“It’s like trying to get married. Right now I’m in the speed dating phase.”

In an interview for a book-related job, the questioning went something like this:

Interviewer 1: What are you currently reading?
TSR: *takes deep breath*
Interviewer 2: Restrain yourself!!

[Yeah, Interviewer 2 had me dialed. And I did get the job.]

The sidebar ‘books I’m reading’ has been pretty static lately, mainly because I keep starting books and then not finishing them, or rather some other book gets in the way. I currently have on the go:

- George Gissing, New Grub Street. Someday I must determine why I love Gissing so much, even though his work is so depressing, whereas Thomas Hardy’s work is also depressing but makes me want to stab myself with a sharpened pen. The problem is that this will probably require me to read more Hardy, and that is something I do not wish to do. I am rereading NGS in the hopes that it will make me feel better to be reminded that, in fact, there never was a prelapsarian publishing era of joy, and authors have always had it tough. Status: just begun.

- Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey. Required reading. I like it, but I really want to reread Persuasion and Sense and Sensibility. Status: just begun.

- Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Played With Fire. I mistakenly thought this was the first in the series, though as the library won’t be able to get me that one for weeks, I might as well start with this. I am trying to approach this book with an open mind, but given that the original title of book number one is Men Who Hate Women, I have the feeling I may finish the book solely to avoid ‘but you haven’t READ IT’ arguments (though these will undoubtedly be replaced with arguments that include the words ‘you feminists’ and ‘no sense of humor’). Status: just begun.

- Tom Brown and Henry McLeish, Scotland: A Suitable Case for Treatment. Am toying with writing something set in an independent Scotland (those cries you hear are the Scottish Nationalists a-whoopin’ and a-hollerin’), and picked this up in a quest to figure out how Scots view Scottish national identity. Still not entirely sure, though most seem to agree that the deep-fried Mars bar is an aberration. Status: a third finished.

- Tobias Smollett, Humphrey Clinker. I have a woefully deficient background in 18th century literature so I figured this would help fill the gap. Also, I can read bits aloud to my Scottish friends, who splutter amusingly when they hear nice things about Alloa and Greenock. Status: three-quarters finished.

And don’t even ask about the BTR stacks/shelves. No, really, please don’t….

La Shark says it best, as she often does: “1. A query letter is a business letter.“

The novel is finished. It took longer than I expected, but the next one will be easier, if only because I’m a hell of a lot more aware of the stuff that shouldn’t been included in the first place and had to be removed at great cost.

Nothing to remind you you’re writing for the public than the blog hits shooting skyward, and finding that an ex-co-worker seems to have linked to you on her Facebook page.

Writing workshops are immensely helpful. Today’s reality check: “Great images, but I have no idea what the narrative is.”

I never used to listen to music while working. Maybe a CD or two, but always stuff I knew so well that it could just exist in the background. And I never bought a lot of new music. Then I got iTunes and started developing a writing playlist, which expanded to ‘anything not involving a heavy beat and/or wailing’ (which, given that I tend towards female singer/songwriters, isn’t much of the collection anyway). Then last month I got an iPod shuffle – yeah, I know, I can finally join the rest of the universe – and suddenly it’s my constant companion. The interior narrative now has a soundtrack, and I’m not sure if that’s entirely a good thing.

Given that I want to carry more upon my person than the iPod and a bottle of eyedrops, I am resigned to making most of my future clothing purchases in the men’s department, for one simple reason: pockets. Seriously, my corduroy jackets have dinky little pockets that I consider myself lucky to have, whereas if I could actually find a men’s jacket in my size, I’d be able to travel to London for the weekend without worrying about an overnight bag. A fishing vest, now, there’s something useful – I once fit in four paperback books….

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….

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

I entered both the novel and poetry categories of the Yeovil Literary Prize, and last month when I was having a Very Bad Day I (for some reason) checked the online system and found that all four pieces I’d entered were categorized as ‘Was not Shortlisted’. Which just melded into the general grumpiness and I crossed them all off my list. (Well, removed them from ‘Submissions 2006+’ and moved them to ‘Dead submissions’. Which is not, I must say, as satisfying as scraping with a thick black marker.)

…except that either this was an error or I’d hit the online system at the wrong time, because my poem ‘Captain’s Colours’ has been highly commended.

