I opened a popular and literary work that’d I’d call science fiction but critics would call “magical realism,” and before I got done with the prologue, all I could see was the work of an overly earnest writer that was trying very hard to not be seen as too trophy, writing a book that stared herself as the main character and an elusive non-traditional boyfriend.

Yawn.

Now I’ll probably give the book a second chance but it provoked some thought about my own writing, and story telling styles and habits.

First of all, I don’t really put myself into my stories in specific ways. I don’t have legions of characters that are intense, but quirky, young writer/student types: nothing that you could look at and say, “ah, that one’s clearly tycho.” At the same time, there’s a little bit of me in all the character’s I write, but that seems utterly natural.

This culminated in a series of thoughts about the differences between “professional/academic creative writers” and whatever it is that I do. As I think about “what comes next in my life,” and I try to sort out the role that fiction writing plays in that life, I’ve thought about the differences between these two pursuits, and goals. I’m not even sure that I’m coherent about this enough to explain all of the contrasting points in my mind right now, let alone come to some satisfying conclusion.

In a lot of ways, I sort of see my fiction writing as being very similar to my essay writing, except I’m writing a essays on places and times that don’t and can’t exist. Maybe this isn’t a genre thing, though, I don’t know.

I think I’m a bit more keen on this though, I often approach my work/ideas as a historian, and I’ve joked that if there’s one field that I’m really “SFing up,” it’s history and historiography not physics and cosmology.

One of the things that I enjoy reading so much on other people’s blogs are the hilarious (and weird) stories people have about their jobs. Sam Starbuck is particularly good at this. On the other hand, I don’t tend to contribute to this body of literature. So here’s some commentary on the genre

Work is fascinating, and something that we aren’t prone to talk very much about it. In part because it is work, and work, is by definition a drag. In most cases we don’t work because we enjoy it, we work because we have to. Even if our careers are something that is important to our sense of who we are, even if our jobs are fundamentally something that we enjoy, work is alienating, and a drag.

To be fair, a lot of jobs don’t begin as alienating enterprises, but I think in time they become that, becuase there is a fundamental conflict of interest between the worker and the institutions (however small) that employ them. Employers demand/need individuals to contribute intellectual/bodily efforts, and while money helps the compensation, the economic conversion between labor and money is psychically difficult, particularly in light of it’s variability. Ok, enough theory.

And yet, we spend the majority of our lives at work, working. This creates something of a paradoxical situation, but thankfully (in addition being able to eat as a result of work) some people are able to write pretty interesting stories. And their are entire genres of blogs (academic blogs, doctor/nurse blogs, etc) that are dedicated to people’s work lives. Good stuff.

So my work. I’ve mentioned that I’m basically working a 9-5 gig at least through the end of the summer, and I’m looking for something more long term. I have a job interview next week (wish me luck,) for something that would be really great. I don’t want to jinx anything, so I’ll say more when I know it.

As for the mean time, there aren’t a lot of great stories. Most of the really funny things in my day have to do with transcriptions errors from olds transcripts of 20 year old interviews. The number of ways people misheard and miswrote “Kwame Nkrumah” is really amazing. But it doesn’t make for good story telling.

I finished, at last, The Left Hand of Darkness, the canonical novel by Urusla K. LeGuin.

Even though I’m not in school any more and thus don’t have that as an excuse, I’m still a tragically slow reader, this is one thing among many which I hope to get much better at.

Anyway, the book. I loved it. Both because the story was good, and because the gender thing was clever and neat (at least for 300 pages), and probably most importantly because it is such a clever example of ethnography. I like the way that it is able to evoke that genre and style so effectively.

So what’s next on the reading list?

Melissa Scott’s The Jazz.

I’ve often thought about (sometimes even here on tychoish) about cyberpunk, and sort of the next thing in this “intellectual tradition,” and I think about people like Cory Doctorow, or what William Gibson has done in the last ten years, and I’m underwhelmed. The wonder, the adventure (which is often exchanged for ‘thril[ler]'), and the way that the genre initially dealt with class are all gone.

And then I read the first 25 pages of The Jazz, and I realized that cyberpunk is in fact, not dead. Not impossible in the post 2001 world.

And I am happy.

So I have a confession to make.

I haven’t really been knitting very much.

The writing, the work, and the weekend of morris dancing has left me with not a lot of time for knitting.

Also, after a very cool spring, summer has invaded my world with a vengeance.

These are all excuses I know.

But you have to admit that it is a lot to cope with in a week.

I’m going to charge the batteries and take some pictures of the Latvian dreaming sweater, and hopefully get back into it. I know I’ve made promises about not knitting more than one project at the same time (particularly to avoid sleeves), but I’ve started to get pretty annoyed at the yarn, and you know how the knitting malaise goes. And it might be nice to knit something plain. How wierd does this sound.

