Even in a little thing

It's been a while, largely because my computer and email have been facing a lot of technical issues and posting in two places at once was a step too far. Now that I'm facing even more technical issues and LJ is down, I want somewhere to quietly grump. I'll try to get back to regular posting here when things calm down a little (hopefully next week), but the big thing about today is that...it's a mess.

I had a lovely weather migraine last night. It took me until 2 am to sleep and it took 2 hot water bottles and 2 doonas to bring my body temperature up to normal (which is what finally allowed me to sleep). This happens. I just adjusted my alarm clock so that I would get an extra hour this mo9rning and reduced my list of 'to do' things for Friday.

You can guess where this is going, can't you? Since I'm grumpy? The migraine lingers, and my body temperature is falling (although it's now 36.3, which is at least in sight of normal). My next door neighbour woke me up at 7.30 with Zimbabwean pop (she was coming back from work and I don't have the heart to tell her that her music wakes me up as she drives in, for she has an impossible shift). I went back to sleep and then the postie woke me up. I gave up on sleep and thought "At least the work end of the house is quiet" and now my upstairs neighbour is apparently having some very noisy work done which necessitates much yelling and men being rude to each other about laziness.

None of this is serious. It's just annoying and tiring, on the morning I set aside for being kind to myself because it's going to be a big weekend and it was a huge week. It's peak teaching time and peak form-filling-in time and peak everything-else time and sleep was already becoming a bit of a rarity. I don't need roaring machines and shouting men outside my window as well. And I have run out of time to go back to sleep until it all goes away,: all I can do is puddle through the morning's work and drink copious amounts of weak coffee and take lots of Vitamin D and choose bigger pain relievers. Then it will be over and I will be laughing. Ha!

At any rate, I've already crossed 2 things off my must-do-before 11 list. And I've started a third thing that wasn't even on it...

I have a problem with some novels. They don’t belong to any specific genre. I seem to encounter them on average, one a month. Some of them are written brilliantly and some are not and some would make rather good stabilisers for a wonky table. The only thing they share is a view of language. Other people’s language.

The authors just don’t seem to understand how languages other than English operate. Or how using those languages to represent speakers of those languages can be done without artificiality. Some don’t understand that French is not a matter of adding ‘Oui’ or Italian ‘Si’ at an almost-appropriate moment of their story – that it doesn’t actually give the flavour of a language if one spatters the text with perfectly translatable words. That there are other ways of indicating that every single person is speaking in French besides having someone nod sagely and say “Ah, oui, that will solve the crise. Let’s get down to it.”

That’s my first problem: that it would be rather nice if I weren’t dragged out of reading by trying to work out why someone is translating their own common speech into a foreign language. For if everyone is speaking French, then that ‘oui’ represents a foreign language. Proper names and terms that are uncommon and don’t have a solid English equivalent are quite different. Playing with syntax is fine (as long as it doesn’t go the “'Allo 'Allo" route), but every time a writer shoves in an everyday word or phrase, I’m shoved right out of the reading. That’s why I here, now, and not finishing my current book, in fact.

Then there is the problem of food. When is bread ‘pain’? Or rather, when is bread painful? When the word 'bread' would do just as well as the word 'pain' and yet the word 'pain' is used. When a foodstuff is quite specific to the time and place of the tale, that's a different matter. If the story is set in Paris (a place chosen at random largely because I miss it) then talking about the long artisanal bread baked by Mme Curie (with its lovely, crunchy radioactive coating) might be cause for a word in French ('pain lumineux'). If the bread is, however, baked by M. Paul Curie, Mme Curie's third cousin twice removed, the side of the family that came to France 4 generations ago, then 'bread' is less distracting. And yes, the Curie family in this paragraph serves the same function as pain in a novel - it distracts and has not much to do with anything and has the added bonus of being mostly invention. This is the precise effect that using 'pain' where 'bread' would suffice has on me. There are other ways of describing a long loaf with a polished outside that has to be ripped open with one’s teeth to get at the silk-fine white interior, and most of them are less annoying.

Then there is the problem of proof-reading and copy editing. The more exotic words and phrases that are written into a novel, the more likely there are to be typos. I collect these, so all my writing friends ought to be worried. I have a personal trophy chest. The phrase currently on display there is ‘magrat du canard’ which I have encountered in two different novels and ‘margrat’ in a third: none of these novels are by Terry Pratchett (hence the dedication). I think the moral of the story is to try not to use words and phrases we can’t actually error-check for ourselves.

One writer told me (when I was editing them) “No-one notices.” This is just to warn other writers with a similar view that some of us do notice. Not only do we notice, but we take note. Not only do we take note, but sometimes we wave the novel at students saying “Look!”

