Blogetary (Weblog + Commentary = Blogetary)

I think one of the reasons I do so love Neil Gaiman is that he knows how to write *magic* at the same level as such great writers as Patricia McKillip. When Gaiman’s illustrated book StarDust came out, I was Christmas shopping at the Borders in downtown San Francisco.  I believe it was back before the turn of the century in the dim recesses of 1998.  I carried that book around the store in my basket the entire time before putting it back with a sigh.  I was super broke at the time and just couldn’t justify buying it for myself and I’d already gotten Christmas gifts for anyone else who would enjoy it.  So, I thought I would try again later.

Then I got it for Christmas from the people I would have gotten it for! Such a nice memory. 

A few months later, Neil Gaiman came to read at a bookstore on the Haight.  I can’t remember which bookstore it was. It was at the upper end, near Amoeba and it had also had a reading by Anne Rice a little time before that had had Goths lining up around the block.  Neil had a line, too, but it was a much more varied crowd.  It was so enjoyable.  I had him sign my illustrated copy of StarDust.  He talked about Good Omens and Neverwhere.

Now, there is a movie coming out based on StarDust and I think it is time to reread it and get in touch with *magic* again.  The StarDust Trailer is fun.

There is also a humdrum nonillustrated version of Stardust, but that’s like looking at rock from outer space as opposed to speaking with a beautiful creature who fell from the sky.

Read the book, you’ll get what I mean.

No, sirree.  But, I did read a friend’s blog and it is the one thing I did feel today.  It is Women’s History Month, which isn’t to say it’s the same as being feminist month, but it’s darn close.  So check out Ginger’s Blog. 

Amen, Sister!

But with a personal note attached. The personal note just made it worse. Basically, it’s what they were looking for, but it wasn’t sophisticated enough. But not to worry, just keep trying and you’ll get there.

F#$K! I’ve been writing most of my life when it comes to poetry. When do I get “there” wherever “there” is!?!?!

I’m feeling just a tad patronized lately and it’s really getting to me.

More later.

Grief, loss, anguish, bereavement.

Grieving the loss of a friend, feeling bereft and desolate because you know that you will never be able to see them again, hear them again, smell them again, what is the definition of that?

Grief, in the dictionary, is defined as a deep mental anguish from bereavement. Bereavement is the act of being left alone and desolate, usually from death. Anguish is to suffer physical or mental pain. Loss, to lose, being lost and deprived of someone. Yet, losing someone sounds so careless.

Nowhere in the dictionary does it admit to emotional or spiritual agony, just mental and physical. Physical, I understand. The churning of my gut while I choke on my tears. That is physical. But the mental just sounds like I’m having problems with a math equation. It is emotionally and spiritually where I feel the anguish, the pain, the desolation, because mixed with the bereavement is the guilt. Could I have spent more time with them? Could I have done more for them? Did they understand how much I loved them? But it is the mental and physical that is what can be codified and calculated, so that is the term of the definition.

As I go through my day, reminded of the one who has gone forever, it amazes me that the salty water falling from eyes hasn’t permanently stained my eyes or dug furrows in my cheeks. But I look in the mirror, and the stains I feel aren’t there. The furrow that is in my heart, so plain to me, is not on my cheek. My face, looking like it always has, is just a mask that hides the grief.

I get up in the morning to go to work and listen to people on the phone who are complaining about problems that seem trivial to me. I don’t want to help them. I think they’re asinine, self-centered idiots. But I can’t say that. Focus. I have to focus while they demand my attention.

It’s worse with my friends. They have lives, opinions, books, movies they want to discuss. I want to pay attention to them, but it is the friend who is no longer able to be there who is the one I want to pay attention to. Yet, I try to focus. Focus on the friends who are there instead of on the one who isn’t there.

I think the most difficult time, though, is time spent with people who are making you their project. They are going to make you better, solve your problems, help you feel better, and wrap it all up in an afternoon of coffee or tea and muffins. You may not be interested in dating or yoga or religion or whatever it is they think will solve your problems, but they are are sure if you just do thus-and-so that everything will be better. As I nod and smile at their unthinking arrogance, holding back biting remarks as I remember all the times I tried whatever it is they think will solve everything, I try to remember that they think they are helping. So I focus. Focus on the effort they are making to help me feel better.

Finally I make it home, where I no longer need to wear my mask; where I can let the tears stain my eyes and dig furrows in my cheeks as I go about my life doing dishes, laundry, vacuuming. The tears flow freely; nothing to check them as they flavor my food and place a watery veneer over everything I watch. The memories flow through as I get ready for bed, as I sit and stare, and then it comes to me, once again, that I need to focus. Focus on my life. Somehow, keep going, keep moving. Remember what is important to me. For the sake of the friend who is gone. For the sake of those who remain.