At the same time, writing (not even posting it yet!) has caused me enough guilt to get my knitting out again. So that’s good. I’ll keep you posted.

I had, until a few moments ago, recently been very keen on trying to make my computer last as long as possible. It does what I need to to, I can’t really complain, and new computers are a lot of money, particularly when apple is on the cusp of new models.

And then my “r” key and the “tab” key flew off my keyboard.

I take this as a sign from the gods. I’m going to wait till I find a job and/or there are good new laptops from apple, because while I’m more partial to getting a linux laptop than I have been in the past, I think I’d be much more pleased by either: getting something like the Asus EEE PC (rumor has that there’s going to be a new faster one in a few weeks) and/or something in the cloud that I could SSH into¹

Anyway. I looked at the Apple website for the first time in months and I realized something: The MacBook Pros, are finally worth the extra price again. If you assume that the difference between a 2.4, 2.5 and 2.6 ghz Core 2 Duo processor is basically academic (which I think it likely), for about 500 dollars you get: a much nicer screen (quality), a bigger screen, more powerful graphics, a firewire 800 port. I mean, these are the historic differences between the models, but usually the difference in price is more like 1000 dollars.

But this post is supposed to be about what I’m thinking of doing. I recognize that you can get replacement keys for about 9 bucks a pop, but upgrading is pretty inevitable, and desirable at this point.

Given this, my upgrade scheme/options are:

1. Wait till after the next major revision of the macbook (con: white/black) or the macbook pro and get it. And then continue as I have for the past few years to use it as my main/sole computer. Not a bad option. I’d probably lean toward the pro, if this were the case. 2. Get an iMac and either a MacBook con or an Assus EEE pc. This puts the focus on my at home computing, and while I’d still be mobile, I wouldn’t be as at the drop of the hat mobile. 3. Get a macbook pro and figure out some way to organize for some sort of server-type at-home computer that could grind through the stuff that isn’t laptop suitable: media center stuff and the like.

Two is a radical departure from my established usage patterns, and thus sort of unlikely. And even though my keys are beginning to strike wholesale, I’m probably still going to wait until august or november before I upgrade for real.

Anyway, there’s a weekend brain dump. I’ll see you later, and around.

Here’s another post in the vein of “what I’m thinking about this new site and why I’m interested in doing it.” Another excerps from the interview I did with myself.

I hear that ideas are thick on the ground, and follow through isn’t. To the point that I’ve heard people talk about follow through as *the* quality of a writer. What are your thoughts on this?

I’ve stumbled across people (mostly Mur, I guess talk about how ideas (for stories, but all kinds of creative ideas) are thick on the ground, but that the real magic of being a writer is “follow through:” getting ideas into words. Everyone who reads has ideas, pretty much, and it’s easy to say “wouldn’t it be cool to write a story with telepathic goblin-zombies fighting post-singular AIs around titan looking for the ruins of an ancient civilization there, except it’s not on Titan, because Earth got too hot after the sun turned into a red dwarf…” and somewhat harder to actually write the story. Or at least it requires a greater time commitment.

And for some reason, the proposition that ideas are thick on the ground and that all ideas are equal save the energy put into the execution, is, I think, not entirely true.

I for one, am not particularly good coming up with ideas. Aside from just being silly and pulling out “wouldn’t it be nifty if…” scenarios, in the entire time I’ve been writing, which for the purposes of this question is years and years, I’ve come up with like three setups/worlds for stories and like four plots. I might be minimizing slightly, but not much. I almost never come up with new ideas, unless I say to myself “ok, self it’s time to come up with something new,” and even then I get something even vaguely useable.

At the same time I think follow through is incredibly important, so I think the main thrust of the argument is solid, even if it does leave me with a sort of bad taste in my mouth.

On(ward and) Up(ward)!

I present you a question from an interview I did with myself about the more personal angle of why I’m starting a new site rather than work with some other project or seek traditional publishing.

Why is it important for you to be working and publishing independently?

I’ve been writing fiction pretty much in a vacuum for, well, a long time, on the assumption that maybe if I edit hard enough and keep trying, maybe I’ll be able to submit something eventually and get published. Which might have been true, had I had some more effective way to “beta” my work, been not sixteen when I wrote the first book, if the publishing industry were in a different place. Etc.

Now it sounds like I’m making excuses, and maybe I am, but it strikes me that even if god flew down and handed me the best book deal in the world, I’d probably still have to have a day job. I even sort of want a day job of some kind (I like the structure, and pace, given a lot of circumstances in my life at the moment.) While having some sort of publishing sponsor would likely get me editorial support (g-d, how I yearn for thee) a bigger audience, it’s an iffy proposition and so the debate ends up being: do I start regularly publishing my own work (like I intend to do with this new site that I’m cooking up) or do I continue to work in isolation with faith that it’ll probably work out in the end?

