Orpheus Wreath

 I used InkScape to make laurel leaf shapes.  I made a line of about six in addition to single ones.  Then I used a plotter-cutter to cut them out.






 I thought I'd be able to spiral the linked leaves into a wreath.  I probably could have, but it was much easier to use the metal tiara as a form.







 I hadn't realized it at the time, but the cut-out vein made it easy to lock the leaf strings together.





 And then I was ready to dress as if I were Orpheus.








 Tra-la!

Busy Week / Bear Dream

Lots of manuscripts to critique and things have been somewhat busy on the family end here, so I haven't blogged much in the last week.  

I was kind of in a bad place the other day writing wise.  A story got rejected.  Very likely because the market was swamped and the story wasn't what they were looking for.  Yes, I know I'm not the editor, but I thought the story had a chance of selling (or at least garnering a "it was _this_ close" rejection.  But instead it got a form rejection.  

Form rejections are the worst.  I know I should shrug them off.  But I went back and forth fretting with the "I'm just too stupid to be writing" and "Did gay protagonist kissing his boyfriend at the end have anything to do with it?"  

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I had the Bear Dream last night.  In the Bear Dream, I'm usually going onto the north end of the hill where I grew up.  In real life, there's a gravel road and lots of forest... or at least, last I checked several decades ago--it may be more developed by now.  Usually, there's a bear of some sort.  One Bear Dream many years ago, I was shoving Fiestawear plates into snowbanks and the Bear was a Polar Bear.

In this dream, I was travelling by rowboat (or maybe a small sail boat) to a small, rocky island.  It was the middle of the day, and the sun was out.  I think I had a candle or a lamp or something... possibly a glowing quartz crystal.  I got out of the boat and onto the gravelly beach.  The island was mostly bassalt cliffs with many narrow channels.  I knew that somewhere on the island was a Gaurdian Bear, and I needed to be cautious.  As I walked up a slope between two canyon walls, there were lots of lateral shelves in the rocky cliffs.  People had left memorials--silver plates, candels, lamps--within the shelves.  

I think I placed the light I was carying onto the shelf.  There was a break of some kind, and the smallish boat I'd come in had turned into a three-masted ship... and the dream went onto other things.

When I woke up, I couldn't help but notice the similarietesbetween the rocky shelves and the snow banks.  I'm guessing this dream has something to do with personal or family history... or "shelving" things not actively needed.  I'm not sure why the Bear is the guardian, though.

...and now, the Day Jobbe.

Busy Weekend

This weekend was filled with writing, visiting friends, and harping for the ordaining service for my high school friend, the Reverend Amy Beltaine.   Probably one of the funniest moments was "The Dirt Monologue" (which I think you had to be there to appreciate)....  Although, "The Re-telling of The Krumpacker  Family Library Religious Experience" was a close second.

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Lots of strange and active dreams lately.  Last night I dreamed that I was laying on a slope of quartz crystals in very bright moonlight.  I think the dream wanted to be a cross between an Arcosanti dream and a camping at the Lillines Farmstead dream. I think I might have started off hiking with Mark... 

 After a while I slid down the slope to where a throne was in a not-quite-a-cave in the side of the hill.  It was a high backed chair of wood, vaugely arts-and-crafts; it was plainer than the thrones at the Krumpacker Family Library.  Somewhere around this point, the sun started to shine.  

Of course there was a priestess of some sort there.  After some sort of "if you want to sit on the throne, you must perform this complicated Indian/Asian dance/bow," I was sitting on the throne.  Suddenly, I was reading an old Roman treatis on how to sit in thrones with advice like, "don't fidget your hands too much," and "remember to sit so that you aren't exposing your genitals" (those darn togas--wait, how did I get into a toga?)

