosey ("Plus he gets bonus points for using the word 'mosey.'")
Toodle-oo

Poppycock

Criminy

Supercilious

Suboptimal

Superoptimal

Morpheme

Onomatopoeia

And finally, the words I actually posted in my original comments. In roughly reverse order.

Obtuse

Obfuscate

Eschew

Eschew obfuscation.

Solstice (Especially because of Marian Call's song "Perilous Road" and the phrase therein, "the sad solstice sun.")

Misanthropy

Vociferous

Fricative

Deciduous

Eccentricity

Epitome

Ululation

Cacophony ("That's pretty, what's it mean?")

Bibliophile

Soporific (Thank you, Beatrix Potter... and my mother.)

Somnambulating (Marian Call again, awesome use in "Coffee by Numbers.")

Hyperallergenic (Yeah, I made that up. I have a hyperallergenic pie I make sometimes. It's delicious.)

Couth (Normally "uncouth," but dictionary.com does recognize "couth," and even includes a sample phrase of "to be lacking in couth." There you have it.)

Disambiguate

Incorrigible

Disreputable

Abominable

And now we're getting to my few favoritest favorite. Before we do that, so as not to be anti-climactic later... LET'S SWITCH LANGUAGES! No really. It'll be fun. Pleeeeaaase? Hey, I'm the one writing this blog post, and I decide. We're doing it.

In Spanish:

Calabazas (Squashes, as in pumpkins and such.)

Anteojitos (Spec-tacles! Come to think of it, I also like the word "spectacle." Whether that's in spite of Peter's mockery of my glasses, or thanks to. "Anteojitos" is the diminutive of "anteojos," or "before-eyes," or "glasses.")

Rascacielos (Scrapes-heavens. Er, um, sky-scraper.)

Rompecabezas (Breaks-heads. A puzzle.)

Osos mohosos (Moldy bears. Who wouldn't love moldy bears, let alone rhyming moldy bears?!)

Hablaba (Was talking. Blah, blah, blah, blah...)

In Japanese:

[I might be spelling a few of these wrong, as I learned them via audio lessons, but I'm pretty familiar with the standard romaji (Roman alphabet) spellings and rules, so I think if there are things I have wrong, it's mostly in where to put the word divisions -- sometimes there isn't a big difference between a suffix and a particle.]

Chotto

Kawaii (Because. No, I'm not saying that's what it means... never mind.)
Kara (Uh, 'cause of the above... this one actually does mean "because." And it goes at the end of the sentence, and it has a nice sound, all open and fully pronounced as AW vowels, but still choppy and short at the end, and with that nice little flip of the tongue on the "r.")
-chan (Does that count? Of course it does. I say so.)
Chiisai
Hajimemashite (I love Japanese words. They have such wonderful sounds, they just roll off the tongue. After a bit of practice. They're a little tricky if you're not familiar with Japanese pronunciations, but I'd be happy to say them for you, anytime. Just ask. Or don't, I still might. As Melanie said, "I feel like you're a CD.")
Arigatou gozaimashita (A past tense of thank you, for thanking someone about something completed, like having you over for dinner last night, a thing that is very important to remember to do the next day. Thank them, I mean. The next day.)
Shichi ji ni (A phrase, not a word, but the combination of sounds is so great! The first "i" is barely pronounced. It means, "at seven o' clock.")

Otokonoko
Nomimono
Watashi tachi wa
Shimashita
Ikimashoo

And a couple others from a phonetics class that I can't spell without the International Phonetic Alphabet. I don't remember what languages they're from. But trust me when I say they are AWESOME. One... would be something like, "amagomamumu," but the first and last two "m"s are "voiceless," kind of like a whisper (in practice, like you're sniffing out your nose in the middle of the word...), and those two "u"s are nasal. And the other one... if you pretend my upside down question marks are glottal stops (the sound in "uh-oh" between "uh" and "oh"), it'd be wa¿aha¿ayo¿o. IIRC. And one of those two, no joke, means "don't laugh." Seriously. I think the other is "two barrels of sour cream," unless that was what that other word meant, the one I can't remember because I couldn't pronounce it, with all the ejectives and consonant clusters.

And now.

MY FAVORITE WORDS:

Oligoglot (Dictionary.com doesn't have it. This is why dictionary.com is so, so depressed. Not only does a book by the name of Le Ton beau de Marot have it, it also has a chapter entitled "How Jolly the Lot of an Oligoglot." Causing me to fall in love. With the word and the book.)

Transmogrify (Calvin and Hobbes, of course. Via Ron.)

Spelunker (Via Ron.)

Antepenultimate (Remains my most popular post by far, whether I link to it or not. Though really, it contains a sad missed opportunity -- instead of saying, "the antepenultimate syllable," I should've said "the antepenult." Since that's a word, too.)

Defenestrate

Apokolokyntosis

I'd worry that I built this up too much and made it anti-climactic, but really. Apokolokyntosis! (Uh, yeah, that link is different than the last one. And now that I click on the link from the link, I remember that really it should go on "defenestrate," not "apokolokyntosis," but there is a connection, so... Uh, it makes sense. Really.)

Now, because there are so many delicious, savory, delightful words out there, I'm sure I've missed some important ones, even after this lengthy list.

What are some of your favorite words?

Ack, I'm a Bad Person

2012-01-26T15:59:00.000-08:00

I know, because sometimes I sit in my car for a little while after I park at my complex, and then a car will come up behind me and start to wait, thinking I'm about to leave, but I'm NOT, and I crush their hopes, and I know how that feels because that guy who drives and parks the motorcycle does it to me ALL THE TIME (he's a Bad Person, too).

That is all.

My Apartment Complex, Nature, and Me

2012-01-25T16:30:00.000-08:00

Ah, "special."

My first reaction on seeing the very high water level in the pool:

"I wonder if the ducklings were trapped, again."

Then I thought about posting this.

Then I remembered it's January, and the ducklings probably don't exist yet.

I laughed. I cried. I yelled and shook with anger.

2012-01-18T23:34:00.000-08:00

"I laughed. I cried. It moved me, Bob."

Um, to be accurate, I suppose the title should read more like, "I laughed. I cried. I yelled and shook with that feeling you get when you've just yelled at strangers, and whoa, did you really just do that, that is so very atypical, but man it was justified, that was ridiculous, how dare they make you yell at them..." Yeah. That emotion. Not exactly anger. Not exactly embarrassment, either.

As for the crying, that was a different occasion. And I didn't, much. Just felt like it.

This was an interesting day.

An anniversary, of sorts. The day of the Alzheimer's Mass, at work. The day, a year ago, when I started thinking and working on my first blog post about Mom's dementia. (The major thinking anyway -- most of my posts do some early percolating first, but as a step towards actually sharing what I was thinking about, it basically happened a year ago today.) The next day I finished and posted it. The Mass stays on the same day of the week, so the date is slightly off, but meh to that.

It's been... an interesting year. I think I might even mean that in the full Firefly sense. Well, the second half of the year wasn't so bad.

It was good to start a new year. Felt hopeful. Nice. Thank God all that stuff from last year is over...

Oh, wait. It isn't. One thing is just going to keep getting worse and worse. Still, without some of the other things going on, it's a LOT easier to handle. Or it would be, if it would just stay still, d*@& it.

Yeah. I was feeling fine. I sat in on a Fantastical Lit class over the fall semester, which was awesome. Processed a little bit more about Mom's dementia in the midst of the class. Occasionally worried that I was ignoring it too much, and this was going to be bad, but that was it. The worry didn't even turn me instantly depressed, like it would've if I hadn't been doing so great.

Until today. Stupid anniversary.

No, that's not true. There were some twinges before this.

She's been repeating herself more, but... well, I know that it's beyond normal, that it's obviously because of the dementia, but it doesn't seem so bad. Sometimes you repeat yourself even when you remember what you said, just because it's something that's important to you. This was beyond that, but... okay.

Recently, one of my sisters sent Christmas presents for everyone to my parents' house. Mom has them, and has been distributing them. Doesn't make complete sense, but it's one of those things she always would've done in the past, and she basically still can do it, so I guess it's good. I came over one day, she gave me mine. I think before I left she wondered for a moment if she had something for me, I reminded her she'd already given me the present, and that was that.

Then I came over again, last Thursday, to pick up something. She took me aside, pulled out the presents, was looking through the labels... "No, Mom, it's okay. You already gave it to me."

I mixed a shake for myself and was on my way out about ten minutes later. She stopped at her room, pulled out the presents... "You gave it to me already. It's okay."

Oh, and she was also pretty perplexed about how to butter her potato.

I know these are small things. I know she still has so much, so many memories that could be gone later... but today is an anniversary of sorts, and I am sad.

I ended up missing the Mass this morning, taking a friend to the hospital instead. (She's completely fine.) I'm kind of glad I missed it. The Mass itself is beautiful, but I think today seeing the Alzheimer's patients would've made me cry. I just... don't want to see that right now. I'm fine with seeing it in general. Just... not now. Please?

I mean, I would try to stop thinking about it, too, but that didn't work. I finished the novel I was reading, and killed my phone's battery browsing facebook before giving in. I could continue browsing on my computer (did, for a bit), but I think the time has come. Have to write to think. At least, in a productive, now-I-can-put-something-behind-me sense, and not the broken record kind of thinking.

The other thing I've been thinking about recently? Being young for this to happen. I was... very tentative, at first, to accept any condolences about my relative youth and her relative youth. Implying that because I'm 29 years old and was 27 that last October then this must be harder for me, well, that implies it's easier on my older siblings. And I don't want to say that, and I don't want to try to quantify or compare levels of pain. No good comes of this. Although I think I'm fine with saying it could very well be harder on Melanie. I... with the death of a parent, okay, it's obviously not good to lose a parent as a child, or in high school or college. It is Bad. With a spouse... tragic when a newlywed dies. I think the one part that made this harder for me to admit is that when someone dies after a long full life with them, you grew to know them that much better, there's even more there to miss and grieve the loss of. But... okay, you can be glad for the time you had. That's life, everyone dies eventually... But yeah, Melanie, you having to deal with this when you hadn't quite graduated from college yet? That's bad. No one should have to do that. I remember her heart attack while I was at Biola. That was bad.

29 years old, on the other hand, is not that young. That's the other bit. I was a morbid child and thought when I was a kid about my parents' age and my age and when they might die, and because I was only a child with a very limited grasp of life expectancy and it sometimes happens this way, I thought, okay, what if they die at 60? That hasn't happened. That would've been... 2001, for Mom, and end of 1998 for Dad. Thank God you're still here. Still here while I went through high school and college.

Heck, back in not-quite-as-modern times, I could die at 29, and it'd be young, but not unheard of. For my parents to die or suffer the diseases of old age when I'm 29, and they had me when they were older... Yeah, not the most tragic thing out there. I'm not a child anymore.

But all that to say, I think I'm fine with this particular condolence now. It's... lonely. I am... really, really, really tired of hearing about people's grandparents who have or had Alzheimer's. No offense to anyone who's told me that. Sincerely, I do not mind, I haven't minded any of these statements on their own. It's just as a group that it's grown taxing. It's like it's rubbing my nose in the fact that I'm young, and none of my peers are dealing with this yet. It's probably the exact thing I would say, in your place. And I'm sure having a grandparent with Alzheimer's can be very, very painful. I definitely grieved when my grandparents died, and I wasn't at all close to them.

But this... this is different. Except maybe for a few people who were raised by their grandparents instead of their parents, the relationship is different. And I'm young, and it's hard, and this kind of thing isn't supposed to happen to me yet, and it sucks. In fact, I would very much like to hit something.

There. I said it. I'm going to hold back from calling that a "pity party," and just be honest. It does suck.

I've also been thinking about identity. I'd rather identify myself by my strengths than my scars, I think, but because it's often much harder and takes much more vulnerability to show another your scars, sometimes they feel like the most real, deepest and truest things about yourself. At least to me.

I get depressed at times, and sometimes a thing like Mom's dementia can be handy when you're in pain -- you can point to it, and say, "Look, this. THIS."

But of course it isn't handy at all because it just adds to the pain.

And there were times last year when it felt like so overwhelmingly everything... of course it seemed like a part of my identity. It is. My mom has dementia. That's a part of who I am right now.

But... I had other pains, before this happened. Those were a part of my identity. They're harder to explain, and point to. Not as overwhelming right now, but if harder to share, in some ways they still feel truer, because of that? I don't know. Maybe not. But one thing I do know -- I am still the same person I was before this happened. At least in part. I've changed, but not completely, and I'm still me. So she can't be all of my identity... Not that I thought she was the whole thing but... Okay, I don't know where I'm going with this, anymore. Just thinking out loud. Sorry. Moral of the story: Identity is complicated? Guilt over how you see yourself is bad, even if you define large parts of yourself by the wounds and scars, rather than by the joys?

Now for something completely different! In honor of the other interesting part of my day! That I referenced way back at the beginning of this post, and even posted a teaser sketch for, on facebook and google+!

(I was going to do a better drawing for the post, take more time, but it's getting late, and I just want to finish this thing. I'd really like to post it tonight instead of tomorrow. That way I won't have to change my "today"s to "yesterday"s.)

It was a new experience, because I've never had people honk and yell at me for something I so obviously couldn't do anything about, before. At least, I don't think that's happened to me before. It was ludicrous.

Though I've drawn little tiny arrows, those are to show which directions the cars were pointing. We weren't going anywhere, save for a bit of impatient inching, now and then.

In retrospect, I think the guy next to me and the guy behind me didn't see or couldn't tell (respectively, probably) that there wasn't any room at all for me to move forward. I mean, it wasn't like it was one of those situations where it would be a little tight and you wonder, "Can I get through? Should I try?" No. There were two feet, maybe three between the van and the corner. But I didn't notice that the guy beside me wasn't blocked, that he could advance and fix the whole mess from the very beginning! So see? It's not always easy to be very observant about what's going on behind you! He didn't notice that I wasn't being an idiotic-let's-make-a-huge-traffic-jam-on-the-off-chance-that-if-I-wait-here-I-can-get-a-parking-spot person, and I didn't notice that he...was! Yeah.

Wait, I was trying to be nice, and give him the benefit of the doubt, and all that. Oh well. Oops.

At first I typed (and posted) that as "...I-can-get-a-parking-lot person." Yes. Just wait here, and we will give you a PARKING LOT! It's magic.

Um, so he yelled some, and the guy behind me honked, and I yelled back (complete with big arm gestures), "Where am I gonna go? I can't go back, he's there, you're beside me, they're in front of me, what do you want, I can't go anywhere!" Or something to that effect. I was ticked. And then, wonder of wonders, he moved! And the van could move, and the woman driving the van thanked me, and everyone lived happily ever after. The end. Though, driving away, I was shaking with the emotion I mentioned at the beginning of this post.

See, who ever said yelling never fixes anything?

Ooh, do you think they're wrong about hitting stuff, too? [evil grin]

Anxiety and Peace, Exhaustion and Rest

2011-12-16T23:43:00.000-08:00

This is not the blog post I expected to write. It started out, in my thoughts, in a tired and slightly exasperated place. Not angry, but definitely tired. A little ironic.

But I'm happy now (not that there wasn't any happiness before, there was), and a comparison at the end (which was there almost from the start) took its full natural progression (the major late addition being the penultimate paragraph, and the first sentence of the last), so now it is what it is. Yay.

I have a feeling I accomplished two or three full days' worth of work today, in the space of eight hours.

I don't have full-time hours at my job. I'm only supposed to work four and a half hours a day.

Oops.

I guess I'll work less when I get back, or something.

Hooray for vacation!

Speaking not of which, I'm tired. Or I was, when I was thinking of writing this. I've had a nap since.

You know that slightly panicked feeling? The one that comes when you know you really need to leave, if you don't leave soon you'll be working overtime and we Can't Have That, but you have to be sure to do X first, and oh, don't forget that other thing! And oh, was there something else? YES! There was! And it was vital!

You know, that feeling? Turns out it's oddly similar to the feeling you get when you're running at Seal Beach for Cross Country practice, doing laps from the pier to the jetty and back, and then from the pier to the other jetty and back, and then back to the first jetty and back... and everyone else on the team has finished the whole run, but you just made it back to the pier where they're waiting, and you have to turn around one more time and do the entire last pier-to-jetty-and-back stretch while they stand there and stretch and chat.

I'm glad I experienced that, and remembered it today. Because it wasn't as bad today as that was. Why, I didn't even hyperventilate! Not even a little bit!

Plus, it makes me associate the feeling with running, and I like running. I can't just think of anxiety when I think of running. It makes me think of peace and just-what-I-needed wandering thoughts and decompression and emotional processing and joy and rest and strength and healthy effort and healthy exhaustion and favorite places where I've run and the journeys we all must take and the natural order of things.

Thank You, God, for running, and beaches, and all other blessed Cross Country courses, and my own unofficial haunts near my apartment. For vacation. And for my job. And for music, for Marian Call and Kate Rusby and mog.com. Thank You for life.

Hooray! Fear!

2011-12-12T16:13:00.000-08:00

I say this in a completely non-thrill-seeking sense. I'm also not talking about how fear is a good thing because it keeps us from doing stupid things, though that's true enough.

See, I learned as a child to run away from certain stressful situations. It wasn't a bad idea at the time. Sensible survival technique.

But our unconscious brains over-generalize, so I often still run away from things when I'm overwhelmed, even if it's the sort of situation where that's completely the Opposite Thing of Helpful.

Similarly, I learned as a child that when in out-of-control situations, I could gain some control back for myself via passive rebellion. The sort of thing that probably won't get you in trouble, or at least not very serious trouble, but, well, you're doing what you want, darn it. This was also very helpful at the time, emotionally speaking. (Probably not so much, pragmatically.)

Again, not so helpful now.

Because these are survival techniques, it really can be very freakin' scary to fight against them. It can feel like you're going to die. See, relationships and emotions are very important to our brains. Whether from an evolutionary (babies are one hundred percent dependent on other humans) or a creationary (our Creator not only created us in His image and wants us in relationship with Him and each other, but He created us to be one hundred percent dependent on other humans when we're babies, and created our brains to be good at survival sorts of things) perspective, it actually makes sense for our brains to encode certain sorts of things as Matters of Survival.

Even though they later end up being... not so much. Or even when, later on, the related technique hurls us to our doom.

This is why I'm glad to feel fear. Because normally, I've stepped back and retreated before I'm even conscious of any fear. If I am feeling very aware of lots and lots of fear, it's probably because I'm pushing myself, maybe even growing! I'm on the edge of Accomplishing Something. Something new. This is good.

If I have a dream where I can't quite manage to brake fast enough at stop signs and I keep rolling out into intersections, it doesn't mean that I'm going too fast in real life and I need to stop doing something; it means I'm scared of going too fast, which means I'm making progress, so FULL SPEED AHEAD! >D

Disclaimer: There were other steps on this journey, before I could've been happy about fear. If I had read this blog post earlier in my life, I doubt it would've been helpful. When you frequently hate yourself (I occasionally still do, but it's much less common now)... well, this just would've made it worse. "Shame on me, fear doesn't make me happy. I must not be one of those people who looks on risks as opportunities. Because I'm a Bad Person."

If you relate to this disclaimer, please, don't worry about this post. I started with The Pathway by Laurel Mellin, it helped a ton with my depression. Knowing nothing about your situation because I don't know who's reading this, I don't know if it would help you, but it might.

Because I Care

2011-12-12T14:59:00.000-08:00

Dear Southern Californian Drivers,

When it's raining, you're supposed to turn your lights on. I know most of you are aware of this, but given that I was able to count over fifty of you with your lights off in a pretty short stretch of time, there seems to be a disconnect somewhere. Turning your lights on makes it easier for other drivers to see you. It also makes you less likely to be ticketed by a state in desperate need of funds. I thought you should know.

Sincerely,

Your Judmental Friend,

("Judgmental?" I'm just looking out for your best interests. Honest and true!)

Marcy

Oh! Sing a Lament for the Life of a Blog! Or... Don't. Plus!: Old News!

2011-12-10T18:15:00.000-08:00

I noticed the other day how much my Bloggy Goodness Output has dropped (oh so steadily) since 2006, and then especially dramatically since 2008, as indicated by my sidebar. I suppose 102 posts in 365 days is quite a bit (Possibly padded somewhat by pictures which counted as one post each...? Yes. Definitely.), and I'm not going to try to reach those heights again, but I don't want it to keep dropping at this rate, either.

Facebook is partly to blame. I think I'd like to do a lot more posts like the last one, which started life as a facebook status update, and then migrated. Only, in the future, I'll just let such things import to facebook, rather than starting them there. I will think about making them as status updates, but then I will stop myself: "Wait, no!" I will say. "A short blog post! That's what's needed here!" That's the plan. Aside from updates I don't actually want to keep public, or updates that are only a sentence long. (Ha! How often is that gonna happen?!)

To be fair to facebook (Why? That's no fun!), it's been good to the blog in other ways, ways that don't have to do with the sheer quantity of material. With the post importing feature, many people read random posts of mine they never would've read otherwise. So that's cool. But that can still happen if I make fewer status updates and more blog posts. And then I'll have more of my writing together in one place, and update the blog more often... yay. Good things.

Sort of kind of also along those lines, there's a blog post I started writing on April 30th this year which I never published, and it's been bugging me. Especially since it involved talking about writing goals that I met, and I'd like to start posting goals again, but then I'd rather not before I actually post what I've already written on that topic... It'd be like forcing you to come in in the middle of the conversation. Er, monologue. Only not really probably, probably it wouldn't even be noticeable. But... um, you get the idea?

The reason I never published it... well, for a clue, look to the original title: "Chapter 371: In Which the Blogger Writes of Writing Goals Met, and a Kind of a Win, and Megan Whalen Turner, and a Couple Cool Links, and the Results of The Alzheimer's Blogging Competition, and... Okay, That's It." Yeah.

Another part of it was that I wasn't sure how much to say about Megan Whalen Turner. I met her at the LA Festival of Books, but somewhere in the process of writing the post I looked her up online, noticed that she isn't very comfortable with having stuff about her up online (scroll down through the link), and began to wonder how much I should really say. Probably beyond the point of reason, as she seems to be talking more about bio type stuff, but... I'm not completely sure on that. And she's so explicit, with the "I'd rather that you didn't either," so I shall err on the side of quietness and cut what I was going to say. Because she's awesome, and it's well worth respecting her wishes. If you ask me in person, I'd be happy to talk about the event. Maybe someday I'll even write up a proposed post and send it to her for permission. Maybe. But not right now.

What I shall do now is give you the rest of what I did write on April 30th. I could try to finish writing and editing it just as I had originally intended it, as its own post without all this intro, but... that was taking forever. (Yes. More forever than this.) So I'll give you the incomplete version. Merry Christmas. You're welcome. (No, I'm not that arrogant. I'm quoting Raj! Clearly.)

"A lot of things to blog about today. Many of them deserve their own posts, and maybe one will get one later (though... good intentions or not, it's honestly a bit doubtful), but I might as well just post them all now. Better for each topic to have a post, shared with other topics, rather than to have no post at all, right?

