call me back when the war is over

 journal  6 Responses »
Jul 312010
 

I am, right this very second, supposed to be writing.

Sir Tessa is sitting across from me1 and she's working industriously.

I am not.2

Instead I am trying out Sir Tessa's new portable ergonomic keyboard. I am not succeeding overly well at typing with this contraption, because the keys are in the wrong space! They're also labelled weirdly, but, being a touch-typist, that's not so disturbing on the whole.

Being a touch-typist is also part of the problem, however. It means my fingers know precisely where the keys should be, and they're not there any more. Y and B are particularly troublesome: those two keys are supposed to be hit by the right and left index fingers, respectively. But I tend to indulge in some crossing of the keyboard, depending on the word in question, so every second time I try to hit either one of them I go for it with the wrong index finger and end up stabbing the table.

Yeah, I look pretty incapable right about now.

Maybe I'll go back to hunting and pecking. That's probably better for the wrists anyway.

  1. Well, she was, when we sat down. For all I know, given she's leant me her laptop riser stand and thus I can't see anything behind the screen, she's got up and run away, leaving me all alone in the library… [↩]
  2. She's gonna be so disappointed in me, when she realises what I've been doing with my time… [↩]

no, i'm not pining, whyever do you ask that?

 journal  Comments Off
Jul 292010
 

Those of you who follow me via Faecesbook Facebook may have gathered that I fell in love with the horses while I was over there.

I was always taught that the official definition of horse vs pony was simply that a pony was under 14 hands high at the withers. Turns out from a quick google this may actually be a competition-only definition, and that ponies have a different conformation to horses. Whatever, my point is that I had a terrible time not crying out "Look at the PONIES!", which I understand is deeply offensive.

(Seriously, though. Look at the ponies!)

They're an ancient breed, suffering little impact from human-induced selection, which probably explains their straight-backed conformation as much as it explains the incredible variety of hide colours.

The Mongolians (who don't name their horses) have over 300 different names for the colours of their horses. I was astonished when I first learnt this: I was even more astonished when I saw that the Mongolian horses need over 300 names for their different colours. There are horses over there sporting hides for which I had no descriptor.

They're short of stature, but they have hearts as big as the Mongolian sky. Those little horses will go, and go, and go. And they'll choose the pace, thank you very much. (You wanted fast, didn't you?) This was fine by me. The first word I learnt to pronounce properly in Mongolian was the command to go faster. Then, while cantering1 through countryside riddled with the burrows of the Mongolian gerbil, my Mongolian horse-riding guide taught me, through mime and mimicry of animal noises, the Mongolian names for horse, cow, sheep, goat, and camel. He also threw in dog and tiger for good measure.

If I ever make it back to Mongolia, it will be for a horse-riding holiday.

  1. A process perhaps best described as being perched atop the world's most willing pogo stick [↩]

tell the rambler, the gambler, the back-biter

 announcements, journal, shaping lily, writing life  2 Responses »
Jul 242010
 
IMG_1828

I have been the slightest bit remiss, of late, in my authorly duties. Or rather in broadcasting to you all just how my authorly duties have been carrying on while I wasn't watching. (Damn things require careful supervision, or they start nesting in the corners. You know how it is.)

So!

First up, a little whiles back I participated in an discussion-type interview about writers and writing.

Writers deal in conundrums and contradictions, striving to “open a vein”, as the saying goes, and tap something you don’t necessarily want on public display in order to produce worthwhile writing, and at the same time working very hard, crafting and polishing, in order to produce something worthy of public display. Reconciling those opposed desires, as Tess pointed out, requires sleight of mind (that’s such a great phrase!), especially during the initial draft.

The discussion was triggered by Gillian Pollack's new anthology, "Baggage",1 which I for one am pretty keen to read. It veered into all sorts of interesting places, from cultural baggage and the (often irrational) process of writing, to writing on difficult/sensitive/arresting subjects that have no solution. And it isn't just me mouthing off; the wonderfully irreverent Tessa and incisive KJ Bishop get all wise into the bargain — so go, read. Marvel at our flippant biographies and potted wisdom. (Or thank your lucky stars you don't have to live in any of our brains. Take your pick.)

Secondly, my contributor's copy of ASIM #45 arrived in the post a little whiles back. Look! Is it not pretty?

