Reading at Sundance Bookstore, November 15

On Thursday, November 15 at 6:30, I'll be reading from Brief Visits, my new book of sonnets about my ER volunteer work.  Here's the official flyer for the event.

If you're in Reno, please stop by, and even if you can't make it, please spread the word!

Return of The Necessary Beggar!

My favorite of my books, The Necessary Beggar, is finally available on Kindle. For months, the release date read "December 31, 2012." I'm so glad they got it out there early!

The weightless edition, just in time for the holiday season!

Outcomes

The surgery went fine, thank goodness. Our friend will be in the hospital for about a week; her husband will be staying with us, since they live a bit too far away for commuting to be practical. I'm grateful we have a guest room to offer.

Still no writing today, but I am wet-finishing two pieces of weaving I'm pleased with. Tomorrow the car goes to the garage and I'll be stuck home most of the day. Will. Write. Then.

Honest.

Later: Got a little writing done after all. Ha!

Sunday

WorldCon is over. I'm registered at Fourth Street Fantasy for next year and on the waitlist for World Fantasy this year. I bought the Laurie Edison ring (tourmaline and sterling silver, gorgeous) as a birthday gift to myself, but because she has to size it, I probably won't have it until after my birthday. Elsewhere in birthday land, I went to Inez' birthday party, thrown by several of her old friends in Reno, which featured a truly fantastic Day of the Dead birthday cake.

Tomorrow, Inez flies back to Iowa.

Many other people are already gone.

I'm both sad and relieved. For five days now, I've been on a little piece of My Planet. Now, most of My People are going home, and I have to resume the stranger-in-a-strange-land gig.

On the other hand, tomorrow I get to sleep in. And exercise again, which hasn't been possible during the con. And maybe get some writing done. I'm very glad I had the foresight to cancel my hospital shift tomorrow!

For the rest of this evening, I plan to be a vegetable.

WorldCon

This WorldCon has, at the very least, been wonderful for me. It may turn out to have been life-changing.

For one thing, I got to see all kinds of old friends, including my beloved former students Kurt Adams and Inez Schaechterle -- with whom I've hung out for much of the con -- and my editor/NYC buddies Ellen Datlow, David Hartwell and Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden (most of whom have also edited me at one time or another).

I got very satisfying strokes for the panels I moderated, especially the one on "Faith and Science," which went very smoothly despite the potential for catastrophe. I went to excellent panels and presentations. I got a lot of knitting done.

But I also got a lot of very specific reinforcement about my own identity as a writer. For instance:

* At my first panel, someone showed up with, I swear, a copy of every book and story I've ever written, asked me to sign them, and then gave me a beautiful piece of fluorite to thank me.

* When I was wandering around the Dealers Room, someone told me that "Gestella" is "the best werewolf story ever written."

* Only ten people attended my reading, but one of them was Cory Doctorow, a Much Bigger Name than I am, who appeared to genuinely love the reading and told me it reminded him of some of Kelly Link's work. She's an Infinitely Bigger Name than I am.

* I didn't expect many people to come to my signing today. It was a group signing, and Carrie Vaughn was signing at the same time; I figured she'd have lines around the block and I'd be twiddling my thumbs, so I brought my knitting. Carrie -- sitting next to me, as it turned out -- indeed had long lines, but mine weren't bad. I signed solidly for the first half hour. After that, it got a bit spottier, but not enough for me to get any knitting done. There were a few people who had multiple copies of my books, and someone who had a copy of my very first story, published in 1985 in Asimov's, and someone who said that he's bought anthologies simply because they contained stories I'd written, and several people who heaped praise on "Gestella." And towards the end of the hour, Mega-Infinitely Bigger Name Than I Am Carrie Vaughn turned to me and said, "Susan, I just want you to know that 'Gestella' blew my mind, and as a writer of werewolf fiction I tell other people to read your story, because I think it's definitive."

Holy crap.

* I've always been deeply moved and honored that Jo Walton, whose work I admire tremendously (and who's also much better known than I am), has said glowing things about my work in print. I was very excited to learn that she'd be at Renovation. I looked forward to meeting her in person. I was flattered when she asked if we could have tea together and hang out for an hour between panels, and more than a little startled when she said that one of the reasons she came to the con was to meet me, "because you don't travel much, and I knew you lived here."

Jo proceeded to give me a bracing pep talk. She reads the blog (hi, Jo!), and, among other things, said briskly, "It's perfectly obvious from your blog that you spiral down into depression and then pull yourself back out, but you need to get to more cons. The external validation's really important." We talked about cons: WorldCon and World Fantasy are often impossible because they conflict with teaching. Lately, the only cons I've attended have been WisCon and Mythcon, and even that's been spotty. I'm going to Mythcon again next year; I've been waffling about WisCon. Jo recommended the Fourth Street Fantasy Convention, which I've heard about but have never gotten to. Inez and I are talking about sharing a room there next year.

