I haven’t been posting much because I’ve been closing in on the end of a draft of a novel-in-progress. Everything else pretty much has to get out of the way for the moment. I have been kicking around different titles, however, and thought I’d ask what appeals. The working title has been The Best Lucifer Ever. Also in contention are Lucifer in Dreams and Lucky to Have Lucifer. If any of these sounds more enticing to you, please pass that information along.
One of the very best writers in fantasy these days is Jeffrey Ford. His new novel, The Shadow Year, will be coming out March 11th, and I can hardly wait. It’s based on his World Fantasy Award winning novella “Botch Town.” He told me at World Fantasy he was particularly pleased with the cover, and I can see why.
You have to love a story like this. It seems a struggling creationist museum near Lubbock, Texas is strapped for cash in spite of its ideal location in God’s country, and is being forced to auction off its prize mastodon skull. The story from AP makes it sound like mastodons were dinosaurs. Tut, tut. Mastodons were mammals contemporary with early man. Imagine: Barney Rubble and Fred Flintstone might’ve ridden astride this very beast!
Maybe all the sf writers who’ve gotten so much mileage out of the prehistoric over the years might pony up some cash to help save one of God’s roadside attractions. What do you say, Swanwick?
I mentioned Naomi Epel’s cool deck of writing advice The Observation Deck the other day, which prompted Dustin Lacina to recommend Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies deck of creative prompts. It’s available in a nifty Widget, if you happen to be a Mac owner. If you’re not, I’m sorry about the series of bad decision that has led you to that state of affairs. The prompts are little moments from Eno’s creative process. Things like Water or Go Outside and Shut the Door. They work for me. I’ve been like a self-rewarding rodent ever since I installed it. My Sudoku Widget sits idle. I notice that all parts of the creative process aren’t included, only the punchy moments. Things like Get Drunk or Give Up or Start Over didn’t make the final cut. I’m reminded of a time when I was working on Circuit of Heaven and trying to get a handle on Justine, so I had her tarot cards read. Worked like a charm, as they say. I used to do a little tarot reading in Texas, though never for money. Fiction writing is good preparation. It’s a great workout for the unconscious. Unfortunately, people will believe you, so I quit, though I’ll occasionally do a reading for one of my characters if they ask. My favorite Anne Tyler novel is Searching for Caleb, about a card reader who always counsels the same thing: Change! Amen.
I’ve been doing what I often do two-thirds of the way through a novel, I’ve been re-structuring it. My most influential writing teacher, Ellington White, used to say often that if a piece of fiction isn’t working, or becomes bogged down, the problem (or solution, depending how you want to look at it) often lies in the structure.
The phrase “think architecturally” I’m borrowing from Naomi Epel’s nifty little deck of cards recommended to me by Steve Krause, called The Observation Deck: A Tool Kit For Writers. Each card addresses some writerly advice gleaned from a wide range of writers Epel interviewed. It sounds cheesy, I know, but the idea is to draw a card when stuck or looking for a little inspiration, read the discussion in the accompanying booklet, and take it from there. It rarely tells me anything I don’t know already, but that’s usually the point: You’re forgetting something you already know!
So in my case, when I drew this card and remembered Ellington’s advice, a cursory examination of the three threads of the story quickly revealed they were seriously out of proportion with each other, and while one was ladled in great globs, the others were eked out in dribs and drabs. The sequence of events in each needed to be seriously reworked. This led to other discoveries and an end to the logjam. Feeling stuck? Ellington, Naomi, and I recommend having a look at structure.
That was the CNN opinion question this morning, and I was surprised to find myself in a 25% minority who said no. I rather enjoyed the holidays. Maybe this is because we didn’t go to any malls or travel or do much of anything but visit with friends and go for a few hikes. We especially enjoyed an 8-mile out and back at Dutch Gap, even if there is a power plant from Hell there. Alice and Sharky were unavailable for comment, but as you can see they had quite the fun New Year’s Eve.
