...the PopMatters one on the film Holiday, that is.

Yeah, I know, it's been awhile. Here I was patiently waiting to be notified the article was up, like last time, and turns out it's been on the go all along. Maybe that's a service only provided to novice authors, or ones who bug their editors to distraction (if there's a difference!), I don't know.

Anyway, there it is, and I'm pleased as a very pleased person over it. Looking at it in a pro-type setting, it has...well , a professional-type air. It sounds article-y. It resolves any last lingering doubts in my mind; I can write. The Bob & Ray thing was neither fluke nor (total) mania. From a non-fiction standpoint at least, I have it under control.

Aw, man, that's a nice feeling.

After due consideration, I am thinking that it might be wiser to get this going now, before the cold medication wears off.

It's interesting, what an afternoon home sick trying to entertain yourself will do to your authorial morale. I've been skimming the Wikipedia 'Articles For Deletion' discussions - fascinating little mini-sagas of the effort to be neutral and altruistic on the Net - and have been encouraged not to worry, because comparatively speaking, I don't HAVE any readers. Thus, there's little-to-no chance thousands will gather and jeer and eventually make an Internet-wide fetish of my incompetence.

....Still, it might just be worth pointing out that I can spell, OK? I can spell REALLY REALLY WELL, as a matter of fact. Except the parts that I deliberately misspelled, for effect. That is...oh, the hell with it.

To confuse the issue further, this isn't the same saga I was on about a few weeks ago; it has roots in a few of the same places, though. I actually started this one 'way back on the old forum, but got sidetracked - hard - when it became evident that I'd have to introduce some actual plot at some point. The idea now is, I post the setup chapters over a few weeks, by which point I will have made a decent start on the plot part and be posting that.

If anyone wants to follow along, feedback is welcome as usual. Just realise that this is still a very rough draft, 'kay? And overlong, and probably embarrassingly naiive if not derivative. But it is - I cannot stress this enough - very well-spelled. (Also, on the off-chance, copyright asserted etc.)


( Either way, fun starts here... )

 

...I've caught up on all ten chapters of Ursula Vernon's Digger. Really, I need to stop discovering wonderful webcomics that've been running for years; compulsive archive-reading does not mesh well with the amount of sleep required for coping with fashion vendors. Especially the ones who change their retails on 1500+ units, and - whoopsie! - somehow forget to tell the ticket printers before shipping. There are days, in this job, when you seriously consider the 'Is everyone else crazy? Or is it just me?' dilemma. Long before noon.

Anyway, Digger. It is one of those media which naturally lends itself to listing off the goodies - Heroic wombats! Vampire vegetables! Oracular slugs! Metaphorical pigeons! Pirate shrews! - but as you can see, in this case we'd be here for a lot longer than it'd take you to just travel to page one and get hooked.
Because you will. Oh, yes, you will. This thing is almost hypnotically addictive, gorgeous art, literate wit and all. What I love most about it, though, is that every single one of the fantastic elements are so firmly grounded - even the Shadowchild. Vernon is not writing fantasy for the sake of it; nor is she being clever for the same reason. Her characters speak from solid convictions about interesting ideas; their damage - and a lot of it is severe - is nonetheless real, their varying degrees of strength in the face of it no more and no less than natural consequence.

****************************************

Meanwhile. This weekend. In a weird way reading Digger has given me some help with my own fiction-writing blockage...Thinking about starting, that's OK. Even fun. But actually starting...over the last year I've realised that the problem is that it'd mean going to a place of total honesty within. And that in turn means confronting some things that - I don't - really - want to. Mind, I'm not saying I have any baggage on the scale of Vernon's characters to deal with. I mean, pretty sure there are no shadows of malevolent goddesses on my brain, or anything.

Just...everybody has an Unknown, and mine and self don't really get along so well. So following Digger and company as they deal with theirs has been a treat in more ways than one. Perhaps that's part of what I want to write about - why my subconscious is so insistent I get on with this sci-fi story. It's a vivid reminder that considering reality does not make one mad, no matter how mad the reality may seem; that in fact confronting one's fears, doing something active about them - while it may or may not make things easier - is one hell of a lot better than just sitting around brooding. In a way, I've been just sitting around inside my head since I was a teenager, and it's high time I got out and explored a bit.

Right then, this is me, doing something. Sitting down and sketching out my ideas - since, as you may have noticed [/self-deprecating sarcasm] I'm one of those anal types that can't function unless I know where the story's going from the outset  - and then going back and editing the first few chapters a bit, and then posting them here. And then I have to go on, or I look like an idiot. A pretentious idiot, to boot. And being thought pretentious may be the only thing that bothers me more than being thought crazy.

--Threw on a flimsy cardigan over my spring dress and spent two hours' preaching service in beautiful Rosedale, strolling 'where the wealthy nobles dwell', almost giddy with the sensation of warm sun on bare arms.

