An Odyssey of Dreams

Wiscon was not what I expected. Much like rosefox, I'd heard "Readercon, only bigger" and expected it to be that.

On the other hand, I did adapt enough to have a good time. Seeing people was wonderful, and probably the highlight of the trip. Met mroctober for longer than 15 minutes, and he had no idea who I was. Saw matociquala and truepenny at the Gathering, buymeaclue, nihilistic_kid around here and there, ellen_kushner and deliasherman flitting like busy butterflies to and fro, sdn after her second panel, wherein we had a brief chat about fanfic, and blackholly when she crawled out of bed recovering from whatever bug she had. Met grahamsleight and desayunoencama, as well as Maureen McHugh and her lovely spouse. Learned a lot.

Heard people diss the Kushiel trilogy on multiple levels, which was highly entertaining, as they expressed most of the problems I had with the book aside from the massive culture rape.

Cleaned up nicely for the parties, and had the joy of Doyle walking around in leather pants (which prompted grailquestion and yuki_onna to explain to justbeast that he needs to obtain a pair), and generally hung around parties. Parties were not what I expected - entirely too much standing around and chatting and not enough, well, partying. When we came down to say goodbye to people on Sunday night there was a dance party going on, and that was great - I wish we could have stayed.

Monday was entirely a day of travel. We planned our England trip from Midway airport and panicked about having two days to do it in. We've mostly accomplished the task now, though. All packed and stuff, and off to England at 10pm Eastern.

I do have panel notes, and I do want to write them up, but I'm not sure I'll have the time before we leave. In that case, they'll wait until I get back.

Did I mention that I read books? Well, I did. Fiction, even! I read Valiant on the plane to Chicago, Vintage and the ARC of So Fey at the con, finishing the former on the plane to Atlanta, then The Theif by Megan Whalen Turner on the plane back. queenofthorns reviewed the series some time ago, so when I saw the first two in paperback I snagged them up. Gen certainly hooked me, so I read The Queen of Attolia yesterday, and pre-ordered The King of Attolia paperback, which comes out June 12th. I've packed a bunch more to go, and hopefully I'll have time to write about them more after we return. I'm so happy to be reading fiction again!

Also, justbeast asked meaningful questions about Glamour, and prompted me to crack open the Honour draft. It's not as bad as I feared, which is almost always the case. I'm truly looking forward to beginning the revisions to the first book when I get back from England, now. Just a reminder, that if you want to help critique it, answer this poll.

I wrote this on Friday afternoon, and having sat on it for a weekend, figure it's still worth posting. I don't like feeling like I'm angsting publicly but this journal is supposed to be my outlet for creativity, and creativity has been sorely lacking.

deliasherman once told me that you can't write while things are going wrong. She's right, of course. (I'll not say "She's always right," but near enough. Let's go with "She's often right.") So perhaps it's no wonder that I draw blanks whenever I so much as look toward one of my writing notebooks - this entry, after all, is being composed on paper dedicated for class notes, during class, no less.

But none of that gives me any comfort when it comes to how well Honour isn't going. Sure, the past month or two I've had plenty of excuses. But what about before? Has the steam gone out of my writing? Am I bored with my own story?

If that's the case, there's also the question of the short stories that have been sitting by, waiting their turn. I've only gotten a few lines on one of them, and I wonder where it's going and what my audience for that one could possibly be.

It feels like someone rolled a big-ass boulder into the middle of my creative stream and every so often I just collect what leaks through.

Well, okay. That's fine for now, I guess. I'm busy with school, and my family is taking far more of my attention now than previously (one way to know you're no longer "the baby" - everyone is looking to you to tell them what to do). But these things are temporary. I won't be in classes forever, and as my family heals and deals we'll lean on each other less.

And then what? Will my interest magically reappear? Do I just wait by the window for my muse to drop by? Until it condescends to see me?

I am so grounded in real life and the mundane right now I cannot fathom fantasy of any sort. (And so I went to Boskone. Heh.) And it makes me want to cry.

What the title says. I've been buried under a pile of grad-school-y stuff. It's been an amazingly positive experience thus far, but certainly an exhausting one. Voluntarily I've been putting in hours that have had people in the lab I'm rotating telling me that I'm working too hard and I really shouldn't stress so much. The funny thing is that I'm not stressed at all on this score - it's the most biologically-related fun I've had since I left undergrad. Absolutely wonderful!

So wonderful, in fact, that it's been stimulating my writing. Out of the blue I started rewriting one of the most troublesome parts of Glamour - the prologue - and just today came up with a really nifty idea for short stories. ( Cut to spare those who aren't interested. And also, rambly. )

In other news, I'm enjoying the latest season of Stargate: Atlantis like little else. Character moments! And backstory! And group bonding! Yay! Though I haven't seen last weeks', and won't see this weeks' for a bit. SG-1 is looking good too, though I'm sad about the cancellation.

I'm feeling less-than-thrilled over the upcoming VM and BSG premieres, though. Both shows have kind of left me underwhelmed in the aftermath of their second seasons, and the only way I was able to enjoy the Veronica Mars finale was by tossing the plot out the window and forgetting anything that even stank of continuity and cohesion. Though to be fair, I wasn't thrilled with the the first season's finale, either. Battlestar Galactica sort of went downhill for me after the Pegasus episodes, and for pretty much the same reasons. I'm not at all impressed with the commercials SciFi's been running, either.