Then the day became murkier.  There was a kind of SCA or Renn Faire gathering in front of me.  My chair was lifted and I was carried at the head of a procession.  At some point I started making proclamations, like, "Let lithesome men dance before me."  None that I recall actually appeared, but there was a kind of dance in a tent which I suddenly found myself in--or, rather, my throne was in.  It was sort of like being Motel Kamzoil during the wedding scene again.  (In waking life, this is usually what  I think of as an "Otherworld Dream" because the light usually is some kind of twilight, I usually cross some significant barrier like a stream, and the people in the dream take on a Prerafealite  appearance.)

Then the dance turned into a kind of running procession across the countryside.  Everyone was dressed in flowy robes or armor.  I was still being held aloft in the chair and we would rush up to fences or walls.  The first was a wire fence across a meadow.  We'd rush up and somehow rushing up to the fence with my throne would cause it to open and the people on the fence facing us to join in the running.  We did this at least once more, each time the fence or wall becoming more substantial.  The last one was sort of across Reed College.

The runners caried me over a brick road and set the throne down in the entry hall of a brick building.  This was some sort of hotel or inn, and ghosts or zombies were the servitors.  I don't remember too much about this part of the dream, other than I had somehow left my throne and returned to it a little later on.

I'm sure there was some more....

Must Wake Up...

I'm blaming the pollen for making me feel tired. OK, and I'm failing to transition to a Morning Lark (Be strong, there's a heart of a night owl calling...)

Dreams and Writing

Crazy dreams lately.  Two nights ago I had a matchmaking dream for one of our friends... before that there was the hypnogogic mesh image that floated behind my eyelids before I fell asleep.  The other night I must have come out to at least two dream people.  I'm guessing that explaining to someone that some stories I write have gay characters because I'm gay might have something to do with that.

Last night I dreamed I was walking somewhere very icy and I had to watch out for cars sliding over an embankment and into me.  Then I was in a magic dream garden someone had decorated with lights and cut-out dioramas -- I think it was winter and spring in the garden at the same time, because I have a strong recollection of twiggy branches in the snow (lit up with small strings of lights) and verdant leaves and spring flowers (also lit up with lights).   I'm going to blame recent paper cutout art  projects for last night.

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On the writing front, during a recent writing excersice, I managed to crank out about 600 words in about 30 minutes.  I'm reminding myself about that when I notice that I "only have a half hour to write."    

Writing in the mornings this week hasn't worked out so well... except for the morning when I woke up sore, decided to take a bath, and floated with my ears underwater and the fawcet dribbling and the bathroom fan on and asked myself what the characters were going to do and worked out story problems.  (Yes, it's true, my joints are officially barometers, and if I wake up with my feet hurting then it probably rained over night.)

And, in my mind, Chris Hadfield is standing over my bed as I squint at the clock to see if I can sleep for just five more minutes, and he says, "...don't let life kick you into becoming the adult you don't want to be."  Ug.  I think becoming a Morning Lark would be easier in microgravity.  

And now, to the Day Jobbe.

Just Ten More Minutes...

Well, let's see.  First there was a the dying cell phone tone--an electronic plea for recharging that sort of sounds like a quiet but insistent snooze alarm that chimes semi-randomly for a half hour while you lie in bed wondering if you're awake enough to actually get up and plug the phone in assuming that you can find it.

Then there was the dream where I dreamed I was telling someone an earlier dream.  For the record, I was having a conversation with Lori Carroll and we were touring new Arcosanti construction and I said to her, "Wait... are we in a Paolo Soleri concrete staircase inside a re-purposed chimney? There were also old cruise vessels being salvaged on the edge of the Aqua Freya River.  Which I lived in.  Over a gun shop.

Next, over the weekend I activated my Night Owl Tendencies.  Which makes being a Morning Lark on Monday kind of hard.  Add to that the weather, which can't decide what it wants to do, so I'm feeling it in my joints.  Feeling the rain in my broken right hand wasn't so bad compared to having barometer balls of my feet.

So... um... no.  I didn't spring out of bed at 5:30 to write.

And now, tea.

