Better Than Dead

Random quote of the day:

“Now is the time for all good men to come to.”

—Walt Kelly, Pogo

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Some of you who have known me for a long time, and read my stuff for a long time, may remember Hortensia Bustamante. She’s the strong-willed sister of the Bustamante Brothers of Dos Lunas County, the first white settlers to invade the Kintache Indian homeland.

Ever since I finished Venus in Transit, my Dos Lunas County novel, strong-willed Hortensia has been bugging me. “Where my novel?” she’s been asking.

I’ve explained patiently that I’m working on other things now, to make a change from Dos Lunas, but Hortensia has never been one to listen to the reasoning of her writer when she’s made up her mind about something. “Where’s my novel?” she repeats at every chance.

I staved off her insistence some time back by writing a 30k plus novella, but—although she liked it quite well—she’s informed me that it isn’t sufficient. Her story deserves expanding and exploring. I have been thinking along those same lines myself for some time and even had several ideas on how to do that, but I hadn’t thought of taking on that challenge at this juncture.

“It’s time,” Hortensia insists.

I find myself sighing fatalistically a lot these days. My imagination ping ponged all last week between chapter two of the Carmina novel and a short story, and I’ve been considering that maybe it’s time to start the rewrite on Venus in Transit. All the while Hortensia kept crooning in my ear: “It’s time. Where’s my novel? It’s time.”

I pulled the novella out today just to, yanno, look at it. Hortensia squee’d with glee. I told her not to get her hopes up. She scoffed.

So I don’t know what I’m working on now. Perhaps Hortensia would be the antidote to my restless. I’m sure Venus would be. Maybe I’ll let Venus and Hortensia and Carmina and Sea Eyes from the short story fight it out amongst themselves. Just let me know when you’ve figured it out, gang. Only, don’t start sending me tweets advocating for yourselves. That would be one step too far over the line.

Random quote of the day:

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise.  The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

—Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950-1962

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“Civil religion has always struck me as both dismal and dangerous to the health of the general population.”

—Elizabeth Cunningham, The Passion of Mary Magdalen

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

If you would actually like to check off ticky boxes for this poll, you can go here.

If the giant killer asteroid was projected to hit your home town in the next 24 hours, what would you do?

Hit the highway with the 5,837,934 people trying to escape the area.
Shelter in place. They could be wrong!
Shelter in place. I wouldn’t want to be part of the dystopian society left after it hit.
Finally tell my parents I’m gay/an atheist/polyamorous/a 9th level wizard/other.
Finally take up gender experimentation/prayer/polyamory/D&D/other.
Hold the mother of all block parties.
Return ET’s phone call.
Loot and pillage.
Tell everyone how much I love them and curl up into a whimpering ball.
Give up the last seat on the last ‘chopper so the pregnant lady can escape.
Hold onto the skids of the last ‘chopper out of town.
Fall off the skids of the last ‘chopper out of town somewhere really dramatic.
Ticky doesn’t care for any of these options.
Other.

Random quote of the day:

“The self is not a unified, coherent, logical entity.  Paradox, contradiction, and ambiguity abound.  This is part of the human condition.”

—George P. Hansen, The Trickster and the Paranormal

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“Borders are established so there is something to fight about.”

—Karol Bunsch, quoted in Geary’s Guide to the World’s Great Aphorists

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

The Rules: Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen authors (poets included) who’ve influenced you and that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. Tag at least fifteen friends, including me, because I’m interested in seeing what authors my friends choose.

(Please, do this if you like..)

These are the first fifteen off the top of my head.  I’m sure I’ve left someone(s) vital out.  Some of these are “for better or worse” (I won’t say which ones); others I no longer read all that much, but they definitely influenced who I am as a writer.  They stay with me forever in that way, even if I don’t read them anymore.

1. Rosemary Sutcliff
2. Carlos Casteneda
3. Mary Stewart
4. Charlaine Harris
5. W. B. Yeats
6. Carl Sandburg
7. Kage Baker
8. Andre Norton
9. Anne Rice
10. Peter Beagle
11. Karl Shapiro
12. Edna O’Brien
13. Charles de Lint
14. Billy Collins
15. John Fowles

Random quote of the day:

“The pleasure of love is loving.  We are much happier in the passion we feel than in that we inspire.”