Perhaps I'll go in the rather arbitrary order listed in the title. So. The writing goals set forth in "Chotto..." on Sunday were not completely met. But I did a lot more writing this week than in previous weeks, and I'm happy with that. It was a semi-decent pace. Even some of my slowing down was fruitful, a bit of time needed to stop and contemplate what might happen next, and whether or not I should really still keep it going in that direction, given one slightly unexpected development. I'm okay with a certain amount of sitting and staring out the window daydreaming, as long as I'm still doing enough writing that I am consistently daydreaming. Actual action is very helpful for keeping the story present in one's head, and not forgotten for most practical purposes...

So, I wrote that Healer scene, from Beth's perspective this time (which I apparently had started on before, but I didn't get very far, and I ended up writing it differently), and I wrote most of her journey home, I think. Including some general summary paragraphs, and one scene that I'm rather fond of at the moment. Though it may be too intense. Not sure yet. It's possible that I've put other characters of mine into situations just as or more traumatizing, but... well, Beth is the one I keep shaking my head at and saying, "Wow, I've traumatized her. Poor Beth." Yeah... That may just be because I haven't done as much writing for some of those other characters. They're more roughly sketched out, or they aren't as major characters for their books... The first person point of view makes it a bit tricky, too. I think it has to be in first person, but... aaeeh. I mean, I really like that scene I just did, despite the intensity. We'll see. Maybe... Well, I suppose I like reading that sort of thing myself. Maybe I'm not writing for people who don't like that. Sorry, this train of thought is highly influenced by the Megan Whalen Turner topic coming up, but I'm not there yet. Wait your turn, Mr. Topic, sir. Um.

I did not finish the journey completely, or start on the scenes at home. That part, not done.

In the course of writing that scene I liked and its aftermath, I accomplished something else unrelated to my goals, but a thing I find to be a kind of cool marker: I passed 50,000 words. And actually, unlike in NaNoWriMo, where you even count words you're going to delete later (by italicizing them, if you must), this is not counting those words. I sort of kept them, by using the Track Changes feature in Word, but that means the word counter doesn't count them. I'm pretty sure. In other words, I have more than won a NaNoWriMo event with this novel, finally! Kind of sort of. I mean, it took a year and a half instead of a month... That's quite relevant. Technically, by the rules of NaNo, it's not a win. But something to be proud of? Sure. It's way harder to keep slogging through, to write when there's no fun-month-thing hanging over your head, to just keep writing day in and day out, than it is to write in the excitement, when you know that next month you can just pick up the other pieces of your life, that IT'S ONLY A MONTH, AFTER ALL. In real life you have to find a balance, and sometimes discipline in one area translates to no discipline in another area (like writing), and man it's so much easier to curl up with someone else's good book, and I don't know what happens next anyway (okay, that can be a NaNo excuse, but the proliferation of other excuses in the non-NaNo times can make it feel stronger, more valid), and... well, so on.

It's still not up to the pace a career novelist would write at. Not by a long shot. But it's something. It's a heck of a lot better than the pace I was writing at before I ever did a NaNo.

And, let me remind myself: 50,000!!! There. That's better. Heh. Makes it the longest of any of my works thus far... for now. That will change.

Today I went to the LA Festival of Books, and I saw Megan Whalen Turner at a panel I attended, and the signing after. It was awesome, and there's so much I could say about it, I'm not sure what to say. But I wore my "I'm blogging this." T-shirt, so I should say something. 'Course, I wore that shirt for the Patrick Rothfuss signing too, and I never did. Just posted a few pictures to facebook. Lame. I should totally write about that signing. But again, so much to say..."

Yeah, this is where I cut a couple things I was going to say. Ha! Consider yourself taunted!

"Next topic." Which... is all I had written after the Megan Whalen Turner part. I don't think I'm going to bother with the "Couple Cool Links" part of my original title. But I do want to finally write about the results of the Alzheimer's Blogging Competition, since I still haven't done that yet.

So here. Have a link to the results. I really liked and strongly recommend reading the winning post. And then... I'm listed second. Not explicitly or officially as second place, but... I'm going to think of it that way, anyway. ^_^ Because I can. (And because, if I ever mention it in a query letter, calling myself the "first runnerup listed, although not officially second place" is just... awkward.)

Yes. I could definitely use more of the short posts.

In which the pieces of my to do list happily attempt suicide

2011-11-18T17:20:00.000-08:00

Ha, project-I-was-dreading! I have COMPLETED you!!! Take that!

Now, which of you little buggers wants to go next, huh? Huh? ::hides from the millions of tasks that raise their hands, clamoring for attention::

::peeks out:: Uh-uh. Only the ones that absolutely HAVE to be done before Thanksgiving need apply. That's better. Run away, you others! Because, uh... later, I'm coming for you!

Which you apparently don't mind. Darn it. I wanted to get revenge on you for existing.

The Points System, or How to Avoid Stealing the Souls of Innocent Retail Clerks Everywhere

2011-10-10T18:14:00.000-07:00

Because stealing souls might SOUND fun, but it's EVIL. And you'll lose points. You don't want to lose points. The innocent customer next in line doesn't want you to lose points, either.

This post is brought to you because I haven't been posting enough lately, and I especially haven't been posting non-depressing material enough lately. Yes, complaining about customers I don't have to deal with anymore is my idea of fun. No really, it is. The following was SO MUCH FUN TO WRITE. [Yeah, I'm using a lot of caps lock. I blame Maureen Johnson. She does it (erm, on twitter, anyway), and she's funny. It's possible that I've read too many of her tweets recently, and she's rubbing off on me. You should follow her, too.]

This post is also brought to you because I feel like I keep hearing complaints about how customer service is getting worse and worse. This might be quite true, but there's another side of the coin that's very important to be aware of. Namely, customers are also getting worse and worse. Either that, or they have always been horrible. For proof, see the hilarious blog Not Always Right. (Caution: Best to consume in small doses.)

Please, don't be one of these horrible customers and then complain that customer service is getting worse and worse. And even if you're the most saintly of customers... be aware that everyone has a snapping point. Even when they're enormously grateful that they have a job. Even when they like helping people. Unfortunately for you, the person not helping you may have just reached that snapping point five minutes ago (or maybe last year...).

Last but not least, this post is brought to you because of Query Quagmire and Slushpile Hell. These are blogs from the publishing world, from a literary agent and an editor. They are about query FAILS. Epic fails. So bad. In some respects "Not Always Right" is their natural equivalent in the customer service world, but after working at a used bookstore and rejecting countless boxes of books brought in by hopeful sellers, I... feel a special camaraderie with these lovely anonymous human beings. So when I read last week's "Query Quagmire" post The Points System, or "What not to do in a query letter... ever" I was inspired. This post is roughly modeled after that one. Just... with more opening paragraphs of explanation, because this blog is not devoted to griping about customers.

(Getting published is a dream come true to a lot more people than selling used books is, so you'd think people would be less passionate about this. You'd think. Perhaps people aren't scouring teh Interwebs asking, "Why can't I sell my books at a bricks-and-mortar used bookstore? Oh, for the love of all that is good, why? Why will no one take them?!" Regardless, this was fun to write, and hopefully fun to read. Even if you would never do anything as awful as the things I will describe, I hope you can extrapolate some lessons for good customership. Yes, customership. It's a perfectly good word... now that I invented it.)

Here's how the points system works:

When you walk in the door, you start with some points. The amount you start with isn't important right now, what matters is how many points you lose from the moment you walk in the door to the moment... well, either the moment the employee decides which of your books to buy and how much money to give you for those books, or... any other Customer Interaction Moment.

I would now tell you, as "Query Quagmire" did, that "You can only lose points," but that's not completely true. I would allow you to gain points, but the ways you can do that are few and far between and vary widely from person to person. I refuse to tell you what they are. They're not important.

But wait: "Points?" you ask. "How can working retail be like reading a query letter? Aren't you selling things, not buying? Oh sure, so in your case you bought used books too, but even then, don't the books speak for themselves? And isn't the customer always right?"

There are three answers to those questions. Answer number one: See Not Always Right.

Answer number two: No, as I've already mentioned, used bookstore employees also buy books from customers (and/or from the homeless). It's true that there are certain objective measures that are used -- for example, a copy of Twilight would have to be in pretty bad condition not to buy it -- but it's also a rather subjective process. The rule of thumb is not to buy books if you're not completely sure they'll sell (and sell quickly), but... like I said, it's subjective. An employee might lean on the generous side or the harsh side, depending on how many points you've lost so far.

There's also the matter of money. Yes, there's an objective formula to follow: You get a set percentage of each book's store resale price. (As with everything else in this post, this may vary widely from used bookstore to used bookstore, but most of the principles behind it remain the same.) But... the buyer may not be the one who sets those prices. The buyer may estimate. If he's worked at the store very long, his estimates will be pretty good, but if you've lost a lot of points already, guess what? He's going to go with his lower estimates. Just for you. Because he loves you so much.

And the third answer? So you're not selling any books to the store, you're buying, and the employees have to be nice to you, right? No matter how much of a jerk you are? Meh. To some extent. With some employees, you can go pretty far and they'll still be nice to you. But everyone has a snapping point. It's only human. After enough customers in a row have lost a sufficient number of points, it's quite possible that the employee will lose their soul. And people without souls tend not to be as gracious in customer interactions. Just sayin'.

[Please note that none of the point losses listed below have anything to do with the actual quality of the books in question. That's a whole 'nother list. And even though these points, when lost in sufficient quantities to go negative and create black holes, can have repercussions for any Customer Interaction Moment, I limited myself to the Point Loss Methods you might fall prey to when selling your books to a secondhand store. That's my area of expertise. There are more ways to lose points in customer service (again, see Not Always Right), but I thought I'd start small, and with the list more similar to Query Quagmire's.]

So with no further ado, you can lose points in the following ways:

By telling me, "They're in really good condition" (For whatever reason, there's an inverse relationship between the number of times that phrase is used and the actual condition of the books.)
By calling the store for directions, proceeding not to follow them, and then blaming me for the results
By refusing to carry the books into the store yourself
By complaining about the parking in a tone that implies I should Do Something about it (News flash: I can't)
By demanding I look at your books right away, even if paying customers have to wait
By calling yourself a "really good customer" when you've never bought a book from the store once
By ever referring to one of my coworkers with the words, "But he said..."
By complaining about how long it's taking me to check your books
By rearranging my piles of rejected and accepted books, even if you're trying to be helpful
By asking the reason for each rejection, and exclaiming "Oh, but it's so good! You won't have any trouble selling that one. It changed my life! I would totally keep it if I weren't moving/didn't need the money/weren't selling off my dead grandmother's estate (okay, so I haven't read her books, I don't even know how to read, but I'm sure it's Very Good, that's the only kind she had)."
By arguing that I HAVE to buy your book back, and my reasons against it Do Not Apply, because you bought it here
By telling me what will sell
By giving me the life story of every single book I pull out of your box (Ever heard the expression, "Don't judge a book by its cover"? I believe it became a common saying because customers Do. So unless you plan on sticking around and recommending your former books to everyone who walks in the door until they finally sell...)
By bringing me books to sell only after browsing the shelves for a while
By trying to sell a bunch of titles that recently went missing
By trying to sell a bunch of books I rejected earlier that day, that the last hopeful dumped in the trash can or on the sidewalk outside our store
By ever dumping the rejects in the trash can or on the sidewalk outside our store
By asking if I can throw away the rejects for you
By offering to "throw in" the rejects for only a dollar, when HELLO, I WOULDN'T TAKE THIS CRAP FOR FREE
By calling my coworker an f--ing __ (Assume I like my coworkers. Some of them are my good friends. You're better off assuming they all are.)
By hitting on me as crudely as possible
By insulting the store
By disparaging children's books, or fantasy, or Tolkien
By explaining to me who Tolkien was after I've already told you he's my favorite author
By asking my name and using it every five seconds (Hint: Over-friendliness is really, really annoying)
By telling me a sob story about why you have to get rid of all two of your bookshelves
By asking, "Are we having fun yet?" while I check which of your books are already in stock (Hint: If I wasn't, that question ain't gonna help)
By bringing a box of books straight from your garage, containing spiders and mouse droppings
By not apologizing when you see me flinch from the spider in the box you brought me

There are doubtless many more, and I could wait a few days to post this, to try to remember them all... but I won't. More posting! Less waiting! Huzzah!

It should be noted that losing points here and there doesn't necessarily mean I'll reject any more books than I would have otherwise, or give you any less money. It's not going to help you, though.

Also of import: This is my points system. Other clerks might have slightly different things that peeve or enrage them. Good luck!

NOT cute.

2011-08-15T18:17:00.000-07:00

On Saturday I knocked a spider off my head. It was every bit alarming as it sounds. Possibly more.

I was sitting in the shade at the park, watching ground squirrels. They're very cute. Then people walked by and scared them into their holes, so I decided to play on my phone while I waited for them to come out again. I sat there for a bit. I reached up and scratched my head. And knocked the spider off.

Not just any spider, oh no. A spider fat enough, with its legs tucked in slightly, to be roughly spherical, though vertically a bit more of an oval. And, with said legs tucked in, probably about the diameter of a quarter. Light tan color, and some of the thickest spider legs I've ever had the displeasure to see. UGH.

It wouldn't have been so bad to see on the ground in the park, if it hadn't been on my HEAD first. It didn't look like a spider that spins webs, it looked like some kind of a hunter spider. So what did it do, fall out of the tree high above and land on my head? I would think I would've felt that -- it would've plopped. I would think if it'd climbed up my back I would've felt that too of course, even if it used my braid -- my braid wasn't touching the ground, it'd have to get to it somehow. So I say again, UGH.

I guess it could be worse. It could've bitten me; or a black widow would be worse. Although black widows like dark dry places, darker than an open shady spot, so it's even harder for me to imagine a black widow showing up on my head than a big fat light tan hunter spider. Well... the latter's pretty easy for me to imagine, now. Not so much how it got there. I mean... I can imagine various scenarios. Just not one that seems sufficiently plausible. Do you mind if I say "ugh" again? Yeah...

Nature is... not very cuddly. I think next time, if I sit at all, I shall sit on the grassy sunny side. Sunburns are tame. Lovely things, really.

Lag

2011-07-06T18:00:00.000-07:00

Apparently it's still 2009 in my dreams. Or at least, in a dream -- I mean that literally, not that I wish it were 2009. In a dream last night, my birthday was coming up, and I was trying to figure out how old I was going to be. I thought for sure I was going to be 29. It was quite puzzling when the math kept coming up as 27. I checked it over and over. It wasn't until I woke up that I noticed the problem -- yes, 2009 minus 1982 is indeed 27. That would do it. Yup. I'm actually kind of proud that my subconscious knows the answer to 2009 minus 1982. Just arithmetic, but not the easiest to do in one's sleep. Also I am amused. Vastly. Thus the blogging.

On Mom and Pain and Broken Bones

2011-05-23T21:12:00.000-07:00

No, Mom hasn't broken anything.

First of all, when this imports to facebook I think I'm going to tag quite a lot of people. I don't like that, I feel embarrassed to tag so many; like I'm standing in a crowded room, waving my arms and yelling, "Look at me! Look at me!" Especially unsettling when the blog post is on such an uncomfortable subject as pain, and it doesn't really build to a hopeful point.

But there are reasons to tag you all, as individuals. I have so many family members, to start with. Okay, that makes it sound less individual, but still, this is relevant to all of you, I think. Then there's my home group at church (spiritual family), other people I've had conversations with about Mom, people who've said they're praying for me, and other very good friends. There's SLOBS -- I don't attend very consistently and I don't know many of you super well, but I like you, I consider you friends, and, well... shared books are a strong bond, I think.

I might have whittled down the list the more I thought about it, instead of adding to it, but some of you are going through your own immense pains right now, and... maybe this post will be helpful. I'm really not sure. Despite the lack of a general tone of positivity, it was helpful for me to think through. Maybe it will be for you, too.

If you mind being tagged for whatever reason, please let me know. If we don't have that close of a relationship and I'm making you uncomfortable, if you always read my blog posts anyway and would rather not be tagged as well... whatever. Or, if you're reading this and I didn't tag you and you'd like to keep reading updates, please let me know that, too.

Alright. Remember my comment from my original post about Mom's dementia, "I can think about everything else relating to her dementia, in the present and in the past and in every aspect of my own reaction to it, but the future... I think maybe one thought, then flinch away, like the instinctive reaction to testing a broken bone"? Well, recently I've thought of a lot more similarities between this experience and my one experience with a broken bone. Physical and emotional pain and injury have a great deal in common, more than I realized.

The more I think of it, the more I see and find. I can't count the number of things they share, not without writing them down. I'll try to remember everything I've thought of so far, though. Wish me luck.

So here we go, but first, a little background: In February of 2004, I played a game of Ultimate Frisbee. I played it barefoot, because I'd found that was more enjoyable for me than playing with shoes on. I felt lighter on my feet, faster, even. Certainly faster at changing direction, which is important in Ultimate.

I'd do it again, in a heartbeat. Barefoot Ultimate is FUN. Risky, maybe, but so is driving a car.

The game was not unusual, although I think I hadn't been playing as much as I'd like around that time. That wouldn't be unusual, either. Anyway, in the course of the game I jumped up to block a throw to my brother Nathan, and as I remember it, rather than landing on my feet wrong and from there crumpling to the ground... well, there was no pause in the motion. My descent was one smooth and seamless event, from the brief fall through the air (brief because I'm no impressive jumper) to sitting on the ground in pain. Someone said they heard a crack. I didn't hear it, but I guess my body was busy doing other things instead of listening.

Despite this, it pretty much felt like any other time I'd landed wrong or twisted something a bit. I figured the pain would go away soon. The biggest difference I'd observe between a broken bone and pain that goes away in a few minutes or hours or days... well, I've given it away already, haven't I? It's that the pain doesn't. You keep expecting it to (if you're like me), but it doesn't.

But I'm getting ahead of myself; talking about my thoughts and reactions gets into territory of similarities with emotional pain. Background. That's what we want now.

So... I didn't get X-rays until a few days later, as I recall. The day after, people advised me that I should probably get it checked out. Eventually I agreed enough to go to the Health Center at Biola. A doctor there told me I'd probably broken the base of my fifth metatarsil -- a very common injury, apparently, at least for athletes. (See, playing Ultimate barefoot must have little to do with it -- he didn't mention an epidemic of barefoot athletes.) But they don't have X-ray machines at the Health Center. I had to get a ride to the ER (ended up making more sense than making an appointment with someone, though it didn't feel like too much of an emergency anymore), and I don't think I did that right away, either. But eventually I did, and they confirmed it was broken. The base of the fifth metatarsil, by the way, refers to your little toe -- but the bone connected to it higher up in the foot, by your ankle.

This was my first broken bone and is still my only break thus far -- hey, I drank a lot of milk. And it wasn't a very bad break. No one really deigned to explain it to me, to tell me it was a "hairline fracture" or anything else, but I did get to see the X-rays. And I couldn't see it. Not that I'm trained, but still.

On to similarities.

1. Both learning to live with Mom's dementia and breaking a bone are like other experiences I've had, contiguous so to speak, but simultaneously Other.

I've already mentioned how it felt like any other time I landed wrong. Well, that's true enough. But it taught me all kinds of new things about pain, too. On the first day, for example, I couldn't make myself put my weight on it any more than I could make myself put my weight on a piece of paper (I've never been good at those fall-backwards-and-I'll-catch-you games). My brain just wouldn't let me, it felt impossible. That was different. Feeling the pain fade a little, and then moving my foot to test whether it was better now or not and seeing spots in front of my eyes, deciding that the foot movement might not be a good idea after all -- well, that was different, too. Lying in bed trying to find a comfortable position for it, with the sensation that my foot was hanging by a thread, though it quite manifestly was not -- that was different. I'm still not sure that it's the most pain I've ever experienced. I wouldn't say so, I don't think. But it was pretty close, and despite the similarities to other events, it was different.

Well, Mom's dementia has maybe less in common with other events than the bone breaking did. But there are commonalities. I've certainly been depressed before, I've grieved before. Depression caused by self-loathing and depression caused by loss... it's kind of surprising how subtle the difference is, actually. The flavor is different. Depression caused by loss feels a little more powerless... no, only because now I know how to deal with self-loathing, I can bring myself out of it. At the time I couldn't, or it was much harder at least, so the powerlessness was similar, too.

Still, pain about Mom is certainly different from other emotionally painful events. Some of that will come out as I continue to write about the similarities with physical fractures. Some of it, like the pain of the break not going away, is just in the length of the pain. That, on its own, makes it so, so different from other painful events.

Oh, but speaking of which:

2. "It's not that bad."

I didn't feel guilty for feeling pain in my foot. But I DID think at first that the pain would go away. I certainly didn't think it was broken.

I'm not terribly close to my mom. And I'm not living with her, not a caregiver. She's not all that far along. So it shouldn't be that bad, right? Heh. I think it's still broken. And limping over to the doctor's office to confirm something's wrong does hurt... So does not taking painkillers, but you don't want to numb the pain, walk on it, and make it worse. Yeah.

3. The ups and downs, the pain and the fading.

This is fairly self-explanatory, I think. Even in the first days, when the pain was constant, the intensity level still varied slightly. Pain about Mom also comes and goes. Sometimes something seems to set it off, sometimes it seems to start throbbing for no explicable reason. I suppose just because it's broken, that's explanation enough.

This is not quite the same thing as, but very related to:

4. The testing of the pain.

Here's one of the things the analogy is really helping me understand. I can't process all the pain about Mom all at once. I mean, when it's really bad, it feels like it's the entire weight of pain all at once, all intent on killing me -- but it's not. And the important thing, for this particular point, is that I don't have to feel like I'm "supposed" to process it all the time. It may even be healthy to run away from the pain, at times.

Now, in order to heal a physical break, one doesn't have to test the movement at all, really. Processing emotional pain and healing a physical injury don't have a direct one-to-one relationship. If you keep a bone immobile forever it's the muscle that will be harmed more than the bone, right? But still, you do have to test it at times to figure out how much it's healed, to see if you can use it again. Doctors help, you don't have to test it as much when you know you're supposed to wear your ortho shoe thingy for six weeks or whatever it was... but until you see the doctor, it's the small experiments and the resulting pain that tell you you have a problem. They're necessary.

But you're not going to go testing it all the time. You'd faint, for starters. (Even if you don't think it hurts "that bad" -- your body may be shielding you from the full force of the pain, you know.) And you'd probably do further injury to yourself.

The cycle of thinking about Mom and retreating, pain and relief, feels very similar. Both the pain and the flight from pain are necessary, I think. It gets to be too much, I have to retreat sometimes. But I also need to process it. This is also related to:

5. Peripheral pain, and circling around the actual injury.

I don't know that much about how the body's designed. I know extreme trauma can cause you to go into shock. And I know an injury in one part of the body can cause the area around it to feel pain, too. Sometimes the pain in the surrounding area can be so intense, it's hard to tell what's actually broken.

