hot night

for Washington, anyway, and so I can’t sleep. had to write to Steph and Irina to tell them that I’m not going to the reunion. 🙁 that’s the part I’m most bummed about, because they live way far away, and we haven’t talked in about 8 years. (they don’t ‘blog, either, so far as I know, which is also a bummer.)

I can’t find what I think is the most recent draft of Aila among all my scattered disks and folders. one more place to check, and if it’s not there, then I’ll have to recreate from scratch. a good argument for (a) a good backup system and (b) frequent print-outs. I know there’s a whole huge section that I wrote playing around with some early scenes, and it’s not in the printed draft, and so far it hasn’t turned up in electronic format either.

this remains my eternal reservation about having my writing – including this weblog – solely in electronic form. I trust that I still have and can read my girlhood journals from 1984. I can’t say that with such certainty about this. I lost several months of electronic journals, way back before weblogs, practically before the web. In the fall of 1993, I bought a brand spanking new Mac with a color monitor, which was about the coolest thing I could imagine. (I don’t remember the model name.)

that was a pretty bad fall, all things considered. I feel damn lucky to be alive and sane. when things got bad (not really bad – when they got really bad, I usually wasn’t in much of a state for it) I wrote in my computer journal. just a bunch of Word files, but it was a release, and I type faster than I write longhand, so I could get out even more of what I was thinking. along with taking long walks at night (that’s part of the “i’m lucky to be alive” bit) and my paper journal, that journal helped me keep it together, at least a little bit.

on Christmas Eve – Ra & I were home for the holiday break – I got a phone call from our roommate. her name, by the way, escapes me entirely now; she was one of about 4 or 5 regular roommates that we had there. we’d been robbed the day before…our other roommate was in Arizona visiting his folks, and she’d been at work. damn near everything of value was taken…TVs, stereos, my fabulous CD collection from my summer working for a music reviewer at the LA Times, and computers. so, yeah, a whole fall’s worth of journaling, plus some poetry, probably even a short story or two that I’ve entirely forgotten.

and I’m not too much better about backing up than I was 8 1/2 years ago, which is what makes me twitchy…’cause, yeah…I looked at the draft this morning while I was on the bus and thought – hmmmm, I rewrote a bunch of this, I remember it, but it’s not here. I hate that feeling.

then again, maybe some of it, at least, is in my paper journals. y’know, I’ve been writing in those things since 1984, when I got a puffy diary with teddy bears on the cover. I was erratic with it through elementary school, junior high and high school, but I’ve been keeping a journal regularly since November of my senior year, more than 10 years ago. I’ve used spiral notebooks, black composition books, memo pads and stationary pads – fancy journals, too. from tiny little books that would fit in a purse to the oversized spiral sketch pads I use now. I used to hate unlined paper, but I got a gorgeous fancy journal about 5 years ago that was unlined that turned out to be perfect, and now I can switch back & forth pretty easily. just the sight of a book can remind me of the time I was writing in it – the color, the shape, the stickers – without even opening the cover. and reading is like slipping back into my own history: sometimes entertaining, even exhilarating, sometimes mortifying, sometimes too sad for words.

I miss that physicality in writing on the Web.

my oversized black heavy-duty-spiral-bound unlined artist’s sketch pad, along with a smooth-writing rollerball pen, will still go with me on the bus or into meetings.

on that note, it’s off to bed, or I’ll be too tired to haul it out in the morning. 😉

my apologies – and write what you don’t know.

to Dorothea, for not updating my link to her weblog in my sidebar. tonight, I hope, and until then this will do for me, at least. (thank goodness she is well linked by others!)

and speaking of Dorothea, yesterday’s entry about writing & school, and the entry it linked to (primarily about being an American, but with a long interesting tangent into the teaching of creative writing), reminded me of a rant that rattles around in the back of my head from time to time. as did Dorothea’s comments about Americans and fantasy writing.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, and I’m gonna go overboard on this point – we will be reeled back in, eventually.

“Write what you know”? Wrong.