After tea with Jo (coffee for me, actually, which may have been unwise that late in the afternoon), I went home to help Gary get ready for dinner, since we were having Inez and Kurt and Kurt's wife Shauna over. I babbled to Gary about all this. Before I'd even told him about Jo's depression comment, he said, "You need to get to more cons. This is doing you more good than all the meds you've ever taken. It's all about connection and community."

Yep.

I know this probably sounds like a lot of insufferable bragging, but I've effectively been in exile from my community for a long time. Part of that's geographical; a lot of it's been self-imposed; and it's been reinforced and deepened by my increasing marginalization within my department. Some people there admire the fact that I write, but as far as I can tell, none of my English Department colleagues read my fiction, or particularly like it if they do (other university friends, especially in the music department, have been loyal fans and a wonderful cheering section). Various of my colleagues clearly think I'm a little strange -- one person I like and admire once called me a "fanatic" to my face -- and between all that and the fact that the job's become more difficult and less rewarding for all of us, leading to a universal nosedive in morale, I haven't felt deeply affirmed at work. I know some of that's my fault, especially because I'm terrible at certain kinds of political games, but blaming myself only makes me feel worse.

Church has filled in a lot of the holes -- faith's really a huge antidepressant -- but it can't do everything.

The recent three-year grief-fest hasn't helped any of this, of course (and that's not my fault, and I think my reactions have been entirely human and understandable).

So I went to WorldCon figuring that I'd see some old friends and that nobody else would know who I was, and that would be okay, because it would be my fault, because I haven't been writing much.

What I discovered instead is that people in my field know my work and admire it. People I've never met know my work and admire it. People I admire, blazingly successful and famous and talented people, know my work and admire it. I've written things that matter to other human beings.

It is very difficult to communicate what this feels like. Like floating in airless space and then finding yourself standing on solid ground in a beautiful forest? Like being a ghost and then regaining a body? (Good heavens: am I empathizing with Sauron and Voldemort?) Those are cheesy metaphors, and unsatisfying besides. Let's just say that I've found my country again, or my planet, and learned that I was always welcome there.

So yes, I'll definitely try to get to more cons. I'm exhausted, and I'll be grateful to get back to a normal schedule when WorldCon's over, but I'm going to be very sad when everyone leaves.

In the meantime, I may buy myself a token of citizenship. Y'know how in some fantasy stories, people think their adventures Elsewhere were just a dream, until they discover that they still have a coin or a key or a crown they were given there? The fluorite rock would work, but I can't keep it with me all the time, so I may indulge my shopping obsession and buy a ring. Laurie Edison makes gorgeous jewelry and sells it at cons. It's pricy, so I've never bought any of it. But today I tried on a series of rings and both Laurie and I went, "Oh, wow," at one particular one with a shiny blue stone that looks like opal but I think is something else I can't remember at the moment.

If that's still available tomorrow, I may spring for it, as a sign of renewed commitment to my SF/F citizenship. If it isn't available, I'll cart the fluorite around, maybe, or get some smaller thing. Either way, I'll be registering for Fourth Street.

This is an exceedingly long post. Thank you for bearing with me!

Lotsa Stuff

Hi, everybody! Sorry not to have posted in a few days; I'm spending a lot of time over at FB these days. It really is a fun way to keep in touch with people.

A few items of note:

* For those of you in Reno: On Saturday August 13 at 2:30, I'll be giving a talk and reading at the Nevada Historical Society. This is part of a Worldcon promotion. The curator says that after my talk, "we will show the bad sci-fi movie 'Godmonster of Indian Flats' for Nevada-themed sci-fi." Mark your calendars! Bring popcorn!

* I now have 71,000 words of the rough draft, with completion of same estimated around August 10.

* I love weaving on my new Cricket loom and can't wait to try different techniques. My first scarf was short and ugly; the second, currently in progress, is longer and less ugly.

* It's really wonderful to be going into August without having to worry about prepping fall classes. I needed this sabbatical!

* Caprica is well; she goes to the vet for her FIV/FLV tests tomorrow, and, we hope, will be "released to GenPop," as Gary puts it, soon thereafter.

* Last night we watched a TV special about the Serengeti. As a baby elephant and mom traipsed across the screen, James Earl Jones praised the devotion of elephants and said, "The bond between mother and daughter can last fifty years." My first thought was, "Lucky elephant. I only had my mother for forty-nine." I'm doing better, but still miss her.

* There was a wildfire across the street two nights ago, about half a mile away. We watched it from Gary's study; when someone started pounding on our front door, I thought maybe we were being evacuated, but no, it was two friends who'd come over to watch the fire. Summer sport in Reno! (Cars lined the street, too.) Luckily, they got it under control quickly, and there was never any threat to structures.

I think that's about it. Hope you're all well!

Adventures in Alternative Medicine

Today I went to see my acupuncturist, who's also a western-trained MD, for the third time. The first time I saw him, he sternly advised me to get back on western stomach meds and then used his needles to work on my sinuses, which indeed felt better. The second time I saw him, I mentioned writer's block and frustration and he did a longer session, something called "detox acupuncture," which I'd ordinarily scoff at, except that it also made me feel better.

