Lacey

My goal was to have 10,000 submittable words by the end of November, and I didn’t make it. Instead, I’m at about 12,000 words that are not yet submission-worthy. I have one or two more scenes to write before I’m going to stop to focus on revision, some of it substantial. I’m hoping to write that last scene tomorrow. Tonight I’m drained after writing about 1,500 words and am surprised I’m even managing to squeeze this entry out. I’m looking forward to having this submission all tied up and sent away, hopefully early enough that it won’t plague my holiday preparations. And perhaps when it’s finally out the door, I’ll have the energy to detail how I managed to get it written.

A Vending Machine Ring – to symbolize that happiness does not have to come with a hefty price tag.

A thermometer with a probe cover – because it’s important to protect yourself before you go into a heated situation.

A roll of duct tape – because sometimes keeping it together requires strong adhesiveness and a tough backing.

Vending machine rings.

My wedding set and Ivan’s combined barely cost more than $500. Yesterday he asked me to “marry him again” with a 25-cent ring from a vending machine. Although I usually eschew “junk,” this 25 cents was well spent for the assurance that he thought about me. He told me how Darren tried to discourage him from “wasting” his money on the quarter machines, but Ivan couldn’t resist. As Darren yelled, “Don’t do it!” Ivan considered his options and decided a ring for me was the best thing available.

I don’t think status and marital happiness are necessarily inversely correlated, but my prejudice says differently. I always thought I’d marry someone similarly situated to me and we’d live simply by necessity our whole lives. Then I met and loved Ivan who happened to have a stable and solid income. Yet we still live simply, by choice more than necessity, and I feel that is somehow tied to happiness. We yearn to expend our time and money on that which is meaningful — and the truth is that the things money can buy are mostly not meaningful. I often wonder about relationships in which status and material wealth play a larger role, in which common dreams are related to physical things rather than a more balanced life. Do those people look at our life, at our tiny house, our old cars, and my subtle rings and see us as failures? Meanwhile, I bask in the knowledge of our joy–and wonder what they’re covering up with all their bling and glamor.

Thermometer with probe cover.

I’ve always been one who wants to be fully prepared for what I’m getting into. I think one of my least favorite things is to be caught unaware by drama after I’ve already committed to a situation. The only time that comes to mind is when we first moved into the artists’ cooperative and we encountered the “down with <NAMES REMOVED>” campaign. We rightly stayed out of it, and I rightly stayed out of most of the drama there. Perhaps if I’d fully taken the “temperature” of that place, I wouldn’t have moved in, which would have been a shame.

I tried to take the temperature of the institution of marriage before I entered it, reading tons of marriage books, studying the lives of people who are already married, pushing Ivan to answer difficult questions. So I entered into marriage somewhat prepared for what I would find here, but I knew better than to enter into marriage “protected.” It’s the constant vulnerability that makes marriage sacred.

Duct tape.

And I can’t help thinking of marriage when it comes to the duct tape metaphor, too. It’s crucial that we stick tightly to one another, but our outside shell has to be tough enough to protect us from the rest of the world. Although marriage is the most apt application of the metaphor, family and friendship groups operate on a similar principle. Perhaps more important is that it is the love of these people that patches up the damage in moments that your life feels “broken,” whether through letting you bitch or cry on their shoulders or fixing your car or lending you $20.

I can think of my writing this way as well — as something I must stick to and continue to repair, all while staying tough to the rest of the world’s indifference.

They are …

Publishing E-books for Dummies by Ali Luke – This is fairly technical reading, but after checking it out from the library, I really wanted my own copy as a reference. I’m about halfway through and plan to use it as my Bible for formatting and publishing Rumpled.

The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide by Angela Ackerman – I bought this one because I wanted to bring an Amazon order up to $25 so I could get the free shipping. I read about this book in Writers Digest and put it on my wishlist long ago. It has an alphabetical listing of emotions, along with some common facial expressions, gestures, or other mannerisms that are outward signs of that emotion. It’s not the type of book one reads cover-to-cover, but I thought it might be useful when I feel there’s too much lip-biting or hand-wringing going on. I haven’t used it yet, though … now that I have it, I almost feel as though using it would be cheating. It’s probably a better tool for revision than rough-drafting, anyway.

