Category Archives: Deep Thoughts

Remembering

Today, the world is a little dimmer as one of its feline lights leaves us. It’s not my news to share, but the call telling me about it affected me deeply yesterday, and affects me more than it might have at any other time of the year.

Sunday marked the first year anniversary of Maggie’s death. And I don’t really know what to say other than I still miss her very much, and I am still unexpectedly reminded of her and tear up. A couple of months ago I heard a sound in the kitchen while I was working, a kind of rusty strangled meow-like sound, and in the back of my brain I identified it as one of the cats. Then my subconscious kind of poked me and said, “Well, yes, except the cat that made that particular sound you heard for seventeen years is no longer with us.” And I burst into tears, and e-mailed Ceri a garbled note that essentially said, “I still miss her so much.”

Cricket has taken to sleeping between HRH and I, something that Maggie used to do now and again, and when we watch TV next to one another she jumps up onto the chesterfield and snuggles between us. In both she reminds me of Maggie. Not that she’s doing exactly what Maggie used to do; it’s more like she’s joining us in the same activities Maggie used to accompany us in as well, sharing space and time that Maggie used to share, somehow bringing her into what it is we’re doing.

Liam still talks about her all the time. Up until a couple of months ago he was still telling random people that Maggie had died, and that Gryffindor was our new cat.

They leave us, but they don’t. There’s a Maggie-shaped hole in my heart, but her memory curls up there and is with me always.

And this isn’t anything like I wanted to write, but I can’t get the words out properly in any way that makes sense.

Dear 4/4 Cello:

Fifteen years ago I bought you almost new from another student cellist, your only identifying label a small one that says “Made in Hungary.” We’ve seen a lot together, from Twinkle to Scheherazade. I was stunned when luthier after luthier examined you and told me that you were about my age and a high-end intermediate model, not the shlunky new student model I’d been told you were by the previous owner. Over the past fifteen years your sound has developed beautifully, and you’re powerful and strong. Your action is easy. Your only prima donna trait is your tendency to demand a new bridge every eighteen months, and really, when you think of what can otherwise go wrong, that’s pretty reasonable.

I never knew how huge you were until I handed you to the principal cellist of my chamber orchestra for a moment, and she exclaimed about your width and depth. You were just my cello; that’s the way you were. So when I spoke to my new luthier and he measured you, I was surprised to find out that you are in fact an oversized 4/4. I am petite. I always thought people’s remarks about how amusing it was to see a tiny person playing a large instrument were generic sorts of comments. Now I wondered if there was something else to it.

After much discussion with my new teacher a year ago, we decided to start trying 7/8s; she said that the smaller size and proportion would positively impact my technique. I felt horrible, like I was cheating on you. I felt even worse when I discovered that it actually was physically easier to play a 7/8; I didn’t have a huge chunk of wood in my way when it came to putting my left hand in higher positions and moving my bow arm to play the C string. Even as I searched for a 7/8 whose tone I liked and whose action felt good, I thought I’d never sell you: I would be loyal to the end, whether I bought a second cello or not.

I rented the latest 7/8 for four months to play it exclusively in order to test the playing-better theory. And then last week I brought you upstairs from your lovely exile to play you, to see if there really was a difference. You were almost perfectly in tune, as if you’d been waiting for me.

And you were… harsh. Oh, your action was as easy as I remembered it being — easier than the 7/8, truth be told — but your sound was so bright and cutting that I found myself wincing. I remembered how I searched endlessly for the perfect combination of strings to tone down your brightness, to give you the more mellow sound that I craved. The sound that, I must admit, this 7/8 has in creamy, caramel-y spades. I had no physical problem playing you, but I did notice how large you were and how I had to lift my arms more to get around you, which limits the power I can devote to refining the sound I draw from you. You boomed, you were operatic, and… I cringed a bit. Were I a true soloist, your sound would be perfect for me. But I’m not. I’m a small-ensemble, orchestral-section girl. You’re… big, in every sense of the word. And I’m small.