For all I knew, I'd sprained or broken my ankle. It's not like I was set on that as an explanation (as the doctor I saw seemed to assume), but it worked as well as anything else for me. My ankle HURT. It took the doctor tapping on my ankle bone to show me the ankle wasn't the issue.

As I "test" my emotional pain about Mom, it also feels like I'm circling around the real issue. (Writing about it, incidentally, is a more distant pain. I'm thinking about it, but not as much as when I started composing the post in my head. Mostly I'm thinking about the writing, the word choice and phrasing and how to fit in a new thought without interrupting the transitions. It's easier.) Here, again, the analogy is helping me to understand, to view this as a healthy thing. The pain is too great NOT to test it gingerly, not to circle around it. Don't want to go around whacking an injury, just to make sure nothing's really wrong...

The way I had been looking at it, though? More like: "Good grief, I think this hurts so much, but I'm not even really thinking about Mom, am I? Just self-centered things, like how stressful this is, and how it's affecting my work, and observations about pain... But what pain? What am I feeling pain about, when I'm not really even thinking about Mom? How pitiful is that! It's like I'm trying to make a big deal out of nothing, feeling sorry for myself, taking a sick sad comfort in a new identity as someone whose mom has dementia, when in reality I don't even care about that, do I? If I did care I'd be thinking about that, not this."

I had a feeling there was a flaw in that thinking somewhere. I knew it was a big deal. Remembering how my foot felt helps me see the flaw though, in a way I couldn't before. Surrounding pain doesn't invalidate the injury, it's more like the true measure of it. When your whole foot turns black and blue you don't say, "Oh look! It's only a bruise! What are you whining about?"

And that is a relief. I think it might be natural and healthy, as I process this, to spiral inward. As I mentioned in point number four, I can only take so much pain at once as I test the injury. So I start by processing the pains that are more peripheral, and only when they're less overwhelming (when thinking about them isn't going to make me faint, to extend the metaphor) do I move on to more central issues. That sounds right. And that process is pretty instinctive, it's not something I have to think about very consciously. This exercise is just helping with the reduction of guilt, I think I'd still be doing the spiral thing whether I ever understood the reasons behind it or not. Well, definitely. That's what I was doing.

6. Control and lack thereof.

I can't go back and keep the injury from happening. And beyond that, when I broke my toe/foot I couldn't move across campus to my classes nearly as quickly. But I could adjust to that fact, learn to account for it.

It was exhausting. My body was working hard to heal itself, plus pain itself is draining, plus walking became a lot harder, took a lot more energy. I couldn't change that. I could... well, I could sleep. That helped. I could go easy on myself, allow myself to heal.

I couldn't walk normally, but I could hop. I could wrap my foot with an Ace bandage and kind of limp, I could go to the doctor and get crutches, go to the ER, get X-rays and an ortho shoe, and then I could limp around a little better.

Speaking of control brings me to a big reason I'm writing this, though it has less to do with broken bones.

I started last week to read Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief. It explains why (with a multitude of reasons) this sort of ambiguous loss is so stressful. I won't bother to explain all of that here. The important thing... before this, I wouldn't have said I find ambiguity to be all that difficult, or that I need to be in control all that badly. But now... well, evidence seems to speak to the contrary.

Lack of control is harder with this than with breaking a bone. Breaking a bone wasn't so much an ambiguous loss. Writing about Mom helps, though, I think. Helps me make some sense of it, understand it... it helps a little with the perceived lack of control. Maybe writing is my ortho shoe, heh. At any rate, analogous to physical injury or not, writing helps.

On the other hand, I guess the point of contact between physical and emotional pain in this area seems plain enough: I can't fix it. I can learn to cope with it. Whatever that means.

7. Learning to cope is not an easy transition.

The only way to learn how long it would take to limp from my dorm room to a class across campus was to do it. I couldn't account for it with perfect accuracy at first. It's sort of a hit-and-miss, hunt-and-peck, learn-by-failing process. Right after the game of Ultimate, before I had any bandage, crutches, or ortho shoe, when I couldn't put any weight on the foot and was hopping everywhere, how to climb stairs? Tried hopping, figured out it didn't work, crawled.

Again, I think the similarity with emotional pain is pretty evident. I don't know how to deal with this yet. I can only figure it out by living it, I think. Advice can help, but it's hard to communicate things like levels of fatigue, subjective, "in-your-head" things that vary based on so many factors. Mmm, but advice is welcome, that's for sure.

8. It helps when people know.

I mean, then they do things like offer to go back and get the textbooks for you that you forgot, so you don't have to trek all the way across campus all over again. And they give you chairs to put your foot up, and they forgive you for missing your cohort group meeting because you fell asleep (day after the break, if I remember correctly). These are good things. It's hard enough already. No reason to turn down sincere offers of help.

Of course, when one is crawling up stairs, or hopping across campus, or severely limping, or using crutches, or wearing a bandage or an ortho shoe... Obviously it's easier to tell that something's wrong. Random strangers will ask what happened when an extreme limp is advertising the pain you feel at every step.

Emotional pain can be harder to see (if you're not crying). It can be tempting to wear one's heart on one's sleeve, just to be seen. But then it's also not tempting. I mean, you don't necessarily want to cry, either. And talking might lead to that... The whole thing's dangerous, darn it.

Do I want people to cut me some slack right now, because of Mom? No... wait, I mean, sure! Heh, not about anything in particular. If I'm doing a poor job in some area of my life, I'd like to know. And it may not be because of the stresses... But still, more generally speaking, support is a good thing. Sharing the burden is a good thing. I could write all this stuff in a journal without publishing it online, and it'd probably still help me to think through the issues and clear my head, but it wouldn't be the same.

Finally, and not so relatedly:

9. Thinking about Mom and testing the break can both make you feel like you're going to faint.

I've fainted before, and I've come so close that I've blacked out before, so I know what it feels like. Oh, thinking about Mom doesn't make me feel very close to fainting, but the physical symptoms are the same, if much lessened. A little queasy and sick to the stomach. A little weak. A little lightheaded.

I'm careful, thinking about it when I drive. I know from the time I blacked out that thinking about feeling like that other time when you almost fainted can make it much, much worse, so even though it doesn't feel at all close to fainting, I'm careful. Don't want to black out while driving.

I've felt a bit of that physical sickness while writing this (thinking about broken bones on top of it probably didn't help, I suppose), although on the pain scale this writing hasn't been nearly as bad as other parts of my day, "testing" this injury by thinking about it. Maybe it's time to go read a novel.

There are still other similarities to list. But it's getting a bit late to write them all, if I'm also going to read before bed, and this post has probably gotten long enough, anyway (ya think?). So... maybe I'll post more of them later. Broken Bones and Dementia, Part 2. Something like that. Even if I've listed all the main ones already.

Chotto...

2011-04-24T20:37:00.000-07:00

averagecats.com: Kittens, Inc.

For those of you who don't know (um, probably for most of you then, other than... Melanie, Robert, Peter... Ron? Sharon?), the title of this post is Japanese. Literally it just means "little," but in this sort of context it translates to, "That's a little bit..." and is a very understated (Japanese, remember) way to say "no," or "That's the craziest idea I've heard in years," or other things along those lines. It's been a favorite word of mine ever since I learned it from my Pimsleur language lesson CDs, because it cracks me up. And it's so very useful...

By the guidelines I set out in my last post, I should have written three more posts before this one. That's what I'm saying "chotto..." about this time. "I was going to do all this writing, in Sometimes Blind and here, it was going to be awesome, but I'm a little bit..." Like that. Chotto.

On April 16th I would have written that I didn't meet my goal, that I hadn't written anything since that update at the end of the April 11th post. The last post. On April 17th I would have set out a new goal for the new week, one that incorporated the previous goals I hadn't met yet and maybe just a bit of the goal I'd originally had for that particular week, but toned down some. On April 23rd... well, hopefully posting my goals on April 17th would have made a difference. That's supposed to be the point of this whole exercise, right?

So today I tell you, I have not written since April 11th. Sad face. But I will now! Yes. Cue happy face. Mmm.

What will I write? My goal for the week... is to write a LOT. To make up for some lost time. I mean, most of the time, when I don't meet my goals, I know it's not the brightest of all possible ideas to subsequently set bigger goals, to try to meet my unmet goals and then some. But... well, I haven't met them because I haven't been writing at all. I know I can do better than that. How much better? Not quite sure. But pretty significantly I think, if I put my mind to it. Some of the goals were already pretty modest, I might have been able to meet them with just one or two writing sessions. And I know, going from zero writing sessions to a lot is still a big task--but it's doable, I think. If I want to badly enough.

Oh, and I can always under-write. Maybe that journey home will be much more... concise than it otherwise would have been. For now. As Chris Baty put it in No Plot? No Problem!, speaking of under-writing to finish your novel during NaNoWriMo instead of after, "It can be disheartening to realize that you aren't going to be able to write every scene in your novel before the month ends, but I can tell you from experience that it is much easier to fill in connecting scenes and interludes during rewriting than it is to have to conceive and write the final five chapters of a story after the month has ended."

Better to meet my coupon-redeeming deadline at the end of June with a skimpy novel rather than a chopped-short novel, right? I think so.

Okay, so for a more concrete goal than just writing "a LOT," this week I plan to write that dreaded Healer scene (from Beth's perspective, this time), her journey home, and at least the beginning of the scenes at home.

For tonight, I'll begin again on the Healer scene. I don't have to finish it. Just start. This will be victory enough. I may even use pen and paper, with my Kindle for reference for my notes and the rest of my draft, and type it up later. Maybe.

Oh, and one other goal for this week: To decide on how much of the next portion of The Miller's Granddaughter I'm going to share with Neo-Inklings on May 4th, and begin editing again, explicitly with that time in mind. At the last meeting I shared everything up to the first section break. But there are more frequent section breaks after that first one. And the first chapter is long. Will I be able to share the rest of it? Not sure yet, I need to take a look. How much work will it need? Not sure of that, either. Just taking a look for now. Bulk of fixing later. Maybe.

If these goal posts don't work and I need more incentive, I may start sharing the rough pieces of Sometimes Blind with a few of you, as I write them. With the idea that you would push me to keep going. Not sure about that yet, either, though. Rough drafts are bad enough to share as it is, I'd rather see what the whole thing looks like before sending it out there. But if it helps, it helps. We'll see.

An Experiment in Writing Accountability

2011-04-11T16:23:00.000-07:00

averagecats.com: 2886

Despite the poor spelling and the Photoshopping, I like this one.

I've decided that very concrete goals may be more helpful for my personality and writing productivity than abstract goals, even very specific abstract goals. Like trying to finish certain scenes, rather than meeting certain word counts. Like now, rather than during NaNoWriMo. Well, NaNoWriMo works well, but there's built-in accountability and general excitement and so on during NaNo that word count goals at other times of the year don't have. And word counts aren't as helpful when you know you want to finish a novel (er, the rough draft of a novel) by the end of June but you're not sure how much you have left.

Um, this is relevant because Melanie gave me a coupon for Christmas, good for the free printing of my novel into nice bookish form. (Very bookish. Being, well, a book. Um.) It expires at the end of June. I'd use it for The Miller's Granddaughter, but I already have a nice copy of the Miller's rough draft (courtesy of another Christmas), and Miller's won't be in its final, beautiful form by July. And why some random middle draft? So I decided to use the coupon on Sometimes Blind. Which gives me motivation to finish the darn thing. Erm, the lovely thing. Yeah.

So, I've decided to break down what I know of what remains of Sometimes Blind into equal portions. How equal these portions will actually end up being is anyone's guess, but as I learn more (as I write!) I'll revise the goals. Also, having no idea whether or not I've assigned way too much work to the back end of the project will motivate me to work ahead, and make sure to meet the early goals. Maybe.

I mean, I haven't met any yet, but I'm feeling quite angsty about the fact. More than usual, perhaps. That's a kind of progress. Ooh, and I'm so going to write this afternoon. There you go.

I've created goals for April, for May, and for June. Further, I've created goals for each week in April.

I did not meet last week's goal. Maybe I'll meet it today. We shall see.

I'm thinking of posting my goal (or a vague version of it, in case anyone minds spoilers for My Very Own Rough Draft) every Sunday, and whether or not I met my goal every Saturday. Granted, I could post them together on Sunday, but I like the twice-a-week idea better, for some reason.

So. Last week: To write the scene with the Healer. (One scene? How difficult can that be? Heh. Given that she's blind in this scene and doesn't speak the same language as half the people in the room, it has its own trickinesses. On the other hand, no one said I have to write it well.)

This week: To write her journey back home. Darn it, I wish I knew how to make that more vague. Oh, well. Now, those of you who want to read it someday, or have read some of it already, you will know: She goes back home! At some point! Before the end of the book! Possibly (if I'm writing these scenes in order) after some scene with a Healer! Um. Yes. Self-mockery aside, I really do wish I could be more vague. I should just say, "her next journey." Yes. Um. Too late. I've already said the one, and there's no possible way of changing that. None at all. Doom, doom, doom and destruction.

Update later in the day: I have now written that scene with the Healer. Mostly. Just... not from her perspective. And it's going to have to be from her perspective. I'm pretty sure. Stuff and botheration. I mean, I knew what I was doing when I started writing it from a different character's viewpoint. I just... didn't expect to write two thousand words that way. I guess. Though that counts some words that were cut and replaced. Bleh.

Don't get me wrong. It's fun to write. Really it is. It's just simultaneously frustrating. And at this point, I'd rather enjoy the writing of a different scene. Meh.

Alzheimer's Blogging Competition

2011-03-28T20:44:00.000-07:00

Thank you to Chrissy for pointing out this competition to me. I had already written my post Meditations on a Parent with Dementia, and I decided to make that my entry. I played with the idea of changing it a little, as it was initially focused on writing to friends and family, but decided to leave it completely as is. Well, aside from marking it as an entry, and linking to the competition and rules.

So... this post is to draw attention to that post. Again. The competition is intended to raise awareness and funds for Alzheimer's research, so it seems only polite to post again and say that I've entered and point to the The Disabled Shop Blog, even though I first wrote my entry before I found out about the competition.

Self-Acceptance and Mother-Acceptance

2011-02-25T21:32:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I'm frightfully slow.

I knew my mother has traits I dislike very much. I won't list them, out of deference to her, and maybe also because of last Sunday's sermon on that section in James about the tongue. Even though listing them would lend more power to my words when I say I also knew I could see hints of those exact same traits in myself. Where "hint" sometimes means "big flashing neon sign."

And it terrifies me. I am scared to death of being like my mom.

I didn't even used to like it when people said I looked a little like her. Part of it was that she had me later in life, and I didn't want to look like someone older like that. Shallow. But part of it was simply not wanting to be associated with her, not wanting to be like her at all. Because of the recent scanning of photos for my parents' 50th anniversary I've been looking at photographs of her at my age for the first time in quite a while, and it's a bit eye-opening. The physical resemblance is such a tiny thing compared to other resemblances, but just accepting and being happy about it as seen in those pictures seems like a step forward, to me.

What I never thought of before, somehow, is that of course I have trouble accepting myself, when I'm not accepting her.

I suppose I didn't realize how angry I still am with her until connecting it with how scared I am of being like her. What does it say of what I think of her, if I am so loath to resemble her?

Now, granted, no matter how much I value her intrinsically, as a person, I would still want to avoid some of her... mistakes. I think that's valid. But my reaction is a lot more extreme than that sort of caution justifies.

Sometimes I remind myself that I didn't start having kids at twenty years old, as though that fact on its own can protect me, as though it's a magic hedge that shields my life from hers.

The thing of it is, it gives a whole new meaning to the statement that holding a grudge or holding onto anger is harder on yourself than it is on the person you're angry at. Because it's not just the disadvantage of the anger itself inside me, that it hurts me more than it hurts her, it's that I can't accept the very qualities in her that I have in myself. And if I can't forgive her for those, how can I forgive myself?

I do want to see the image of God in her, I do want to see the beautiful and name it, to name her rightly. For her own sake, but even more now that I realize that if I can't do that, I can't name myself rightly, either. Not in full.

I am my mother's daughter, and I do look like her.

Alphabetized Book Reviews

2011-02-05T00:12:00.000-08:00

averagecats.com: 3295

I think I shall make alphabetized lists of my book reviews. One by author, one by title, like Sondy used to do for Sonderbooks. I like that better than a search box -- depending on the search technology, it can be hard to be sure you haven't missed a book, to prove a negative. It's pretty easy with alphabetization. I can never remember whether Alexander McCall Smith is properly filed under "M" or "S," but all I have to do is check both places.

I don't post nearly as many reviews as I mean to, and at times I go quite a while without adding any new ones, but nonetheless, it's not something I'm going to stop doing entirely any time soon. It makes sense to me to have them organized by a little more than a loose chronology ("loose" because it doesn't necessarily even correspond to the order I originally read the books, or when I started writing about them).

Oh, and I hadn't noticed, apparently blogspot now has a thing about publishing pages as well as posts. I was thinking that possibly the next two posts would be beginnings of lists, and I'd create links to them in my sidebar, then update those posts as I added reviews. A little clunky, but it seemed like the way to go, using a blogging website rather than an independent website. And I like blogspot. But I guess now I won't be doing that. Still linking to each review and alphabetizing it by hand, since I don't want to go through all the trouble of finding an easier way, but that shouldn't be that bad, especially once I'm done with the old reviews. Besides, I'm not working at a bookstore or a library right now. If I can't mess with my own book organization, I just might go crazy.

Of course, if you're reading this on facebook, you'd have to click the link to the original post for any of this to be relevant. Clearly you should do that. At least, you know, if you've heard of a book, you're not sure yet if you're intrigued enough to read it, and so you think, "I wonder what Marcy thinks of that book? I wonder if she's written a review of it? Does she think I should read it? I should go check!" Yeah... I mean, I know that happens to me all the time. Ooh, or if you want to buy a book and you remember that I reviewed it and that if you buy it on amazon and use my link to get to amazon and purchase said book I get a teeny bit of money. It's never happened yet, but it could, darn it. Especially with handy alphabetized lists for easier reference. Uh-huh.

Meditations on a Parent with Dementia

2011-01-20T18:15:00.000-08:00

averagecats.com: 1026

3/28/11 Update: I am retroactively making this blog post an Alzheimer's Blogging Competition Entry. To enter the competition, donate $1 or more, write your post, and email the organizers. For more details, see the Disabled Shop Blog.

For those of you who don't know, my mom was diagnosed with vascular dementia last October. I hadn't told all that many people until recently, but I bet many of you who read this are my family members, so I'm pretty sure you're aware of it.

But for those who didn't know, I'll answer the FAQ I've noticed from telling people in person: She's only 69, not as old as one might expect, for dementia. It's probably because of her heart problems, since it's apparently reduced blood flow to the small blood vessels in the brain that's causing her difficulties.

I've played with the idea off and on since the diagnosis of blogging about it. There's just so much that feels odd about the whole situation to me. I suppose it comes of having a new experience, never lived through before, which is fortunate. I'm glad it's my first time living through a parent having dementia. Sometimes I feel guilty that I can be so detached at times -- not so much caught up in the event itself, or concern for my mother, as in writing in my head about my own reactions and emotions, and even writing about writing about it! But it's not necessarily as bad as all that -- I think writers can have a tendency to sit back from themselves and observe moments of grief, like C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed, although I won't compare myself to him in any other respect. Writing is how writers make sense of the world, and we have to observe to write.

Yesterday the church I work at had a Mass for Alzheimer's patients and their families, and I was able to attend part of it. Thinking about going, that morning, is what made me start to take notes on my voice recorder as I drove to work, about actually going ahead and writing this post, and about what I wanted to say. I'm glad. Whether it's a helpful thing to read or not, it's very good to get it all out and off my chest. It was a beautiful service, too. Maybe next year I can bring Mom with me.

I must make the disclaimer, though, that this is my own personal reaction to her dementia, and it doesn't necessarily share anything in common with that of my siblings. Every person is different, and every relationship with a parent is different. I cannot speak for them. (Or for you, perhaps I should say, if you are the ones reading this.)

While I'm doing disclaimers, I should explain that Mom is still in pretty early stages. She can still recognize people, her memory isn't all that bad. It's her processing speed, her words, and her decision-making that seem to be most affected for now. She gets confused easily and has trouble telling stories. Ah, those are understatements. Everything is much more so than what would first come to mind when you hear a symptom like "confused easily." She can be left alone, but she couldn't live completely on her own. Her declines seem to come in spurts; she'll seem the same for a while, then get worse really fast, then stabilize again, and so on. I'm not around nearly as much now that I'm not working for Jeff anymore, but I know that's how it was.

Now, disclaimers and explanations aside, time for my couple observations. Maybe my first observation should be about that "meta-observation" I've already talked about, that sitting back and writing in my head. In a more sinister form, I have a tendency (in everything, not just this) to secretly want everyone to know, to understand and pity me. I want to be the hero of my own story. It's... human, I suppose. Especially growing up in such a big family, without much attention. I've come to peace with the fact that a certain amount of desire for attention isn't sinful -- we all need love, and no one can love without giving attention. It's okay to desire love, it's just important to be more focused on giving love than on receiving it. That doesn't mean one can't think about receiving it at all. I think. And attention seems to be the same way.

It's understandable too, as a writer. Framing your life as a story may not be a bad thing; so long as you realize that you aren't the hero of the story, or even a hero at all, necessarily. So I try not to take a sick pleasure in pain (not really an issue in the most painful moments), and remind myself that yes, this is a big deal; and yes, it's okay to want your friends to know.

I suppose my second observation is that pain comes and goes in waves. Sometimes I sincerely feel fine, and it doesn't seem difficult at all. It's the way things are, the way things have been, and putting it into words feels melodramatic and unreal; not an actual reflection of my life and my relationship with my mother. A side-effect of gradual change, perhaps. In fact, when my mom and dad and sister first got back from the neurologist and I heard how it went, the predominant emotion was relief; finally, we knew what was wrong, what to expect, and someone had taken her seriously. This story certainly didn't begin at the time of diagnosis, though diagnosis made the story easier to tell, easier to frame in one's mind. It was an answer to prayer.

Other times I don't feel fine at all. Very soon after that relieved, calm moment when I first found out, I decided to look into descriptions of vascular dementia online. That was a mistake. I freaked out, and no matter how often I've started writing this blog post in my head, I haven't thought much since then about what Mom's dementia could look like in the future, or how it might progress. Steadfastly ignoring the future might sound unhealthy, but I'm not sure.

You see, a diagnosis is helpful in terms of what to expect. You stop suspecting yourself of going crazy. Even though I knew before that neurologist appointment that something was wrong that my mom couldn't control, I've been much more patient in my interactions with her afterwards. It's so much easier to be patient. Simple interactions now seem overwhelmingly sad, but at least I don't get mad at her. Normally.

But on the other hand (and this is where I come back from my tangent to talking about ignoring the future), in some ways it's not helpful at all, because even now no one can tell you what to expect. My brief stint looking it up online told me that very quickly. It just varies too much, from person to person. There are averages, but no one can really tell me how much longer my mother is going to live, or what's going to happen in the meantime. Apparently the decline is faster (on average) with vascular dementia than with Alzheimer's, but that was about as definitive as anything got.

