Yerp! It's that time of year again -- the time when Catt can do little more than sew, pack, fret, and talk about her panel schedule!
So let's get the schedule out of the way, shall we?
Friday:
5:30 -- Corsets, Hoops, & Other Undergarments: That'll be as it says on the label, I'm pretty sure. For myself, I'll be bringing scans, and a Very Fluffy Bustle. I'll leave the corsets to other folks this time.
7:00 -- The Exiled Character: Again, what it says on the tin. Only they've writ me in as the Moderator for this panel, so you never know what I'll get up to once the power goes to my head. (Note to self: have div-head look up the word 'moderation' in dictionary AFTER the con! Also, no bodies!)
I'll be doing lots of hanging out on Friday, seeing as how I'm not scheduled to the wall this time. So; wanna hook up?* Drop me a comment. Also, there will most likely be filking that night. BeCAUSE; that's why!
Saturday:
11:30 am -- Character Building: This is in the writing track, so y'all can expect to hear me espousing the virtues of Stanislavsky Character Writing Method. I'm just like that.
1:00 pm -- Magickal Traditions: A Review: I'll be there representing the 'Make Shite Up' tradition...
5:30 pm -- Sexual Harassment and Assault in Fandom: We'll be going over what it is, what it looks like when it presents itself in fandom, and what to do about it, whether you're the target, or a bystander. Or a perpetrator.
10:00 pm -- Mud and Blood: The Grittier Side of Fantasy: This will be where I express what an utterly FILTHY place the past was.
Again, probably there will be filking. But there might also be dancing, or possibly hooking up/hanging out in the bar, depending on DJ, bartender, and potential flirt-targets.
Sunday:
12:pm - 2:pm -- I'll be manning the Back Up Project table. For those of you who don't know what the Back Up Project is, come find me at the table, and I'll explain it.
2:30 pm -- Use Your Words: Dialogoue, Prose, and Tone: Another writer's craft panel. And again, pretty much what it sounds like on the label. No sparse prose for me, thank you!
7:00 pm -- READING! I'll be doing a selection from One Saved To The Sea, which will be coming out from Circlet Press sometime this coming year. Spring. I'm going to say it'll be out in the Spring. I'll let you know if I'm mistaken.
10:00 pm -- Fan Etiquette: How Not to Be *That* Fan: We know him, we fear him, and sometimes, despite the best of our intentions, we are him. Come hear us discuss the field identification notes for *That* Fan. I predict highlarious and slightly skeevy stories.
11:30 pm -- "No Sh*t, There I Was!": Oral Storytelling: Who in the world put this panel so late? Ah well. Assuming the panelists and/or audience shows up, we'll have a good time anyhow.
No filking for me on Sunday night, I fear. Instead, I expect there will be sleep, because I have a panel to be at on...
Monday:
10:00 am -- Collaborating Couples: Working with the one you fuck, and not killing them. Yeah, it's about that.
11:30 am -- Setting as Character: From Hogwarts, to the House, there are fantastic places that drive the plot as much as any characters within them. There will be a quiz afterward, to see who can correctly spell Gormenghast.
2:30 pm -- Mainstream Fiction for Fen: Again, they're giving me the Button! The Shiny! Red! CANDYLIKE! BUTTON!!!
After that, I go home.
MWAHkisses!
Now, the rules:
* If you're going to touch me, arm, shoulder, waist, or anywhere, make sure and get my attention first. This will make it less likely that I'll swing on you in alarm. My purse is heavy, my elbows sharp, and I get hypervigilant in crowded public situations. I will be sorry I hit you afterward, but I'm sure we'd both rather you didn't get hit at all.
* I like flirting. It's fun, and I'm quite good at it. However, I do not do hookups. At all. I will flirt like a pub-wench, but that does not mean I'm going to get naked with you, or, in fact, with anyone whom I do not know quite well. If we have amazing chemistry, then I'll really enjoy getting to know you, and going on several dates before the topic of pantslessness will even be set onto the table. I am bi, poly, and kinky, but I am NOT easy.
* If I'm brusque, snappish, or rude to you, please just call my attention to it, and ask what I meant before getting hurt, if at all possible. I might be having a sugar crash, I might be quietly freaking out about too many people and not enough space, and I might just be having a case of Sagittarius hoof-in-mouth disease, and not have realized whereon I trod. It happens. I would far rather set something like that straight at once than have to circle back through a months-old welter of hurt feelings to figure out what happened and apologize.
* If you want to sing with me, have a drink with me, hang out with me, or fansquee with me, by all means do so! That's what cons are for.
* It's ok if you step on my train. Everybody does it. No, really. Everybody.
* Yes, you may take pictures of me when I'm in the halls in costume, or when I'm sitting on a panel. No, you may NOT take pictures of me when I'm eating, or drinking, or making out with someone. Please be courteous with your cameras.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Book review; The Victorian Underworld
The Victorian Underworld by Donald ThomasMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
This might actually be the very best writer's resource for the Victorian period in England I have ever encountered. Western literature is stuffed full of depictions of the glamorous upper class, but the depictions of the middle and lower classes are reliably shallow, and often quite poorly thought out. This book, based on the social work of Mr. Mayhew, who went amoung the poor and the criminal classes and recorded, in their own words, their answers to his interview questions, reflects a much richer, and more nuanced reality of the society upon which the 'literary Victorian' society was balanced.
This book illustrates the underclasses' strata of rankings, describes how they perceived themselves in the mews and rookeries of pre-blitz London. It has chapters on pornography and prostitution, thieves and beggars, crooked police, prisons and punishment, and epic swindles that put one instantly in mind of modern Wall Street. Any reader who is at all salient on the points of current affairs in the West will find a wealth of eerie similarities between the political and social environment of the later 1800's and today.
I recommend this book without reserve, however I will give the caveat that it's excellent for nibbling upon as one has a taste for it, as opposed to a face-hugging book. However, seeing as how it's a history sampler and a reference book, this is entirely forgivable in my scoring system.
View all my reviews
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Thoughts Contingent on The Turning of The Long Night
He asked me, after his first, "What's the significance to the Solstice Vigil? I mean, I'm kinda not getting the symbolism."
I had been expecting that, and offered my answer couched in the mythology of it all; "Solstice night is when the Lady labors to bring forth her Son -- the God, back into the world. We stay awake and keep the vigil as any family members do, and should, when their mother, or wife, or sister labors through the night to bring forth life. Not because we can shoulder any of the burden, or make it easier on Her, but out of respect to the work She is doing, and the life She has created, and is now working to give to us."
And on one level, that is so.
