Maybe It's You

I'm leaving tonight for a 4-day conference in Phoenix. One of the things to which I'm really looking forward is the "small group intensive." Me and four other people will be getting together over lunch every day and going over our writing, trying to refine our voices and perfect our technique in an effort to stem the tide of rejection that we all face as writers.

The thing is, as long as you're writing and submitting, you're going to face rejection. There are really three ways to react to the constant rejection that's part and parcel of being a newer writer:

1. You can give up.
   It's easy to say "I just suck" and stop submitting at all. What's worse is when, in anticipation of "I just suck," you don't submit at all. I can't begin to tell you how to develop the thick skin necessary to brave multiple rejections, but there are a couple of things that helped me:
   
   • Have a cheerleader. Having someone who's both unfailingly enthusiastic about your work and at the same time willing to give you honest criticism will help you feel like your work is something you can both take seriously and have some pride in.
   • Have someone else do the submitting. This one's a little harder and involves some expense, but there's no enthusiasm like the enthusiasm of the paid employee. After all, they're not the one getting rejected. It's not like it's any risk for them to keep your stuff in circulation.
   Really, you have to find the motivation and method yourself, otherwise it won't be yours.


2. You can examine your work, make improvements, and THEN resubmit. For me, there's nothing that feels better than getting good feedback on a piece of writing, making some edits, and ending up with a piece that I feel is even stronger. To get to this "no pain, no gain" attitude, though, I had to go through years of writing for a magazine, struggling through every paragraph and sentence, having every piece handed back to me multiple times with advice like "cut it by 150 words."
   
   I knew that my editor liked my writing. I knew that he wasn't criticizing me as a person, my style, my education, my "voice" or anything else personal. He was looking at the layout and seeing too many words for the amount of space he had on the page and needed fewer words. Or more. Or a lede with a better hook. Or something. He seemed to like me as a person just fine, but he was also tasked with making the writing for the magazine the best it could be. Other editors at other magazines for whom I don't work feel the same way, and it's up to you to take their rejections for what they are - indications that your writing may be just fine, but it doesn't work for the space the editor is trying to fill.
   
   It's rare when you get an editor who's willing to give you feedback on your story. If you get some, listen carefully to it - this is the voice of your potential audience. In most cases, though, you're going to need to recruit your own editors and get them to give you feedback. Don't use your mother, who's likely to be unfailingly generous and tell you what a genius you are for being able to spell all the words correctly. Find other people whose writing you know and trust - people who are willing to tell you the truth, but in a tactful way. I'm always wary of the person who says "I have to be honest with you..." and ends with a searing, insulting rant.


3. You can assume that anyone who rejects your work as "not good enough" is a moron and die bitter and alone. I've run into a ton of these people, and so have you. Their work may have the germ of a good story, but for whatever reason, it's not publishable. Instead of looking at their own work and saying "Readers don't understand it. I should fix that flaw," they say "Readers are a moron and don't deserve a genius of my caliber." I have been told by many an insufferable hack that I'm "too stupid to appreciate" his/her work. They rail against the publishing system that only rewards vapidity and commerciality (okay, that's partly true); they rail against editors who are all untutored fools who wouldn't recognize a good book if it landed in their laps; they rail against the reading public who are stuck on conventions like plot and readable sentences. Bastards!
   
   Their fiction is PERFECT. And not only is it perfect, often it was perfect on the first try. "Take that, Anne Lamott! Take that, Strunk & White! I don't need any of you because I am capable of wiping my ass and producing a work of inutterable...genius. I can dash off a first draft that's so far above anything being published today that no editor or publisher is even CAPABLE of recognizing its true genius." Sound familiar?

I have decided to spend more time this year polishing up my own prose, finishing things that need finishing and in general putting in the effort to get more of my stuff published. I have a plan, and that plan includes taking some serious time for reflection and learning from my past.

What's ironic is that I've been having a series of discussion with the Pirate about folks we know who are in this exact same boat - with their love lives. We know people who have just given up, too defeated to do the very hard work of fixing things. We know people who put a lot of time and effort into changing the things in themselves that they see as obstacles to romantic happiness. We also know a few people who have stated in no uncertain terms that they are PERFECT, and that the world is a MORON for not being able to appreciate their perfection.

The point is that publishing is a for-profit business. Publishers are looking for books that are going to sell lots of copies and therefore justify what it costs to produce them. Similarly, life is a for-profit business for each and every living creature. Individually, we are looking for people and things that add pleasure, or at least don't actively piss us off all the time. Being defeatist - giving up and never looking at yourself and your own actions - guarantees that you're never going to find what you're looking for. The other end of the spectrum, being so egotistical about your own worth that you think that the world should love you as you are, despite empirical evidence that it doesn't, is equally doomed. The people who are the most successful in publishing and in romance, are the ones who are willing to admit that they need some work, put their heads down, and get to it.

The Joys of Dissection

I was just talking to a good friend about things we've read: specifically about authors who are very popular but not very good.

I'm not going to get on my high horse here and claim that I've never read trash. I'm not even going to claim not to have enjoyed it. It's just that when I'm reading something strictly for pleasure - something I know is not going to illuminate ANYTHING, I don't question it. I just let the words wash over me and create the story and forgive them when they suck.

Mostly, though, I read stuff that I want to learn something from. I'm reading nonfiction to figure something out, or reading the work of authors I'd like to emulate. When I'm reading those things, I'm not a fast reader. I will read the same paragraph many times to figure out why it made me feel a certain way. I will look at how a very skillful writer weaves imagery without necessarily resorting to metaphor or how verb choices set the tone for an entire scene. I like noticing the use of color and texture in writing, and whether or not a writer pays attention to the musicality of the work.

I can tell you, in lengthy and vivid detail, why I like the authors I like. I can tell you what distinguishes them from other similar authors and why I think they're better or not as good. I can tell you their weaknesses and their strengths.

I hope, at the end of the day, all this comes out in my own writing.

Sundance Film #10: Once

Once
A Dublin busker, who ekes out a living playing guitar and repairing vacuum cleaners for his dad's shop, meets a young Czech immigrant who sells roses on the same street. She likes his song, and what's more...she has a broken vacuum cleaner! They soon find themselves playing music together in a nearby music store (since she can't afford a piano, the owner lets her play his floor models). Over the course of a week, they form a musical rapport and, newly inspired, decide to record an album.

Once may loosely be classified as a musical, but it has a refreshing verite inflection. Conceived by director John Carney as a "video album," it sports a scrappy, unembellished naturalism. Carney took a risk in choosing professional musicians over professional actors, but Glen Hansard (of the well-known Irish band the Frames) and Marketa Irglova (a Czech singer/songwriter) are not only remarkably charming together but they're equally adept with the more melancholy shades (Hansard's lonely soul, stuck on an old flame, Irglove struggling to support a mother and daughter). Burdened and brokenhearted, their musical bond is the heart of the film and their love.

Great music aside, what makes this film special is how little effort it seems to exert. If it's possible to be blindsided by simplicity - a light touch, Once does it.
(John Nein, 2007 Sundance Film Festival catalog)
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Once again, John Nein sees WAY more in a film than I did. I have to admit, I'm always wary of romantic films. I don't like people acting unnaturally in the name of "love," but I'm happy to say that it didn't happen here. Irglova was charming in the way that children can be charming - insistent in drawing Hansard into a good time that he looks like he desperately needs. The romantic tension of their initial first "date" is broken by the fact that she's dragging her broken vacuum cleaner behind her like a boxy blue dog.

I put "date" in quotes because this isn't a love story as such. It's obvious that the characters find each other attractive and they are obviously musically compatible, they never actually kiss and they don't end up together. Essentially, we have a very sweet story of two people who get together to make an album. That's the beginning and end of it.

Our tickets were for the World Audience Award for dramatic film. When the program director who introduced the film got up, she said that this was the first time she had ever seen an audience give a film a standing ovation. Between that and the fuss made about the outstanding music, I knew to be on my guard.

Sure enough, at the end of this sweet but not outstanding film, two of the folks in the row in front of us jumped to their feet during the applause. The Pirate leaned over and said "This is worse than San Francisco," referring to the tendency of San Francisco audiences to give a standing ovation to anything with a spotlight, including a drug deal on a well-lit streetcorner.

Besides the non-love story (with which I was perfectly okay), the music wasn't really my thing. It was the same kind of whiny-boy music that just makes me want to scream. It would have been okay if there had been a lot of varied sound, but they played the same single song over and over. It was during that song that I realized that two days ago, as the Pirate and I were walking from one film to another, we walked by two street musicians. At the time, I was surprised at what a huge crowd two unremarkable street performers had gathered. Now I realize that it was them, staging a performance for...I don't know what. I thought the song sounded sweet, but it wasn't enough to make me want to stop and listen. And that kind of sums up how I felt about the movie, too.

The Pirate says: Predictable, whiny music, otherwise unremarkable. It wasn't some fantastic thing, but it wasn't really horrible.

Sundance Film #9: Enemies of Happiness

Enemies of Happiness
In September 2005, Afghanistan held its first parliamentary elections in 35 years. Among the candidates for 249 assembly seats was Malalai Joya, a courageous, controversial 27-year-old woman who had ignited outrage among hard-liners when she spoke out against corrupt warlords at the Grand Council of tribal elders in 20003. Enemies of Happiness is a relevatory portrait of this extraordinary freedom fighter and the way she won the hearts of voters, as well as a snapshot of life and politics in war-torn Afghanistan.

