Radio For Your Head

October 3

The scooter saga continues. We rode our original scooters for but a single evening. The following day Scott and Lynne took a trip to Fry’s in San José. Fry’s is to electronic stores what the great pyramid is to gravestones (that’s a particularly apt analogy, as this particular Fry’s has a rather disconcerting Egyptian-themed interior).

Therein, Scott and Lynne found scooters vastly superior to our own. So on Sunday we took advantage of Toys R Us’ very considerate return policy and, yes, returned our original scooters. Then we went to Fry’s, and got new scooters. These have higher handlebars and longer footboards and are much easier to fold up (on the others, you had to twist a nut to fold them up; with these, you just push a lever), and they come in cool colors (the handlebars match the wheels, and both of these elements are interchangeable). While lacking a case, these do come with a strap (I actually replaced my strap, a cheesy orange thing emblazoned with the name of the scooter-company, with a longer, more padded black strap taken from a shoulder bag I never use). These scooters are clearly designed to be usable by grown-ups, while the others clearly were not.

Lynne also got a scooter. We now constitute a scooter gang. As shouting passers-by sometimes remind us.

Unfortunately, due to limited selection, Scott and I both wound up with identical scooters-- orange ones. In isolation, this is fine. Taking us separately, this is fine. When we scoot down to Pergolesi together, however, and each walk in with our (identical) scooters thrown over our shoulders, we appear to be an especially adorably and kitschy gay couple. Good-natured mockery ensues.

But what can I do? Perhaps I’m destined to never be hip. The joy of scooting means more to me than hipness, anyway. I wasn’t hip before, so I haven’t lost anything, and now I can scoot.

And who knows? Perhaps I’ll pass through the fire of lame and emerge from the other side, tempered and transfigured into a hip post-lame human...

I’m reading Jim Morrow’s The Eternal Footman. Jim was one of my Clarion instructors, and, in the parlance, he rules. So do his books. I might like Only Begotten Daughter better than the Godhead Trilogy, but it’s a near thing.

I sent out about 20 stories yesterday. It’s a real weight off, and maybe something will come of it. I’ll let y’all know. I’ve got four or five other stories that are almost done, just need a little tweaking, and then they’ll go out, too. Then I guess I’ll have to write some new stuff. Or, Ganesha forbid, finish this cowgirl story. I’m going to work on it tonight, and it doesn’t have that far left to go. The only really persistent ideas I have for short stories right now are pretty gimmicky ones... and while the gimmicks are inherently odd and maybe even engaging, I find that I want more these days in a story... like, say, some characters I care about. I’ve written a few stories where I think I succeed in having cool stuff, a good plot, and strong characters-- “Behemoth” (which is presently snailmailing toward Realms of Fantasy), “Captain Fantasy and the Secret Masters” (which is expressing my hubris by sitting all-unnoticed in Ellen Datlow’s slush pile at Scifi.com), and “Harupsex” (which Dave Cox at Darkling Plain is contemplating). I think this cowgirl story will be the same-- a story worth working so hard over..

All modesty and self-deprecation aside, I think I have it in me to be a good writer, to write the kinds of things that I love to read, the kinds of stories that have made my life better. I think about these stories that I consider successes, and I suffered over them, I really did. They didn’t fly from my fingertips, they took hard thought and hard writing and even facing some stuff I didn’t want to think about. The breezy stories, the exercises, the gimmicks (my Lovecraftian sushi bar story leaps to mind) are fun, and some of them aren’t bad, but they’re not in the same league, they don’t try to speak the same language, to deal with the same things.

Then again, I have to write those breezy tales, too. I’d get in some kind of wretching blue funk if I had to wrestle inner demons every time I picked up a pen, if I took two months to write 14,000 words on a regular basis.

With novels I do all the wrestling during outlining, and I can burn through the writing. All my novels (well, save the one I banged out in 3 weeks during Xmas break of ’98) mean a lot to me, and took a lot of work between conception and birth. Maybe I should outline these big important stories in the same way I do novels, rather than thinking so hard about them during the writing.

Hell, I don’t know. I’m just sort of feeling my way along this whole writing thing. That’s worked out okay so far.

I forgot-- I've got some new pictures posted. They're mostly pictures of me. You've been warned.

I am presently listening to Kid A, the new Radiohead CD. As one reviewer wrote, Radiohead has come not to praise rock, but to bury it. I suspect I will grow to love this album, though it’s very, very different from previous ones... I highly recommend the web site, too. It’s one of the strangest, most elaborate, most ever-shifting and activist sites I’ve ever visited. And there’s blinking bears.

I wonder what sorts of stories I’ll write while listening to this CD? Time will tell. Time always does.