May Pollen

This morning as I was waking up, I somehow managed to splice "Let a Woman In Your Life" from My Fair Lady with another song from the musical and a third one from "Annie Get Your Gun." Something like, "I'm a very gentle man / I can drink my liquor faster than a flicker / with the milk of human kindness by the quart in every vein." Only it was more back-and-forth.

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Pollen season is here. The car has a light yellow dusting on it from the pine trees. It affects Mark more strongly than it does me. May and June are the months when Mark is "taken by the faeries" and I say things like, "oh, it's the pollen talking." The pollen season may be shorter this year--we're getting our summer weather earlier than usual. I'm hoping we get more rain soon, because the ground and some of the plants are already looking dry.

On the plus side, I unrolled the outdoor carpet for Café John. This makes pretending I'm in a French Tea Salon much easier as it covers up the growing cracks in the patio. I'm sure there's a metaphor in there somewhere....

Sanctificetur Nomen Tuum

I just got back from a workshop on Russian sacred choral music. It was fun and interesting, and it wasn't what I expected.

I misunderstood who would be teaching. I thought it would be Eastern Orthodox Christian monks, so I imagined a cross between Rasputin, the pictures of the the monks who raise German Shepherds, and Jedi Knights. They'd wear long dark brown robes, or at the very least have circular, fur-lined hats reminiscent of the Renaissance. I imagined they lived and sang in a monastery that only recently acquired electricity and indoor plumbing. Oh yes, and there would be a hint of frankincense and myrrh wherever they walked.

One of the reasons I went was story research. Sacred music and its effects play a major role in the fantasy world I tend to write about, and my understanding of Eastern Orthodox Christian monks is that they eschew musical instruments because the human voice, which is something fashioned by God, is the holiest way to sing hymns. And here was an opportunity to learn Secret Chants from foreign holy singing people! With monastic vestments and accents and everything!!

I even thought there might be a discussion of the symbolic means of various musical key signatures, and maybe even Secret Names of God. Or they'd pull out Sir Arthur Sullivan's Lost Chord with a small smile, a shrug, and a "Oh, this? It was discovered in St. Petersburg... we use it every day to get in touch with The Almighty." And maybe they'd have a musical monk's version of a lightsaber.

As a writer of fantasy stories where song, spell and prayer are supposed to the same thing, you can imagine my excitement.

It turned out the instructor, Sergey, wasn't a Orthodox Russian Ninja-Monk. He wasn't even a monk. He _was_ Russian, and he was the leader of a touring vocal ensemble. Learning a Russian Pater Noster was interesting, but the most useful thing from a writing a story-world point of view was when he would stop us singing and say something like, "this part means 'bread' and here is where the phrasing should be largo," or "Don't punch the words here, they shouldn't be war-like," or "...and this is 'Maria' and we venerate her."

In my fantasy world, I've been approaching magic and song in a mechanistic way. The story-world's Old Testament creation myth has The Father singing creation, and The Mother taking His Song and fashioning the cosmos. I've been having my spell-casters singing mechanically, which is a mist-step similar to having a B-movie scientist proclaim "E=mc^2!" in order to justify giant nuclear frogs. (Pause to imagine Bill Nye the Science Guy singing "Doe, a deer, a female deer" as a valid physics lesson....)

When I depict my characters doing magic, I need to have Sergey's memory whispering in my ear, "this is 'Maria' and we venerate her" so that, for the characters--at least some of them--there is no difference between song, spell, and prayer.

Early Morning Writing

This morning I managed to arise and write a little. What I'm finding is that it takes me about twenty minutes to be in a state where I can write, so if I want a full hour from 6 AM - 7 AM to write--less when the family wakes earlier--I have to be standing by 5:30. Or earlier.

On the days where I fail to drag myself out of bed, I kick myself for not being able to write. Feeling like an inadequate writer-wanna-be is not the best way to start the day.

Now I have to start keeping word counts....