Amidst vivid, poetic images of Joya's dusty Farah province, the film tracks the final weeks of her campaign, when death threats restrict her movements. but the parade of trusting constituents arriving on her doorstep leaves no doubt that Joya is a popular hero. Among her visitors is a 100-year-old woman who treks two hours to offer loyalty and herbal medicine. King Solomon-style, Joya acts as folk mediator and advocate, adjudicating between a wife and her violent, drug-addicted husband and counseling a family forced to marry off their adolescent daughter to a much older man. Protected by armed guards, Joya heads to poor rural areas to address crowds of women, pledging to be their voice and "expose the enemies of peace, women, and democracy." In the presence of her fierce tenacity, we can imagine the future of an enlightened nation.
(Caroline Libresco, 2007 Sundance Film Festival catalog)

preceded by the short Make a Wish
A young Palestinian girl will do anything it takes to buy a birthday cake.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Just as the short that preceded Offscreen should have warned me that the coming film would be disturbing and bizarre, the short Make a Wish warned me that the coming feature would be sweet and heartbreaking. Make a Wish showed two little girls trying to buy a birthday cake. What they endure trying to buy the cake is positively post-war Italian in its sadness, and when they come home triumphantly with their cake, their worried-out-of-her-mind mother grabs the older girl by the arm, making her drop the cake. Crying ensues, but at last we see why the cake is so important as the girls and their mother all sing happy birthday around the cake with the lit candle and the oldest girl whispers to the picture of her dead father "Make a wish, papa."

You'd pretty much have to be made of stone not to cry at that.

About Make a Wish the Pirate says: It was very sweet.

My face was still wet when Enemies of Happiness started. Our ticket was for the World Documentary Grand Prize, and although they released the names of all the prize winners at eight o'clock and we were in line for the film at 8:15, nobody knew what film it would be.

Enemies of Happiness starts with footage of the speech that got Malalai Joya banned from the Grand Council two years earlier, then shows her in the present during the few weeks right before the elections. I was really afraid that we'd see her, get attached to her and then watch her gunned down or blown up in front of us, and I was thankful it never happened. In the Q&A after the film, the director said that Joya, whose district is an outlying one in the south of Afghanistan near the Iranian border, has moved to Kabul and is still working hard in parliament for the rights of women and against the institutionalization of the kinds of laws enacted by and for the warlords who have controlled Afghanistan for so long.

The speech she made in 2003 gave Joya a great deal of credibility with her district, and she becomes the neutral third party that many people come to with their problems. We get to see her mediating on behalf of several people, and she comes across as trustworthy even though she never tells anyone "I can solve your problem for you."

In politics, she's very passionate and I worry that she won't heed the advice of one man who told her "you can't chop down a tree with one stroke. You have to take a branch off here and a branch off there and that's how you do it." Joya is all for ridding the country of the warlords who control huge private militias in one fell swoop and her passion has already made her a target. I'm excited to see her working so hard to make a difference, but I hope that she sees that she can make more of a difference as a live politician than as a dead martyr.

The Pirate says: Inspiring. It was a really good documentary of a politician in a difficult circumstance.

Sundance Film #8: Chicago 10

Chicago 10
As one of the seminal political events of the 1960s, the Chicago Seven trial seems to come from another era, but filmmaker Brett Morgen, in his third trip to the Sundance Film Festival, has created a film that is much more than a look back. Indeed, Chicago 10 takes a stylized, innovative approach that gives contemporary history a forced perspective. He boldly mixes original animation with extraordinary archival footage to explore the buildup to and unraveling of the infamous conspiracy trial. Set to the music of the revolution then and now, Chicago 10 is a parable of hope, courage and challenge as it portrays the struggle of young Americans attempting to confront an oppressive and armed government...their own.

The 1968 Democratic Convention was a watershed event in the ongoing opposition to the Vietnam war. Protestors clashed with Chicago police, and the ensuing battles were witnessed live on television. In an effort to find a scapegoat, eight protestors were charged. The trial became a circus, and the abuse of individual liberties made this event one of the era's most significant.

But this is not the focus of either the film or our choice to have it open this year's Festival. Chicago 10 is much more than mere historical drama, and its creative artistry and inspiration are at the core of what makes this documentary and its subject as relevant today as it was 40 years ago.
(Geoffrey Gilmore, 2007 Sundance Film Festival catalog)
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

From an early age, I have always had a taste for history that wasn't limited to wars and political boundaries. I like knowing how normal people lived, what they thought, and how the events of the time affected them. Chicago 10 set the events surrounding the 1968 Democratic Convention and the trail of the Chicago Seven in the context of the people in and around Chicago and other places where Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin spoke to people. At one point, in a piece of archive footage, a reporter asked a young black woman how she felt about the events going on uptown (the Yippie protests were held in Lincoln Park in Chicago, not in the poorer [and more predominantly black] south side), the woman squinched up her face and expressed her opinion that she was glad it was happening in someone else's neighborhood, and that she didn't feel sorry for the white guys getting beat up by the police.

The director apparently went through hundreds of hours of archival film and audio and tens of thousands of pages of court transcripts, but because the courtroom portions of the movie are stylized animation, it's hard to tell how much is true and how much is "dramatized," especially since Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin were pretty dramatic already.

Abbie Hoffman, being the biggest clown of the group, ends up getting the most screen time in both real archive footage and animated footage. He said more than once that politics, and his trial in particular, were theater - this movie took his words and turned them into performance art.

I want Peaches to see this movie, just to give her some context in American history that she probably won't get otherwise. The Pirate and I had a long discussion (on our way to the next movie) about what lessons were learned as a result of the events of the late 60s, and much has changed - but for the worse. Democrats and other people more liberally inclined have decided to try taking the moral high ground - not once are you going to hear Barack Obama yelling "Fuck you!" at Bush or any of his supporters - but they've also decided that they have too much to lose by speaking out. Tom Hayden was carted off to jail at least once, and every protestor in Lincoln Park knew that they had a very real chance of being taken out of the park by force, and they accepted that. In the trial, the Chicago Seven were labeled as terrorists, but after the trial every day they left the courtroom without guard, boarded planes, and went on speaking engagements.

If the same sort of thing were to happen today, there would be no public trial because they would have been branded "terrorists," making them "enemy combatants" and stripping them of their legal rights. They would have been held in jail while their trail by military tribunal went on without them, and they would have been unable to tell anyone about what they were going through. Knowing that, liberals today cluck their tongues at the antics of the current administration and talk in hushed tones about how they could do better.

If Abbie Hoffman were still politically active in the same absurd way today, he would point at the current regime and say loudly for all to hear that not only does the emperor have no clothes, but that he thinks it's a great idea and everyone should join him. And then take off his pants for the camera.

The Pirate says: It was interesting, engaging; it made the whole thing very exciting.

Sundance Film #7: Offscreen

Offscreen
Christoffer Boe's delirious psychological drama is an adept deconstruction of modern self-absorption and a trenchant commentary on the supposed utopia of readily available digital technologies in the modern media atmosphere.

The plot is straightforward: actor Nicholas Bro asks friend and director Boe for help with a documentary about his strained relationship with his girlfriend, Lene. Boe lends Nicholas a digital camera, along with the offhand advice to film everything he can. Nicholas takes this advice absolutely literally, exacerbating his domestic troubles with the intrusive camera until Lene walks out on him for good. Friends and acquaintances also evacuate the sweep of his omnipresent lens. The fragile, egomaniacal actor, fixated on fictionalizing his quest to win Lene back, slides into career ruin and psychological disintegration with shocking consequences.

Bro adroitly portrays Nicholas's decline in a terrific feat of self-parody as Boe explicitly (and cagily) interrogates the vapidity of a DIY media culture that raises egocentrism to a supposed art.
(Shannon Kelly 2007 Sundance Film Festival catalog)

preceded by the short Induction
The unexpected meeting of a shaman, a lonely woman and a young boy, whose paths cross and slip away in a labyrinthine world of unresolved mystery.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

The irony of this whole thing is that prior to hitting the theater, the Pirate and I stopped off at the Starbucks and got some hot beverages. We had an hour or so to kill, and while the Pirate waited in line I was listening in to the conversations of both the two women at the table on my right and the four women at the table on my left. On my right, the conversation was about what each had done the day before (skiing, eating out) and on my left there was a long and involved conversation about a woman not at the table who had just "gotten the ring," but whose relationship was being dissected in a pointedly unkind way.

The shallowness and vapidity of the conversation were making me edgy, and as the Pirate was sitting across from me wondering why I was looking unhappy, I finally whipped out my phone to send him a text message expressing my feelings. We moved over one table and started discussing something else entirely. Although I felt much better, we were both awestruck at the self-absorption of the ladies at the table.

Enter the short feature, Induction. Ten minutes of shots of a naked black man, a white woman in her underwear, a kid in sweatshirt and jeans, and various incomprehensible shots of blurry trees, blurry leaves, upside-down rooms and a shot of sheep running across a field shown upside down and backward. If Nicolas Provost, the director, was trying to portray "a labyrinthine world of unresolved mystery," he failed utterly. What he showed was some bad cinematography and some all-too-common sexual hangups.

About Induction, the Pirate says: So what?

Offscreen is in the "New Frontier" category which "celebrates experimentation and the convergence of film and art as an emerging hotbed for new cinematic ideas." While I am not even going to pretend that the preceeding sentence is anything but a lot of solipsistic nonsense, the category fits this film beautifully - solipsistic in the extreme!

For the first quarter of the film I identified with the main character, Nicolas, as he films everything. At one point, he's standing over his wife as she sleeps and whispering into the camera about how beautiful he thinks she is and how she's the best thing that ever happened to him and how he's really doing this for her. But when she leaves him because he's unable to turn the camera off, when he not only films her leaving but, as she sees the camera and asks incredulously "You're filming?" and he LIES TO HER, vehemently denying something she can see with her own eyes, he lost my sympathy. From there it was an uncomfortable forced march as Nicolas decayed before us.

The pain and discomfort I felt as a viewer weren't just in his more "public" moments - when his filming gets him into trouble with his friends and co-workers. There was a scene right after his wife's parents come to get her passport because she's moving out of the country and she doesn't want to go herself. Nicolas is broken-hearted at her leaving and after the in-laws leave, he films himself at the kitchen table and sobbing as he literally chokes down slice after slice of pizza, cramming them into his mouth as he cries.