So... I could play out painful scenarios in my mind, but maybe (yeah, I'm not quite sure) I'm glad that my brain seems to be shying away from that. I can think about everything else relating to her dementia, in the present and in the past and in every aspect of my own reaction to it, but the future... I think maybe one thought, then flinch away, like the instinctive reaction to testing a broken bone. All I know is that I want to have kids while she can still recognize them.

I suppose... When I was a kid, I think the very first time I heard about Alzheimer's I thought it sounded like the worst thing that could happen to a person. It seemed incredibly sad. I wouldn't say the worst, anymore, but it still seems tragic. Maybe that's why I won't let myself imagine it going that far with my mom. And maybe that's part of what makes it seem so unreal right now -- yes, it's hard, watching her seem to... lessen... but it's not yet what I would visualize, thinking of dementia or Alzheimer's. The worst hasn't happened yet, and I can't quite make myself believe that it ever will. Though the possibility still has a weight, to nag on the edges of my brain.

One aspect of pain coming in waves is that, when I'm already sad about something else, those are often the times I start thinking about Mom more, and I become sadder. It's like it's just waiting there, in that emotion, for me to join it and think about it. Which may be a good thing. Intermittent grieving... it may be too much to handle, to feel the full weight all at once, or all the time. If gradual change is what gives me the ability to not always feel pain, all the time, at the loss of the person my mom was, and the relationship I had with her, such as it was... then I'm glad of gradual change. Even if it means living with it for longer. I think.

I haven't been very close to her, not for a long time. But she is still my mom. The exasperation I first felt, when her symptoms were first appearing and sometimes seemed exactly like how my mom had always been, only more so... well, that exasperation shifted to guilt shifted to sadness. I suppose I grieve the impossibility of ever having a deep relationship with her, now. I already knew I couldn't, to some extent, but this made it more real. At the same time, I do have a chance to change in how I respond to her. I have a chance to be patient and loving with her... in the extreme, actually. There's a book I plan on reviewing later, After You Believe by N.T. Wright, which talks about the gradual formation of virtue, and how it takes practice for something to become second nature. Well, if dealing with a confused parent isn't good practice in developing patience, I don't know what is. And... it's a good thing, to have that chance to deal kindly. Not that one can "make up" for earlier, impatient times, but it's still good, I think.

And that's all I have to say about that. For now. I'll keep you posted.

The Antepenultimate Blog Post

2010-08-17T19:02:00.001-07:00

averagecats.com: Critical Mass

This post isn't the antepenultimate blog post, it's just a post on the topic of the antepenultimate. I plan on keeping up this blog until I keel over and die. So if my eventual death doesn't involve keeling over, maybe I'll continue the blog from my grave. But it's highly unlikely.

I admit I included the words "the," "blog," and "post" in the title only because it made the above explanation slightly more relevant.

Anyway, the post was inspired by the discussion in comments on the blog post "The Ultimate Chalupa," by Patrick Rothfuss. Logically enough, antepenultimate came up. So then I said, "I was close to ecstatic when I saw 'antepenultimate' used casually and correctly in a linguistics textbook of mine. Apparently it’s a pretty standard word for linguistics — easiest way to talk about stress or other features on the antepenultimate syllable of a word. Generally stress."

But later I was thinking about it, and okay, it's not necessarily the easiest way to say it -- for example, for someone who didn't know the word "antepenultimate," "the next-to-the-next-to-the-last" or "the third-to-the-last" would be easier. But it'd sound silly in an academic context, and like you were talking about siblings, not syllables.

And that made me think, next time someone asks where I fall in the sibling lineup, I should say I'm the penultimate.

And that made me think, not only is Robert the seventh son of a seventh son, he's also the antepenultimate. Some people have all the luck.

But then, luck is the whole point of being the seventh son of a seventh son, isn't it?

Home

2010-07-11T22:14:00.000-07:00

averagecats.com: Individuality

Home by Marilynne Robinson

Read: 4/20/10-5/2/10

LibraryThing tags, if I had put this on LibraryThing: Family, Dysfunction, Grace, SLOBS

This book wasn't quite satisfying to me, but I decided to share about it anyway because of a couple compelling features: first, it's one of the only books I can think of about people from a big family -- after the kids are all grown up. An obvious hole in the existing literature, for people like me... not that there are many of us, but still. I thought it might interest my siblings. In Home they're all dispersed, the book is only really about three of the family members, but the large family still changes things, affects their memories and so on.

Second, the father in this book is... growing at least a little senile. I related to that too, although I feel funny saying much about it on my blog. But for those who don't know, I, being the next-to-youngest in a very large family, have older parents than people would expect for someone of my age. Like Glory, the main character in Home (although she's actually the youngest, and there were only... eight in the family, I think). My mother... seems to be losing some of her memory.

It was weird, seeing things I've never even put into words, skillfully and even lovingly portrayed in a fictional character completely unconnected to my family. To see in someone else's character some of the things I think odd about my mother in particular, apparently a possible general feature of someone growing old, even where it's only a more extreme version of a trait that was already there. Sorry, it's not easy to be more specific.

It was a hard book to read, but I liked it; or at least some of the time I liked it. I still want to read Gilead before I come to a final verdict -- the book jacket claimed Home is an "entirely independent" work, but I'm not sure I trust it. The father in Home is the best friend of the main character in Gilead. Apparently.

Oh, by the way, as to what the book's really about, as opposed to what I personally identified with about it -- it's about a son who fills the prodigal son and rebellious preacher's kid roles, but not exactly; it's about a father and retired preacher who loves him, but is sometimes horrible; and about a grown woman who has come back home because her own dreams have fallen down around her, watching the father-son relationship, wanting to be important somehow to her big older brother she's always admired but... Um. She's not the narrator, it's in third person, but it's still from her perspective. The book's not really about her, but it is. Yeah, a helpful description, I know. Anyway. And, of course, it's about home, in all its glory or lack thereof. So many things about home. Marilynne Robinson is very, very good (in this novel, at least) at showing the ambiguities and complexities of human relationships. There aren't a lot of dramatic, earth-shattering events in Home, but she makes even a person over-analyzing a situation totally engaging. She packs a lot of emotion into very simple sentences and scenes. So yeah, I think I liked it.

"'It is an oddly patient beast, my carnal self. I call it Snowflake. For, you know, its intractable whiteness. Among other things.'"

The Garden Behind the Moon

2010-07-07T09:13:00.000-07:00

The Garden Behind the Moon by Howard Pyle

Read: 5/14/10

LibraryThing tags, if I had put this on LibraryThing: Children's, Fantasy, Fairy Tale, Victorian

I tag it as a fairy tale not because it's a traditional one, but because it has all the elements.

This is a more charming and less adventurous book than Howard Pyle's usual fare, I believe. Not that there isn't any adventure; it's just not The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood. It's a little reminiscent of George MacDonald -- Pyle was born only about thirty years after MacDonald, and it looks like he started writing (or publishing) about thirty years after MacDonald did, too. So roughly the same period, and "one of the late nineteenth-century writers who helped invent the fairy tale novel," as Jane Yolen put it (quoted on the back cover of my library copy), so it's not particularly surprising one would remind me of the other. Yay!

Now let's see if I can remember all the adjectives I was thinking of when I first finished the book. Hmm. Charming, I already mentioned that one. Beautiful, sad, and oh bother, one I could remember just yesterday, gaaah... I think it basically meant beautiful and sad (but not tragic!) at the same time, but still, the connotation is so much better than if you just use the two words... it started with an "m"... gaah. Delightful. No, it's not the word I'm looking for, but I think it was still one of the original adjectives. Sort of picturesque... Ah well. Someday I'm going to buy this book, a nice edition with all the original illustrations.

From the Foreword: "When you look out across the water at night, after the sun has set and the moon has risen high enough to become bright, then you see a long, glimmering moon-path reaching away into the distance. There it lies, stretching from the moon to the earth, and from the earth to the moon, as bright as silver and gold, and as straight and smooth as a turnpike road...

It looks like a path, and that is what it really is, for if you only know how to do so, you may walk upon it just as easily as you may walk upon a barn floor. All you need to do is to make a beginning, and there you are. After that it is smooth enough walking, and you may skip and play and romp as you choose. Then you may come and go whenever you have a mind to, and if you will take my word for it, it is the most beautiful and wonderful road that a body can travel betwixt here and the land that so few folk ever go to and come back again.

For the moon-path leads straight to the moon. That was why it was built -- that a body might go from the brown earth to the moon, and maybe back again.

But why, you may ask, should anybody want to go to the moon? That I will tell you. The reason is that behind the moon there lies the most wonderful, beautiful, never-to-be-forgotten garden that the mind can think of. In it live little children who play and romp, and laugh and sing, and are as merry and happy as the little white lambs in the green meadow in springtime. There they never have trouble and worry; they never dispute nor quarrel; they never are sorry and never cry.

Aye, aye; -- that beautiful garden. One time I myself saw it -- though in a dream -- dim and indistinct, as one might see such a beautiful place through a piece of crooked glass. In it was the little boy whom I loved the best of all. He did not see me, but I saw him, and I think I was looking into the garden out of one of the moon-windows. I was glad to see him, for he had gone out along the moon-path, and he had not come back again."

And from the end of the book (but without any spoilers, don't worry!): "Well, you may smile at this story if you choose, and call it all moonshine, but if you do not believe by this time that there is more in moonshine than the glimmer and the whiteness, why, I could not make you believe it if I were to write a hundred and twenty-seven great books instead of this short story."

Mild Burns and Automotive Air Conditioning (With Many Parenthetical Explanations [Or at Least One Multi-Layered Parentheses {Slightly Inspired by Robin McKinley's Blog "*with footnotes"}])

2010-06-22T13:56:00.000-07:00

You know how when you have a mild burn (or a not-so-mild one that's a little older and healing), after you've already held it under cold water for a while you can do other things and carry on with your life for a time without holding ice to it or putting it under cold water again, but eventually it hurts more and the pain grows and grows until finally you go to the sink? Or something like that? Well, it turns out that, for mild burns at least (How mild, you ask? Well, instead of burning your hand or arm on a freakishly hot pan or other metallic something, you just poured near-boiling hot water [or to be slightly more accurate, tea] on it. That is all. [For a better idea of how near-boiling it was, here's the {entirely theoretical, of course} sequence of events: You boil water in a kettle. When it's ready, you turn off the burner and pour the water into a teapot with a tea bag inside. Then, directly after that second step, you pour the tea onto your hand. {And no, don't ask me how one manages to do that accidentally when the tea hasn't steeped and it's not yet time to pour yourself a nice cup -- I'm not going to tell you.}]), your car's air conditioning works almost as well. A good thing too, because holding a cold water bottle on your hand is a little awkward to do while driving. But all you have to do is turn on the air, hold your burn directly in front of the vent, and voila, it feels as good as if the air were water. I'm not sure the effects last as long, but that might just be because of the general warmth of the car, or the direct light of the sun, or some such.

That is all.

On Language Change and Oatmeal Cookies and the Oddities of My Brain

2010-06-09T14:32:00.000-07:00

There are certain jokes which don't rely on a punchline so much as on the feel of language -- wordplay that doesn't strike us as funny because of clever double meanings but because it just... has a certain feel, for lack of a better word. "Jokes" might be the wrong word, too. Nothing so formal as that. Like treating plurals as singulars, at least when they are plurals not formed with a simple -s. Like Tad Williams' facebook status update the other day, on how children are crazy, and "thank goodness I was never a children."

Or the phrase under consideration today, the frequent comment that so-and-so "is good people." This sort of informal not-exactly-a-joke may be overused, but unlike a true joke it doesn't seem to decay with use. It's sort of insinuated its way into our language, far as I can tell. In doing so it doesn't mean the same thing as saying so-and-so is "a good person." It has hardly any connotation of morality; the connotation is all of wholesomeness and appealingness. Or just appeal, if you prefer to keep your nouns simple instead of adding a nounizing morpheme to their adjectival forms. But that sounded too much like the verb for my purposes here. Anyway. So you see, "good people" even acts very much like a one-word adjective, despite being formed out of what's ostensibly one adjective and one noun.

This is why it makes perfect, perfect sense that the other day after making oatmeal cookies I often found myself thinking, as I ate them, "Oatmeal cookies are good people."

This is not an example of true language change however -- I highly doubt the above example will make its way into widespread use. The origin is too transparent at the moment -- one's brain can easily and subconsciously follow the change of meaning between "a good person" and "good people" in the original context of describing one person; using it for inanimate objects jars the brain back to superconsciousness, and most people who aren't fond of analyzing language would find it extremely crazy instead of realizing how much sense it makes.

It does sort of fit into the overarching reason for language change -- to make something either easier to say or to understand. I mean, there's this very specific connotation that has come to be signified by the words "good people." I wanted to apply it to my oatmeal cookies. That was the easiest way to express the intended connotation. But alas, for the reasons given in the above paragraph, I cannot. I must bow to the oft-said (in my linguistics classes), "speakers of languages are lazy." It's true in making me want to say "oatmeal cookies are good people," and it's true in preventing me, for I can hardly expect sufficient English speakers to become language analysts and agree with me that the above statement makes sense. It is not easy to understand. A pity. At least they can't prevent a blog post.

Yep. That's my answer and I'm sticking to it. And yes, I was this way before I took linguistics classes. I just didn't have as many resources at my disposal. It's harder when you have to build your resources from scratch.

Mairéad Ní Fhlatharta - Barr an tSléibhe - Abair Amhrán

2010-06-03T15:11:00.000-07:00

I don't know what it is about this video and song exactly (other than that it's Irish), but I really really like it. I kind of wish she had a CD.

It Rained Tonight, Hallelujah!

2010-05-17T21:03:00.000-07:00

This weekend was very stressful in a couple ways. Saturday I found out I'll be losing my job at the end of the month. I've known it'd happen at some point, but it's still not the easiest thing ever. Good news for the bookstore lovers, though - it's not closing, at least not yet - just reducing store hours and cutting all payroll. So you can still shop there. Please do, in fact, or it might well go out of business despite the belt tightening.

Then the other stressful thing happened yesterday - my car broke down. Not real near my house, either. Well, not super far. But still, why is it that my alternator issues always make themselves known on the long car trips? Okay, so this time there were a couple signs earlier that could have warned me if I'd been paying attention. Still, it's annoying. Just once, I'd like my battery to die a block from my house. Or a block from Fred's Automotive. Ah, well. No car troubles at all would be preferable, while I'm wishing…

So now the two cars I've owned in my life have both broken alternators. With very different symptoms, though. I prefer the newer car symptoms. The old Volkswagen needed the car to start before the gas guage would go up and show you how much gas you had, so when the alternator broke I thought I'd run out of gas, much to the inconvenience of some people who tried to help me rectify the problem. Gaah.

Anyway, this time my car was obviously having problems by the time I made it to the wedding (my destination), so I asked my dad to take a look at it before I left, and after charging up my battery he followed me home, then helped me get it towed when it died and gave me a ride. So it could have been much worse.

But at any rate, I didn't mean to talk so much about the stresses. I almost just mentioned that they existed and moved on to the point of the post (But then I had to explain. It's What I Do.), which was the bright spots in the midst of this weekend. Chief among these would be my cousin Keith's wedding. His new wife, Lindsay, is so cute! Such an expressive face. And I got to sit next to Dr. John Mark Reynolds at the reception, which was another bright spot. And it turns out that a dying car can lead to more Quality Time with your little sister, so that was good. It lead to a couple noteworthy quotes, even. Well, the first one happened at the wedding reception. Something like (feel free to correct this, Melanie): “I just accidentally said, 'I think I was the Holy Spirit.'” Then there's the one I said in the car later (yes, I'm self-quoting - it amused me and I want to share it and I'm willing to admit those facts!), which I'm having more trouble remembering exactly, although I remember the concept. Something like, “Very important, you do NOT want to see an un-pedded xing, believe me. Those xings really like to be pedded.”

At first those were the only bright spots I was going to mention, but then it RAINED! Even though the hills have grown yellow already! And that might be the best of all (no offense, Melanie), although… no, remembering Lindsay's face, I guess not. And my bread's out of the breadmaker and tastes so lovely, and I made waffles Friday night and the almond milk substitution worked great so I could eat them without upsetting my allergies, and there are still strawberries in the fridge. Life is good.

Sundays

2010-05-02T12:48:00.000-07:00

Let's blog about something other than books, shall we? Okay then.

There's a clear danger to sleeping in the car before church (as one might do if one's husband has to get to church early to set up and run sound). The marks on your face from the closest pillow to hand (a sweater) might still be there when church begins. Beware.

I dreamed this morning that I was singing in the worship band in church, but that I was so tired I couldn't keep my eyes open. I was having trouble holding my eyes open before I went up to sing, but I figured I'd manage once I was standing on stage. There were other elements to the dream besides that, but that's the one that sticks out in my mind now. I mean, I've had those dreams where you need to go to the bathroom. Those are kind of normal, make sense. But dreaming that you're tired? Come on subconscious, I'm trying to work on it. Shut up and let me get some rest, okay?

Church is one of those things where you don't always want to go, maybe you often don't, especially when you're tired, but you (or I, I guess...) are often glad you (or I) did. Community is so, so good. Even for us introverts. Probably especially for us introverts.

Our pastor said something today (in passing, it wasn't really a main point) about how common it is for people to doubt their salvation. I seem to differ from him in that I think it can be a healthy doubt. The Bible tells us to test our faith, 2 Cor. 13:5, "Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves!" But the words he used reminded me of some things I have thought through before. Sometimes it seems like the more I study the Bible the less sure I am of myself. Back in my senior year at Biola I learned that the Greek word normally translated as "trust" or maybe "belief" in the book of John means something more like "entrust yourself to." We are to entrust ourselves to Christ, faith and action encapsulated in one word. I often don't live like someone entrusting herself to Jesus. But I've come to the conclusion that all I can do is cry out to God, "I do believe; help my unbelief!" (Mark 9:24) What else can I do? What other choice do I have? "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life." (John 6:68)

When Athens Met Jerusalem

2010-04-30T23:24:00.000-07:00

When Athens Met Jerusalem: An Introduction to Classical and Christian Thought by John Mark Reynolds
Read: 1/10/10-3/30/10
LibraryThing tags, if I had put this on LibraryThing: Philosophy, History, Theology

Here ends my little marathon of book reviews. For the moment. I was trying to review all the books I finished reading in March. This is the last one. Well, there were a couple others, but I decided they weren't quite worth reviewing. I only finished reading five books in March -- "finished" being the key word -- I may not read as much these days as I have at certain other times in my life, but I haven't backed off that much.

Melanie gave John and me this one for Christmas, for which I must thank her profusely. Everyone must read it. Everyone. Kind of like The Discarded Image, only... more obviously structured, and easier to understand, I think. You know: just like it, only different.

It is, as the subtitle states, an introduction to classical and Christian thought. Why should anyone care about that? Because of the world we live in, for starters. The entire preface is worth quoting, especially for my purposes of urging you to run out and get this book ("do not pass GO"), but for now I'll settle for one paragraph:

"Anybody who lives in a place with a Christian heritage, even if that heritage lies mostly in the past, needs to understand the relationship that developed between Christian ideas and Greek philosophy. To do that, one first needs to understand the development of Greek and Roman thought. Christian theology has shaped and is still shaping many places in the world, and it was the Greeks who contributed a philosophical language to Christianity."

He adroitly handles both the objections of the non-Christians who doubt Jerusalem has anything beneficial to offer and of the Christians suspicious of Athens who think reason may be an enemy of faith. In fact, he shows that faith and reason flourish best together.

For those who already knew that, that's far from all Dr. Reynolds has to offer. This would be a good book to read after Love Your God with All Your Mind, because whereas that book mostly argued for the place of intellectualism in spirituality, When Athens Met Jerusalem actually goes with you on that journey. Arguments for faith and reason are there so you will trust your guide. Speaking of journeys, that reminds me of a good quote at the end of the book (hey, it's non-fiction, I've got to take advantage of the lack of spoilers):

"Christianity is so complete and so utterly true that it is a severe temptation to give up on mental growth. And yet God has not seen fit to give Jerusalem a complete guide to everything. Christians do not yet live in paradise. There is still a vital role for philosophy.

God delights in allowing his children to grow into his image by thinking as he thinks, with liberty based on his absolute freedom. Knowing revealed truth leads to better questions, not to the end of questions. Stagnation and mere repetition of the truths of revelation risk making this good thing the enemy of natural, God-created, human development."

Obviously a section more directed at the Christians, but being one of them, I loved it. It's one of the better descriptions I've read of the relationship between special and general revelation.

But his introductory material isn't just about persuading you that it's safe to listen to him because faith and reason are good friends; he also argues that our culture at this point in history is in trouble, and neither Athens nor Jerusalem are healthy without each other. There's an urgency to his message. And, I'm afraid, I must quote at length, I just like it too much:

"Christians must act quickly, for Athens and Jerusalem are dying and each needs the other to thrive. Athens has been sacked by secular barbarians who chain rationalism to materialistic science. Science can do useful things, but it knows nothing about truth, goodness and beauty. Science cannot subsume virtue to its limited methods, so it must deny the existence of virtue if scientists wish to control all knowledge.

Athens, the rational mind, does not by itself have the resources it needs to deal with the most important things. The ancient Greeks knew this, which was why so many of them were eager to embrace Christianity. We are learning the same lesson again, the hard way. The fashionable cynicism called postmodernism is merely the tired realization that rationalism without faith ends up destroying its own foundations.

Jerusalem, too, is sick. Its inbred residents, who cannot even do the sort of classical theology that produced their own creeds, sit in their ghetto talking only to themselves. Ironically, her ruling class is often composed of absentee landlords. They live in Athens and only show up in Jerusalem to collect their tithes. These rulers reject the creeds, since Athens has rejected both the religion and the classical thought behind them, but cannot substitute much of anything in their place."

All that said, after a rather quick introduction he gets into the meat of the book: a walk through the history of classical philosophy; starting with the pre-Socratics, taking a little more time with Socrates, lingering over Plato, continuing with Aristotle, and finishing with the neo-Platonists and the other schools of thought which led to Paul at Mars Hill. It's really quite a linear book for Dr. Reynolds. But of course, unlike authors of textbooks on the history of philosophy, he doesn't pretend not to have opinions of his own. Which is really quite advantageous, when it comes to getting any kind of a grasp on the connections and relationships between ideas. I don't know how you can do that without evaluating, sifting through the fabric of history...

The chronological structure does make his opinions and the message of the main body of the book a little harder to summarize, though. Except for maybe, Read Plato. That's what I'm going to do. Several times over, if I take his advice. And then I'm going to read this book again.

“For many readers the first experience with a serious book is reading a textbook. They learn, or are even taught, to skim to get to the main idea. Whatever the merits of this strategy for reading books written by committees of corporate educators, it is absolutely the wrong way to read Plato. These dialogues have no filler, no fluff. They are the unique, sometimes eccentric but always brilliant fictional inventions of a first-rate mind.”

