Category Archives: Books

Stalking Authors

When I’m feeling singularly uninspired, I meander about and look at what other writers think and feel about writing.

Jane Yolen is an author I’ve been reading since I was about eleven. On her For Writers page, she says that [t]he Muse is an ornery creature and rarely comes when called. She wears feathers in her hair and birkenstocks on her feet and is often out in the woods when you are home at your keyboard. Which is all too true.

She quotes Gene Fowler: Writing is easy: all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead. Of course, she goes on to point out that writing isn’t agony, and the majority of the time I’d agree with her; I’m not one of those people who thinks that an artist has to suffer in order to create, or to be able to create, good art. Every once in a while, though, yes, it really does feel that hard. Yolen also quotes Roland Barthes: The author performs a function; the writer an activity. It suggests that an author has a job, but a writer is the job. (I don’t remember ever reading anything so inspiring when I read Barthes a few years ago, but I might have missed something.)

However, the nicest thing on the page was this:

A writer has many successes:

Each new word captured.
Each completed sentence.
Each rounded paragraph leading into the next.
Each idea that sustains and then develops.
Each character who, like a wayward adolescent, leaves home and finds a life.
Each new metaphor that, like the exact error it is, some how works.
Each new book that ends–and so begins.

Selling the piece is only an exclamation point, a spot of punctuation.

Which is remarkably inspiring.

Lit Endorsement

Ginger reminded me of how much I love Jasper Fforde, so I thought I’d share his particularly quirky sense of humour with you:

If you prefer words, and haven’t read The Eyre Affair yet (and why haven’t you?), you can read an excerpt here. Caution: this is addictive for anyone who has a sense of humour and multiple degrees, or even a single Eng.Lit. degree. You’ve been warned.

Words And Music Etc

Orchestra last night was like a train wreck. We all should have just stayed home; I mean, for goodness’ sake, we played the Grieg better the very first time when we were sight-reading it. Collectively, we appear to be at the stage where we know a bit, but not enough, so it’s falling apart. The only thing more dangerous than not knowing anything about a subject is knowing a bit about it.

And, on a completely different topic, here’s an example of why I love the English language:

Verse feet in the romances are predominantly iambic, but anapests and trochees that appear should often be taken as welcome prosodic variations.
–from the introduction to Middle English Verse Romances by Donald B Sands

And this morning I found this in the writing diary of Virginia Woolf:

Writing is not in the least an easy art. Thinking what to write, it seems easy; but the thought evaporates, runs hither and thither.

And that’s it, really; when you think about it, and conceive of the finished product, it seems a piece of cake. Actually doing it, though; wrestling the language into some semblance of gawky order… now, that’s anything but cake. More like cement and traffic-light brownies or something. Or whatever you can think of that describes hard and heavy and not what you were expecting when you put it in the oven at all.

Oh, and I saw the four Animatrix shorts plus Final Flight of the Osiris last night; a colleague of my husband’s recorded them for us. I enjoyed them all for different reasons. I already had every intention to pick up the compilation DVD next week, but now I have even more motivation to do so.

Movie News

Tim Burton is to direct a live-action Charlie and the Chocolate Factory film?

This is going to be creepy. But then, a lot of Dahl is creepy, and people tend to miss it, focusing on the humour instead.

And an official bio of Joss Whedon has just been released. On Amazon, under the editorial reviews, is this gem posted by the man himself:

Joss Whedon
“Possibly the finest book of the century; It’s exactly like A Tale of Two Cities, but with 30% more me.”

On Dreams Etc

My parents are back from their trip to Italy, and when my mother called last night she sounded like she’d been roaming the pages of Janson’s History of Art, pages 278 to 473 inclusive (in the third edition; YMMV depending on the edition you consult, of course). I’m extremely happy for them; it sounds like they enjoyed themselves immensely, but I am just a teensy bit jealous. It comes from being so well educated, I think. If I’d never learned anything about art or history or Western Culture, then I’d have no reason to be envious, would I?

