if you want to write...

Camera guy at Vistek. See entry below.


Mary Ellen Wessels has a riproaring discussion about introversion/extroversion in one of her Livejournal entries, for anyone interested. One of the common to threads that I'm involved in is focusing on the topic of "smalltalk".

I have mentioned several times that I despise smalltalk, but I'm realizing that I should clarify what I mean I use the term. I'm referring to the type of conversation you have at weddings when you've been seated beside someone you don't know, will never see again, and with whom you have very little in common.

The last bit is important. I CAN enjoy conversations with complete strangers I will likely never see again if there is some connection, even if it's a wonky sense of humour. The photo at the top of the page, for example, is of the guy who sold me my camera at Vistek. Parki and Jeff were with me. Very funny in a quirky dry sort of way; the three of us were almost disappointed when the brief exchange was over and we left the store. :-)

I used to be much better with the "making vapid conversation with a stranger at a wedding" sort of thing, and would put more effort into finding SOMETHING interesting we could talk about. But I've grown much less patient over the years with empty and passionless activity. Another reason I hate smalltalk is that it inevitably leads to the "what do you do for a living" question, and that often leads to a shallow discussion about a topic about which I care very much about.

I'm also getting somewhat tired of the "I want to be a writer, too!" conversation. Don't get me wrong: if the person truly WANTS to be a writer, passionately, wholeheartedly, then I'm more than happy to talk, especially with young people. But I've run into far too many hopeful writers who get much more enjoyment from talking about writing than who are actually writing.

My advice to those who want to write:

1. READ. Read as much as you can, the good and the bad. If it's bad, figure out why it's bad. Ditto for the good stuff. Read a wide range of material, not just your genre of interest.

2. WRITE. Keep a writing journal, write about everything. Keep it private to avoid the pressure of knowing that other people are reading it. Or be stupid like me and make it public: my Blatherings page is my "get the creative juices flowing" writing journal, my equivalent of some people's morning cup of coffee. Write every day, even just a little bit. Even if it's crap. Work on improving your writing. If you keep at it in a regular fashion, it WILL improve.

3. FINISH WHAT YOU WRITE. I know far more writers who are forever working on a book or article or story than who have actually finished one. It's far more fun to talk about your current writing project than to actually -finish- the thing, after all. Because once it's finished, you have to...

4. SEND IT OUT. This is the big test, as far as I'm concerned, the major psychological hurdle that many hopeful writers can't get over. Understandable, really. It's sort of like sending out your child into the big world by herself for the first time. You're afraid of her getting hurt, getting rejected and teased, criticized. With good reason, too...chances are good that your poem or book or query or article or story WILL get rejected. Many times. And that will probably hurt a lot, at least in the beginning. Ah, who am I kidding...it'll always hurt, though eventually the soul-wrenching heartbreaking disappointment will probably subside to the occasional knife-in-the-gut twinge, as it did for me. To survive the whole submission/rejection process, you'll have to develop a thicker skin, and that won't happen if you never send your stuff out. Yes, you can choose to just write and never send anything out; if you're content with writing for the sake of writing as a conscious choice, fine, but if your goal is to make a living from your writing, it's not fine.

Ok, I realize that the advice above sounds dead obvious, but I'm amazed at how many hopeful writers don't take it to heart. They're looking for a magic answer, someone to hand them the miracle nugget of wisdom that will immediately elevate them into the lofty literary realm of the J.K. Rowlings of the writing world. While that does happen sometimes, it's more often the case that writing is a lot of hard work, frustration, and heartache. Emphasis on the hard work. Then why do I do it? I guess you could also ask me why I breathe. Sounds clicheish and overly dramatic, but it's the truth. Even when I had a fulltime job, I still wrote on the side. I've been writing for as long as I can remember, and I feel very lucky that some people will now PAY me for what I already love doing.

Which brings me back to my dislike of smalltalk, because I encounter much of what I've just ranted about in situations where the other person is just talking about writing for the sake of conversation, like the weather or the latest episode of Temptation Island, and THAT'S what makes me want to pull my hair and scream and run from the room because I HATE making smalltalk about something that is such an important part of my life; I'd rather be dipped in a vat of boiling marmite or fed, piece by quivering piece, to a pack of rabid naked mole rats.

And you can quote me on that.

LINKS:

Thanks to Heather for telling me about this Livejournal entry about using a voice recognition software with Livejournal. The entry focusses on using Dragon NaturallySpeaking, but gave me some ideas re: ViaVoice in case my arms get worse again (WHICH THEY WON'T, OF COURSE).