And in the interim, I grieve.

One of my friends on MySpace, Reid, has been doing a series of blogs he’s calling Literary Lingo 101, on story telling devices such as the BDO (Big Dumb Object), the McGuffin, Deus ex Machina, the Red Herring, and most currently, Plot Coupons.  I had never thought of calling them that, but they’re the Quest Objects the Main Characters collect to produce at the end to SAVE THE WORLD or whatever it is they’re going to do.  I like that term.  Plot Coupons.  As Reid points out, all these are tools of the writer and have been used often and well over the generations.  They get their bad press, however, from the times they have been used badly.  Anyway, if you’re looking for some definitions on plot tools, check out his blog and his discussions may help you out.

So, yesterday I worked late and got distracted and left my keys at work, thus locking myself out of my apartment.  Luckily, people were leaving as I needed to enter, and I have a neighbor I left a set with a while ago.  Blessings on his head!

But, in the middle of that I told him about being distracted because I missed Kiko, and he hadn’t gotten the email I sent out.  And so we spent some time in the hallway, teary-eyed and remembering our respective animal friends.  I had writing to do but all I wanted to do after that was sit in front of the telly and veg out or lay on the bed and cry.  So, I went downstairs to check my mail instead.

Another No Thank You.  This one from Harkur Palate.
Honestly, I don’t know why I bother sometimes.  At least the rejections slips to the literary and college magazines are worded much more graciously than the slips from the commercial speculative fiction zines.

What I think is funny is that the college and literary periodicals that have just finished telling me they can’t use their stuff, will put a slip in the envelope for a contest they’re holding for whatever I submitted (essay, poem, etc).  But they just finished telling me my stuff wasn’t fit for their periodical, didn’t they?  Why do they think I’m going to waste money on contest entry fees to be rejected by the same people AGAIN!? I know, it’s their way of making money.  I mean, the most writers really get from some of those places is a contributor’s copy or two as well as a lot of exposure.  Not lucrative. We do it for love, not for money.
Well, rejections from the literary zines are getting easier to handle.  I almost forgot about this one in the midst of worrying about finishing a paper for work, paying bills, mourning Kiko and wanting to nurture Pye.

There are a few more submissions out there I am waiting to hear back from.  In the mean time, I have some stories that I am leaving to “cook” that are out for critique that I’ll revise when the time is right.  Also have some new ideas to work on, some for a couple of new markets I’ve found.

And now, it’s time to go.  I was going to go to bed as soon as I got home tonight, but here it is, almost 10:30pm.  Well, leaving you with a rhyme my dad used to always say to me at bed time:

“To Bed! To Bed!” said Sleepy Head.

“Tarry a while!” said Slow.

“Put on the pan!” said Greedy Nan. “Let’s sup before we go!”

I think I’m going to stick with writing short stories for a while. I’ve had quite a few ideas lately, some of them pretty good, and I want to work them. Not sure what kind of markets I would send them to, but as Chandra has pointed out, you write because you want to.  So, I’m going to write what I want to write and if there’s no market out there for what I write, maybe eventually there will be.

So. There.

Novel will be put on hold until I can put these other ideas down first.  There are even a couple of longer short stories – novellas really, that I put away a while ago that I want to work on.

Now, back to procrastinating on my paper.

Monday evening I came home to find something I had forgotten I ordered, the inaugural edition of All Possible Worlds, the most recent project out from Zeta Centauri, Inc.  It is perfect bound with fine art work and 11 tales from otherwheres comparable to what could be found (IMHO) in The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy and Realms of Fantasy Magazine. For a new magazine, fresh out of the starting gate and newly launched, I felt I was getting a good deal for my $5.95.  All the stories were strong, although I thought some were better than others.  My two favorites were “Save a Dance for the Plowman” by Justin Stanchfield and “Penny Royalty for the Pound Mob” by Gene Stewart.  However, these would be closely followed by “The Apocryphist” by Bruce Golden, “Whitening” by Michael A. Pignatella and “Prizes” by Edward Muller.

What I Liked

I liked that this was a magazine with a good strong mix of paranormal literature (please – no more definitions of what is what – just tell me a good tale!). One of the reasons I enjoy Science Fiction and Fantasy so much is that it has a similar mix: Good literature that happens to be paranormal/speculative in nature. That is what I seek. Sometimes it’s a kid’s tale. Sometimes it’s a romance.  Sometimes it’s something that could have been in The Outer Limits or Twilight Zone.  And it’s all good.  And if All Possible Worlds keeps up this kind of mix, then I might start subscribing.  I will definitely see if I have something to submit sometime.