To avoid the trophy chest and the book-waving, all writers have to do is think about what languages they use and how, and to be very, very careful to avoid errors. That’s all. So why is it so difficult?



PS Please don’t tell me you use Google Translate for your languages-other-than-English and don’t check with a native speaker (or even a non-native speaker with advanced skills). I pasted my first paragraph into Google Translate and took it to Spanish, then Arabic then back to English, just to show how automated translation gets some things, but not others. This is the result:
TENGO United Nations problema con novelas algunas. Pertenecen género NINGUN. Algunos de ellos están escritos con brillantez YY OTROS algunos estabilizadores haría bastante bueno para una Mesa wonky. If UNICO QUE ES UNA comparten vision del lenguaje. Lenguaje de otras personas.

Then I fiddled with the translation route until it gave me something actually in English:
United Nations HAVE some problem with novels. ANY genre belong. Some of them are written brilliantly OTHER YY stabilizers do some pretty good for a wonky table. If ONLY THING THAT IS A shared vision of language. Language others.

PPS Now I want to use automatic translators for my whole text, just to see if I can produce Great Literature. Which becomes ‘Gran Literature’ using the same route on Google Translate that I used for my paragraph. Is there a genre that’s literature for grandmothers? There ought to be.

This morning I am down to one box of papers. It didn't start well, though, and I want to do the beginning all over, and quite differently. I didn't want to step on a slug, for instance. For those who need to know, a bare foot on a squashed slug is an effective way to wake up.

It does, however, make me interpret the day from the wrong end. Instead of the papers almost sorted, I want to say "I still have most of the real work to go." Instead of saying "I have two emails to send and two works are finalised at my end, and hey, look at the kind comment the very, very senior editor made on the story that was rejected today (I write a vile story and the editor called it 'nicely done') I say "Oh no, I'm doing everything wrong!"

I think the moral of this story is never to step on slugs while you have a cold. For I am at the stage of the cold where it's descending into my chest and I really don't feel very well. And yes, I stepped on a slug.

If getting drunk helped me at all (it never does - I'm not that kind of drunk, it seems) I would have a drink. Instead all I can think of doing is sharing the pain. Who wants to know what it feels like to step on a slug?

The highlight of my morning was being introduced to an arquebus, firing it, and ruining a favourite (but bedraggled) shirt. I will be forced to be more respectable this winter. Understanding the smell and feel of the early gun was worth it, however. I might wear my very-slightly-ashen shirt around the house, for it's very comfortable and its scars were well-earned.

The highlight of my afternoon was making inroads into my tax. I've now sorted 1/3 of my papers and my loungeroom looks delightfully disordered.

The highlight of the early evening was long talks with friends. This was also a highlight of this morning, since I went to the gun range (it was open day) thanks to the kindness of friends.

The highlight of slightly later evening was the duck being cooked. I invented a stuffing for it. The duck was delectable with the stuffing, but the stuffing was ... drabbit, why didn't I write down proportions? I made it up as I went along, and it turned out to be fruity and tart and just amazing.

I tipped some quinoa into a bowl. I added about the same amount of water. I chopped up an onion finely and added that. Then I topped it with a nice slurp of pomegranate molasses. I zapped it in the microwave (which was behaving today) a few times (a minute each time) until most of the moisture was absorbed. I might have added a knob of butter (but don't tell my mother, for that would be so wrong). Then I stuffed my duck with it. The stuffing doesn't cohere (for there's nothing in it to make it stick) but I kinda forgot to carve the duck once I had a taste of the stuffing., An hour later I actually ate a piece of duck and found that the scent of the pomegranate is faintly through the whole and it is just... I am going to stop here, for the duck and the rest of the stuffing is the the fridge, for eating during the week and it is STAYING THERE (at least until tomorrow night). I am not allowed supper! But, really, that's the best stuffing I've ever invented. I have no idea if I'll ever be able to duplicate it.

Obviously the highlight of my later evening is the memory of finally getting back my cooking mojo.

I'm blogging earlier than usual because I want to draw a line under my morning. I've got one of those internal self-castigation things going (which can reflect pain, or can reflect memories that came up during my sleep) and it was validated by the tone and nature of an email. What this means is that I'm in self-punishing-Cinderella mode, and the best way to cure it is to start the day again. I can't change the physical self, but I can change the rest, including what day it is. So all the negatives now happened very, very, very late on Thursday and today is simply the day after.

I was going to run messages and go to the movies today, for the bushfires are finally out and I want to celebrate, but I think I finish my teaching prep for tomorrow, make more inroads on my tax, and finish small things. I can do the shopping on the way home from teaching, and everything else can wait.