By Carol Ann Duffy.

*shakes head*

*checks again*

My new contact lenses are going a bit blurry (must remember to keep blinking when I’m at the computer!) but I’m pretty sure I’m not hallucinating this.

*checks the online system*

Wow, that’s better:
Captain’s Colours
Poetry
Work Highly Commended

After the top three poems there are nine highly commended. Out of 416. WOW.

This is a good thing for me right now. And not just because I get to squee about it to Ken Macleod tonight, but that’s always a bonus.

Many many thanks to the judges and administrators.

I’m getting some hits because I’m running a workshop at Ladyfest in Edinburgh on Saturday – hello, potential workshoppers! I hope you will join in – so here I am in the library to get some poems of other people to use for kickstarting creativity.

And I have been thinking lately about a Roethke poem, which was not difficult to track down since I knew the a) author and b) last line: Elegy for Jane.

So I have the feeling I will be jumpstarting myself from that this weekend.

It’s a fun exercise – take a line from any other poem (or, really, a line from the newspaper, or a picture, or…) and dash away with it. I like doing it in workshops because it’s creative rather than ‘read and critique’. And there will be another dimension to it as well, which appeals to a wide range of people.

Here’s hoping I actually end up running the workshop. Or at least, that if no one comes, my friend who’s one of the organizers takes pity on me and participates for the ten seconds she isn’t busily dashing around.

I’ve been working on a lot of short pieces lately – partly because (as I swear I’ve blogged about, but I cannot find an entry) I tend to work on short pieces when the big ones feel like an endless slog, and partly because there are a lot of Scottish/Scottish-based markets with deadlines in the next month and a half. (I seem to be locating myself within the Scottish literary scene, so here’s my attempt to see whether they agree.)

Since the start of September I’ve written two poems, overhauled a third, and revised a short story that’s been hanging around for a while. When I say revised, I mean smoothing out the prose – removing scaffolding and clutter, taking away weak clauses and descriptions and repetitions, and generally making it easier to read – as opposed to replotting. The most substantial edit was changing a few of the names.

And yet without even noticing until I had a look at the word counter, I reduced the story from 3544 words to 3124 words. 420 words – 11.8% of the story – GONE.

I’ve always been a proponent of the theory that if you delete something and don’t notice it’s missing, it isn’t necessary. This becomes tougher when you’re working on a project for a long time, because it’s more difficult to tell if something is necessary or simply hanging around in your mind. In this type of situation, though, it’s mind-boggling how much extra junk I was happily living with.

(Looks warily at the bookshelves and piles of papers nearby.)

interesting things to read

This tends to come up a lot. I try to be humble.

brilliant query letters

*snort* I’ll keep you posted

flogging -molly -sales

What? I got three hits on this?

writing of books never ends

Don’t I know it.

can my query letter be single spaced

Hmm, good question. I’d say yes, because it’s a business letter, but if you’re submitting by e-mail try and keep the paragraphs short.

bbc international adult writing scholars

Individually, the words all make sense, yet they do not connect in a way I understand.

charles dickens big books

Not Hard Times, which I am about to reread.

how many chapters are in a 87,000 word b

How long is a piece of string?

homage vs. plagiarism

Heh. I think if you claim it’s post-modern, you win.

“homage” plagarism

See above.

why did daisy miller die

Because the transgressive woman ALWAYS has to die.

homage vs plagiarism

Just put quotation marks around it and add a footnote or a parenthetical reference. Trust me.

thundercat a sex poem

…what?? Thundercat a snoozing meatloaf, at this exact moment in time, but I’ll pass on your request.

Ever since I went to Japan I’ve been meaning to get Mylène Farmer’s new album (I heard it on one of the flights), but iTunes doesn’t offer it – at least not in the UK – so I headed over to Amazon France, thinking I’d just buy the CD.

But the mp3 version is less than half the price of the bonus CD (though I can’t figure out what’s ‘bonus’ about the Bonus version, except that it costs 3 Euros more), so I might as well go for that option.

Except that I can’t tell whether I can order a French album from over here in the UK. They do have a section about ‘Règlementations sur l’Export ; Utilisateur américain’ but surely they couldn’t tell that I’m a Yank?

Obviously the best thing to do is channel-hop and just buy the damn thing in a store. Much simpler. Non?