Something else I enjoyed was the artwork.  In general, I am NOT a fan of fantasy art.  I think the popular stuff tends too look too much like idealized porn — every muscle outlined in a skin tight outfit on some model who wouldn’t POSSIBLY exist in real life on any world. Then there’s the other art that tends to be all fairies with gossamer wings and butterflies. So tired of that.  Realms of Fantasy has a tendency to showcase the former and the latter is seen all over the internet.  The artwork in All Possible Worlds, however, was NOT like this. It was much more imaginative in that there seemed to be a mix of sketch work and digital artwork, in many different styles that I found more pleasing to my eye.  Cheers to the artists: Ryan Durney, John N. Baker, Marlo Dianne, and Marge Simon.

What I Did Not Like

Notice how all the authors are men.  And all the stories were about men.  These were all good tales and I really enjoyed reading them.  However, it was really discouraging to feel like I was 12 years old again and surrounded by no female role models.

I remember when I was younger and as much as I loved reading speculative fiction, I got so tired of male authors and male protagonists.  It felt so good for there to be female authors and protagonists once I discovered where they were buried that I dove into those books and rarely came up for air.  I thought the field had opened up.  I thought that was wonderful.  But this makes it appear as if we were moving backward again.  I hope not or I’m going to have start signing my work with my initials and play the pronoun game.

This made me think of something else that disturbs me lately as well. Recently,  I have noticed a divergence in the speculative fiction force and it feels like a gap between the genders is increasing. When I was younger, “Mythic Realism” referred to the writings of Isabel Allende and Gabriel Garcia Marquez and was seen as being on par with the surrealism in the art world.  “Urban Fantasy” referred to someone like Charles DeLint or Neil Gaiman who showed us that the elves and spirits didn’t really go away with the forests. Both of these subgenres had a mix of readers and writers – both genders. Now these terms (well – urban fantasy more than mythic realism) seem to have been appropriated by other (more romantic, less fantastic) types of fiction that are heavy with female writers and readers and I think that disturbs me. The reason it disturbs me because when there is a divergence, there is a gap and once you fall the gap between it’s hard to be found (remember what they say- Mind the Gap). Where do the betweens go?  Where does a young woman who writes like Neil Gaiman or Robert Silverberg go? Where does a young man who writes like Kim Harrison or Laurell K. Hamilton go?  Where are the Drag Queens, the skateboard punks, or the nicely married biracial gay couples with 2.5 puppies that should be following us to outer space or to alternate realities? If they’re showing up on tv, then why aren’t they showing up in my speculative fiction?

One of the reasons I so love speculative fiction is that it is such a good vehicle for showing up prejudices and bigotry for what they really are – chains that hold us back from growing into better sentient beings.  In speculative fiction it is possible for everyone to have a place at the table. It would be nice for there to really be a place at the table for everyone.

A.P. Fuchs of Coscom Entertainment had an interesting post on how to keep up the momentum in your writing.  He was writing specifically about keeping up the writing energy in the month between finishing your book and then picking it up again for editing after it’s “cooked” or “aged” a little.  But it got me thinking.  There are other times when the momentum needs to be kept up, when we need to somehow keep our creative or writing hand in “between” things.  Things disappear “tween,” whether they be dragons or slips of time or children crossing galaxies using thousand league boots.  “Between” is a dangerous place indeed. Stories get lost “between.” “Between” books or short stories or editing, what do you do to “keep your hand in” so you don’t go “between”?

I freelance part-time for the company I work for so whenever I am out of writing projects or out of inspiration and am only thinking in “concrete mode” I see about getting assignments.  They aren’t fun and they aren’t creative so why do I do this?

1. They pay me.  Much as I love my fiction writing, it’s all on spec and I have yet to get a paycheck more than $10 for any of my stories or poetry.
2. They keep me writing and working on my craft.  Academic prose is not the same as narrative fiction or lyrical poetry, but it’s still practice writing (hopefully) grammatically correct sentences in a (semi)logical manner.  I make it a challenge to see how interesting I can make the dullest paper I’m working on (in a purely academic way of course) by varying sentence length, use of active sentences versus passive sentences, and ways to bring in interesting examples. In short, even though it’s not creative, it is, in a way, and keeps me writing.
3. I never know where inspiration will hit next, so my best bet is to keep going with life.  If doing a paper on how water filters work sparks an idea for a story or a poem, who am I to argue?

What else do I do? Probably the same as other people.  I watch movies and read books.  Some are old favorites and some are new to me. Go listen to music (not as much as I used to, I confess).  Live music is a good muse.  Go to a fair or festival or a different part of town.  Go to a conference or writers group. It’s good to be around fellow writers.
And I take notes.  Not everyone does this, I know, but one of the best books I read on writing was Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones.  Two things she said stuck with me.  One is to jot things down as soon as you can after they come to you. Not everything I jot down will be worth anything, but how do I know unless I jot it down to examine it later? Otherwise, it may just disappear “in between.” The other thing she said was to Be Kind. Be kind, be kind, be kind.  Be kind to yourself, to your fellow writers, to the waitress who pours infinite amounts of coffee while you take up her table writing, to the librarian who lets you use her conference room for your meetings, to everyone who in some way helps contribute to the writer’s life you are trying to live.

