Not much to say, except doing a lot of reading (more than I’m listing here…I’ve been reading some things at the urgings of others and re-learning that I generally have pretty good instincts about what I like to read. Possibly I’ll post about that sometime) and writing (stuff that will almost certainly never see the light of day. There’s a lot of freedom in this kind of writing and I encourage everyone to give it a try). And listening. And watching. There is so much to hear, to see, to learn.
While the world continues to burn, and tragedy and injustice keep on occurring, I feel hopeful at the moment that we may see some change. Black lives matter, change must happen. To those of you who are out in the world demanding that change, I respect you, I am grateful to you, I admire you.
Myself, I’ve been struggling. I’ve been struggling with what my responsibility to the world is right now, as someone with a lot of privilege but without a lot of voice. Mostly I think it is to shut up and support. But I don’t know.
I recently attended a concert by the wonderful Takács Quartet and, as is not unusual for me, listening drew correspondences. Three things came together in my mind:
The Ursula LeGuin short story “Imaginary Countries” (it’s in The Unreal and the Real but I’m sure it can be found elsewhere as well)
Recent events in Syria.
I wept as I listened. I am often a weeper, particularly at musical performances, but this was some heavy-duty weeping even by my standards.
I have some sense of what this set of correspondences is about, but I don’t think I’m able to capture it in words, at least not yet. So instead, I will simply leave this list here.
I have a couple of longer posts brewing right now, but they are going to take a while to finish. They involve some big ideas, and writing (and thinking!) about big ideas takes time and space. But I wanted to link to this thread now, because these big ideas are related in an indirect way to pseudonymity, and @nycsouthpaw‘s posts on why he chose to use a pseudonym touch on some thoughts I’ve been having. (Another source that I think has interesting things to say on this topic is You Are Not a Gadget, though the world is a little different now than it was when that book was published.)
Maddy McBride is, in fact, a pseudonym. My reasons for using a pseudonym are somewhat similar to @nycsouthpaw’s, but unlike him, I’m not at a point where being pseudonymous is impacting my ability to do what this pseudonym was set out to do. I use a pseudonym to talk about a part of my life (reading and writing) that’s separate from my professional life, without worrying that what I post might impact my ability to do my day job.
But the dividing line between my professional life and my life as a reader and writer of fiction isn’t always so clear, and that’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.
Enough of that. Updates on reading: since I posted here last, I’ve read The Book of Hidden Things by Francesco Dimitri (enjoyed it greatly up until the end – I’ll probably write about this at greater length at some point); Pacifica by Kristen Simmons; Raven Strategem by Yoon Ha Lee; and The Four and Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book by Emily and Melissa Elsen (highly recommended for pie technique – specific recipes may or may not be to your taste, but they do a great job of explaining how not just to make a pie, but to create a new recipe). Currently reading, among others, The Death of Expertise.
In other news, I AM FINALLY WRITING AGAIN!!!! (Definitely deserves a few exclamation marks.) Or really, revising. The particular manuscript I am working on is in need of a lot of work, and I’ve had a horrible time making myself get to it – I have so many other writing projects and it’s been easy to put this off. It’s a novel (so it’s big); it will probably never be published, unlike other stuff on my plate; and I have been working on it, on and off, for SO LONG.
But I’d like to finish it, and so I committed to really working on it, at least one hour a day, for the rest of this month.
But after a few days, things did turn around. It’s funny how revising is a little like kneading bread: at first the words are stiff and resistant, but with some consistent effort usually they’ll become supple and malleable. Fingers crossed that this good stretch of revising continues!
It is still August and the calendar tells me there’s another month or so left of summer. But even here in central New Mexico, where summer weather may persist into the first weeks of October, lived experience reveals the “technically” aspect of calendric facts. No matter what the calendar says, autumn is here. I can see it in the tomatoes heavy on the vine; I can smell it in the late summer wildflowers.
I love autumn but the older I get the more bittersweet it is. Some of this is because I’ve grown into a gardener, and watching the garden die each year saddens me. Some is increasing awareness of my own mortality. But there is sweet that comes with this bitter: the seeds of next year’s garden, the appreciation of my own life.