Sarah and I made a visit to the Edgar Allan Poe Museum here in Richmond. It was a dreary, rainy, melancholy day—perfect, in other words, to visit Edgar. In the middle of the place is the Enchanted Garden, said to be fashioned from the descriptions in a couple of Poe poems, one of which is a favorite of mine, “To Helen.” There are two Poe poems so named. This one was sent to Sarah Helen Whitman, unsigned, untitled. She took it to a friend for a “psychometric reading.” You see in the photo how much she liked it. That Poe was quite a charmer, I must say.
TO HELEN.
I SAW thee once — once only — years ago:
I must not say how many — but not many.
It was a July midnight; and from out
A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring,
Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven,
There fell a silvery-silken veil of light,
With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber,
Upon the upturned faces of a thousand
Roses that grew in an enchanted garden,
Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe —
Fell on the upturn’d faces of these roses
That gave out, in return for the love-light,
Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death —
Fell on the upturn’d faces of these roses
That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted
By thee, and by the poetry of thy presence.
Clad all in white, upon a violet bank
I saw thee half reclining; while the moon
Fell on the upturn’d faces of the roses,
And on thine own, upturn’d — alas, in sorrow!
Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight —
Was it not Fate, (whose name is also Sorrow,)
That bade me pause before that garden-gate,
To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses?
No footstep stirred: the hated world an slept,
Save only thee and me. (Oh, Heaven! — oh, God!
How my heart beats in coupling those two words!)
Save only thee and me. I paused — I looked —
And in an instant all things disappeared.
(Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted!)
The pearly lustre of the moon went out:
The mossy banks and the meandering paths,
The happy flowers and the repining trees,
Were seen no more: the very roses’ odors
Died in the arms of the adoring airs.
All — all expired save thee — save less than thou:
Save only the divine light in thine eyes —
Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes.
I saw but them — they were the world to me!
I saw but them — saw only them for hours,
Saw only them until the moon went down.
What wild heart-histories seemed to he enwritten
Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres!
How dark a woe, yet how sublime a hope!
How silently serene a sea of pride!
How daring an ambition; yet how deep —
How fathomless a capacity for love!
But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight,
Into a western couch of thunder-cloud;
And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees
Didst glide away. Only thine eyes remained;
They would not go — they never yet have gone;
Lighting my lonely pathway home that night,
They have not left me (as my hopes have) since;
They follow me — they lead me through the years.
They are my ministers — yet I their slave.
Their office is to illumine and enkindle —
My duty, to be saved by their bright light,
And purified in their electric fire,
And sanctified in their elysian fire.
They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope),
And are far up in Heaven — the stars I kneel to
In the sad, silent watches of my night;
While even in the meridian glare of day
I see them still — two sweetly scintillant
Venuses, unextinguished by the sun!
I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas. Much to my regret, I never knew Sarah’s dad, Ben, but he took up painting late in life, and this is one of his pieces that hangs in our bedroom. I never tire of looking at it. As a boy he lived on Forest Hill Avenue where the streetcar is passing. That tiny little guy making his way to the park just may be him.
Sarah goes to Barcelona for three weeks, and I get the little guy pictured below, a Catalonian tradition called a canager. Shitter, I believe, is an accurate translation. The tradition is to put him somewhere in the nativity scene. I’ll spare you his bare backside or any puns on Anne Lamott renaming her fine book on writing. Sometimes you just get the perfect gift, you know? When Sarah and I spent Christmas Eve in Naples a few years ago, the nativity market was one of the highlights. There, the nativity scene often included this oversize baker lurking by the camels and wise men like he was waiting to pull a pizza out of the oven. What would you put in your nativity? Don’t you just love Christmas?
The conclusion of R3, my Christmas story, is now available on Strange Horizons. I hope everyone’s getting a snoot full of the Christmas spirit—and I don’t mean shop till you drop.
For those of you who’ve inquired about God’s campaign, he does have plans to return to the campaign trail once he figures out what Romney means by freedom needing religion and religion needing freedom and all the other God blather that’s going on. “It’s embarrassing, all this talk about me,” he says. “What about the issues?”