But it doesn't actually go far enough, of course. Because we live in an age of scientific prominence now (Climate Deniers and Creationists notwithstanding,) and, as another friend pointed out to me, "I can't take it too seriously when I KNOW there's no danger of the sun not coming up tomorrow, you know?"
And he's right, too. We know it's axial tilt that brings the winter as well as the summer; that an eclipse is a predictable, and temporary situation, and not a sign of the End Times; that comets don't bring the Black Death; and unicorns don't cure poison, nor do hedgehogs invade vinyards in order to roll in the fallen grapes and turn their spines into hateful wee cocktail skewers. (Oh, medieval zoology, you stay wacky!)
So why stay up all night long then? It's not a cakewalk, that. On the far side of three, it gets to be quite an uphill haul, especially when you don't strictly HAVE to do it. I mean, to pull an all-nighter when you're cramming for a test, or writing that last minute paper, within a chapter of finishing your novel, or trying to get a show's worth of artwork framed and matted because it has to be in the mail first thing in the morning (coughTimcough) those are tangible, concrete reasons for pushing through the night. As is staying out and partying all night when you're on the leaside of twenty, think your liver's ironclad and gold plated, and that sleeping when you're dead is a viable option.
But to do it at home, in comfort on a winter's night, with little more than caffeine and rowdy TV to keep you from dozing off when three thirty AM comes sniffing around... really?
Yes. Really. Because sometimes our faith needs to tangibly remind us that it's not all going to be easy. Yes, the lengthening night begins to scroll back from here on in, but that doesn't mean the winter's over, or even that the worst of it's past -- contrariwise, it actually means that the hard part's just begun. It's going to get colder. The winter will get harder and deeper, and the slightly longer days will be little comfort against the grey storm skies and iron black trees. There's hope, and that hope will grow as spring creeps nearer, but we will have to work in order to see it through -- in order to see ourselves through, so that Eostar finds us in a position where we want to be.
Just as there comes a time during every vigil when nearly every cell of you is arguing in favor of closed eyes and a warm bed; of rolling over, settling into the doze, and letting things just roll along on autopilot, we will be tempted when our own lives get hard, to just coast. To figure that the axial tilt will handle things even if we have a nap. To choose to leave the striving to someone else and just float rather than fighting the undercurrents to get to the beachhead landing we have in mind.
And that's a choice which any of us can make, truth be told, but if you sleep while others row, then you don't get a say in where the boat's going, do you? If you stop pushing when it gets too hard, then your limits are where you've set them until you get up and start pushing again. If you say you're done, then you're done, even if you might have gone further.
Solstice vigil reminds us how to be strong. How to walk uphill for as long as the ground rises, and our road leads that way. How to keep going when stopping would be more convenient; how to keep believing even when the conclusion seems foregone, and the whole thing little more than a pantomime. Mummers, of course, were a Yuletide tradition for longer than long, and what is a Mummer but one who shapes the world in dance and mime, song and story, teaching it to follow in his footsteps to a place where goodness is triumphant, and evil collects only its karmic due? What is any ritual, but us informing the Universe of our expectations and desires, in hopes some influential force might be paying attention? We are Mummers through the night, miming survival and patient endurance while we wait for the coming dawn.
We sit the vigil on Solstice night because it isn't easy. We sit the vigil on Solstice night because not everything about life, love, faith, or God is GOING to be easy, but we are strong enough to meet its eye, spit into our hands, and take it on anyway. And a little, but frankly, rather difficult thing like staying awake all night to 'make sure the Sun comes up' is a way of celebrating that fact, even if we know all along it'll come up just fine without us.
And if we happen to drink wassail, eat gingerbread, and watch Top Gear while we do? Well, Jeremy Clarkson's ego is involved; tell me THAT doesn't add a few stone to the burden when all's said and sifted?
I had been expecting that, and offered my answer couched in the mythology of it all; "Solstice night is when the Lady labors to bring forth her Son -- the God, back into the world. We stay awake and keep the vigil as any family members do, and should, when their mother, or wife, or sister labors through the night to bring forth life. Not because we can shoulder any of the burden, or make it easier on Her, but out of respect to the work She is doing, and the life She has created, and is now working to give to us."
And on one level, that is so.
But it doesn't actually go far enough, of course. Because we live in an age of scientific prominence now (Climate Deniers and Creationists notwithstanding,) and, as another friend pointed out to me, "I can't take it too seriously when I KNOW there's no danger of the sun not coming up tomorrow, you know?"
And he's right, too. We know it's axial tilt that brings the winter as well as the summer; that an eclipse is a predictable, and temporary situation, and not a sign of the End Times; that comets don't bring the Black Death; and unicorns don't cure poison, nor do hedgehogs invade vinyards in order to roll in the fallen grapes and turn their spines into hateful wee cocktail skewers. (Oh, medieval zoology, you stay wacky!)
So why stay up all night long then? It's not a cakewalk, that. On the far side of three, it gets to be quite an uphill haul, especially when you don't strictly HAVE to do it. I mean, to pull an all-nighter when you're cramming for a test, or writing that last minute paper, within a chapter of finishing your novel, or trying to get a show's worth of artwork framed and matted because it has to be in the mail first thing in the morning (coughTimcough) those are tangible, concrete reasons for pushing through the night. As is staying out and partying all night when you're on the leaside of twenty, think your liver's ironclad and gold plated, and that sleeping when you're dead is a viable option.
But to do it at home, in comfort on a winter's night, with little more than caffeine and rowdy TV to keep you from dozing off when three thirty AM comes sniffing around... really?
Yes. Really. Because sometimes our faith needs to tangibly remind us that it's not all going to be easy. Yes, the lengthening night begins to scroll back from here on in, but that doesn't mean the winter's over, or even that the worst of it's past -- contrariwise, it actually means that the hard part's just begun. It's going to get colder. The winter will get harder and deeper, and the slightly longer days will be little comfort against the grey storm skies and iron black trees. There's hope, and that hope will grow as spring creeps nearer, but we will have to work in order to see it through -- in order to see ourselves through, so that Eostar finds us in a position where we want to be.
Just as there comes a time during every vigil when nearly every cell of you is arguing in favor of closed eyes and a warm bed; of rolling over, settling into the doze, and letting things just roll along on autopilot, we will be tempted when our own lives get hard, to just coast. To figure that the axial tilt will handle things even if we have a nap. To choose to leave the striving to someone else and just float rather than fighting the undercurrents to get to the beachhead landing we have in mind.