That third sentence is such a great line.

Then, in an explanation of Aristotle's four types of causes: “A Chinese factory worker is the efficient cause of the original pink flamingo, but the minivan is the efficient cause of the squashed pink flamingo.” It's good to have that cleared up, eh? Sorry, it made me smile.

Okay, just one more favorite, then we're out of here: “Aristotle erred, but he did so because of a rational induction based on a large set of observations. Humans had been observing the heavens and keeping careful records for hundreds of years. Aristotle could induce the fact of change in the heavens since they move, but he also sensibly induced the eternality of the heavens since they seemed stable over all of human history. In 1572 a supernova shocked scientific Europe not because it was a change in the heavens (as even some college texts teach), but because this change seemed to be a birth or destruction of an object in the heavens. Aristotle was wrong.” Shock of shocks, a textbook misunderstanding human reactions to a historical event! And in astronomy?! No!

The Patron Saint of Butterflies

2010-04-29T18:44:00.000-07:00

The Patron Saint of Butterflies by Cecilia Galante

Read: 3/18/10-3/22/10

LibraryThing tags, if I had put this on LibraryThing: YA, Cults, Dysfunction, Friendship, Sonderbook (click here for Sondy's review)

I was surprised by how much I related to these characters, since I wasn't raised in a religious commune like they (and the author) were. The two characters (the book alternates their first-person perspective chapters), Agnes and Honey, aren't even very much alike, although they're best friends. But just as the author put different pieces of herself into the two of them, I related to different aspects of both girls.

Agnes wants to be a saint, and the copy of The Saints' Way that the cult leader gave her on her twelfth birthday is her most cherished possession. She fasts (at twelve years old, remember) and imposes the penances of her favorite saints on herself for her sins. I remember when I tried so hard to be good and felt that I was continually failing (mostly for not following my mom's "If you can't say anything nice..." rule, and because I cared who "started it"), although fortunately I didn't live in an environment that encouraged me to punish myself so severely for my failures. I shudder to think what would have happened if I'd had the same influences as Agnes had. I felt sad for Agnes, that she didn't have anyone to separate the truth from the lies for her, to show her where the good had been twisted and broken, so that she would still follow the good after uncovering the lies. But I'm getting ahead of myself, and of course I am not going to tell you how it all ends.

Then there's Honey, the commune's only orphan. Well, her parents aren't actually dead, but her mother abandoned her and she knows nothing of her father. Honey is far more rebellious than Agnes, and it frustrates Agnes to no end that her relationship with Honey seems to force her into sinning -- lying to protect Honey, and so on. Honey is both outsider and insider -- cut off from the rest of the community enough to be a bit more sane and have a more objective view of things, but it's still where she was raised, and she can more or less understand and interpret Agnes and the rest of them to the outside world, as much as that's possible. Between my own personality strength of empathy, the oddities of my own family, and growing up in the "Christian culture," (which, due to a semi-widespread Christian attitude [maybe from fundamentalism] that's more concerned with purity and separation than with loving people and impacting culture, can be a little odd and different even at times when it's being healthy, not weird and cultish), I can definitely understand the feelings of being caught between worlds and understanding both.

The quotation at the front of the book nicely sums up the feel of the story: "In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot." -Czeslaw Milosz

It's about truth and secrets, and changes which threaten to tear people and friendships apart from the inside out. Fun stuff. I recommend it, and am curious what my sisters would think of it. I know Sondy's read it, any of the rest of you? Want to borrow my copy?

The Hob's Bargain

2010-04-27T15:59:00.000-07:00

The Hob's Bargain by Patricia Briggs
Read: 3/8/10-3/9/10
LibraryThing tags, if I had put this on LibraryThing: Fantasy, Romance, Ghosts

This is one of the ones I'll have to be a little bit vague about, plot-wise -- there are spoilers right from the beginning. They're not hard to feel coming, but still. That's different than having them blurted out in a review. Then there are other things it seems safe to say since they aren't really surprises per se; given that they happen at the beginning and are intrinsic to the plot, I'll go for it.

The main character, Aren, has the sight in a world very hostile to magic. If people find out you're "mageborn," you might just be killed, or you might have a choice -- to die or to become a bloodmage -- which involves killing and torturing and eventually going insane and basically rotting from the inside out. Fun stuff.

So needless to say, Aren isn't too happy about having the sight, and she doesn't go around telling people about it. As she puts it early on in the book, "Not very useful. If I had to be stricken with magic, I would rather have had something like Gram's talent for healing, or my brother's knack for finding things--especially because the consequences of having magic were so deadly."

But then her world changes (quite literally), magic is unbound, and wild magical creatures who haven't roamed the land in hundreds (or thousands? I forget) of years are about again, and of course no one in her village knows how to deal with them. To protect her people (including those of the villagers who hate her guts) from them and other threats which emerged with the changing of the world (or, in fantasy epic terms, with The Breaking of the World, I suppose -- seems like the way they might term it, far enough in the future)... well, cue the adventures of the rest of the book. Of course a bargain with a hob is involved, since that's the title. She has plenty of her own fighting to do though, aside from any bargains.

I liked the way Patricia Briggs dealt with believers in a One God suddenly having to appease nature spirits and such -- unlike the way most fantasy would have treated it, it was quite respectful to monotheism. In her hands, the whole thing was actually quite amusing.

And, of course, I loved the characters. Because I always love Patricia Briggs' characters, particularly her heroines. Maybe they're all the same -- wounded but strong -- but I don't care. That's general enough, they're distinguished in every other aspect. And they're all wounded in different ways and with different personality strengths. She strikes just the right balance for perfect empathy, admiration, inspiration... yep. Never obnoxious, just... strong.

I was sad when I realized this one's a stand-alone. A lot of her older ones come in twos, and I thought I'd heard someone talk about this one and its sequel, but... guess not. Very disappointing. Oh, well. I guess that makes it a good choice to start with if you haven't read any of her books before. And I have a copy I can loan out.

I Crack Myself Up

2010-04-24T20:35:00.000-07:00

So, on my dinner break at work tonight I've been going through what I have of my rough draft of Sometimes Blind thus far, just making quick little edits, trying to make it ever so slightly more presentable as a rough draft for a First Reader.

Now, Word has a handy dandy little "insert comment" feature that I like to use liberally as I write and edit, to keep me from getting bogged down when I need to keep writing rather than stopping and making the changes immediately. I came to one of those comments tonight.

For a little context, this is after the main character has stepped through a portal into a different world, and I've already made clear that only a few people in this other world speak English, and each of them for very specific reasons. So the comment that amused me reads, "Um, an issue here of…. Why the heck does he speak English?!!! AAAAaaaaaahhh!!!" That character... hadn't, earlier. Since that comment will NOT be making it into later drafts, I thought I'd share my amusement with all y'all now.

Heart's Blood

2010-02-15T10:16:00.000-08:00

Heart's Blood by Juliet Marillier
Read: 1/7/10-1/27/10 (but only in about three sittings -- around 50 pages one day, the rest of it a few weeks later)
LibraryThing tags, if I had put this on LibraryThing: Fantasy, Romance, Fairy Tale, Historical Fiction, Ireland, Medieval, Family, Fear... and a couple other tags I won't include this time just in case it'd spoil things for a couple of you.

Perhaps the best way to introduce this book is with the author's own words (I will link to it only with the warning that the page includes spoilers, but I don't think the part I've copied here really spoils anything, unless you just don't want to know what a book is about at all before you read it, in which case, why are you here?):

"Beauty and the Beast has always been one of my favourite fairy tales, and readers will recognise the bones of it in Heart’s Blood: a mysterious house with an alienated, disfigured master, a priceless plant growing in a forbidden garden, magic mirrors and unusual household retainers. The story of my novel has the same general shape as that of Beauty and the Beast.

However, this is far from a fairy tale retelling. It’s not even a close reinterpretation of the traditional tale. Heart’s Blood is a love story, a... [Marcy just now realized one of the descriptions she uses could be a big spoiler to the right kind of brain and cut it] ...a family saga, a story about people overcoming their difficulties, and a little slice of Irish history, as well as a homage to a favourite fairy tale."

Aside from the magic mirrors and one other spoiler aspect, there isn't a great deal of the fantastic in this book, especially when one has "Beauty and the Beast" in mind while reading it. It had a gothic feel to me (although I'm not widely read in gothic literature), even more so than some of the traditional retellings, which seems a little odd now that I think of it. I suppose when there's already a beast in an isolated castle you don't want to make the tale too dark, or the happy ending begins to feel implausible. And I suppose it made particular sense for Heart's Blood, because one of the main themes concerns facing your fears, so a dark, frightening mood lends itself to the theme.

And now you're going to think it's horror or something. Not so much. It's fantasy, romance, and historical fiction; in that order, I think. Maybe more romance than fantasy, but not enough that you would ever want to shelve it there. Heavens, no. For starters, fantasy readers don't like going into the romance section, whereas the reverse is not true. Romance is one of those things... any genre can have a pretty huge dose of it without necessarily offending its readership or moving it in the bookstore. Anywho.

As for the historical fiction, it's set in western Ireland, Connacht, in the twelfth century. Dang it, I started a new paragraph, but that's really all I have to say about that. Huh. I mean, I could say more about the period, but I don't really need to for my purposes, and I'd risk spoilers. So meh. You can read more about it (on the author's page, or elsewhere) after you finish the book.

I didn't like it quite as much as some of her other books, but that isn't saying much, as Daughter of the Forest and Wildwood Dancing are among my favorites. I'm not quite sure why I didn't like it as much. It was certainly well written and enjoyable. It just didn't have that extra something those two did, to flabbergast and amaze me. Maybe the themes and characters didn't speak to me as much? And yet, I did like and relate to them; the hero not as much as other characters, perhaps, maybe that's it. Maybe I stayed too busy thinking about the book instead of living it. I'm really not sure. It was very good. I wouldn't be particularly surprised if other readers fell in love with it.

40,609!

2010-02-11T22:57:00.000-08:00

At this rate, I'll hit 50,000 in another two months. Of course, I don't know if the story will be finished at that point. For all I know, this is a 100,000-word book, in which case it'll be another year, writing at this pace. But I think I might be at least halfway through already. And I can speed up, if I need to. I think maybe.

Ah, poor Beth. I'm sorry, real Beth, because I'm definitely putting the Beth in Sometimes Blind through a lot of crap. I don't know that you'll be happy about sharing names.

On the Edge

2010-02-02T20:41:00.000-08:00

On the Edge (The Edge #1) by Ilona Andrews
Read: 12/8/09-12/9/09
LibraryThing tags, if I had put this on LibraryThing (I'm currently at the max number of books I can add for free -- the lifetime upgrade doesn't cost much, but still, not doing it yet): Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Rural Fantasy, Romance, Georgia, Atlanta

The most recent of Ilona Andrews' (actually two people, a husband and wife team) books and the first of a new series, I read the first two books in her (agh, I mean their) Kate Daniels series before this, but I'm reviewing this one first because I need to return it to the library.

The first order of business is to explain my "rural fantasy" tag. It's a slightly misremembered term, on my part, from the original "rustic fantasy" the husband in the writing team came up with: "The first hint of trouble came when Gordon edited it and took to calling it 'rustic fantasy' as opposed to urban fantasy." At first I thought this was just silly. I mean, I can tell what the point is, but isn't that ridiculously redundant? And yeah, "urban fantasy" sounds like it should be urban, but in reality the sub-genre is basically defined as our modern contemporary world with fantasy elements -- often with vampires and werewolves, often urban, pretty often with large doses of romance and mystery, but those aren't the defining points. So okay, "rustic" or "rural fantasy" is going to be those, only set somewhere in the country, right?

After reading it, I decided it's an oddly appropriate classification. It's so appropriate, I don't know if anyone else will ever write a book that fits the category as well as this, but oh well. See, even though your standard fantasy fare generally is set in the country, On the Edge feels even more rural than that! How so? It reminded me of things I've heard about the Appalachians, for starters.

In this world, you have the Broken, the Edge, and the Weird. The Broken is our world, complete with Wal-Marts. The Weird is a place where blueblood aristocrats rule. Magical strength is very important in the Weird, and the aristocrats tend to have it. Magic isn't usable in the Broken, making magic users from the Edge or the Weird feel broken, hence the name. The Edge is the long, long, long strip of land between the Broken and the Weird. Most people in the Broken don't know about the Edge or the Weird, wouldn't be able to see the boundary. And for people in the Weird, it's painful to cross to the Edge, and possibly fatal to cross to the Broken. People on the Edge have to have sufficient magic to cross to the Weird. If those from the Weird succeed in crossing to the Broken, there's the danger of losing their magic if they stay long enough, and not being able to cross back.

Edgers -- well, they could easily remind one of white trash, only the main character, Rose, is way way way too likeable for me to ever want to call her that. Their culture makes a lot of sense, given that they're isolated from the rest of the world, with no police force. It's like what I've heard small towns are like, with plenty of people rubbing each other the wrong way, but they have their own ways of dealing with it to avoid blood feuds between their clans. And they're poor, because if you're born on the Edge you don't have a proper Broken birth certificate, and that means you work the same kinds of jobs any illegal alien works.

So, that's your basic world premise. I won't get into the main character's premise, that's another bundle of explanation. Not too much for the book -- the exposition is handled just fine -- but a bit much for one review.

Besides finding the world fascinating, did I like it? Yes, definitely. Some of the situations for the romance were a bit of a stretch, a little silly, but some of the later explanations helped. And I liked the characters. The main character, Rose, takes care of two little brothers I thought were awesome. I'd tell you all about them, long review or no, but I don't want to spoil it. Oh, and the novel's hook was great. A wonderful first page, a wonderful first three pages, and then just try to put it down. There were several places that made me laugh out loud, great lines and scenes. I'll see what I can quote without ruining anything. Hmm. Well, this isn't the best of them, but it had me cracking up. For all you manga fans out there:

“She barely had a chance to taste her first cup of coffee when Georgie wandered out of his room, sleepy eyed, his hair tousled. He ambled over to the window and yawned.

‘Would you like some Mini-Wheats?’ she asked.

He didn’t answer.

‘Georgie?’

Georgie stared out of the window. ‘Lord Sesshomaru.’

The demon brother from their comic book? ‘I’m sorry?’

‘Lord Sesshomaru,’ he repeated, pointing through the window.

Rose came to stand behind him and froze. A tall man stood at the edge of the driveway. A cape of gray wolf fur billowed about him, revealing reinforced-leather armor, lacquered gray to match his cape, and a long elegant sword at his waist. His hair was a dark, rich gold, and it framed his face in a glacial cascade that fell over his left shoulder without a trace of a curl.”

This one amused me, too:
“His gaze snagged on her Clean-n-Bright uniform. ‘Why are you wearing that?’

‘It’s my uniform. Everyone in my company wears it.’

‘It’s hideous.’

Rose felt her hackles rise. The neon green uniform was hideous, but she didn’t appreciate him pointing it out. She opened her mouth.

‘Yet despite it, you look lovely,’ he said.

‘Flattery will get you nowhere,’ she told him.

‘It’s not flattery,’ he said coldly. ‘Flattery requires exaggeration. I’m merely stating a fact. You’re a beautiful woman wearing an ugly sack of unnatural color.’”

Fire

2010-01-22T21:14:00.000-08:00

Fire by Kristin Cashore
Read: 10/31/09-11/1/09
LibraryThing tags, if I had put this on LibraryThing: Fantasy, YA, Romance, Beauty, Family, Dysfunction, Sonderbook (click here for Sondy's review)

This is a companion to Graceling, and can be read before or after, although it seems to me one mystery in Graceling would be a touch easier to solve after reading Fire. The ease of solving that particular mystery isn't integral to the enjoyment of Graceling anyway.

They take place in the same world, but Fire is set in the Dells, which are separated by almost impassable mountains from the countries in Graceling, so the culture and world are rather different. Most importantly, instead of Gracelings, the Dells have monsters. "Monster" has a very specific meaning in this world. "It was their unusual coloration that identified them as monsters, because in every other physical particular they were like normal Dellian animals. They had the shape of Dellian horses, Dellian turtles, mountain lions, raptors, dragonflies, bears; but they were ranges of fuchsia, turquoise, bronze, iridescent green. A dappled gray horse in the Dells was a horse. A sunset orange horse was a monster." The herbiverous monsters, the mouse and rabbit monsters, are harmless; but the carniverous ones are much more dangerous than their animal counterparts. "They craved human flesh, and for the flesh of other monsters they were positively frantic." In addition, monsters are so beautiful that they have the power to stun and control the minds of those without the experience and training to resist them. Monsters come from monsters. They can breed with the non-monsters of their species, but the babies are always monsters.

The main character, Fire, is the last known remaining human monster (with bright hair and eyes), with all of the baggage that suggests. She may be gorgeous, but she has to deal with people loving her for that instead of for who she is, or wanting to possess her, or just out and out hating her for it. Monsters are a bigger threat and danger to her than to anyone else, since they're crazy for the flesh of other monsters. And she has to figure out how to deal with her power. Her first impulse is not to use it at all, because Fire's father was a monster--both in the Dellian sense of the word and in the more metaphorical sense. As you might guess, that's an important theme to the book.

As my sister pointed out in her review, there's quite a lot of casual sex in the book; not on camera, but still, be warned. While there certainly are some issues with that, and I think the consequences would sometimes be different than what Cashore portrays (affairs can actually be quite traumatic for those cheated on, something I almost forgot until I read Sondy's review, since it's not a side of things much explored in Fire), it makes some sense for the story, too, as the book concerns at least three bad fathers and the legacy they leave their children, including how their sons and daughters deal as they grow with love, sex and parenting children of their own. So, although not all of the extra-marital sex is portrayed as a Bad Thing, not all of it is portrayed as Good, either. And some of it is mixed, which fits with themes about the mixed nature of good and evil people, that none of them are all good or all bad (although some are certainly more evil than others!).

So with that caveat, Fire is, like Graceling, powerful, heart-breaking, beautiful, entertaining, thought-provoking and romantic. Enjoy!

“The city folk adorned themselves with even more monster trappings than the court folk, and with much less concern for the aesthetic integration of the whole. Feathers jammed randomly into buttonholes; jewelry, quite stunning really, necklaces and earrings made of monster shells, worn by a baker woman over her mixing bowl and covered in flour dust. A woman wearing a blue-violet wig from the fur of some silky monster beast, a rabbit or a dog, the hair short and uneven and sticking out in spikes. And the woman’s face underneath quite plain, the overall effect tending to an odd caricature of Fire herself; but still, there was no denying she had something lovely atop her head.”

Oddities

2009-12-19T21:40:00.000-08:00

It's weird how much sitting down and writing helps with writer's block. Uncanny, I tell you. At this rate, I may find out what happens next after all.

Anger and People Reading Skills

2009-12-01T21:39:00.001-08:00

When I get annoyed, angry, or irritated with customers at work I normally put on a blank face and give pretty short answers to questions. Sometimes I wonder how transparent that is. I mean, I'm polite, but there are only so many ways people hide anger, and it seems pretty obvious to me. At best it should be interpreted as unfriendly. On the other hand, most of the customers who make me angry aren't all that bright, people-wise. Sometimes I think I could start yelling and swearing and I'd only get a, "Huh? Are you mad or something?" Or, more likely, since this does seem to happen occasionally with the blank-faced treatment, they'd just find it amusing for some reason. "Aww, look at the cute little retail worker, she doesn't like us." Either way, I wonder what the odds of detection are. And how far do the odds drop when the customer in question is drunk?

Yes, working retail has made me more cynical. Maybe it's a good thing -- I was pretty idealistic before, this has just injected a dash of realism. That could be good. Maybe.

Fear of the Blank Page?

2009-11-20T22:19:00.000-08:00

Maybe what I have is the same thing. But that's not how I would describe it. That's just... woefully inadequate. The physical blank page or blank computer screen isn't that threatening. It's not a physical fear, it's the absence of ideas, or the twisting of ideas that are so like and unlike one's dreams, the blank story that is scary. It's much more like Fear of the Void than Fear of the Blank Page. A big, black, gaping nothingness that threatens to swallow us all. Or at least me, when I step out into it.

And maybe I have stepped out into it before, and supports appeared for my feet. Maybe I even grew confident enough to run laughing through the void, ground always appearing underneath me. Still, it doesn't matter. Every time I come back to the void it's stressful again, being asked to jump. And I might have to crawl from stepping stone to stepping stone, only to get stuck out in the middle of nowhere and crawl back. Poor story. Is it any wonder that when I'm stressed I write less?

20,747 for now this evening. Only 30,000 to go in 10 days! Piece of cake! Ikes.

I can do this. That's just 3000 a day. It's manageable. It is. Time to run laughing and skipping through the void, wind in my hair. I wonder if bikes are allowed out there? If so, do I need a helmet?

Was this what they meant when they said NaNoWriMo can make you go insane?

2009-11-13T12:55:00.000-08:00

If you have a blind girl stuck in a cave in a new world for a day or two, no one else around except a stranger who's also stuck in the cave, what do you do? Why, have them talk and talk and talk and talk, of course. What else are you going to do? Say, "And they were the most boring days of her life, the end." Oh no, not "the end." "And then, the next day..." That's what you do. Yeah. But think of all the words you would waste, doing it like that! Why, thousands, down the drain! And all that interesting, easy-to-write dialogue, just gone, poof! It'd be like... like drowning a kitten. Yeah. A perfectly good, cute kitten, just because you don't want it. A valuable, word-count producing kitten. So sad.

=)

NaNoWriMo is... interesting. Especially when you've got about one known plot element left, after the current scene, and you have certain mysteries set up, and no answers to them yet. But it is good dialogue. Really!

7,675

2009-11-10T14:03:00.000-08:00

Or 7,670 by nanowrimo.org's word counter. Either way, I haven't accomplished much else today, and I'm still tragically behind on this year's novel, but at least I did laundry and made progress today. Almost 3000 words. Not bad.

Not bad, not bad, not bad at all. I can do this, I can do this... ::Marcy talks to herself, trying to convince herself of the feasibility of 2009's NaNoWriMo::

That whole "show, don't tell" thing is really annoying sometimes. It can help pad wordcounts, but it can also really really delay the more interesting, exciting scenes. I have a feeling I've written some things I will be cutting later... Ah vell. (No, that's not a typo. It's a German accent.)

Um, so yeah, I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year. By the way. For info on my novel, go here. I was thinking this year would be harder than last year because it'd be easier -- that is, I've already proved I can do it, so I wouldn't have as much drive to succeed. Now I'm not so sure, though. It seems... well, I write as fast as I did last year, over a thousand words per hour generally, but it doesn't feel like I'm writing that fast. It feels like this idea is so much newer than last year's was, more strange, less exciting, and I'm just plain not prepared enough. But I think that's wrong. But that's my barrier, this year. I probably don't need my previous strategy--an even more ambitious goal, to kick my drive to succeed into gear. My thought was to not only try for a 50,000 word novel by the end of November, but also 8000 more words in my Aedhira novel and at least a few minutes a week editing The Miller's Granddaughter. I guess I'll still try. Meh.