My semagic informs me that today is matociquala's birthday. Happy Birthday Bear!

Today is also the start of Rosh Hashannah, so if you thought that I'd be on more now that I've appeared briefly, you were most likely mistaken. Nevertheless, Shannah Tovah to all that celebrate, and may you be inscribed in the Book of Life!

I am off visiting people at glorious Pennsylvania retreat, where internet is limited, and even if it wasn't I'd not be spending much time on it as there is a lake! For swimming! Still, gmail's inaccessible and it's driving me batty to not get my e-mail, so I'll settle for posting briefly.

I've been reading Dawn Cook's The Decoy Princess, which is great at subverting tropes and full of enjoyable characters. Not Faulkner, but then I'm in the mood for a light read having re-read ellen_kushner's divine The Priviledge of the Sword prior to leaving. I've got my head chock full of thoughts on how Alec Campion is a great champion of women's rights, and when sober, a remarkably useful person to know. There might be a post on that later, full of spoilers for all three books. Then again, that depends entirely on how coherent I can make myself under all the squee.

My own writing is still being beaten into submission. I feel like I've written something that might have a few jewels underneath if only I can scrape away all the dust and annoying bits of forcing the plot to the point where it makes no sense. And rewrite the prologue so it's not a vehicle for all! melodrama! all! the! time! (Yes, I do like my exclamation points today.) Still, it's a process that's helping me immensely, and I like to think is actually simplifying a narrative that will be difficult enough with all the characters and their arcs in there.

But more importantly, swimming!

I lack discipline. Every time I make plans, they get sidelined and I wind up reading Jane Austen instead. Not that reading Austen is bad, by any means, but I do have a book I need to rewrite in large chunks. And so, a meme stolen shamelessly borrowed from truepenny.

A List of First Sentences of Works in Various Stages of Progress:

( Cut because I care, and you may not. )

*sigh* Combining the first two chapters isn't so difficult, but it largely involves sync-ing several people's edits to something reasonable. As a result, fuyu_no_fuhei has convinced me to wait until lareinenoire arrives here tomorrow before deleting/rebuilding/polishing. They're going to take it all apart while I'm off stuffing Readercon packets.

May they have no mercy on my poor book. :-)

In other news, much SQUEE!! regarding today's semi-final, and I'm off to resume my reading of Blood and Iron, which won the battle of the books.

*sigh* I just wish my sore throat would go the hell away.

[Poll #742100]

Note: Those already on the filter can feel free to vote or not as they see fit. Unless you wish off, in which case it's probably best that you go ahead and tell me so. :)

Having sent Glamour (yay! it has a title that I can call it now!) off for editing, phase 1, my brain is divided on the things we should do next.

The happy, productive part is bouncing up and down going "Good job! We should write something! Write something!" It does not, unfortunately, specify what that "something" should be.

The lazy, overworked part is busy lying on the couch, staring out into the torrential downpour and going "Are you kidding? Gimme some tea, some books, and leave me the hell alone. The draft stinks anyway. You're never going to fix the shit that is chapter 20, so suck it." I'm not too fond of that side of my brain right now, but it does have a point with the tea and the book.

Plus, I have a weird urge to do a lot of research on rusalka and domovoi. I tried to get my mom to give me some tips on finding Russian balladry back in February for Greer Gilman, but she's been so busy she flaked and probably forgot about it long ago. Getting back to my mythic roots or something?

It's weird. When I was in college I was writing these stories about my ex and one of my professors looked at me and said "You moved to this country and had this incredible formative experience? Why the hell are you writing about coffee shops and exes?" And I honestly tried to write about my experiences then, but no matter how hard I squeezed, it wouldn't get anywhere.

Having read as much as I have lately, I think it has something to do with the format and structure of the story. When we were moving it was a novel. Things blended together - one thing led to another and it was a long narrative. I was trying to write short stories - single moments in time, a point at which change happens - because that was the scope of the course. But my immigration wasn't a short story - it was a novel. And my difficulty reflects that.

This leads to all sorts of deep navel-gazing as to what I want to write when I'm finished with the trilogy. But at the moment, the "when" is rather optimistic on my part.

Eh, all navel-gazing aside, I should finish The Faery Reel so that I may squee about it in an unhindered fashion.

So far this month I've gotten into grad schools and chosen the one I shall be attending next year. But if that wasn't enough, I just wrote the final word of the first draft of my novel!

I have totally earned my Caribbean vacation, oh yes.

( Wherein I talk more about the book. )

C'est tout, as some French-speakers may say. Possibly with the proper accents and everything. I shall be departing tomorrow later today for the sunny Caribbean, where I shall celebrate my new-found freedom by gorging myself on as much sci-fi and fantasy one can squeeze into hours of lying on a beach and explaining to my family that vacation means moving as little as possible.

See you on the other side!

I posted a short story over here, at Gather.

Not entirely sure how I feel about that one, though.