My goodness.
It seems I have won a contest.
Personally, I think reading the list of rejections is prize enough.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Monday, November 9, 2009
Storytime
Current Reading: Now and Forever, by Ray Bradbury
Inspirational Quote: "The more you give, the more you get in return." -- Dave Thomas, Founder of Wendy's Restaurants and an adoptee.
Let me tell you a story...
Once upon a time (Cassandra tells me that all good stories start this way), there was a husband and wife who very much wanted children. Unfortunately, for reasons no-one could explain, they remained childless. They decided to adopt and registered themselves with the local Children's Aid Society. Years passed, for in the olden days, adoption was a slow process and Rip-Van-Winkle could have had a nap in the time between registration and adoption finalization.
Then one day, they received a phone call. A sibling group had become available, two brothers, who needed to be moved from foster care right away. The husband and wife were given four days to decide (very unusual and against established process). They did not sleep much during those four days. In the end, they said "Yes," even though they had no prior experience with children, because... well, because they believed in themselves and in each other and because they believed this opportunity coming at this time was something like destiny, or the will of God, or synchronicity or whatever words you like to use to describe things that just happen, but feel as though they were inevitable.
So two boys, six and nine, moved into their rather small home and all four of them tried to figure out how to become a family. It wasn't easy. Mom and Dad had no idea how to be parents. The boys had begun their lives in a home of abuse and neglect, and had only begun to think of their foster home as "home," when they were pulled out of it and placed with complete strangers who were, so far as they understood, just another set in a long line of people named "Mom and Dad."
Time passed, because it does that no matter how much you wish it wouldn't. There were a lot of hard times. The emotional damage they suffered had left them moody, uncommunicative and sometimes violent. The family used all the resources the CAS could offer, and sought support from other adoptive parents. They learned that they could not change the past, but they could make a good future. They learned how to cope, not necessarily with grace or without occasional bouts of despair, but with tenacity.
And there was love, always. And time wore the jagged edges off all of them, and they fit together about as well as families ever do.
There is no end here because we're still in the middle of it. Nor is there a moral because real lives don't have those. There is, however, an appendix:
My sons are thirteen and fifteen now, on the edge of becoming young men with all the storms and madness that accompany that stage of life. There are things that, as adoptive parents, Penelope and I have had to deal with that ordinary families cannot understand, and probably can't imagine. It's hard sometimes, but they are my sons. They may not have started their lives with me, but I shall end mine with them and I believe the latter is far more important. Although I see myself, my sense of humor, my sense of right and wrong, reflected in them every day, it is their impact on me that I feel every moment, especially as I look back on the previous seven years and look forward to the next sixty.
November is Adoption Awareness Month. Whatever your situation, single/married, gay/straight, childless/childful/childish, consider adoption (or even just fostering). You really can make a difference in a child's life, and they will make a wonderful difference in yours.
(For the curious: Cassandra was born 14 months after the boys moved in. Yep: 3 kids in 14 months, with 10 years between the oldest and the youngest. I always say I had my children in an avalache. I can't say I recommend it, but it's worked for me).
Inspirational Quote: "The more you give, the more you get in return." -- Dave Thomas, Founder of Wendy's Restaurants and an adoptee.
Let me tell you a story...
Once upon a time (Cassandra tells me that all good stories start this way), there was a husband and wife who very much wanted children. Unfortunately, for reasons no-one could explain, they remained childless. They decided to adopt and registered themselves with the local Children's Aid Society. Years passed, for in the olden days, adoption was a slow process and Rip-Van-Winkle could have had a nap in the time between registration and adoption finalization.
Then one day, they received a phone call. A sibling group had become available, two brothers, who needed to be moved from foster care right away. The husband and wife were given four days to decide (very unusual and against established process). They did not sleep much during those four days. In the end, they said "Yes," even though they had no prior experience with children, because... well, because they believed in themselves and in each other and because they believed this opportunity coming at this time was something like destiny, or the will of God, or synchronicity or whatever words you like to use to describe things that just happen, but feel as though they were inevitable.