By the end, when he loses touch with reality entirely, I was scared and wanted to leave, but it was obvious that we were near the end. After the movie, the Pirate and I ended up doing a lot of talking just to outprocess the horror of the movie. No, you're not like that. No, you'll never be like that. Yes, that guy was a sick fuck and although he was sweet for the first fifteen minutes of the movie, it didn't make him any less of a sick fuck.

The Pirate says: It was creepy and it was horrifying, but it was very well done. And if you really liked The Vanishing, you'll love Offscreen.

Luckily, the voting is over because awards are being presented tonight. The movie was amazingly well-acted and well-shot. The story arc was brilliant and it was thought-provoking, but I was deeply disturbed by it and would have no idea how to properly score a movie like this one.

Other Sundance Stuff

So, we've done six movies in three days. We've also shopped for prezzies for the group at home, gone to the grocery store about nine times and I've fielded eight inquiries about my hair.

A friend from work was here last week, and she said that one particular day, the high was 3 degrees. It was pretty chilly when we got here, but today, I'd say the high had to have been close to 40. The snow is melting in rivers all over the place. It seems like every time we go out, there's a little more sidewalk showing.

At this point, more than halfway through our movie-viewing saga, the movies are starting to blur into each other. At one point during the second movie today, I was thinking "Did you hear when that guy said 'No one can take knowlege away from you?'" except that was the previous movie.

While we will be seeing 10 movies, there are a bunch we're not going to get to see. You can't walk five feet in this town without being beseiged by ads for them, and here are a few that've caught my eye:

In the Shadow of the Moon: "Seamlessly melding the wonders of science with the drama of the human quest, filmmaker David Sington has crafted a nostalgic and inspiring cinematic experience that provides unparalleled perspective on the fragile state of our planet."

Drained: "Palpable, intimate, and vibrating with vivid textures, Drained has a delightfully simple narrative that overflows with metaphors that maintain a singular sense of dark humor."

Black Snake Moan: "In a small Tennessee town, two unlikely souls meet at the sticky crossroads between rage and love. Lying beaten on the side of the road is Rae, who has developed a reputation for an insatiable 'itch' for sex. Her rescuer is Lazarus, an ex-blues guitarist who is used to life's relentless refrains of trouble and sorrow." (The fascination comes from the postcard - Lazarus is Samuel L. Jackson in a wife-beater holding up a length of chain, to which is clinging a Daisy-Mae-looking Christina Ricci.)

Tanju Miah: "Tanju Miah opens in a misty landscape in rural Bangladesh, where a young boy waits for his mother. "I'm about eight or nine," he says in voice-over. "When I grow up I want to become a rich man, by singing." He waits and works, and sometimes sings.

Worth looking up.

Sundance Film #6: Reves de Poussiere (Buried Dreams)

After traveling across the vast desert expanses of northeast Burkina Faso, Mocktar, a Nigerian peasant, arrives in a mining camp looking for work. Racked with grief from a past tragedy, he takes a job mining gold for the camp's unpitying boss. Carrying small hand picks, the miners crawl through dangerously narrow shafts leading hundreds of feet down, then haul bags of rock back up. Although Mocktar has clearly chosen to lose himself here, he befriends Coumba, a young widow raising her daughter. Like all the castaways, she also waits desperately for a nugget of gold and a better life.

The characters in Laurent Salgues' entrancing debut feature occupy both a literal and a figurative netherworld. Pulling amazing textures from the windswept wasteland, his widescreen images are hypnotic. But it's the camera's evocation of people that is most striking. Salgues is more interested in showing us inner landscapes - and the dignity of these souls that seem to erode before us. For the rest, it's cruel irony that they are so close to gold but so far from happiness.

In in amazingly stoic performance, Makena Diop conveys an entire journey of self-discovery. We have only a vague sense of Mocktar's wounds, but it's clear that riches will not salve them.
(John Nein, 2007 Sundance Film Festival catalog)
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

I don't know what movie John Nein saw, but what I saw was punishing, depressing and mean. I have to say, the acting was fine, the cinematography was swell, it was technically a very competent film, but after the effervescent hope and love of The Pool, Buried Dreams was like waking up from a nightmare to find that you're still in prison and your cellmate hates you.

The characters in Buried Dreams are living not just in the desert of Africa, but in the moonscape of a gold mine where the shafts have been dug by the short-handled picks of countless men. Mocktar, the main character, comes into the camp as a man who doesn't drink, doesn't do drugs, and looks bewildered at the madness around him. But without any kind of acknowledgement, he slips into the same life as everyone else.

In Buried Dreams, everyone is after a fortune, but everyone who's made one has lost it. One man went home and was beset by "cousins" who moved in and spent all his money. One man gave all his money to his father who was then killed and the blame laid on him. One man had just gotten his fortune and was on his way to his hometown, but his body was found in the desert. It didn't matter what kind of person you were - nobody got ahead, nobody got any happier, there was no redemption or hope anywhere in sight.

We didn't stick around for the Q&A, but if we had, I'd be curious about what exactly Salgues was trying to say. The reviewer for the catalog obviously saw a great deal more in the film than I did, as did the person who introduced it. It feels to me like someone did a really good job of selling this to a committee somewhere. I can't count how many times I've written a piece and showed it to someone else, only to have them not get it because I'd left out key information.

If you have to explain it, it's just not a good movie.

The Pirate says: *groan* It's bleak. Depressing enough it could be Italian. Umberto D. in Africa, only not as upbeat.

My score: 3
The Pirate's score: 2

Sundance Film #5: The Pool

The Pool
A filmmaker who returns to Sundance in a new guise is a familiar-enough occurence, but to return with gifts as unique as Chris Smith reveals in The Pool is rare in any year. In the same vein as his latest documentary work, Smith's creative acumen focuses on the gulf between the rich and poor, sharing insights, observations, poignancy and truth in a deceptively simple narrative.

The Pool is the story of Venkatesh, a "room boy" working at a hotel in Panjim, Goa, who sees from his perch in a mango tree a luxuriant garden and shimmering pool hidden behind a wall. In making whatever efforts he can to better himself, Venkatesh offers his services to the wealthy owner of the home. Not content simply to dream about a different life, Venkatesh is inquisitive about the home's inhabitants, and his curiosity changes the shape of his future.

Remarkably cogent and affecting, this is inspired storytelling distinctive for its ability to transmit a complete world view in just a phrase or brief conversation. Working in Hindi with young actors in a country obviously not his own, Smith has nevertheless created a superbly incisive portrait that will take its place on the global stage.
(Geoffrey Gilmore, 2007 Sundance Film Festival catalog)
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

"Imagine I gave you a hundred rupees, and I gave your sister a hundred rupees and told you to buy whatever you want. You buy a shirt, she buys a dress. But how would you feel if she opens her bag and you see that she bought you a shirt, and you bought her a dress. You'd still have a shirt, but that feeling - that feeling that comes from giving. No one understands that anymore."

Before we even got to Park City, the three ladies in the car with us told us that "The Pool" had a lot of buzz going on, and we heard the same thing at one other venue. The Pirate said he picked it because it somehow reminded him of The Life of Pi, although the only the only similarities are the presence of a swimming pool and Indian boys. Like The Life of Pi, this movie showed resourcefulness, courage and faith that made it the best movie I've seen so far.

One of my favorite things about it is that the two boys, Venkatesh and Jhagir, are played by two boys named Venkatesh and Jhagir. I'm almost afraid to say much more, because I guarantee that this film will be screening everywhere soon and I want everyone to go out and see it. The most surprising thing is that it was made by an American, but it didn't show some kind of idealized or stereotypical India. It showed two boys, eleven and eighteen, who work at menial jobs in Panjim. They make spare pocket money by selling plastic bags to shoppers in the market place, and then spend the money on bottles of soda. Venkatesh sleeps on the floor of the lobby of the hotel where he works, and Jhagir pulls what looks like a tablecloth over his head and sleeps on a table at the restaurant where he works. Both would like to rise higher than menial labor, but the outlook is pretty bleak. You never once see the Taj Mahal, there isn't a quasi-religious glow over everything, and you never see the setting sun through eighteen tons of red dust while sitar music twangs in the background.

Please. Go and see it. You won't be sorry.

The Pirate says: Great movie. The only thing it lacks is a wiggly song and dance number.

My score: 5
The Pirate's score: 5

Sundance Film #4: Acidente

Acidente
Inspired by the evocative names of 20 cities in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, filmmakers Cao Guimarães and Pablo Lobato uniquely meld a cinematic poem and an atypical travelogue in their film Acidente. Guimarães and Lobato visit each city and unobtrusively film slices of life, from a religious procession in Virgim da Lapa (Virgin of the Rock) to the nighttime activity at a lone gas station in Olhos d'Agua (Watery Eyes), to women sweeping the road in Entre Folhas (Between Leaves). These individual picture postcards from a larger tapestry revealing the diversity of the people, locations and cultures of the region, while the place names gradually unite to become a literal and expressive poem on the screen.

As the title suggests, much of what is filmed happens by chance, highlighting the unpredictable nature of life, even as the portraits of the various cities palpably reflect their names and their assimilation into the filmmakers' lyrical structure. Purpose and accident, and text and image merge to explore different facets of life in these cities, where a great deal takes place off camera in the margins of the frame or in the shadows. Local music and alternating film and video footage further individualize each city, creating a strong sense of place.

Acidente rewards the viewer with the joy of discovering not only Guimarães and Lobato's poem as it comes together, line by line, but also the people and places of Minas Gerais, city by city.
(Bill Tsiokos, 20007 Sundance Film Festival catalog)
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

This was our third film of the day and our second back-to-back; I was fully prepared to nap during the entirety, but it was so gripping that napping never happened.

There is precious little "action" in Acidente, but in the Q&A afterward Lobato (who spoke no English, but when someone's purring in Portuguese, that's easy to forgive) said that he grew up in a small town in Minas Gerais (although not one of the towns featured) and wanted to give a sense of the way that time passes differently in these towns.