The Creative Life: True Tales of Inspiration by Julia Cameron – Another one I read about in Writers Digest. I still haven’t even cracked The Artist’s Way, but I’ve got the follow-up ready to go for when I do!

How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy by Orson Scott Card – There are not a ton of writing books out there that are genre-specific, and this is only the second one I’ve come across for sci-fi and fantasy. The other one I’ve read is How to Write Tales of Horror, Fantasy, and Science Fiction by J.N. Williamson, and that was over 16 years ago when I was writing my first fantasy novel. I’ve written about my ambivalence toward Orson Scott Card, so I feel it behooves me to say that I got this book through Paperbackswap so OSC isn’t making any money from my acquiring it. And when I’m done, I’ll pass it on via PBS again.

Magazine Article Writing by Betsy Graham – My dad bought this for me at a secondhand shop and recently rediscovered it in his basement. It’s over 20 years old, but good writing advice never goes out of style. And as much as publishing has changed and expanded over the past 10 years or so, magazines themselves haven’t changed much — aside from developing robust online counterparts and/or folding altogether.

If and when I get around to reading these, I’ll be sure to post my reviews here. And now that I’ve shared them, it’s time to finally make room for them on my shelf!

]]> https://llword.wordpress.com/2013/11/25/have-books-will-read-need-time/feed/ 0 1790 Lacey Louwagie Writing Books https://llword.wordpress.com/2013/11/24/book-review-jim-henson-the-biography-by-brian-jay-jones/ https://llword.wordpress.com/2013/11/24/book-review-jim-henson-the-biography-by-brian-jay-jones/#comments Mon, 25 Nov 2013 00:34:04 +0000 http://llword.wordpress.com/?p=1787 Continue reading →]]> Since The Dark Crystal has been occupying so much of my creative space these last couple months, it seemed worth sharing my review of the new Jim Henson biography here. As a creative person, I found the biography to be inspiring on many levels — in its reassurance that even cultural icons faced drawbacks and rejection, and in the knowledge that it really is possible (although perhaps rare) to be successful and to stay true to one’s artistic and moral compass. I feel honored to be participating, even in the smallest of ways, in Jim Henson’s great legacy.

If you’re going to read this book, you need to be prepared to cry for about an hour at the end.

I listened to it on audiobook, which meant I cried through the last hour or so, while I was doing the dishes.

Just so you’re prepared, Jim Henson dies at the end.

The book leading up to that point is mostly fascinating. At moments I may have felt that too much time was given to Jim’s early career (and I certainly didn’t need to know all the lineage stuff in the beginning, although that seems to be standard in biographies), but I understand the importance of examining how Jim got to where he ultimately ended up. What intrigued me most about his early career was how he wasn’t specifically interested in puppets — he was interested in producing TV entertainment, and some early opportunities in puppetry, along with his realization that puppetry was more appreciated as an art form in Europe, set him on that path. Still, he struggled throughout his career against being “boxed in” as just a “puppet guy.”

I’ll be honest and say that what I most adore about Jim Henson’s legacy is his puppet-related work because there is so much warmth, depth, and magic in it. Reading this made me want to rewatch everything I’d already seen and hunt down everything I hadn’t. A few things about Jim didn’t totally gel with me — his inability to hold onto his marriage, his weakness for fancy cars and fine furnishings, his penchant for humor that involved explosions. But other things resonated with me deeply — his interest in imagination and mythology, his feeling that there would never be enough time to do everything he wanted to in life, and the integrity with which he treated his work, especially that which was aimed at children. His ethos, focused on acceptance, warmth, forgiveness, and optimism, is part of what makes his legacy so powerful, and the reason that I was so inconsolable when the author related his death and its aftermath. (I remember crying when I watched the Muppets’ Tribute to Jim Henson when I was 9. Then I cried when I read this book. Then I dug up the tribute on YouTube, watched it again, and … cried again.) Perhaps I would have preferred not to know about some of the more gruesome moments in Jim’s last hours, and although I wept as I listened to it, when I later related the story to Ivan I found myself angry. Jim died of complications from Strep throat — something that almost killed me when I was a child — and something that could have absolutely been prevented if he had been less stubborn about seeking help earlier in his illness. If he had, perhaps we’d see where his imagination and his dreams would have continued to take him. It’s especially painful to know he always imagined himself “sitting in his rocking chair, performing Kermit when he was eighty.”