I know now that keeping you would be sentimentality, pure and simple. While I can physically handle you, it’s just easier with a 7/8. And your sound isn’t what I’m looking for. Now that I know I have other options, I’m a bit sad. It was easier when I didn’t know any better.

You held my hand through pizzicato, my first shaky bow strokes, in-class group recitals, public recitals, joining my first orchestra, and playing bass in an eclectic cover band. We’ve experimented with a wide variety of strings and bows. I’ve given you four new cases over the years. Remember the time I shipped you to Toronto in the baggage car of the train, and the base of the hard case got punched in somehow? I panicked and opened you up right there in the middle of Union Station. And you were fine, laughing at me as if it would take more than whatever happened to hurt you. You have nicks and scratches all over you from minor mishaps over your forty years, and you don’t care. You haven’t a single wolf, and your balance across your strings and throughout your octaves is beautiful. I’ve never found your limits.

Come August, I’ll list you in local classified ads and hope you find someone who will love you as much as I have, someone who needs your size and your beautifully developed, unique sound. I love you. And I release you.

Enter The Clue By Four

The copyedits for the anthology landed in my in-box this morning.

Naturally, even though I didn’t write 98% of this ms., my first instinct was to quail.

I should really remember that I’m very good at my job more often. The ms. is pretty darn clean, with only a handful of queries in the first half that I’ve done today, most of which I can handle myself without checking with the authors. Most of the copyedits are simply punctuation and house style stuff.

I am good at what I do. Why does this fact elude me so often?

In Which She Makes A Regretful Revelation

I’m working on the taxes today. I hate it. I hate sorting receipts and adding things up and inputting them into appropriate columns. Bah.

So I’m taking a break to share something very sad with you. I figure this is timely, what with Easter coming up.

Over the past two months, I have developed a sensitivity to chocolate. The darker the chocolate is, the worse my reaction.

Yes, you read that right. I can no longer eat dark chocolate.

No, this is not an April Fool’s joke.

You have no idea how much this has upset me. Chocolate is my reward to myself for finishing a task, my encouragement for making it through part of the day or a project. Instead of being able to enjoy it, my tongue and hard palate burn. It’s no fun at all, I assure you. This has really depressed me, and it’s been one of the things I’ve been struggling with behind the scenes.

It’s not just one brand, either. I’ve experimented with various kinds from my stash. Same result every time. The higher the cocoa content, the worse it is. Chocolate chips in cookies, chocolatines, chocolate-covered butter cookies; they’re all culprits. Those double-the-cocoa cupcakes I made last week? Bad. But the regular chocolate cake I made earlier in the month was fine. Go figure.

The reaction I get from milk chocolate is almost non-existent, so I’ve nibbled what little I had of that with caution. So far, so good.

Then this morning I made myself a peanut butter sandwich, and fifteen minutes after I finished it my tongue and throat were prickling. It’s not an additives thing, either; we use natural peanut butter (as in, the ingredient list reads: “Peanuts, The End”). I suspect my body, slyly encouraged by spring and the general sap/growth thing that used to turn me into a mess as a child and teen, is now manifesting allergies to things it hasn’t previously needed to in a new and exciting way thanks to a ramped-up sensitivity level. Ten years ago the new symptom was random skin itch and contact dermatitis with pretty much everything, so I wouldn’t put it past my body to have developed a new symptom. I haven’t yet experimented with diphenhydramine hydrochloride (like Bendryl, one of the common food-sensitivity-friendly antihistamines) to see if it’s my body releasing histamine in an attempt to fight off what it perceives as an invading chemical of some kind. (Dear body, you know I love you, but really, dark chocolate? Is this some kind of amped-up immune system thing connected to the fibro? Do we need to talk about ongoing medication again?)

Sigh.

You know what this means, of course. It means I have to go shopping to replace all my dark chocolate with creamy good-quality milk chocolate. In small amounts, of course, in case I develop a more intense sensitivity to that as well. And yes, it also means I’ll be careful, and will speak to my doctor about it at my upcoming appointment.

Wiktory!

Finished!

Intro complete, bios in, story order rocks, spreadsheet final. Except now there’s the editorial memo/cover letter, which always takes longer to write than it ought.