One of the questions afterward was about how they filmed - did they give themselves a time limit in each town, or did they just stay until something happened? Guimarães, the director who spoke English, said that they didn't have a lot of time to spend, but they spent as much time as they needed in each place, although as he answered the questions about different parts of the film it seemed like nearly all of the segments were things that happened while they were drinking or looking for a place to go drinking or after they'd been drinking for a while. Listening to him talk, it was easy to believe.

The visual was rich and varied due to both the use of different filming techniques and the fact that each city had something different to offer. Some segments lasted only a minute or two and had no human sounds whatsoever, others focused very clearly on the interactions among or between people. The buildings, machineries and tools of the cities shared equal time with plains, forests and endless trees.

This is one of my hands-down favorite kinds of movies - it was rich and varied and engaging, but in a quiet way that encouraged the later conversation about "wasn't that part incredible?" and "didn't you love how that did that thing where...?"

My single criticism is that the sound mixing isn't quite right. There were places where the sound was physically painful - both loud and high-pitched - and I had to cover my ears. Apart from that tiny flaw, it was perfect.

The Pirate says: Beautiful. Slow in spots, but beautiful.

My score: 5
The Pirate's score: 4

Sundance Film #3: Cocalero

Cocalero
Recently the U.S. has directed its war on drugs against Bolivian coca-growing regions, and the Bolivian government has attempted to eradicate coca crops, devastating the livelihood of indigenous people who cultivate it. In response, the farmers formed a powerful union. Their leader is the Aymara Indian Evo Morales, and in 2005, this unwavering, unpretentious socialist made an historic bid for the presidency.

A lively story about geopolitics, people's movements, indigenous culture and one man's impressive determination, Cocalero closely follows Evo's campaign, getting up close and personal with the candidate and the union organization backing him, while presenting critical views of both. What makes Evo so fascinating is how unlikely a candidate he is. A relaxed 40-something bachelor who sports blue jeans and sneakers and lives in a one-room house, he drinks beer with his cronies and goes swimming in his underwear. Yet he moves effortlessly from formal fund-raising dinners to mass rally, charismatically proposing the redistribution of wealth, renationalization of industries and legalization of coca products.

Not surprisinly, Evo's populist platform elicits strong responses. After he addresses Venezuela's Hugo Chavez as "Commandante," Bolivian TV questions whether Evo is on Chavez's payroll, and his presence at the airport elicits racist epithets. But Evo, defender of Bolivia's first people, wins by an unprecedented majority. Cocalero offers fresh insight into big political changes afoot in Latin America.
(Caroline Libresco, 2007 Sundance Film Festival catalog)
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

I've seen the president of Bolivia in his underwear.

This film follows Evo Morales on the campaign trail during his bid for the presidency, and the only thing it proved to me is that politicians - regardless of their nationality, their stance on issues, their personal credo - are all the same guy. Morales, like every other politician in the world, talked endlessly about himself - about his opinions of things, about what other people were saying about him, about how much other people were willing to do for him. He surrounded himself with sycophants who said things like "sure, we have a law against a president serving for more than two terms, but it shouldn't apply to him."

The dialog was entirely in Quechua, Aymara and Spanish, and the subtitles were awful. If you saw Lost in Translation, you'll remember Bill Murray listening to the Japanese director going on at length, and the assistant translating his 45-second long speech into "More intensity, please." Bill Murray kept asking "Is that all he said?" In Cocalero that is most assuredly NOT all he said, but that's all you're getting of you don't speak Spanish.

Much of the film used a handheld camera that bounced and joggled and washed out all the color when the candidate went outside, and I ended up feeling a little carsick in places. The principal characters - the vice-presidential candidate, Evo's driver, the local union leader from Evo's hometown - were re-introduced in every single scene, an unnecessary distraction.

Another distraction was how very much Morales and his party hate the U.S. and its policies. Their official party slogan ends with "Death to Yankees!" It made me wonder what kind of reception the director was hoping for. It's hard to sympathize with a guy who wants to kill you.

The Pirate and I were scheduled for two films back-to-back, and the way Sundance works is that the line starts forming almost an hour before the film starts, so we ended up having to leave before the movie actually ended. The director was standing outside and spoke to us as we were handing in our ballots, and he complained that we were going to miss the end of the picture. I said, "He wins!" and the director, Alejandro Landes, whines "No, it's very special!" (a term he used for everything).

To satisfy my own curiosity and because I knew I would miss the Q&A after the film, I asked Landes "Does Evo own a tie?" Not once during the entire film do you ever see Morales in anything more formal than a polo shirt, and normally he's in a t-shirt and jeans. Landes laughed and said "You should stay for the end! The end of the film is all about your question!" It turns out, he does not ever wear a tie.

My curiosity having been satisfied, I don't feel the need to see the end. This was Landes' first movie, and I think he has some rough corners to knock off.

The Pirate says: As a film, it was obviously a freshman effort, and as a political documentary it was a little less interesting than the documentary of Clinton's first presidential run.

My score: 2
The Pirate's score: 2

Sundance Film #2: Eagle vs. Shark

Eagle vs. Shark
Which is the more dangerous predator: an eagle or a shark? That's a trick question. Don't try to answer it. You'll have your own opinion by the end of Taika Waititi's deliciously tangy, deadpan feature debut about two colorful misfits thrown into each other's orbit.

Lily is one of those weird, sweet-natured girls with stringy hair who is quite lovely and charismatic under a surface of shy awkwardness. But most people don't have enough vision to notice, and the truth is that Lily isn't looking to change. She cashiers at a fast-food joint and pines for Jarrod, the self-aggrandizing, clueless geek from the computer store across the way. Fiercely optimistic, Lily crashes Jarrod's animal/video-game extravaganza, impressing him enough with her shark suit and gaming prowess to score a hookup with Eagle Lord (Jarrod) himself. Soon Lily and her brother are driving Jarrod back to his hometown to confront his childhood nemesis. but here Jarrod's self absorption blossoms so mightily that it may drive even the most adoring of girlfriends away. As Jarrod prepares to exact his revenge on the past, Lily's quiet power gathers force as well.

With so much subltety and precision in Loren Horsley and Jemaine Clement's straight-faced, oddball performances, Lily and Jarrod's attempts to reach each other are hilarious and excruciatingly real. Meanwhile, Phoenix Foundation's charming, moody score perfectly reflects lopsided hearts as they stumble through the uncomfortably transformative terrain.
(Caroline Libresco, 2007 Sundance Film Festival catalog)
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

If you liked Napolean Dynamite and Love Actually, Eagle vs. Shark is your film! Unfortunately for me, I was one of the two people in the theater who hated both Napolean Dynamite AND Love Actually.

I've talked before about The Castle, a sweet little movie that's so loving and kind about its quirks that it's a joy to watch. The characters are quirky, but they love each other, so we are encouraged to feel the same. In Eagle vs. Shark, the characters are just as quirky, but rather than loving each other, they bite and snipe and pick, encouraging the viewer to laugh at them the way all the kids on the playground laughed as the bully beat up the dweeb that nobody liked.

The same awkwardness in Eagle vs. Shark characters was there in Napolean Dynamite, but in N.D., the camera is neutral. If Napolean wants to dance and his brother wants to train to be a cage fighter, the viewer is left to decide how s/he feels about it - their clumsiness isn't held up and ridiculed by anyone onscreen.

The main character, Lily, redeemed the movie from utter meanness. She was dorky, but she held her dignity the entire time she watched with improbably huge eyes as Jarrod makes a fool of himself, and she not only refuses to mock him, she refuses to stop liking him. Not entirely logical, but beautifully admirable nonetheless. Maybe it's telling of my own life that my mind filled in the "what happened next" with "Jarrod is never going to stop acting like a dick and when she sees that, she'll get a real boyfriend." I just hate to see nice people hooked up with anyone who doesn't treat them well.

I think that most people who watch this movie will think it's hilarious. They'll see it and think about some kid they knew in high school and laugh at the both simultaneously, or they'll remember their own loserhood and laugh on the outside, flinching on the inside (I went right ahead and just flinched on the outside). The audience in our auditorium certainly thought it was a giant larf-fest. But there will be a few people who will watch it and think to themselves, "I want to be like Lily."

Okay, maybe it'll just be me thinking that.

The Pirate says: Bah.

My score: 3
The Pirate's score: 2

Sundance Film #1: Crossing the Line

Crossing The Line
In 1962, Private James Dresnok, a 19-year-old American border guard in the notorious Korean DMZ, deserted the U.S. Army by crossing over into communist North Korea. As one of only four American soldiers who defected to North Korea during the height of the Cold War, he was noticeably a stranger in a strange land. Although Dresnok was unsure about his future in the highly secretive communist country, the North Korean government found they could use his unusual circumstances in their propaganda campaign against the United States. Dresnok soon became a film star, playing the evil American again and again.

Crossing the Line expertly provides an in-depth portrait of the last American defector still residing in North Korea after 40 years. Director Daniel Gordon skillfully counterpoints Dresnok's own testimony against stark archival footage of the People's Republic and a haunting soundtrack. Further historical context is provided through interviews with his former commander and fellow soldiers, as well as a childhood friend who still awaits his return.

Crossing the Line is the unprecedented and complex story of a man who left the native country he felt unconnected to and found himself living in an alien nation he came to call home.
(Lisa Viola: 2007 Sundance Film Festival catalog)

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
I have to admit, this movie was a little slow to get started. We are treated to many shots of Joe Dresnok leading his normal life in North Korea (which he refers to throughout as "DPRK") - taking the bus, shopping, fishing. He appears happy, although his smile shows a mouthful of gold teeth.