So two boys, six and nine, moved into their rather small home and all four of them tried to figure out how to become a family. It wasn't easy. Mom and Dad had no idea how to be parents. The boys had begun their lives in a home of abuse and neglect, and had only begun to think of their foster home as "home," when they were pulled out of it and placed with complete strangers who were, so far as they understood, just another set in a long line of people named "Mom and Dad."
Time passed, because it does that no matter how much you wish it wouldn't. There were a lot of hard times. The emotional damage they suffered had left them moody, uncommunicative and sometimes violent. The family used all the resources the CAS could offer, and sought support from other adoptive parents. They learned that they could not change the past, but they could make a good future. They learned how to cope, not necessarily with grace or without occasional bouts of despair, but with tenacity.
And there was love, always. And time wore the jagged edges off all of them, and they fit together about as well as families ever do.
There is no end here because we're still in the middle of it. Nor is there a moral because real lives don't have those. There is, however, an appendix:
My sons are thirteen and fifteen now, on the edge of becoming young men with all the storms and madness that accompany that stage of life. There are things that, as adoptive parents, Penelope and I have had to deal with that ordinary families cannot understand, and probably can't imagine. It's hard sometimes, but they are my sons. They may not have started their lives with me, but I shall end mine with them and I believe the latter is far more important. Although I see myself, my sense of humor, my sense of right and wrong, reflected in them every day, it is their impact on me that I feel every moment, especially as I look back on the previous seven years and look forward to the next sixty.
November is Adoption Awareness Month. Whatever your situation, single/married, gay/straight, childless/childful/childish, consider adoption (or even just fostering). You really can make a difference in a child's life, and they will make a wonderful difference in yours.
(For the curious: Cassandra was born 14 months after the boys moved in. Yep: 3 kids in 14 months, with 10 years between the oldest and the youngest. I always say I had my children in an avalache. I can't say I recommend it, but it's worked for me).
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Putting a Big Box Inside a Small Box
Current Reading: Now and Forever, by Ray Bradbury
Inspirational Quote: "Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." -- Howard Thurman
Well, in theory, this is my last week of waiting to know my employment fate. In reality, who knows?
I've been writing a query for the Magnus Somnium. The novel is not ready to approach an agent yet, but I thought I'd post a query to Critters as a way of requesting readers for the manuscript. Anyway: writing a good query? Harder than it looks.
It's the literary equivalent of trying to pull your whole house inside-out through the front-door keyhole.
I mean, describing the story in 250-or-so words? You've really got to figure out what the important points are. I can do it in a sentence, but that's easy. You just drop everthing but the protagonist and the conflict. But when you have to add in some details, maybe an event or two, the whole thing blows up into unmanagable proportions.
It's like there's no middle ground.
Of course I lie. There is middle ground. Successful writers find it every day. It's just a skill in which actually writing a novel gives you no practice.
Inspirational Quote: "Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." -- Howard Thurman
Well, in theory, this is my last week of waiting to know my employment fate. In reality, who knows?
I've been writing a query for the Magnus Somnium. The novel is not ready to approach an agent yet, but I thought I'd post a query to Critters as a way of requesting readers for the manuscript. Anyway: writing a good query? Harder than it looks.
It's the literary equivalent of trying to pull your whole house inside-out through the front-door keyhole.
I mean, describing the story in 250-or-so words? You've really got to figure out what the important points are. I can do it in a sentence, but that's easy. You just drop everthing but the protagonist and the conflict. But when you have to add in some details, maybe an event or two, the whole thing blows up into unmanagable proportions.
It's like there's no middle ground.
Of course I lie. There is middle ground. Successful writers find it every day. It's just a skill in which actually writing a novel gives you no practice.
Book Report: Escapement, by Jay Lake
This is my first Lake book, and I enjoyed it tremendously. It's the story of a girl with a gift who ranges far from home to find a place for herself and it in the world. She ends up finding her place both closer to home and farther away than she ever dreamed.
This is a sequel to Lake's Mainspring, which I have been unable to acquire (haven't tried too hard, mind you), but it seems to be an independent story with independent characters, and shares only the world and the situation with the previous book.