And that's a choice which any of us can make, truth be told, but if you sleep while others row, then you don't get a say in where the boat's going, do you? If you stop pushing when it gets too hard, then your limits are where you've set them until you get up and start pushing again. If you say you're done, then you're done, even if you might have gone further.
Solstice vigil reminds us how to be strong. How to walk uphill for as long as the ground rises, and our road leads that way. How to keep going when stopping would be more convenient; how to keep believing even when the conclusion seems foregone, and the whole thing little more than a pantomime. Mummers, of course, were a Yuletide tradition for longer than long, and what is a Mummer but one who shapes the world in dance and mime, song and story, teaching it to follow in his footsteps to a place where goodness is triumphant, and evil collects only its karmic due? What is any ritual, but us informing the Universe of our expectations and desires, in hopes some influential force might be paying attention? We are Mummers through the night, miming survival and patient endurance while we wait for the coming dawn.
We sit the vigil on Solstice night because it isn't easy. We sit the vigil on Solstice night because not everything about life, love, faith, or God is GOING to be easy, but we are strong enough to meet its eye, spit into our hands, and take it on anyway. And a little, but frankly, rather difficult thing like staying awake all night to 'make sure the Sun comes up' is a way of celebrating that fact, even if we know all along it'll come up just fine without us.
And if we happen to drink wassail, eat gingerbread, and watch Top Gear while we do? Well, Jeremy Clarkson's ego is involved; tell me THAT doesn't add a few stone to the burden when all's said and sifted?
Monday, November 28, 2011
Young Man With a Juvenile Red Tail Hawk In Schuyler Park.
Young Man With a Juvenile Red Tail Hawk In Schuyler Park.
By Catt Kingsgrave
Strap your bells upon my heels to take my silent flight away,
From the jesses let me dangle till I let you have your say.
Keep me hungry, keep me focused, keep me near so I must come
Whene’er you call me from the sky to stoop and nibble at your crumbs.
Tell yourself you trapped me fairly; there’s no sin for to atone
That I am happier being yours than when entirely my own.
Call me emblem of the Royal, or the favorite sport of kings
Specimen or prize or profit, proof of how your manhood swings
But fancy not I’ll come to love the hand inside the leather glove
Don’t dream that I’ll have given up myself -- the arching sky above
Wide thermals rising from the ground, to stoop like lightning without sound
Of bells; my prey what might be found and carried off. You keep the ground.
Then lace your eyeless hood atop my head
And know that I would like you better dead.
Author's note: Yes, I've handled captive raptors and owls before -- all those birds were rescues who could never be released wild again, not young, healthy birds trapped and taken from the wild. Yes, I know that the training means are far more humane now than they used to be... but then the means of breaking the spirit of a wife used to be just as openly brutal, and the fact that one breaks that spirit more gently now does not make it less broken, Nor less of a shame in my mind. I've no idea if the young man had the right permits and licenses to have captured the bird, or to be training her that way. Not having the authority to intervene if he didn't, it did not seem worthwhile to ask. But I do know that hearing him talk about her training echoed eerily the pattern of domination and control that often begins when a domestic partner turns violent.
The poem above came to me as I drove home from the park.
Make of it what you will.
Friday, November 11, 2011
George and The War
Title: George and The War
by Catt Kingsgrave
Rating: Gen
Wordcount: 1700
Genre: Memorial poem... with dodgy scansion.
Author's notes: This is a votive offering for my Grandfather, who died earlier this year, and to whose funeral I could not make it. I wrote this on Halloween, before making an Obon lantern boat for him -- a tradition I've adopted as part of my Samhain rite in any year that someone I know has passed on. The sight was lovely, and I wish I'd a way of capturing that line of glowing jewels as they floated easily down the river toward the sea... but it was late, and we were all tired, and we just didn't think of it then. So I'm sharing this poem I wrote for/about him now, in honor of Veteran's Day, 2011. No apologies.
Feedback: This is pretty personal stuff here, so concrit might not go over well. Headpats would be welcome though.
Linking/reposting: Sure. Just ask first, and send me a link, so I can track where it goes please.
Tips: Not for this one.
George and The War
What follows is a story of a man I never knew,
But who somehow laid the pattern for what I would know as true
And strong and right, and to be wished for
And of what was worth the fight,
And whose spirit I sent sailing down the river Samhain night
With a candle lit to guide him, and a sail of ocean blue
And a story built of pieces I have gleaned from those who knew.
George was a good boy, and he was a good man
Branched up out of humble and hardworking clans.
He was a deft tinker, a good man with tools,
With a mind running higher than everyday rules.
But he wasn't a rebel. He tried to be good,
Clever, strong, and upstanding, to show where he stood
In a world that was hurtful, and reckless, and cold,
Where a soul could be bought, and a life could be sold,
And but could he cleave tight to the things he knew right,
Then he might just hold fast, and stand tall.
Then the Harbor went up into flames,
And the shadow of Japanese planes
Scared the somnolent giant right up to its feet,
Sent a million Joes marching in ten thousand streets
To note their names down upon crisp paper sheets
They would offer in trade for their guns.
(And the God of his Fathers had told him not to kill.
That death is bought cheaply, and comes where it will,
But that life is a chalice which can't be refilled
Once it has been broken or spilled.)
George rose to his duty: no coward, no shirk,
Put brain, back, and belly full into the work.
He kept up the engines, the cars and the trucks,
Generators and loaders, and diggers, and luck
Brought his wheels to the beachhead -- the first in four days
With a tractor intact to dig all the men's graves
Who, in those three days prior, had charged through the tide,
Got their first tour of France in the moment they died,
Then bore blind, bloody witness wherever they fell,
To the living, who fought for that eight miles of Hell
Till the first landed backhoe that made it up whole
Scraped them out of the way and into a deep hole.
And George hoped, as the sand brushed their bodies from sight,
That they were resting better than he would that night.
(And the God of his Fathers had said how it would be.
That the righteous would survive, while the sinners could not flee,
But through dust, blood and gunsmoke, it grew hard for him to see
How the dead were less righteous than he.)
George's coil went un-shuffled, his bucket un-kicked.
He did his job well even when he felt sick
At the hell all around him in War's grisly tread.
At the nightmares that ranged very far from one's bed
To march over the hillsides in boots of both kinds,
Wreaking bloody amusements on any they'd find.
Still, the process, the pattern, the motors, the gears
Gave a part of him anchorage -- a wheel that could steer
By the schedules. Supply times, upkeep of the fleet
Kept him sane, or sane-seeming, and up on his feet.
And yes, there were times when he fought not to run,
And times when he held fast and fired his gun.
And yes, there were lives that he shattered this way,
But I don't know those tales, for he never would say.