ETA: One of the causes of this being a worm-eating day is something I just discovered by going outside (yes, I keep sneaking outside, now that I can). We're getting the big shift of weather patterns from summer to autumn. Today. On 1 March. How did the seasons know that we declare autumn to begin today?

It's funny how many holes one's mind has. Mine has more than most, I suspect. I had a whisper of a story out last year. It was so short that if you breathe then it's over, but it most certainly did appear, albeit only in the context of Conflux and CSFG.

This morning I sacrificed six vials of blood to the Deity of Testing, to see if this pain can be sorted, to find out if the fact that I am middle-aged can be sorted, to see if I'm diabetic (except that was another vial and it was a different shape and did not contain blood) and to work out other things. I don't know what the other things are, for the vast list of hormonal material being tested piqued my amusement. Also my interest. Why was I tested for any of this when perimenopause first manifested, a decade ago?

Since I came back from the testing-place (which is just four doors from my doctor - and by 'four doors' I mean doorways within a building) I have pottered much and frittered away time, for what I'm doing today is tax and I hurt. It's the weather and the PMT and the fact that it's acid-in-the-veins-day (this month I have a 60 hour day, I think) and the sad fact that I have no deadlines to force me to do things. The only one I had today (for my teaching on Saturday) I have met. This means that it's 2.30 pm, and I've only done 3 hours work. But I've done a remarkable job of feeling sorry for myself.

Half the problem is the weather. It's in a constant state of significant change. It will settle later today, or I shall have words with it.

Nothing's actually wrong at my end of things. I just hurt. And obviously, if I can't remember my own publications, I'm not going to drown my sorrows in something workishly interesting. I potter around with my taxes (which will take a long while at this rate), and I restore bits of my place to its pre-fixing-up normalcy, and I prepare a bit of dinner here and a bit there (for I have friends dropping in), and I wash dishes, and I do email or teaching prep (Saturday's is a workshop that has fairly intensive prep for me, so all I've done is the first segment, but that includes the handouts, so I'm 1/3 through) and I do more bits and pieces.

It's not even a wasted day. It just feels like it, for I can't tick things off my list. Maybe it would help if I did a list for March. The only item unfinished on my February list is taxes. This would be why I had planned to spend today breaking the back of them.

Coffee, that is my answer. And a wall-list for March. And just keep on starting and stopping until the first part of the job is done. To music. I shall give myself three hours for these things.

I've finally caught up on quite a few of the things that got caught up in other things. I'll have another wave of promises to keep, but they don't start until 1 March. At least, I hope they don't. I have just a little pile of notes to myself, and they're all about today's tasks, but I haven't been through my scary pile of paper yet. Why do I keep a scary pile of paper? I think it might be... no, I don't know why. Anyhow, my tasks for the day are:
1) to check the scary pile of paper
2) to entirely get rid of that small pile of notes
3) to teach
4) to work on much medievalness (I get to learn about glass!)
5)to start my taxes.

Taxes are the most important undone task this week, for I sorely need finances (again). I have some unexpected expenses. Also, I have the world's nicest accountant (we met because our shared interests in history and books) and I don't want to cause her extra work.

I don't know if I'll get a refund this time round, but I really, really hope I do. I'm at a transition stage of my life, and I can't tell myself "Leave this until I have money." Transition stages of life are more expensive than other stages.

In other news, the engineer is back from holiday today. This means the block of flats will soon be checked for structural stuff. This is not a bad thing.

Also in other news, the weather here is fine compared with cyclone in WA and roaring winds across Texas, but for myself and weather-sensitive friends, it's not good. Muggy and warm and storms around every corner. I had a bad night, and I have one friend who may well have had worse (for it's her boys who are weather-sensitive, and feel the storms coming). I'm the lucky one, for after teaching is over, I can rearrange all my messages to tomorrow and come home and sleep it off before doing the rest of my day's work. The rather large sleep deficit one gets in weather like this is tolerable when one can sleep it off. Also when the work one faces before one sleeps it off is the best class in the world.

Today I plan to cast words among them like corn. Also, just because I feel like it and it's a fun way to approach story structure, we will write a group beginning and a group and and then each student will write their own middle. We've been getting caught a bit on tale length recently - it's time to re-prove to all of them (not just the incipient novelists) that they can write more than ten lines.

And in more other news...if you hear of someone getting arrested for creating a public disturbance, it was me. I am guilty. I fully intend to walk to the bus stop shortly singing "It's raining, it's pouring" at the top of my voice. This is because it is. I shall not let the fact that I cannot sing deter me.