My experience in high school English and college writing courses demonstrates that most people, even fairly creative ones, take that too damn literally. Stories about the deaths of grandparents, the beginnings and ends of relationships, the (often petty) anxieties of young adulthood: those are the results. And “write what you know” gets combined with the idea of “art as therapy” to create the scene that is described thus:

I remember when I was given it [a writing exercise] in my first writing class. It caused me to write something that embarrasses the hell out of me. I remember watching other students break down and cry as they read their papers. A prompt like this forces a student to confront loss, place it into a suitably artful skin, and satisfy the voyeuristic desires of the teacher. It avoids the issue of how to write, focusing on issues of self-disclosure and how to craft compelling images to prove your creativity to the teacher instead.

And I disagree with the author of that passage – it’s not perfect for a creative writing class either. Just because it makes you cry doesn’t mean it will make someone who doesn’t know you cry. (Natalie Goldberg actually has a pretty good chapter on that topic.)

All classic literature leaps away from the experience of its author to some extent, whether in the characters or the setting or the scenario that drives them. Imagination and research are as important and useful as lived experience.

What if? What if you found yourself in a world entirely alien? What if you fell in love with the wrong person? What if you became a dragon, or found a dead body that later disappeared, or lost your soul? (all stories that I’ve read & enjoyed, by people I know) And what if that you were older, younger, smarter, more foolish, a different gender, bigger, smaller, a different social class…..

C says sometimes that all writers should try gaming (role-playing, not gambling!), and I’m inclined to agree. it doesn’t fit all temperments, but as a writer, I’ve learned more about story-telling from creating characters in a world and having to play them out as they are. (wouldn’t that be an interesting experiment for a fiction class.) also from creating that world for my players and seeing what they did with it. (oh, the pig-farmers of Tabor….)

the “bones” of good creative writing, to use Jeff’s conceit, is the telling of the story…this is the craft of writing, as LeGuin put it in Steering the Craft, which I’d recommend as a fabulous counterpoint to Writing Down the Bones. if your words aren’t well-assembled for communicating the story: the characters, the setting, the action, and the emotion, then you’ve failed, even if you’re writing something you know intimately. and if you’ve got it down, then you can imagine worlds and characters that never were, and your readers (don’t forget, it’s all about the reader, not the writer) will happily follow along.

then, writing what you know means being able to include your knowledge and lived experience, bringing your observations to bear, finding a true detail that fits perfectly. and if you don’t know, then you research or imagine. but I’d never give up trying to write something just because I’ve never done (or been) it. Great exercise I did last week: write from the POV of someone you don’t like or understand. every writer should try it.

updates

Daewoo still sucks, but that’s not really my problem any more. (a full report to come)
– I’m copying my Steering the Craft exercises into my old “AilaLog” – will link when I’m done.
– the pie listed below turned out pretty good – next time, add more flour to the filling. (also got some great tips on better pie crust from that test kitchen show on channel 9)
– oh my god I need to send my grandmother a birthday card!
– I can’t find Thao’s address (physical), and I have a postcard to send her….
– it’s damn fine weather.
– I have paid off a student loan in full…just got the receipt today from UPS, marked “PAID” with a big red stamp. ain’t that happy!
– I need to email Paula & do some (serious!) work on Zografis. (gonna do it entirely over, I think, if I can find the original graphics files.) ditto with Martin & the Diversity Hair site – not an overhaul, I don’t think, but I haven’t been too great about staying in touch. (and what’s new about that, you ask? not much, I’m afraid. if I were more on the ball, that Tara chick from North Carolina wouldn’t have been the first candidate with a weblog. need to email Mary, too, and see if she still wants/needs my help for her friend.)
– Edith called last night. it’s all right…her house scene is again a little sketchy, but whatever. she seemed in good spirits. maybe more on that later.

Daewoo sucks, with feeling

Daewoo to continue warranty work, braces for Chapter 11
Daewoo’s uncertain future drives dealers to distraction
U.S. Daewoo Owners, Dealers Left in the Dust

and a few choice quotes:

“I can’t imagine being an owner of one of these cars,” said Kerry Bivens, general manager of Daewoo of Puyallup. [where we bought our wagon; thanks, dude.]

“I thought I was getting a good deal, and I’ve been really happy with the car,” he [Ari Mishkin] said, “but now it looks like I bought an Edsel.”

oh, and here’s a few more links….

