Gratitude and Geraniums

The value of true gratitude is another lesson I keep relearning. One everyone should revisit from time to time, actually.

Late afternoon Friday I was in my yard attacking weeds, and one of the weeds won. A trip to urgent care and several days of rest, anti-inflammatories and *many* swear words later, I'm walking more-or-less normally. Sitting for any length of time isn't happening, and I dread my next car ride, but it could have been considerably worse. Much worse.

So I am grateful. Grateful I'm learning this lesson yet still ambulatory; grateful I have a calm boyfriend who helped me inside, took me to urgent care and insisted I eat; grateful I have friends who immediately offered assistance; grateful I have cats who curl up with me in bed (the comfort factor there is embarrassingly huge). Grateful the discomfort is tolerable, that I have internet that allows me to connect with friends and distractions, that I can do some of my hobbies while reclined in bed, which is the only place I'm comfortable staying still for long stretches. Grateful there's a position in which I can be comfortable. I know people with back injuries for whom NO position is comfortable. 

Last week I did so many things without even thinking about it -- picking up items off the floor, driving a stick shift, picking up a heavily loaded basket, cleaning the litter boxes, planting fall flowers in pots, vacuuming, even getting up from the toilet (toilet hygiene requires counter-balancing spinal muscle contractions I had not been aware of or considered until they made themselves highly known that first day). 

I thought about all those things this weekend, and most of them I didn't try. Getting off the toilet was the only necessary action, and a learning process about how to get up from a sitting position primarily using my legs, not my back. I'm grateful I can take time to heal. Going to a job in this condition would be both terrifying and miserable. Yet another thing to be grateful for: health insurance for everyone, finally, in the U.S.

Word to the wise: if you ever find yourself fighting geranium roots, dig 'em out. Don't pull. Those things are better attached and stronger than your spine.

Cooking creativity

I've been doing a lot of sewing and cooking, lately, domestic creativity as opposed to writing, although I'm finally getting back to doing that as well. In the kitchen, for the most part I've been following recipes for things I haven't done before: fruit leather, fish stew, and various vegetarian dishes as I've been trying to work through the lovely veggies we're getting in our CSA box.

Last week, though, I tried an experiment; totally off the cuff with flavors and scents that just sounded good.  

I took a thick pork loin, cut it into small cubes and marinated it for about half an hour in a bit of liquid from soaking dried chilies, some chopped fresh mint, and about 1 Tbsp. MILD harissa. 

Now, those who love harissa will scoff at this. Harissa appears to be a paste of reconstituted dried hot peppers mixed with garlic, caraway, cumin and coriander to either distract from or enhance the burn. I can't do the burn, so I mostly used the latter four.

Browned meat and then simmered it in more soaking juice (could substitute a 1/2 cup of red wine or broth) for 20 minutes. Added potatoes, celery, carrots, and corn (and scrapings) from two fresh ears. Minced a clove of garlic, add it and salt, pepper, 1/2 cinnamon stick and some ground cumin -- I probably used 1/2 tsp. 

Added just enough stock to simmer -- less than a cup -- and cooked on low until veggies were tender, about an hour.  Removed cinnamon stick before serving.

Mmmm. Tasty. I can do that again.

SF from 1989

Been working my way through The 1989 Annual World's Best SF, "Presented" by Donald A. Wollheim. In the intro, Isaac Asimov explains that DAW books was created by Mr. Wollheim, those letters being his initials. The things I still need to learn. 

Speaking of which, I'm aiming for learning one thing from each story I've read so far.

(edited)

I've read 

"The Giving Plague" by David Brin

  -- Changing expectations, so that the goalpost we think we're headed for is constantly moving. Interesting use of "you" -- protagonist addresses his adversary, a virus.

"Peaches for Mad Molly" by Steven Gould

   -- minimal setting details, but essential ones, create the tension here. That and the clear assumption of what the protagonist is doing without being told. Nice information feed without handholding.

"Shaman" by John Shirley

   -- Loved the antihero here, fascinated and repulsed by the bizarro world. Nothing made sense, so I'm having trouble pulling a learning bit out of this other than... not all stories have to make sense? No, actually, the use of details that evoked images I already had, dropped into this unfamiliar world made my brain cling to the things I understood or thought I did, and gave me visuals enough to carry me through. That said, I bumped against facetious names (the Fridge for a prison) because even though it made sense for locals to call it that, it jarred with the tone of the story. The prison-on-an-island concept threw me because all I could see was an Arthurian castle.

"Schrödinger's Kitten," by George Alec Effinger, (the reason Aaron loaned me the book in the first place -- I'd done a flash piece that attempted to show a person interacting/reacting to his alternate realities, and Effinger's much longer story is a brilliant exploration of that theme.) 

  -- Rich, textured setting does not have to be intimately tied to the *theme* of the story, although perhaps the Islamic setting and POV here, in 1989, was otherworldly for the average reader.