But I know he picked Jerry cans up off the roads
Where the tank-jocks had thrown them to lighten their load.
And he convoyed the diesel for Patton's advance
Through the hill towns of Belgium, and Brussels, and France.
That he once, in a village that should have been cleared,
In a mid-convoy truck with a dodgy third gear,
Watched the lead truck (his own when he'd started that drive,)
Explode into flame leaving no man alive.
And three days door to door, street to cellar they fought,
Till the column came 'round and the catchers were caught.
And I don't know how many of Ours or of Theirs
Met their ends in that village's parlors or stairs,
But I know at that battle, like all those before,
Young George left a piece of his soul on the floor --
A shred of the good boy whom once he had been,
Back when rules were straightforward, and fair play could win,
And when honor was more than an Officer's word
Sent in letters back home as the dead were interred;
Or a thin bit of brass that was stamped with a time
When the sense that God gave you was screaming to hide,
But you didn't, and only in retrospect learned
That really, you probably ought to have died;
Or a word that they say at the foot of your bed
When your arm is half-gone or you can't move your head,
Or disease and dementia wear through to the bone,
Meaning "Sorry we broke you young man, now go home."
(And the God of his Fathers said despair was a sin.
That faith must go the distance when all hope had been kicked in,
Cause it's done when He says so, and not one heartbeat before.
So you'd better keep your knees upon the floor.)
For George, the War up-ended while he worked the Maginot Line:
Clearing out traps and tripwires, defusing lurking mines
Left by soldiers, that soldiers whom after would come
In their footsteps, must creep, never daring to run.
T'was a foot put down wrong; a pliers that slipped;
A red wire instead of a blue that got snipped,
And under George went in a welter of dust,
Pain, and deafening silence, with the taste of rust
And of copper, and ends flooding over his tongue.
He must have thought sure that his tour was all done,
But Talent and Competence are dearly bought,
And those who shape the nations considered, and thought
How useful and handy their young George had been,
And thought that a way might perhaps yet be seen
Whereby the downed soldier might useful be still:
A bit of down time, what he needed to heal,
But then higher rank, and more brass, and more pain,
More soul shards lost in gory rain,
More deaths, more killing, more despair,
More nightmares he could hardly bear,
More gas, more gears, more bombs, more bones,
More flowing fire, more flying stone.
(And the God of his Fathers had taught him to obey.
That the primal sin of humankind is looming till this day,
And the price of disobedience runs generations long,
So when you're told, you'd best just move along.)
But George lay, de profundis in his army medic cot,
And considered what he'd lost against what little he had bought.
Thought of facing his reflection every day that he might live,
What he'd see inside his mirror, and just what he could forgive.
Then he handed back the letter, and in respectful tones,
Said "I don't want a field promotion Sir. You've broke me. Send me home."
(And the God of his Fathers said he'd reap what he had sown.
That the plowshares, swords, and politics would always claim their own,
And there just is no escaping from the sins of one's own hands,
No matter how your ledger's balance stands.)
George did a lifetime's sowing in the fields he knew as home,
All the seeds he hoped would grow into the truths he once had known;
Honor, truth, responsibility, fair reward for working hands,
And obedience to what his Church or Country might demand.
And the harvests of his lifetime came in flowers, fruit and grain,
And in thistles and in brambles, and in blight and grief and pain,
And in love that built a family, (half would die before his time,)
And in work to build a name that would survive the winter's rime.
To do what it was he must to greet his mirror every day,
To keep the memories down, and keep the nightmares all at bay.
George was no marble hero, and his feet were flesh, not clay;
Judgmental and sarcastic when his temper had its way,
Fell to bigotry at times, rode to rescue other days,
And last spring, he laid his life aside, got up, and walked away.
For he could no more stand tall, and he could no more hold fast,
And so he chose his ending on his own terms at the last.
Now all that I have told you, I have heard from other tongues;
Not a whisper of his telling would he share when I was young,
Nor when I grew. But once I wrote to him, and tried to make it plain
That he was my only hero, and it was against his frame
That I would measure every man who ever caught my eye.
But I've no clue what he thought; he never wrote me a reply.
I don't know if it moved him, I don't know if he cared,
For he never gave me reason to think that respect was shared,
And I can't recall a moment when he said I'd made him proud
As an adult, but I suppose he wouldn't say such things aloud.
And now I'll never hear them, though there's those who hold him dear
Who'll offer that assurance, say the words I want to hear,
And will explain his way was silence, and in subtlety he proved
Just whom he thought was worthy, just whom he really loved.
And I'll nod like I believe them, but in truth I'll never know
If I was more to George than stories of a toddler long ago,
Or if the part of him that could have written answer back to me
Lay in pieces upon battlefields far off across the sea.
(And the God of his Fathers says a lot of stupid things.
And I gave up all the blame and shame and anguish that it brings
To live by a set of rules that always serve another's needs,
Leaving mine to starve and struggle, scratch a harvest through the weeds.
I will never have his blessing, but he still has my respect;
Not overly a hero, but a man I'll not forget.)
by Catt Kingsgrave
Rating: Gen
Wordcount: 1700
Genre: Memorial poem... with dodgy scansion.
Author's notes: This is a votive offering for my Grandfather, who died earlier this year, and to whose funeral I could not make it. I wrote this on Halloween, before making an Obon lantern boat for him -- a tradition I've adopted as part of my Samhain rite in any year that someone I know has passed on. The sight was lovely, and I wish I'd a way of capturing that line of glowing jewels as they floated easily down the river toward the sea... but it was late, and we were all tired, and we just didn't think of it then. So I'm sharing this poem I wrote for/about him now, in honor of Veteran's Day, 2011. No apologies.
Feedback: This is pretty personal stuff here, so concrit might not go over well. Headpats would be welcome though.
Linking/reposting: Sure. Just ask first, and send me a link, so I can track where it goes please.
Tips: Not for this one.
George and The War
What follows is a story of a man I never knew,
But who somehow laid the pattern for what I would know as true
And strong and right, and to be wished for
And of what was worth the fight,
And whose spirit I sent sailing down the river Samhain night
With a candle lit to guide him, and a sail of ocean blue
And a story built of pieces I have gleaned from those who knew.
George was a good boy, and he was a good man
Branched up out of humble and hardworking clans.
He was a deft tinker, a good man with tools,
With a mind running higher than everyday rules.
But he wasn't a rebel. He tried to be good,
Clever, strong, and upstanding, to show where he stood
In a world that was hurtful, and reckless, and cold,
Where a soul could be bought, and a life could be sold,
And but could he cleave tight to the things he knew right,
Then he might just hold fast, and stand tall.
