Barnstorming on an Invisible Segway

1. What is an interesting object you have out on display in your house somewhere? Why is it interesting, and where did it come from?

On the mantelpiece in the library, we have: three star-shaped crystal candleholders that were in my grandparents' house from before I was born and that only came here when Grandpa died and Grandma moved up here; a vase ladysea made for us; a three-vase dealie that looks like a Miyazaki thinger (purchased at the Eagan Art Fair); a blown-glass ship in a blown-glass bottle, imported from Hungary; a rosmaled box made by my grandmother who died before I was born; and a chunk of salt (I forget what kind of salt) that lights up interestingly, purchased by markgritter's father.

We are full of cool stuff. I promise.

2. Why is five the canonical number for LJ? Five questions, five things make a post, five times such-and-such a character did X.

I don't know about the other ones. But five things make a post was my friend wilfulcait's originally. This is why all my "five things make a post" post are tagged "missing rise," because I do miss Rise every time I do a post like that. We lost her far too young (breast cancer that metastasized), and I am still wistful about the absence of this true and good friend whose face I never saw in person.

Sorry, bet you didn't see that one coming.

3. What is the most recent bit of art you've traveled somewhere (a museum, a theater, a freeway overpass) to see? What is the most recent bit of art you've stumbled upon accidentally? Which approach do you generally prefer?

Well, markgritter and I went to the surrealists exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery more recently than to the Inuit Prints exhibit at the Museum of Anthropology. I always think I like surrealists better than I do because I like Rene Magritte enough for all the rest of them. People: painting an eyeball on things does not make them surreal. It makes them eyebally. We are all done with the eyeballs now. You can do something else. (Hint: not the old-fashioned diving suit.)

As for the stumbling, I don't know--do people's homes count? Or foodstuffs? Usually foodstuffs are sought out, but knowing that they're art in advance is not always possible...anyway, I enjoy the things I look for but also things unsought. I wouldn't want to pick just one.

4. Do you any particularly cute/funny/dramatic Ista stories?

Oh yes. Ista is me in a dogsuit. She is frequently quite opinionated, and this translates well into monkey tales. Just today I have generated an interpretive dance of what Ista is like when she doesn't want me to disturb her by printing out my book.

(I do more interpretive dances than people expect, I think.)

And I'm going to steal one you asked me, because it was interesting: 5. What part of your life would be hardest to explain to your 20-year-old self? your 10-year-old self?

I think my 10-year-old self would be more surprised at the inability to do all things simultaneously backwards in high heels, so "here is why you are not a physicist" would take more doing. "Why there is essentially no math in your life at the moment" would take a lot of doing. My 20-year-old self had actually overcorrected in a number of ways there, so it would be very nearly the opposite explanation from the one my 10-year-old self would need. Which somehow seems to imply that my 33-year-old self has found a lovely balance. I chuckle quietly at the thought.

1. I have seen the Table of Contents announced, so I feel comfortable that I'm not stepping on anything if I say that my good short story news squeaking at the very end of last year was selling "Tusk and Skin" to Ekaterina Sedia for her Bewere the Night anthology. The spelling on that is correct: it's a shapeshifter-themed anthology. Very very pleased.

2. Many of you have probably seen this from other friends of elisem, but just in case: signs of a stroke. Learn them, know them, cherish them in your heart. If tnh hadn't known them and acted quickly, we don't like to think what. Instead we get our elisem some more. So: make sure you know how this stuff goes, just in case.

3. I have been in tidying mode around the kitchen. This does not mean putting things away in the cupboard or Narnia or the recycling bin as one might expect. It means that when in doubt as to what to eat--and I am often in doubt as to what to eat these days--I am Using Things Up. I am a holy terror at Using Things Up, which is good, because the tea/tisane section of Narnia is rather overflowing after Christmas. So I got major points yesterday for using up an entire kind of tisane, even though it's a good kind and I should probably get more next time I go to Tea Source. But! The Tea Source run is not imminent, and in the meantime I have so-virtuously cleared out space.

Why, this makes me want to have a cup of tisane right now. Just to continue with the virtue of tidiness.