That was at the end of June, right before my state-employee health insurance crashed and burned on July 1. (Our family deductible has now gone up to $3,800, which means that if I'm lucky, I could get through the entire year without insurance covering anything.) "Next time," I told the good doc, "I'll have to pay your full fee, not just the $25 copay."

He pondered this. "I charge $130 for a private session. I really think you should have one more detox session, and then you can start coming to the clinics." He offers acupuncture clinics where he'll treat a group of people at once, for only $40 apiece. "But you have to decide what you can afford."

I talked to Gary about it; the treatment really had made me feel better, and Gary said, "If it's just once, and it helps, then pay the $130."

So I went back today. Before we got to the needles, I asked the good doc about adrenal fatigue, which I know is highly controversial in allopathic circles. Does he believe in it? He pondered this and offered a thoughtful and carefully nuanced version of "no." (That's why I love this guy: he really does combine the best of both worlds, and so far he's never made me feel like I'm asking a stupid question.)

So then we got to the needles. "Last time we detoxified the front of your body," he told me. "This time we'll be doing the back. The front works on internal dragons; the back works on external dragons."

"Mmmmph?" I said, already lying on my stomach on very comfy cushions, which meant I was talking into one of those donut pillows massage therapists use. "Dragons?"

"Chinese dragons," he said. "They're good dragons. They chase away evil. The internal dragons chase away internal evil; the external dragons chase away external evil."

"Ah," I said, and he inserted the needles and left me to "cook" for a few minutes, as he put it, and then came back to check on me.

"How you doing?"

"Fine," I said into the donut pillow.

"Remember the dragons."

"I'm trying to visualize them."

There was a short pause -- I'm sure he was pondering -- and then he said, "They have long mustaches, and they're slightly iridescent, and they like to drink tea and don't eat peanuts."

"Ah," I said.

"No peanuts," he said, and left the room again, leaving me to reflect on what has to be the strangest conversation I've ever had with a medical professional. But I was all comfy and feeling very nice, except that my hands kept falling asleep, and I still couldn't visualize the dragons, although I did have a vivid mental image of a sleek black panther lounging by the side of the massage table. (What the heck was in those needles? I hear you asking.)

When he came back in, I mentioned the circulation issue, and he removed the needles so I'd be able to move around again, and I told him about the panther, wondering if he'd laugh. He didn't bat an eye. "Well, the dragons are just a metaphor. Your dragon might be a panther. Someone else's might be an eagle." I suspect my panther had more to do with watching Crystal the were-panther on True Blood the other night than with anything else, but that's okay; I'm a champ at metaphor, after all, and I was all relaxed and happy-like, so I floated out the door to pay my $130.

I like this doctor a lot. I do not like his young front-office person one bit. I'm sure she's a lovely human being, adored by her family and friends, but every time I've been there she's struck me as supercilious, with a tendency to lecture, and with the uncanny ability to look down her nose at me even when she's sitting down and I'm standing up.

"That will be a $25 copay," she said.

"No, actually --"

"I need you to pay that," she snapped, as if I'd been planning to offer her my firstborn child or barter with a stick of Juicy Fruit instead.

"Actually, I need to pay more," I said, trying not to snap back. "It's after July 1. My insurance just changed. So I need to pay the $130."

She scowled. "You can't pay the $130 if you have insurance."

"No, my deductible's $3,800, so --"

She slid into lecture mode. "The $130 is for private-pay patients without insurance. I'll have to see what the bill will be with insurance." She got up, went into another room, came back with a sheaf of papers, typed on her computer for a bit, and then said, "If we bill your insurance company, that will be $289."

"Excuse me? Two hundred and eighty-nine dollars?"

She flashed me a phony smile. "At least you'll pay your deductible sooner!" Mentally, I was trying to sic panthers and dragons on her. I know it's not her fault, but couldn't she be just a little bit sympathetic and acknowledge the utter absurdity of the system?

"I came here prepared to pay $130. That's what my husband and I budgeted."

She resumed looking down her nose. "If you pay the $130, we won't bill your insurance and it won't count towards your deductible."

Reader, I paid the $130. If I go to any of the clinics, that $40 fee won't count towards insurance either. It seems absolutely insane to me that with insurance, the treatment costs more than twice as much as it would without: the extra money goes into administrative expenses, no doubt.

Dragons and panthers and bills, oh my.

Yeah. You know I couldn't resist that one. Anyway, I was feeling a bit less floaty when I left, thinking in annoyance that the dragons and panthers hadn't worked very effectively against the evil of the billing system. As we all know, though, American healthcare is one heckuva job even for the most potent metaphorical ninja-beasts. Or maybe somebody slipped the dragons some peanuts; as Gary observed, they're probably allergic.

A dragon in anaphylactic shock: now there's an image.

Right. I'm clearly punchy. Must go work on the book. With material like this, who needs to write SF/F?