Then the Harbor went up into flames,
And the shadow of Japanese planes
Scared the somnolent giant right up to its feet,
Sent a million Joes marching in ten thousand streets
To note their names down upon crisp paper sheets
They would offer in trade for their guns.
(And the God of his Fathers had told him not to kill.
That death is bought cheaply, and comes where it will,
But that life is a chalice which can't be refilled
Once it has been broken or spilled.)
George rose to his duty: no coward, no shirk,
Put brain, back, and belly full into the work.
He kept up the engines, the cars and the trucks,
Generators and loaders, and diggers, and luck
Brought his wheels to the beachhead -- the first in four days
With a tractor intact to dig all the men's graves
Who, in those three days prior, had charged through the tide,
Got their first tour of France in the moment they died,
Then bore blind, bloody witness wherever they fell,
To the living, who fought for that eight miles of Hell
Till the first landed backhoe that made it up whole
Scraped them out of the way and into a deep hole.
And George hoped, as the sand brushed their bodies from sight,
That they were resting better than he would that night.
(And the God of his Fathers had said how it would be.
That the righteous would survive, while the sinners could not flee,
But through dust, blood and gunsmoke, it grew hard for him to see
How the dead were less righteous than he.)
George's coil went un-shuffled, his bucket un-kicked.
He did his job well even when he felt sick
At the hell all around him in War's grisly tread.
At the nightmares that ranged very far from one's bed
To march over the hillsides in boots of both kinds,
Wreaking bloody amusements on any they'd find.
Still, the process, the pattern, the motors, the gears
Gave a part of him anchorage -- a wheel that could steer
By the schedules. Supply times, upkeep of the fleet
Kept him sane, or sane-seeming, and up on his feet.
And yes, there were times when he fought not to run,
And times when he held fast and fired his gun.
And yes, there were lives that he shattered this way,
But I don't know those tales, for he never would say.
But I know he picked Jerry cans up off the roads
Where the tank-jocks had thrown them to lighten their load.
And he convoyed the diesel for Patton's advance
Through the hill towns of Belgium, and Brussels, and France.
That he once, in a village that should have been cleared,
In a mid-convoy truck with a dodgy third gear,
Watched the lead truck (his own when he'd started that drive,)
Explode into flame leaving no man alive.
And three days door to door, street to cellar they fought,
Till the column came 'round and the catchers were caught.
And I don't know how many of Ours or of Theirs
Met their ends in that village's parlors or stairs,
But I know at that battle, like all those before,
Young George left a piece of his soul on the floor --
A shred of the good boy whom once he had been,
Back when rules were straightforward, and fair play could win,
And when honor was more than an Officer's word
Sent in letters back home as the dead were interred;
Or a thin bit of brass that was stamped with a time
When the sense that God gave you was screaming to hide,
But you didn't, and only in retrospect learned
That really, you probably ought to have died;
Or a word that they say at the foot of your bed
When your arm is half-gone or you can't move your head,
Or disease and dementia wear through to the bone,
Meaning "Sorry we broke you young man, now go home."
(And the God of his Fathers said despair was a sin.
That faith must go the distance when all hope had been kicked in,
Cause it's done when He says so, and not one heartbeat before.
So you'd better keep your knees upon the floor.)
For George, the War up-ended while he worked the Maginot Line:
Clearing out traps and tripwires, defusing lurking mines
Left by soldiers, that soldiers whom after would come
In their footsteps, must creep, never daring to run.
T'was a foot put down wrong; a pliers that slipped;
A red wire instead of a blue that got snipped,
And under George went in a welter of dust,
Pain, and deafening silence, with the taste of rust
And of copper, and ends flooding over his tongue.
He must have thought sure that his tour was all done,
But Talent and Competence are dearly bought,
And those who shape the nations considered, and thought
How useful and handy their young George had been,
And thought that a way might perhaps yet be seen
Whereby the downed soldier might useful be still:
A bit of down time, what he needed to heal,
But then higher rank, and more brass, and more pain,
More soul shards lost in gory rain,
More deaths, more killing, more despair,
More nightmares he could hardly bear,
More gas, more gears, more bombs, more bones,
More flowing fire, more flying stone.
(And the God of his Fathers had taught him to obey.
That the primal sin of humankind is looming till this day,
And the price of disobedience runs generations long,
So when you're told, you'd best just move along.)
But George lay, de profundis in his army medic cot,
And considered what he'd lost against what little he had bought.
Thought of facing his reflection every day that he might live,
What he'd see inside his mirror, and just what he could forgive.
Then he handed back the letter, and in respectful tones,
Said "I don't want a field promotion Sir. You've broke me. Send me home."
(And the God of his Fathers said he'd reap what he had sown.
That the plowshares, swords, and politics would always claim their own,
And there just is no escaping from the sins of one's own hands,
No matter how your ledger's balance stands.)
George did a lifetime's sowing in the fields he knew as home,
All the seeds he hoped would grow into the truths he once had known;
Honor, truth, responsibility, fair reward for working hands,
And obedience to what his Church or Country might demand.
And the harvests of his lifetime came in flowers, fruit and grain,
And in thistles and in brambles, and in blight and grief and pain,
And in love that built a family, (half would die before his time,)
And in work to build a name that would survive the winter's rime.
To do what it was he must to greet his mirror every day,
To keep the memories down, and keep the nightmares all at bay.
George was no marble hero, and his feet were flesh, not clay;
Judgmental and sarcastic when his temper had its way,
Fell to bigotry at times, rode to rescue other days,
And last spring, he laid his life aside, got up, and walked away.
For he could no more stand tall, and he could no more hold fast,
And so he chose his ending on his own terms at the last.
Now all that I have told you, I have heard from other tongues;
Not a whisper of his telling would he share when I was young,
Nor when I grew. But once I wrote to him, and tried to make it plain
That he was my only hero, and it was against his frame
That I would measure every man who ever caught my eye.
But I've no clue what he thought; he never wrote me a reply.
I don't know if it moved him, I don't know if he cared,
For he never gave me reason to think that respect was shared,
And I can't recall a moment when he said I'd made him proud
As an adult, but I suppose he wouldn't say such things aloud.
And now I'll never hear them, though there's those who hold him dear
Who'll offer that assurance, say the words I want to hear,
And will explain his way was silence, and in subtlety he proved
Just whom he thought was worthy, just whom he really loved.
And I'll nod like I believe them, but in truth I'll never know
If I was more to George than stories of a toddler long ago,
Or if the part of him that could have written answer back to me
Lay in pieces upon battlefields far off across the sea.
