Job 2

ate up more of last week than I had hoped. Travel is exhausting because it is over-stimulating. And without the downtime to do anything with the stimulation, it just crushes me.

Postal

Sheila Williams passed on “Bitten by a Radioactive Historian” for Asimov’s. The form email asked to see more when I have them, so that was nice. I guess I do need to print stuff out for Analog; sigh.

I also sent off a query to see how much I can bend a mag’s guidelines. Normally I wouldn’t do that but I rather like the poem and think I have at least some rapport with the editor. We’ll see.

Reading

The kobold is pretty awesome, though, so I am managing to read things. It’s harder to keep track of them, however, as I can no longer just throw the book next to the computer when I’m done to remind myself to mention them.

I read Andre Norton’s Key Out of Time, something I probably wouldn’t have picked up except for the kobold. There were a couple of painful passages about natives vs. colonists but I appreciated the fact that Norton was even touching on the subject. There were a great number of stereotypes fulfilled, including gender ones, but the book was published in the early sixties. It still makes me sigh a little, though.

I finished Brenda Cooper’s Reading the Wind. I really enjoyed the cultures on the other planets; I’m kinda surprised how easy it was to get there when in the first book it had seemed nearly impossible. In general, I think my reaction was similar to the first: refreshingly well-done science fiction, with real aliens and plot points that made me think. I’m looking forward to the third one. And I’d like to find some of her work that isn’t of this world.

I read more Agatha Christie: The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Great fun. And also: I am getting better at figuring out who’s doing what before Poirot reveals. I also read The Secret Adversary, which is a Tommy-and-Tuppence story, rather than Poirot, and was rather surprised by the difference in narrative tone. It felt a little unpolished, compared to all the others I’ve read. I enjoyed it, and felt that the changing points-of-view could have been an excellent contribution to the story-telling.

(And I’d like to point out: do you know who’s building the best-looking e-books? The folks putting free ones up there. (Maybe not all of them.) The free Christie novels are the first ones in a long time (even including the big publishers) who are typo-free and have decent formatting.)

I read a lot of Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans. I know almost nothing about Cooper, or his time, or why he wrote this book; and there is so clearly a lot going on that is motivating the plot and characters. (Wikipedia says it was published in 1826 and took place in 1757. I’m afraid to look at it too much more, for spoilers.)

Lots of responses here (no reviews so far):

• How is Cora not from the 21st century? I mean, she clearly doesn’t think like everyone else in the 18th century.
• If only the male attackers would simply leave when the male defenders left, as if
  the woman had nothing to do with anything

• This would have been a very different book had Cooper thought about rape; did the Iroquois attackers not rape? And what sort of machismo males (which the protagonists are portrayed to be even if that is not an accurate description of the true culture) would leave the women to the Iroquois (as depicted in the book) and think them only to be captured?
• By the time Cora has spoken twice, both times she has said, “Hey! Don’t judge that man by his skin color!”
• Did any woman of Cooper’s time buy the whole “women are only gentle” bits? How could frontiers-women be only gentle?
• Cooper being hilarious:

  “In vulgar parlance the condiments of a repast are called by the American ‘a relish’, substituting the thing for its effect.”

• “while one of two [Iroquois] even gave vent to their malignant feelings by the most menacing gestures, against which neither the sex nor the beauty of the sisters was any protection.”

  Sex and beauty as protection against male violence?

  You’ve got to be kidding me.

  But it is an interesting idea.

• More Cora: “And am I answerable that thoughtless and unprincipled men exist,
  whose shades of countenance may resemble mine?”

• Also—is there truly no story about natives in which they are not dying out or are not primitives? Even the Sherman Alexie I’ve read sort of included those aspects.

  I’d like to see some native science fiction (but better done than The Bones of Time). There was so much in I Tell You Now (but by definition, as memoir, it was all about the past), in The Way to Rainy Mountain, but I want… It is a bit wrong to want science fiction, though, isn’t it?

  Well, I (also) want to read a contemporary story about natives talking to natives, and doing what they consider normal, just living, and I want that to be normal. (Well, and have a good plot, else why the story?)

  (In the that I wanted Tron to show normal things: to have women doing things they are doing right now (say, talking to each other about computers, or say, just existing) without fanfare, just the way things are.)

  I have got to look harder.