The Wolf Hunt

2009-10-26T15:53:00.000-07:00

The Wolf Hunt by Gillian Bradshaw
Read: 9/11/09
LibraryThing tags, if I had put this on LibraryThing: Historical Fiction, France, Medieval, Fantasy, Romance, Sonderbook (click here for Sondy's review), and another tag I won't actually use because it'd be a bit of a spoiler

Ware spoilers for this book, for they abound. The book's cover blurb, the Publisher's Weekly review, several of the top amazon customer reviews -- for some reason they all feel compelled to summarize the entire plot, right up to the climax of the book. I understand a certain amount of summary is customary in reviews, but the entire thing? Good grief.

In some ways I didn't mind too much myself -- the only reason I picked the book up at all is because I was browsing in the library and picked this one out of a row of books by Gillian Bradshaw based on reading the blurb. The description fit my mood at the time and sounded more interesting to me than her other books. I was chagrined as I read to realize how much the blurb had revealed, but it was still well-written enough to keep my attention, even when the details I'd picked it up for were long in coming and I found I already knew certain elements which could have made for suspense.

So, what can I tell you about the book, without spoiling anything myself? Not as much as I'd like (perhaps the reason so many tell everything...), but here goes. As you can tell from my tags, it's historical fiction, set in medieval France. There are a few fantasy elements, but they're included in what I can't tell you, although they're really not hard to guess. It's based on a poem by the twelfth-century Marie de France, and set at the end of the eleventh century, although she says in the author's note, "as befits a medieval romance, the history is not entirely exact." At the very beginning of the book (so don't read this if you want utter and complete spoiler-freedom) the main character, Marie Penthievre, is kidnapped from her priory in Normandy and taken to the court of Brittany, where she fears she'll be forced into a marriage that will give Brittany her Norman lands. Although there was a king over all of France at the time, Normandy and Brittany were basically at war much of the time, despite that. Early medieval, and all.

I didn't find the plot as melodramatic as Sondy did. Probably in part because of how much I was expecting, from reading the blurb. Partly because some of the more melodramatic elements, like her kidnapping, are entirely plausible (actually quite common) for that time and place in history. And unlike certain books in the romance genre (this book is certainly romantic, but doesn't really fit into the genre), the author's done her research, which does a great deal to make kidnappings and things seem quite level-headed rather than melodramatic. She's not just spinning a yarn set in the vague romantic past.

Quite the contrary, this is one of the best medieval novels I've read, as far as being true to the time period. She doesn't gloss over anything, she gets across a good deal of their mindset as least as it relates to the fantasy elements, and she doesn't make them seem like idiots in the process (which is good, because medievals weren't idiots). I knew she was a scholar, but not even all scholars get the medieval period right, and most of her books are set in the ancient world, so I was quite relieved.

There's also a good dose of mystery, but it isn't a who-done-it -- you know exactly who did it, the whole time. The mystery is in how in the world the culprit is ever going to be caught, how the main characters are even going to realize there is a mystery to solve. Add in some interesting thematic elements, and I highly recommend this one. Enjoy!

The Power of Full Engagement

2009-10-14T14:12:00.000-07:00

The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal by Jim Loehr & Tony Schwartz
Read: 8/27/09-10/4/09
LibraryThing tags: Self-help, Business, Life Management

In some ways this is a very typical self-help business-y kind of book. It quotes and uses concepts from other self-help, it cites studies and confuses correlation with causation. But it does have some very good ideas. It's not as deeply lifechanging as The Pathway by Laurel Mellin, but few things are. It's value is in the tips, the little changes one can make to one's life which turn out to be extremely powerful.

I suppose the first is in the subtitle. Makes sense to me. Perhaps the second is the idea of rhythmicity, oscillation, or cyclicism versus linearity. Apparently humans have ultradian rhythms, 90- to 120-minute cycles, which cause an "ebb and flow of our energy throughout the day." Taking breaks at those intervals (or even just switching the type of task, perhaps) instead of "powering through" can be tremendously energizing, and thus actually much more productive, no matter what kind of work you're doing (i.e., even if the book mostly focuses on athletes and corporate workers, this also applies to housewives, artists, etc.).

Actually, I can see this concept of cycles and rhythms at play in much more of life than what the book discusses. It seems to me to be a reason behind the various kinds of festivals and holy days commanded in the Old Testament, at every level from the week to the month to the year even to the Year of Jubilee. We're told there's a "time for everything," we're repeatedly told to remember -- because we mortals can only do so much at once. We have to take turns focusing on different things. We think in our quest for excellence we need to be and do everything at once, but that simply isn't true. I'm not trying to take these things from the Bible as proof -- they are not the entirety of the reason I believe cycles and rhythms are so important -- I just think, if that's true and they are important, it makes sense to see that illustrated here and there in the Bible. Since it's how God designed us and all. Anyway.

The third thing I got out of it is that balancing stress (or exercise) and recovery is important in every area of life; physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual (although for the purposes of the book by "spiritual" they just meant the higher purpose kinds of questions, it seems true for the actual spiritual side of things as well). This is most easily seen in the physical -- obviously lack of exercise causes atrophy, but too much exercise can cause injury and burnout, not to mention what not eating or sleeping can do to energy levels. There aren't perfect parallels in the other dimensions, but the general principle is still there. I know someone who never faces her fears, and her emotional capacity has kept shrinking and shrinking. On the other hand, someone who never renews themself emotionally is probably going to be more irritable, etc. Good self-care is in the balance, and while you don't want to be perpetually focused on yourself, you will be better able to love others if you take care of yourself. Don't be a needless martyr.

I also enjoyed the section on values. Realizing what my most deeply held values are was rather eye-opening. Since, again, we're mortal, it may sound good to try to hold all truths equally, but it doesn't normally work out that way. There are going to be some things you value more highly than others. And to realize you're not living out even your own most deeply held values, let alone God's... well, it's rather humbling. But if you hold those things in your heart every day, keep reviewing them and checking your actions against them... well, you can begin to change for the better. Elementary self-help, I know.

Another powerful tool for change is habits, or what they call in this book "positive rituals." Because we have a limited amount of willpower, it makes sense to work on a limited amount of changes at a time, until they draw us on their own, requiring no willpower. It's very FlyLadyish. Actually, one of the reasons I wanted to read this book is because I'd heard it described as explaining why FlyLady works so well (although of course FlyLady is never mentioned in the book).

And... I think that's all I got. There was more, but those were the big points, as far as I'm concerned.

The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes

2009-10-13T10:55:00.000-07:00

The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes (The Sandman Volume 1) by Neil Gaiman
Read: 5/18/09
LibraryThing tags: Graphic Novel, Fantasy, Mythology

I can't refresh my memory too much on this one because I already returned it to Joi, but it's not all that hard to remember the main points for review. This introduction to the Sandman series tells of the accidental capture of Dream, aka Morpheus, aka Sandman (well, accidental in the sense that they were trying to capture Dream's sister, Death; not Dream); the horrible results for our world, and the quest that follows after. It's a very structured volume, which I like. I love the mix of mythology and the epic with our contemporary world -- I'm not quite sure why, since stories which begin in our modern world normally bore me; I suppose it's because, like Buffy, there's plenty of fantasy mixed into our world, it's not a story of escape from our doldrums into a parallel world. Yes, come to think of it, it's perfect because it takes mythology which really is awesome in all its resonances and symbolism and whatnot, and frees it from what even C.S. Lewis in The Discarded Image admits can be the biggest weakness of medieval and renaissance literature -- "sheer, unabashed, prolonged dullness."

So yes: it's awesome, and I've heard later volumes are better! Squee!

I especially liked this quote, from a scene in which havoc has errupted in the dreamscape: "The quakes and lights send the keepers of the stories scurrying for cover. Their monsters hide with them, under the bed." Tee hee. Okay, maybe it needs context. Meh.

The Little Lame Prince

2009-09-10T20:36:00.000-07:00

The Little Lame Prince by Dinah Mulock Craik, illustrated by Hope Dunlap
Read: 5/17/09-5/20/09
LibraryThing tags: Fairy Tale, Fantasy, Children's, Victorian

Cute story. You should read it. Mmm. 103 pages of original fairy taleness... It probably would have been even better if I had read it when I was a little kid, but that cannot be helped.

Poison Study

2009-08-26T21:50:00.000-07:00

Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder
Read: 8/25/09-8/26/09
LibraryThing tags: haven't bothered with this yet, but they'd probably be fantasy, romance, maybe suffering and... oh, I don't know. Let's get on with the review, shall we?

I finished Poison Study earlier today. I don't normally review books so quickly after finishing them (ah, there's an understatement for you), but I've had words spinning around in my brain and I need to get them out. I've found a new favorite, thanks to amazon's recommendations based on books I like and thanks to whoever it was that sold this copy to the store I work at. I highly recommend it, and if five of you want to email the author to say I said so, I would appreciate it, since that could get me a free signed book. Blogging that feels like cheating, but I doubt she cares, and I'm sure I'll mention the book to five people in person either way. This blog post was mostly composed before I found out about the referral program. Anywho. Poison Study is about a woman who is given the choice to become food taster instead of being executed. It's about much more than that, but I wouldn't want to spoil anything.

Someone might think it's just a fun light fantasy/romance, but that person would be wrong. For example, to the amazon reviewer who said, "I thought the plot was well thought out and pretty good, although it slid over precisely what it was that Brazell had been trying to do to Yelena," my witty rejoinder is, "huh?" And I'll throw in, "I do not think it means what you think it means" for good measure. Props for liking the book despite that, but I'll give him or her the benefit of the doubt and assume he hasn't read much fantasy, making him a little more disadvantaged than the rest of us when it comes to putting two and two together in said genre. I pity him for the details he wouldn't have noticed that he didn't notice, as they added to character rather than plot (hmm, no one ever mentions "character holes"... although of course characters are "flat" if they severely lack).

Sure, I've read fluff that sort of resembles this novel -- at first glance. An author has a good idea, loves the characters and is willing to put them through horrible pain and suffering for the sake of a good story, is good at appealing to emotion, but doesn't necessarily apply very rigorous logic to the plot. Or perhaps simply doesn't have a very sophisticated grasp of history or some other subject important to the novel. This book still would have been good if that had been the case. But there were a few details here and there that made my jaw drop. She obviously thought of everything, but maybe even more importantly, she told it well, without feeling the need to prove herself and spell everything out for you. Maria V. Snyder is an amazing writer, but not in a way that draws attention to itself. I don't think most readers would notice -- not her techniques anyway, just the result of loving the book.

Side note: I hate it when literary fiction critics look down their collective noses at genre fiction, and I really hate reviews of books which "shine" in the midst of "trash" that "gluts the market." Since I only read books I'm interested in, before I worked at a bookstore I really didn't know what they were talking about, or where all these market glutters were. Even now, I'm pretty sure that the most commercial of writers take their work seriously. As Tad Williams has said. If a book seems like it was thrown together, it probably wasn't. Again, perhaps the author didn't have a very good understanding of history, or some such. Whatever. I'm not trying to make it sound like I think most fantasy is "light fare," I'm just trying to say that Poison Study is not one of those books that seem like it was thrown together -- even if seems to be one of the ones that seem like that, to some people, at first. Clear as mud? Great. End side note.

One thing in particular... well, I won't explain clearly because it involves a very minor spoiler. But some novels would have elaborated on it for pages and pages, full of emotional angst. This one mentioned it in two places, just a couple of lines each, and leaves the emotional whammy to your deductive powers. I was very impressed. Obviously.

Oh, and don't get me started on the politics of this fantasy world, because I'd probably spoil something; let me just say, once again, what seems black and white at first? Yeah, not so much. Oh, don't get me wrong: there are thoroughly evil villains. But... heh heh. Maria V. Snyder is like... like a cross between Patricia Briggs and J. Michael Straczynski. And maybe... oh, I don't know who else. I'm not literate enough to think of someone known for their subtlety right at the moment. Besides a scene from Remains of the Day which springs to mind; I'd probably just confuse the issue if I said she was a cross between Patricia Briggs, J. Michael Straczynski, and Kazuo Ishiguro.

The mysteries could have been a little more difficult to solve at times, but given the character and writing strengths, I didn't mind. The characters' densest moments had good reason behind them, true to the characters (and by "true to the characters" I do not mean the characters are Dumb). Oh, and the ghost! Brilliant! Yes, I know you don't know what I'm talking about. I command you: go find out.

For myself, now I've glowed and gushed enough that I'm afraid I'm wrong, exaggerating in those first obsessive moments after reading a good book. Yep, better go read it again to check.

Stupid Internet

2009-08-21T17:40:00.000-07:00

Okay, okay, obviously I'm not that upset with it. Still, I give up on researching SMF (standard manuscript format) online. I'm placing a hold on a good old-fashioned book (which I chose during online research, of course) through the library (well, using the library's website, of course).

Wading through contradictory advice about The Standard is getting annoying. The book is Writer's Digest, so it should be reliable. Don't know if it'll be adequate. I found very important information on epigraphs (along the lines of "DON'T" -- don't try using them until after your manuscript's accepted, because at the very least it'll really annoy the agent or editor evaluating your manuscript, for a number of reasons) here. If I see nothing about this in the book, I will conclude it is inadequate. Then I'll check to see if the beloved 2010 Guide to Literary Agents or 2010 Writer's Market I've been drooling over for so long (well, I was drooling over the 2009 ones before, but same difference) have any articles that mention it. If they don't... well, I guess I'll be sad. And paranoid about how religiously I must follow publishing sorts of blogs such as the one I already linked to or Miss Snark's.

Musings on a Kind of Creativity, Staff Picks, Standard Manuscript Format, and Author Hero Worship

2009-08-19T21:41:00.000-07:00

Normally we use the word "creative" to mean original, innovative, that sort of thing. By that definition I am not creative when it comes to cooking. I'm good at baking because I am good at following instructions. Occasionally I'll make very specific adjustments to a recipe for very specific reasons. Unless they are easy to remember in the extreme, I will write down these adjustments for future reference. Besides things like hot dogs or spaghetti, I do not make cooking decisions based on what I have on hand. I plan to cook something, figure out what I need, and go buy it as soon as I can based on the new grocery budget I'm trying and our priorities (milk will always win out over some random thing for a new recipe). So no, I don't consider myself very creative in the kitchen.

But recently as I've perfected (according to my husband, woo!) my pizza recipe and cooked it repeatedly (mmm, cheesy goodness...), I've been thinking. In a different sense of the word "creative," cooking, well, almost always is. Provided it involves "real" food, anyway. Because cooking is about creating something, about taking diverse, often rather inedible ingredients, and bringing them together. Food-wise, it is creating order, harmony, goodness. Despite itself, it sometimes feels like it fulfills my creative urge. Especially when forming pizza crust dough from my breadmaker into a round flat disc. It'd be even better (in that respect) if I didn't use the breadmaker, I suppose, but I'll take what I can get. It's not creating anything permanent, but it's still a kind of creation. And I've always enjoyed the eating more than the cooking, so I don't mind the impermanence all that much. If it were a novel I would, but no. It is food. I will eat it. Mmmm.

In other news, remember how I wanted the books on my table of picks at work to move? And how I never updated you guys on the changes in that situation? Well, there is much good news that has stored up, what with the lack of updating and all. First off, my table was promoted! Quite a while ago now. That is, it was moved up to the ground floor from the basement. Everything on the ground floor does better than anything in the basement. This promotion was a Good Thing. And so second off, as far as I've been able to track sales (going by the sales in the computer; thus counting anything I've bought myself but not counting anything which mysteriously disappeared; whether stolen, or misplaced, or simply not scanned out when sold), a grand whopping total of 285 items has now sold off my table. This seems decent, even over the given time period, which is kind of fuzzy through a lack of adequate records on my part. Not sure when the "promotion" occured, but I last blogged about it in Feb. '08... yeah, it seems decent. And about as good as the average display table in our store. Once again being a nerd, I have the totals by author in my Palm. Not the totals by title, I'd have to be at work for that. The winner is C.S. Lewis, with 26 titles sold. He has an unfair advantage, since I put more of his books on my table to begin with, but hey, the complete Chronicles of Narnia only sold once. As far as I remember. Hmm. Second place goes to Jane Austen, with 22. I believe those are almost entirely Pride and Prejudice. Third goes to Emily Bronte with 14, I think all Wuthering Heights (What else would it be? I think I'd have noticed), fourth Orson Scott Card with 12 (Ender's Game) and fifth is a three-way tie between Lynne Truss (Eats, Shoots and Leaves), Tolkien (assorted wonderfulness), and George MacDonald (also assorted, but I think mostly The Light Princess and The Wise Woman and Other Stories?) with 11 each. Some authors also have an unfair advantage with larger amounts (or any at all) of used books in our inventory, or a higher priority in our reorder list, for reasons of being wanted by people besides those who browse my table. I still find sales statistics interesting, no matter how they are skewed... Plus I love my table, and love the concept of people taking the lovely books home with them. Yes, "love" is the word of the sentence.

And in yet other news, I think I may be done changing my first draft of The Miller's Granddaughter into the second draft. There are still new scenes to add, I haven't finished going through it as far as that's concerned, but there's one particular scene that is going to change things drastically enough that I might as well just make it a new draft. I'd have to change things I've already changed once, and it seems simpler, organizationally speaking (if I'm going to have a copy saved of each draft so I have a record of all the changes). So yay. Kind of. Haven't finished adding all the handwritten edits into the electronic copy, but close.

I'm also working on standard manuscript format (SMF for the rest of this post). I need to do more research, since my first cursory bit of research yielded instructions for the romance genre (don't think it's very different, but still) and my second cursory bit yielded instructions for short stories (and thus doesn't talk about helpful things like chapter breaks or epigraphs), but it shouldn't be hard. I'm pretty sure it's one of those things that can be found all over the internet. From what I've gathered so far, SMF is Ugly. This is because it exists for entirely different purposes than the format of the published book. Editors want to catch errors. They also want to have a standard way to estimate length (other than taking your word for it, although you would be well-advised to be accurate, within the rounding formula and guidelines) and have room to write notes. But still, does it really have to be in Courier? Ah, well. My poor ugly professional-looking (er, when I'm finished making the format changes...) manuscript.

Speaking of writing and editors and research online, it seems that blogging stories and poems really does count as "previously published" to many magazines. This seems silly to me, but whatever. I may start asking some of you for your opinions and criticisms in person... or not. I think I'm probably better at novels than short stories, so how much time do I really want to take from polishing a novel in order to write and edit and attempt to publish short stories, just to make my query letters to agents about my novel that much more impressive? Hmm. Ask me again after I've collected some rejection letters... meh.

And in... um, still more news... (hey, it's been a while since I've posted [and my last post that didn't review a book or movie was back on April 15th, and that was just a little poem -- my last long non-book-review post was March 15th! Sheesh! That merits many parenthetical phrases in a great gush of words], give me a break here -- pent-up words, pent-up words!) I've decided the closest I come to hero worship or celebrity obsession is with authors. It's... not very close, I suppose, but it's the closest. I love their blogs. a) They've very entertaining, what with being well written, since they are WRITERS, after all. b) Since I only look up the blogs of authors whose books I love anyway, they often seem to have certain personality traits I like, and they feel like people I could be friends with. If I weren't a Random-Fan-whose-path-will-never-cross-theirs-unless-maybe-I'm-published-someday, that is. (And no, that's not why I want to be published. Honest. Almost 95% not why.) My latest author blog find is Tad Williams'. I quite like it. I'm on a Tad Williams blog kick. Hmm, I should go catch up on my poor neglected unread old favorite awesome author blogs, like Shannon Hale and Kristin Cashore and (at this point I closed this window by accident and nearly had a heart attack before remembering that blogspot does, in fact, automatically save your work periodically...) Writer Unboxed (because of Juliet Marillier) and Neil Gaiman (although my Neil Gaiman kick is actually pretty new and feels a little silly since I haven't read all that much of his work yet). Or maybe I should sleep. Nah, that can't be right...

A Live Coal in the Sea

2009-07-14T10:17:00.001-07:00

A Live Coal In The Sea by Madeleine L'Engle
Read: 5/25/09-6/1/09
LibraryThing tags: Identity, Redemption, Grace, Family, Dysfunction, Suffering, SLOBS

Madeleine L'Engle was born in 1918 and this book was published in 1996, making her 78 years old at the time (or 77 more likely -- she was born late in the year, like me), and it shows -- in a good way. I have never before read a book that dealt with so much family melodrama, dysfunction, and pain in such a calm, level-headed, mature way. It was truly impressive. It's contemporary adult fiction by the way, a little rare for her. But unlike most contemporary adult non-genre fiction I've read, it's actually worth reading! It's easy to tell from what I've read of A Circle of Quiet and what I've heard about Madeleine L'Engle from other people that there are large autobiographical elements, although it's certainly fiction still. The wisdom and experience of her 77 years (or however many when she was actually writing it) permeate the pages. I noticed some of the reviewers on LibraryThing didn't like the ending, which irked me a bit, since I thought it was beautiful and the book would probably have become meaningless without it. I can sort of see why some people might not -- one element, or at least the foreshadowing and preparation for one element, seemed like a bit of a stretch to me. But in general it was masterfully done.

I loved the title. Don't read this part if you're a stickler about any kind of spoiler, because you don't discover the meaning of the title until 167 pages in. On the other hand, it is the title, it's from a fifteenth-century quotation, and if it were me, I probably would have placed the quotation as an epigraph at the very beginning of the book. But the process of discovery of the meaning of the book is certainly interesting too, so I can see why it's on page 167, and maybe you shouldn't read this. You decide; here it is, quoted from William Langland: "But all the wickedness in the world which man may do or think is no more to the mercy of God than a live coal dropped in the sea." Isn't that beautiful?

Preliminary Meditations on A Circle of Quiet

2009-07-03T23:25:00.000-07:00

This isn't a real book review, so I shan't be bothered with things like links and author names. Well, okay, maybe I'll give you the author name. Madeleine L'Engle. Happy now? A Circle of Quiet is book one of "The Crosswicks Journal," and the subjects chosen to be printed on the cover (you know, the classification intended to make things easier for bookstores -- and I speak from experience when I say they often do, though they can make us laugh) are "spirituality" and "autobiography." They'll do. It's meditative, as this post will be, although not really because I was trying to imitate the book.

I watched The Secret of Roan Inish today. Good movie. Afterwards I was feeling the sadness and longing of it, inherent in any story touching on selkies and the sea. And then I realized that I left my journal at work today, and couldn't write, at least not in the manner I had wanted to. I hadn't even been sure that was the thing I wanted to do next, but I didn't like having the option taken away. I became more sad, feeling more strongly the need to write and my own inability to do it, for reasons besides no journal. Instead I read the first 60 pages of A Circle of Quiet. In one sense I should not have, I should have just written, stopped making excuses for myself. But on the other hand I am better now, and more able to write again.