(And the God of his Fathers says a lot of stupid things.
And I gave up all the blame and shame and anguish that it brings
To live by a set of rules that always serve another's needs,
Leaving mine to starve and struggle, scratch a harvest through the weeds.
I will never have his blessing, but he still has my respect;
Not overly a hero, but a man I'll not forget.)
Friday, September 16, 2011
Memories are dear this year, and passions bare this spring
Awhile ago, during Hurricane Irene, I had an unexpected and wonderful guest in my house. Author Jo Walton, whom I had not met previous to us giving her a ride to Troy from Pi Con, wound up being stuck staying with us during the post-storm floods, when the trains and busses in New York were all playing Silly-Buggers.
She was a fantastic guest to have, and despite her frustration with being stranded so close to home, and being stuck in a house with creatures that triggered her asthma, she kept us in fascinating chat and anecdotes the whole time she was here.
She also drew my attention to something I hadn't really properly realized before; something that really makes a lot of sense when I look at my life, and the relatively meagre level of success my work has brought me, and helps to mitigate the self-blame I've often struggled with for not being a better agent for myself, for not already having two or three novels out by now, and so on. She pointed out that it makes sense that my career would grow slowly, because I'm not just building one career. Because I'm not just a writer.
I paint too, and not just hobbyist painting, I paint like someone who once made her living with a brush and paper -- because I did. Right up until Dubya the Gubna flushed the Texas economy down the shitter and put Underhill Arts out of business (luxuries like art are always the first to go when the layoffs start and people have to tighten the strings.) I spent much of my twenties painting-and. (-and all the business chores that came along with painting, and selling one's paintings, which are frankly too numerous and tedious to re-list here.) Just like I've spent most of my thirties and early fourties writing-and.
I sing, play the guitar, and write and arrange songs too. Again, not like a hobbyist, but like someone who once played for pay. Because I did. This was another -and that took up a lot of my twenties. (If I add the jobs of booking agent-and, treasurer-and, manager-and, and arranger-and into it, it was a lot more than just the one -and, really.) Acting, directing, and costuming for street theatre were still another set of -ands. So that makes five categories of -ands that were happening in my twenties and early thirties. No, my math's not off, because during that time I was also the primary homemaker for not just myself and my husband, but for most of my friends as well. Wait... my math's not off, but my count is. I forgot to add Priestess and Tarot counselor into those jobs. Now none of those jobs were full time, but I did them all more or less together. And I wrote on top of it all, when I could fit time in, and dredge up the inspiration. And I somehow managed to get a novel done in that environment, too. When I look at that, it's kind of a miracle, really.
And it cost me a lot of spoons as well. Which is why when I moved out to New York, I stopped with a whole lot of the -ands, and just wrote. Now that's a bit of an oversimplification, I'll admit, and there were a lot of reactionary justifications to why I put away my art supplies, and let my guitar languish in its case for so long after I moved. And to be fair, I was still processing my grief at losing Ravens, and I was still radically averse to the hoop jumping carny-barking, dignity-shrivelling ballyhoo that came along with trying to sell art for a living, and perforce the Priestess job went away when there was no more coven at hand in need of me. But really the first thing that New York did for me was give me space to let the -ands drop, and just write for awhile.
Which is what I did. I wrote like a fiend, and though I couldn't legally sell a page of it, to this day I can't regret any of the work. I pulled out my art supplies only as it pleased myself to do so, just like I took out my guitar when the rare impulse to play it came on, and at no other time. But overall, I just focused my attention and will on putting the words onto the page, and the 'career' I built thereby was a pretty damned good one by any measure.
But things like that don't last for me. The fandom spark began to nag me into less fannish directions, and as though invoked by the spring rains, the -ands began to spring up like weeds. And like weeds that have wintered the snow in thick earth, they've come back hardier than before. My poetry is better now, my songwriting too. My art turned a definite corner while I was drawing primarily for fannish entertainment, and it's better now than it ever was when I was painting in Tim's shadow. My playing is maturing as well, now I don't have a web of voices to hide it under -- not quickly, as I've never been more than an adequate guitarist, who only learned to play in order to accompany her own voice, but still. And all just in time to interfere with the actual Writing-For-Pay career that I'm trying to get off the ground.
I read things online about how selling your own work is just part of the job, paying your dues, just the proving ground, and if you can't do that then you don't deserve to be published. How if you're not 'willing' to sleuth out which editor buys what kind of work from which agent, who represents which kind of writers, who reads for which editor at which house, who's moved jobs, houses, or careers lately, and what are their readerly tastes, and do they ever take manuscripts over the transom at all, then you're really just a hobbyist who should keep the day job. And that's all incredibly demoralizing. Because that's another -and added into the mix, and it's an ugly -and as well. It's a lot like the aforementioned hoop jumping carny-barking, dignity-shrivelling ballyhoo that made the profession of artist ache like a bad tooth sometimes. Because damn it, I want to WRITE, not dance the hoochycooch so some editor might come along and give me thirty seconds to pitch my work while ze's sticking a dollar in my G-string.
And so, people also say, there's also the wonderful, blossoming world of E-Pub. Which makes me just cringe. Because if shilling myself to editors is another -and, publishing my own work is about sixteen -ands all in one place. Marketing exec-and; layout specialist-and; edtor-and; art editor-and; typesetter-and; cover artist-and; accountant-and; donation bell-ringer-and; shop clerk-and; writer-and; press agent-and. I'm sure the list goes on for much longer, but I've exhausted myself just rattling off those few. Those aren't small -ands. They don't leave a lot of room for the bigger, more deeply rooted -ands I already have going; the -ands that aren't going away anytime soon, because they are so very much a part of me that I would not know myself without them.
Jack of all Trades, goes the saying, Master of none. And I call your attention to the word "TRADES" here. Not Jack of all Arts, but Jack of all Trades. Because it's the trade that grinds you down, and takes your focus and fire and energy. It's the trade you have to fight for, and if you're fighting for trades in too many fields, there's only so much success you'll have the energy to win. I can think of another person who does essentially all the things I do, and who's achieved, in the last five years or so, some pretty wild reaches of success. I've met her agent. She's wonderful. I am, in dark moments, more jealous of that woman's having a talented agent to manage her business -ands than I've ever been of any of my husband's girlfriends. Because if you have the right support, you CAN master more than one trade. Alone? You can't master them for long. You run out of spoons, you collect too many asshat scars, you stumble at the wrong moment, and you drop everything. Balancing acts that go on too long usually do end that way.