And what a world.
Taking steampunk thought a little further than I ever bothered to imagine, Lake imagines an Earth divided at the equator by a wall. This wall rises straight up into space where it forms a gear by which Earth fits into the clockwork of the solar system. At night, the characters are able to look up into the heavens and see the distant massive cogs that form their Universe. That's a perspective that would definitely impact your world view.
My least-favorite part of the book is the plot, I'm afraid. Perhaps things would fit together better for me if I read Mainspring. Perhaps not. I was left at the end with so many questions: what happened to the English attempt to drill through the wall? What happened to Boaz, the metal man, or the Mask Childress and her renegade Chinese submarine crew?
This leaves a great deal of room for a sequel, but I was disappointed that in a book which seemed to have so little direct follow-on from its predecessor, so much would be left unresolved.
Still, a great book. Lake's prose is wonderful, providing the perfect concrete details that make his world come to life.
Ulysses Rating: 4 - I loved this.
This is a sequel to Lake's Mainspring, which I have been unable to acquire (haven't tried too hard, mind you), but it seems to be an independent story with independent characters, and shares only the world and the situation with the previous book.
And what a world.
Taking steampunk thought a little further than I ever bothered to imagine, Lake imagines an Earth divided at the equator by a wall. This wall rises straight up into space where it forms a gear by which Earth fits into the clockwork of the solar system. At night, the characters are able to look up into the heavens and see the distant massive cogs that form their Universe. That's a perspective that would definitely impact your world view.
My least-favorite part of the book is the plot, I'm afraid. Perhaps things would fit together better for me if I read Mainspring. Perhaps not. I was left at the end with so many questions: what happened to the English attempt to drill through the wall? What happened to Boaz, the metal man, or the Mask Childress and her renegade Chinese submarine crew?
This leaves a great deal of room for a sequel, but I was disappointed that in a book which seemed to have so little direct follow-on from its predecessor, so much would be left unresolved.
Still, a great book. Lake's prose is wonderful, providing the perfect concrete details that make his world come to life.
Ulysses Rating: 4 - I loved this.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Braindump
Current Reading: Now and Forever, by Ray Bradbury
Inspirational Quote: "I believe that we are here for each other, not against each other. Everything comes from an understanding that you are a gift in my life - whoever you are, whatever our differences." -- John Denver
Success
I've found myself thinking more and more about the definition of success. Kristine Kathryn Rusch has a great deal of analysis, in several parts, that indicates why the idea might be worth some contemplation.
I've never felt like a success. I got through university, I eventually got a job which led to other jobs and to about as much financial reward as could reasonably be expected. By that measure, I guess I'm doing alright (although that could change in the next three weeks. Yes, I know, but I've been told that deadlines have slipped and dates are approximate. My happiness is immeasurable). I've got a working marriage and a family that clunks along without actually flying apart, so I guess that could be considered success of a sort.
However, I feel less like a success than as though I simply haven't failed.
But that judgement demands I define personal success. What am I reaching for that I haven't achieved? I haven't finished thinking about that. Until I have, I guess worrying about whether or not I'm successful is a fool's exercise.
Musical Interlude, Part I
I feel bad about this: more than 20 years after hearing "Summer of Sixty-Nine" the first time, I've realized that I don't like Bryan Adams's music.
Please, don't tell anyone. They'll revoke my Canadian citizenship and I'll have to move to somewhere foreign, like Andorra.
I could just move to Quebec, but I refuse to worship Celine Dion and that may cause greater difficulty than my lack of French fluency.
Politics
No modern politician has had as significant an impact on my country (Canada, not Andorra. Not yet.) than Pierre Trudeau. The Toronto Star asked Pierre's son, Justin Trudeau, to review the second book of his father's biography. Interesting reading.
Musical Interlude, Part II
October 12th was the anniversary of the death of John Denver, a musician, writer and actor who was everyone's kid brother during the 70's. As a teenager, my favorite albums were Star Wars (by John Williams and the LSO), and Greatest Hits Volume 1 (by John Denver). This is perhaps greater testimony to my innate oddity than any other single fact I could relate.
