So I finish number 3 and - taking a break - I pick up Carol Berg's "Transformation" and am totally incapacitated. Where does a book like that come from? I spent two evenings reading it (and not speaking to anyone) and I couldn't write anything because I was so intimidated by the density and how much she made me *care*. I cried. Real crying, with sobs. And then I stopped and wondered how she did it, and if I could.
Thankfully - in one sense anyway - I'm not so overwhelmed by "Revelation", the second in the trilogy. It's still great, but I don't have to read it all the time and I can, just about, write.
After weeks and weeks of writing easily, I'm teetering on the edge of one of those loss-of-faith periods, I can feel it coming. Do I blame "Transformation" or do I admit it was probably on its way anyway?
I'm writing I'm writing and about halfway through this version, although a lot of the re-write was necessary for the earlier bits it won't be so necessary for the later stuff where the story wanders off to another environment. Seems no matter how much time I spend tracking down and tying up loose ends, they still appear everywhere.
And have been reading the Stephanie Meyer books because - well, vampire high school romance, and I loved Buffy so much. And yes - involved. And keen to see the film. But I should probably read Proust or something now, just to balance the fluff (ppffff as if).
Oh, which reminds me, apparently people lie about the books they've read. How bizarre that top of the list is 1984 -- it's not even a long or scary book (unlikely, well, Ulysses). And it is one that I've read. Unlike War and Peace (which I really should have read and most people I talk to assume that I've read...) , and I've read some of the Bible and almost all of Midnight's Children er and I believe I've passed a Brief History of Time on the bookshelf in the house and someone once lent me The Selfish Gene... Nice that people still think that reading those books is impressive enough to lie about, though. Even if they haven't read them.
I don't know why I don't post more, although it's probably something to do with having to summon coherence late in the evening when I am barely capable of putting one foot in front of the other (foot).
Here's an email I got today from a guesthouse in the highlands:
Thank you for your enquiry but unfortunately we do not accommodate young children.Gah.
Why?? Are children a lesser life form? And why is it acceptable to say you don't accept children but it's unacceptable to say, for example, that you don't accept students or pensioners or any other random age group? Is that because students/ pensioners/ whoever can be expected to behave themselves? Well, why can't children?? Surely there should be laws about this sort of thing - age discrimination laws, for example.
Grrrrrr. I understand that some people prefer not to have children around, but that's their problem, and a slightly bizarre one given that children are a fact of life and anyone not created in a lab from random bits of wire was probably a child at some stage. I say this as the mother of a superbly well behaved two year old, of course, he's far better behaved than most of the adults I know. Does this happen elsewhere or is it just Scotland where the assumption is that for adults to have a nice time small children must be barred from the premises?
I hope the guesthouse in question (at which I will never stay) gets trashed by a stag party of pensioners.
I've never had the best of teeth (snaggle-toothed is a term I think of as my own) but they've been OK for the last few years. Falling asleep with toddler, waking at 2am to brush my teeth, though - that can't have been good for them.
Normally my dentist is gently encouraging but today, I'm afraid, he's going to disapprove of me. And it might hurt.
Also I have chewed right through my gumshield. Again. I keep waking up with my mouth full of bits of jagged plastic.
Edited to say: woo hoo! Clearly brushing teeth *very*carefully this morning was enough to avert catastrophe.
And I only have myself to blame.
(I did it last week too with The Interpretation of Murder, which was *another* book I really enjoyed).
I've rediscovered music. Honestly, I didn't notice that I'd lost it until I heard (murmur mutter lionel ritchie's dancing on the ceiling)on the radio. How embarrassing. But it got me thinking and, well, jigging around the kitchen in a slightly unbalanced sort of way. So now I am listening to music at work. Yey.
The writing is progressing. After slogging painfully (oh it was SO painful) through about half a chapter that took eons and which I couldn't get to flow no matter what I did, things are now working better. I can at least edit and decide which of the bits that seem like the characters are just hanging around waiting for something to happen are useful (just boring) and which are there because I was hanging around and waiting for something to happen and which therefore need to be ruthlessly deleted.
