Updatery and the Green Glass Sea

My computer comes home tonight. The good news: new hard drive, systems operation is updated. The bad news: No data retrieved from old hard drive, all programs will have to be reloaded, all the novels in process will need to be imported again to Scrivener. Well, better to have the computer back. That saves money. The rest will just take time.

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Off to...Wiscon! So, you will be getting the barrage of Wiscon reports as usual. I have not forgotten about the Black Widow, and have been thinking about my feminism in The Avengers write up, so that's still coming.

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Yesterday on my daycation I didn't do much of anything. I had an awesome spa treatment, got my hair done and styled and read. I finished Renegade Magic by Stephanie Burgis (as expected, good!) and 3 volumes of Love and Rockets.

The evening before I finished Ellen Klages' The Green Glass Sea.

All right. So it's not a fantasy. It's a book about the Los Alamos development site for the nuclear bomb, and the experiences of two young girls who live at the project with their parents. There's a lot of the 1940s in it. The girls are very interesting characters, and their interactions are natural and evolving. Coloring everything in the background is what you know, and what the scientists don't, about our nuclear future. It's a stunner. It's the first book where I've cried reading a character scene in quite a while. I cannot recommend this book highly enough, especially if you like reading, or you're working on, character development and relationships.

One more post today, and then I've got to get down to some hard core computer program chasing.

Cath

Mirrored from Writer Tamago.

The Wanting Game

I am, alas, going to sound a bit pedantic here. Forgive me. I think that the farther up the ladder you are, I'm also going to sound kind of amateurish. So, please forgive that.

Are you ready then? Here we go.

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Let's go back to your childhood. Do you remember when you started taking lessons in _____? Because you thought it'd be cool to _____? Do you remember how awful you were at first? I come from a musically inclined family. I played the baritone. I started in sixth grade. There were a lot of squeaks and blats, and lots of tone deaf renditions of Mary's Little Lamb. I did get better.

Let's go back to a class that really challenged you in high school or college. My first philosophy test was a C. It was a boring recap of the contents of the articles I read, and my first experience that college teachers want your own thoughts and extrapolations in philosophy. I finished with an A-. I got better.

How's about that first day on the job? Let's...not talk about my first year of high school teaching. It took that long to get hazed by the kids, to learn about the patriarchal environment of a small town school, and how to work within that system. The second year was better, and although I chose not to stay in high school education, I got better at the job.

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Writing then. Remember your first story? Your first book? Your first "good" rejection? Your first request for a partial manuscript? A full? Several fulls? An almost offer of representation? It's great if we get farther and farther along the trail. How frustrating to not get there.

Two things:

1. It takes a while to learn to do anything well. To master a craft. It takes a while to write something that is good enough. Gotta live with that. Got no choice there.

2. It only takes one yes. One message in a bottle. One short straw. One number picked between one and ten.

The first point is a question of skill. Work and wait. Try not to be demoralized while you work and wait. You will be, of course. Even when you've published books, you'll probably still play these I'm not good enough games. And you aren't. But you should keep writing anyway.

The second point is the role of luck or subjective preference. And you can't do anything about whether someone is going to pluck you out from all the other straws, from all the other numbers. Stop worrying about that, because you can't do nothing about that.

In closing, go out and buy a teddy bear so you can have free hugs when you're feeling down. I got nothin' else. Get to work.

Mirrored from Writer Tamago.