—François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxim 259

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

There’s a lot going on in my life right now that’s consuming my energy. The phrase I say most often to myself, and not just in the context of blogging, is “You don’t have time for that.” I’ve managed to carve out niches for writing sessions and some critiquing (because the critiquing is important to the writing, too), but so many other things seem to elude me. Sometimes on the weekends I just collapse in a heap. My body demands it. This has been one of those weekends.

If things would just calm down at work…if things would just settle down in life…Ifs and might have beens.

I’ve also tried to carve out moments for myself when I don’t have to do anything, when I can sit and listen to the silence, or the song of the universe, where I can just exist. When life is pressing, it’s difficult to push that imminent sense of Things To Do away, but it’s necessary, even if only for fifteen minute chunks at a time. It all adds to the well of replenishment.

I accomplished this yesterday evening sitting in the garden for about twenty minutes reading, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch by Henry Miller. It’s his 1957 portrait of Big Sur, California, where he lived for fifteen years, and it sounded like a wild and marvelous place back then, both by its unspoiled nature, and in attracting a hardy breed of artists and dreamers. I found myself longing to go there—but that place he wrote about doesn’t exist anymore, not really. There’s still a great deal of impressive nature in the California central coast and it’s not nearly as populated as some parts of the state, but I can’t help thinking he’d shudder to see what it is now. Although maybe not. He predicted as much in the book, that it would be “discovered” and irrevocably changed. He thought they would be lucky to make it to the next millennium (2000) and keep it as wild as it was, and he was right.

So as I’m sitting there, longing for a place that doesn’t exist, feeling a little sorry for myself, I read this passage which really resonated:

In addition to all the other problems he has to cope with, the artist has to wage a perpetual struggle to fight free. I mean, find a way out of the senseless grind which daily threatens to annihilate all incentive. Even more than other mortals, he has need of harmonious surroundings. As writer or painter, he can do his work most anywhere. The rub is that wherever living is cheap, wherever nature is inviting, it is almost impossible to find the means of acquiring the bare modicum which is needed to keep body and soul together. A man with talent has to make his living on the side or do his creative work on the side. A difficult choice!

Now, I’m not much of a subscriber to the Artist as Special Creature Ordained by the Cosmos, but it was very much in vogue in the 1940s and 1950s, so Miller is writing inside his own time here. Rereading these passages today when I’m feeling a little less exhausted, they seem a bit over the top. And yet…and yet…when I think of all the artists I know—writers, painters, designers, whatever—this is the single biggest problem for most of them: how to make a living, how to spend one’s time, how to focus one’s life, trying to keep themselves together financially while they pursue that one thing that makes them feel most alive. Almost all of us work at some job to keep ourselves together, squeezing in time for creative work. Very few of us have the luxury of either existing in decorative impoverishment or living off our art. And yes, decorative impoverishment, the whole artist in a garret thing, is definitely a luxury. Anyone with a modicum of responsibility in life can’t afford to do that. Most of us have to slog away at it as best we can. There’s no nobility in it, it’s just doing what you have to do to keep body and soul together. For most of my life I, and almost every artist I know, has accepted that reality and gotten on with it.

It’s just at times like this, when I’m tired, when my art seems to be going through one of its periodic and chaotic phases of “redefinition,” when Real Life crowds, that it gets to me. The Artists’ Life may not be an Ordainment, but it is a calling, and for those of us stuck with it, it’s something of an imperative. It is that Thing That Must Be Done, regardless of what else is going on in life, because to not do it is to betray something fundamental in ourselves. To not do it is courting an impoverishment of the soul, the ashes of dreams which eventually choke off the life force altogether.

So. Fifteen minutes for myself here and there, a inviolable carved out chunk of time to do art, are not selfish things. They are necessary things, even if the world doesn’t always recognize that. Henry Miller was right about that, too, even if he did get a little carried away about the whole Artist as Noble Creature bit.