Wednesday, June 28, 2000

Day Eighteen

 

Yesterday, Greg drove to the vet's office and said good-bye to Sable, the last of our pre-marriage cats. Greg had two cats when he found Sable on a cool, Autumn day and tried to find a home for him, even to the point of trying to convince me that my cat, Charcoal, needed a playmate. No one was willing to adopt Sable and thus the cat became his by default and mine post-marriage. Sable was very much an outdoor cat who resisted living inside and he seldom ate cat food because he fended so well for himself. I've lost count of the number of times we've found tiny skeletons and some not-so-tiny skeletons upon the doorstep and I don't remember how often my daughter chased him across the yard screaming for him to drop the rabbit. I remember him only as a cat who had a very, very happy life and who fought long and hard to survive. We were certain he'd survive, and then moved him to our regular vet when the problems wore on, waiting for him to improve, accepted the inevitable, regained hope when he appeared to be pulling out of it, and then faced the bitter taste of defeat when his body just couldn't survive unassisted.

 

Deciding to end the struggle was a decision born of love after ascertaining there was no possibility of survival.

And now back to Clarion.

Last night, after getting the final word on Sable, I spent an hour trying to sleep and then paced and finally picked up our instructor for the drive out to the Schuler Bookstore. Lister and Adam joined us in the cafe for sandwiches and I made the unfortunate mistake of wandering into the world history section.

I am a fanatic about the War of the Roses, the Tudor lineage, and particularly intrigued by the story of the two princes who died in the tower. My idea of heaven after Clarion is to spend a month in England wandering through the Tower of London, etc. and escorted by learned scholars who can answer every question I have. [If I'm going to dream, I might as well dream big.]

I bought way too many books and used plastic. Given the situation at home with mounting cat health care bills and now the tractor needing repair, I really should cut back. However, I've cut back for the children and I've cut back for the husband, and I've cut back for things time and time again all my life and thus we agreed [I think it was we] that this would be MY turn. My time. My gift to myself. My first opportunity in at least fifteen years to go full throttle for what I want without guilt and without hesitation. I work full time and I really have worked hard the last few years so I'm entitled to this and determined to enjoy it. Clarion will be followed by Rivercon and then Worldcon and then Context and thus the bills will mount. But after Context in October, there will be nothing until our credit cards are free and clear again.

I bought eight books and my challenge from yesterday's assignment is to try to write like an author whose work we admire. Thus, I bought another copy of Hyperion.

I stayed up until 0200 hours and then woke early enough that I could go through the completed story. It's most assurredly not a Dan Simmons story and I have failed to capture his style. OTOH, it is much more descriptive than my usual work. My actions usually take place within white rooms because in short stories, you hit the ground running with the heart of the story and flesh it out as much as you can without distracting from the story. I have a tendency to leave way too much for the reader to flesh out. Between me and Dan Simmons, we could have one writer of averagely descriptive prose.

I did manage to turn in a 2,500 word story right before we began critiquing four more stories. Six stories were turned in today. I wish I'd tracked how many stories have been turned in thus far.

We finished our critiques about 1300 hrs. today and I started from the beginning with my castration story. While I joking call it the castration story, it's really an after-the- holocaust or possibly alternate timeline or may even just a plain fantasy story. The world is modeled very much upon an Indian tribe from the East Coast that later moved to Canada. In that culture, the men were the warriors but the women made the important decisions at meetings in the large, log meeting house. I'm starting with that premise and then extrapolating from it into a female-dominatd culture where we've reversed one very important thing: In our culture, the women teach the women not to reach above their stations and to be polite and lady-like, etc. In this culture, the men will be teaching the men the same things and controlling their biology in painful ways that are really not that different from some cultures in Africa. It's very much a mixed bag and half the fun is developing the culture within which the story will take place. The goal is to tell a story that would feel most of us with fear and make it a happy story within that culture.

Quote: Aim high. You'll probably miss but at least you won't shoot your foot off.

I took a two-hour nap after keying in the beginning of my story and then I was up until well past 0200 hrs. I got so caught up in researching and finding neat things that were interesting and might be useful later but have no relevance to what I'm researching, that I got lost on the web. Bad thing! Very, very, bad thing!