I just read Flesh and Spirit by Carol Berg. I'd bought it because, ahem, I liked the picture on the cover and sometimes random purchases like that pay off (sometimes they don't - By These Ten Bones being the other book I did that with recently. Yerg. Though, even reading them afterwards, I really enjoyed Clare Dunkel's goblin books so maybe it did sort of work out). Anyway, the Flesh and Spirit central character, Valen, is packed so full of personality and issues and interesting things that he practically bursts. Which, naturally, makes me worry that my character isn't. And she's not - but is that OK? Do you need to have a really really strong central character for a story to work? If you don't are you laying yourself open to criticisms of your character being wooden or unrealistic? (Like, I seem to recall, the main character in Never Let Me Go is, although I didn't think so). I do need to think about her some more, I do need to bring out what she's like some more, but I haven't decided how much yet (unfocused rant, or what?).
Quick quick baby update: he's getting sweeter all the time (again! More!). We went brambling yesterday (impressive in mid-November - we didn't plan to, we just found them) and he ate an amazing number of them. He has these little whispy blond curls that I can't bring myself to cut off, even though my father keeps insisting that they make him look like a girl (well, I think he said that once, out of ear-shot, about six months ago). Oh the cuteness.
Anyway, I must go home. The office is finally quiet(ish) and everyone else has gone home. At ten past five - how shocking.
* my eyes aren't actually blue, but well, green-blue eyed sort of. Brightly coloured anyway (and not red).
So, writing is going. Perhaps not well, but at least something's happening. I forgot that if you don't write anything you have nothing to edit so instead of sitting around (or, more accurately, frantically chasing a toddler determined to throw peaches on the floor/ draw on the walls/ eat crayons) and worrying that my new beginning wasn't going to be perfect, I started to write it. And it isn't perfect but at least it's there.
Toddler-wise things have been a bit crazy. He was ill (with a SuperCold + mini-measles from the MMR) and is now pretty much better (another 3 days before we discover if he has mini-mumps, but that seems less common) and now I am ill (with SuperCold only) and kind of fuzzy and incapable of Thought. And not so hot on patience either.
But I did just buy some funky brightly-coloured nappies for him, so that's making us both happy (me more than him, admittedly, but I think he likes being able to choose the colour. There's been less screaming about nappy changes, anyway). And some babylegs so he looks like a 1980s dancer - someone out of Fame, probably (or was that the 1970s?).
I've been reading... the second and third Cast books. What do I say? They're a guilty pleasure. They have to be. Anything that gives you that much pleasure has to be guilty. And the fourth is out and I will buy it when Amazon gets itself sorted out.
Writing is um stalled sort of.
But I have bought the perfect perfect suit. It's just gorgeous and I love it passionately. When will I wear it?
Oops S is crying. Better go before he concludes I've been eaten by a rhino.
But: she said one thing that really made me think. She said: look at your story outline and think - "is there anything I can turn around to make things more surprising or effective?"
I got as far as the first event (character leaves old job because she's bored of it) and went "oooh". It's now: character is forced to leave old job and is very unhappy about it. It makes things much tighter in the first few chapters and it's more fun to write. Of course it does mean a complete re-write of the first 3 chapters or so, but they needed it. It also gives me a really good way in and a first page (or five) that is much more powerful and interesting than before.
So hurray for that.
Now I just need to deal with being a weirdo.
I have finished King's Shield and am desperate for the next book, but Sherwood Smith says on her webpage: "Treason's Shore, is about three-quarters written...". Argh.
I know I know I know.
But I want it NOW.
Baby-wise the sleep thing is still going astonishingly well. 9.30pm-6am last night. Yey.
Much to my surprise (since in my pre-baby head I was going to be Strict Victorian Mother, always impeccably turned out, aware of the latest political developments, and capable of a conversation that didn't involve half sentences trailing away into the ether) we turned out to be attachment parenting, baby-wearing, co-sleeping, knitted yogurt-type parents. Who'd have thought it?
Anyway, the lovely thing about giving the baby everything he wants (except permission to poke bits of metal into electrical sockets/ stroke passing cars) is that it's just... lovely. And he is just lovely too. The downside, for us, was we haven't had a full night's sleep for eighteen months. Which isn't as bad as I would have thought in my pre-baby days when, I vaguely remember, I was horrified at the idea that children woke you up at 7am at the weekends. HAH.
