Echo Les Semaines

I stuck in a recent poem, and got





Then I tried the story I'm currently reconstructing, and got





Hee!

Hello, 2:45 am, my old friend. Yes, that's when I finished this week's write-a-thon commitment. The timing is my own fault, of course. I made my submissions (2 queries for different manuscripts) earlier in the week then I'd started to revise a short story but realized that there was no way I would manage to complete the revision by Sunday night, so I thrashed around for a long time trying to figure out what to do.

But thanks to the commitment I'd made to the write-a-thon, I finally figured out that some notes I'd made for a short story were really for a narrative poem, so last night I pushed through and made myself finish a first draft. (My commitment for the w-a-t is 2 submissions + 1 draft each week.)

I'm really grateful for the w-a-t, because otherwise I would have slept instead, which would have felt briefly rewarding, but nowhere near as rewarding as actually completing something I hadn't expected to. Who knew I wanted to write a fairy tale in the voice of Mother Death? That's weird.

But now I have a new poem. Here's the first stanza (first draft, remember please):

Owl-light

The owl's voice buffets the night with its tumbling roll
and the emptiness between. It sends its call out for me:
red rover red rover, I call him over.

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I'm not sure I can bear to do this each week--I guess it depends on the draft--but sponsors and cheerleaders got to see the whole poem.

As most of you already know, I'm participating in the Clarion West Write-a-Thon this year.

My modest goal this year is two + one = two submissions + one new draft or major re-draft. It's definitely a challenge to me to keep submissions out in the mail at any time, but I'm pushing that a little farther to keep drafting new work in the midst of running the writing workshop.

This week I met my goals by sending out a novel query to an agent, a poetry submission to a new online magazine, and I kind of faked the draft business as at the last minute I realized there was a grant deadline I wanted to catch so my draft for the first week was a grant project statement.

Any support, no matter how small, moral or financial, is welcome. There are two ways you can help:

1. Pledge towards my goals. The Write-a-Thon is a fundraiser for the Clarion West Writing Workshop. You can pledge as much or as little as you want: $1/week, $2/week, $5/week, $25/week, or just a flat sum. Friends putting their money where my mouth is is highly motivating. Please don't feel obligated to pledge--but if you'd like to do so, you're supporting a wonderful non-profit organization dedicated to developing new writers. Donations are tax-deductible.

2. Offer support and encouragement. This is just as important to me as pledges.

Either way, let me know if you'd like me send you a weekly email with updates on my Write-a-Thon progress. I want to send out some sort of small thank-you gift to sponsors, so if you don't already have a copy of my poetry CD, I will come up with something else: maybe a lavender sachet from my garden. Or maybe an exclusive poetry broadside/flyer.

To make things easy, Clarion West has given us each our own write-a-thon page and PayPal buttons. I can certainly take checks, or you can send them directly to Clarion West (P.O. Box 31264, Seattle WA 98103-1264), but if you find the web more convenient, my PayPal buttons are located on my Clarion West W-a-t page.

Or you can see if there's someone else you'd like to sponsor (there are a lot of wonderful writers participating this year) at Clarion West's write-a-thon page: http://www.clarionwest.org/write-a-thon

Thanks for reading this!

Yesterday:

1. First Atia knocks over Jim's breakfast coffee. I wake from my 6:00 am couch doze to the swear words. No, I don't learn any new ones, which is somewhat disappointing.

2. Then get to work to discover my backpack dripping with tea. The thermos hadn't been closed properly. Luckily, no electronics are harmed in the course of these events and there are few other casualties.

3. Our neighbour is suddenly painting her house and we discover the hard way that branches from a little tree we put in between our houses were in her way. Suddenly there is a pile of branches on the ground and the tree requires immediate damage control.

Today:

I have done so much email, paper-organizing and paper-clipping in the last few days that my arms hurt. They want not to move. However, moving they must do.

Today is my last day at the UW until September. Yes, that means that this afternoon is move-in for the Clarion West Writers Workshop! It can't possibly be mid-June already. Even the weather says it's still February.

Go Look. No, really, you'll thank me.