I think making (science) fiction prose work online is probably the next big thing, which is to say that it’s already underway. 365Tomorrows, EscapePod, Tor.Com not to mention Podiobooks are all forays into this sphere (as it were) and as exciting as all of these ventures are, there is something totally invigorating about doing this on my own.

I’m not saying that I don’t want support, nor am I saying that I’m conceiving this new site as something that will be excessively me--quite the contrary, if it were just me, I could probably orchestrate it entirely out of tychoish. But I very much treasure the possibility and opportunity to give this a go on my own terms.

For those of you keeping score at home, I’m chugging along for a mid/late June launch. I’m probably about half to a third of the way done with the logistical work, and I want to get a stronger habit formed before I start, but it’s very real and coming quite soon.

I said I’d write a post about why this ale was amazing, and why I love these gatherings. Some of the readers of this site are also morris dancers and so will “get” some of the things that I talk about. If you have another “thing,” just unfocused your minds eye, and extrapolate these memories to your favorite annual gathering. I just got back and read posts about the Men’s Spring Knitting Retreat, which I know a number of you all were at, and I think these were similar sorts of events.¹

This post is just a series of anecdotes of events and connections, with minimal amount of musing.

There were a lot of people in my general age cohort: 18 to 27. We were the heart of the after 3 am dancing, and that was generally a lot of fun. One person is, though a friend from a morris dancing context, someone who I’ve spent a not-insignifigant amount of time with outside of dance. All this makes dancing so much more fun. I remember once when he came to visit me at college (where I didn’t dance much, and didn’t talk much about dancing except in)

I remember one time sitting around with these folks and just talking about normal people things, and thinking, “I like you all a lot.” And it was good. We had sort of congregated on a massage table that someone had set up in the corner of the dining room and were helping each other stretch and it was very nice.

These gatherings aren’t the kind of thing that’s sustainable long term, like it wouldn’t work if it were longer than three days every year, but that’s ok too. It’s a situation where lots of sort of transcendent experiences are primed to happen, and too much of it, and you don’t realize how special it is.

I’ve been to the past seven of these gatherings (which have been going on for 27 years I think), my mother has missed two of them--including (most importantly for this story,) the last one. I should also subtitle that my emergency-back-up-mom (Hi Judy!) goes to these as well, and we’re all on the same team, etc. etc.

On the first night I asked someone to go get my mother (who was in the women’s buck room) and she went looking for Judy. Which embarrassed her terribly, but the rest of us found very funny. And it happened to my mom a couple of times, where she’d say “my son does so and so,” and they’d ask “who’s your son?” and she’d say “tycho,” and they’d be surprised, because they clearly thought that my mom was Judy. It happened in reverse a couple times as well, which I was equally amused about.

Steven’s Joy of Six+: I got to watch this absurd but truly amazing moment of dance.

This typifies one of the things that I so adore about this weekend: it’s so clearly about having fun and dancing for other dancers.

Like getting the opportunity to dances that my team doesn’t do, for fun. While people were concerned about “getting it right,” it was never as if you were being judged for getting something wrong.

Like, when Steven’s team did splitters and turned their baseball caps backwards/to the side so that the bills wouldn’t interact as they leaped toward each other, everyone knew what that took.

A woman at some point had her knitting out and I was admiring it and this guy who is a great dancer, with a lot of experience and reputation was sitting near by and asked if I was getting a lesson, and I said, “oh no, [pause] in fact, I’m a way better knitter than I am a morris dancer.”

“And you’re a pretty good morris dancer,” he said. (This meant a lot to me.)

I shrugged. I think it’s fair assessment. My mother agreed with my judgement of these things.

There were a couple of “new” people that I adopted and encouraged, and it felt really good to play this role. There were a couple of girls that I would push to get into dances, even if they didn’t know them, and I think they got up and did dances (and enjoyed them) that they wouldn’t have done without encouragement. That’s a good thing.

Two years ago, I had a minor dehydration issue. It was really hot, and I didn’t drink enough fast enough, and I’m skinny and a sweat-er, and it was hard to keep up, and I wasn’t paying attention. So I was pretty vigilant this time, and ended up drinking 5-6+ liters of water a day, which was almost enough. I only had a few hours where I fell behind.

There was a new person who started to look a little wilty, and I asked her if she was drinking water, and she said something, and I knew it wasn’t enough, and I was like “if you’re not peeing regularly, you’re not hydrating enough,” (good rule of thumb, by the way) and it was just a funny moment, but helpful.