We go back to the beginning of Joe's life - his start with parents who didn't like each other and didn't want him, a feeling that no one truly cared about him. After his parents abandoned him, he was left on his own and eventually ended up in a foster home. At 17, he joined the Army and before he was sent to Germany for 2 years, married. When he came back from Germany, his wife had found someone else, and Joe was once again abandoned. His luck was no better once he shipped out to Korea. Joe fell for a local prostitute, and one day, after his commander told him that he couldn't have leave to go into the village to see her, he forged a pass and went anyway. When the commander found out about it and told him to report in for disciplinary measures, Joe decided that enough was too much. He defected to North Korea that day and what happened to him was a complete Cinderella story.

He defected to the North, where he made his career doing propaganda for North Korea. First, he did the Miss America circuit - showing up at events and large gatherings to wave, smile and receive flowers and applause. Later, he showed up in Kim Jong Il's 30-part movie series "Nameless Heroes," a serial about the noble cause of the war of liberation. Dresnok and his fellow-defectors all have recurring roles as evil American characters. At the end of the film, Dresnok is shown greeting some old men who call him "Arthur," the name of his character.

Joe did not shy away from some of the flaws of North Korea, saying that "everyone has to adapt to his own life," but said that he'd been treated exceptionally well. Even during the famines (the "Long March of Austerity") where hundreds of thousands of North Koreans died of starvation in part because of Western aid embargoes, he said that he continued to get full rations. He seemed both baffled and extremely grateful that even though Korean citizens were dying, the government continued to care for him - an "American bastard."

Joe's own words paint a picture of a man who had been looking for love, dignity and a measure of respect all his life, but had been denied that in a democratic society. He found all of those things in Korea, where he married and had two sons who are now attending college. He rightly pointed out that if he were living in America as a worker with his education, he wouldn't be able to send his sons to a prestigious college - it's not impossible, but it's highly unlikely. I walked out of the movie feeling like Joe was the very kind of man that communism was made for - the kind of man who's willing to work, who doesn't want his past held against him, who wants to be valued for what he can do, not shamed for what he can't.

In the Q&A later, Daniel Gordon said that he and his British film crew were granted "unprecedented access" to North Korea, partly thanks to his producer who has lived in Beijing and traveling regularly to North Korea on business for 13 years. I was pleased that despite the many "How do you feel about..." questions afterward, Gordon was able to focus on "I want you to draw your own conclusions." Afterward, I was moved enough to feel almost schmoozy and talk to someone! I told Gordon "great job!" He was becomingly grateful for the compliment.

My conclusion is that I feel lucky to live in a world where everyone, even Comrade Joe, is able to find what makes them really happy.

The Pirates view: It's a darned fine movie. Everyone should run out and see it.

My score: 5
The Pirate's score: 5

I Won't Dance - Don't Ask Me

For the next few days, I'll be writing from Park City, Utah, where the Pirate and I are attending Sundance. We've got 10 movies to see in five days, and I'm gonna tell you about them!

Today's our first day at Sundance. The trip here was great - utterly without incident for us. On the other hand, before we've even stepped foot into a theater, we've already seen one comedy and one drama.

Before we even got on the plane, there were two ladies ahead of us who had obviously primped long and hard for this event, and were ready to have a good time. They were made up, sprayed up and being the sort of loud, boistrous people who assume that everyone loves them and wants to participate in their deal. Of course, they were in our shuttle to Park City from Salt Lake.

First, the loud blonde with the weird topknot insisted that the unassuming snowboarder guy, who had been told to take the front seat, sit in the back so that her friend could take the front seat because "she gets carsick!" Said friend spent the entire trip turned toward the back of the van looking at her friends and reading her email from her Blackberry (gosh, I wonder why she's carsick!). Then, before we left, the same loud blonde told the Pirate (who is 2 meters tall) to sit in the back so that her friend could sit in our seat because "she's almost 6 feet tall!" He laughed and shook his head, saying "I'm pretty tall." If she'd been looking, she would have seen that he's so tall that even in this seat where we supposedly had plenty of legroom, he had to sit with his legs spread wide because there wasn't enough room for him to put his knees together in front of him.

They asked us if we were film makers, and when we said no, they asked us if we were film watchers to which we said yes. These were the only two classes of people these women were interested in. The Pirate and I did not say that are a Netflix employee and a writer; instead we looked at the scenery, responded to direct questions and generally kept to ourselves while these three ladies kept up a very loud and animated conversation that was the verbal equivalent of a Jack Russell terrier, although not as smart. However, since we were dropped at our hotel first, the three ladies enthusiastically wished us a very good time, promising to see us at some point during the festival. And if we see them, we'll smile and act like old chums, I'm sure.

Once we landed we were STARVING, so we walked off the lethargy of the plane ride by heading into town. We headed for La Casita, a nice little Mexican place (with real Mexicans!!) downtown, and sat at a table by the front window. I was facing the window, and the Pirate could tell when something interesting was going on outside by my face.

Outside, a man wearing a poncey hat and big glasses and the ubiquitous pass-on-a-lanyard (if even we have those, they can't be that big a deal) was angrily gesturing toward and yelling at a woman who looked like either his fed-up assistant (who would at least be getting paid for his abuse) or his even more fed-up girlfriend (who presumably would not). He finally ended up gesturing toward the restaurant and then walking toward it while she hurried to catch up. To his credit he *did* open the door for her, but within five minutes of their walking in together, she walked out alone.

The Pirate and I were both pretty happy about that, even though we don't know either of them.

Our first film will be tonight: Crossing the Line, about a man who defects *to* North Korea. I'll also be talking about some films that we won't be seeing but look interesting.

Writing: Blessing or Curse?

I know people who are writers, and I know people who *want* to be writers. The distinguishing characteristic in my mind is the quality of bitching between the two groups.

People who *want* to be writers complain that they can't get inspired. They're "blocked," they can't figure out what to write, they have a great first sentence or setting or ending but they can't do anything with it. They write endless blog entries complaining that they don't have time to write. I met one person who, in her late 20s, thought that she'd start writing "as a way to make some quick money." Her plan was to sell a few articles to Reader's Digest "because they'll take anything," before moving on to "real" writing. It seems sometimes like a lot of people who want to be writers want that because they don't believe that it takes any special skill or talent.

People who *are* writers tend to complain about the things they have to do that take time away from writing. They seem to always be spinning off ideas and trying things out and writing up outlines and sketches and scenes and characters. They've always got something lurking at the back of their minds, tucked away for a time when it's needed.

I think that's part of what attracts people to writers and writing - they see people with a lot mentally going on, people whose imaginations are teeming with stories and plots and worlds, and they want to be that. They want to have access to that kind of imagination and the ability to live more than one reality at a time.

I guess I can't blame them. To be able to look at anything that is and know a thousand things that might be is to be blessed.

Writers of a Feather

I know a fair number of people who are also writers. Their genres are different than mine (whose isn't?), their methods are a little different than mine, but they also tend to hang out with other writers.

The problem is that, while I have a few other friends that write, I don't really "hang around" anyone. I have one dear, dear friend with whom I do some weekly writing, but other than that I'm pretty much a loner.

It makes me wonder if I shouldn't be working harder to shmooze the writer crowd. Seriously - I don't link to any other writer's blogs, I don't eagerly eat up the written word as falls from the pen of this popular writer or that popular writer. Years of being a Buddhist have left me with the impression that I can't place full faith and credit in anything I haven't experienced for myself, so reading about someone else's experience of writing or the publishing industry really only has the effect of making me curious about my own experience of it.

But perhaps it's time. Perhaps now is the time to start reaching out to some other writers - to start making more of an effort to get myself and my stuff out there. I mean...you know...moreso than I am now.

December Slump

It happens every holiday season. During November, I'm going great guns, cranking out my November novel and feeling that this year, it's one of my best (yes, I feel that way every year, even 2004) and then come December, I think "it's time to take a little breather." And I pause to do a little gift shopping and visit family. I fully intend to take up my pen again and finish the masterpiece I've started, but it just never seems to happen - sometimes not until months and months later.

I still haven't found why I'm a freakin' dynamo in November and a complete slug the rest of the year. My first year, as many people know, I lost my job and had a death in the family in November. I had to travel out of state for the funeral, keep doing my regular job AND look for a new job and STILL managed to write over 100,000 words in 30 days.

Granted, I'm not the best person to ask. During all the time I was doing these things I have no memory of washing a single dish, preparing a meal, running a load of laundry or seeing either my husband or my children. I'm sure that they were in the house during November, and that they ate from clean dishes and wore clean clothes. I'm just not sure I had anything to do with it.

Over the years I've figured out how to better integrate writing with the rest of my life so that my family doesn't necessarily have to suffer for me to get stuff done, but it has meant that my productivity has taken a bit of a hit.

What eats at me in December, the busiest month of the year for the people where I work, is that all the people that I know who are successful writers have become successful because they were able to quit their jobs and concentrate entirely on their writing. For a ton of reasons, I'm not going to be able to do that for quite a while, but it's something that, in my fantasies, I'd love more than anything.

I guess the only thing for it is to continue to steal the odd hour hear and there and finish what I can. One day, this will all pay off and December won't be the slowest time of my writing year anymore.

How Does She Do It?

I've mentioned that I have an assistant who helps me with my submissions. We're still early in this process, so she's a little unsure about which pieces to submit to what markets. She is still looking to me for guidance, asking me "Which one do you want to send to Kidney Quarterly? How about to Hubcap Review?" Normally, I think about what pieces she has, which of them hasn't gotten enough exposure lately, and make my answer based on that.

When you look at the submission guidelines for most magazines, if they're not genre, they're depressingly similar. "Furgpickl Monthly accepts only the most outstanding fiction. We're looking for evocative, edgy, brilliant writing that makes the hairs on our arms stand up." Or something to that effect. Something that says "Don't submit anything written on the back of a napkin unless you're already an established name, in which case we're already bribing your office assistant to mail us your garbage."