I also started Wendy Babiak’s Conspiracy of Leaves and was happy to enjoy a number of the first handful of poems. It’s the most poetry I’ve read in a while and it made me miss it, so I was impressed by that.

I liked “Nonsense Poem #1″ (although I didn’t find it to be nonsense at all), I liked her way with titles (such as “Apology To My Husband For Snapping Upon Being Made To Wait To Use The Shower & Get On With My Day”). “Confessing Grief” and “The Garden This Morning” had beautiful language and strong endings. Of particular note is the ending (and thus trajectory) of “Lessons From European History and TV Applied To Current Events While Washing The Dishes”.

I ended the year, literally, by reading Neile’s and Jim’s holiday gift poems. That was pretty wonderful.

Today I read all of Scott Westerfeld’s The Midnighters. It was fun! Good way to spend a few hours this afternoon, filling the Bucket. And I was glad to see that he opens up the story, at the end, with the bit I felt to be the gaping hole over which I failed to suspend my disbelief (!) in the plot.

Resolution?

I spent too much of the end of the year doing rather than reflecting, just no time. And unlike everyone else, I’ll have to spend 002 as a miniature of the year rather than 001, because 001 was really 365 for me.

I want to write more this year. As soon as I manage to balance other things, something falls off, and this past year it was writing. (Also, I think what fell off was “taking care of myself” because at some level those two are intertwined. Perhaps I should be honest: at all levels they are intertwined.)

I’d like to spend less energy reading poetry and consequently read more of it instead of being hung up on (1) only saying nice things and (2) trying so hard to learn lessons from art that simply doesn’t reach me.

If I stare at the painting for 5 minutes in the MFA and it doesn’t move me, I just walk on, you know? I don’t beat myself up about it.

I even have some real ideas about ways to find and showcase more poetry of the kind I like to read.

I don’t believe that I have to write everyday (although that might be best) but I do have to figure out what time I can set aside to write. (Even if it is just scribbling here, with Dora as my guide.)

The calendar, however, gives me the lie.

In Review

I sent 33 poems out in 2010 whose publication status came back in 2010; 3 of those were accepted for publication. (Nothing went out in 2009 and came back in 2010.)

On all fronts, this is the worst publishing year I’ve had since I started the journal. According to my review in 2007, it’s also my worst year for making money from poetry. (Laugh with me.) I can’t even say, as I did in 2006, that I’m ecstatic about what I wrote this year.

::must change mood::

Less quantitative items (but with cute little squares!):

• I did revise a lot of pages in Queen of the Steppe. It’s better now. I still find it to be a compelling poem to work on.
• Stone Telling published two of my poems and I had a nice revision moment with a real editor.
• Jonathan David set “At Titania’s Garage Sale” and I got to hear it performed.
• The SH reading, the reading in New Hampshire, the blog tour.

Halfway through the dark is better than not, I guess.

Warm Fuzzies

Some news to help change the mood:

Karen Weyant includes The Scientific Method on her list of 2011 books to look for. I’m honored. (Look at those names! Seth Abramson! C. Dale Young! Dorianne Laux! Wow.)

Dan Campbell’s generous mention of “Tertiary” in his review of the latest Stone Telling issue.

Writing

After the beautiful snowstorm, I tried writing a haiku for Peg that would capture my first snow on the southern Colorado prairie. I’m not sure I succeeded (well, I know the last line is right) but it was good to do.

Two goals for today: (1) make headway in revising the next scene (with spoilers in its title) in QotS and (2) start on this “lyric workbook” that I can carry around with me to have little bits to work on since I can’t use the Job 2 laptop for non-work stuff.

Queen of the Steppe – I revised (the newly titled) “Our Dead Sing Still”. There’s probably too much in this scene and the next two; I’m not sure it needs that many words to get the story across. A lot is coming out, due to some plot line changes as well as the fact that so much of it is no longer integral. At the time, I was figuring out where this was going, as well as how they do burials. I have those details down, now.

I’m cutting all of “Bath in preparation for spoilers” (teehee) because there isn’t anything in there that’s necessary now.

Which means going back and adding to “Our Dead Sing Still” to incorporate what plot does need to happen, as well as a conversation with Jalil. (Ye gods, this means I have to find another horse name for her. And make sure I change it throughout the remainder of the story. Names for horses has been the hardest part of this whole thing. Ah, well, that’s an idea…)

Well, one for two isn’t bad, especially since I picked the actual writing one. And now to harp.