So this balancing act stays close to the ground for now. That said, I am asking the universe for an agent like hers -- an ally like hers to take care of busking the crowd while I'm keeping all of MY -ands in the air and trying to fall off neither the tightrope nor the unicycle.
So no; I am not a particularly good agent on my own behalf. I'm not gifted in business. I'm not all that good at the shill and the ballyhoo. But I'm a damn good writer. And a damn good painter. And a damn good singer. And a damn good songwriter. And a damn good actress. And a damned good costume designer. And a damned good cook. And a damned good Tarologist. And a damned good dancer. And I'm even a fair carpenter on top of everything else, so I refuse to be shamed by writers who tell me that if I'm not a good agent then I don't deserve to be published.
Let them line up their -ands next to mine and we'll SEE who's bloody slacking!
She was a fantastic guest to have, and despite her frustration with being stranded so close to home, and being stuck in a house with creatures that triggered her asthma, she kept us in fascinating chat and anecdotes the whole time she was here.
She also drew my attention to something I hadn't really properly realized before; something that really makes a lot of sense when I look at my life, and the relatively meagre level of success my work has brought me, and helps to mitigate the self-blame I've often struggled with for not being a better agent for myself, for not already having two or three novels out by now, and so on. She pointed out that it makes sense that my career would grow slowly, because I'm not just building one career. Because I'm not just a writer.
I paint too, and not just hobbyist painting, I paint like someone who once made her living with a brush and paper -- because I did. Right up until Dubya the Gubna flushed the Texas economy down the shitter and put Underhill Arts out of business (luxuries like art are always the first to go when the layoffs start and people have to tighten the strings.) I spent much of my twenties painting-and. (-and all the business chores that came along with painting, and selling one's paintings, which are frankly too numerous and tedious to re-list here.) Just like I've spent most of my thirties and early fourties writing-and.
I sing, play the guitar, and write and arrange songs too. Again, not like a hobbyist, but like someone who once played for pay. Because I did. This was another -and that took up a lot of my twenties. (If I add the jobs of booking agent-and, treasurer-and, manager-and, and arranger-and into it, it was a lot more than just the one -and, really.) Acting, directing, and costuming for street theatre were still another set of -ands. So that makes five categories of -ands that were happening in my twenties and early thirties. No, my math's not off, because during that time I was also the primary homemaker for not just myself and my husband, but for most of my friends as well. Wait... my math's not off, but my count is. I forgot to add Priestess and Tarot counselor into those jobs. Now none of those jobs were full time, but I did them all more or less together. And I wrote on top of it all, when I could fit time in, and dredge up the inspiration. And I somehow managed to get a novel done in that environment, too. When I look at that, it's kind of a miracle, really.
And it cost me a lot of spoons as well. Which is why when I moved out to New York, I stopped with a whole lot of the -ands, and just wrote. Now that's a bit of an oversimplification, I'll admit, and there were a lot of reactionary justifications to why I put away my art supplies, and let my guitar languish in its case for so long after I moved. And to be fair, I was still processing my grief at losing Ravens, and I was still radically averse to the hoop jumping carny-barking, dignity-shrivelling ballyhoo that came along with trying to sell art for a living, and perforce the Priestess job went away when there was no more coven at hand in need of me. But really the first thing that New York did for me was give me space to let the -ands drop, and just write for awhile.
Which is what I did. I wrote like a fiend, and though I couldn't legally sell a page of it, to this day I can't regret any of the work. I pulled out my art supplies only as it pleased myself to do so, just like I took out my guitar when the rare impulse to play it came on, and at no other time. But overall, I just focused my attention and will on putting the words onto the page, and the 'career' I built thereby was a pretty damned good one by any measure.
But things like that don't last for me. The fandom spark began to nag me into less fannish directions, and as though invoked by the spring rains, the -ands began to spring up like weeds. And like weeds that have wintered the snow in thick earth, they've come back hardier than before. My poetry is better now, my songwriting too. My art turned a definite corner while I was drawing primarily for fannish entertainment, and it's better now than it ever was when I was painting in Tim's shadow. My playing is maturing as well, now I don't have a web of voices to hide it under -- not quickly, as I've never been more than an adequate guitarist, who only learned to play in order to accompany her own voice, but still. And all just in time to interfere with the actual Writing-For-Pay career that I'm trying to get off the ground.
I read things online about how selling your own work is just part of the job, paying your dues, just the proving ground, and if you can't do that then you don't deserve to be published. How if you're not 'willing' to sleuth out which editor buys what kind of work from which agent, who represents which kind of writers, who reads for which editor at which house, who's moved jobs, houses, or careers lately, and what are their readerly tastes, and do they ever take manuscripts over the transom at all, then you're really just a hobbyist who should keep the day job. And that's all incredibly demoralizing. Because that's another -and added into the mix, and it's an ugly -and as well. It's a lot like the aforementioned hoop jumping carny-barking, dignity-shrivelling ballyhoo that made the profession of artist ache like a bad tooth sometimes. Because damn it, I want to WRITE, not dance the hoochycooch so some editor might come along and give me thirty seconds to pitch my work while ze's sticking a dollar in my G-string.
And so, people also say, there's also the wonderful, blossoming world of E-Pub. Which makes me just cringe. Because if shilling myself to editors is another -and, publishing my own work is about sixteen -ands all in one place. Marketing exec-and; layout specialist-and; edtor-and; art editor-and; typesetter-and; cover artist-and; accountant-and; donation bell-ringer-and; shop clerk-and; writer-and; press agent-and. I'm sure the list goes on for much longer, but I've exhausted myself just rattling off those few. Those aren't small -ands. They don't leave a lot of room for the bigger, more deeply rooted -ands I already have going; the -ands that aren't going away anytime soon, because they are so very much a part of me that I would not know myself without them.
Jack of all Trades, goes the saying, Master of none. And I call your attention to the word "TRADES" here. Not Jack of all Arts, but Jack of all Trades. Because it's the trade that grinds you down, and takes your focus and fire and energy. It's the trade you have to fight for, and if you're fighting for trades in too many fields, there's only so much success you'll have the energy to win. I can think of another person who does essentially all the things I do, and who's achieved, in the last five years or so, some pretty wild reaches of success. I've met her agent. She's wonderful. I am, in dark moments, more jealous of that woman's having a talented agent to manage her business -ands than I've ever been of any of my husband's girlfriends. Because if you have the right support, you CAN master more than one trade. Alone? You can't master them for long. You run out of spoons, you collect too many asshat scars, you stumble at the wrong moment, and you drop everything. Balancing acts that go on too long usually do end that way.