If I had superstitions about the year continuing as it started out, I would be sad now. We had a very quiet New Year's Eve, followed by a lovely dinner with Devin and Tamar, two of my favourite people on the planet, so that was good. But my back has been painful since last week when we went to a movie and the theatre had those seats that lean back. My back likes to sit up straight. I should have used my backpack or packed my coat behind me more effectively because the next day at work when I was bending down to staple pages I'd just picked up from the printer I felt my back go out. It went into spasm and has been annoying ever since.

I gently did exercises and moved often, but still...this was the worst it has been in years and years. It's almost better at last--nearly two weeks later.

I would say getting older sucks, but my back first went bad when I was 21 and tried to lift a table saw at work when I couldn't get anyone to help me and the customer who bought it was getting impatient. It's never been quite that bad since, and I'm SO grateful.

This has also been a complicated time for family and friends' physical and emotional health, and I have to say I hope the year doesn't hold too much more of this. I'm full up. It feels like ten months rather than ten days in. Am I allowed to be tired of 2010 already?

I hope things calm down and that my stressed reaction to them does, too. It's wearing me out, and the year is still an infant. Maybe that's it--infants are exhausting, right? And they can still grow up to be entertaining and fun and bring good things into people's lives? Right?

2010, grow up already.

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For my recent listening, a long catch-up reading list, and writing news, see Les Semaines.

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Look at this!



A watery view out our front window, making the fall colours of our smoke bush look like a watercolour.

We're having some pretty serious November here. Storms blowing through with lots of rain and wind and hail. One night I couldn't sleep because the frequent lightning flashes were like someone strafing a flashlight across my face again and again. There is some glorious sun and beautiful skies then more rain rain rain. Good thing I like rain.

Had a busy but weekend in sunny San Jose at World Fantasy Con, where I saw loads of people I'd wanted to see but missed many others. Damn. I had a good time but I was hoping to meet some people I knew were there, but I never managed to. We had a fun Clarion West get-together, fun dinners, parties, hanging out talk talk talking.

Then the fates gave me nearly a week of normal life again until, when Jim and I were watching Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire dance in Roberta, I suddenly started coughing. Chills and fever followed, and I kept that fever for a week. A week, people! I don't think I've ever had a fever that long before. Luckily the Wednesday was officially a holiday, or I would have burned through five days of sick leave rather than four. Yet another week later I still have a cough from it, but I'm so happy not to have a fever I don't mind. Really, I don't. *Cough, cough*

November is whipping past so fast I can't grab hold of it to make it slow down so I can catch up.

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For my recent listening, reading, and writing adventures, see Les Semaines.

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...and many happy returns!

Wishing her all the joy and awakening her books and essays have given me over the years.

Long may she reign!

And so, September went by and barely had time to say a word in passing. Or rather, I barely had time to say a word (here at least) in September.

It has been back to work. Back to working my life around work.

I'd forgotten, or erased from memory, how difficult it is to get things done during the academic year when I'm back at work. I mean things aside from the daily necessities of life, but kind of including them, too. It doesn't make sense. I only work five hours a day. But after work, after the (admittedly short) commute, errands, the necessary phone calls, I often find myself not getting to lunch until 3:00 or so...and by that time I'm starving because I had breakfast before 7:00. Or when I eat it at work, before 8:00.

Trying to fit in an hour of writing time each day is difficult, but damn I'm doing at least that if it kills me. And don't laugh, because it sometimes does. I could so easily be buried under a pile of books (the library's and mine own) that are piled up waiting to be read, or choke on the growing and accumulating dust mice, or get tangled in cobwebs that already festoon the chandelier in the dining room. I already trip on cat toys. Oh, and cats. Who want to emphatically point out that feeding cats isn't optional. Nor is not playing with, or holding, or not petting enough.

Other possibilities include being foreclosed on for not making mortgage payments, malnutrition because we're eating out of the pantry and freezer, starving when that runs out because I haven't gone grocery shopping.

Well, okay, I did pay the bills, despite them forgetting to put me back on the payroll. Oops. A bit of a surprise on the payday that wasn't, I have to say. But they did fix it quickly.

And I wrote a grant application and even sent it in a day early. You can be as proud of me as you like.

So that was September. And now, ready or not, here comes October.

[The original date on this post--the day I started writing it--was September 9th. Oh well.]

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For quick updates on my listening, reading, and writing, see Les Semaines.

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