Every magazine suggests that you look through their back issues to see what kinds of stories they've published in the past, but I maintain that's bullshit. Here's the thing: even at the smallest magazine, you've got at least two - more likely three to five - people making the editorial decisions. If you can find even one story that's like yours, chances are that not everyone on the staff liked it but they put it in anyway. Now, you don't know what it is that they liked about it. Perhaps it had a dog in it with the same name as a particular editor's dog, and that made him feel kindly disposed toward it. Nevermind that the meat of the story was the one-legged woman determined to run a marathon. And your story about the one-armed tennis player has no dog and is therefore going to be seen as derivative and tacky. You are being asked to look into the minds of an unknown number of people and guess, based on choices they've already made, whether they would choose another thing that you've produced.

There's a term for this: it's called "collaborative filtering," and it was the common way that people did things back before everyone shopped online or in big, anonymous chain stores. You would go down to your local grocer and he'd say "Howdy, Myrtle. I see you're buying some peaches. You know, Frances was in yesterday buying peaches and she bought some maple syrup to put on them. Said she's been having them that way for years and she loves them." You'd buy yourself some maple syrup, remembering that time that you had a nice salad at Frances' house and she'd put raisins in the salad and that was really delicious too. The grocer knows that you know Frances and knows that you like her cooking, and is passing along her preferences to you in order to make an additional sale.

Places that do a lot of online business do this with complicated algorithms. Amazon.com does it - you see a window every time you choose a product that tells you that "People who bought a cheese straightener also bought a left nostril inhaler." Netflix does it, first asking you to rate a lot of movies and then recommending more movies to you based on the movies you rated highly.

Both the Amazon and Netflix systems are flawed, though. They can only be binary in their calculations (okay, so Netflix's system has four stars, it still comes down to "like/didn't like"). They can't drill down on why you liked or didn't like a particular thing. Sometimes, they make some spectacular mistakes and we look at something that Netflix or Amazon has recommended to us and think "What in the hell are they thinking? Why on earth would I want to buy a crossbow, just because I bought some cheese popcorn? Why would I want to see Jesus Christ, Vampire Slayer just because I liked Jesus Christ Superstar?"

But Amazon and Netflix are dealing with exactly the same basic problem. They're trying to discern, based on previous choices, other things that you would like. They don't know you personally and can't tell why you might have liked a thing in the past, so they're making their best guess. And remember, their "best guess" involves engineers having spent thousands of hours and millions of dollars constructing, refining and testing algorithms that are supposed to more closely mimic the millions of decisions that go on in the human brain when developing a preference.

I don't have thousands of hours or millions of dollars. I have just me and the knowledge of what any given magazine has published in the past. And sometimes, I don't even have that. Is it any wonder that I look at this whole process as a crapshoot? So, in the absence of the kind of engineering power that large corporations have applied to this problem, I turn to wisdom that has helped people in my situation for decades now:

If you throw enough shit at the wall, some of it's bound to stick.

When Curmudgeon and Philanthropist Battle It Out

I've been submitting like a fiend lately. Well, credit where credit is due - my lovely and capable assistant has been submitting like a fiend on my behalf lately. The point is that over the last year, a boatload of my work has been sent out for consideration.

Many of those submissions are to contests of one sort and another, and most of those contests are held by college publications. I enter these contests not just for the glory of having someone tell me that my work doesn't suck (which has happened even when I haven't won), but because most of them offer a better payoff than actual publication. If I were to publish a short story in most magazines, I might get fifty bucks for it, but if I win a contest with it, I could garner $250.

The thing that cheeses me off about those contests, though, is that they all come with a catch: you have to pay an entry fee (which is fair enough), and they're then going to send you a subscription to said publication. I now have a 3-foot high stack of these things in my dining room - Tin House and Boulevard and Hotel Amerika and Alligator Juniper and about six with the word "Review" in the title.

When they first started coming to me, I felt it my duty to my fellow writers to look at them - to see who had gotten that coveted first prize instead of me, to see whose work fit the judges' notion of "good writing" moreso than mine. But then they just kept coming.

It never bothers me when the person who beat me for first place writes something wonderful. Even better if the person's style and subject are nothing like mine. That's fabulous! There's room for everybody.

But that do-gooder, beatific, sunshiney attitude goes right down the toilet the minute I read the first "experimental" thing that sounds as though my 6-year-old had written it, then torn it up in shame and hidden it under her bed because in first grade even she should know better. Those bastards! I think to myself. They've got some kind of balls to reject my well-written, beautifully-rendered, heartbreaking prose in favor of this foetid, gelatinous suet of words! And then I stop opening their stupid magazines, no matter how many they send me.

But wait! There's MORE! They've taken your entry fee, they've rejected your work, they've burdened you with the stinking drivel of people whose crap they chose to publish INSTEAD OF YOURS - and then they send a renewal notice!

"Your subscription to We're Never Going to Publish You Even if You Beg Quarterly is about to run out. Don't cut off our gloating before we have the chance to rub your face in the untutored prose of every semi-literate twelve year old on the planet!"

I called my local library. They don't even want these things for their periodical section. They have no use for four copies of Squat and Hunker Review. Who does, really?

I know. This makes me a terrible person. Terrible. I should be doing all I can to further the cause of literature in America, including donating zillions of dollars and acres of storage space to back issues of All-Adverb Review, but I just can't whack up the ginger, really.

In the Virtual Bank Line

I know, it's been a quite a while since my last post, but on the good side, if my evil plans come to fruition, I'll have much more to post soon. In the meantime, I have a couple of Virtual Bank Line episodes I wanted to record.

7.23.2006
I was sitting at my kitchen table with several of my former co-workers, including my old boss. We were trying to solve some kind of engineering problem and were in a heated discussion, but the television was on and it was loud enough to be distracting.The television show was some kind of nature program about how animals react to the panic and pain of other animals. The narrator was saying that when an animal was dying traumatically, other animals would kill it to relieve its suffering.

On the screen there was a dog. It had no hair left and its skin was a horrible, mottled pink, like a raw sausage. It was lying on its back, writhing and crying. The skin was stretched and looked like it was going to burst. Another little dog jumped onto it and began tearing at its belly, eviscerating it.

The engineers and I looked on, horrified, but soon realized that we had a much worse problem. We had vampires.

I came upon a vampire killing a very large woman (another co-worker of mine, but nobody I knew in real life). The vampire was a punk-looking blonde girl, about 12 or 14 years old. She standing in the shower, having dragged the woman halfway in after her. The blood was spattering all over the shower and her, and as I walked in, she looked up. The woman's blood continued to ooze onto the shower floor and down the drain, while the girl looked ashamed of herself, then turned to smoke and fluttered away.

The rules of vampires aren't what you think. Vampires don't die in the sunlight; they just lose their vampire powers, along with any memory they may have had of their nocturnal activities. As vampires, they have amazing strength, no fingerprints and they can turn their bodies to smoke, making them able to enter sealed rooms and fly through the air. They instantly regenerate when wounded, so they can't be killed, even by a stake. The thing that's lethal to vampires is the wood. It's like smothering a fire by putting to much fuel on it - when you put a wooden stake into a vampire, the wood "absorbs" the smoke and you're just left with a piece of wood. You can't ever BURN the wood, though, because it will release the vampire. You put it in a coffin and bury it.

As humans they retain the ability to regenerate, just not as quickly. They also have problems metabolizing food: their digestive systems are really set up for being solely carnivorous. Because of the way they metabolize they are normally very thin, with very pink complexions. Mostly, people think of them as beautiful, healthy, rosy-cheeked people. They have unusual amounts of energy and age more slowly than ordinary people.

Vampire victims do not turn into vampires; they just die. I have no idea what it is that turns people into vampires. Perhaps they're born mutations, perhaps it's some kind of virus.

I stood there over the body of the dead woman and wondered how I would catch the vampire, and if I caught her as a human, how do you even begin to prosecute that?

7.24.2006
I'd been on vacation with the Pirate, and at the end of it all, I had to go to a funeral. I was driving into the city for this funeral, but for some reason, I seemed to only intermittently have a car. I would be at a traffic light and realize that I was sitting on the ground with four large pillows in my hands. I was annoyed because I knew that I had to carry these pillows with me, but they were awkward. It's true that in real life, I often feel like I have too many things in my hands at any given time.

I arrived too late for the funeral, but went to the family's house for the reception. In the kitchen, I met the dead man's girlfriend. The dead man was the boy I liked when I was in kindergarten. He'd be my age, but in the dream he was only 20 or so. His girlfriend was sobbing because they'd been having problems right before he died. Suddenly, the wall opened up and I could see an image of the dead man walking down the front walk hand in hand with another woman as the girlfriend's voice kept crying in the foreground.

I went back outside and there were two groups - the dead man's family and friends and my entire family. Why was my entire family here? All of my aunts and uncles and cousins, everyone was gathered at picnic tables out on the front lawn. I noticed that most of the people who didn't know each other were making awkward conversation or at least sitting together and sharing their grief. But there were some men who were specifically avoiding even looking at each other. It was as if they were trying to maintain their status of strangers.

As I walked through the kitchen outside, one of my little cousins was talking to one of the dead man's little cousins, saying "My cousin Malachy's a hitman, but nobody else in my family anymore..." It was a well-known fact in my family, but not something we talked about. But I looked outside at the group gathered there in a whole new light.

In the Virtual Bank Line

I was at a luxury resort whose driveway included a bridge over a deep, clear moat. The moat was a decorative touch, the bottom covered with colorful fake plants and rocks visible from anywhere in the resort (think: the submarine ride at Disneyland). From the driveway, a stone footbridge led to a stone pavilion where one could be close to the water.

I was in the pavilion talking to the woman who had been hired to be the mermaid. She wasn't the voluptuous, hair-combing kind of mermaid. Rather, she was the bony, spiny, lobstery kind who looked more seahorse than manatee.

She wore greasepaint that highlighted the peaks and valleys of ther body, which gave her skin the look of a carapace, a hard shell. The mermaid complained about her job and the toll that the hours in chlorinated water and greasepaint took on her skin. She bitched about the impact that job was having on her acting career.