For the past five days I've been trying a sleep programme (the first one I've tried, except fragments from the No Cry Sleep Solution, despite the Health Visitor telling me sternly (and repeatedly) that I should let him cry it out as soon as he reached six months). Well, it's not really a sleep programme, it's Jay Gordon's night weaning in a floaty gentle co-sleeping attachment parentingy sort of way. At least in theory.
And and (don't let me jinx it, please please) it's going so well.
I have friends who did this and who suffered terrible nights of screaming. One set triumphed in the end (after 3 weeks I think) and one set tried twice and had to give up each time because their little girl just wouldn't stop screaming... all night... for weeks. Argh.
The first night S cried and then complained (going "nonononono") for about 40 minutes on and off, falling in and out of sleep as well, which I found hideously difficult even though I knew it was an incredibly mild reaction. On the subsequent nights it all seemed to sort itself out and he still occasionally complains briefly but it's normally in his sleep. We're not even picking him up, because he doesn't want/ need to be picked up - he just rolls over and goes back to sleep.
An indication of how desperately sleep-deprived I must have been before we started this, was that I actually paid money (real money) to buy something called The Sleep Sense Program, which advocates a programme that I find really unattractive - full of advice about "teaching the baby to put himself to sleep" (for which, read "cry until he decides you've been eaten by wolves and gives up"). Admittedly you don't just leave him a room alone, but you don't pick him up and you do that thing where you leave him to cry for longer and longer. It makes me go "ugh".
She said "there is no research evidence that leaving babies to cry damages them". And, in a cursory investigation carried out by me, she seems to be right. On the other hand, the review articles I read about interventions to get babies sleeping for longer (nearly all of them based on "extinction" - ie: removing the encouragement for the baby to wake up, which is often feeding them but might be cuddling them or whatever) finish after a few months - so there may be no evidence that it harms them, but I don't think there is any evidence that it doesn't, either.
One interesting thing was apparently if you drug the baby to sleep well (this is known as a "pharmalogical intervention") and then remove the encouragement, they are less distressed than if you just remove the encouragement (there's a technical name for the distress: Post-Extinction-Response-Burst (PERB), which goes on for a week or so and makes them clingy and weepy, but why call it PERB when you could call it something sensible like "distress"?).
Writing-wise things are once more going well. I've dug out the last draft, changed the beginning (again, again, yet again) and am working my way through it, editing and seeing how things fit together (that sounds more effective than it is).
Reading-wise I read, finally, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I finished it a couple of weeks ago and decided that I need to read the whole series again. Am currently about to begin The Half-Blood Prince, which I'm rather looking forward to because I've only read it once.
It's clearly affecting my brain because I have come to the conclusion that the HP books aren't really about HP himself (despite all the available evidence, including the titles) but about his mother: she's really the most important character. I mentioned this to a friend and was cheered when he told me that he'd decided they were really about Snape (I kind of agree with that too).
Work-wise have just spent forever trying to find a hotel in Newcastle that (a) is reasonably close to the university, (b) has free parking, (c) is not a "stag and hen night destination" (even though we'll be staying Monday/ Tuesday the thought of vomit - or whatever - in the carpet just makes my skin crawl), (d) looks like it might be semi-baby-friendly. Sigh. I haven't been to Newcastle for years, despite the fact that that's where my father is from. Quite looking forward to it, even though it's become this huge expedition that has eaten up my work time.
Also struggling miserably with Word 2007 on new computer. Can't find anything, EndNote won't work with it, I can't open documents I wrote at work when I'm at home unless I download a bit of software (actually that was remarkably painless and straightforward - hurray to Microsoft for their add-ins which have been surprisingly good -- but it's the fact I needed to do it that annoys me). Grrrr. It looks really pretty, and I (secretly) love the font, but it's such a pain trying to learn the new system that I am seriously contemplating asking for Word 2003 back.
Baby-wise: oh life is good. He's so gorgeous at the moment. Sleep, not so brilliant but I am working myself up (with rage and bile and other helpful maternal tools) to do something about that. You know, when his cold's better and his teeth are through and maybe when we're back from Newcastle too... Then, definitely.
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oursin who talks about it here .Look at the list and:
1) Bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Strike through the ones you couldn't stand.
My work computer is old and beginning to die so I'm getting a new one. While I was buying shiny new technology I got an external hard drive to make carrying things around (and transferring stuff) easier and because, well, I wanted one.
I'm so in love with it.