--Went shopping and managed to find Shoemom the perfect white sweater almost on first go in the change room. Those of you who don't have mothers for whom clothes shopping is as convincing a Calvinist to have fun, trust me, this was a red-letter event.

--Indulged myself to the hilt in Godiva chocolates -- I highly recommend the key lime truffle, by the way - and Shoemom didn't complain once about the wasted $$. Probably because of my cunning flanking maneuvres involving mandarin orange ganache, at the taste of which she is helpless.

--Got to sleep in literally 'til noon on Sunday.

--Constructed the most amazing outfit for services from various forgotten pieces in my closet. Memo to wanna-be dieters needing a boost: This is the feeling you're shooting for, and oh, is it worth it. Every last glass of water and stick of celery.

--Had several nifty comments on my blog, including one from an old friend I'd been missing for yonks and another, on WordPress, that said my writing style was 'unusual and nice'. I am thoroughly chuffed.

--Made various fun and frolicsome plans with friends for upcoming summer weekends.

--Finally found the perfect 'dark' LJ theme I've been searching for - that is, elegant and evocative of something other than 'Hey world! I wanna die!'

--Contrived at last to convince myself my Holiday review had simply got lost in my previous column-proposal mess @ PopMatters, and fired it off again, to the features editors this time.

--In the course of the usual angsting over my fiction-writing follies, thought back over a project I'd started and then abandoned awhile ago...and suddenly it all clicked into place, all the plot elements I'd been struggling with resolved. A tight, complete story is now staring back at me out of chaos, one that I'm genuinely interested in telling. All ready, just as soon as I want to commit it to paper...

...so, um, why am I suddenly terrified?

I may....just...possibly...see the glimmer of a way clear to resolve my plotting headaches. Something someone mentioned in a comment here awhile ago, about telling the observer's story. More on that later, if it pans out.

Meanwhile, I've been toying with the idea of going back and reworking some of those old posts, pruning them down as it were. I've been concentrating hard on not rambling lately, and the self-editing process has actually been a lot of fun - enough so that it's making reading back over the archives a slightly cringe-worthy experience.

...Also, the cats have come down with an advanced case of February and are currently moping around giving me the Big Eyes of Feline Pathos because I refuse to let them go out in the -20 C windchill. I need something to block out the whining, stat.

So I finally heard back from PopMatters re: the column proposal - after a gentle nudge sent earlier this week. My idea is too unfocussed for their needs, they said. And that's all they said, leading me to believe there's a whole lot more they could've said.

Well...hey, it's an essential experience on every aspiring writer's resume, right? Right. Besides, I'd rather concentrate on fiction just now anyway.



...Sigh.

[sigh] Were the back-from-vacation blues supposed to kick in this early? I was having a ton of fun yesterday, unpacking and looking at downloaded pictures and cataloguing smuggled American chocolates (oh, Dove, why must you stint the Canadian market so?)..then I woke up today, and looked out at the grim winter gloom, and suddenly...

I suppose it's understandable in one sense: namely, the 'tomorrow I have to get up and face the cold dark Monday commute all over again' sense. I love summer, and I love how summer makes me feel - 'happy and aimless and idle and pagan', as per Annie Sullivan. I don't like the feeling of being confined by the weather again.

But that's not what seems to be uppermost. What's really bugging is a sense of having done something different, unusual, out of the daily grind, for a short two weeks...and now here we are again. I am just not feeling very interesting, today. Not so much in terms of my writing (although I will confess to having hyped myself up a little in re: coming home to find an email from PopMatters, since the editor mentioned considering submissions over the holiday break). Just...you know that Barenaked Ladies song, Pinch Me? "On an evening such as this/It's hard to tell if I exist"? Like that.

Yes, I know this is basically a self-pity fit. Also, that I've brought a lot of it on myself. I look back at my entries for 2008 and see a whole lot of wishing and hoping and excuses, but not so much with the going out and grabbing the brass ring by the tail, or whatever it is I'm supposed to do. There is procrastination, and then there is yours truly, brushing out the mane of the My Little Pony toy she got with a Happy Meal in West Virginia.

So this seems like as good a time as any to think about New Year's resolutions. I hereby resolve, this year, to stop yapping and start doing. To quit thinking of an hour spent reading people rambling on about how much they hate comic strips as time spent productively on the computer. Over the course of this year spent searching so haphazardly for a writing focus, I ran across one simple piece of advice that really resonated, from Toni Morrison: "Write the story only you could write." It shall be my mission, in 2009, to find that story and commit it to, er, MS Word.

Meanwhile, to all the friends and other readers who've stuck by me and my pretensions thus far, you are either completely crazy or...well, yeah, you're completely crazy, and I love you for it. Here's hoping we all land at the bottom of the new year with our crazy intact.