We’re lucky that his family and colleagues saw the value in his work and have continued his legacy. If there was one thing I would have wanted more of from this book, it was an examination of how Henson-related projects unfolded after his death. (Happily, we’ll get another one in March of 2014 — what a lovely birthday present!)

Overall, this is a book that will stick with me for its humanization of a cultural icon, for its balanced examination of a brilliant dreamer, and for its Kleenex-box ending. Definitely worth a read.

Cover image from Sarah Pepper’s newest release.

Last week, I went to a community ed class about how to market your book put on by Sarah J. Pepper, a local author who has achieved success through both traditional and self publishing. I always wonder when I show up at these things whether I’ll learn anything new, and I always walk away from them glad that I went. Along with some potential freelance contacts, great handouts, and frantically jotted notes, I also came away with this revelation:

To really market, I need to stop writing.

Not forever (God no!) but long enough to not be distracted. Long enough to let my writing energy rest and build up. Long enough to really commit myself to marketing, and long enough to possibly see results.

This came when Sarah admitted that her husband told her she “can’t start” writing a new book until after her soon-to-be-released Death of the Mad Hatter is released. So all that writing energy goes toward … promoting the upcoming book.

I’ve never been good at marketing because I always try to squeeze it in on the fringes of my writing work (which I try to squeeze in on the fringes of my paid work). And since I don’t like marketing, it’s easy for it to fall to the bottom of the “to-do” list. It’s not so much that I don’t like talking about my work — like most writers, I enjoy that very much. But I don’t like feeling like I’m “bugging” people. And as an introvert who doesn’t really like to be “sold to,” I project that onto anyone I might try to sell myself to, and I sort of crumple up inside. And I retreat to writing. True, there could be worse ways to avoid a dreaded task. But I really, really, really need to give this self-promotion thing a try if I want to keep striving to make writing central in my life. And I do.

Now the decision point comes — I know that my focus needs to be on my Dark Crystal submission until I send it off, hopefully in early December. After that, my initial plan was to return to work on my Rapunzel novel and work on preparing my Rumpled ebook for distribution. But it may not be wise to pursue both at once, as I’m likely to hide from the ebook within Rapunzel. Still, I’m thinking a good strategy might be to complete my second draft of Rapunzel, then set it aside to work on Rumpled. I’ll probably have some fresh insight when I return to my Rapunzel draft afterwards. Now the real question is whether I can accomplish all this before next November, which is supposed to be my “on” year for NaNoWriMo. Stay tuned!

How to Spend a Weekend Alone

Ingredients

48 hrs solituide
DVDs
Internet connection/computer
Books
Journal
Protein bars and other quick or non-meals

If you find yourself alone for the weekend, don’t despair! This can be an opportunity for reflection, personal growth, and rejuvenation.

It’s best if you know in advance that you will be spending the weekend alone. This gives you some time to mentally prepare. Think of all the things you might do when your partner, family, or room-mates are away. You might watch the romantic movie that’s too cheesy for everyone else’s tastes, or watch all your favorite “shipping” moments fro your favorite couple without having to explain why you’re watching just 5 minutes of a dozen X-Files episodes.

Still, even if you look forward to some aspects of your weekend alone, all that time to yourself might feel overwhelming. This tentative schedule can help you get started.

Friday Night

The weekend is here at last! Give yourself some downtime — eat leftovers or order takeout, and settle in for a movie you’ve wanted to watch. If you like to stay up late when you’re home alone, watch a series marathon, or make the movie a double feature.

Saturday

Sleep in as long as you like — no one will judge! But this is the day when you’ll feel better about yourself if you’re a little bit productive. Clean the house or run some errands in the first half of the day. Consider using the second half of the day for creativity. Write in your journal, bust out the magnetic poetry, play an instrument, or make homemade gifts. Feel the bliss of “losing yourself” in a creative endeavor.