In other news, the afternoon temperature is rising. It's OK, although it sounds like this Sunday is going to be unpleasantly hot. Alas, the air conditioning in our car has gone out over the winter, so even relatively nice days like we've been having transform the car into a rolling greenhouse oven. Time to surf the net for Toyota air conditioner tune-up tips.

But first, the Day Jobbe.

Gay Beltaine

Beltane is coming up, with all its "Tra-la, It's May!" imagery.

If you do an image search on Pinterest for "beltane" or "beltaine" you get lots of saucy pictures of white folks dressed in scanty scraps of green, with crystals or elk horns stuck on their foreheads. Or you get suggestively posed trees. There's some maypole dancing, and a few folks jumping over flames. Oh, yeah; and deely-bopper-anteneaed flower fairies.

If you do an image search for "gay beltane" or "gay beltaine" you get _nothing_. Not even gym-queens in Pan drag. Same thing for "lesbian beltane" and "LGBT beltane." Granted, this is Pinterest and not the whole internet. But still, it reflects the heteronormativity of the Neo-pagan community.

I've always had difficulties squaring homosexuality with mainstream Neo-pagan celebrations of Beltaine because attempts to do so seem like simple token substitutions (http://johnburridge.blogspot.com/2009/02/why-im-solitary-neo-pagan.html). To be fair, my latest Google search did bring up an interesting ritual exploring the erotic relationship between the Greenman and the Horned God as a metaphor for the interconnectivity of as the plant kingdom and the as the animal kingdom. ... and then it turned into a discussions of the symbolic roles of tops and bottoms.

Turning away from the internet, when I think of this time, I tend to not think in terms of Beltane and more in terms of it being The Ides of Spring: the purifying balance-point between the new beginnings of the Spring Equinox and the transformations of the Summer Solstice. For me, the male divinity of this festival manifests as an attractive man, drumming, with flowers or a wreath in his hair. I like the custom of jumping over a fire, or passing between two fires as a kind of purification--and a ritual circle of scantily-clad men drumming together around a roaring bon-fire for purification would be enchanting. And hot.

Thinking about the ritual and the erotic energy connected to this festival, I can't help think about boundaries and taboo--which circles around again to purification. And then I get conflicted thinking about how to share this kind of festival with my family. I know balancing body- and sex-positive ritual with family-friendly ritual is an on-going debate within the NeoPagan community, and it gets even more complicated in a mixed-faith family. I imagine some Neo-Pagan families get a babysitter for the "adult" rituals.

Beltane Babysitter. Now there's a story idea.

Mid-Spring Sickness

Monday morning I woke up to write and writing went OK for about twenty minutes before I realized I was writing extra slowly and I wasn't feeling so well. Rumbling guts called me away from the keyboard. By breakfast time, I had lost my appetite. Mark usually makes oatmeal--when I brought the spoon to my lips, the oatmeal tasted bitter and wrong.

I stayed home from work on the theory that telecommuting would allow for less obtrusive bathroom breaks.

I wish I could blame the pollen for this, but something's wrong because tea this morning feels unappetizing. I had very little yesterday, and we'll see how far I get on half of what I normally have by now. I'm hoping there are no caffeine-withdrawal headaches involved.

At the very least, this gives me material for characterization.

Writing with the Sphinx

The last two days, the morning sunlight has shone on our garden sphinx, turning her stoney countenance rosey. When it happened yesterday, I looked up from writing and it seemed as if a person in an Egyptian headdress crouched amidst the squill and Portuguese laurels.

I almost went out in my bathrobe with a camera. But then I decided that I would consine the vision to memory. I have pictures of the sphinx already, and they never quite turn out the way I see them in my mind's eye. Besides, sometimes Mark accuses me of living behind a camera.

And, if I was photographing the sphinx, I wouldn't be writing, which was the reason I was stumbling about before dawn in the first place.

This morning the rising sun performed its magic again. This time I noticed the cherry blossoms scattered on the lawn. I almost photographed her again. But as the shone moved and highlighted different features, I looked up at her between working on the current short story. Which was stubbornly being difficult.