(Yes, my shorthand for our pantry is Narnia. If you'd seen how it opens up in layers, you might well believe there was a magical land behind the cereal also.)

4. timprov was not up for an hour and a half of subtitled French, so we didn't watch the movie we've got on our pile for "family movie night" next time (Micmacs, for the curious, but I can't tell you anything about it). Instead markgritter and I watched the beginning of the butchery they made of The Dark Is Rising to see if it was as bad as we feared. Friends, it was worse. They were clearly trying to make it more "action-y" and "relatable," but half the changes were counterproductive for the other half's goals, and it just ended up a wandery mess with no bearing on the original. It was the sort of thing that made me wonder why they even bothered using the name and paying Susan Cooper, because there was that little relationship between the book and the movie--they could have just made an action fantasy about an American (!!??!!) boy in England and not tried to pretend it was The Dark Is Rising.

There was an ad for the movie of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader before it. "If you like butchering children's fantasy classics, you might try...."

5. Relevant to #1: I am terrible at writing author bios. Terrible, terrible, terrible. I have my standard one, but I get tired of it, and then the process invokes my inner sullen teenager: "I dunno. Nothin'." Which is ungracious and unpleasant. I also tend to roll my eyes at the people who give into their impulses and have bios like, "Ever since she was horribly scarred, Marissa Lingen has been living under the Paris Opera House and coaching promising young singers in secret, hoping that one of them might love her." Nor, in fact, was I born in the wagon of a travelin' show. And, "Marissa Lingen wishes she was writing any other novel than the one she's writing," probably won't be true by the time the book comes out. It is a conundrum.

1. The lj community at 4th_st_fantasy reminds me that the membership rate goes up for 4th St. as of June 1. Which is not that far away now. It will be lovely, and I'm looking forward to it greatly, and some of you should definitely come.

2. My mother and I wrestled cadithial's mega-ultra-super-ladder into place in our stairwell yesterday. Laurel and Hardy, people. Laurel and Hardy. They did not plan those things to be maneuvered by two women of 5'6", one of them with vertigo, but we are mighty and fierce, and also able to hold up long ladders while maneuvering so that one of us always had a steady point to hang onto and laughing hysterically at ourselves. And now the stairwell is painted and timprov's Hidden Falls picture is hung in it, and I am pleased.

3. Next time there is a charity auction, do you think "the Carter Hall story of your title or mythological-figure choice, or choose from some ideas I haven't written yet if you don't have a particular idea" would be a thing? Or not so much a thing?

4. It is not the best thing in the world to be eager to see one's neurologist, but on the other hand it is not the worst either. Better, I feel, than being required to do so and yet dreading it personally because the neurologist in question is such a dolt. This is the Very Best Neurologist, Adult Practice Category. (I only know the VBN, Pediatric Category socially, not professionally, and I have hopes of it staying that way.)

5. Why is it that the buttons come off things more when I am trying to finish a book, supervise house projects, do what I can to keep markgritter's plants alive while he is gone, get ready for multiple birthdays and company, and generally mop the moose and feed the bear? Buttons! Silly buttons! Stay put, buttons!

1. I don't have my singing voice back, but I have most of my speaking voice mostly back. So that's a good thing. I have this stupid cold on the run enough that I can, y'know, do stuff. I like stuff and the doing of it. I'm crazy that way.

2. In other news, the electricity is back to all parts of the house, and the mistakes of the last electrician have apparently been rectified, hurrah. This basement-finishing job: it looks to me as though the bits we will see take far less time than the bits we won't see. I hope I'm not wrong on that, or we will be another twelve million years in getting the drywall up.

3. It's been snowing here since before I woke up. A few hours ago, the plow and the mail delivery came through at the same time, attempting to pass each other multiple times within our small cul-de-sac. They looked like a mechanized Three Stooges routine. I do not mean this as a compliment. Our driveway guy has not been here yet. That is such a hopeful "yet," sitting right there. I don't really know how to articulate how I want him to do his job differently. Perhaps he'll come along and clear just around the time the snow is stopping, and I won't want him to do his job differently at all this time. One can hope.