I recently decided that, although I have to treat writing very seriously and as a job in itself before getting published if I am to have any hope of being published at all, I cannot completely commit to it yet. I have to concentrate on things like finding a stable job. But what has changed since I decided that? I still have done very little actual fiction writing. I still feel a compelling need to -- must... get out... this creative... something! Which is good, I think, although I might be letting it pressure me too much, as though anything I write has to perfectly express that urge. On the other hand, I still can't keep myself from writing -- I do need to write more fiction, but if I am not writing fiction, I'm writing poetry. Or if I'm not writing poetry, I journal. If I don't journal, I blog. If I don't blog, I probably journal. Round and round I go, thankfully.

Remember one of my old posts about writing? When I said I was like a child playing in a sandbox? Oh, let me find it for you... Here it is. Madeleine L'Engle talks about that! I was so grateful to understand what I was feeling, through her.

"I could, during the long years of failure, console myself with the fact that van Gogh sold precisely one picture while he lived, and that he was considered an impossible painter... I think that all artists, regardless of degree of talent, are a painful, paradoxical combination of certainty and uncertainty, of arrogance and humility, constantly in need of reassurance, and yet with a stubborn streak of faith in their validity, no matter what... And I think, too, and possibly most important, that there is a faith simply in the validity of art; when we talk about ourselves as being part of the company of such people as Mozart or van Gogh or Dostoevsky, it has nothing to do with comparisons, or pitting talent against talent; it has everything to do with a way of looking at the universe. My husband said, 'But people might think you're putting yourself alongside Dostoevsky.' The idea is so impossible that I can only laugh in incredulity. Dostoevsky is a giant; I look up to him; I sit at his feet; perhaps I will be able to learn something from him. But we do face the same direction, no matter how giant his stride, how small mine." Yes! Of course, in my "constant need of reassurance" it feels a little amazing that I could do even so much as that. But there it is.

There are some points I disagree with her on, even ones rather integral to the book. She believes one cannot be humble and... have any thoughts of oneself at all? It seems to be what she's saying. Ah, yes, here it is: "One cannot be humble and aware of oneself at the same time." I instinctively shy away from it, and then rationalize why it seems anathema. What she's getting at is the concentration, the complete lack of self-consciousness which can be seen in a child's play, or in... the best of art. But, but, but...! Yes, it's definitely good to forget oneself at times. But must one, completely? I don't think so. Someone or other said, (I can't be bothered to look it up at the moment) "Know thyself." How can one know oneself if one never thinks of oneself? In fact, I think this is an unBiblical definition of humility. I won't be bothered to look up the references or the exact quotes, because I'm being lazy, or at least because I'm having fun just ruminating and don't want to interrupt it, but there are a couple verses that come to mind. One is from James, about reading the Word and forgetting what it says being like a man looking in a mirror and forgetting what he looks like. An analogy not exactly talking about thinking of oneself, but then there's another verse. In one of Paul's letters, I believe, he tells his readers not to think of themselves more highly than they ought, and also, if I remember correctly, not more lowly than they ought, but with "sober" or "sound" judgment. That doesn't sound like advice to not think of oneself at all. Yes, us introspective sorts often do need to stop and get out of our own heads. But... I can just picture the mind games! "Oh wait, I'm thinking of myself. Got to stop that. Aaah, there, I'm doing it again! Must... think of something else! Concentrate! Ah, that was better... aaahk!" I don't think Madeleine L'Engle would go that far, except... some of her meditations in this book almost sound like that to me. How can one learn or grow in such a mental environment?

And as for art and writing... yes, it's good for it to be unself-conscious. Lose yourself in it, and enjoy! And yet... there's also a very self-conscious side to it. You takes your hopes, fears, daydreams -- your deepest emotions -- and "write what only you can write." You stop imitating and start creating by working out your own demons, maybe not even realizing what you're doing... but then you do. And sure, a good writer has to be good at observing other people, but, to me, I'll never really be able to write for others in a deep sense, not without writing for myself first. And I'll probably always be best at writing characters who resemble myself in some respect. Fortunately I'm a bit empathetic, but even so... hopefully that comes out into my writing naturally, without my trying too much, because I doubt I can force it. Of course, A Live Coal in the Sea seemed very autobiographical in some respects, so does she really disagree with me? Probably not. Doesn't change the fact that I hated a few of the sentences in the book, yelling at them, "That's wrong!" But not take myself too seriously? Sure, that's good advice.

There was something else I disagreed with, I think. I forget now. Oh, wait. It was about mental health. True, the greats have not been people known for their sanity, or people who "would qualify for a mental-health certificate." But is it really the wound, the craziness, the flaw that makes the artist? None of us can escape a life touched by sadness and pain, that's not the issue, I don't really want to talk about creating art in a perfect world. The issue... hmm. Shouldn't moving towards health cause one's art to grow? Isn't sanity inherently good? Now, I have to qualify here. It's true that might not mean qualifying "for a mental-health certificate." It isn't always a good idea to go with the status quo's concept of health, to fall into line and conform. I agree with her on that. But I won't let them take the entire concept of sanity, of... soundness with them. And that brings me to my biggest object of contention here -- "If we were all what is generally thought of as mentally healthy, I have a terrible fear that we'd all be alike." Okay, she gets brownie points for using the words "what is generally thought of as" here, it redeems the sentence. Nonetheless, who cares what "they" think of as mentally healthy? Let's get down to business and talk about real mental health, about being sound and undiseased and what God designed us to be! If such a thing were possible here on earth now, what would be the result? I must say, with Lewis, that we would be more individual, more unique, not less. Yes, our diseases, wounds, and weaknesses give us a lot of character, a lot of who we are. But do they have to? Would all truly healthy people truly look alike? I can't believe it, I won't. God is more creative than that. And the clones I've seen are trying too hard to be clones and to force happiness with it.

I think that might be all I had to say. For now. I'll let you know if I think of something else. Oh, wait, here's something! I totally agree with this (I might think NaNoWriMo is a great invention, but I can't really understand anyone who actually is happy with it as a novice activity, solely on the level of hobby with no desire for publishing), "But during that decade when I was in my thirties, I couldn't sell anything. If a writer says he doesn't care whether he is published or not, I don't believe him. I care. Undoubtedly I care too much. But we do not write for ourselves alone. I write about what concerns me, and I want to share my concerns. I want what I write to be read." Yes, writing has always been a way to find a voice for me, if only because my literal voice doesn't always seem to do that great of a job.

Of course, she also says, later, "I covered the typewriter in a great gesture of renunciation. Then I walked around and around the room, bawling my head off. I was totally, unutterably miserable.

Suddenly I stopped, because I realized what my subconscious mind was doing while I was sobbing: my subconscious mind was busy working out a novel about failure. (Marcy's note here -- I would so do that! Or at least a blog post, erm.)

I uncovered the typewriter. In my journal I recorded this moment of decision, for that's what it was. I had to write. I had no choice in the matter. It was not up to me to say I would stop, because I could not. It didn't matter how small or inadequate my talent. If I never had another book published, and it was very clear to me that this was a real possibility, I still had to go on writing."

Wow this is long.

First Clement

2009-06-23T11:11:00.001-07:00

First Clement by Clement, from The Apostolic Fathers in English translated and edited by Michael W. Holmes, after the earlier version of J.B. Lightfoot & J.R. Harmer
Read: 5/1/09
LibraryThing tags: Theology, SLOBS

I found First Clement interesting in a rather academic sort of way, but was less generally interested than I was in Athanasius, and soaked up less. It's a very early letter, "...one of the earliest extant Christian documents outside the New Testament." I found it interesting (that word again -- sorry, but I did, it's the best word in this case, honest and true, I'm not being a lazy writer) how similar it was to 1 and 2 Corinthians in certain respects (First Clement was also written to the Corinthian church), and how much the author quoted Scripture. And that's about all I remember getting out of it. I should probably read it again sometime... It's too bad I didn't make it to the SLOBS discussion on it and Athanasius. That probably would have helped.

The Incarnation of the Word of God

2009-06-19T17:11:00.000-07:00

The Incarnation of the Word of God: Being the Treatise of St. Athanasius: De Incarnatione Verbi Dei by Athanasius, translated by A Religious of C.S.M.V. S.Th., with an introduction by C.S. Lewis (the one I linked to here is a different edition than the one I read, but fortunately it still has the intro by C.S. Lewis)
Read: 5/1/09-5/3/09
LibraryThing tags: Theology, Incarnation, Christology, Classics, SLOBS

A beautiful little book. I wasn't sure what he could say about the incarnation that I hadn't heard before, but Athanasius surprised me (despite Lewis' recommendation to that effect...) with his depth and simplicity. I was especially impressed by his meditations on the impossibility of the Author of Life remaining dead. It was, as I said, beautiful. I highly highly recommend it. I think I'm going to have to start reading it regularly. For one thing, it didn't really feel like I let it soak in. Letting it soak would definitely be a good thing.

“The Greek philosophers say that the universe is a great body, and they say truly, for we perceive the universe and its parts with our senses. But if the Word of God is in the universe, which is a body, and has entered into it in its every part, what is there surprising or unfitting in our saying that He has entered also into human nature? If it were unfitting for Him to have embodied Himself at all, then it would be unfitting for Him to have entered into the universe, and to be giving light and movement by His providence to all things in it, because the universe, as we have seen, is itself a body. But if it is right and fitting for Him to enter into the universe and to reveal Himself through it, then, because humanity is part of the universe along with the rest, it is no less fitting for Him to appear in a human body, and to enlighten and to work through that. And surely if it were wrong for a part of the universe to have been used to reveal His Divinity to men, it would be much more wrong that He should be so revealed by the whole!”

The Witches of Eileanan

2009-06-08T18:41:00.000-07:00

The Witches of Eileanan (The Witches of Eileanan #1) by Kate Forsyth
Read: 2/2/09-2/13/09
LibraryThing tags: Fantasy

I forget what was I going to say about this one. It was good, an intriguing beginning to a series. The characters seem childish at times, but it looks like they'll get over it. The brogue employed in the dialogue throughout the book adds a fine flavor. It's fairly standard fantasy in some ways, but richly done. I'll let you know what I think of the rest of the series as I read it.

Star Trek

2009-05-29T23:52:00.000-07:00

John and I just got back from seeing the new Star Trek movie. It was fun. It showed, once again, that J.J. Abrams is not a particularly deep person.

****SPOILER ALERT*****

The worst of it was realizing, when John pointed it out as we talked after the movie, that Abrams killed billions of people in the story just to get one person to break down. Right and wrong? Sure, they exist. But feelings, now those are fascinating. Please, if I'm ever so flippant with my worlds or characters, someone point it out to me, while I'm still in the editing stage!

Fun movie, though. I enjoyed it.

Poe's Dupin Stories

2009-05-17T14:18:00.000-07:00

"The Murders in the Rue Morgue", "The Mystery of Marie Roget", and "The Purloined Letter", from Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe
Read: 4/2/09-4/3/09
LibraryThing tags: Short Stories, Poetry, Classics, Mystery, MBC

These were cool. I hadn't realized that Poe invented the mystery genre. Reading Sherlock Holmes after this, it was extremely obvious that Doyle stole a couple things from Poe. The "MBC" tag, by the way, refers to the Mystery Book Club I've been going to when I can.

For inventing a genre, these stories aren't bad. But just as stories judged on their own merits, I liked Sherlock Holmes a heck of a lot better. Which is understandable; I mean, Sherlock Holmes. Come on. These ones... they seemed a little more like case summaries taken from a book of logic puzzles than actual stories. Even as far as atmosphere, something Poe is normally the master of.... they were only so-so, I thought. Not the best Poe. Maybe if I hadn't been so distracted by case details conveniently published in the newspaper in systematic fashion. You know, just in case the newspaper's readers want to try their hands at solving the crime. Or police letting them snoop around once they saw their "credentials," which would have been what exactly, on their first case? Meh. The subsequent stories did improve somewhat. I thank him for inventing the genre, and for a bit of entertainment and some good lines.

“‘That is another of your odd notions,’ said the Prefect, who had a fashion of calling every thing ‘odd’ that was beyond his comprehension, and thus lived amid an absolute legion of ‘oddities.’”

“‘Be a little more explicit,’ I said.

‘Well, I may venture so far as to say that the paper gives its holder a certain power in a certain quarter where such power is immensely valuable.’ The Prefect was fond of the cant of diplomacy.”

Heir to Sevenwaters

2009-05-15T19:38:00.000-07:00

Heir to Sevenwaters (The Sevenwaters Trilogy #4 -- okay, okay, not exactly, but it amuses me, and it almost is) by Juliet Marillier
Read: 1/17/09-1/18/09
LibraryThing tags: Fantasy, Romance, Historical Fiction, Ireland, Medieval, Irish Mythology, Mythology

Beautiful book. I'm so glad she came back to Sevenwaters, although as far as I've heard everything she writes is wonderful. Plot-wise, it definitely is distinct from the original trilogy, and there's a lot of promise for the two books to follow. I hope she is able to finish them. The romance was fairly obvious, but it often is in romance, and it was still good; well developed, actually romantic, all of that. And the fairy tale elements! It wasn't a fairy tale retold, but the elements of a fairy tale were definitely all there. Kind of like Fruits Basket. Only different. Um, with Irish mythology instead of the Chinese zodiac. Yeah. It's not so much a new take on the existing mythology (as fairy tales retold sometimes are) as... an addition to them, I suppose. Recommended.

Child of the Prophecy

2009-04-17T19:33:00.000-07:00

Child of the Prophecy (The Sevenwaters Trilogy #3) by Juliet Marillier
Read: 12/19/08-12/21/08
LibraryThing tags: Fantasy, Romance, Historical Fiction, Ireland, Medieval, Redemption

I really really liked this one; especially the perspective, the character Marillier chose to be narrator. It added a wonderful tension to the story and immediacy to the battle between dark and light. It would have made a good book in its own right, but with the backdrop and setup of the last two books the perspective change had an even greater impact. Delightful.

Flight

2009-04-15T22:18:00.000-07:00

There's a flight of the strong
and a flight of the weak,
wings like an eagle
or winged feet like a thief.
Soaring high
or rushing away,
destination
or escape.
Whether strong or weak
I do not know;
but I,
I want to fly.

More Depressing Poetry

2009-04-12T19:55:00.000-07:00

Well, technically, it's not depressing poetry because I was depressed when I wrote it, and it helped... =) But... don't know that it'll be the same for my readers. Though we "read to know we're not alone", and so for example certain very depressing episodes of Buffy are tremendously encouraging and helpful for some people... But anyway, thus the blog title, what with the sadness and all.

This is... not in honor of Easter. Sorry.

I'm a child again
Huddled in a ball
I'm a child again
Locking the bathroom door
I'm a child again
I can't get free can't get free can't get free.
Don't touch me
I can't take it right now.

Powerless
It's all the same
Powerless
I'm helpless against myself
Powerless
I keep calling me back calling me back calling me back.
Don't tell me
It'll be all right.

I know this one
I know how the game is played
I know this one
I've seen I've read the end
I know this one
It keeps playing over again over again over again.
Don't you dare sing along
But I can't change the tune.

It's kind of ironic, because as far as my overall story arc is going, for once in my life I do feel like I'm actually changing. But I still have moments when the above feeling haunts me, though they be fewer and farther between. I would have liked to end the poem, at least, on a happier moment. But I couldn't. It wouldn't let me. Only my blog post is allowed the happier ending. That's the way it goes sometimes. Even the Psalms... people say they move from dark to light at the end, but not quite all of them. Sometimes you just get snapshots of the hopelessness. Is it worse because you can't see the whole progression of the Story, of dark to light, in one single poem? Okay, I'm just going to be quiet now, that's enough of the defense mechanism of babbling. As a further random aside, the "currently reading" on my sidebar is currently wildly inaccurate.

Son of the Shadows

2009-03-23T21:08:00.000-07:00

Son of the Shadows (The Sevenwaters Trilogy #2) by Juliet Marillier
Read: 12/7/08-12/18/08 (started reading before that on 7-8-08, but stopped after only 20 pages, so I just started again in December)
LibraryThing tags: Fantasy, Romance, Historical Fiction, Ireland, Medieval

As you can see, it has been a few months since I read this, so this won't be a super-detailed review. I remember I didn't like this one quite as much as the first or third, but my opinion is hardly universal. Certainly it was a good book. But the first one was amazing, and had other things going for it that I won't talk about for those of you who haven't read it yet. And the third one... well, in my opinion the perspective (especially with the setup of the first two books) made that one, well, also amazing. So. I think this one was the least self-contained of the three (or at least it has the least closure -- like I said, the third one relies on setup), which is probably another reason I liked it less than the others. It does have its own story, but that story is shaped by motivations and struggles which aren't fully played out yet. And there's a little less time actually with the love interest too, which can be annoying. Like in Sleepless in Seattle. I like to see their romantic interactions. The more the better. "Interactions" being the key word. Not just daydreaming or hearing others talk about them or hearing their voice on the radio (again, Sleepless in Seattle). Yep. Anywho.

Literary Alchemy

2009-03-15T21:28:00.000-07:00

The month is almost halfway over. I have logged 6 hours and 9 minutes out of the requisite 50 hours of editing. 72 of those minutes tonight. I have a practically hopelessly long way to go if I want to win, which of course I do. Lose? That's no option. On the other hand, even if I do lose, I've done more than I would have otherwise, I suppose. Goals are useful, that way. They push you, even if not as far as you want to go.

I wrote a scene tonight I really liked, the essence of one of those themes I want to come through, for one section of the story, anyway. I work first from themes and motivations -- emotions are far more important to me than the physical, and physical description will come later. Fortunately, I'm getting some physical description in now because some themes have physical symbols... Anyway, I've been thinking about alchemy recently, at least in relation to The Miller's Granddaughter, first because of talking with Rachel about the book How Harry Cast His Spell, and then because of another book I had begun recently, Spinning Straw into Gold: What Fairy Tales Reveal About the Transformations in a Woman's Life, and then from there to the fact that my book, The Miller's Granddaughter, is in fact inspired by a fairy tale which I now realize has a very obvious alchemical theme running through it, being in fact about spinning straw into gold. I am a bit troubled that the order of the colors seems to differ in the two books, and annoyed that the better order is probably in How Harry Cast His Spell, since it has explicit references to alchemy and Spinning Straw into Gold rather ironically doesn't, at least not yet; annoyed because I read How Harry... later, after roughly shaping the color stages in my book. But arguments could be made for various orders, I suppose. To a certain extent. And I'm all for diverging from past literature, so long as one realizes exactly how one is doing so and why.

So. I haven't done much writing or editing. I need to do more. But bit by slow bit, I hope to turn my story itself into gold, just as within itself it portrays the process. I cannot express how thankful I am for this, for my novel, for the satisfaction of writing it... for... everything. I only wish I did more. I still get afraid of it, when there hasn't been time in a while. I fear that if I sit down and try to write, nothing will come out. I fear that I'm tapped out, that it's too hard, that I've been away from it for too long and I've lost everything I had. But then I sit down, and as it turns out, there's something there after all. There's always something. Again, thank You, God.

Oh, by the way, if anyone can think of good literary examples of invisibility as powerlessness rather than power, could you pass that on to me? As far as I can think of, ghosts are the only example of that. And maybe The Invisible Man, but ideally I want to find it in fantasy literature or fairy tales, and I haven't read The Invisible Man. There's a bit of it in The Lord of the Rings, but really the Ring-bearer loses power when he puts on the Ring only because the Ring makes him more visible to his enemy. Still, that concept of fading is part of what I'm going for. There might be a good quote in Deathly Hallows, but I most aggravatingly do not own that book. Still, I'll definitely get a hold of it again if I need to. And then if anyone can advise me whether or not I'm stretching things to connect this invisibility theme to alchemy... white is one of the colors, but that's not the same as transparency. Meh. I'll make it fit, darn it. There can be multiple themes, not just one. Yeah.

And now I think I may be spending more time writing about writing than actually writing... ah, well. Even if not in equal proportions, I do seem to need both.

Timing could be better...

2009-02-28T17:25:00.000-08:00

Aaaaah! I forgot NaNoEdMo starts tomorrow. Botheration. 50 hours of editing in one month. In some ways that's worse than NaNoWriMo, because I think I averaged slightly more than 1000 words an hour, meaning I spent less than 50 hours on it in November. But 50 hours of editing is 50 hours of editing. It's irreducible.

But what's the problem? I was working on editing anyway. It's just... a little more intense now. But doable, just like NaNoWriMo was doable. Yeah. 20 hours a week at work, 20 hours a week job searching, maybe a few hours getting started on Cookie Lee, and about 12 hours a week on editing. No problem. I'll be fine. I may not have time to do a lot of reading, but I've done so very much reading over my lifetime that I've got an extra store of inspiration to draw on, I don't necessarily need to keep adding to it simultaneous with writing... yeah. And March even has 31 days, not like November... What am I grumbling about? NaNoEdMo! I get to take a giant step forward with my novel! Yay! Yes.

A Tale of Two Cities

2009-02-16T19:52:00.000-08:00

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Read: 1/5/09-2/2/09
Also read for high school English, assuming I finished it, which I don't remember for certain.
LibraryThing tags: Classics, Historical Fiction, French Revolution, SLOBS

I enjoyed this a lot more than when I read it in high school. A mix, perhaps, of not being forced to read it for a grade, and of reading it quickly enough to stay in the mood and to remember what was going on. There were even some moments in the book that I actually loved. Imagine! =)

Dickens was very, very good at description. There are still moments when one wants to throw something at him because he let description slow down the story, but at least it's good description. And sometimes he was so delightfully sarcastic! I had forgotten how sarcastic Dickens could be. As, for example (forgive the length, for I love this one):

“Military officers destitute of military knowledge; naval officers with no idea of a ship; civil officers without a notion of affairs; brazen ecclesiastics, of the worst world worldly, with sensual eyes, loose tongues, and looser lives; all totally unfit for their several callings, all lying horribly in pretending to belong to them, but all nearly or remotely of the order of Monseigneur, and therefore foisted on all public employments from which anything was to be got; these were to be told off by the score and the score… The leprosy of unreality disfigured every human creature in attendance upon Monseigneur… But, the comfort was, that all the company at the grand hotel of Monseigneur were perfectly dressed. If the Day of Judgment had only been ascertained to be a dress day, everybody there would have been eternally correct. Such frizzling and powdering and sticking up of hair, such delicate complexions artificially preserved and mended, such gallant swords to look at, and such delicate honour to the sense of smell, would surely keep anything going, for ever and ever… And who among the company at Monseigneur’s reception in that seventeen hundred and eightieth year of our Lord, could possibly doubt that a system rooted in a frizzled hangman, powdered, gold-laced, pumped, and white-silk stockinged, would see the very stars out!”

I also liked, especially when thinking of Baltar in Battlestar Galactica: “Some of his King’s Bench familiars, who were occasionally parties to the full-bodied wine and the lie, excused him for the latter by saying that he had told it so often, that he believed it himself—which is surely such an incorrigible aggravation of an originally bad offence, as to justify any such offender’s being carried off to some suitably retired spot, and there hanged out of the way.”