Thanks to Harald for telling me about SpamBayes to help with my spam problem. I must check this out.

And for those who like word games, check out WordBlog. (Thanks to Ray van Kleef for the link!)

September/2003 comments: Read | Post | LJ

striving for patience

I took David B. out for lunch at Fune yesterday
in thanks for his help with the liner notes
of our new CD.


Trying very hard to be patient.

The more I work on my novel, the more frustrating it is not to be able to fully immerse myself without having to worry about taking frequent arm breaks. It has always taken me some ramp-up time whenever I do fiction-writing, to get into the flow of the story, into what's going on in the characters' heads at the point I last stopped writing.

I find, however, that I can only type for about 10-15 minutes before I need a break. I find it nearly impossible to use ViaVoice when writing fiction...by the time I've said "move down 2 lines, move left 2 words, select right five characters", the sudden burst of inspiration I had for a different turn of phrase for character dialogue or scene description is fading. Anyway, the need for frequent breaks is really slowing down my usual fiction writing and editing pace. Yesterday I only got through one chapter. But hey, I need to remind myself that that's better than the ZERO chapter progress of the past six months.

1500 e-mails in my Inbox, not counting filtered mail. Spam Assassin is starting to miss more and more spam messages. I -am- reading any e-mail from people whose return addresses I recognize, but will probably not be able to reply right away. Thanks for your patience.

The silver lining is that one of the things that I do during my breaks is study German. Yesterday I went downstairs and visited the Goethe Institute, about a minute walk away..or to be more accurate, about 30 seconds' walk away, at Emily & King. HOLY TOLEDO, what a treasure trove for me...a free library card gives me access to a wealth of German learning materials, videos, children's books, books and plays on tape, magazines, and books, all with a FOUR WEEK loan period.

The two librarians seemed amused (and somewhat pleased) that I was so excited about signing up for a library card. Hey, and the library also has chairs and tables... this could be a convenient alternative to working in my home office from time to time.



My borrowed selection from the Goethe Institute.
The big blue book cost $3 and was on the sale table, and seems
to be a collection of native short stories.


I've been reviewing my schedule and con budget recently, and here are a list of the conventions I plan to attend (or hope to attend) next year. Sadly, it doesn't look as if I'm going to be able to make OVFF this year. I need to focus on ramping up my freelance income between now and December.

GAFilk: Jan.9-11/2003, Atlanta, GA. I'll be visiting with Bill and Brenda Sutton afterwards, VERY excited about this :-).

FilKONtario: Mar.26-28/2004, Toronto, ON.

Confluence: July ???/2004, Pittsburgh, PA. Tentative.
(date given on site doesn't refer to a weekend, so I assume it's incorrect...if it overlaps Sara's birthday on the 27th, I'm not going)

Ohio Valley Filk Fest (OVFF): Oct.24-26/2004. Tentative.

Other news...

TypePad is MovableType's new hosted service. Costs $4.95/month. Good for those who want the flexbility of MovableType but don't want to worry about the coding/tech, and are willing to pay for it.

More people have responded to my "what if" poll from a couple days ago: Bill, Lynn, Lyanne, Paul (and his follow-up), HeatherB, AmandaS and Lainiekins.

Two years ago, Jeff and I were in Japan when the first plane hit the World Trade Centre. We were supposed to fly home shortly after the attack, but ended up being stranded several more days until we could get another flight home.

My heart goes out to those who lost friends or family on that day.

September/2003 comments: Read | Post | LJ

"the two towers" dvd

Jeff reads bedtime stories to Sara and Annie.


Had my last physio appointment yesterday. Funny how my attitude towards physio has changed. In the beginning, I wanted to schedule as many as I could in a short a time as possible; I was unable to do much else. Now, however, I would far rather be writing. Also, it's just not the same now that Nick The Physiotherapist has moved to Montreal. ;-) My arms are nearly better. Can type for longer without pain, only used ViaVoice for a small portion of this Blathering.

Sent out two magazine article queries yesterday, withdrew two from markets that haven't responded to old queries. I'm gradually working through my Filemaker database, where I have manuscript queries/articles cross-linked to submission histories and markets (thanks to my technonerdboy husband Jeff for setting up the database a long while back), following up on old queries, adding new ones. Didn't get a chance to work on my novel yesterday, so am going to focus on that today.

Had lunch with Amanda Foubister, who had a TVO Imprint film crew following her around at Torcon (she says she will let me know when the episode is aired). Amanda is conchair at Ad Astra next year.



Naoyuki and Mai, who are visiting my father
right now from Japan.