So this balancing act stays close to the ground for now. That said, I am asking the universe for an agent like hers -- an ally like hers to take care of busking the crowd while I'm keeping all of MY -ands in the air and trying to fall off neither the tightrope nor the unicycle.
So no; I am not a particularly good agent on my own behalf. I'm not gifted in business. I'm not all that good at the shill and the ballyhoo. But I'm a damn good writer. And a damn good painter. And a damn good singer. And a damn good songwriter. And a damn good actress. And a damned good costume designer. And a damned good cook. And a damned good Tarologist. And a damned good dancer. And I'm even a fair carpenter on top of everything else, so I refuse to be shamed by writers who tell me that if I'm not a good agent then I don't deserve to be published.
Let them line up their -ands next to mine and we'll SEE who's bloody slacking!
Friday, September 2, 2011
"Bollocks, sir," she answered, all eyebrow.
I've been thinking a lot about 'purple prose' versus 'literary modernism' and 'efficient prose', and I find I'm with Mr. Fry on this topic.
The current literary style that calls for writers to go through their final draft and remove words like : that, really, great, just, a lot, interesting, wonderful, very, sure, often, usually, many, and most, because they 'are slimy and slippery and lack value,' just make me seethe. A lot.
It's true, if you can cut a word from a sentence and not change the meaning, then yes the word is superfluous, and you ought to consider whether to cut it... or not. But the error there lies in the author's execution, not in the inherent worthiness of the words themselves. Truth is that each and every word on that list has meaning, use, solidity, emphasis, and yes, dammit, VALUE, if it is used with joy, with heart, and with a love of the language in which it flows. And when it is used just where it belongs, by someone who has a love for, and a skill with the component parts of his language.
I will never be a fashionable writer, I think, and that's because I just love words too much. I won't cut them out and throw them away just because they're adverbs. I will wander by the orphaned adjectives that other writers hack off, pick them up, dust them off, and give them homes in my work, and offer apology to no editor over it. I'm willing to use synonyms of said where I feel they fit. I'm not scared of long sentences that don't conjugate out in a straight line. I find I rather like them, in fact.
Is my work descriptive? Is my work rich with emotional sensation, and sensory information? Is my work florid, purple, and overly wordy? Fuck if I know. Fuck, in fact, if I care overly, because it all depends on whom you ask -- ask my target audience, and they're happy to have someone who writes prose that doesn't feel like a cage on a hard concrete floor, populated with brittle people and sharp ideas. Ask MY readers, and they're happy to have phrases and passages stick with them like song lyrics long after they've finished the work. Ask MY readers, and some of them will even quote the stories they loved.
Ask the readers who are decidedly not in my target audience, and they're disgusted at having to read more words than they like to in order to get the story's plot. They're scornful of my descriptors, bored with knowing the details I've given, amused by my adjectives, annoyed by my compound sentences, and dismissive of my shameless love affair with words. And frankly, I'd RATHER that they didn't read my work. Because there are other writers out there who are entirely set up to make their modernist tastes happy, and there's no need for someone who prefers Bauhaus to endure Baroque. But neither is there any need to force an Art Nouveau writer to practice Cubist Abstraction prose in order to grant her work any merit.
I am not a modernist writer. I write to the audible, if you will. I write with half an ear turned toward saying the words out loud, to reading them out and shaping them on my tongue to a room full of ears. Maybe this is born of my innate talent for performing, or maybe this is just the way I experience the act of writing, but to me, if it sounds empty, constipated and sparse, I cannot find it to my liking. Give me a story with comfortable curves, so that the sharp angles and narrow turns will be the more harrowing in contrast. Give me rich colours to offset the bleak shadows that will creep across it. Give me depth of feeling, and the words that know their way around it -- I'm not scared of them.
Even if they are 'slimy and slippery and lack value', I can and will put them to good work.
The current literary style that calls for writers to go through their final draft and remove words like : that, really, great, just, a lot, interesting, wonderful, very, sure, often, usually, many, and most, because they 'are slimy and slippery and lack value,' just make me seethe. A lot.
It's true, if you can cut a word from a sentence and not change the meaning, then yes the word is superfluous, and you ought to consider whether to cut it... or not. But the error there lies in the author's execution, not in the inherent worthiness of the words themselves. Truth is that each and every word on that list has meaning, use, solidity, emphasis, and yes, dammit, VALUE, if it is used with joy, with heart, and with a love of the language in which it flows. And when it is used just where it belongs, by someone who has a love for, and a skill with the component parts of his language.
I will never be a fashionable writer, I think, and that's because I just love words too much. I won't cut them out and throw them away just because they're adverbs. I will wander by the orphaned adjectives that other writers hack off, pick them up, dust them off, and give them homes in my work, and offer apology to no editor over it. I'm willing to use synonyms of said where I feel they fit. I'm not scared of long sentences that don't conjugate out in a straight line. I find I rather like them, in fact.
Is my work descriptive? Is my work rich with emotional sensation, and sensory information? Is my work florid, purple, and overly wordy? Fuck if I know. Fuck, in fact, if I care overly, because it all depends on whom you ask -- ask my target audience, and they're happy to have someone who writes prose that doesn't feel like a cage on a hard concrete floor, populated with brittle people and sharp ideas. Ask MY readers, and they're happy to have phrases and passages stick with them like song lyrics long after they've finished the work. Ask MY readers, and some of them will even quote the stories they loved.
Ask the readers who are decidedly not in my target audience, and they're disgusted at having to read more words than they like to in order to get the story's plot. They're scornful of my descriptors, bored with knowing the details I've given, amused by my adjectives, annoyed by my compound sentences, and dismissive of my shameless love affair with words. And frankly, I'd RATHER that they didn't read my work. Because there are other writers out there who are entirely set up to make their modernist tastes happy, and there's no need for someone who prefers Bauhaus to endure Baroque. But neither is there any need to force an Art Nouveau writer to practice Cubist Abstraction prose in order to grant her work any merit.
I am not a modernist writer. I write to the audible, if you will. I write with half an ear turned toward saying the words out loud, to reading them out and shaping them on my tongue to a room full of ears. Maybe this is born of my innate talent for performing, or maybe this is just the way I experience the act of writing, but to me, if it sounds empty, constipated and sparse, I cannot find it to my liking. Give me a story with comfortable curves, so that the sharp angles and narrow turns will be the more harrowing in contrast. Give me rich colours to offset the bleak shadows that will creep across it. Give me depth of feeling, and the words that know their way around it -- I'm not scared of them.
Even if they are 'slimy and slippery and lack value', I can and will put them to good work.
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