4. When I went to let the dog out, she looked out in the snow, and then she looked up at me like, "Okay, monkey, there's a difference between funny once and funny all the time."

5. We are now owners of a startling share of the world's supply of chocolate, hot (or, more to the point, potentially hot) and otherwise. Eeeeexcellent. Now with only four hundred and six more steps, my plan for word domination will be complete.

Oh, there's supposed to be an l in that? Hmm. This may require substantial alterations to the said plans.

1. I can't figure out whether I was supposed to clip this comic for Mom or whether Mom was supposed to clip it for Grandma.

2. We have a bathroom in the basement! There's one tiny fixture thing to be handled so it's just the way we want it--and, of course, cabinet drawers lined and pictures hung and all that--but hurrah for the new bathroom! We're talking to the same contractor about the rest of the basement work; we'll see whether that's the way we go with it. But it's really satisfying to have a pretty blue bathroom down there. I may be making people troop down to see it when they're at my house for quite some time now.

3. It is also really satisfying to be able to go about my morning routine with less expectation of a parade of contractors through my house. They are very good contractors, very considerate and polite and competent and punctual and all the things one would want of contractors. But they are still Not My People and they have been in My House, and it's nice to have a break from that.

4. The oaks in the backyard seem to have heard that we're nearing the end of our yard waste collection service for the year: the leaves are all falling today. Just boom, we're done hanging onto the tree now, buhbye. markgritter will have such a lovely surprise waiting for him when he gets home. If yard work can ever by its existence be truly surprising. But I honestly thought it was raining, and no, it was just the large number of leaves and twigs falling that made that noise.

5. I am filled with extremely good, general, unsolicited advice that nobody particularly wants to hear, and that people will misread as directed at them, unless it is directed at them, in which case they will misread it as directed at other people. It is not just one piece of good advice. I've got lots of 'em. So if you're feeling in need of advice, I guess today's the day to ask it of me. Otherwise I am mindfully practicing butting out. Mindful out-butting is a neglected spiritual practice these days, I feel. (Note: this should not be construed as advice that you should or should not butt out. Some of you can quite usefully butt in from time to time, and more power to your butting.)

1. Before I wandered off to the con, I read a link from somebody else's journal to this Powell's blog entry called "No One In Romance Novels Is Ever Fat." It reminded me of something that worries me when I run into it: every once in awhile I hear writer friends who are more visual than I am talking about casting their current story or book projects with Hollywood actors.

And I think, don't we hand over enough of our visual imagination to Hollywood already, without handing them a piece of control over what is not a visual medium, or at least not in the same way? Of course one obvious (or at least obvious in my social circles) concern is a dearth of actors from ethnic minorities. It's bad enough that there aren't more Asian characters on Eureka. But prose writers can't let that lack keep going into their stories, where you can't have more than a token Asian character because you can only name two Asian actors who could play them. It's not just obvious ethnic minorities, either. I was pleased by Season 2 of The Wire but also completely knocked over, because they got so many of the different visual types of Polish-American you run into if you live in a heavily Polish-American area. Not just the Sobotka family members (all of them, oh perfect casting), but also Horseface and Maui and random guys in the background on the docks and at the bars: none of them looked alike. They all looked right. And Horse, in particular, is a guy I saw four or five of just at my mom's cousin's family events when I was a kid (the said cousin married a Polish-American fella)--none of the faces exactly alike, all interesting--and never, ever see on TV or in movies.

And no, you don't want every character to look like Horseface Pakusa from The Wire. Obviously. But there is a certain sameness, a certain smoothing out of variation, among Hollywood actors, and I don't see why we should settle for that in our inspiration to prose. If you're one of those writers who wants visual cues for character description, please please consider looking at photo websites like The Big Picture, where even their recent dance entry has professionals and non-professionals in a dozen styles of dance from all over the world. The focus of these photos is to be interesting rather than to conform to a particular look of person. In other entries are people dealing with war, natural disaster, and political strife--interesting faces in interesting times. Which is what we want in fiction, isn't it?