And of course he had numerous appearances on the Muppet Show.
He lost me when he began turning to New Age concepts and away from the sort of grass-roots innocence that informed his early work, but that's the way it goes.
For those of you who expected a teen-aged Ulysses to an angst-ridden fan of rebel-music, metal or counterculture, I'm sorry to disappoint. I'm too shallow for any of that.
Anyway, here's Calypso in memoriam, a piece which never fails to stir my nostalgia.
His description of a moment of subconscious creative breakthrough (a conscious mind becomes saturated with a problem it is unable to solve despite complete concentration, it distracts itself with some other activity only to find the subconscious providing a complete solution during that activity) should be familiar to creative people in any field.
Inspirational Quote: "I believe that we are here for each other, not against each other. Everything comes from an understanding that you are a gift in my life - whoever you are, whatever our differences." -- John Denver
Success
I've found myself thinking more and more about the definition of success. Kristine Kathryn Rusch has a great deal of analysis, in several parts, that indicates why the idea might be worth some contemplation.
I've never felt like a success. I got through university, I eventually got a job which led to other jobs and to about as much financial reward as could reasonably be expected. By that measure, I guess I'm doing alright (although that could change in the next three weeks. Yes, I know, but I've been told that deadlines have slipped and dates are approximate. My happiness is immeasurable). I've got a working marriage and a family that clunks along without actually flying apart, so I guess that could be considered success of a sort.
However, I feel less like a success than as though I simply haven't failed.
But that judgement demands I define personal success. What am I reaching for that I haven't achieved? I haven't finished thinking about that. Until I have, I guess worrying about whether or not I'm successful is a fool's exercise.
Musical Interlude, Part I
I feel bad about this: more than 20 years after hearing "Summer of Sixty-Nine" the first time, I've realized that I don't like Bryan Adams's music.
Please, don't tell anyone. They'll revoke my Canadian citizenship and I'll have to move to somewhere foreign, like Andorra.
I could just move to Quebec, but I refuse to worship Celine Dion and that may cause greater difficulty than my lack of French fluency.
Politics
No modern politician has had as significant an impact on my country (Canada, not Andorra. Not yet.) than Pierre Trudeau. The Toronto Star asked Pierre's son, Justin Trudeau, to review the second book of his father's biography. Interesting reading.
Musical Interlude, Part II
October 12th was the anniversary of the death of John Denver, a musician, writer and actor who was everyone's kid brother during the 70's. As a teenager, my favorite albums were Star Wars (by John Williams and the LSO), and Greatest Hits Volume 1 (by John Denver). This is perhaps greater testimony to my innate oddity than any other single fact I could relate.
And of course he had numerous appearances on the Muppet Show.
He lost me when he began turning to New Age concepts and away from the sort of grass-roots innocence that informed his early work, but that's the way it goes.
For those of you who expected a teen-aged Ulysses to an angst-ridden fan of rebel-music, metal or counterculture, I'm sorry to disappoint. I'm too shallow for any of that.
Anyway, here's Calypso in memoriam, a piece which never fails to stir my nostalgia.
His description of a moment of subconscious creative breakthrough (a conscious mind becomes saturated with a problem it is unable to solve despite complete concentration, it distracts itself with some other activity only to find the subconscious providing a complete solution during that activity) should be familiar to creative people in any field.
Monday, October 19, 2009
We're All Unique. Except Me.
Well, this is interesting enough to bring up:
A discussion about writing by some of the writers attending the International Festival of Authors.
Two big takeaways for me:
1)I'm not the only one who procrastinates.
2)I'm not the only one who kicks myself for procrastinating.
Y'know, it's a wonder anything ever gets done by anyone.
A discussion about writing by some of the writers attending the International Festival of Authors.
Two big takeaways for me:
1)I'm not the only one who procrastinates.
2)I'm not the only one who kicks myself for procrastinating.
Y'know, it's a wonder anything ever gets done by anyone.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