Also, late at night, one of the dancing powerhouses (to my mind) looked all red and distracted during the lead up to a dance, and I leaned over to a friend and said, “B. looks dehydrated to you right?” The friend agreed and after the dance was over we called him over to us, and were like. “Drink water. Now. Don’t pass go.” It helped, he’s fine, and he even reported on it thankfully to my mother.

Part of the reason why these weekends work so well is the pervasive feeling that everyone has your back. It was nice to be on the giving end of that for once.

Even though the weekend is about dance, there are lots of great singers and lots of opportunities to sing. There’s a regular late night singing, which is sometimes fun, but there are also little ad-hoc moments where singing happens. Places where people congregate in a corner under a low ceiling, and sing favorite songs in folksy harmonies.

There were a couple of moments that stand out:

• Underneath the great hall of the Nebraska state capital, there’s a low dome and everything is marble. We sang “Let Peace Prevail,” and “We are a People,” by Robert W. Service (and Steven) set to music by David Perry, and a couple of other songs that were vaguely protest songs that I don’t remember. I got to see a number
• In the corner outside the dorm rooms, we sang “Rolling Home,” and something else that I also don’t remember. I was in the middle of this little cluster standing next to two basses, and it was divine.
• At the Sunday morning shape-note sing, I sang a song, and I got it. I don’t shape note much, and I’m not particularly good at it (circle = sol, square = la, triangle = fa, diamond = mi? Right?), but for the first time I sang and got it, and I could see and hear all the parts and how they worked.
• There’s this song that I think of as being sort of schizoid, in that the chorus sounds like it’s from different songs and the verses don’t really jive, but the most recognizable line is “let union be in all our hearts / let all our hearts beat on as one,” and we sang it once and I it was just right.

Good moments.

One of our stops “on tour” sunday afternoon was at a museum, where we were basically dancing for ourselves, and somehow, I got to do a dance with a team that I absolutely adore. It’s also to the tune that Peter Bellamy set Kipling’s “A Pilgram’s Way,” (and thus the dance is appropriatly titled “The People’s Dance”) and it was a great pleasure and an honor to be able to do that.

At these ales--if anyone who doesn’t go is still reading--there are a list of dances provided and taught ahead of time that the group can do as a whole (Mass/ed Dances). Most of these are accessible dances picked from a limited repertoire, but most years there’s a more piquant dance, in the mix, which can be a lot of fun. This year it was, probably, my favoritest dance of all, one called “Queen’s Delight.”

Earlier in the afternoon, I had danced it with an amazing dancer from the women’s team in the twin cities, on a little stage like platform, and long story short, she misjudged, on the last and climatic portion of the dance, and almost fell of the stage. Luckily she wasn’t hurt (there was a doctor in the set, who took over her position and finished up the dance for her). though she had a broken bell pad and a nasty bruise, and that afternoon when they called the dance again, I was standing next to her and said “we need to finish this right.”

End result: I was thrown into this set with hotshot dancers. And it went off perfectly. Well maybe not perfectly, but all mistakes were recovered, and it was almost zone-like. At the end one of the people in the set--who is amazing--said “best dance/set at the ale,” and that felt really good. It was so much fun.

Last year, as a commentary on a pub-stop where the only dancing area was behind a pool table in an area not suitable for real morris dancing, I instigated a skit where we did (I should say that morris dancing is most frequently done in sets of 6) a single set of a dance with 12 people dancing six positions, two layers deep.

I threw around the idea of putting on the same skit only for 18 people (3 layers deep,) but we tried it at a pub with 14-16 people, or so and it totally wouldn’t have worked out.

But, the notion of doing dances this way, with “shadows” totally did catch on, and we tried a lot of dances this way at night, and it was a lot of fun. Durring one dance my shadow, lost me as I surged through a hey, and I heard him from the other side of the room say “hey, where’d you go,” and then saw him run out of the corner of my eye, around the outside of the set to catch up with me. It was funny, trust me.

The truth is that it’s a lot of work to shadow someone. Because you have to go the long way around curves to end up at the other side behind them, and you have to move fast.

There is also a class of figures where, facing across from someone, you pass by one shoulder, slide to the left or right behind them, and pass back to your original spot on the other side. We call this “back to back,” but it’s the same basic thing as a “do si do” in contra dance (do si do, is apparently a corruption of the french for back-to-back, so yeah, same thing). Anyway, when there are shadows this figure with 4-6 people involved, is hilarious.

Strangely it all seems to work out just fine.

That’s all that I can think of right now. I’ll return to normal posting and working on things tomorrow. Thank you for your patience.

Onward and Upward!