Week of September 26 - October 2

Two rejections, no acceptances. You all know what I've been working on.

Had an afternoon and dinner with porphyrin, matastas, dlandon, and Mike and Roo, who exist despite not having ljs. Auntie Mrissa played the ABC song on the piano six times in a row. Then Twinkle Twinkle (which bears a stunning resemblance to said ABC song). Then the ABC song again three times. "Yay! [pause] P'ay ABC again now, p'eese." Then I got to switch recorders every three or four notes: "Now you p'ay dis flute! [pause] Now you p'ay dis flute, I p'ay dat flute! [pause] Now you p'ay...." We loves us some Roo.

After we bore witness to dlandon's misery (wish I'd served the apple crisp after the guys looked at her computer, so we could at least have offered some cinnamonny, nutmeggy consolation!), everyone headed out their various ways, and it occurred to us that it was only 6:30 and we could still make it to careswen and mmerriam's game night. Which we did, and there was much rejoicing and much killing of Dr. Lucky (or at least many attempts), and we met pezwitch and...umm...shoot, I know their real names, and they have livejournals. Ah well. Dr. Lucky successfully killed, we retreated from the beautiful, beautiful kitty, who was making my eyes itch.

My hands don't ache quite so much after not working on the book Friday or yesterday. Obviously the most sensible thing to do here is to immediately start working on the book again. Well, seriously, I think it is, because the darn thing is interfering with my sleep. A small glass of Riesling took care of that for last night (I'm a cheap date), but I don't care for that as a long- or even medium-term solution, so the answer is to finish the book. Right? Of course right. And I have plans for what I get to do when I finish this book. I've always had plans for that, actually, but they mostly involved what short stories I would get to write and what book I would get to write next, and now I have some Mrissa-maintenance things in mind that have nothing directly to do with what I'm writing next. Which seems like a positive thing. Tired. Pressing onward.

Open Letter, Number Thirty Million Or So

Dear Hosiery Company:

Please examine your sizing chart. You will notice that "small" goes up to 5'5". This is well and good: women shorter than I am should be able to buy tights. You will also notice that "medium" goes down to 135#. This is also well and good: women heavier than I am should also be able to buy tights. Here's my theory, though: I should be able to buy tights.

Could you not manufacture tights in additional combinations of height and weight? Or could you not build that much more stretch into your smalls so that they will go up not-proportionally-that-long 5'6" woman legs, rather than being the ever-popular low-rise tights and causing me to worry that they will slip over the widest part of my hips and make a break for it at any moment? One's tights ought never to make a break for it. This is a rule of life. Nor ought they to be baggy upon their removal from the package. The ever popular wrinkled-elephant ankle is not "in" for this season.

I just thought you should know. I don't really expect that you'll do anything about it.

Yours Wearing SmartWool Socks,
M'ris

How original

The book I just finished reading for contract work contained a hero who:
--discovered, to his howling chagrin, that the medium-level bad guy was his father
--abandoned the training/quest he was supposed to be on in order to try to save someone he cared about, and only partly succeeded, but -- lo and behold oh my oh my -- did not manage to wreck his quest completely as everybody wise said he would
--discovered that the parentless female of about his own age, who had been wandering around with him acting a bit like a love interest but not in a nakedy way, was his sister.

You just can't do that any more. You just can't. You should never give the reader the opportunity to mutter, "Luuuuuke...I am your father..." or "There is...another...Sky...walker...." Ever ever ever.

I have often given the "you must educate yourself in your genre" speech, and I still think it's true. But this is worse than that. When this author was ripping off Prydain, he could at least hope that his young readers had not yet gotten to Lloyd Alexander. Nobody in our culture has not yet gotten to Star Wars. Even my godfather Joe, who has never seen a Star Wars movie, knows the references to Star Wars. It's just lame. Lame, lame, lame.

I'm going to retreat into my own book now, where everybody's parentage is known and nobody is assigned quests externally. And then I'm going to have Leftover Fest '04 with dd_b and lydy (yes, sdn, this does constitute rubbing it in -- sorry). And then I don't know what. But it will not involve me muttering, "You have hibernation sickness. Your eyesight will return in time." And that is final. (This character did not have hibernation sickness, but he did have to recover sight from blindness. SIGH.)