The ASIM website is still listing #43 as the most recent issue, but I'm assured that #45 will soon be on shelves or available for purchase through the website. This is the copy of ASIM that features my week one Clarion South story, "Shaping Lily", a story about a little old lady on an epic quest, with fruit bats and hearts and Consequences.

And finally, because I think you should admire my mad photography skillz some more love you all, have another Mongolia snap.

  1. I don't have a story in Baggage. I'm not entirely sure how I therefore earned myself a place in this discussion, but when people call me rather wonderful and ask me to say things, I do not quibble. I'm nice like that. [↩]

impatience for the new excludes … the new

 journal  4 Responses »
Jul 212010
 

A couple of weeks ago, I heard a new song I instinctively liked, which turned out to be by … Let's call this artist Hot New Thang.1

But after a couple more listens, I just started to feel cheated and, eventually, resentful.

The reason is simple: HNT's song has a very distinctive sound to it. Someone else's sound.

Now, being a writer rather than a musician, I haven't spent a whole lot of time analysing music and its nuances, so it's possible my ear is simply not refined enough to hear the difference between HNT and the someone else who very obviously influenced said HNT. But even if that is the case, that makes me no different from the rest of the listening public, who will also notice the similarity. I'd lay bets that a good slice of said listening public will turn away from HNT's first album because it's derivative.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the latest victim of our hunger for the next new thing.

We, the consuming public, are always hungry for new voices. I imagine this is normal enough. We like art that speaks strongly to us, and new voices have, on account of being new, an element of surprise that can increase their impact. So the people who feed us our art are always looking for the next new thing.

That's not the problem. The problem is what happens when we find that next new thing. Because lately it seems to me that, more and more, we're rushing our artists.

We're finding them young — awfully young.2 And they have potential, oh boy do they have potential, they're damn well overflowing with it. But they're so young they haven't found their own voice yet. They're so young that their voice is nothing more than a clumsy mishmash of all their influences, with a scintillating promise of their potential peeking out through the gaps.3

And we idolise them, not for what they've actually achieved, but for their potential. What we think they can achieve. We rush them into celebrity so fast we push them ahead of their learning curve, so far ahead that they outstrip their current talent. By the time their talent has caught up with them, and they've digested all their early influences and found a truly unique voice of their own, the advertising/celebrity machine has done its job so well, and saturated every corner of the market with every possible mention of them, that we're bored.

Somehow, we who are eternally hungry for new voices, have created (or at least participated in creating) a system that ensures the only new voices we get are too young to be anything but derivative — and when those voices outgrow their origins, and evolve into something truly new, we're so overexposed we can't hear it.

Has anybody else noticed this?

Is anybody else frustrated to all hell and back by this?

  1. Bear with me — I'm going to try and tell this story without naming names. Partly because I have an aversion to speaking negatively in a public forum about creative work I didn't enjoy, for whatever reason, and mostly because names have no real bearing on the point I'm trying to make. [↩]
  2. It occurs to me at this point that my use of the word young may lead you to suspect I mean calendar age. And while I'm not precluding calendar age, what I really mean is in terms of experience in a creative endeavour. So if you're suddenly thinking Ah-hah! By HNT she means that child-star who has a song consisting entirely of, as far as I can make out, the word Baby repeated over and over and over again until you would like your eyeballs to spontaneously start bleeding just for something different to break the pace, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but he is not the artist who triggered this thought. (And if you're now thinking I thought you weren't going to name names, Deb? … um, yeah. Shaddup.) [↩]
  3. This is normal. Everyone's early work is derivative, because with anything you learn by doing, and you learn how to do something by copying someone who already can. And only with practise do you learn how to borrow the skillsets of other artists without falling into mimicry. [↩]

what do you mean this isn't a photoblog?

 asides, journal  5 Responses »
Jul 182010
 

now THIS is how you drive an ambulance: backwards. in a crocheted cardigan and corduroy pants. watch and learn, my friends, watch and learn.

Also, does it alarm anyone else that the ambulance looks more like a hearse with a red cross hastily pasted on? Like some kind of horror-story-esque vehicle that vivisects its patients en route to the "hospital"?

Well, that, or the Ghostbusters car.

i am this close to declaring to-do-list bankruptcy

 journal, writing life  6 Responses »
Jul 112010
 

Since the old routine was proving difficult to groove back into, post-Mongolia, I've been trying out a new routine. It's not quite working yet.