As I was leaving, cars were comign across the bridge - limousines and huge SUVs obviously carrying important people. Celebrities were showing up with the attendant lights and fanfare. There was going to be a magic show, televised and broadcast, so all the celebrities were dressed to be seen.

One particular man, a sporst figure, abandoned his SUV on the bridge, stepping out in a cherry-red silk suit that gleamed in the spotlights. The cameras swarmed to teh banks of the moat to catch the man, who said that he'd been studying magic forever and he had it all figured out. He was there, he said, to relax and have a good time, but he was too smart to be taken in by a little sleight of hand.

He strolled to the edge of the pavilion and bend over to start flirting with the mermaid who sat coyly on the bottom step of the pavilion, smiling at the man's advances. As he approached her, she smiled and flipped into the water. The man laughed at the antics of the mermaid and came closer to the edge of the water. The mermaid's head appeared, and as the man bent forward to say something, he toppled over and fell into the water.

The combination of his churning arms and legs and the bright spotlights rendered the water opaque and obscured the man's body from view. The water continued to splash and froth with the commotion, only dying down as the man managed to climb back onto the steps of the pavilion - but now, he was naked except for a pair of filthy sneakers. He pulled himself out of the water and stared around, not seeming to realize that he was nude. A lackey from the hotel came running up with a blanket to cover the man, who was now shaking and trying to cover himself from the cameras' view. As the huge man stared into the water trying to figure out what had happened to him, the mermaid's head appeared in a spotlight and she announced "The magic has begun."

Busier Than I Knew

A little while ago, I was feeling sort of blue because I had friends who were saying "I have 25 pieces ready to be put into the pipeline..." and things of that nature. When people say that they have tons of material that they've written and are sending out, I feel the lack of writing time in my life keenly. I'd like nothing better than to be able to do nothing but write, but it's unlikely to happen.

On the other hand, I was searching through my documents folder for something and I came across two pieces that I had written a few months ago and then utterly forgotten about.

It's like finding a fiver in your pocket.

We Have a Winner!

I came home from doing a reading at the California Writers' Club open mike to find two envelopes that had my address label on them - obvious SASEs from previous submissions.

"Ah, well," I thought. "Another couple of rejections."

The first one was exactly what I expected - the cover letter I had sent along with a rejection printed on something larger than a business card, but smaller than an index card. Not the worst thing I've gotten.

The second envelope had the word "yes" stamped in green ink on the front. I looked at it and thought "Wouldn't it be cool if that meant an acceptance," but dismissed the thought because acceptances are in thicker envelopes. Or something.

I opened the envelope and pulled out a pink photocopy, trifolded, called "List of Winners for the 2005 Soul-Making Literary Competition." I started looking at the categories, because I didn't remember off the top of my head what I submitted to them. Under "Sheila K. Smith Short Story Prize" was my name under second prize. Yup, I won second prize.

On the back of the pamphlet was this notice:

"In keeping with our ongoing tradition, every prize winner and honorable mention is invited to read from his or her winning works at the

Soul-Making Literary Competition Awards Reading
Sunday Afternoon (1:00 pm)
March 12, 2006
Koret Auditorium
San Francisco Main Library, Civic Center
Program includes dance and music performances and art exhibit and will be televised for future viewing on Access San Francisco Channel 29.
Event includes a reception and is free and open to the public."

Hint. Hint.

In the Virtual Bank Line

I had two distinctly different dreams last night, which is only significant because the end of the first one kept coming into the second one in a kind of "WTF?" way.

At the end of the first dream, my friend Mortaine had a special kind of bell. It looked like a clear glass Christmas tree ornament, but inside it had three bells that looked like finger cymbals. They were one above the other, each with a hole in the middle so that tiny golden beads could trickle through, chiming the bells inside. She held it in her hand and, moving her hand slightly, made beautiful, trilling music with this tiny little thing. She told me that each bell produced a different note, and that the three notes together were especially pleasing. The notes were E, A and N. That's right. N.

I woke up from that dream thinking "N? What the hell does N sound like?" And then went back to sleep, but throughout the next dream, I kept thinking "E, A, N? That can't be right."

In the next dream, the Pirate and I had moved to a cute little neighborhood into a townhouse. All the houses shared walls, and we could all see into each other's yards. Our bedroom was on the ground floor, and the window was right above our bed. The blinds we bought were just a tiny bit too big for the window, and the breeze from the open window (it was hot) made them scrape softly against the window frame. It was right in the Pirate's ear, driving him crazy. I snuggled up behind him and put my hand above his head, holding the blind down to keep it from scraping.
{N? No. Not N.}
When we got up, we had to go to a party at my friend's house. My parents were going to be there, and a lot of our neighbors - it was going to be a big thing. I thought it was just going to be a barbecue, but it turned out to be a trunk show of jewelry - they were still setting up as the Pirate and I arrived. We talked to other guests for a bit, and then I wandered off to look out the window.
{E. A. N. E. A. N.}
The neighbors had caught a fawn and were using it to entice its mother across the creek. The mother was understandably nervous about trotting over, and it wasn't even clear to me whether they intended to capture the mother and kill her or just to get both mother and baby out of the way somewhere else. There was a boy - 8 or 10 years old - who wanted to pet the fawn, but the neighbors kept shooing him away and the boy was crying.
{It must mean something - be short for something. There's no N.}
Back inside the party was underway, and people were lining up to dance. They had a squaredance caller who was calling out the moves slowly so that even inexperienced square dancers could follow along. There were eight couples who were all in a line (instead of being in two squares). Now, remember, this is a jewelry trunk show. And who buys more jewelry? That's right. So, the couple are all dancing, and at one point, the women have their backs to their partners, and they lean back with their partners holding them under the arms, and kick one leg out. The caller then yelled "Now drop 'em!" and the men all dropped their partners, who fell on their butts to the floor. The whole place went quiet.
{If there's a note N, is there a key N?}
The caller came in quick with "Gentlemen, you can make it up to your lady by buying her some lovely jewelry!" And, while most of the women let their partners off with mean looks and expensive purchases, one woman with long, white-blonde hair started screaming at the square dance caller, telling him how dare he make her husband humiliate and hurt her just to sell some cheap costume jewelry! Then she ran into the bathroom and slammed the door. When she'd composed herself, she left the house, got into her car and drove off, leaving her husband behind. I watched the whole thing, thinking "Good for her. He was an idiot to drop her like that."
{E. A. N. N. N.}
The Baby Goddess came running into the room, telling me that I had to come and walk with her to her daycare. It wasn't her daycare in real life. This was a series of small buildings joined by corridors. The corridor that the children entered in the daytime was built to look like a forest path. There were round stones set into the concrete of the walkway, and everything was overgrown with moss. The buildings had columns that looked like giant tree trunks, and in the window of an office, there was a cutout of a kindly-looking old lady with the words "I'm watching you" above her head. Next to her was a video monitor where the children could see themselves walking down the path. (As I was telling this dream to the Pirate and the Baby Goddess, she said "That sounds really scary!")
{bEAN, clEAN, dEAN, lEAN, mEAN, wEAN}
There was a tiny door leading down to a sort of basement looking place, and I asked the BG what they kept in there, and she told me that it was where they kept Sarah. Sarah was one of the little girls at daycare, but because she was small, she stayed in that little room. I opened the door and saw a room that was about 4 feet tall, and perhaps six feet on a side. Along one wall there was a bench, and a tiny table in front of it. The only light coming in was from the cracks in the floorboards above. It was inconceivable that the daycare would be keeping a child in such a hole. As my eyes adjusted to the dimness, a tiny little person popped up and said "Is it time to go home?"
{Where would N show up on the clef?}
I didn't know what to say. It was Saturday afternoon. "Time to go home" would have been nearly 24 hours ago, and yet the girl, who looked to be a very tiny 4-year-old, didn't seem distressed at all. She was still wearing diapers and seemed to be a little addled, but pretty clean and cheerful. I was getting myself all worked into a state, wondering where the girl's mother might have been and how I was going to find the woman. I had changed her diaper and was trying to figure out her tights. They weren't proper tights - they were made out of cotton gingham, fitted to the leg and fastened with buttons all up the outside of the leg. They looked like doll clothes. The feet were much too small for the little girls' feet, which looked bloody from being jammed into too-small tights and shoes, but the little girl didn't seem to notice as I put the clothes back on her. I was getting more and more panicky - so much seemed to be wrong with the situation, and yet I was the only one who was noticing it or taking it to heart.
{THERE IS NO N!}
I woke up with my heart and head both pounding. Apparently, I'm still sick.

Taking Notes

I got the contributor's copy of my little magazine article, but still no word from the agent who promised to get back to me "much sooner" on the second submission.

I think it's time to do another round of submissions, although I must admit, I'm a little upset with myself. Other people I know who are writing have volumes of work that they're shoveling out the door with both hands. Due to my own perfectionism, I tend to have only a few offerings at a time that are ready to go out.

*sigh*

I have started a new writing notebook. For years, I have carried around a little green leather notebook that I have jotted down bits and phrases in so that I could save them for later. I like hearing things that people say that are particularly juicy, like "No hair is okay if you have really bushy eyebrows." People say weird things, and I like being there to chronicle them.

But this particular notebook is where I have been actually sketching out the skeletons of the projects I am working on. I've gotten to the point where my ability to work is so sketchy that it's best if I jot down everything about an idea that I can jot down so that when I do have some time to concentrate on it, I have a good idea of what I'm doing.

Thus far, my book is rapidly filling up with ideas that I don't have time to flesh out. But I'm not bitter.

The Bitter Tang of Success

I know now what it is that's been dragging me down lately.

It's success.

In November, I got word that a nonfiction piece I'd submitted in October had been accepted. The piece was short, the pay nominal, but it's an acceptance and that's what counts. The minute I got word, I started hating my job. I wanted to stay home and be able to get to work on all the ideas I had flitting through my brain.