Jeff and I watched the special features on the Lord of the Rings "The Two Towers" DVD last night. Man oh man, are we both super-hyped about "Return of the King"! I'm also hyped about attending and performing at The Gathering of the Fellowship in December in Toronto, a Tolkien convention featuring a masquerade banquet and ball with live music (Urban Tapestry! :-)), various workshops, panels, galleries, a gaming room, a vendor's room, and a triple showing of all three movies.

Do check out Bill Roper's, Lyanne's, Paul's (and his follow-up), HeatherB's, AmandaS's and Lainiekin's journal entries in response to yesterday's "what if" poll. If you have a similar posting, please let me know, thanks.

Thanks to Tom Jeffers for playing our music on his radio show (AKF Studios/Prairie Ceilidh Show)!

Celebrities on our street last night: Joan Cusack for The School Of Rock and Meg Ryan for In The Cut.



I was too lazy to go downstairs to get a closer
glimpse of Meg Ryan when she arrived for the debut of her
Toronto Film Festival movie. Took this shot from my office
window instead. She's down there somewhere.

September/2003 comments: Read | Post | LJ

"what if"

Went running out to the CNE grounds
yesterday. On the way, I passed the Toronto Music Garden.


I try not to focus on "what if" scenarios.

You know, stuff like "what if I never sold Inkspot", "what if I focussed on writing right away instead of doing a degree in Computer Science", "what if I had ordered the chicken instead of the meatloaf".

Going through the "what if" game becomes silly if you start examining it closely. If I hadn't gone for a degree in Computer Science, for example, I probably wouldn't have met technonerdboys like Tom West or Jeff. Leaving aside the obvious life-influencing Jeff factor :-), Tom was the one who introduced me to sf conventions and filking. Which means I may not have ended up meeting Allison, or finding out about filk, which means Urban Tapestry wouldn't have existed...you see how ridiculous it all gets.





The fact is that I am the sum of my life experiences. I've made mistakes, said and done things I've regretted. But I've also learned a great deal, accomplished things I'm proud of.

I'm more self-confident and happier now than I was twenty years ago, as well as being more physically fit. Yes, I admit a twinge when I realized a very long time ago that my childhood fantasies of being a famous scientist or concert pianist or bestselling author at age 21 were just those...childhood fantasies. There's a certain relief to giving up some of those fantasies to narrow my focus to ones within reach.

I still make mistakes. A lot of them. :-) But I'm getting better at focussing on the future instead of the past, pursuing my goals with passion instead of getting pulled into the "what if" whirlpool of regret.

What about you? Are you happier now than you were when you were younger? Feel free to post in your own journals, but I'd appreciate it if you would post the URL so I can read your entry.

Do check out Bill Roper's, Lyanne's and Lainiekins's journal entries in response to this poll.



This set of stairs is one of the challenges I've set
for myself near the end of my run. This and another like it on the
east side of Skydome require a last "big push" of energy
to run up all the stairs. On good days, I don't feel like
dying when I finally get to the top. :-)

September/2003 comments: Read | Post | LJ

grant family reunion

Case (Jeff's brother), our niece Brittany, Jeff.


Jeff and I attended a family reunion on his mom's side of the family yesterday. Normally I dread this sort of thing, particularly since I didn't know most of the attendees, and I despise smalltalk.

I ended up enjoying myself much more than I expected, however. The scenery at my mom-in-law's place out in the country was, as usual, spectacular. Scrumptious food. And I especially enjoyed conversations with Dick Grant, the fellow who originally inspired our trip to the Nahanni, and Michael Grant, an extremely creative sort (writer, filmmaker, has done TV work) who now owns a guesthouse in Tuscany with his wife, a professional chef. Jeff and I have been invited to visit(!).

Sold a few "Sushi and High Tea" CDs, too. ;-)

Speaking of new CDs, Andrea Dale is holding a release party for her new CD "Zen Cappuccino" at her place on September 20th. If you're interested in going, please let her know.

Here are some pics from the Grant reunion party:



My mom-in-law Ginny.




My niece Olivia (daughter of Case and Debbie)
on Scout, Brittany's pony, with my sister-in-law Larkin
supervising.




The kids' table (jazz band behind them).




A barn kitten recently adopted by my mom-in-law.




My sis-in-law Debbie (Case's wife) with her son Spencer.
We all had name tags identifying what part of
the family we were from. Debbie and I also had our husband's
names on our tags since we weren't direct blood relatives.




My brother-in-law Rick (Larkin's husband)
and his son Jeffrey.





Ginny gives a speech to family members.

September/2003 comments: Read | Post | LJ