(no subject)

The time has come at last, my friends, to talk of many things. No shoes nor ships nor sealing wax, but I was certainly thinking of cabbages and kings. I was also thinking about a half day course on Medieval Canberra and about the convoluted messages my mother, my youngest sister and I leave on each other's answering machines. Instead, the new blogchain has appeared (this time round I'm near the top of the list and last time I was near the bottom, which means they have an appearance of turning up every other day, just like US elections) with Simran - who has fine taste in chocolate - talking about writing.

Writing. What an odd thing for writers to obsess about. Sorry about my little snark. It aimed at shaming myself into being a little disciplined. Today is one of those days when I cannot and should not be dreaming about novels and writing styles and the tone of introductions. No half-evolved stories of my own or even just a chapter worth of yummy reading (current book: Changer of Days, Alma Hromic/Alexander).

In fact, a goodly chunk of my next year's income depends on me not dreaming too much about fiction. The Centre for Continuing Education and I are in the throes of course development and I ought to be focussed severely on calendars and on Medieval Canberra.

It's almost-legitimate to think about whether three more people will enrol for my course on Magic in the Middle Ages the week after next. This course has produced some of my most exciting teaching moments in other years, including the time when the Wiccan High Priest led an Oprah-style chat show exploring Medieval magic belief. Almost. It's still more important to find out when the long weekends are and how the courses nest together to tempt strangers into spending an evening (or six) with me. Which is a vast pity. Wiccan High Priests are much cooler than Canberra Day.

Simran has me all sorted out, though. My life isn't about Medieval magic. It's all about writing. For every moment of planning today, I have had three moments of writing.

On the way home in the bus I worked out when duplicate explanations in narrative were artistic and when they were an uncontrolled torrent of language. Walking back from the bus stop I stopped at the traffic lights to write a new paragraph which made sense of a character's passivity.

Simran didn't ask about my compulsive behaviour, though. I guess it was all too obvious. She asked if I switched genres.

I do. Of course I do. I write academese (badly) and lighter non-fiction (not as badly) and fantasy and science fiction (increasingly better). My whole existence is about genre-switching. Except that I'm not conscious of doing it most of the time.

The only story that I have said "I am writing in *this* genre" was "Happy Faces for Happy Families." I wrote it because Donna Hanson and Maxine McArthur wistfully yearned for science fiction submissions for their anthology and I told Donna "I can't write science fiction." Telling her was the mistake. I found myself up at 3 am writing science fiction. Naturally. Except that Ellen Datlow thought it was horror. Which suits me. It means I can claim I don't write in a given genre except accidentally.

I know the genre tropes and what makes good writing in a genre. My doctorate was partly about that, and once you can recognise genres in Old French it really isn't that hard to puzzle them out in English. Except for my own writing. I can't figure *anything* out about my own writing today. I can't even figure out why I keep slipping into American English.

Part of being unable to decode my own life is because I feel as if I am illegally sneaking time out even to blog. My brain just isn't on the job. I have forms to fill in and dates to verify. My brain isn't on that job, either, but it must be done if I want my cupboards to magically fill with food next year.

Lucky Bk_30 who is up next. She lives in Florida and I bet they aren't planning next year's courses there!