Robert Standish on antiquated British thriller author E. Phillips Oppenheim, quoted by Colin Wilson in Snobbery With Violence:

There was in him, as there has been in almost every man or woman who has found a place in tens of millions of human hearts, a wide streak of mediocrity.

...Or, as we post-millennial types like to call it, the American Idol Principle.

Seriously, though, it's kind of interesting to ponder where the would-be auteur goes from there; related to the age-old question of whose critical opinion really matters.
Do you (as did most of the authors surveyed by Watson) proudly revel in the approbation of the good honest yeoman heart? Do you take it as a challenge and try earnestly to raise its consciousness? Or do you just give up on mass appeal altogether and revel in being above it all?

...and it is codeine. Lots of it.

To backtrack a bit: I have - or had, now - a couple of frankly rotten wisdom teeth in the back of my mouth. Friday afternoon I developed a killer toothache, the kind that prevents you from concentrating on anything other than, well, KILLER TOOTHACHE OMYGOD THE PAIN GET IT OUT OF THERE RIGHT NOW WHY WON'T IT COME OUT OHMYGOD JUSTMAKEITSTOPRIGHTNOW...

Yeah. Try being trapped on a bus, in urban traffic, in this condition. Nothing works on this kind of toothache. Advil by the handful, Orajel, nada. The only relief I have ever found is very direct application of cold - in sipping ice water, or a bit of ice in my mouth. The problem is this remedy only lasts for about thirty seconds, then the pain starts gathering again and I hasten to take another sip, then another...before you know it, you're a hopeless Evian junkie. As Shoemom pointed out, in her own inimitable lemons-to-lemonade fashion: 'Well, you're certainly getting your system flushed out, anyhow!"

Also, as you can imagine, this remedy is not very practical for sleeping. As of Saturday night I was reduced to experimenting with holding an ice cube between my teeth..all that did was give misery the option, wake me up from pain or in a soggy puddle of drool. Or both.

By Sunday morn my dentist phobia was as if nonexistent by comparison, and I got both teeth extracted. The local emergency dental clinic may be unconcerned with frills like putting patients at ease, but by God they are efficient. And by that I mean, they prescribe codeine. By Sunday night, I was flying so high I had my formal PopMatters column proposal typed out and sent pretty much before I even realised what was happening.

(Including a link back to this blog, incidentally...uh, I can write when not under the influence, I swear. Although, when you're hopped up enough, the concept of  what would basically be a Muppet Hunter S. Thompson is kind of an interesting one...)

There was also the thing where I rewrote the entire TVTropes entry for Sesame Street, but that need not concern us here. The really intriguing news is that the prescription runs another week or so...and I'm already pondering a possible breakthrough in my fiction stalemate, finishing the sci-fi piece I'd started at least. Just out of curiosity, were I to post installments here, as I'd thought of doing previously, would anybody care to beta-read?

Am really getting into these baked Lay's chips, although the cheddar-and-sour-cream goodness wears off a smitch too fast without the oil to stick to. This is the first thing you realise, when you start becoming fat-conscious: it is what puts the flavour in things. The loss of creaminess and richness I can live without ('cepting ice cream), but the quest for taste, in a diet that already didn't include much in the way of fruits or veg, raises the hunt for low-calorie gratification to an art form.

(Look, yes, I know. The reason I don't eat fruits & veg - other than juices, corn and potatoes - is that the texture makes me quite literally retch. At various points in my lifetime friends and family have cajoled, teased, guilted or humiliated me into trying, say, a strawberry; the results have not been pretty.)

Pacifying small indulgence of the week: Vachon triple-choco cakes. Chocolate snack cake topped with a loop of chocolate frosting, within which is chocolate-fudge syrup. I have had them in the cupboard for 24 hours now, and I have only eaten one. Victory is mine!

Meanwhile...yeah, the writing thing. Am still waiting on feedback re: my PopMatters column idea, as noted a very simple concept involving my one proven audience-gathering skill: the ability to say snarky and/or clever things about pop-culture. The more I think about it, the more I like it; inclusive yet uncomplicated, fun to write and certainly to research, so motivation to keep a deadline would be a breeze. Maybe too uncomplicated. We'll see. I am feeling better on that score, after a week's reading what passes for a similarly-themed humour column in the MetroNews.

The fiction experiment, or lack thereof, is what's really bugging. Same old same old: the historical family saga is bogged down in my total lack of confidence in re: writing period accuracy, the sci-fi thing is too cliched and the 'write what you know' idea is at a dead stop thanks to my being a pastel-cover person with an absolute horror of pastel-covered fiction.

Result: one ridiculously frustrated Shoe. I should just start writing something, I know. Given a choice between that and gorging on choco-cakies, maybe I will.