I finished my Nanovel, but I wasn't all that excited about it. The plans I have need a little more work than I was able to give this one. The contract job I'm working at right now means that I have a boss who thinks that because I'm a contractor, I'm not subject to the normal rules that everyone else adheres to. I should be available 24/7, I should have no life of my own that might require my attention. I must be desperate enough to want to do nothing but work.

I got back on track and buried my head in work, but then along came a rejection that was better than anything I'd ever gotten. I note that actually called my writing genius and expressed deep regret that he hadn't been able to convince other editors to publish my story. Again, I'm sure that the pay would have been nominal, but it would have been something.

That note came on the same day that I had driven into work through one of the worst traffic jams I'd ever seen. It had taken me over an hour to drive the last four miles, and for the rest of the day my left eye was twitching the way it does when I'm deeply stressed and unhappy. A couple of days of working from home has fixed that, but I'm still resentful as hell that I'm working on this and not on something I'd rather be doing.

Back in December, I'd gotten a rejection of my first novel from an agent who said that they loved the work, but just didn't feel they'd be able to sell it. They asked to see something else I'd written, so I sent them another novel of an entirely different flavor - Genius of Want. The December rejection had come fourteen months after I had initially sent them the manuscript, and they promised in the letter to give the next one a quicker turnaround. I sent the next manuscript off two or three days after getting the news from them, and I have no idea what to expect, but I can't help but have some high hopes.

The problem is that those high hopes are making it really difficult to concentrate on making a living. It's not my boss's fault that I have literary aspirations. It's not her fault that I'd rather be creating swirls of magic than bringing my considerable organizational skills to bear on her subscriber communications.

I just can't help but realize that every other successful author I've heard about has bitten the bullet, made incredible sacrifices and NOT WORKED A DAY JOB while they were working on the novel that made it for them.

I keep wishing that something will happen to make that possible for me, but that's unlikely.

In the Virtual Bank Line

It's been a while, but I've had some pretty mundane dreams lately.

Last nights' dream was a little disturbing and I don't even really understand why.

I was jogging through my old neighborhood, back in Phoenix. There's a maze of condos there called "Concord Village," and in the dream, it had been given over to some sort of military training complex. As I was jogging along, I turned down a path and came upon some guys showering under an upturned hose. They weren't in a camp shower or anything - just hanging out in the middle of a public pathway, naked as could be. They started to laugh as I jogged through, but I told them they didn't have anything I haven't seen before and kept running. It was kind of funny, I thought.

As I jogged, I realized I was holding someone's towel. I slowed down as I came to a house that I remembered seeing as a kid. I looked at the front door, and it was open, so I went inside. The place was two stories and filled with rustic-looking antiques. There were three cradles that looked as though they were made from bark, and three trundle beds and three high chairs. They looked at least a hundred years old. I managed to walk all through the house without seeing anyone. It looked like a tiny little museum of old pioneer artifacts, but when I came out the other side, I realized I had left my towel inside somewhere. I put my face to the window and saw it on the stair railing. Just then, a woman in her mid-thirties came out of an upstairs room and saw me. I was going to run, but she opened the door and led me inside, telling me all about how her grandmother had collected all these things, and how she and her two brothers had been the babies who had used them.

I left the woman's house and went back toward my own place. As I neared my condo, a little kid came running toward me, showing me some treasure she'd found. She was babbling on about it, holding my hand as I went toward my place. As we got nearer, I realized that this was a kid who belonged to the daycare just across the passageway.

I went to my place and changed clothes, and the minute I was done my best friend from grade school showed up. She wanted to go shopping for something, but she was being really mysterious about it. We went to a strip mall that had one shop with no sign outside. Inside, the whole place was full of huge chests of tiny drawers. The drawer fronts were all carved wooden filigree with tiny elephants on them whose trunks served as the drawer pulls. I looked inside a few of them and found carved wooden rings, bracelets and necklaces of various sizes and colors. There were tapestries in back, black hangings with bright weaving through them depicting various Latino left-wing heroes. My friend was looking around with her nose wrinkled.

I had no idea what she could have been looking for or how she knew about the place, but it was obvious that she was disgusted by what she'd found. I realized that she was just checking the place out. She was going to report back to someone else, who would then take some action I couldn't begin to predict. I told her that I thought she was a bad person and walked away back across the parking lot.

On my way home, I went through an open-air market. I started going up and down rows of market stalls filled with all sorts of things - food, clothes, housewares, auto parts - and I was looking for something specific, but I couldn't remember what it was.

I was still looking when I woke up.

Another Opportunity to Get My Message Out

Once again, I'm going to be on the radio. I did it last year and it was really fun, even though what I was reading was silly, silly, silly. This year, I think I'll mix my soundbed carefully and practice a lot. I haven't read in public in a while, and I'm feeling out of practice.

It would be even better if, by the time I read, I can tell people that the novel is due to be published....

The Days Simply Fly By

In October, I announced to people that I was definitively NOT participating in National Novel Writing Month. And then, at the beginning of the November, I found myself with some unaccustomed time on my hands and an idea that was just sitting there in my brain waiting to be written. I wrote nearly a quarter of my novel in three days.

I was 60% done by the end of the first week, and then things hit a snag. I had no time, I had more projects in the real world than I could reasonably complete, and besides, I wasn't participating. Why should I worry about things like plot trajectories and word counts if I'm not participating?

But then, just after Thanksgiving, guilt caught up with me. November 26th and I'm still stuck with the same 35k words I'd had for the past two weeks, and not a word more to show for it. I knew that, given my logorrhea, I could certainly produce the requisite 15k words, but would I? After all, I wasn't even participating.

I guess it says a certain something about my character that, given the writing successes that I've had this November, I decided that I wanted to go ahead and finish. The effort sapped my health (okay, that may have been cold season and my proximity to a 5-year-old) and I ended up, at the end of things, in bed for an entire day, but I did finish.

And now, I don't even know how I feel about it. Happy? Not really. More like, not embarrassed that I gave up in the middle of things. Proud? Again, not so much. The first year, I was proud just that I had finished, despite the fact that what I had at the end of the process wasn't usuable. This year, I realized that my novel was not even close to coherent until the last 10k words, which means that to make it usable and readable, I have to pare away several weeks' worth of work and do several weeks more, and that's just writing. Being proud of my effort at this stage is akin to being my age and being proud that one can use the potty like a big girl.

So I guess that my feeling right now is really just relief. Once again, I haven't embarrassed myself. I have been a good example for other people I know who are struggling and who may or may not have finished. I have the beginnings of something workable and ideas for a great many other things that are possibilities. The whole exercise is not a loss, and I do have to say that the ultra-competitive side of me really loves knowing that I'm one of only a handful of people who enter every year who actually finishes. It does make me feel that I am, indeed, a writer after all and not one of those people who thinks that any boob can sit down and crank out a book.

Much Ado About Much

I haven't updated much because at this point I am working a full-time job, raising two children, writing a novel, keeping chickens and keeping up three other blogs about the whole mess. I've been...distracted.

First, the Santa Cruz chapter of Nanowrimo made the local paper. You can read the article, complete with an interview with yours truly here.

Second, just because I'm writing a novel doesn't mean that I'm brain dead. One of the inevitable effects of writing a novel is that I end up with more story ideas than I can possibly manage. I currently have three or four, and they end up falling out of my ears. Here's one of the ways I ensure that I have story ideas that work: I don't write them down right away. The good ones are the ones that stay with me over several days or weeks, popping up in my psyche and demanding my attention. By the time I get around to writing them, they're much more powerful.

Third, just because you're done writing doesn't mean that you're done. A few months ago I went through an orgy of submissions. I do this every once in a while, sending out dozens of copies of work to dozens of markets hoping that something will stick somewhere. As of right now, I have one essay sold, a short story on an anthology's short list and a novel that might be delighting an agent as we speak. Call me a mercenary, but I'm doing this for money too.

I'm two-thirds done with this year's Nanovel, and I'm confident that in a year or so, it'll be just about ready for people to look at. But I'm just as confident that in the meantime, other little seeds I've planted will have sprouted and flowered.

Break Taken

Tuesday last, I woke sick as the proverbial dog. I stayed home from work and mostly slept, but did manage to get a few words down, seeing how it was the beginning of the month and all. Wednesday, more of the same, but I must say that I was feeling the pressure to get better, as my boss was leaving for three weeks and Thursday would be her last day. Thursday I dragged myself into the office, did a few ineffectual things, and then wrote some more when I got home. Friday, I worked from home and did a little writing in between emails.

What this all adds up to is that by the 4th, I was 40% of the way through Nano.

This, despite the fact that I have still not officially committed myself.

Which means that the fact that I was so sick on Saturday and Sunday that I did literally nothing but sleep and zone out in front of some DVDs makes me feel not one whit guilty.

No guilt. None whatsoever.

Okay. Maybe a little.

V-I-C-T-O-R-Y

As some of you may know, my first Nanovel, Mitos del Pueblo, garnered first place for novel at the 2004 East of Eden Writer's Conference. That was a wonderful perk and a great feeling, but it wasn't the end of that particular novel's journey. In fact, it turned out to be little more than a bump on the Road to Publication, which it's still barrelling down with no signs of ever coming to rest.

But I did write about that process, and the resulting essay "Putting the Suck in Success" was accepted by Rambler magazine for publication.

Well, it's a start.

Oh, Naughty Me

It's been months and months since my last post, and here it is the 3rd and I haven't said word one about Nanowrimo.

Honestly, there are two reasons for that:

1. I haven't had time. Since I last posted to this blog, I have been a writing and submitting f3wl, so it's not as though I've been entirely idle. Partially, but not entirely.

2. I still have not committed to actually *doing* Nano this year. Having said that, I must confess that as of last night, my word count is over 13,000. No, it wasn't a typo, it is the third day and I'm already a quarter of the way to completion. But the thing is this: I know that I can do it. You know that I can do it. It's just that I also have many, many other things I have to do this month, and therefore I don't want to begin by oversubscribing myself.

Although we all know, don't we, that I'm incapable of *under*subscribing myself.