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Jul. 16th, 2011 05:24 amI just realised that I have left my computer on Canberra time. I added three hours and subtracted twenty-four before I realised this fact. Now I'm wondering why I'm so chirpy at 5 am.
Another thing I calculated was how much work I have to do as follow-up for the last two weeks. Some of it will have to wait til my return, but I'm going to take advantage of being tired and spend tonight and tomorrow night sitting (or sprawling, when I want to act sybaritically) on my bed and doing bits and pieces of it. There's a perfectly comfortable chair in my room, but I am a lazy sod and will work lying down. My aim is 2000 words tonight and tomorrow night, then that whole block of writing will be done. Also, I have had book-creep happen unto me. If I write really, really quickly, then I could lie in bed and read books. Then i could write on them here and read quite different books upon my return.
Did I say that, in the end, I posted 27 kg of books to myself? This is thanks to the wisdom of friends who knew such things would arise. Although I'm not sure that any of the friends concerned quite envisaged 27 kg of books...
York is, as ever, beautiful. I had choc cake for afternoon tea and had a long talk with Lee Harris who is just as awesome in real life as online. Also very patient, for I talked a great deal, even for a Gillian.
I spent time in parks, after that, for there was much green in the cities I've been in, but parks were not as omnipresent as Canberra, and I missed them. I ought to have contemplated my sins in the Museum Park, for there were many scraps of the Middle Ages around me, turned into flowerbeds and stray ornaments, but instead I drank rose lemonade and I took photos for numerous purposes (teaching, researching, stirring friends) and then I watching the boating people (York has a river festival - I was waiting for the river god to make an appearance but he was scared away by two nine year old girls competing to see who could roll down the hill fastest) and I worked out that it was probably a good idea to make a start on reports and writing up.
Whenever I sort out the narratives that different groups use and how fiction writers access them (not a part of my work directly, but indirectly of huge importance, because it governs why some facts work in a novel and some don't, why some are accessible to fiction writers and some not) I find a hitch. My latest one is that the narratives that are most accessible to fiction writers (tour guides, for instance, which is what Michael Crichton may have based his contextualisations on (from what he says on his website - and now I've committed punctuation heresy and must pull my socks up or behave)) are really not trusted by a lot of specialists. Was it Katrin or Sara Louise or Valerie who reminded me of this at Lincoln? Valerie, perhaps, which means this insight is really hers, not mine at all. One of our archaeologist commented that the guides always blamed Cromwell for the problems with one window, when the problem was that the window had been structurally unsound and had collapsed and been assembled rather haphazardly.
Fiction writers really need historian's skills of evaluation of narratives and sources. It's that simple, and that impossible. They need to be able to compare the whole windows in the cathedral with the random one and say "Why would Cromwell's supporters blow out one window and not others?" They also need the capacity to ask the archaeologist who had worked out what happened with those windows, what his evidence was for no-one eating vegies in the Bishop's palace. Technical specialists are not universal sources of knowledge, and educators of the public will sometimes choose colour and education over a complex technical response.
On another note, I'm still getting that excited reaction when people discover I'm writing a time travel novel. Evil Gillian would really like all the historians she knows to announce the same thing in order to find out if the reading world actually wants time travel novels by historians. I suspect they do. More cans of worms.
Speaking of worms, I refrained from buying a tequila lollipop today, mainly because the dead caterpillar entombed in it did not tempt me at all. Also, I have discovered a shop that sells absinthe - 82% - can I carry it round France safely? I will worry about this in a few days time. Maybe the desire for absinthe will have passed by then. it's one of those drinks I've wondered about for years, though.
I'm not drinking nearly as much as it sounds, alas. What I'm doing is winding down after a frenetic two weeks that may well be two of the best weeks of my life. I haven't told you the half of it. If anyone wants the slide show, I think I know how to show it on a television, so consider yourself invited to dinner in August (or invite me to dinner in August - I'll be in Sydney 27-8, for teaching) and i'll give you the pretty sights and some of the Middle Ages. The rest will emerge on the blog if it becomes public. So many possibilities have opened up, but none of them are certainties. More watching of this space!