2. I had a really good weekend at Fourth Street. I have notes in my journal and notes on PostIts and other stuff just floating around my head, and my library list and my Amazon list each grew by several items. I have come to consider, as a philosophical position, that it's a good thing about a con when I don't get to talk to everybody I want to talk to, or when I don't get to talk as much to everybody I do talk to as I'd liked; but in practical usage this does not actually translate to, "Oh, I'm so glad I didn't get more time talking to that particular friend or cordial acquaintance or new person." Funny thing, that. There'll be a few more opportunities this week, but still.

3. You know what I want to talk about on panels next year? Lots of stuff, in fact, but particularly Work In Fantasy, books that handle work particularly well, not just, "look, our main character is a writer/artist/musician/vaguely creative type, again, and it does not appear to be any kind of work for them." And sort of conversely, I'd like to do a Fun Bits of Writing or a Writing as Play or Recovering the Fun Parts panel sometime. And also maybe Geezers In Fantasy, because old people who are actual characters rather than types are striking me as frustratingly rare. And stuff.

4. I think the weather is trying to convince sheyrena and papersky that they should be pleased to leave Minneapolis. Sigh. This is not June in the Twin Cities! June in the Twin Cities is nice, and by nice I do not mean 80 F by 9:00 a.m. and rising! This is more like August, and nobody wants extra August! (Note: if you want extra August, please apply in the comments section to take mine. Thank you.)

5. I am at that stage of having too much to do where I'm sort of flailing out randomly and doing things that need doing when I smack into them. This is not perhaps optimal, but it also might be inevitable to the level of tired my brain is and the length of my to-do list.

Grandpa has now been in the hospital for three weeks. He continues to improve, but: three weeks. With no certainty that he'll be out again this coming week. Without intruding too much on his privacy, this gives you a general idea of how much room for improvement there was at the worst point. (It has been really hard, frankly, to find the line between "indicating how serious this all has been" and "trumpeting personal details over the internet against the will of the person whose personal details they are." I don't think Grandpa has a carefully formulated policy on discussing his health on the internet, but I know he doesn't mind my friends knowing he's been in the hospital and is getting better again, albeit slowly, so that's where I draw the line, mostly.) I realized how inadequate some of this communication had been when I startled a close friend with the current assessment of Grandpa's health yesterday--it was a hopeful assessment, and it sounded good to me in context, but my friend didn't have the context and was really hoping for something more like "he is not turning cartwheels down the hall yet but we expect that by Tuesday" for all the improvement I've been saying (and meaning!) that Grandpa has had.

Springing ahead did me no good whatsoever this year. Usually it enables me to sleep into the joyful decadence that is the seven o'clock hour. This year, no: up at 6:30 just as if we hadn't turned the clocks back. Sigh. At least there was a pecan roll for breakfast to console me. And more to come: there's an entire pan of them from Wheatfield's, an entire pan of cinnamon rolls, and a vat of frosting for the cinnamon rolls. I saw this vat and thought perhaps Kathy and Bill and Mom had picked up soup for us for dinner from Wheatfield's, and I wondered what soup they had there that was good, since I never get the soup. But no: frosting. Uff da, the frosting.

This was merely one example from yesterday of How I Have Monkeys and Why It Is Sometimes Very Good To Have Monkeys.

I have the Solar Flare song in my head. The "hallo birds sky molesworth I am dying of radiation poisoning" song. Well, the molesworth is my paraphrase rather than the actual song. I don't want to disappoint anybody over molesworth space travel songs that don't exist.

1. Did someone else from Minnesota say that it's cold here tonight? Because it is. In case you didn't hear. Cold. Yah.

2. It's always more amusing than helpful when a nonfiction author, trying to be helpful, tells the reader that a word is pronounced like "____" or "_____," which are not, to my way of thinking, pronounced the same way. Latest example: "deuce" and "moose." That is not the same vowel. I know a lot of Americans would say "doose, moose, it's the same." The deuce it is. It's a subtle difference. This is not the same as no difference. Which is why people who try to "sound Canadian/Minnesotan/Northern" by saying "aboot, hahaha," are grating and wrong. There is another option than "bow" and "boo" for that noise, people.

