la_marquise

I'm back from the writing retreat and pleased with the progress  made on Dragon Weather. I cut a fair amount but also added new material and I think it's in better shape.

Tidying the files this evening, I came across this. It's a scene I wrote three years ago, then cut before anyone but me and Phil saw any part of the book. I like it, but it's a scene that doesn't add to the plot, and anyway the plot went in a different direction. The characters still have their original names here, too. (The book started as me having fun with the characters from The Book of Gaheris.)

Anyway, here's an outtake.

“I’m an idiot,” Gawain said, and looked at the wall speculatively. “Is that brick or plasterboard?”

                “I don’t know,” Gaheris looked at him curiously. “Why?”

“I’d rather not make a hole in it.”

“Please don’t,” said Kay, and coughed. He was thoroughly fed up of feeling ill, and it was still only Thursday. Gawain had told him earlier that he was to stay home at least until the end of the week. He was going to go mad. Or rebel. Preferably the latter, once he had enough energy to stay awake for more than a couple of hours or do anything more energetic than walk from the bed to the sofa. Flu was a huge time sink. And very annoying. He didn’t recommend it.

It was just before eight in the evening. Gawain had stopped by to look at him – which he did not need, thank you – ask Gaheris a couple of arcane sounding questions about laundry, and fill him in on the new doctor. Today had been her first day, and she sounded competent. At least, she seemed to have Gawain under control and that was always useful. If he was honest, Kay did not entirely trust Gawain alone at the surgery. He was a good doctor, but trouble did seem to follow him around.

“She drew up a job description for a part-time practice manager,” Gawain said, still eyeing the wall. “It sounds just like the twins.”

Kay choked on his tea,[1] and Gaheris gave him a worried look. “I’m fine. Just startled.” And then, “Tell her it has to be approved by all three partners. That should buy us some time.”

“I could come in for a while. If it would help.” Gaheris spoke softly, gazed fixed on some point halfway between the two of them. “If it’s admin.”

“Heris, it’s people. Lots of them.”

“I…” Gaheris rubbed his arm. “I know most of them. Probably. And… Well, it might be good. To try, I mean.”

“Heart,” Kay began, remembered Gawain was in the room, and blushed. Gaheris gave him a sidewise smile.

He said, “I’ll be all right. You’ll be there.”

“Kill me now,” Gawain said. “Am I the only person in this village who hasn’t turned into marshmallow?”

“Percy,” Gaheris said, thinking about it. “And Mrs Galvoy at the Co-Op. And…”

“Rhetorical question,” Gawain said, hastily. Gaheris could be rather literal at times. “But about Rauni – Dr Guillou, I mean… Will you both stop looking at me like that?”

Kay looked at Gaheris. Gaheris looked back at Kay. “I’ve created a monster,” Gawain said. “I take it all back. Kay, you’re a terrible influence on my brother.”

“Hmm,” Kay said. And coughed some more. “I could… come in tomorrow… and talk to her…”

Both brothers Looked at him in turn. It was easy to forget, sometimes, how very alike they were. “I don’t think…” Gaheris began.

“Absolutely not,” Gawain said. “Rest and fluids, remember. Not to mention that today’s the first day you’ve spent more than twenty minutes upright since Monday morning.” And how he knew that… Kay would have to pay more attention to how often Gaheris was texting his brother. “The less you push it, the sooner you’ll feel better and you know it.” Gawain paused, considering. “If it was this one down with flu,” and he nodded towards his brother, “would you be letting him do that?”

Gaheris was still underweight and sometimes brittle. He’d spent the last three nights sleeping on Kay’s floor, the days taking care of him. He was so very young and so vulnerable… The situation was different. Kay wasn’t twenty five or fragile. He had responsibilities.  Gawain was still Looking at him and it was very annoying.

“You set one foot in the surgery tomorrow,” Gawain said, “and I’ll hire Lynette for the entire summer.”

And that was a low blow. Kay drew breath to protest and coughed yet again. “Point proved,” Gawain said. “Do as you’re told, or I’ll send Gareth round to cook, as well.”

Kay raised a hand. “All right, all right, you win.”

“Which reminds me,” Gawain continued. “I invited her to dinner this Saturday. Kay, too, of course, if he’s well enough. Is that all right.”

“Oh,” Gaheris said. “Okay. Right.” His hands crept towards each other, fingers twining. “That’s not.. I mean, the prep time… I need to know about allergies and what she likes and…”

“No allergies. And she’s a grown up who I am sure will be happy with anything you choose to make.”

“But…”

“Heris, I thought you said you wanted to try meeting new people more?”

“Yes, but…” Clasp, unclasp; clasp, unclasp. Kay began to try and get up, to move closer, so he might take and calm those troubled hands. He stood up all the time, after all, without even thinking about it. It was easy. It should be easy. It was just a virus, damn it. He used a hand to push against the arm of the sofa, and his legs let him down completely by wobbling. He caught at the back of the seat for stability, and Gaheris was there, one hand under his elbow, the other against his back. “What are you doing?”

He really could be remarkably like Gawain. The long hands steadied him, and pressed him gently back down. “If you need anything, ask me to get it,” Gaheris said. “You’re supposed to be resting.”

“You were warned,” Gawain said, amused. “He’s worse than Blodwen for fussing over his pack.”

Gaheris threw a cushion at him.

It's a truism that all writers are different and no-one has exactly the same process. Over the years, I've met writers who write detailed, scene by scene outlines and writers who start with a vague idea and a few opening lines. Some of us work out plot points on post-its or Scrivener peg boards. Some keep notebooks or ideas files. Some create playlists and moodboards. Some have complex rituals, others just sit down and start. I know writers who always create a first draft longhand, writers who work in bed, in garden sheds or in coffee shops. I know even more writers who vary, depending on circumstance and project.

I write both fiction and non-fiction, though rarely at the same time. A friend once observed to me that he found the two completely incompatible and needed a clear division between the two. I'm not quite in that category, although, again, it depends. Serious academic research takes up a lot of brain space and concentration and I've never been able to write the more literary end of my fiction if I also have an academic project on the go. On the other hand, I write non-fiction far faster than fiction. WIth history, at least, the article or book at the end is the final, often shortest stage. I've done all the research and the note-making and the thinking and the discussions. I'm just writing up. Again, though, this is me. I've had colleagues who find the writing stage slow and difficult.

I'm not an outliner: even with non-fiction, the most I do is come up with a list of chapter headings, with maybe a few key words about intended contents. WIth fiction, outlines trip me up. They feel too rigid, clsing down the creativity, the depth, the landscape of the book or story. I make running notes: in my long hand days, these were in the margins of whatever notebook I was using (usually Alwych All Weather, which I still prefer). This days I make them in bold at the front of the file. But I don't always remember to look at them. I also leave myself notes on scraps of paper, which I then lose or forget and rediscover months or years later and wonder at.

I don't always write in the same voice, either. With non fiction, a monograph or an article for a peer-reviewed journal requires a different style and tone to one intended for the popular audience. My first copy editor told me that I was unsually clear, even in the most technical sections, which I treasure as a comment and try to live up to. But at the same time I have peers who produce wonderful work in High Academic, and I enjoy that, too. It's just not how my thoughts tend to flow. (I can speak Post-Modern and Post-Structuralist if required, but I don't write it. this is at least in part because I'm an early mediaevalist and the sorts of source materials I work with don't lend themselves fully to these in terms of theoretical model -- too many absences and lacunae, which my personal academic sense of rigor feels it would be inappropriate to try and fill with models from theory.)

Fiction, though... Elizabeth Bear once said that all writers arrive with two skills already rooted. Mine are style and atmosphere: I feel my way into and through my books, reaching always for the emotional effect I want to create. Words are each of them layered and nuanced, bringing with them resonances from culture and context, history and daily use. No word is an island.

Flaubert, it is said, agonised over almost every word of Madame Bovary. Sometimes I know how he felt. Words matter and it makes me itchy when I can't find the right one. There are things I want to say that are unamenable in English. There are echoes I want to conjure. Words are beautiful and I want to use them to build structures worthy of their beauty.

So far, so literary -- and I am, alas, a literary fantasy author, in terms of style at least. It doesn't make for commercial books, which is not ideal. But I like Living With Ghosts and The Grass King's Concubine. I like how they sound and feel, even if I worry about my skill with plotting. My plots often go sideways, and that's not ideal.

Almost all my life, I've written stories and most of my childhood and teenage writing was essentially fanfic. I still have a lot of this stuff (no, not going up on AO3). From my mid teens onwards, it reads like me, in the way I stack and shape words and the games I play with grammar. Much of it is pretentious and annoying, and, well... (I once wrote a story in the style and language of Sir Thomas Malory, for instance. There's anotjher that's a literary allegory based on T S Eliot. They're appalling.) Every once in a while, I come across something I'd forgotteen I'd written, and, well, yes, that's my voice.