Two hours later: Done, done, done, and handed in! (Okay, there was an hour-long break to do some divination work for a different cause in there, so it didn’t actually take two hours.)

Oh, hell. I haven’t thought about what to make for supper. *headdesk*

Orchestrated Overview

It didn’t really take very long at all to complete this. Here’s the breakdown:

12 May 2008: Original exercise (brainstorm a story idea, write a back-of-the-book synopsis)

May 2008: Expand 200-word synopsis to a two-page descriptive outline (same day, actually)

July-October 2008: begin writing once or twice a week (about 30K or 60pp)

Nov 2008: approx. 30K done over the month

Jan/Feb 2009: ten writing sessions to finish it

So overall, if one leaves out the day in May where I brainstormed the idea, it took eight months of part-time work on it. If one includes May to give a better overall idea of the development time of the idea/prep time for headspace, ten months. Eight to ten months is a very, very respectable timeline for a part-time novel.

Now, could I do it again? That’s the question. It would depend on the idea and how fully it was worked out in the synops(i/e)s.

In Which She Reflects On Her Reading Tastes

I just filled in my Locus ballot for the published material of 2008, and I have realised something.

I don’t read many best-of or notable books any more in this genre. In fact, I don’t read many of them at all. (‘Them’ meaning in the genre, not notable books.)

Now granted, I no longer work exclusively in the realm of speculative fiction, and as a result yes, I do tend to miss some of the sleeper hits or books of note released from smaller publishers. But even when I did work in the speculative fiction market, I’d look at the Hugo or Nebula nominations and think, Wow, I’m lucky if I’ve read one title in each category. I was very excited one year when I’d read three books in the Best Fantasy Novel list. I do still have speculative fiction authors I read religiously. Most of the authors I follow online via blog or journal are spec-fic writers, now that I think about it, and they’re in the same category of must-buy-upon-release-date.

I’m not sure what this says about me. It may indicate that my tastes don’t run to what people consider Good Books, although personally I’d laugh at that assumption. I’ve never been a big reader of hard SF, which tends to considered Serious and therefore often perceived as more worthy of a nomination. I’m not a big SF reader in general any more, nor could I really classify myself as one even in my heyday. (That said, I actually read Anathem this year and could vote for something on the SF list with a clear conscience.) But I’ve cut down my fantasy reading too, mainly because epic fantasy takes too much work and how many times can I reread the basic tropes and plots? (I did write in nominations for Elizabeth Bear’s Stratford Man duology, though, because they were among the best books I read last year of any category.) I’m a year or so behind on books, too, which doesn’t help, because I’ve read some great stuff this past year that would have been on the 2006 or 2007 lists.

When I got to the Best YA Novel category, though, it clicked for me. Oh, I thought. This is where all my reading material has gone. Which makes sense, really, because it’s what I’m interested in writing, too.

My non-fiction reading has evolved as well. Whereas I used to devour books about spirituality, now I’m finding it hard to enjoy them the way I used to before I started, well, writing them myself. A colleague gave me an advance reading copy of Voices of the Earth: The Path of Green Spirituality by Clea Danaan, and I had to force myself to start reading it. It’s not bad, has the potential to be really interesting, but I’m just not drawn to that kind of book any more.

Which begs the question: What am I interested in, then?

I have to look back over my reading log to answer that, because I can’t off the top of my head. This horrifies me to some degree. Why can’t I describe what I want to be reading?

My reading log suggests that I’ve been reading mysteries, specifically historical ones; narrative non-fiction; YA fiction, especially paranormal or fantasy; the occasional biography; historical fiction; mainstream literary fiction, and now and again some more popular mainstream fiction. That’s not in any particular order, either.

It’s like I haven’t found my reading niche again. Not that eclecticism is bad; on the contrary. It’s just that I used to be able to pinpoint my taste in books, and I’m not quite sure what they are any more other than a general YA sort of trend. And I don’t know why this disturbs me, other than theorizing that I’ve lost some sort of stability in some ineffable way, or some sort of defining fact or structure to my life.