I didn’t win a goat

In spite of the hopes of my roleplaying group – who made very mean comments about curry; I must learn “evil glare” before our next session – I did not actually receive a goat as part of my Gorgie City Farm poetry competition prize.

I did win sponsorship of one of the pygmy goats, and a picture of him (Toby!), both of which are taped to the side of a bookcase, as well as a £10 book token. I don’t know what I’m going to spend it on yet. But really, half the fun of gift certificates is mentally spending them a dozen times over.

What’s happening right now: the final edits of GB and gearing up for the next book (= pre-writing, outlining, minor research). Thankfully, as it won’t be a historical novel I don’t have to do the same immersion I did for the Third Reich book – no one is going to quibble that the tunic insignia are the wrong color – though obviously everything has to be consistent, and there are plenty of pitfalls with worldbuilding no matter what the context.

The main difficulty is that even after putting the Auschwitz novel aside, I have two very strong possibilities for the next project, and I want to write them both.

Now!

Possibility A has some plotting already completed but I just removed a major character and am not yet sure if I’ve lifted away the book’s spine by doing so. (You know, the way you have to eat certain kinds of fish?) And I need to get Possibility B to the stage where the ‘ooh shiny’ feeling wears off, and see whether there’s actually a plot there, rather than just a conceit.

So come November, I’ll be hard at work on the next book, but don’t ask me yet what it is.

And no, I won’t be doing NaNoWriMo. I have no problems with the concept, but I don’t need a little counter on my website to track my progress….

I won a poetry prize – no kidding!

The poetry competition was sponsored by Gorgie City Farm in Edinburgh, and I won the adult category with a poem about pygmy goats.

…no kidding!

*pause for big laffs*

Aaaaaaaanyway, it’s National Poetry Day, and I was going to post my favorite poem here, but I’ll do that another day. Here’s my award-winning poem about pygmy goats. Man, I am so not ever winning the Nobel Prize now, although I am told on the highest authority that Jacinto Benavente wrote a one-act farce about chickens.

Oh hey, speaking of which, Herta Müller won. Finally, someone I’ve not only heard of, but who I’ve read! (The Land of Green Plums, as I was reading everything I could find about Romania before going to live there for a year on a Fulbright.)

And here’s my little contribution to world literature:

Pygmy goats, pygmy goats,
climbing on their frame.
Dancing up so light and proud
then dancing down again.

Pygmy goats, silly goats,
scuffling in the mud.
Butting, wrestling, tossing horns
in gleeful kiddish fun.

Pygmy goats, lovely goats,
daft and rough and wee.
Lovliest of all when they’re both
nuzzling up to me!

Congratulations!

My world has been full of rejections and not-hearing-back-which-means-rejection so I am absolutely thrilled that someone I know has not only received an acceptance, but a really good one.

Congratulations to Kelly Hourihan, who’s just been selected as the Boston Public Library Children’s Writer-in-Residence.  I’m not up on my residential fellowships but this has to be one of the peachiest ones going, and Kelly’s an amazing writer and great person who completely deserves it.

And darn sure I’ll be buying her book (from Better World Books, of course) as soon as it’s published.

The downside of fame is that everyone wants you to be famous

The Nobel Prize in Literature. The pinnacle of international success. The best thing that could ever happen to a writer. Right?

Doris Lessing disagrees.

Nobel Prize-winning author Doris Lessing has said winning the prestigious award in 2007 had been a “bloody disaster”. The increased media interest in her has meant that writing a full novel was next to impossible, she told Radio 4’s Front Row. Lessing, 88, also said she would probably now be giving up writing novels altogether. [...] Since her Nobel win she has been constantly in demand, she said. “All I do is give interviews and spend time being photographed.”

Admittedly, she also cites her age as contributing to her slowdown, but still, constant media attention is not conducive to sitting alone for long hours, staring at the computer screen.

Also, why the hell are they giving it to her for being an ‘epicist of the female experience’? Why was Saul Bellow allowed to be awarded it for ‘human understanding’? Oh, right, male experiene = universal. Grumble.