PS My old computer got in one last whatever. I found two paragraphs mucked up in an article. Also some punctuation which I'd fixed. Anyway, I'm nearly at an end of these things being possible, for much of the work spawned on the old computer is where it needs to be. Only three more pieces have the opportunity to be so very wayward. I'll be very glad when it starts happening that the piece I proofed and checked is the piece that arrives on editors' desks. (And this has been happening a lot more often than I've reported her e- mostly I just frown, fix and move on.)

I just did my annual check for the Ditmars. I'm suggesting to people left right and centre that they nominate their favourite works and make sure they're seen, but my reading is a bit behind, so my own nominations will be at the last minute. I have read 66 of the novels, and intend to read as many more as I can fit in. Obviously I'm going to go for easily available fiction (I have 3 books waiting for my at the library, for instance) because I have neither time time nor the resources to go a-hunting.

There were so many novels published last year that anyone who reads them all deserves some sort of prize, but if I can read 75 of them, I will be happy. The question is not how quickly I read, but how quickly I can obtain the books.

To keep myself honest (ie to make sure I keep reading) I shall blog the books here. I wont' promise reviews - that will depend on my mood or how much time I have, but I will make a mention of each book I finish as I finish it.

Does anyone in Canberra want to do a round of book-swapping, later in the week?

I have slept and slept and slept and slept. Turns out this is what happens when the pain goes from screaming-size to "ouch, that hurts." I keep discovering how much pain I was in and being astonished. For instance, I have pain circles under my eyes still and my muscles are still stiff enough so that I can't turn my head. Whenever I lie down, I can feel the hurt that belongs with this. I think "I need to take pain killers." But I"m too tired and besides, it's not so acute I can't lie down anymore, so instead, I sleep.

I didn't realise I had reached a level of pain that meant I was actually obliterating the pain. I also didn't realise that I had learned how to tolerate quite bad pain all the rest of the time, simply because those three days a month were impossible. All I knew was that I was grumpy and couldn't see straight and couldn't think straight.

If I hadn't been driven out of my place by the chemical sensitivities, I possibly would not have been to the doctor yet. I knew I had to go, but doing anything that took me away from my desk was tough. It's still tough, which means I'm not where I need to be yet. But I will be. On Monday I will get the bloodwork done, for instance.

The amusing side of this is my astonishment. I came online just now and thought "I guess that's why I've been a bit less productive than I want to be."

Speaking of productivity, the details have been released of the volume that contains my Lanagan essay: http://salempress.com/Store/samples/critical_insights/speculative_fiction.htm

This is one of the things that's been bubbling away for months. Soon I hope to have news of the others. And now that the pain's subsiding, I can maybe make more progress on my writers and their history book. More and more I see a need for that book to be out there. The lack of progress at my end, though, means that I haven't sent off the proposal I meant to, three weeks ago. I've put in more work on it, but shaping the work into two sample chapters required a brain that was just that much clearer. So it has progressed, but not enough and not in quite the right direction.

It's an interesting balancing act, this book. I want writers to be able to use it, but I also want to use all the wonderful ground-breaking stuff I've been researching and to situate fictional historical writing in contexts that are not normally considered.

I nearly dumped my research and wrote it as a manual, which would be much easier, but which would leave the field without the stuff I feel is missing from it. By doing my balancing act I get to talk about historiography and historical method and to talk about writing techniques and the needs of readers and about the cultural contexts of genre. So many writers take their history seriously and yet are sent to high school level background texts for theory. And so much of the understanding of the relationship between history and fiction rests on how writers go about their job. The needs are meshed. It's quite tough to write because meshed needs don't always mean meshed approaches, but it's going to be a useful book, I think.

I need to get past this pain, do all the essentials for the weekend, maybe watch more Fringe, and then get to work on those two draft chapters.

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I'm becoming almost intelligent, I think. I had about 3 hours of things to do outside the home today, but I woke up with pain (thunderstorms quite late yesterday are the main cause) and there are more bushfires around today and I thought "Can they wait a day?" They can and so my messages are now all happening tomorrow. This makes it easier to work around the pain and get all the work done I need to do (for this week everything seems to have deadlines attached). It also means I can work to diminish the pain (even though we're due more storms today) and not have to live with it for longer than I have to.

The big thing that moving a few items to tomorrow gives me is a sense of accomplishment, however. I said I was gaining in intelligence, you note, not actually becoming intelligence. Five items are crossed off my to do list and I feel accomplished, but really, they're still to-be-done.

The good thing is that only five of my remaining items are hefty. I should be able to get everything I need to get done actually finished today.

For my next trick, I shall make my fourth phonecall*.



*I ought to admit that I've crossed four more things off the list simply because they're finished...