Another thing I calculated was how much work I have to do as follow-up for the last two weeks. Some of it will have to wait til my return, but I'm going to take advantage of being tired and spend tonight and tomorrow night sitting (or sprawling, when I want to act sybaritically) on my bed and doing bits and pieces of it. There's a perfectly comfortable chair in my room, but I am a lazy sod and will work lying down. My aim is 2000 words tonight and tomorrow night, then that whole block of writing will be done. Also, I have had book-creep happen unto me. If I write really, really quickly, then I could lie in bed and read books. Then i could write on them here and read quite different books upon my return.
Did I say that, in the end, I posted 27 kg of books to myself? This is thanks to the wisdom of friends who knew such things would arise. Although I'm not sure that any of the friends concerned quite envisaged 27 kg of books...
York is, as ever, beautiful. I had choc cake for afternoon tea and had a long talk with Lee Harris who is just as awesome in real life as online. Also very patient, for I talked a great deal, even for a Gillian.
I spent time in parks, after that, for there was much green in the cities I've been in, but parks were not as omnipresent as Canberra, and I missed them. I ought to have contemplated my sins in the Museum Park, for there were many scraps of the Middle Ages around me, turned into flowerbeds and stray ornaments, but instead I drank rose lemonade and I took photos for numerous purposes (teaching, researching, stirring friends) and then I watching the boating people (York has a river festival - I was waiting for the river god to make an appearance but he was scared away by two nine year old girls competing to see who could roll down the hill fastest) and I worked out that it was probably a good idea to make a start on reports and writing up.
Whenever I sort out the narratives that different groups use and how fiction writers access them (not a part of my work directly, but indirectly of huge importance, because it governs why some facts work in a novel and some don't, why some are accessible to fiction writers and some not) I find a hitch. My latest one is that the narratives that are most accessible to fiction writers (tour guides, for instance, which is what Michael Crichton may have based his contextualisations on (from what he says on his website - and now I've committed punctuation heresy and must pull my socks up or behave)) are really not trusted by a lot of specialists. Was it Katrin or Sara Louise or Valerie who reminded me of this at Lincoln? Valerie, perhaps, which means this insight is really hers, not mine at all. One of our archaeologist commented that the guides always blamed Cromwell for the problems with one window, when the problem was that the window had been structurally unsound and had collapsed and been assembled rather haphazardly.
Fiction writers really need historian's skills of evaluation of narratives and sources. It's that simple, and that impossible. They need to be able to compare the whole windows in the cathedral with the random one and say "Why would Cromwell's supporters blow out one window and not others?" They also need the capacity to ask the archaeologist who had worked out what happened with those windows, what his evidence was for no-one eating vegies in the Bishop's palace. Technical specialists are not universal sources of knowledge, and educators of the public will sometimes choose colour and education over a complex technical response.
On another note, I'm still getting that excited reaction when people discover I'm writing a time travel novel. Evil Gillian would really like all the historians she knows to announce the same thing in order to find out if the reading world actually wants time travel novels by historians. I suspect they do. More cans of worms.
Speaking of worms, I refrained from buying a tequila lollipop today, mainly because the dead caterpillar entombed in it did not tempt me at all. Also, I have discovered a shop that sells absinthe - 82% - can I carry it round France safely? I will worry about this in a few days time. Maybe the desire for absinthe will have passed by then. it's one of those drinks I've wondered about for years, though.
I'm not drinking nearly as much as it sounds, alas. What I'm doing is winding down after a frenetic two weeks that may well be two of the best weeks of my life. I haven't told you the half of it. If anyone wants the slide show, I think I know how to show it on a television, so consider yourself invited to dinner in August (or invite me to dinner in August - I'll be in Sydney 27-8, for teaching) and i'll give you the pretty sights and some of the Middle Ages. The rest will emerge on the blog if it becomes public. So many possibilities have opened up, but none of them are certainties. More watching of this space!