Lilith Saintcrow

Five random and not-so-random things:

* I will never eat homemade banana bread right before bed again. The nightmares, dear God. While I do not blame the banana bread for them, I still was so upset I tasted mostly-digested banana bread at about 3AM. That sort of thing will leave a mark on one.

* To: My subconscious. Re: the nightmares. Look, I know you think they help when I’m writing a book like this. I really, really appreciate all your hard work. But please, f!cking stop. If I have a cardiac arrest from that hospital dream, we’ll both be out of luck.

* Kids are so cool. In the past few minutes the Little Prince has treated me to a trolley sound, several Bionic Man sound effects, two car crashes, and one shootout worthy of John Woo. And the Princess is singing the theme from Neverending Story in the kitchen as she gets her breakfast together.

* The soymilk experiment continueth well. The Muffin got a gallon of cowmilk for pancake and biscuit-making this weekend, and was relieved to find out that the soymilk is just a modification, not a hard and fast change. Several of you have warned me of the plant estrogens in soy. I’m being cautious–but I really can’t think it’s any worse for me or the kids than the bovine growth hormone, antibiotics, and assorted other stuff in cowmilk. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.

* The last hundred pages of Redemption Alley are where all the huge architectural revisions need to be made. That’s both good and bad–good because it was a clean edit up until now, and bad because that’s going to take me more time than the previous two hundred pages. *sigh*

And a sixth not-so-random thing: Steelflower is now available for preorder as a paper book! Yippee!

Incidentally, if anyone out there has dealt with the process for putting one’s books into Kindle form, can you please drop me a line about that process and your experience with it? I’m thinking of putting smoke and mirror in Kindle form.

Whew. Ever have such intense nightmares the waking world feels like the dream? Yeah. It’s like that, this morning. I feel physically rested but emotionally drained.

So the Selkie inflicted Bertie Higgins on me (don’t ask). My response was tongue-in-cheek–so that’s who Don Johnson was trying to be! Now I get it! I was forced–forced, I tell you–to find a little Chris Isaak as an antidote. Ah, supermodel in granny-panties, sand, and a romance video that just screams “trainwreck”. AWESOME.

I’m feeling better, though still weak-kneed. The fever comes back in spates, and when it hits my body is so busy fighting the rest of me just wants to curl up and stare blankly at a glowing screen playing Looney Tunes. The kids have no problem with this, really.

I seem to have missed some Internet kerfluffle. Over at Richelle Mead’s weblog, she makes a very valid observation–the Web can bring together communities, but it also turns them into high school all over again. She’s right as far as that goes, but it’s long been an observation of mine that most people never outgrow who they were in high school. It also seemed to me that the more “popular” someone was in high school, the less chance they have of being really effective in the real world, because they’re expecting that high-school popularity to carry them.

Now, I advance this as a general rule, not as an inescapable fact. The corollary to it is the people who weren’t “successful” in high school tend to mature better and have a better time of it in the Real World. Geeks and nerds do better, whether because they’re used to buckling down and getting through it or because they don’t expect something like “popularity” to carry them. Or for some other reason entirely.

That, however, wasn’t the kerfluffle. Robin Hobb posted a rant–very funny and lighthearted in some places–against writers blogging on her website.

I disagree.

Blogging is valuable. It teaches you how to speak to an audience–if you don’t have good content reasonably well-assembled, your visitors will trickle away. It also (hopefully) teaches you clarity and boundaries–you have limited space in a blog entry, and you need to use that space well. And boundaries, well, everyone has to learn them on the Web. You can’t spread your personal life around on the Net, and getting burned once when you let something loose in a blog hopefully teaches a LOT of writers to be careful about what they say in public.

Hobb’s problem with blogging seems to be with its addictive nature, and with that addiction taking time away from writing. But come on–if someone is going to use a crutch not to write, it’s going to happen whether it’s blogging, surfing Lolcats, looking through the Victoria’s Secret catalog, alphabetizing one’s bookshelf, going out for coffee, writing in one’s diary, playing with Legos–you get the idea. It is not the form procrastination takes one must be on guard against as a writer. It is the procrastination itself. Getting upset at one form just lets another slip in to take its place.