GM Will Sell Rebadged Daewoos
Consumer Complaints about Daewoo
Yoo-hoo, GM – Daewoo owners feel abandoned [google cache version]

Twenty-three Daewoo dealers in Florida have filed suit against GM, claiming it has violated dealer franchise laws in Florida and other states by refusing to honor Daewoo Motor America’s contracts with dealers. GM has argued that since it bought only the assets of the parent company, it has no obligation to the dealers or, presumably, consumers.

I’m fscking pissed, and I’d like to find a class-action suit that we can join.

not that the credit union is being too helpful either. it looks like I’m about to be saddled with either a worthless car, or several thousand dollars in debt.

I will continue to craft my thoughts on this. if you have a weblog/journal and are reading this, please link & spread the word. if you are a daewoo owner, and either have news or would like to figure out some additional course of action, please use my contact form. thanks.

misc.

Usability applied to life
Pardon me for being forward (this reminds me of something Joe sent once – then again, Joe had very bad luck with forwarded email….) “I do not care about your heart-warming bullshit, for I am a stone and my heart is cold.”
more importantly, go read this now – We must engage in copyright debate – a letter has been forming in my mind to my representation.

(oh, hell, I just remember something I was going to do today, speaking of angry letters.)

DotColor – like a clipboard for color, apparently.

reconsidering things

I’ve changed my mind about the reunion (10th HS)…I think I’m going to skip it. too much money, too much vacation time, too much time travelling w/out C (who can’t go regardless), and too much to do here with the house.

and who do I want to see? only a few people: Steph, Irina, maybe Elma & Marsha. a few people I’d love to be snooty (or snarky) to, and others I have a morbid curiosity about, but I don’t know if that’s really worth it. there’s other people I want to visit with – Ra, Franz, K, Thao – but there’s always the possibility of other visits, other times. and what I really want right now is to be able to take a trip to someplace new, a big crazy road trip. it won’t happen this summer, but maybe next spring? and then I can visit Steph & Irina where they live now, maybe swing by AZ to visit Greyson, and even cut back thru LA. (I’m seriously thinking about going to SXSW next March, which give some interesting possibities for routes.)

so we’ll see.

you will now be overwhelmed.

over the weekend I’m going to make these into real links and at least add what they’re linking to.

http://www.anthro.com/template.asp?CartName=AdjustaCart&Tag=grid
http://tate.cix.co.uk/
http://j-marshall.com/
http://docbook.sourceforge.net/
http://www.viridiandesign.org/notes/301-350/00325_open_source_speech.html
http://www.quicktopic.com/blog/archives/000085.html
http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/images/markets.gif
http://www.blogtree.com/
http://www.websitetips.com/business/
http://www.janisian.com/article-fallout.html
http://levin.blogspot.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/28/magazine/28ONLANGUAGE.html
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/siliconvalley/business/columnists/dan_gillmor/3751660.htm
http://ftrain.com/google_takes_all.html
http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/07/26/army.wives/index.html
http://www.angelfire.com/wa/loungerat/ and http://www.angelfire.com/wa/fourwinds/bardbook.html
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2001OctDec/0474.html
http://www.1976design.com/testarea/jw/index.php
http://www.pubserv.washington.edu/lunchbox/
http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/DasherSummary2.html
http://isen.com/archives/020723.html
http://www.bookmouth.com/getthewordout.html
http://www.allaboutvision.com/cvs/
http://www.fawcette.com/dotnetmag/2002_07/magazine/features/jsemeniuk/default_pf.asp
http://metku.net/cryo/
http://www.bricklin.com/peoplepay.htm
http://www.botany.com/coreopsis.html
http://www.kottke.org/02/07/020721six_degrees_.html
http://www.edemocracy.gov.uk/
http://www.textartisan.com/caveatlector/archive/2002_07.html#e000310
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/3385422.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/16/opinion/16KRUG.html
http://www.washington.edu/uwtv/webmaster/
http://www.siia.net/sif/spec.html
http://www.schoolforge.net/index.php
http://xml.coverpages.org/sif.html
http://scout18.cs.wisc.edu/K12news/99-11/99-11-16/0002.html
http://www.wsipc.org/
http://gisdata.usgs.net/website/National_Map/viewer.htm
http://thisplacesucks.blogspot.com/2002_06_09_thisplacesucks_archive.html#77646054
http://duncan.focuseek.com/googleintegrity.shtml
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Search-Engines-Advertisers.html? ex=1027396800&en=dbdeac9041a7bfab&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND