The weekend went well, though not as productive writing-wise as I would have liked. "In Jurong" is now up to 5600 words, and our man has just made it to the Undine's Waterfall to get the answers behind his amnesia. After writing this entry, I'll try to finish it up (or get as close as I bloody well can).

This morning, I headed back to the health center so they could take blood, and I have to say, it was one of the most pleasant blood-takings I've ever had. The technician had the lightest touch, and was incredibly efficient, extracting two tubesful before I really even realized what she was doing. Then the needle was out and she was putting a band-aid on my arm. Awesome.

Afterward, I came over to Cup A Joe, ordered Green Eggs and Ham and a Grande Double Mocha, and busted out the iBook. Go words go!

A quick linky: Jennifer Weiner's SnarkSpot. She's a bestselling literary author with a wicked sense of humor, and she has hilarious advice on querying The New Yorker and becoming a novelist. (Thanks to Steph for the pointer!)

Last night, after paying bills (bleh), I filled out membership and registration info for ICFA and WisCon, and reserved hotel rooms for both events. Yay ICFA! Yay WisCon! I'm trying to see if they'll let me do a reading at ICFA in addition to my paper presentation, but I'm not sure if that's reserved for, you know, authors that people have actually heard of. And I put my name down as interested in being a participant at WisCon, so hopefully I'll be on a panel or two there, and get to do a reading as well. Janet also signed up to display her art at WisCon, so if you're going, make sure to check it out, and then buy some of her wonderful art so that we can continue going to cons.

***

Okay, on to the style-monkeyish part of this entry.

I've been paying much more attention to style recently in my (and others') writing, in the way the words fit together and sound on the page. And so, I've decided to give Greer Gilman another chance. Her story "Jack Daw's Pack" was published in the Winter 2000 issue of Century, and at that time, I gave up on it after a couple pages. I just didn't have the patience at that time to slow down and experience the story, to my detriment. And when I reviewed the excellent Small Beer Press anthology Trampoline, I had the same reaction to her novella "A Crowd of Bone," which I didn't even mention in the review since I couldn't make it past the first few pages. (The story went on to win the World Fantasy Award.)

Now thoroughly ashamed of myself, I revisited "Jack Daw's Pack" this weekend, and realized what a remarkable piece of literature it is. It was still confusticating and hard to penetrate, but I could appreciate it now, and revel in the myth-making that Gilman is able to pull off. The plot (if there could be said to have one) is one that requires analysis, and this (long) interview with Michael Swanwick helped to clear things up a bit, especially with the dialect and vocabulary that Gilman employs. It was also very interesting to see that not only does she write that way, but she seems to think that way.

What else is interesting is that she has completely invented a mythology, in the world of Cloud. Her archetypes are rooted in various mythologies, yet none of it feels rehashed or derivative at all. Her characters, gods and mortals alike, are completely original and fascinating.

Prime Books is reprinting her first novel Moonwise, which won the Crawford Award and was shortlisted for the Tiptree and Mythopoeic Fantasy Awards, but I managed to find a decently priced paperback on half.com. When I finish with my thesis, and have some time to truly appreciate her wordsmithing, I'll read both "A Crowd of Bone" and Moonwise.

And while I was thinking about all this stuff this past weekend, it hit me, out of the blue, lightning to the brain, how I should approach my own novel, the book which will be my doctoral dissertation. I'd been thinking about how I could create something iconic and lasting, and I think with this new approach I've got it. I don't want to say anything more about it, because it's all still nebulous and amorphous in my mind, and if said out loud, it might collapse like a soufflé, made idiotic and simple by concretization. Needless to say, it'll be an ambitious project, and one that will test all my skills as a writer.

Okay, enough babbling, time to write.

UPDATE: At 2:00 p.m., I finished "In Jurong." It rounded out at 6700 words. I'll need to make another run-thru, fix some things up, flesh others out, possibly increase the word count a bit, and the end feels like it happens too fast. Then I'll give it to Janet for a looksee, fix the things she points out, then insert it into my thesis. Then John Kessel will look at it and give me any of his comments, I'll fix those, and thesis will be finis. Yay! I'm almost done!

Now Reading:
Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales & by Anna Tambour

Stories Out to Publishers:
9

Books Read This Year:
4

Zines/Graphic Novels/Fiction Mags Read This Year:
2