Another thing to remember, is that even when writing is done in a rush of words, it’s not really a rush of words.  It’s word by word. Step by Step.  Bird by Bird.

So, what are you doing, today, to keep your hand in?

Remember “Ring around the Rosie”?  Did you know it was supposedly a rhyme made during the middle ages and the black or bubonic plague of the 13th century?  (I think it was the 13th Century, or it may have been the 1300s – I’m sure someone out there knows).  Anyway, supposedly, the rhyme refers to the plague.  If you got rings, or sores on your body and started smelling you could wear flowers to hide the smell, I think that’s the first part.  The second part refers to the practice of burning the homes of those who had died of it.

Anyway, that’s just a roundabout (get it? ring around? round about?) introduction with a bad segue into the topic of getting Kiko’s ashes back yesterday.  I was teary, but okay when I got them.  The delivery man and I talked about our common love of tabbies.  His gray tabby is 18.  I wish Kiko could have lived that long.

Okay – back to topic.  But my boss was there, the one who likes to ask if I have had any life affirming moments that day.  He and I are pretty good at gruesomely inappropriate jokes and thank G(g)od(s)(ess)(es)/Universe for that because the joking kept me from falling apart.  Then a friend offered to give me a ride home so I wouldn’t have to maintain on the bus, but even then, my spirits were cheery cuz we were in a convertible in the California sunshine and talking. So just a few tears.

No, it was getting home that was the bitch. Ouch.  Kiko’s canister I put out to Pye who only slightly sniffed at it.  Pye kept wanting to play with the box it came in.  I started bawling then.  Pye moped all last night and today.  I cried some more.  Cried whenever I woke up.  Kiko was a good friend who watched out for me.  When he could go outside, he used to walk me to my bus stop and meet me back there at the end of the day.  When he thought someone was bad for me, he peed on their stuff (and he was right most of the time).  When I was sick or sad, he knew whether to cuddle with me or bat my head with his tail.  So, I am sad to no longer have my friend around. I’m crying – a lot.  I didn’t go to work today.  Pye threw up on the bed (he, like some of my family, carries his stress in his belly).

I know some people don’t get this.  That’s fine.  If it helps to explain, the friend who drove me home last night pointed out that it can actually be worse with your animal friends.  I mean, they’re your friends and live with you like family, so there’s that bond.  But where a human who is dying can talk things over with their loved ones and their loved ones talk back and everything is understood, that can’t be done as well with your animal friends.  So, there’s always a feeling of helplessness.  You always wonder if your friend was really ready to go.  Did they really understand that you had done all you could for them? Do they really understand how much you love them and will miss them?  Or do they just feel betrayed in the end?

I guess, until we develop our brains beyond the normal 10% we’ll never really know.

So the grief is partly due to this lack of closure with our animal friends’ deaths.

My dad has lost two animal friends in the last couple of months. I think one of things I will be doing today, besides washing the bedding where Pye threw up, is calling Dad to check on him.  He and I were talking last week about whether or not you believe in an afterlife yourself, you want to believe that there is one for your animals. You want to know that there’s a place where you can meet up with them after you all die.  And there is that poem about the Rainbow Bridge out there.  Dad, card carrying agnostic that he is, doubts everything – existence of God, heaven, hell, etc.  But he was saying, in regards to a kitty heaven “when they die, it really makes you want to believe in the Great God-Damn Fucker, doesn’t it”?

I don’t know where Kiko’s spirit is: if there is a kitty heaven, if he’s wondering around snooping through walls and spiritually pissing on everything, or if his spirit evaporated with the last breath in his body and the last beat of his heart. It would be comforting to believe that he at least gets to wander around again.

Meantime, though I never thought I would be the person who keeps the ashes of their dead kitty, I find myself turning remarkably Egyptian  (influence of Bastet maybe? Did Kiko have a religion and observances he is whispering into my ear? He did sometimes stare into space for no reason, seemingly only to meditate.).  I’m going to find a suitable kitty cookie jar or vase, hopefully at some Color Me Mine type store where I can paint and finish it to my liking.  Then put the canister in there with his collar, a favorite toy or two and his eulogy.  Then I’m going to put it all up on the type of high shelf he would have liked to have perched on when he was alive, and maybe his “ka” will be happy then.

So, not that you wanted or needed to know.  But that is what I’m doing in honor of my friend.