"The Flies of Memory" by Ian Watson

      - Fascinating use of POV and interesting exploration of memory as reality. We don't actually realize whose POV we're in until near the end of the story, nor do we even meet this person until we're a third or halfway through. Can't imagine anybody letting me get away with that, nor with the leisurely pace. Probably the story that makes clearest the changing expectations in literature in the ensuing 25 years. 

  

"Skin Deep" by Kristine Katheryn/Katherine? Rusch

  -- Good example of a quick-paced, high-stakes story. Isn't a four-paragraph sequence that goes by without heightening stakes or tension shifts of some sort.

"A Madonna of the Machine" by Tanith Lee
 -- Omniscient POV works here. Story reminds me of Ayn Rand, sadly, but Lee manages to write a story about a perfectly grey, bland, emotion-robbed world in which a machine, apparently, triggers a religious experience for its (human) tools. Arc is complete for one character; disruption in "utopia" (or hell, depending on your view) is implied but not carried out.  I wanted more.

"Waiting for the Olympians" by Frederik Pohl
 -- Self-referential alternative history can work. Exploration of alternative history used as a way for the author to make a statement -- The fall of Rome and the rise of Christianity is responsible for a fractured Europe, multiple wars and the end of slavery. The fact that that feels like a statement and not a mere theory of the protagonist results, I think, from the characters' unnecessary mental density. 

"Ain't Nothin' but a Hound Dog" by B.W. Clough
 -- Tacky kitsch as a common binding factor of  humanity strikes me as a novel concept to explore in a sci fi story.  Story is well grounded in reality and the actual sci fi part is limited to one or two essential paragraphs; nicely handled.

Still to be read:

"Adrift among the Ghosts" by Jack Chalker

Ripples in the Dirac Sea by Geoffrey A Landis

With luck I'll get it finished before tonight.

Still have to read and crit Tuesday nights' stories.

Vacation is awesome, even when it involves plumbing, irrigation repair and terrifying four-wheel-drive roads.

Now back to writing.

Ides of May

It's been a month and a half since I posted; "The Man Who Bridged the Mist" seems to have broken me. *lol* That was the hardest of the group to do. I loved that story,  wasn't sure why and didn't think I did it justice teasing it apart.

Perfectionism rears its ugly head? Probably.

I'll get back to the short story dissections soon. In the meantime, here are a few of my lessons from the last 90 days: 

* Classes keep my interest and motivation going. I signed up for Holly Lisle's "How to Write a Series (Expansion)" course because she's planning on taking the group through a six month, loosely-scheduled course in which she's rewriting and re-taping her teaching materials. I figured I couldn't get six months of motivation and accountability-to-self-and-others that cheaply anywhere else. So far (I'm about three weeks in) it's working.

* I am a cyclical being. Phoenix should be my middle name. Crash and burn is normal. So is rising from the ashes. *sigh*

* I need to be certain that I'm 100 percent behind my own goals. i.e., that I'm being honest with myself about them. That sounds like a no-brainer, but last season I had a huge set of goals I was trying to accomplish in three months. I spent two days making detailed plans so all I'd have to do is check steps off as I went... and stopped working on them after a month and a half. Life happened, but I *allowed* that "life" stuff to stop me, and I don't think that would have happened if I was truly committed to the goals I was trying to reach.

* Writing down what I do accomplish is essential, because I don't remember much of anything I accomplish beyond 24 hours. In that same three-month period, I *did* do many things ... it's just that few of them were on my Grand Plan. Had I not kept track of everything that I was doing, I would have thought I'd laid on the couch for 90 days, and crashed and burned even harder as a result.

* Asking a few basic questions clarifies what I'm thinking a lot. That's the benefit of having colleagues read something you've written, of having friends who'll talk you through your latest relationship snafu, of having a partner to talk through life decisions. Another brain on a problem is rarely a bad thing. It would be nice to be able to set up a way to do that for myself while I'm still in the idea stage to avoid future problems, or at least knock off the worst ones. 

How many of those are recurring lessons I keep learning? Oh, all of them. Although the tracking portion is something I've never stopped doing, and the cyclical knowledge is what keeps me going when the world opens up under my feet -- it's happened before, it'll happen again, I just  have to keep breathing.

Dissection the third; "The Man Who Bridged The Mist."

"The Man The Man Who Bridged the Mist" is third on my list of recognized shorts from The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2012 that I'm attempting to dissect. I'm seeking what the author did right, so as to know how to fix what’s wrong with my own work.

I'm not happy with this dissection; too much by example and too little about the author's choices, but I need to finish this and move on to other projects.

For each story, I try to answer the following questions to help me in my own work:

Why is the story good; why might it have been awarded/bought.

How does author: 

- do character/alien descriptions

- put the reader in the protagonist's skin 

- evoke emotional truth/reader emotion

- depict character emotion

- create mood

- handle EDACE (Eric Witchey's analysis tool, which I'm employing in a truncated fashion)

"The Man Who Bridged the Mist" by Kij Johnson was originally published in Asimov's, October-November. 

