Caesar admires the Nervii, even though he’s got to fight them for Rome. One gets the idea they were at least a worthy adversary. And here’s an elegant little sentence.
Intra eas silvas hostes in occulto sese continuebat… -The Gallic War, Loeb Classical, p112.
“Within these woods,” Edwards translates, “the enemy kept themselves in hiding.” Silvas for wood, of course, related to sylvan; and in occulto–something hidden. It pleases me, while reading aloud, to make the connections, tracing a word through centuries into my own mother tongue.
I’m not a Bloody Mary person. I think vodka belongs either straight or in cranberry juice, with a slight but significant exception for fresh orange juice. But–useless to deny it–there is a certain charm to getting all your brunch veggies in this form…
Well, I’m awake. The house is quiet, especially since Odd Trundles, worn out after all his napping yesterday and a night spent snoring, is on his Fancy-Dancy Office Bed. Miss B, twitchy since I didn’t take her out yesterday, is busy supervising both his schnorgling snores and my listening to affirmations. This supervision mostly takes the form of nosing him and begging me for pets.
I’m back at work, thank the gods. Not fully recovered, I suspect, but the itch under my skin has mounted to such a pitch that scratching it outweighs the need to rest. It’s time for me to shift most of my engines to Khir’s Honor, which is….a complex book. It’s hit 60K and is just getting started. Apparently the next thing the Muse wants is doorstop epic fantasy. Conspiracies! Poisoning! An unsteady empire transitioning from expansion to maintenance, but under external threat! ROMANCE!
This is going to be fun.
The other thing on my list is revising Jozzie & Sugar Belle. This will probably be a weekend project, since I’ll need a block of dedicated time to get back into the lighthearted swing of that story. Plus, there are details I want to layer in, like Jozzie’s jockstrap (look, when your nuts get excised, you might feel a little self-conscious and want to pad things out a bit) and Sugar Belle’s wardrobe, which frankly is a character all its own. I guess when you’re a stripper/tattoo artist/witch, you have no fucks to give about sartorial conventions. I might be wanting to channel a little of that myself, lately.
I never thought I’d attempt epic fantasy, despite Steelflower. Apparently the Muse thinks now is a good time to attempt it. Last time she got an idea into her pretty head was Afterwar, and that book terrified me in terms of complexity and subject matter. She keeps pushing and prodding, forcing me to stretch. Let’s see if you can do this, she purrs, and I sigh.
Like a shark–the only way to breathe is to keep swimming. It’s actually comforting. The idea that the gods can’t take me until I finish my TBR and all the books I want to write is no doubt erroneous, but it helps me get through the day and move forward. Work and books as a bulwark against eternity. There are worse ways to cope.
I am pondering–only pondering, mind you–starting to give writing and editing advice over on Haggard Feathers. (That’s where you can get on my editing/cover copy/ebook formatting waitlist, too.) Running two blogs at once seems a thankless task, but maybe consolidating and putting all my writing advice in one place (that isn’t Quill & Crow) might be a good idea.
In any case, it’s time to get to it for the day. Miss B requires a ramble today, I think, which means I have wordcount to get in before I’m free to stick my feet in shoes and grab her leash. It’s sunny, which means there will be a million people out, probably with their own dogs offleash, but maybe it won’t be so bad.
I took double the time I thought I needed off after finishing a zero, but I’m still stretched-thin and cranky. It always takes longer than I plan for, even if I plan for a ridiculous number of days. I should just give up planning and wallow.
Yeah, I can hear you laughing. It’s not gonna happen. Contact with the enemy throws all plans out the window but planning is indispensable, and all that. Maybe I’ll just revise the Nutless Kangaroo Shifter Story. It’s only 25k, and it’s fun. That might help ease me over the hill.
Otherwise, it’s all opera (yesterday I livetweeted the Met’s 2009 Lucia di Lammermoor, just for fun) and knocking off a bit of reading. I finished Leckie’s Strong Men Armed and have moved on to another Bolaño. The former is not perfect, I’ll admit–the casual racism is very much a product of its time–and Leckie struggles against the dehumanization of the “enemy” as much as anyone who had slogged through brutal combat can. It’s just what it says on the tin–the story told pretty much from the viewpoint of the Marines on the ground, of whom Leckie was one.
The Bolaño is…well, it’s pure Bolaño. Udo the narrator is a selfish piece of shit1, and Bolaño would have done better from a technical standpoint to do the book in the same close first person without trying for the epistolary feel of a diary. I keep thinking every time I read him that I’ll finish scratching that frustrating itch and be done with it, but like Jandek, sometimes I get in a mood and it’s the only thing that will do. Fortunately I have the rest of the TBR to get through when this is finished.
It would be nice if the dogs would stop trying to den in my TBR. In their defense, it’s in my office, where we all spend the majority of our days. And whenever they start, they get a reaction from me, which is probably the point of half their attempts. (Or more.)
I had a list of Serious Subjects for the post today, but any attempt to organize them makes me stare into the distance in self-defense. The part of recovery where you feel better but still have to be careful so you don’t tear something fragile and injure yourself even worse quite frankly sucks.
