Bored Now.

November 14

Heather's off having dinner and hanging out with a friend, and I'm here. I could be doing lots of things; writing and cleaning the bathroom (toilet and tub scrubbing, and sweeping; Heather did the rest) top the list of need-to-do. But I'm not sufficiently motivated. I've been Xmas shopping online all night, answering some e-mail, reading journals... I had chips and salsa for dinner, and later, some tater tots. This is what I'm like when I'm alone, and at low-energy-ebb; I feel like I'm in Santa Cruz again, on those nights when Scott and Lynne would be busy, those nights when I was insufficiently motivated to even go to Pergolesi. Then, I would wind up watching the History Channel or Comedy Central or something. Here, we have no cable (which I think is inherently a Good Thing, actually), so I'm writing a journal entry instead. Aren't you lucky?

***

This morning, I was walking along the sidewalk from the Post Office, and I dropped an envelope. I bent to pick it up, and saw a roll of film on the ground, hidden in the shadow of a trash can. I retrieved the envelope and walked on, thinking, and had a story idea about a man who finds a roll of film on the sidewalk, and has it developed, and sees the most extraordinary things, things that lead to... well. I might write that story, so I won't go into further detail. That's not really my point, anyway; my point is, that it didn't occur to me until I was driving away in my car that I could have picked up that roll of film I saw on the ground; I could have been curious enough to do that, and have it developed, and see what it contained.

But why would I? I had the story idea already. I didn't need the roll of film.

I think there is some essential key to understanding my nature therein. I'd say "hidden" therein, but I don't think the key is all that obscured...

***

There are galleys of John Shirley's Demons at work. I hope I get one to review. I really like John Shirley; he writes insane, weird, wonderful stories, and he doesn't hold back. Just from flipping through the first few pages of Demons, I suspect it's the sort of horror novel I'd greatly enjoy. Funny, violent, strange, and a story that has both a heart and a spine.

***

Hmm. I've got this terrible aversion to my words once they're published. I tried to read "Annabelle's Alphabet" today and I couldn't; I kept cringing at the bad word choices, at the horrible flaws I found. Even though I read it scores of times in manuscript form and on the computer screen. I can't explain it. Once it's set in type and published somewhere, it becomes vile to me-- but only in that typed-and-published form. I could read "Annabelle's" on my computer and, while I'd almost certainly find a couple of things I wanted to change, I wouldn't be repulsed by the words. This happens even when stories are published online, by the way. It's odd.

Doesn't seem to apply so much with poetry, though. I can usually stand to read my poetry in whatever form. And reading my nonfiction (I have recently discovered, with my reviews in A Certain Magazine) doesn't seem to bother me either.

Ah, well. What am I but the sum of my idiosyncracies?

***

I was reading Tangent Online and violently disagreeing with various reviews. Not that I think I could necessarily do a better job... but really, they hate stuff I like and like stuff I hate and sometimes so obviously miss the point... Ah, well. It's all about disagreement, discourse, and so on. Alternate viewpoints. I like reviews that say things I disagree with, if they're well-reasoned and make me think, but sometimes they're just dumb and/or spiteful... Rich Horton does good reviews, though. And I'm a little annoyed by the way Tangent doesn't review poetry. Not that I think they should go out of their way to review chapbooks or anything, but when there's poetry in an ish of Asimov's or Weird Tales or whatever, they could say something. Is Jay Lake's mention (down at the bottom) of my poem "Incident" the only time a poem has been discussed in Tangent, or do the reviewers violate the "no poetry" rule more often, and I just haven't read those reviews? (I certainly haven't read most of the reviews)

***

I'm very intrigued by is this a cat? There's nothing more to say, really, since I don't know what it is, precisely, besides a chapbook with stuff by some wonderful people. But. We shall see.

***

I've been working on this Hallowe'en story, doing it as a very straight narrative, and getting bored. So I think I'm going to weird it up a bit, make it more disconnected, a shattered narrative. Take Damon Knight's advice about only writing the fun parts absolutely literally.

It helps that I finally had an insight into the narrator. He is, basically, my Dad. Thoughtful, comfortable being alone, fiercely protective of his children, reserved, proud, reticent, difficult to know, hard-working, good with an axe, sometimes unflappable, sometimes flappable.

Of course, that's more of a core insight; the character is going to be in many ways quite different from my father. For one thing, he's a first-person narrator, so he's going to talk a lot more.

I almost never base my characters even remotely on real people (unless I count myself, which constitutes an abuse of the word "real", IMHO), but for some reason thinking of this narrator as being like my Dad in many ways is helpful. Whatever works, right?

And this story has bright green rubber spiders in the very first scene, so how you gonna beat that?

***

All day long I have thoughts and ideas and so on, and I get here and forget them, and want to ramble on about my feet or the best kind of nachos or whatever. Very odd. I should write things down more. Lets look at the last few things I wrote down in my paper journal, shall we? Let's shall.

Hmm. An Xmas list for Heather. We shan't copy that down here.

"Tropism title: Arrogant Little Prat". (Susan: Note my use of the British-style punctuation-outside-the-quotes. That's the way we do it at the (thoroughly American (well, slightly Australian, in bits) magazine where I work, too. Oddly enough) Heh. That's kinda funny. I'll have to use that title sometime.

"The First Annual Tropism Everything Awards". Yeah, that's an idea I had that I'll still prob'ly do, most likely on my birthday (Dec. 12, send gifts!).

Various story notes, you don't care about that... notes on a story I never finished, drat...

Wow, this is boring. Mostly story notes, the occasional scribbled quote. Huh. I thought it'd be more interesting than this.

Experiment aborted.

***

Hmm. Heather's back, but has other things she wants to do (besides sitting with me on the couch, watching Buffy? How could she possibly want to do anything else?), so I think I'm going to read a bunch of stuff on Sci Fiction. Swanwick's "Periodical Guide" stuff is hilarious, and I want to read Alyx Dellamonica's stuff, since she's a reviewer at A Certain Magazine, and thus vaguely within my sphere of acquaintances... And I should read Strange Horizons, since I haven't this week...

Anyway. Ta.