As the evening rolls in, give yourself the chance to relax again. Curl up with a good book, or plunk yourself down in front of the TV. At this point, a little junk food might help you round off the night.

Sunday

Go to a different church than usual — maybe one you’re curious about, or one you’ve drifted away from that you’re starting to miss. This gives you a new experience, and you don’t have to answer questions about why you’re alone at your regular place of worship.

This is a good day to get outside. Take a walk or a bike ride, and bring a book so you can stop in a pretty area, perhaps a park, to read. Reflect on and enjoy your last few hours of solitude.

Sunday is a good day for making something special to get you through the week ahead — a mixx CD to listen to in your car, or a batch of cookies to pack in your work lunches.

Before you know it, that door will open and the people you share your life with will return. Hopefully your time alone has given you a new appreciation for them — and, of course, for yourself!

I wavered between giving this a high three stars or a low four. It was beautifully written, with believable characters and motivations. For me its main drawback was how long it took to get going; for half the book, it’s really just literary fiction rather than fantasy or fairy tale retelling, which makes the occasional fantastical elements feel out of place. The writing style in the beginning half also felt a little distant to me, similar to the writing in fantasy classics like the Narnia series, which I’ve never really loved.

The book really picks up in the second half, though, and here we see Anne Ursu’s fantasy writing skills on full display. Hazel’s trip into the woods leads her through one surreal experience after another, many of them enough to cause a lingering shiver when you think of them. The woods are also rich with metaphor, longing, and darkness, where things are not what they seem. This is “hero’s quest” writing at its best; it changes the character and tests her mettle, and you know nothing will ever be the same again.

The winter ambiance was also incredibly rich. No surprise that the author lives in Minnesota! One comment on the audio version, which is how I read this book: they made the odd choice to have a male narrator even though the story is told almost exclusively from Hazel’s perspective, making a female voice seem the more logical choice. The reader did have a good “storytelling” voice, but that may have contributed to certain parts of the book feeling a tad distant as well.

View all my reviews

“In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him.” – A.E. Wiggin

Warning: this post contains Ender’s Game spoilers; proceed with caution unless you’ve already read the book, seen the movie, or have no intention of doing either.

It’s a big scary world out there, Ender, full of aliens and homosexuals.

My husband and I went to Ender’s Game on Friday. I thought it was a beautiful movie, but I still left the theater feeling conflicted. I knew many people were boycotting the movie because of Orson Scott Card’s homophobia — which, as an attitude, could perhaps be forgiven, if he hadn’t also taken active steps to block GLTBQ people from enjoying full rights. It was later revealed that OSC won’t receive any money from box office sales, but many continued the protest on philosophical grounds. Others say to go ahead and see the movie if you want to, but just don’t buy OSC’s books. I have a fairly extensive collection of Orson Scott Card’s books, purchased back when I only knew him as a gifted storyteller and not as a homophobic bigot. Luckily, all my OSC books came to me through used book sales and Paperbackswap, so none of my money has made it back to him (and, by extension, into the anti-gay campaigns he supports).

I often don’t have to struggle with such cognitive dissonance about the entertainment I enjoy, because most creative types are pretty open minded people, especially writers of speculative fiction, where being able to imagine new and different worlds is a job requirement. But one thing that always frustrates me about “classic” science fiction (Ray Bradbury, H.G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, etc.) is that, although these authors could imagine vastly different worlds in terms of politics and technology, they could not imagine gender roles that went beyond the norms of the time they were writing in, leaving their female characters empty and one-dimensional. Orson Scott Card frustrates me in the same way.

In response to the boycott, Orson Scott Card issued a statement in which he said Ender’s Game had nothing to do with “gay rights” (my paraphrase) because they were not an issue when the book was written in 1984 (head in the sand much?). But Ender’s Game, which is ultimately a story about tolerance, remorse, and forgiveness, has plenty to say about prejudice–and that includes homophobia.