Blogging is, like most things, okay in moderation. Some people go overboard with it, some people go overboard with anything. Writers procrastinate because writing is hard, and the discipline of writing is hard too, easy to slip away from. That’s why it’s called discipline, because you have to stick to making enough time during the day to write. Blogging is neither better nor worse than other siren-songs keeping one away from the job.

That being said, dear Reader, it’s time for me to get some coffee and settle down with revisions. A galley arrived today too, for me to paw through.

Work, work, work. And here I am blogging. *grin* See you ’round, chickadees.

Today begins the first step of the Great Experiment. Namely, we’ve switched from cow’s milk over to soymilk. We’re going to try that out for a while, then start trying out meat substitutes. I doubt we’ll go completely vegan–for one thing, I will not give up heavy cream in my morning espresso, I’ve given up every other vice but my daily coffee stays–but cutting waaay back on meat and dairy is pretty much going to happen. What little meat and dairy we eat, especially eggs, are going to be free-range and as cruelty-free as I can find. I just can’t stand what the meat industry does to animals.

Now I know humans have been eating meat for a long time, but not until modern times have we been slaughtering them in such a cruel fashion in the name of efficiency and profit. And with all the meat substitutes and the availability of other protein sources available to me even just in the supermarket, I can’t see feeding my kids factory-slaughtered meat full of hatred, anger, and fear–as well as full of E.coli from the fact that the FDA has been gutted by Republicans subservient to meat-industry lobbyists.

But don’t get me started. The point is, we’re cutting back. The biggest thing is convincing the kids it’s a good idea. Fortunately we have a couple of vegan friends, H & D, who the Princess worships. Presenting the change as, “We’re going to start drinking soymilk–JUST LIKE H & D!” made it an Exciting New Thing.

Hee. Motherhood means Being Sneaky.

Snagged from the Smart Bitches: Things I Will Do If I Am Ever The Vampire. Not quite as hilarious as the villains list, but still pretty funny. (Also, the font is kind of small–I took Sarah’s advice and put it in a textfile for ease of reading.)

Also lately, I’ve been reading about the JT Leroy literary scandal. I know it happened a while ago, but it’s interesting to look at the timelines–especially in light of the recent flap over the false memoir Love and Consequences. The Leroy scandal is oddly train-wreck fascinating, if only because of the sheer amount of effort expended by the hoaxer(s) and the folderol spouted about “identity”.

S/he believed that I had an agenda and was lacking in “purity of intent.” I asked JT to meet with me in person, to show me a Social Security card or a passport. “Why?” s/he asked. “This is your issue. I don’t have any burning desire to be proven to be real.” (from the Beachy article.)

Hmm. Why would a writer not have a burning desire to be proven to be “real”? Especially a writer claiming to be a former teen hustler? You’d think a former teen hustler and prostitute would want to prove to the world that s/he’s “real”.

For more on the old scandal, here’s the wiki.

Writers do use fiction to tell the truth. But there is a compact of truth between writers and readers. When you pick up a memoir, you are expecting a certain brand of truth, just like when you pick up a litfic novel or a fantasy novel. The rules are slightly different for each genre–that’s what makes genre genre. Part of it is that art obeys rules in order to be comprehensible communication. And a cardinal rule is you can’t lie to your readers.

You can’t claim something is a memoir if it’s fiction. You can’t punk out and betray the ending of a novel. You can’t take someone else’s work and claim it as your own. These are all forms of the same lie, and that lie is a violation of the compact between writer and reader–and even between artist and Muse. One only shoots oneself in the foot with that, Chatterton notwithstanding.

Eh, enough Deep Thinking for the day. I’m off to finish some revisions.

Just out of curiousity…What do you think, dear Reader, about an author’s truth?

Good morning all. The good news is the flu didn’t strike hard. The bad news is, I need lots of sleep and fluids or it WILL, and I have to take it easy and not push myself or it WILL, and the being-tired and just kind of sick instead of really sick is weird.