Analysis epiphany

I asked Eric Witchey to check if my use of his EDACE was acceptable. (He said it was). He noted that I should ensure my analysis of other works was useful to me in my own writing. (Actually, what he said was a bit more complicated and far more articulate; that's my oversimplification.)

During the correspondence I stumbled over an old epiphany.

I quote examples because they let me "see" the images I took from the story, and  in my head those images answer the question I'm asking. But it doesn't make the answer clear to a reader, who cannot see into my head. (Thank your lucky stars for dodging that fugly chaotic sight). 

So I'm having the same problem here as I'm having in my fiction, especially my shorts. I can "see" what I'm describing but the readers can't.  I haven't given readers the right words, or enough of the right words, on the page.  That doesn't mean I'll need more words -- I must pick carefully what I describe and how. It's a grand reminder why analysis of others' work is so important and useful in improving one's own writing. Thank you, Eric!

So, for instance, in "Mulberry Boys," the author's verb choices make George's predicament seem more immediate and compelling; active present tense verbs help put and keep the reader in George’s skin. Her vocabulary choices for his dialogue and internal narrative underscore the reader’s belief in his age, mood, lack of education and reliance upon himself and the forest. Her choices for Phillip's dialogue do the same for his education, mood, values. She relies more on adjectives to describe him, however, or rather as she has George describe him.

Also, what's not there: George's physical description is irrelevant to the story, so it's not there. (Though I was bumped near the end, when he was physically so much stronger than Phillips; my mental image was less burly and more wiry.) The author only describes the things essential to the story: bits that give us Phillips' status and wealth relative to George, George's skills, Phillips' skills, the forest's mood, details of John Barn that show what's been done to him, the surgical tools from George's point of view, the mulberry leaves, the ruined and clean silk,  the roaring river.

Mulberry Boys; Story dissection number two

Number two in a series of story dissection for my own edification. (Probably unnecessary spoiler alert; don't go further until you've read the stories if you're going to. And you should). For each story, I want to answer the following questions to help me in my own work:

Why is the story good or why might it have been awarded/bought.

How does author: 

- do character/alien descriptions

- put the reader in the protagonist's skin 

- evoke emotional truth/reader emotion

- depict character emotion

- create mood

- handle EDACE (Eric Witchey's analysis tool, which I'm employing in a truncated fashion)

"Mulberry Boys" by Margo Lanagan, originally published in Blood and Other Cravings, is the second in my totally subjective list from  The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2012, edited by Rich Horton.

Reading to learn; 2012's best and "Ghostweight."

I'm not learning enough from just reading; I need to figure out what the authors are doing that is working so well. And perhaps start to use some of those techniques and skills in my own writing. So I'm starting some posts about what I've read this winter and spring. These are mostly for me, especially since I try to take apart what I've read significantly, so it will spoil the books or short stories for anyone who hasn't read them. 

I begin with The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2012, edited by Rich Horton. 

There are nearly 30 stories in the collection. I needed a place to start, so I used a totally subjective criteria;  stories I remembered solely from the title, sorted in order of impact (how long the story stuck with me, how deeply the premise/idea/story affected me). 

This is a combination of how well the title fit with my interpretation of the story (I might eventually remember the story, but the title didn't bring it to mind) and how well the remembered story lived in this reader. 

This initial list is what I'll start with, one story at a time, but I'll probably add to it as I go through remaining eighteen and realize I liked some of them better, just didn't remember them from the title alone. 

• "Ghostweight" by Yoon Ha Lee, originally published in (opi) Clarkesworld, January.
• "Mulberry Boys" by Margo Lanagan, opi Blood and Other Cravings.  
• "The Man Who Bridged the Mist" by Kij Johnson, opi Asimov's, October-November.  
• "The Adakian Eagle" by Bradley Denton, opi Down These Strange Streets.  
• "The Summer People" by Kelly Link, opi Tin House, Fall; Steampunk!  
• "The Sandal-Bride" by Genevieve Valentine, opi Fantasy, March.  
• "The Girl Who Ruled Fairyland, for a Little While" by Catherynne M. Valente opi Tor.com, July 27. 
• "The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees" by E. Lily Yu, opi Clarkesworld, April. 
• "The Choice" by Paul McAuley opi Asimov's, February.
• "Choose Your Own Adventure" by Kat Howard, opi Fantasy, April.
• "My Chivalric Fiasco" by George Saunders, opi Harper's, September.  

ADDED:
Other stories from the collection that I want to dissect but whose titles didn't remind me of the story:

• "The Silver Wind" by Nina Allan, opi Interzone, March-April.
• "Rampion" by Alexandra Duncan, opi F&SF, May-June.

 For each story, I want to answer the following questions, some of which focus on areas I'm having difficulty with in my own work:

Why is the story good or why might it have been awarded/bought.

How does author: 

- do character/alien descriptions
- put the reader inside the protagonist's skin
- evoke emotional truth/reader emotion
- depict character emotion
- create mood
- handle EDACE (Eric Witchey's analysis tool, which I'm employing a truncated version of to better understand)

 I began with "Ghostweight," which has really stuck with me. I think it's the strongest story in the collection.