Ender is a powerful leader because he understands his enemies to the point of “loving” them. This is what keeps him from becoming brutal, although his mission requires violence. His biggest frustration when faced with the Formics (the alien “invaders”) is that he has trouble understanding them. But eventually, he does — and when he does, he feels such remorse over the genocide he unknowingly committed that he devotes the rest of his life trying to make it right.

In case you missed this, Ender found a way to understand and love an alien species that looked, thought, and communicated nothing like him, and that had wiped out millions of his people. If Orson Scott Card can imagine this feat of understanding, why can’t he make the comparatively tiny leap toward understanding people who fall in love with others of the same sex? Anyone who has fallen in love is already 98% of the way there. If you understand love, if you understand the desire to live a life free from hatred and discrimination, if you understand the desire to follow your heart, there’s not really anything else you need to understand about being gay. And yet, Orson Scott Card apparently cannot make that leap; and he puts his money and his activism into pushing others back from making that leap, too. Is this what Ender would do?

As the series progresses, we see that Ender’s remorse over his role in the Formic genocide leads him to a deeper understanding of all life. In Speaker for the Dead, he makes it his work to find the seeds of good in even the most seemingly “evil” of people, so that after life they can retain some dignity and be remembered as human beings rather than “monsters.” Again, if Orson Scott Card can theoretically make the leap and see “good” in someone who beats his wife and children, why can he not make the same leap to see the “good” in people who are not of his politcal/moral/homophobic persuasion?

Many people speculate that OSC is a “closet case” who feels that the current social order is the only thing “saving” him from giving into his own secret gay desires. While I’m not going to use this blog to speculate on his sexual orientation, he hasn’t left issues of gender ambiguity completely alone in his work. In Children of the Mind, Ender’s adopted son Miro finds himself attracted to “Young Valentine,” who is a projection of Ender’s mind. That means that Young Valentine essentially has Ender’s soul; she is not a real woman, but a man’s imagining of a woman, retaining something that is ultimately male. Miro reflects on this — does it mean that, underneath it all, he’s really attracted to Ender? He can’t shake his feelings for Young Valentine, even after this contemplation. Is it just me, or are things getting a little queer in here?

While the characters in the Ender’s saga attempt a “live and let live” philosophy toward alien races, viruses, and other humans, Orson Scott Card agitated to prevent his fellow human beings from having equal rights and equal dignity. To his credit, he’s willing to “let the case rest” now that the Supreme Court has ruled that forbidding same-sex marriage is unconstitutional (even though, in the past, he’s called to “overthrow” any government that would let such a thing happen.) But how much of this is him “taking it like a man,” and how much of it is his fear over how his homophobia might affect his pocketbook? He’s pleaded for “tolerance” of his views from those on the other side, just as he’s decided to “tolerate” them by no longer fighting against same sex marriage.

Let’s return to Ender’s Game. Although I love the story’s message, there remains a bit that rubs me the wrong way. And that is how quickly, how easily, Ender is forgiven for wiping out an entire sentient species by that very species. While human beings commit genocide to retaliate for millions who died in a past war, the Formic Queen forgives genocide and allies herself with the one who committed it as soon as she understands the depth of his remorse. Now, it seems that Orson Scott Card wants a similarly quick “forgiveness turnaround” from the GLTBQ community. But there’s one important difference: Orson Scott Card has expressed no remorse for the spiritual violence his activism has committed on millions of GLTBQ people and those who love them; instead, he’s simply decided to “let it go.” This is not enough. We have been “tolerating” homophobes forever — when was the last time you heard of gay people committing “hate crimes” against the people who spread hatred toward them? Despite fear rhetoric to the contrary, GLTBQ people have never tried to take away the rights of homophobic people — they just don’t want their homophobia imposed on secular institutions. That is tolerance, and those of us who support GLTBQ rights have been doling it for years. Orson Scott Card can have my “tolerance,” but he cannot have my respect, my admiration, or my money.

In Orson Scott Card’s crusade against homosexuality, he has committed a grave evil, just as Ender Wiggin has. The difference is that Ender immediately feels acute remorse, whereas Orson Scott Card seems to feel a smidgen of embarrassment. Asking for tolerance is not enough. To truly redeem himself, he must ask for forgiveness.