It's tiny (significantly smaller than my hand) and lovely and it's 250 GB (well, 230ish, but who's really counting?). I wondered if there would be space on it for all the stuff I've worked on since 2001 when I came here. HAH. My computer's hard drive - the one with all my stuff on - is 57 GB. I had to check several times because how is it possible that a tiny external drive (with funky blue light) can possibly be about four times as big as my huge and clunky machine? Ahh technology. It makes me happy.
Edited to say: unbelievable. I copied all my files off my old machine to the external disk and it took about 250 minutes - just set up new machine and copying them back and it's taking about 11 minutes. Can't quite get my head round the difference. It seems unlikely, somehow, that my stuff is really being copied.
Then, after that, I will make it good.
Otherwise, lost in and fascinated by The Post-Birthday World. I know this sounds idiotic but it's such a big book - I keep wondering how she can possibly make the story last for that long. It doesn't drag - it's great - but I can't quite believe it goes all the way to the end.
And just, well, bewildered by this WisCon stuff and equally by the amazing fuss over Fern Britton and her weight/ weight loss/ surgery.
What's going on? Who are these people? Why don't they have something better to do with their lives???
Tired (but good tired - we went swimming and had lunch with friends and then out to a babies&biscuits this afternoon where my lovely friends gave me CAKE and sang to me too and it only took me a little over an hour to get S to sleep tonight and there was no yelling - though I must have sung Rock a Bye Baby about a hundred times) so I am going to do a bit of 'good enough' and then I am going to bed.
I have not been writing anything with any enthusiasm recently, so reading instead. Fell upon The Post Birthday World which happened to be lying around in the sitting room because someone had taken it out of the library. Presumably they were planning to read it, but they'll have to wait... I love that feeling when you pick up a book and vaguely read the first few pages and then it's two hours later and someone's prising you away from it with a fork (except, now, it's 10 minutes later if I'm very lucky and it's a small and sticky hand that does the prising).
The other thing I've been reading - although so vaguely and sporadically it barely deserves the description - is The First Five Pages. That one I found for myself in the library. So far it's sensible (do not submit your manuscript written in crayon on the back of an envelope) and a little worrying (multiple adjectives are the sign of an amateur. Eeek).
He's written others, and the one that caught my attention today was A Dash of Style: the Art and Mastery of Punctuation. Not that I've read it, naturally, but I read the amazon page and learned, to my consternation that:
"Punctuation reveals the writer: haphazard periods, for example, reveal haphazard thinking. Semicolons might indicate affectation; colons might denote melodrama; dashes might point to scattered thought."
What, sorry? Melodramatic colons? Affected semicolons? Yikes. The pitfalls are apparently bottomless.
At this stage I should ask for the fact that I am married to a specialist in psycholinguistics to be taken into account, milud.
(must say that, despite what I've said above, having now read the free sample, he makes a lot of sense. He also uses a lot of commas. Yey. I like commas. Actually, I like the excerpts. When I allow myself to buy another book it might be this one...).
I have just come to the conclusion that I have to delete a passage that I wrote very early on - even though it comes towards the end of the story. It defined the bad guy for me, as someone cruel, taking pleasure in the suffering of his enemy. Now that the bad guy has decided he's not like that at all, it needs to come out. I could change it, but even then it doesn't actually achieve anything.
Also, floundering in LJ, found huge discussion on grammar - and lack of it in writings of those under 40.
This is also one of my problems; I have lost confidence with past tenses. It's so basic I would never have guessed that this could happen. But somehow it has...
"...they had all long since become inedible; some of them smelt so disgusting that I gagged as I moved them into the kitchen"
smelt or smelled?
Edited to say: Huh. Having confused most of the people I have talked to in the past day (no one knew), I finally looked it up... It appears that either is correct, with some suggestion that it was originally "smelt" but now, since people like verbs to be regular, it's increasingly "smelled". Hmm. That's Yahoo Answers. All that the reference books tell me (admittedly after a fairly cursory scan) is that both are correct.
Perhaps oddly, I read the travellers as unequivocally Scottish, probably because of this sentence: "You must be a de’il, for your mum to part wi’ you for so little". There are Scottish travellers, as well as Roma, in Scotland (which sounds like I'm making some sort of xenophobic distinction, but really I'm not).
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