Previously I'd been landing early at the dayjob, and writing after I clocked off. This has the benefit of my morning tram not being a peak hour one, and the library, where I'm sure not to be interrupted, is open for my writing session. But the library is in the wrong direction, away from home, and errands tend to be scheduled in my writing time. All of which means it tends to vanish before I get to it.

So I've taken to writing before I clock on. It means I get to keep my non-peak-hour tram, I get to work more "normal" hours, and I get at least one hour's writing time that won't be eaten by errands. Sadly, libraries are not early-risers, so while my writing time isn't being eaten by errands, it's not sans interruptions. Decidedly not.

I've been thinking, this weekend, about what I can do to fix that.

There are a couple of external options — writing in a cafe, for example — but maybe what I really need to change is my mind-set.

Writing used to be easier and swifter than I find it now. Partly that's because I'm more conscious of the craft, and trying to exercise finer control over it; a slower pace is a natural consequence. But maybe it's also partly because I have a habit of pushing myself too hard.

Because pretty much all this year I've been caught in a vicious cycle. I'm tired, from working long hours, which means I don't hit even the modest wordcount I'm aiming for, so I push myself harder the next day and work all weekend to catch up, which means I'm tired from working long hours with no break, so I don't hit even the modest wordcount I'm aiming for…

From now on I'll be taking at minimum one day off a week — and that day is going to be a weekend, so it's a proper rest from all forms of work.

And in the meantime I'm going to practise being more in the now,1 so that when I am interrupted it doesn't take me 20 minutes to get back into my train of thought. Or so that when I'm writing, my mind is working — not on how many words I've written or revised (and oh no I only have 20 minutes left before I have to clock on) — but instead on how I'm going to fix this next sentence, this next paragraph, this next scene.

  1. Oh, and also, I am going to get to all those emails and phonecalls currently waiting on me to return them. Just, yanno, when I can. [↩]

photos just don't do it justice

 journal  2 Responses »
Jul 042010
 

I find there are two things I keep saying about Mongolia.

First, that I frustratingly couldn't fit the country into my camera, and second, that its extremes of weather, and the swiftness with which one extreme followed the other, gave me climate whiplash.

I started off in UB, which to my delight was unseasonably warm for the time of year — daytime temperatures of around 27°C instead of the 15°C I'd expected.

Then I headed south, towards the Gobi, and the days got hotter. If you've ever been in desert country, where the only thing vaster than the deceptively-featureless landscape of burnt and baking ground underfoot is the boundless sky overhead, you'll know what I mean by that. Trees, and even shrubs, were non-existent; the only shade was that provided by the occasional passing cloud.

naturally, we thought a stroll was a great idea

our goal was a particular dune — and the camels knew precisely what to do when we got there

Here's the first hint of whiplash: the photo above was taken 5 hours after I snapped the camels on the sand dune. The day hadn't cooled any — in fact, at the bottom frame of that photo you can just see the spreading ripples of the spring which feeds this lake, and I'm standing there because I'd just dipped my handkerchief into that blessedly ice-cold spring. But, if you can believe it, that lake is only 10 kilometres away from the sand dune.

Two days later, after heading west and starting to curve back north, we were pounded by a dust storm that saw me doomed to carry my own body weight in Gobi dust in the weave of my pants for the rest of the trip, shortly followed by rain. Cold and decidedly biting rain that followed us as we headed further north, hoping to outrun the bad weather.

In vain. Three days more, and we set up camp by the White Lake, in Horgo National Park. Midday had been clear and sunny, but around 4pm the clouds rolled in, and they were darker than the rain clouds that had been chasing us.

oh yeah. tham thar are snow clouds

Having never been snowed on, I didn't know enough to recognise them as snow clouds — but I learnt soon enough when they spent all night dumping snow on the tent.

I will admit that the next morning I was not feeling my most chipper. Mainly on account of the fact that I was already wearing every article of clothing I'd brought with me, the alarming numbness in my toes was not only not retreating but instead was creeping up to engulf the entirety of my feet, and we were nowhere near the Siberian border, our northernmost and coldest point.

from dehydrating in the desert to bogged in the snow on a mountain pass: one week

When we did reach Lake Khovsgol, it was to find the lake still iced over.

melting fast — the ice was up to the shore just the night before