3. Now I feel very sorry for Doc Tichy bellowing, "Marry merry Mary!" at someone in high school debate class and having her obediently repeat, "Mary Mary Mary," back at him for quite a stretch of time. (Note: "someone" was not, in this case, code for "me." I don't actually remember which of the possible suspects it was.)

4. Over lunch:
mrissa: "...so I told him that in his lj, because apparently this is what passes for a compliment in my mind."*
timprov: "There are some sentences only you have. No one else has that sentence."
mrissa: "It's a perfectly good sentence!"
timprov: "I'm not complaining."

5. Despite having a headache I can't quite shake for the second night in a row, I am having an awfully good time writing The True Tale of Carter Hall tonight. This makes me suspicious. Specifically I am suspicious whenever I think I have been funny, because there are few things more awful than having to slog through a passage the author clearly found hilarious when that author was wrong. I know for a fact that some people are not going to find this book funny, which doesn't bother me, because nothing is appealing to everybody. But if it's otherwise the right audience and I've missed on the funny, then we have a problem. On the other hand, if I definitely didn't think it was funny, that's not a very good sign for the reader thinking so, either.

Deadpan is not a full solution to this problem. Which you wouldn't know from the amount I use it. But that's not really a fully conscious choice so much as a genetic imperative. Maybe it's an environmental imperative. Either way, we know the result.

Does anybody else remember some of the Mary Poppins scenes--real Mary Poppins, not Disney--where they are waltzing with all the animals or the stars or whatever? Writing this chapter feels like that. Only without the bit where the children can wake up in their beds and have to figure out some kind of proof that it really did happen. And a lot more risk of death. And funnier. Um.

*Sorry, snurri. It really did sound more complimentary in my head.

1. If you are writing a web interface, do not specify a font color but not a background color or vice versa. This is what we know as sloppy and bad.

2. Clothes shopping online to replace things that have worn out. What did we say about pencil skirts for at least the last six seasons? Together now, in a weary drone: mrissa is not shaped like a pencil. Puff sleeves: do I look like Anne of Green Gables to you? (If yes, check again: red hair? No. Freckles? Only very pale pathetic ones. Best friend who would put a cake ad in my fiction? Not hardly. Earnest assumption of all humanity's goodness? Guess again, bucko.) It's a faux-denim faux-A-line skirt? Great! Then I'm faux buying it! And if you could pick out of all the possible women models in the world, and you couldn't make your shorts look any better than that, why are you selling them? Pick out the stitching, cut up the fabric for a quilt or a pillow or something and hide your shame. Some people would feel better that the shorts they tried on earlier in the season looked on them just about exactly as they did on the model. Me, I feel sorry for the model, because I took the things off and departed the scene as swiftly as the vertigo would allow, rather than standing around letting somebody get photographic evidence that I'd ever worn the wretched things. And the ones I tried on were brown; the model's are in periwinkle pinstripes! There are very few occasions that call for periwinkle pinstriped shorts, in my experience. Perhaps I'm missing out and you're all having parties for which they would be just the thing and not inviting me. Good. Carry on with not inviting me. Periwinkle pinstripes. It's self-mocking!

3. How being a little-known SF and fantasy short story writer is better than being a candidate for PotUSA/VPotUSA (selections from long, long list): the people you deal with like to teach you things, and some of them even like to learn. If someone tries to appoint you to a committee, you don't have to pretend to like it. You can do whatever you want with your hair and it does not affect the success of your career: shaved off? Longer than your butt? Dyed blue? Looped up in dozens of little loops with sparkly butterfly clips? Nobody. Cares. Also if a member of your family gets pregnant, the only people who have opinions on this event are people who have known her name for more than a week. Also if you try to get something stupid published, nobody cares as long as you don't succeed. And when there are good sushi restaurants in the cities where we have our conventions, we eat there.

4. Post-travel vertigo: the less said, the better. But oof.

5. I can tell I'm ready to start really serious writing on The True Tale of Carter Hall, because interesting tidbits about four other novels have popped into my head. I wrote them down and closed the files. Focus is our friend. Our elusive, popular friend who is never around when we want to catch up over a cup of coffee.

6. The vertigo is still making reading nonfiction less fun than it ought to be, but at the moment I feel compelled to be stubborn. We'll see how that goes.