Blah

I'm back, after a rather more inconvenient trip home than my very easy one out. Flying East always seems to go more smoothly than flying West.

I haven't been able to get myself going today. While I enjoyed Mythcon a great deal (and have already registered for next year in Berkeley), the hotel was horrendous. I was allergic to something in the AC, and the bed was too soft for me, and they didn't have an espresso machine so I had to take the hotel shuttle to Starbucks to get my brain in gear each morning -- the shuttle folks were very nice about this, but it was still a hassle -- and there was, I swear, not one comfortable chair in the entire place. The wifi in my room was erratic. The laundry I delivered to the front desk the first morning (getting everything into carry-on was predicated on being able to do laundry) was never picked up, so I had to do the laundry myself, and the front desk was out of laundry soap, so I had to buy some. At least they had a small laundromat onsite and the machines worked, although someone else doing a load told me the hotel staff had warned her not to run both dryers at once.

There were also bizarre issues like my housekeeping tip being apparently stolen out of the room the first day, vanishing hours before any housekeeping was done, and the fact that two of us in my hallway returned from evening programming to find washcloths wrapped around our outside doorknobs, while the people across from me found their door open, although nothing was missing. The front desk staff had no interest in any of this. Someone Googled the hotel and learned that it has a reputation for theft, and while there may have been some perfectly logical and harmless explanation for the little strangenesses, I found myself on edge. (One of the conference attendees was indeed robbed, but I think she may have been staying at another hotel.)

You get the idea. Travel's tiring, and so's being ill at ease in a strange place. (One of the shuttle drivers told me the Reno Aces stay at that hotel when they're in Albuquerque. Gary's response to this was, "Yeah, that's how they know they aren't the majors.") I think it's a testament to my exercise regimen and my chiropractor that my back held up during all of this, but I'm still a lot more worn out and fuzzy-brained today than I usually am after a trip. Maybe it's dehydration. Maybe it's my age showing. Whatever it is, I have no energy -- although I did exercise for an hour -- and I've gotten no writing done yet today.

Yeah, I know. Okay, Susan. Stop whining. Go write!

New Column

I have a new Bodily Blessings column up; this one's about my ambivalence about the musical culture of churches.

In less happy news, BLR rejected the sonnets -- sniff -- so I have to figure out where to send them next. I'm pretty clueless about poetry markets, so I have to do some research, but I probably won't get to it until I get back from Albuquerque.

Random Updates

Our local paper's been updating Amtrak crash news several times a day. The death toll's now at least six, with five passengers still unaccounted for.

The conductor who died was a 68-year old woman named Laurette Lee who lived in South Lake Tahoe. She sounds like a genuine character. You can read moving tributes to her here and here.

The truck driver's name hasn't been released yet, but that part of the story keeps getting stranger. He was leading a three-truck convoy: the other two saw the train and expected him to stop, but he didn't. He tried to brake, though, because there were major skid marks. So the "unconscious at the wheel" theory is out, and I guess we're back to the distraction theory, although everyone said the train was very visible. You can see a long way in the desert.

I don't think I'd be following this so closely if I hadn't met one of the people on the train, but now I feel connected to the story. I hope the guy I talked to is okay, and I really hope the person he carried to safety is okay.

In writing news, I've been churning out 1,800 words a day (a bit over six pages) for almost three weeks now. That's a lot, at least for me, but I have to maintain this pace if I'm going to have a complete draft by August. No one's holding a gun to my head -- my editor's very understanding and patient -- but I want the blasted manuscript off my desk and on someone else's, and I know I'll have to do at least one rewrite after I finish the draft.

At church today, I got a key for the next knitting night this Wednesday. One of the people who was there last week can't make it for the next two weeks, though, so I hope other people show up!

No Kahlua yet. Last night I felt like tea instead. Tonight my back's bothering me -- I worked out for an hour both yesterday and today, and may have overdone it -- and I took a Relafen, which I don't want to mix with alcohol. But the Kahlua will keep.

My pretty twin-leaf lace scarf is done. Time to go block it!

Go, Little Book

As of this morning, the ED Sonnets are on submission at the Bellevue Literary Press. This is a stratospherically prestigious market -- the Knopf of medical humanities -- and the sonnet sequence is an odd, and oddly shaped, little project, so I expect this submission to be the first of many. But, as I always tell my writing students when we talk about sending out manuscripts, start at the top.

Gary thinks very highly of the sequence, and he's invariably a better judge of how my work will strike readers than I am, so that bodes well. (And no, he doesn't automatically praise my stuff just because he's my husband. I've learned over the years that if he says a given piece of writing doesn't work, none of the editors I send it to will think it works, either. This is both slightly galling and really useful.)

BLP says their response time is four to six weeks, which is both unusually fast and a small enough window that it will be difficult for me not to obsess the entire time. But it's not like I don't have other things to keep me busy, so I'm going to try not to think about it.

And on that note, back to work on the novel.