I’ll be interested to see the success rate of this dreaming true thing I’ve been experiencing on and off. Some events I’d like to see happen, such as the wedding of two friends at a particular time of year, or last night’s dream of a film starring Tom Cruise and Carrie-Anne Moss. Then there are others which I’d rather not see happen, like being told by a book rep during the winter that Terry Pratchett has just died. I think I’d like to be completely wrong on that last one, thanks.

Today, I sit down with my first NaNo novel and edit, edit, edit. This will be Edit No. 4, and, I think, the final edit before I write query letters and choose sample chapters to submit to an as-of-yet undetermined list of publishers. One of my cats has graciously consented to be in my presence this morning, so maybe today I’m not as cranky as I have been. Or perhaps she’s just acting out of pity, and it’s pure charity. Whatever her motivation, today will feature Maggie, laptop, peppermint tea, and lotus incense. And Mozart, whose music appears throughout the novel. (Yeah, I know; a CD tray full of Mozart should drive me crackers by about noon. I’ll strike back with Tori Amos when I can’t stand it any more.)

When Less Is Not More

Well, when I said last week that the cello section was getting smaller but better, I didn’t mean to suggest that even less was more. Tonight we only had two celli present – myself, and one other. And of course, we sight-read completely new music: Bizet, Sibelius, and that odd Overture for an Unwritten Comedy which was written by a Canadian in the 1950s, and sounds like it. (No value judgement implied; I quite like some of the Canadian compositions from the latter half of the last century. It’s just that this piece is going to contrast sharply with the others on the program.) None of us had heard it before, so we had no clue what we were aiming for.

On the other hand, the Sibelius was divine: slightly melancholy, slight macabre (even more so when Douglas gave us the story in a nutshell: a dying old woman, mistaking Death standing in the doorway for her long dead husband, rises and dances with him), and of course, in waltz time, my favourite. The Bizet was, well, Bizet. I have a love-hate relationship with Bizet. I like him sometimes; I hate him sometimes, usually when I’m playing his music. The rest of the time I’m terribly neutral about him.

A couple of people stopped by as we were packing up our instruments, and said that the celli had sounded quite good tonight. My fellow cellist looked at me after one such comment and said wryly, “Why do these compliments sound like condolences?” Okay, so we two aren’t necessarily the strongest among the section, but we were sight-reading new music, after all, and apart from losing our place for a bit here and there, we didn’t make any horrible mistakes.

In fact, I felt so good about what I did tonight that, as I did last week, I left rehearsal wanting to race home and play some more. The drive took all the wind out of my sails, though, and now I just want to soak in a bath and read, except that I’ve finished Lincoln’s Dreams and I don’t want to read the non-fiction I have on the go. I’ve recently re-read all the other Connie Willis in the house, so I suppose I’ll wander around my shelves and pull something off at random.

Before I left tonight, my husband asked to read the two bonus chapters I wrote earlier this year to tie up loose ends in my NaNoWriMo novel. As I printed them out for him, I re-read bits and pieces of it. Damn, it’s good. When I feel uninspired, I really ought to read my own work more often to get myself back in the mood. I’ve been dragging my feet about getting back to work on the Great Canadian Novel because I don’t know enough about my protagonist’s choice of action. I discovered the skeleton of a fantasy novel on my laptop last week that I’d forgotten I transcribed a year ago, so I could work on that as well. I also have a non-fiction book drafted out, so I can’t even try to dodge writing by claiming that I have nothing different to work on. A young adult novel, a romantic comedy, a fantasy, and a non-fiction book; no matter how I feel when I get up in the mornings, I ought to be able to work on at least one of my projects. My reluctance to plunge into the GCN is colouring my whole writing approach, though, I think. I don’t want to keep going until I know more, otherwise it just won’t ring true. Sending a protagonist overseas when you don’t know the city she’s headed to is dicey.

Of course, this means I have to travel to France. Just for research, you understand.

Eeeeee!

I check out Neil Gaiman’s log every couple of weeks or so, and this morning I found a dizzying off-hand reference that made my blood pressure soar (in a good way):

finished the last tidy on the pre-outline story draft for the TAM LIN film I’m doing with Brian and Wendy Froud and Sony Animation

Gah! Being (a) a Neil Gaiman fan, (b) a Froud fan, and (c) a huge fan of the Scottish tale of Tam Lin, I am quite naturally over the moon.