The characters did something unexpected and threw my outline out, which meant I had to stop writing and try to follow where they were going. I've gotten into a bad habit of editing in my head while I write, which slows down the transcription process. And when the characters take an unexpected turn, it slows the word count further. I know several folks who just write whatever comes out and then go back and edit and revise later; supposedly this is faster than dealing with the word buffer in my head.

And now the Day Jobbe calls...

Oh What A Lovely Morning

The cherry tree out back is blooming. Mark thinks it looks like some silly Dr. Seuss tree, but I kind of like it for the soft pink color it brings to the yard. Mark likes the tree a little later in the season, when it has leaves and provides shade. Still no blooming irises yet, but they're putting up their swords of leaves and I expect we'll see their purple flags blooming in a few weeks.

I'm still thinking a little about last weekend's character workshop.

This morning when I dragged myself out of bed to write, I found that the main story I was attempting to work on was defying me. It was annoying, because I'd tried to set everything up the evening before by leaving Scivener open with the words "this is the scene where they escape the Voivode" along the top. The Big Clue that this wasn't working were the lines and lines of "It was a dark and stormy night" and "I want tea." So I switched to the character scene I worked on at the workshop. I got a little farther, but it became obvious to me that I was not in a writing groove.

I guess some days are like that. I think some of the difficulty was that the previous night's sleep wasn't the best for various reasons. I'm trying to be serene about times like this, when I set out upon the path and stupid little things come to test my resolve (and I fail). I'm sure there's a seven of something tarot card that I should be looking at this morning.

And now, off the The Day Jobbe.

Writer Thou Shalt Nots

One of the conversations that came up during the Clarion Day Workshop was how critique groups sometimes become rule-based, and they start to develop lists of Things A Writer Shouldn't Do. A writer shouldn't use flashbacks because it slows the plot and confuses the reader. A writer shouldn't start a story with dialogue.

This is incomplete advice which leads to auto-pilot critique and writing. The complete advice is There Are Things A Writer Shouldn't Do Poorly. For example, poor flashback use will confuse a reader, but skillful use of it will make a story work.

The take-away reminder is that a skillful writer can break the rules.

Another gem of advice that I was reminded about was how good writing is like walking on a narrow plank. My personal plank is the details plank: fall off it one way, and the story is buried what I call Tolkien Sclerosis; fall off the other way and the reader can't see the scene on the page or gets confused because the writer has assumed knowledge on the reader's part. One other dichotomy was when to use internal exposition verses character dialog to bring a reader up to speed about the story's situation. Go too far one way, and the characters are having flashbacks in the middle of sword fights; go to far the other way and the characters are having "as you know, Bob" dialog.

Post Clarion Mini-Workshop

I'm on the train after attending a Clarion one-day workshop on character.

What I learned.

1. I write slowly. I think I am editing in my head too much. The remedy for this is to not use the backspace key and instead hit return and recast the sentence the way I want it. Then go back and revise. I was blown away with how much good content people created in short amount of time.

2. It's common for science-fiction and fantasy writers to be good at world-building and writing plots, but not so good at writing characters. Insert "'Tolkien's Women' Essay Joke" here.

3. My particular approach to writing characters is to draw a picture of them, what they're wearing, and any objects or tools they may be using in the story. And then sort of fine-tune the character depiction with an increasing number of approximations. I need to supplement this method with a concisely written set of character traits, character goals, and author goals for the character so I'm not staring at a picture--instead of writing--trying to divine the character as if it were a tarot card. It will help when I'm returning to a manuscript later.

4. Good characterization is layered. Add the layers during revision. The most common writer errors are defaulting to the writer's vocabulary and observations, and having a character observe things because the plot demands it. During revision look at how word choice, character observation, a character's interpretation of observations, and character's vocabulary reveal character on a word by word basis.

So.

Practice, practice, practice. Which means discipline going to bed early so I can have discipline getting up extra early to have solid, consistent blocks of writing time.