Getting There

I'm now just past the 20,000-word mark on the manuscript, which means -- if all goes well -- that the new draft's roughly one-fifth done.

What I have so far is pretty uneven, but I still like it better than the old version.

After this chapter, I'll have to produce much more entirely new material, and won't be able to recycle as much from the old draft. So I'll probably be slowing down. But as long as I keep getting something done each day, I'll be happy.

Bits and Pieces

In no particular order:

* I've been making small but steady daily progress on the new draft.

* We had a lovely dinner tonight with a friend of mine from the hospital, an RN, and her husband. They have comp credits at one of the local casinos and treated us to a splendid meal at a fancy steakhouse there. Yum! It was really fun, and we hope to reciprocate by having them over here for dinner soon.

* On the way home, we stopped at Home Depot so Gary could buy various home-improvement items. While I waited for him, I started wondering if any hardware could be converted to knitting use. And, indeed, it turns out that o-rings used for plumbing repair are perfect stitch markers (although I'm not sure they're much less expensive than the stitch markers sold by knitting suppliers, which are already very reasonable).

* I'm in the process of trimming monthly expenditures, since this is my last month on full salary (next month is paycut plus the furlough that's being applied each of the next two years, plus sabbatical reduction). I reduced my Audible subscription from two credits to one each month; I'd been planning to cancel it entirely, but Gary said I should keep it. Then I started cancelling, or asking how to cancel -- since not all organizations make it easy -- my four small monthly donations to Modest Needs, the Humane Society, Doctors Without Borders and First Book. Modest Needs allows you to cancel a pledge from the website; I sent the others e-mail explaining that I'll reinstate my pledge when I come off sabbatical, and will also make occasional one-time donations during the sabbatical year as I'm able, but that I need to cancel the automatic pledge for the next twelve months. (I'll still be doing my ten percent tithe on discretionary purchases, so that's where one-time donations will come from.) This is prudent and fiscally responsible, but made me feel so wretched that I decided I really need to cancel the Audible subscription entirely too, as long as Audible can assure me that my wish list, and the books I've already purchased, will remain accessible. I've been stocking up on audiobooks in preparation for sabbatical, so it's really a purely symbolic sacrifice.

I'm not a big fan of "I can't have fun if anyone else is unhappy" thinking -- see recent yarn purchases, for instance -- but I decided I just wasn't comfortable buying audiobooks every month if I wasn't also, you know, helping starving cats and buying mosquito netting for field hospitals.

Note: In some quarters it's considered very tacky to talk about money, and especially to admit to charitable donations (that whole "when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret" Ash Wednesday thing). However, I've come to the conclusion that our society would be a lot healthier if more people were comfortable discussing finances, and I think an open discussion of how and where and why we give -- or don't -- is part of that. And I certainly talk openly about how much I shop, so this is just balance, yes?

Progress

I now have about twenty-five pages of the new draft, incorporating both old and brand-new material. I'm already much happier with it.

If I write five pages a day, I should have another complete draft by the beginning of August. This is of course wildly optimistic. On the other hand, I managed to get my five pages written today even though I also swam for forty minutes, went to a half-hour training for hospital staff and volunteers, attended a two-hour meeting of volunteer chaplains, and stopped by the store for some groceries.

I have big-chunk-of-time commitments through the end of next week; after that, I hope things will get a bit less hectic.

Plan Z

As previously reported, I've now revised and rewritten portions of my three-hundred-page manuscript several times. Last night, settling down to the latest onslaught, I entered a bunch of revisions and then descended into a funk. The book had too many characters, and their stories were too complicated -- not to mention preposterous -- and the whole thing was emotionally inauthentic, and I hated it. Too much happened. Not enough of it mattered.

This sounds exactly like feedback I've given various of my writing students, so I gave myself the same advice I give them: Simplify. Focus less on plot mechanics and more on emotion. Figure out why this story should matter to the reader.

That's never easy advice to hear, of course. I gnashed my teeth, cried for a while, fumed, paced, and sat down to try to find the emotional core of the book.

When I was in college, I wrote a long paper on one of my favorite poems, William Butler Yeats' The Circus Animals' Desertion. It begins, "I sought a theme and sought for it in vain,/I sought it daily for six weeks or so" -- a sentiment to which any writer can relate -- and ends with the lines, "I must lie down where all the ladders start/In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart." Last night, I tried to descend into the rag and bone shop.

Well, I got someplace, and it's a destination I couldn't have reached without the latest round of revisions (which is some comfort, since it means all that work wasn't wasted). Near the end of the current draft, a newly introduced character has one scene lasting a page or two. Turns out she's a main character. Turns out she's essential to the core of the book. Turns out the story's largely about her and her relationship with somebody who's been a main character since Day One.

Most writers can relate to that, too. Minor characters, once you start paying attention to them, have a way of saying, "Hey, this story's about me." We ignore our minor characters to our peril.

So this is good news, more or less (especially since the book is now unambiguously mainstream, which is what Tor asked for in the first place; I've finally weeded out the remaining spec-fic elements). The problem is that it means I have to rewrite the book from scratch, and that at least eighty-five percent of the three hundred pages will wind up in the trash. I'm still hoping to be done by WorldCon, but that's very ambitious, at this point.

I called my agent and said, "Well, I finally figured out what the book's about."

When she stopped laughing -- I started this project two years ago this month -- she said, "That's good, Susan." She told me I'll be fine: my publisher won't fire me, and she'd talk to my editor to explain the situation. Shortly thereafter, she e-mailed to say that she'd reached him and he's fine with it, too. (Thank God!) Meanwhile, I'd e-mailed him to ask him to call me so I can talk about the new shape and focus of the book. That hasn't happened yet; I'll feel better when it has.

Today I started the new first chapter. So far, it's using a lot of preexisting material, but tomorrow, I have to start in on the new stuff.

This is why I'm not more prolific. Too many of my projects follow very circuitous years-long paths like this. It's bad enough with short stories; novels are sheer torture.

I'll be so glad when this book's done!

Book Woes

Struggling with the manuscript today, I realized that I have to completely redo the middle section -- a hundred pages -- to make the chronology work. This will probably mean that I'll have to redo a chunk of the final hundred pages, too, but I always knew that was likely.

I'm pretty discouraged, but as Gary says, at least I'm in there wrestling with the beast (and at least I've figured out what I need to do to fix one of the big problems with this project, although I still wonder if the dratted thing will ever be any good). So many of the edits I've already made are now irrelevent that, starting tomorrow, I'm just going to start all over again at the beginning of the book, but on the computer this time. Now the goal will be to produce a fresh manuscript which can then be line-edited.

My brain hurts.

Cold Rainy Windy Night

Happy June, everybody. It's been really chilly and windy here all day, with rain since late afternoon. We always need moisture in Nevada, but I gotta say that I'm craving warmth and sunshine.

I got a slow start today. I've hit a rough patch in the book, as I knew I would, and while I'm doggedly plowing ahead, I'm in "this is garbage and no one will ever want to read it and who am I kidding saying I'm a writer" mode. Every project goes through this phase, and I know that, but this one feels especially bad. That's typical too -- "this is the worst thing I've ever written, and more than that it's the worst thing anyone's ever written, and I should just give back the advance and take up finger-painting" -- but it's never fun, and knowing that I always go through it isn't, at the moment, reassuring me that I'll indeed come out the other end. Y'know how it feels when you're in the middle of a bad cold or a bout of the flu, and can't even remember what it feels like to feel well? This is the writerly version of that.

So, anyway, I moped around in the Slough of Despond for too many hours, and then finally got on the elliptical for thirty-five minutes, which helped. Then I took New Tiny Computer to the computer shop around the corner. They're going to update the browser (it's running an old version of Google Chrome, and I can't figure out how to load a newer one because I'm so clueless about Linux), and also order and install a new battery. The battery life on this thing will never be brilliant, but it's been draining when the machine's off, which seems excessive, and I'd like to be able to go longer than half an hour without an outlet.

The computer geek in the shop beamed at me and said, "Oh, this is a great little machine!" Another computer geek at work, who actually owns one herself, said the same thing. So I think I made the right decision, and even after I pay the bill at the computer place, the entire project will come in for less than anything I could get new.

Then I went to the dollar store and bought some ziplock bags for knitting supplies. Then I got my hair cut, so I now look much less like a sheepdog than I did this morning. Then I came home, actually cleared off two small surfaces in my study -- miles to go, but it's a start -- and used the ziplock bags to sort circular needles by size. I reorganized the bottom shelf of the knitting cabinet, putting all my needles in another of Mom's baskets and untangling-and-winding tail ends of yarn, which went into their own small shopping bag for future use as gift ribbon. In the process, I found another button for the button box. The study still doesn't look as if I did several hours of tossing and rearranging in there, but after a few more days of this, maybe it will.

Then we ate dinner, and then, finally, I sat down with the dreaded manuscript and plowed through today's editing-and-revision quota, loathing every word. Back when writers still used typewriters, one of my writing teachers, Marta Randall, said that she hit a point in the middle of every book when she wanted to insert a fresh piece of paper in the machine and type, "Suddenly the sun went nova and they all died." I'm so there.

Then I knit for a little while to cheer myself up, and now we're going to watch some TV. Maybe tomorrow I'll stumble across a sentence in my manuscript that doesn't make me want to cringe with shame and crawl under a rock. Y'think?

Tiny Treats

"There was coffee. Life would go on."

These lines are from William Gibson's brilliant short story "The Winter Market," and pretty much sum up my and Gary's take on mornings. (We use the quotation all the time; it's one of our tag lines.) So imagine our distress this morning when our industrial-strength coffee maker died. We have an emergency-backup French press, so we survived, although we consider the coffee quality inferior. Tonight we went shopping for a new coffee maker, though.

We got a Krups at Bed, Bath & Beyond. It was pretty pricy, but this is an essential home item, so it's worth the investment. Then we went next door to World Market, because Gary was thinking about getting more Adirondack chairs for our deck.

"Honey," I said, "we have enough chairs." In fact, we have chairs stacked in the garage we don't even use regularly. We used them for Dad's memorial service last July; we'll use them again for our Worldcon dinner party this coming August. We need them when we need them, but we just don't entertain that much.

So we didn't get any more chairs. Gary got a $29 side table, though, because he couldn't stand the idea of going into Memorial Day Weekend without any deck furniture to assemble.

Meanwhile, I browsed around the store. I love World Market because it has some of everything, and also brings back happy memories. In 2001, I spent Christmas with my father in Mississippi. He'd had quadruple bypass about a month beforehand, and he really needed me there. It was very much a turning point for the better in our relationship. Before I went down, I asked if he wanted anything from Reno for Christmas, and he said, "A baby elephant." So I went to World Market and got a bunch of elephant stuff: elephant ornaments, an elephant mug, an elephant wall hook, an elephant picture frame, and so forth. That shopping expedition was really fun -- one of my best Christmas memories -- and since then, the elephant items at World Market have always cheered me up.

I needed cheering up today. I'm fed up with the book (although I'm doggedly plowing through it), completely stuck on -- and panicking about -- the homily I have to write for Sunday, being pecked to death by small pieces of paperwork from a blizzard of sources, and basically out of sorts. I worked out on the elliptical for forty minutes before dinner, which helped quite a bit, but I was still cranky.

So I wandered through World Market, smiling at elephant soap dishes and paperweights and wall hangings and mosaics. I didn't buy any elephant things, though. There's just too much stuff in the house (including the elephant gifts I gave Dad that Christmas, and inherited after he died), and anyway, we'd just gotten the expensive coffee maker. I decided I could get a few very small items if they'd get used up, rather than sitting and gathering dust. So I bought two dark chocolate caramels with sea salt (a decadent little treat Gary and I shared in the car on the way home), a small box of fruit-shaped marzipan (because I love marzipan and my mother always gave me some for Christmas), a small tube of jasmine-scented hand lotion for my purse, and a slightly larger bottle of orange-scented body lotion to use after I shower.

Now my hands smell good, and I've eaten a little chocolate, and I have the marzipan stored away as a future treat. So I'm feeling better.

And there will be coffee tomorrow morning. Life will go on.

The End of the World -- Again

So yeah, no Rapture. Not, mind you, that I expected it, but I feel sorry for all the folks who gave away their life savings or whatever, and now have to figure out a Plan B. A friend of mine commented the other day, "Oh, I'd be one of the people left down here, but that's okay, because I really wouldn't want to spend eternity with the others." I agree with him whole-heartedly. This is another way of saying, I guess, that we all get the heaven we deserve.

In any case, I spent all morning at church, but not planning for Judgment Day. It was a "getting to know you" session for those of us from my old church to meet some of the people from my new church. We shared bits of our history -- most of these intensely moving -- and wrote a group prayer at the end. (This was a quintessentially Episcopal document which, in the thanksgiving section, included the phrase "Thanks for postponing the Rapture.")

Because the session had been advertised as four hours long (and indeed ran that long), I brought knitting, a pretty new scarf I'm working on. Knitting's the only way I can survive marathon meetings, even when they're fascinating. At the end we were chatting about the Ministry Fair tomorrow, and I said, "So is there a knitting group here?"

The rector, sitting next to me, turned to look at the scarf and said, "There is now." So I'll attempt to drag myself out of bed early enough tomorrow to go to the Ministry Fair with a sign-up sheet and clipboard to see if anybody else wants to get together to knit.

In other news, I'm about fifty pages into this phase of the revision. If I can keep going at this rate, I should indeed have the book done before Mythcon, although I wouldn't be surprised if a snag somewhere slows me down.

My first short shift at the hospital went fine. My tally at the end of the two hours was a whopping 59 -- which is about average for a four-hour shift -- so my hunch that two two-hour shifts will let me visit more people may indeed be true. I don't think the numbers will always be that high, though. The ER was extremely busy, and lots of people asked for prayer, but there was no one with whom I had to spend a lot of time, which translated into lots of visits, because I was able to keep moving. If there were fewer people in the department, or if more of them had deeper needs calling for longer visits, the numbers would be lower (not that my supervisors really care: it's not like we have a quota or anything, but they do want us to do basic bean counting).

It was strange being there during the week, when the hospital's so much more populated! Signing in, I said hello to no fewer than three staff chaplains. I asked if I should still respond to non-ER codes, and was told, "No, we'll do it." In a way that's a relief, and in a way it feels like a bit of a demotion. Since the professional chaplains respond to all codes, I'll probably be playing a much smaller role even during ER codes: get there first, provide whatever comfort I can, and stand aside when the professionals show up. When my sabbatical ends I'll have to go back to working Saturdays, though, which means they'll probably want me on codes again (if only because an on-call staff chaplain can take longer to arrive than someone already in the building).