“‘We have so asserted our station, both in the old time and in the modern time also,’ said the nephew, gloomily, ‘that I believe our name to be more detested than any name in France.’

‘Let us hope so,’ said the uncle. ‘Detestation of the high is the involuntary homage of the low.’”

A philosophy of rule that has certainly been held at times in history. Provides an interesting contrast with Cleopatra’s Heir, in which Octavian is made to say that Cleopatra and Julius Caesar both believed kings could do whatever they wished, and both as a result were directly or indirectly betrayed to their deaths. From what I understand of the historical Caesar Augustus (as opposed to this one in a historical novel), this is probably an accurate portrayal; he may very well have taken warning from what happened to his uncle Julius. It's interesting to think of such a "modern" and "enlightened" view in antiquity, long before history was forced to swing back to it after the French Revolution.

“‘...there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you!’”

"Forgive as the Lord forgave you"

2009-02-14T16:20:00.000-08:00

It was a busy day at work today, with insults to myself and the bookstore, although I must admit there were also compliments to the store. One man called us "overpriced" because we aren't selling a certain bestseller as cheaply as Sam's Club, of all places. Such remarks are so ridiculous they shouldn't make me angry, but they do.

The irritations began with a customer I have no great affection for. He was rude to me again. I composed a post in my head about it. I was going to display my scorn for him and his ilk as wittily as I could. Trouble was, during my devotions this morning I read a passage about Phil. 3:7-8, "Whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things." Before the customer, my head had been full of thoughts of holding no material thing and no activity as my own, especially should it hinder knowing Christ. After the customer, these ruminations inevitably turned to letting go of pride, as well. That's closer to the context and original intent of the verses, anyway. I also began thinking about how I know I need to remember how much God has forgiven me when confronted with a large hurt, but it's easy to forget and complain about the little slights. So I couldn't do it. I couldn't post it. Maybe there's still a place for occasional venting. I don't know. I think maybe so. But for me, now, about this guy, I don't think there is. I can acknowledge my anger instead of stuffing it, but at the moment I don't think I'm allowed to be witty at his expense.

I might not have posted this either -- it seems like a boost to my ego in its own way -- "Look how marvelously forgiving I am! Aren't I great?" And I still seem to be using it to tell people about how awful he was, albeit without details. But, knowing so well how easy it is to complain, since I gossip about and mock customers on a very regular basis, and knowing how one joke encourages another, I decided to attempt to encourage in the opposite direction. As Hebrews 10:24 says, "And let us consider how we may spur one another on towards love and good deeds."

I'm not a very good example (I'm still not sure I've really forgiven him his behavior), but I can point in the right direction. So, celebrate Valentine's Day with someone you love (platonically or not), but also, please, forgive a jerk today.

Cleopatra's Heir

2009-01-27T18:26:00.000-08:00

Cleopatra's Heir by Gillian Bradshaw
Read: 1/12/09-1/25/09
LibraryThing tags: Historical Fiction, Alternate History, Roman Empire, Greek World, Egypt, Story Research, Sonderbook (click here for Sondy's review)

This isn't precisely "alternate history" as one normally thinks of it. Or at least, not as I normally think of it. It isn't like Harry Turtledove, or like the only other books I currently have tagged that way on LibraryThing, the Sorcery and Cecelia books. Although it is very, very, very unlikely that the premise of this book actually occurred, it conceivably, theoretically, could have, and our history books would have remained the same.

Cleopatra and Julius Caesar had a son, normally called Ceasarion (all the important figures back then had so many names...). His paternity is debated, but there is good reason to believe Julius Caesar was his father. Among other things, Caesar himself seemed to believe it. Anyway, when Antony and Cleopatra were defeated, Ceasarion was killed by order of Octavian (Caesar Augustus) in 30 B.C. Cleopatra's Heir asks, what if he escaped? Then it proceeds to answer that question quite satisfactorily. The extremely dissimilar viewpoints of a fugitive king and a common peasant are wonderfully done. The character growth is very good, too, without making Caesarion obnoxious and unlikable in the beginning (at least to the reader -- the peasants might have a different opinion). Oh, and the Egyptian, Greek, and Roman cultures are portrayed very well -- accurately, to the best of my knowledge, which one would expect from an author who also happens to be a classics scholar. But she doesn't bog you down in her knowledge, either. If it's a part of the story, she includes it. Otherwise, she doesn't.

I did feel a little detached from this book for some reason -- possibly because of one of those other tags I put on it -- "story research." Still, that didn't come into it much. The issue I want to research more, that of royal hostages, barely was referenced in the book at all. I knew it would be a slender connection. It was still useful, even as a reminder of all the things one has to research to write good historical fiction (and historical fantasy), but that shouldn't have kept me from immersing myself in the story. It normally wouldn't. Maybe I just needed to read it faster. Real life and other books got in the way.

The Discarded Image

2009-01-14T10:59:00.000-08:00

The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature by C.S. Lewis
Read: 9/28/08-1/5/09
LibraryThing tags: Literary Criticism, Medieval, History, Philosophy, SLOBS

This should be required reading for everyone. Okay, it might be a bit academic for that. Still. His focus is very much on interpreting literature, so if a historical tangent would be important but has no bearing on the literature, he says so and moves on. Nonetheless, for such a focused little book, he covers a decent amount of history, especially the history of philosophy. He corrects several very common historical misconceptions, like the idea that the medievals thought the world was flat, or that they would consider a sphere problematic because everything would fall off the other side (something he himself uses in Narnia, oddly enough). I've seen this corrected in other books, but Lewis' analysis is such a great read.

Obviously they did differ with us on some aspects of astronomy, but that affected life and imagination in different ways than one might think. For example (not the best of all possible examples, but I like this quote),

“The Earth is really the centre, really the lowest place; movement to it from whatever direction is downward movement. As a modern, you located the stars at a great distance. For distance you must now substitute that very special, and far less abstract, sort of distance which we call height; height, which speaks immediately to our muscles and nerves. The Medieval Model is vertiginous. And the fact that the height of the stars in the medieval astronomy is very small compared with their distance in the modern, will turn out not to have the kind of importance you anticipated. For thought and imagination, ten million miles and a thousand million are much the same. Both can be conceived (that is, we can do sums with both) and neither can be imagined; and the more imagination we have the better we shall know this. The really important difference is that the medieval universe, while unimaginably large, was also unambiguously finite. And one unexpected result of this is to make the smallness of Earth more vividly felt. In our universe she is small, no doubt; but so are the galaxies, so is everything--and so what? But in theirs there was an absolute standard of comparison."

I love his preface. He explains of his book, "I cannot boast that it contains much which a reader could not have found out for himself if, at every hard place in the old books, he had turned to commentators, histories, encyclopaedias, and other such helps. I thought the lectures worth giving and the book worth writing because that method of discovery seemed to me and seems to some others rather unsatisfactory. For one thing, we turn to the helps only when the hard passages are manifestly hard. But there are treacherous passages which will not send us to the notes. They look easy and aren't. Again, frequent researches ad hoc sadly impair receptive reading, so that sensitive people may even come to regard scholarship as a baleful thing which is always taking you out of the literature itself."

And from much later in the book, one of the things that "look easy" and isn't: “The importance of all this for our own purpose is that nearly every reference to Reason in the old poets will be in some measure misread if we have in mind only ‘the power by which man deduces one proposition from another’. One of the most moving passages in Guillaume de Lorris’ part of the Romance of the Rose (5813 sq.) is that where Reason, Reason the beautiful, a gracious lady, a humbled goddess, deigns to plead with the lover as a celestial mistress, a rival to his earthly love. This is frigid if Reason were only what Johnson made her. You cannot turn a calculating machine into a goddess. But Raison la bele is ‘no such cold thing’.”

I wonder if, later in the Enlightenment and modernity when you have the exaltation of the more specific type of reason, the deductive part, if they ever took as support the old statements glorifying Reason, when in fact those old statements referred to something larger, something that could not be justified by the smaller meaning alone. Seems quite possible.

And later in the preface, "There are, I know, those who prefer not to go beyond the impression, however accidental, which an old work makes on a mind that brings to it a purely modern sensibility and modern conceptions; just as there are travellers who carry their resolute Englishry with them all over the Continent, mix only with other English tourists, enjoy all they see for its 'quaintness', and have no wish to realise what those ways of life, those churches, those vineyards, mean to the natives. They have their reward. I have no quarrel with people who approach the past in that spirit. I hope they will pick none with me. But I was writing for the other sort."

On Desserts, Justified

2009-01-13T18:30:00.000-08:00

If there's any time it's okay to indulge yourself and bake and eat a bit of warm crumbly sweetness, it must be on a day when you went running for an hour, right? Especially when it was uphill both ways, not to mention barefoot in the snow. Um. Okay, scratch that last part. At any rate, Scottish Shortbread, here I come!

In Which It Is Proven That Kristin Cashore Is Awesome

2009-01-12T13:36:00.000-08:00

Hey Ron! Look!

Revising

2009-01-12T12:54:00.000-08:00

Writing is weird. In many ways. Let me tell you about one of them.

Part of me feels like I'm not changing The Miller's Granddaughter nearly enough. I feel afraid that all the praise has gone to my head and spoiled my judgment. After all, writers seem to agree that first drafts are crap, that one needs to do at least seven or eight revisions before publishing, that few words will remain the same from first to finished draft, that it is imperative to polish and perfect as much as possible before seeking a publisher because publishing is so freaking hard and they see so many manuscripts, you've got to blow them away. So I look at my manuscript, at how neat and clean it still is compared to published author Kristin Cashore's, how minuscule some of my changes are, how much I'm leaving exactly as is for now, and I worry that I already like the story too much.

Another part of me feels like I'm changing The Miller's Granddaughter far too much. People liked it! They even loved it! I feel afraid that my judgment is suspect and I must trust these very intelligent readers. And yet here I go manhandling the poor story, cutting things, adding things, probably turning it quite boring. Why would I take something that worked, and try to fix it? Why am I messing with pacing? So I look at my manuscript, at the things I've crossed out, and the arrows, and the handwritten notes, and I worry that I'm making it worse.

I worry that my decisions, each tiny little one, are not perfect. They are, in fact, suspect. I must ask other people what they think. And then I see. Even if they are not perfect, taken as a group, they're probably good decisions. One or two or three or four of them might make the story worse, at least for some readers, but all of them together probably will make it better. And eventually, it will be a novel that I genuinely love. And that's best of all. Not that I don't care about everyone else. If that were the case, why bother trying to share it, to publish it? (Aside from money, and let's face it, my chances of making oodles of cash via my writing are only slightly better than winning the lottery. And I've never bought a lottery ticket in my life.) But even as far as others are concerned, it'll probably be more effective if I love it. a) Books written to formula tend to be boring, and one has to tap deep into oneself in order to come up with something truly fresh and unique. b) I'm not all that unique -- chances are, if I like it, there are other people out there very similar to myself who will also like it.

Those professional writer people seem to know what they're talking about.

2009-01-11T21:20:00.000-08:00

Huh. Who would have thought?

I read an article on pacing by Steve Almond in Writer's Digest earlier today. He mentions a famous piece of literary advice by Anton Chekhov, that you should cut the first three pages of any initial draft. Almond adds that if you're not sure whether or not you should really do that, consider questions like, "Is your protagonist alone for these pages?" or "Is he in bed or in a bathtub?"

Now, the scene I'd especially been thinking about cutting is not actually in the first three pages. The prologue comes first. I had some strong ideas behind the prologue and had to get a lot of information out very quickly in order for my story to make sense, and to get on with said story. So the scene I'd been wanting to cut? First chapter I originally wrote after the prologue. Three pages of it. Of the protagonist alone, starting out in bed, in fact. There are a couple things in those pages I'll save, add somewhere else. But as a whole, they're getting the axe.

Oh, but don't worry. There are other scenes I'm adding. The article ends with exercises. Part of the last one reads, "First: Cut every single word that isn't absolutely necessary until you've cut at least half the story. Second: Using this shorter draft, identify the most dramatic moments and rewrite them, intentionally slowing the pace." Because of the rest of the article, I think what he means by "slowing the pace" is to slow the actual amount of time covered, the chronological pacing, not to slow the "rate of revelations."

I will not be following this advice, at least not just yet, not consciously. (Well hey, Almond isn't Chekhov.) Not only is it brutal, but my novel's pretty short to begin with, and there aren't all that many unnecessary scenes like those first three pages. I under-write. I'm closer to the problem of pacing he mentions earlier, "Covering too much ground. Otherwise known as: That's not a story, it's an outline." Every minute I write I consciously fight that. That whole stupid "show, don't tell" thing. "Okay, that's the scene, now describe the scene, what happens, what do they say?" Nonetheless, consciously doing the exercise or not, I'm sure as I revise there is much I will cut, and even before I had read the article I'd started adding scenes, knowing that such and such also happens to her when she's young, consciously making myself write about it instead of just summarizing it for the reader. That's not quite the same thing as picking dramatic moments and rewriting them, but it's a good first step for an under-writer (I don't know if it's actually spelled with a hyphen, but I am NOT an underwriter) -- picking dramatic moments in what had been backstory and bringing it into the actual story. Yep. Slow the pace. Only without changing certain people's opinions that it's a page-turner. Add depth without actually, well, slowing the pace. Sounds like a good thing to do in a first revision.

Daughter of the Forest

2009-01-02T19:46:00.000-08:00

Daughter of the Forest (The Sevenwaters Trilogy #1) by Juliet Marillier
Read: 7/1/08-7/3/08
LibraryThing tags: Fantasy, Fairy Tale, Romance, Historical Fiction, Ireland, Medieval

Doesn't this list of tags just make your mouth water? No? Hmph. You're weird.

I can't tell you one of my favorite things about this book, because premise or not, it's not something you find out for sure until over a hundred pages in. So you'll just have to take my word for it, I guess. It's good, read it. One of my favorites, now. The prose is wonderful. Despite its length (544 pages), it feels very polished, crafted and magical.

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

2008-12-28T15:32:00.000-08:00

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (The Hitchhiker's Trilogy #2) by Douglas Adams
Read: 12/15/08 (and also12/15/02-1/21/03)
LibraryThing tags: Humor, Science Fiction

I don't think this one is quite as good as the first one. But it's still funny. Yes. I mean, after all, it's got the story of the Nutri-Matic and the tea. Oh, and it's got the story of Marvin and that huge (and "depressingly stupid") battle machine, one of my favorites.

This isn't so much a review as a let's-let-everyone-know-what-Marcy's-reading-these-days. Yes. I should tag it that way. Meh.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

2008-12-28T14:40:00.000-08:00

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (The Hitchhiker's Trilogy #1) by Douglas Adams
Read: 9/5/08-9/7/08 (and also 12/9/02-12/15/02)
LibraryThing tags: Humor, Science Fiction, Movie Inspiration, Sonderbook (click here for Sondy's review)

Let's laugh a bit now, shall we? Okay. Classic book. Read it if you like the more random and silly style of British humor (as opposed to the witty style, although there is some wit involved). Yep. And that's all I have to say about that.

As for quotes, first there's the classic:

“‘Arthur!’ he said, ‘this is fantastic! We’ve been picked up by a ship powered by the Infinite Improbability Drive! This is incredible! I heard rumors about it before! They were all officially denied, but they must have done it! They’ve built the Improbability Drive! Arthur, this is…Arthur? What’s happening?’

Arthur had jammed himself against the door to the cubicle, trying to hold it closed, but it was ill fitting. Tiny furry little hands were squeezing themselves through the cracks, their fingers were ink-stained; tiny voices chattered insanely.

Arthur looked up.

‘Ford!’ he said, ‘there’s an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they’ve worked out.’”

And then, although this is better with the longer context:

“Eventually, of course, after their Galaxy had been decimated over a few thousand years, it was realized that the whole thing had been a ghastly mistake, and so the two opposing battle fleets settled their few remaining differences in order to launch a joint attack on our own Galaxy—now positively identified as the source of the offending remark.

For thousands more years, the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the first planet they came across—which happened to be the Earth—where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog.”

Graceling

2008-12-26T07:00:00.000-08:00

Graceling by Kristin Cashore
Read: 12/4/08-12/6/08
LibraryThing tags: Fantasy, YA, Romance

I really really liked this book. It had a couple issues, but those were relatively minor things I'll discuss with you after you read it. It was beautifully done (like the cover), with intriguing characters and plot and a truly romantic romance, not one of those Sleepless in Seattle affairs where the couple never actually spends any time together.

You know how sometimes you figure things out long before the characters do, and then the author treats these simple, obvious things like they're big surprises? Well, I was quite impressed, because every time I figured such things out in this book, the characters figured it out very quickly after I did, and often some added surprise that I hadn't seen was thrown in as well. And then the plot moved forward, there were later twists as well... so on and so forth. Well done.

I had been eyeing this book for some time at work. Finally I looked closer, then started reading, then bought it. I justified the expense by saying I'd give it to Melanie for Christmas after I finished. Which is why this review is post-dated, so that it will pop up the day after Christmas. Enjoy, Melanie! Part of the jacket cover is spoiler free and gives a good description of where things stand at the beginning of the book: "In a world where people born with an extreme skill--called a Grace--are feared and exploited, Katsa carries the burden of a skill even she despises: the Grace of killing. She lives under the command of her uncle Randa, King of the Middluns, and is expected to execute his dirty work, punishing and torturing anyone who displeases him." Despite that, it's not at all a book with a dark, hopeless tone. It doesn't make light of the hard things in her life, but neither does it become bogged down in them.

Plus, I like the author's blog. http://www.kristincashore.blogspot.com/. More on that later, probably. I like it as much as Shannon Hale's, although it looks like I'm a little more likely to disagree with Kristin Cashore on a thing or two. I don't mind.

Wish List

2008-12-15T22:43:00.000-08:00

I updated all my amazon lists, and added one called "Christmas" which has some of the things I want the most on it. I don't particularly need books... I already have plenty, plus I can generally get them for pretty darn cheap at work. But there are a few novel related things I want very very much, and those are on that list. Also anything about the middle ages or fairy tales or Rumpelstiltskin in particular, including novel-length retellings, would be helpful. But don't get me Women in the Middle Ages or Life in a Medieval Castle or Spinning Straw into Gold or The Crimson Thread -- I already have those. I'll also want things on gypsies and on slavery for another book, just not Bury Me Standing or a book called Gypsies by Bart McDowell. Again, I have those. In general I want things to make my life more sane and productive... But I'll admit, there are some pretty intriguing things on those lists, especially the default list, which mostly has books I haven't read yet on it. As always, check my comments on an item before you buy it.

Christmas Poetry

2008-12-15T11:08:00.001-08:00

I read some Christmas poetry this year (11/27/08-12/1/08), because of SLOBS, although I didn't go to the meeting which discussed the poems. I can't do quite my typical review because I don't have a book of the poems, just a printout, which I will loan to you if you want. But I do want to find more by some of these poets. I particularly liked "Christmas Mourning" by Vassar Miller, "The Nativity of Christ" by Robert Southwell, and "Good Is the Flesh" by Brian Wren. I encourage you all, find some poetry this Christmas. Let yourself pause a moment for beauty and wonder.

"Gift better than Himself God does not know;
Gift better than his God no man can see.
This gift doth here the giver given bestow;
Gift to this gift let each receiver be.
God is my gift, himself he freely gave me;
God's gift am I, and none but God shall have me." -from "The Nativity of Christ," by Robert Southwell

No Plot? No Problem!

2008-12-15T10:35:00.000-08:00

No Plot? No Problem!: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days by Chris Baty
Read: 9/26/08-11/30/08
LibraryThing tags: Writing, Humor

I had to give this book five stars because I wasn't just rating the book, but the entire concept and program. And it got me to write a novel, so there you go. Far better than The Weekend Novelist ever managed. I highly, highly recommend this book for anyone who so much as thinks it might be kind of fun to write a novel someday. It's all about the amateur effort. It works well for those who want it to be more than an amateur effort too, but it's a wonderful place to begin, regardless.

And it's light and encouraging and silly, with such helpful advice about the last week of the month as: "But make sure, when you're at the store, to pick up two bottles of champagne. If you are underage, you can pick up a champagne substitute, such as beer." and observations on the Inner Editor like: "Because this month, you'll leave your Inner Editor here with me at the fully licensed, board-certified No Plot? No Problem! Inner Editor Kennel -- where it can spend its days carping with other Inner Editors, happily pointing out typos in the newspaper and complaining about the numerous plot holes on daytime television. It will be very, very happy here."

The only reason I didn't read this book in one day is because I wasn't "allowed" to. There were sections specifically to read on the first week of the noveling month, or after finishing, or what-have-you. So I finished it as quickly as I could.

I DID IT!!!

2008-11-30T18:16:00.000-08:00

I can't believe it. Because of this last week, especially. Before that I was pretty confident in my winning abilities. Even though I wasn't sure how...

BUT I DID IT! ALREADY! 50,047 WORDS! I'M DOING A HAPPY DANCE NOW! AS WE SPEAK!

Enough caps for you? Me too. Maybe. Instead...

Heh Heh. I haz a book.

48,383

2008-11-30T15:04:00.000-08:00

46,576

2008-11-30T12:22:00.000-08:00

I'm so close I can taste it. I may not even have to keep working 'til midnight. I'm beginning to think I may not run out of scenes to add before 50,000, after all. (One can add words by adding a little description here and there, but for thousands of words, it helps to have big blocks of text to add -- whole scenes.) I'm not sure why I think that, given how much I've already filled in and how close I am right now to my "The End" scene I've already written... I guess the thousands of words I've already added last night and this morning are making me hopeful, contrary to all reason. No. Not all reason. Even if I do get stuck, I think with all the time left before me, I really will win. Squeeeee!!!

41,133...

2008-11-26T12:25:00.001-08:00

...albeit I did quote an entire song from Into the Woods, supposedly as "flavor text"...

39,955

2008-11-25T22:32:00.001-08:00

Yep. I know, it seems a shame to go to bed before 40,000. But I'll get there tomorrow. Or I'd better. This is going to be a very tight week. But I will make it, somehow. Stupid Thanksgiving. No, good thanksgiving. I give thanks for it. Yes. And for novels, too. I'm a teensy bit loopy at the moment, having spent two days trying to work on my novel ALL DAY, and having semi-succeeded, while still only managing something like... what, 4,000 words a day? Blech. (For perspective, it really only takes an hour to write more than a thousand words, when you're not completely stuck, not counting breaks, so that's only about four hours of writing a day, and yet I was working all day, really, really I was...) But...

...I actually figured out how my novel's going to end! Squeeeeeeeee!!!

I think. If I don't later decide I hate it. And the execution and details are a bit tricky. But whatever. I stick my tongue out at writer's block. Then I apologize profusely, not wanting writer's block to take offense and strike again before December 1st.

I actually wrote part of the ending too, complete with "The End," which is just silly, because real published books don't end with that. At least not most of the time. But again, whatever. Now I just need to fill in the pesky area between the spot I'd written up to earlier and the ending... and flesh out some of the scenes that I had shortened to ridiculously concise sketches.