So it’s tea, some revisions, reading, and playing with tetchy bored canines today. The Princess has something pastry-based she wants to experiment with on her day off, and the oven is already going.
I finished the zero of Atlanta Bound, Season 4 of Roadtrip Z. Since Season 3 is finishing (and is up for preorder, my how time flies), I’m busy with all things Ginny & Lee. Subscribers get the original, zero-draft, raw chapters, then an ebook of the first draft (likewise raw, but less raw) when the season ends, and the finished, edited, and prettified ebook before it goes on sale, so they get to see how the book changes during the process as well as two free ebooks.
Halfway through pushing to get the last chapter written, the Princess texted–some jerk had stolen her bike seat while she was at work. I ended up taking the one off my own bicycle to replace it, since her bike won’t fit in the car. It was infuriating–bike seats? What the fuck? Who does that? I hope whoever took it gets a suitable karmic vengeance delivered in an extremely timely fashion.
Anyway, a case of bookus interruptus, but once I got that emergency handled and sorted, I came back and found out the scene wasn’t going to end the way I thought anyway. So it was probably a blessing I got called away. It was definitely a blessing that I used the trip away to stop and pick up some milk and a bottle of wine. Not for consuming at the same time, of course.
Taking that first sip of cabernet after finishing a zero draft was immensely satisfying.
I took Sunday off, but only from work since Sunday is Chore Day. Housecleaning, more housecleaning, and as a bonus not only washing Odd Trundles, but giving Miss B one of her infrequent baths. She doesn’t need them often, because an Aussie’s coat is one of the wonders of the world–stuff just dries up and flakes off, and too much bathing can strip it of natural oils and cause problems–but she did need one, and suffered it only through her vast love for her hoomins.
She also tried to escape multiple times. Love only stretches so far.
Anyway, once she was scrubbed, rinsed, and dried as far as towels could make her, she got treats but spent the rest of the day mournfully reproaching me with big doggy sighs, stares, and not-so-subtle angling for more treats. Odd, since he gets a bath pretty much weekly, forgot about the occurrence almost as soon as he got the ritual treats afterward. But B? No, she was in a mood for the rest of the day, and is still a little miffed.
The idea behind taking a day off was to slow down the decompression sickness that shows up every time I finished a zero draft. I tend to work on multiple projects until one heats up and races for the finish, and bending all my resources towards that finish line means after I cross, the momentum is still there. I have to wait for the flywheel to wind down a bit before I can harness it to the other projects again. Bleed off the pressure, so to speak.
So I finished up yesterday by watching Met opera stagings. I have one of Netrebko singing Lucia di Lammermoor I want to watch, and maybe I’ll do that today. Recovery always takes longer than I think it will, even when I give myself a day completely “off.” (Which means only about 200 words in a single project, really.)
If there’s a single most frustrating thing about writing, it’s needing recovery. I want to work. I need to work. Scheduling in recovery time and sticking with it so I don’t work until collapse irritates me almost past bearing. Which surprises exactly no-one, I’m sure. But it’s necessary, dammit, and faster in the long run.
At least there will be some time for Latin today. The urge to read aloud, going back and forth with the translation on the opposite page, is almost like the fidgets that drive me out the door to run.
Sometimes, you come around a corner while out with your best friend, and you happen upon a basket of…well, of dicks. There’s no other way to put it, really–a basket of phalli just puts too nice a gloss on it.
And sometimes, you dig for your phone and mutter, “I have got to save this for posterity,” and your best friend responds, “Good God, why?” and you both double up with laughter.
Because really, if you can’t hurt yourself laughing over a basket of dicks with your best friend, well, what is life good for?
Edwards translates it as “Fierce was the engagement fought there.” Acriter, which is of course has descended to acrimony from its root which means “pungent,” but in adverb form is “fiercely, strongly.” Then the one-two-three punch of in eo loco2 and the hinge of the sentence, pugnatum, from whence we get pugnacious. To sum it all up, the lovely est, bringing a consonant and the Latin habit of making you wait for the very last breath of the sentence for emphasis.
Part of the joy is the translation, too, keeping some of the rhythm but sadly losing that punch at the end. Fierce was the battle fought there is how I’d have done it, but I think Edwards chose “engagement” because this is just one small part of the ongoing battle at Bibrax, which Caesar has been telling as a whole. I can’t argue with the translation, but I did stop and think “battle would be more poetic, wouldn’t it?”
Well, I’m awake. The house is quiet, especially since Odd Trundles, worn out after all his napping yesterday and a night spent snoring, is on his Fancy-Dancy Office Bed. Miss B, twitchy since I didn’t take her out yesterday, is busy supervising both his schnorgling snores and my listening to affirmations. This supervision mostly takes the form of nosing him and begging me for pets.
I took double the time I thought I needed off after finishing a zero, but I’m still stretched-thin and cranky. It always takes longer than I plan for, even if I plan for a ridiculous number of days. I should just give up planning and wallow.
It was a mildly eventful weekend.