As the most recent shift showed, however, there will still be enough to keep me plenty busy. And a lot of patients love being visited by volunteers; they're moved and fascinated that people just like them do this, and ask lots of questions about whether they might be able to do it, too. We're an important part of the hospital ecosystem.

DIY Art Therapy

At the end of my last lesson with Charlene, she said, "Thank you for all your hard work." The statement caught me a little off guard. I've been very, very conscious of how bad my playing is; although I do have some abilities -- as Charlene said, "You have a good ear; if I play a tune for you, you can play it back to me" -- I don't speak the language of music and would never consider myself a musician. I'm somebody who enjoys scratching out very rough tunes on the viola.

But what Charlene said made me think, "Huh. Yeah, I have worked hard at this, haven't I?" And, more to the point, when I've been able to let go of my deeply ingrained perfectionist streak, I've enjoyed it.

The perfectionist thing goes way back. I'll spare you the history; suffice it to say that for many years, I was one of those unhappy people who measured my worth by my external accomplishments, especially grades. This tends, or tended in my case anyway, to turn into a glass-half-empty mindset: I measured myself according to what I hadn't done, and if you think that way, you'll always consider yourself a failure, because there's always someone who's done more.

I've been struggling with this issue lately at work. For one thing, academics are increasingly being evaluated as much by what they haven't done as by what they have, which is why I won't be going up for full professor. I have to keep reminding myself that even if I don't have the "national profile" required for promotion, I have published four books (with more on the way, I hope), and also perform community service I wouldn't have time for were I serving on MLA committees. The non-promotion situation, though, has re-sensitized me to how stressful glass-half-empty thinking is on colleagues and other people around me.

It's a tricky issue. Several of my students this semester have been very upset that I graded them on the results of their work, rather than on their effort. My response, and that of most professors I know, is that I have no way to measure relative effort, and that other arenas of human experience (most jobs, for instance) evaluate on results, too. Learning to come to terms with that is an important part of a college education.

At the same time, though, I always try to tell my students that their grades are not the measure of their personal worth. I know many of them don't believe me; if they did, the grades wouldn't upset them so much in the first place, and at that age, I sure didn't believe anybody who told me the same thing. I'm always heartened by students who maybe didn't get perfect grades, but who say that they enjoyed the class, or learned something, or acquired a new skill. In other words, the students who are looking at what they have, and not at what they don't: glass-half-full folk. They're so much healthier than I was in college.

Another way of defining this is process thinking versus product thinking. Both are important, but in different ways and for different purposes, and if you enjoy a process, you've gained something even if no one else appreciates the product. (One of the problems with academic promotion procedures right now is that the range of acceptable products has tightened considerably.)

It needs to be said that some of this stuff is a function of consumer culture, which encourages to focus on what we don't have so we'll go buy it. As an inveterate shopper, I'm very familiar with that pattern.

So, anyway. Today, as previously advertised, I sat down to start revising the latest novel. I did fine; I'm about ten pages in. But the next two sections, the ones scheduled for tomorrow, will require a lot of changes and some major plot rethinking, and I felt my stomach clenching up about it even today. Gotta get it right gotta get it right gotta get it right.

That mantra serves a purpose, but at this stage it's counter-productive. It's classic glass-half-empty thinking, because I'm looking at what's wrong, what isn't there: at lack, rather than possibility.

I played the viola for a while, since that always gets me to loosen up. Playing the viola means giving myself permission to do something badly, just because it's fun.

Then I decided to go shopping for a Magic Revision Pencil (inveterate shopper!). I like soft, dark pencils, and the number two I used this morning wasn't cutting it. Staples didn't have anything softer. After a few other unproductive stops, I wound up buying a drawing pencil at an art-supply store.

And that reminded me how much I like drawing. As a kid, I had a modest amount of artistic talent and drew and painted up a storm, to the lavish praise of the adults around me. I loved it. But as I got older and fell further into glass-half-empty, I became shyer about the visual stuff. I wasn't good enough. I wasn't skilled enough. I wasn't a Real Artist. This is of course either completely true or utter hogwash, depending on your point of view. I'll never be in MOMA or be paid for my artwork, but I have as much right to draw, paint and doodle as anybody else.

Back in 2006, inspired in part by a course I'd taken on art as spiritual practice, I briefly kept a drawing journal. Every day I'd produce a little doodle. Some are quite pretty; some are hideous; all of them were absorbing and fun. But after a while, I became too self-conscious about that project, too, and put the sketchbook away.

Today I took it out again. I sharpened up my colored pencils and doodled for an hour or so. The product will never be in MOMA, but the process made me very happy. As kids know, and as adults too often forget, coloring's a blast! (I can't remember who said, "All five year olds know they can draw. All fifteen year olds know they can't," but it's spot on.)

I hope to do one of these a day. I think the drawing journal -- along with the viola and knitting -- will help me stay relaxed on the writing front. And anything that creates joy should be maximized.