More good news–we get the new washing machine today. Since the old one went belly-up I have realized just how much laundry I do on a daily basis. It’s a wonder the machine didn’t poop out long before now.

*time passes*

Ah, they just called. Running ahead of schedule. They’ll be here in the next hour.

SCORE.

Sometimes things just go well. Laundry is the bane of my existence, yes, but having to do it at a laundromat or by hand would just make it more so. Finest day of my life was getting my own washer and dryer.

So. Today will be full of using the brand-new washing machine (always assuming things go well) and revisions, not to mention feeding the kids (though they have been feeling kind of poorly and not like eating) and suchlike things. Once the big revisions for RA are off the docket, I can go back to what I really want to do–creating new stories.

And it’s sunny today. So far the day’s been full of win.

And he had big hands.

This last weekend was…interesting. On Saturday I worked, and the Selkie came in even though she was too sick to be there, paper-white and coughing. I finally chased her out. The Kiwi showed up and came on-shift, and I took the Teen to get his ear pierced–the Big Thing about him turning 18.

Got home and found out that the washing machine is, in fact, dead. The main bearing is shot. The good news is we can get a new one delivered on Tuesday, and on sale too. Still, it’s an expense we could hardly bear. The only reason why we reshuffled everything to do so is because the laundromat is, in fact, more expensive. And, as the Muffin put it, “I am not going to insist you go to the laundromat, dear. I value my nuts.”

Heh.

Which just makes this funnier. I know I’ve linked it before, but Candy reminded me of it last week and I’ve been thinking of it ever since.

Ah now. Wasn’t that nice? Laughter is the best cure for everything. I’ve had a low-grade fever and approaching-and-receding intimations of flu all weekend, which hasn’t been fun. But enough sleep and treating myself nicely seems to have kicked the flu’s ass, for once.

In other news, I’m going to be back and forth-ing between Redemption Alley revisions and reading Cassie Edwards’s Savage Wrongs for the Smart Bitchery. I figure it’s the least I owe them. But it’s going to be rough going. Already on the first page we have a hero named Echohawk (which my eyes persistently misread as “Ecohawk” and I have visions of Greenpeace mantitty) and a prized rust-colored horse called Blaze, which I keep confusing with teen-girl-horse-novel.

Pity me, dear Reader. I’m not sure the laughter won’t bust me in half.

Speaking of huge laughter, I about died when I saw this over at SB:

God. I suspected that was what men do in the shower. To have proof just makes it funnier.

I also went and saw Jumper this weekend. I wanted a totally disposable movie, and I got one. It’s sad, because the book is in my top 10 YA novels of all time, with Cynthia Voight’s Homecoming and Sarah Dessen’s Dreamland. I hope Gould got paid a lot for that option, man. Even Samuel L. Jackson and Diane Lane couldn’t save that movie, though Jackson was menacingly great as usual. Poor Hayden Christensen. Star Wars just buggered him up royal, didn’t it. On the other hand, Jamie Bell as “Griffin” was AWESOME, and I wished the movie had been about him.

One of the things I liked about David in Jumper (the book) was that he was a problem-solver. He planned. It was a far cry from a lot of other YA novels, where the hero/ine seems incapable of even ordering a latte. Kids are smart, and kids in bad situations will try to get control any way they can. I’ve met a lot of kids who are hyper-planners, and Davy fit right into that mold. I also appreciated the fact that Davy didn’t get everything he wanted. The movie just excised everything I loved about the book and left a lot of special effects and trash. Don’t get me wrong, the special effects were nicely done. But it was a disposable movie, where the book was so much more.

I wanted to go see 10,000 B.C., because half-naked cavemen are always good when one is feeling down. (I saw 300 for the same reason.) But you could not pay me enough to go see that movie on opening weekend, no sir. I’ll wait until the guys get that it’s not a “date movie” before I go. Yes, I know it’s going to be total trash. I’m kind of in a mood for total trash right now, since my reading has veered into dry history (no, not Savage Wrongs, dammit. I’m reading that for review purposes only.)

Anyway, it’s shaping up to be a busy week. I can’t wait for the new washing machine to get here. Laundry’s piling up.

Over and out…