So too in my reading and writing. With summer’s end I have less time for reading. But I woke this morning re-energized about a ms. which has been languishing for some time. Perhaps the sweet of this autumn, for me, will be in the writing…
Every few years, I get to attend the American Libraries Association (ALA) conference, courtesy of my partner (who is a librarian). I tag along to whatever cool location in which the meeting is being held and get an exhibits-only pass. Why bother getting a pass? One simple reason: ALA exhibits are *awesome*.
They have robots. Author talks. Publisher displays, from publishers large and small, with recently published and forthcoming books. Sometimes they give some of those books away. In fact for me the most difficult aspect of going to ALA exhibits, aside from the general overstimulating nature of it all, is not picking up too many books.
The ALA 2017 exhibits hall (at the end of the conference – the exhibits are in the process of being deconstructed by a crane in this picture!)
(There are lots of other things in the ALA exhibits as well as books and book-related booths, like displays on library automation software and databases. I like those too.)
This year ALA was in Chicago. Not only did I wind up with a number of exciting-looking books (most of which I knew nothing about prior to the conference)…
Here is Cindy signing copies of her new book, WANT
To top that all off I spent some time exploring Chicago, including eating pierogis at Tryzub, a Ukranian restaurant; experiencing the Purple Pig; and exploring Read It & Eat, a cookbook-focused bookstore.
Yes, I spent all my time reading, eating, and talking with other people about reading and eating. And if that doesn’t sound totally worth the price of admission to you, well, probably you don’t read this blog.
(I did also attend the Chicago – Orlando MLS game, but I ate and drank while there so technically this is in the “eating” category. I didn’t read at the game, but it was still super-fun.)
In the midst of all this activity I also finished The Glass Sentence by S.E. Grove, a book I’ve been meaning to read since it came out. I definitely enjoyed it – it has great world-building and does interesting things with the concept of time. As this review points out it’s in the tradition of Philip Pullman‘s His Dark Materials trilogy, but (maybe because of the American setting) to me it had a very different feel. I’m still mulling over my reaction beyond “I liked it,” though. I suspect I won’t really know until I’ve read the other two in the series.
However, those other two books will have to wait, much as I enjoyed The Glass Sentence. My reading for the next few weeks will focus on the Advance Reader Copies/other books I picked up at ALA, so stay tuned for some thoughts on those!
After far too much time I have finally – FINALLY! – completed the zero draft of this unnamed project (it’s a novel, it’s historical fantasy, I am not sure about anything else about it other than that). Writing longhand is the only thing that got me through the last five pages. Pen-and-paper is my never-fail trick for dealing with blocks – when I’m stuck and can’t figure out where a story is going, pulling out a physical notebook always gets me back on track. (There are lots of other good reasons to write longhand – this article and this one both make strong arguments – but for me, getting unstuck is the most important).
In all honesty, though, it wasn’t stuck-ness that made this zero draft take so long. It was simply time: my life’s been busy (with writing other things, often). And once one’s out of the story, it’s difficult to get back into it.
For this reason I will be plunging straight into revisions. In an ideal world I’d take a little time between finishing a zero draft and moving on, but I know if I do that I’ll lose momentum. And, you know, I’m hoping to truly finish this thing before a decade passes…
Just busy. I haven’t been able to get much writing done over the last month, thanks to a hectic fall schedule (why do I always forget how busy September can be?).
I have managed to read Cheryl Klein‘s The Magic Words this month though. I’ll try to get a post up about it soon – it’s given me many revision ideas, so I may have more to say about the WIP as well.
Here in New Mexico, the end of summer is chile season. I grow chiles (see the photo 🙂 ) but, like many New Mexicans, in August or September I go to a chile roaster and buy a sack of roasted green to get me through the winter. You can smell the arrival of chile-roasting season: the odor of charred chile wafts over the entire Rio Grande valley.
This smell is just one of many things I love about autumn in New Mexico. The clear blue skies, the warm days and cool nights, the way the colors seem so much brighter…usually mid-August feels like coming home.
This year has been different. I’ve been dreading the end of summer, partly due to day-job drama and partly for reasons I haven’t been able to articulate, even to myself. I’ve been frightened and anxious when I’ve contemplated the arrival of the autumn.
But this morning I woke to the smell of roasted chile. And it gave me faith: faith in myself, that I can deal with the challenges ahead; faith in the turning of the seasons; faith in the beauty of the world.