The Book of Gaheris has four different viewpoint characters, each narrating a section. They sound different, because each of the characters sounds different in my head. (The same is true of LWG and GGK, but the sections are more interwoven.) I always assumed that all my fiction writing was basically the same, however -- that the difference in character voice was somehow not the same as variation in style. Then Phil suggested I write a particular short story I was working on in my 'Gaheris voice'. Which... Well, it was a surprise. My writing is my writing. But I went and looked at the Gaheris material again (this was before I wrote the second two novellas or thought about trying to sell any of what I'd written in that background). It was me, yes, and it was the character, but it was also something further. It was demotic, somehow. It was that difference I already recognised from my non-fiction, between the technical and academic and the popular.

Not all The Book of Gaheris is in that mode: certain characters required a more literary tone. The thing I'm writing at present, though, is entirely in demotic voice. It reads, well, fun -- I tend to think my tone in fiction tends to the serious. It's fun to write. Maybe I'm changing as a writer. Maybe I'm just weird. I don't know. But what matters here, for me anyway, is that, finally, writing is once again fun.

So, I have a new story up on AO3:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/64393576

Kay does not believe in the supernatural. Unfortunately, it believes in him.

It's spring. The days are getting longer.
I like the flowers. I don't mind the brightness, as long as it's cool and I don't have to be outside and stationary in it.
But... I am a winter person. I like cool and shadow. I don't like heat and strong light. I don't like the feel of the sun on my skin. And I don't feel like myself when it's bright and hot.
It's only going to get brighter and hotter from now on until September or so. All around me, people will talk about 'lovely weather' and 'glorious days', and say, "But you must like it really," if I demur. They'll make me sit outside in direct sunlight. They'll refuse to let me go inside or share the shade. (Yes, this happens.) I'm not allowed to ask for allowances because the heat makes me ill. (I get dizzy and faint.) And: I am not allowed to talk about this in my main online space. One of the summer people there has announced loudly and repeatedly that anyone who hates the heat is making a direct attack on her and her health and we are evil. Someone else declared that disliking heat and being made ill by it was racist, which makes no sense, because it's not something anyone has control of, but...
So here I am, falling down the well of my spring and summer SAD (which my ex-shrink told me didn't exist), wanting to curl up and hide forever, and feeling that it's not allowed because of other people's feelings.
I apologise for existing in my winter skin.

For the last few years, I routinely set off sensors at airports. I do not have any metal pins in my limbs (or elsewhere). I don't tend to wear stuff with lots and lots of zips. I never put stuff in the pockets of jeans (because, as we know, pockets in women's jeans are decorative, and useless). Quite oftern I travel in leggings and a dress anyway, without zips or metal buttons. I take out my earrings.I take off my wedding ring.

Yet still, the machine that goes ping, goes ping.

It occurred to me a few years back that maybe the problem was to do with my underpinnings. I tend to wear underwired bras (am I allowed to say bras on DW?). I am not particularly large, as such things go, but my rib cage is on the smaller end, so underwires have tended to be more comfortable. (Yes, I know. Many many women hate them and find them excruciating. I'm weird.) So I tried non wired, soft bras.

Ping.

I take off my glasses.

Ping.

At this point, I'm frankly baffled. I've never had major surgery. No-one has accidentally left a scalpel behind. to the best of my knoweldge, I've never swallowed a needle or a hair pin or a nail. My resolve is intermittently steely, yes, but I don't think it shows up on airport sensors.

And the main outcome of this has been to remind me how much I hate soft bras and bras with fitted cups. The soft ones squish me and are less support than the average lettuce. I don't have a silhouette, I have vague lumps. If I'm going to be lumpy, I'll stick with crop tops, thank you: they don't compress. Solid cups are hot and they itch, and what I really want to know is why is it so hard to find a sportsbra without extra padding? Sportsbras are the only time I appreciate feeling squished. I don't care about how a look, I want to be comfortable. I do not need extra pads or cups making life hotter and sweatier and the male gaze is not relevant, damnit. Or, when I'm on one of the long distance solo hikes, safe.

And I bet they'd make the damn machines go ping.

Skirt of the day: Holy Clothing Blue.

Revising this book is throwing up some new scenes. Here's a snippet.

"Meanwhile and faraway
“Have a seat.”
The room is bland: beige carpet and curtains, plain glass-topped table, uncomfortable chairs with worn padding. A mid-level government interview room, could be anywhere outside the corridors of the most powerful. Maybe there, too. Rauni has never been in those corridors. She takes the seat closest to the door.
Two women and a man are already seated. None of them have name badges. All of them, nonetheless, are people of rank. She inclines her head towards the one she already knows, the Aunty.
The Aunty smiles, that familiar Aunty smile, a mix of reassurance and command. She says, “We want you to apply for a job.”
Rauni blinks. This was not what she expected. If she expected anything, about which she isn’t sure. The man slides a folder across the table to her, and she opens it. An advertisement, printed out from an agency website, for a locum doctor in a small village in the North.
Rauni has a job. The Aunty knows this. She reads the advertisement through, twice, then says, “May I ask why?”
There’s a moment’s silence. Then the other woman says, “It’s a delicate situation. That village lies between earth and water, over one of the oldest portals.” She pauses, a fine line drawing itself between her narrow, arching brows. She’s beautiful, this woman, like a waterfall in spring. Like a tempest. Power winds through her, a low hum that Rauni can sense across the room. The woman continues, “There’s a family there, a witchblood family, and a resident guardian.” She pauses, waiting for some response.
Rauni looks again to the Aunty. No help there. She says, “I have no training with portals.”
“No. That will be provided.”
This makes no sense. Rauni is not a witch, and this, surely, is witch work. Medical witches are far from rare: it should be easy to find one to take this job. There’s more to know, here. She folds her hands in her lap and waits.
The man stirs. He, surely, is the other anomaly here. Men are not witches. Men are not Aunties. He must, therefore, hold some kind of sensitive government position. He says, “There is… a complication. The witchblood family has no witches in the current generation, nor is there a powerful witch resident in the village. The guardian reports unease: something is stirring but he does not know what. He detects no witchery, nor any activity from Outside. It’s a new flavour, or a very old one. There is no evidence of change, yet something is clearly changing or imminent. He’s uncomfortable about the weather. He mentioned dragons.”
Ah. But Rauni says nothing out loud, exchanging another look with the Aunty.
“A senior witch from my section is conducting a quiet inspection,” the woman says. “But my colleague –” and she nodded towards the Aunty, “feels we need an alternative perspective as well. You can provide that. If this is old magic, well…” She tails off and looks at Rauni. “We’re aware this is an irregular request. You are under no obligation.”
“How long would the posting last?” Rauni asks.
“A year, in the first instance.” The woman hesitates. “It’s a pleasant village, not too remote and there are facilities. You won’t be uncomfortable. I can confirm that: I was born there.”
“I’ll apply for the job,” says Rauni."

Dictators are frightening.

They persecute, they harm, they plunder and they treat the vast majority of us with utter contempt. We are relevant only as resources to be exploited, for labour, for money, as props in their lives. They're the ultimate narcissists, and they glory in that. And it's terrifying to be subject to their whims. They kill people: all of them are mass murderers. They distort lives and use their power to inflict their bigotries on everyone else. They are the worst of humanity.

It's okay to be frightened and overwhelmed: that's a natural response. It's okay to be confused. It's okay not to be fighting all day everyday. We take turns with that, and we support each other. Some of us are in far safer, far more privileged situations than others and it's reasonable to ask those who are comparatively safe to do more of the heavy lifting.

But here's the thing: they aren't invincible.

And at heart, they're afraid. That's one of the reasons they are so desperate to control and divide us. Because we always outnumber them. They try and try to get into our minds, to make us compliant and dependent. There's a reason Elooong wants to install chips into people's brains. There's a reason governments create networks of quislings and informers and secret police. There's a reason they want to control the media and education. They don't want us to discover each other's humanity, to combine against them, to learn that other ways of thinking and acting and being exist. We frighten them.

Easy for me to say, perhaps. Right now, the world is scary for an awful lot of people.

But, looking at this in historian mode, these people fall. These systems fail, and in general this has been happening faster from the beginning of the 20th century. There is light at the end of this tunnel.

Hi, it’s been a while. Who’s still around in here?

Two more episodes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRsKy-2cgv0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I63Rw09Cpeo

I'm also giving lectures on Wales between around 450 C.E. and 1100.
These will probabaly be weekly. The first one is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_SbdIy78AI