I'm it!

I have been tagged, and I don't mean anything to do with gang vandalism, or the research dissertation that is currently devouring my brainpower. I have been old fashioned tagged, like at a kid's birthday party where the grass is slick under our runners and the sun hot on our heads. Tag!

This is virtual tag, of course, and Ev Bishop got me. Now I answer eight questions and tag five other bloggers. Better start running!

1. If you could have any superpower, what would you have? Why?

Good thing this is one of those questions my circle of friends considers on a yearly basis. I've had a few answers throughout my life, but currently I think I'd choose telepathy. I am very curious what's going on in people's heads. In your head, even. Yes, you. Worried?

2. Who is your style icon?

Apparently this is usually a question about clothes, but Ev and some others have made it about writing style, so I will happily embrace that alteration. At the moment my style icon is probably Kate Atkinson, who has defined the "Literary Suspense" genre and managed to write books that fascinate me with their mystery and their characters. Characters that blow me away with how strange and real they are, and mysteries that show how twisted the world can be. And it isn't just that genre, but her easy and complex style that I love.

3. What is your favourite quote?

The one that impressed me most recently was a friend who said during a debate, "I'm not an expert, but the person I'm pretending to cite is." She knows who she is, so I won't name her. But my favourite (writing-related) quote of all time, the one I keep coming back to, the one that I even had inscribed (in part) on my iPod (now that shows real devotion!) is from Bag of Bones by Stephen King:

"This is how we go on: one day a time, one meal at a time, one pain at a time, one breath at a time. Dentists go on one root canal at a time; boat builders go on one hull at a time. If you write books, you go on one page at a time. We turn from all we know and all we fear. We study catalogues, watch football games, choose Sprint over AT&T. We count the birds in the sky and will not turn from the window when we hear the footsteps behind as something comes up the hall; we say yes, I agree that clouds often look like other things--fish and unicorns and men on horseback--but they are really only clouds. Even when the lightning flashes inside them we say they are only clouds and turn our attention to the next meal, the next pain, the next breath, the next page. This is how we go on."

That, or Vladimir Nabakov: "The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamouring to become visible."

4. What is the best compliment you’ve ever received?

Yeah, I really don't know. People have complimented me, sure. The best? Any time anyone has expressed an honest emotional reaction to what I've written. I don't know when that was, but I'm sure it's happened.

5. What playlist/CD is in your CD player/iPod right now?

Let's see. The playlist is called "ice ice baby." Yes. Despite that, there is no Vanilla Ice on the list. It's dance music I use for throwing myself around my house when I want to relax.

6. Are you a night owl or a morning person?

As time goes on I have started to realize that I'm actually a morning person. I'm as disturbed by this as anyone who has ever lived with me.

7. Do you prefer dogs or cats?

I don't really prefer either. I'm as fond of other people's pets as I am of the foxes that visit my back yard, or the squirrels that hang out in my tree. That is to say, I think they're all great. As far as my pets are concerned, I prefer cats because they're more like me. We have moments of wonderful affection when we're absolutely bonded, and moments when we get to leave each other the hell alone.

8. What is the meaning behind your blog name?

Really? Okay. It's supposed to mean "I write, therefore I am," though I have been informed by intellects greater than mine that it actually means something nonsensical, a bad translation. Well heck. I don't care. The idea was that I was starting a blog about my writing life (I hadn't added my library life yet) and I needed a name. Why do I write, anyway? Because I have to. Because that's who I am. They're intertwined. I write therefore I am. So it was.

And now... ha! I've caught up with five other bloggers.

Jason Coggins
Laura Eno
Icy Sedgwick
Benjamin Solah
Anthony Venutolo

Banned Books Week

No, I didn't make this one up. Every year the last week of September is dubbed Banned Books Week by the ALA and various other organizations, and effort is made by librarians, teachers, and book-lovers the world round to bring attention to stories that have been suppressed.

Here's a Guardian article describing the top ten banned books for 2010. Among them are classics (Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird) new books (Twilight, ttfn) and one of my favourites, the children's picture book And Tango Makes Three, about a penguin family in Central Park Zoo.

There's good reason this event takes place at the end of September.  When kids go back to school parents take an interest in what they're studying. And a lot of these books are chosen either as part of the syllabus or to be included in the school library, because they contain events and issues of interest to the kids, and of interest to the people who are trying to teach those kids.  Looking at that Guardian article, the main reasons these books are banned boil down to racism, homosexuality, drugs, offensive language, sex, religion, and violence.

I have a lot of respect for people who take an active interest in what their children are studying.  I think it would be pretty rotten if you knew something was going on that you felt was wrong, especially with regards to your children, and you sat around and did nothing about it. But I am also about as far into the freedom of information camp as you can get, so this censorship thing makes me tired and sad every year. Not just during Banned Books Week, but all year. Because it is a sad and tiring thing.

Jason Black has written an excellent post about hating the repression of information rather than the book banners themselves, and I think he makes a lot of good points. This is all part of progress. These are the growing pains of the human race.

I embrace the struggle. I do not have a sword or a gun on a battlefield to show my determination, but I will continue to be a voice against censorship, and feel relief as new generations grow up allowed to know the world they inherit, and allowed to feel their own pain honestly. Because that's what most of these repressed ideas are about: things that we wish our children did not have to face. But they do, and they will, eventually. And hopefully they will never feel alone in their quest to understand themselves and each other and the hardness and beauty in this world.

Since I'm waxing poetic, here is one of my favourite quotes about this struggle. It's from Babylon 5 of all places.

"The war we fight is not against powers and principalities, it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender. The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain."

---

Photos: Against Banned Books by florian.b, Banned Books Display by Muskingum University Library, and I will read... by david silver on flickr

Lord of the Rings day

When The Fellowship of the Ring was released in cinemas in 2001 I had never read The Lord of the Rings, or even The Hobbit.

I'll pause here for you to get your sputtering indignation under control.

Okay? It wasn't that I hadn't heard of the books or didn't realize they were important. But there were a few factors influencing this tragedy. The first was that my mom owned a beautiful copy of The Hobbit, illustrated and leather-bound. One day when I was very young I took this copy off the shelf and tried to read it. I thought it was such a gorgeous book, and so recommended, it had to be amazing. And my God was it awful. It's a terrible story of a greedy little creature out for treasure. I couldn't get through it. (I have since. My opinion on its content remains unchanged.)

The second factor was that everyone kept telling me that all fantasy fiction was based on Tolkien's stuff. Since I had at one time been a fan of Robert Jordan, and read quite a bit of other traditional-type fantasy novels, I didn't see the point in rehashing it by going back to the origins. Not great reasoning, but there it was. I didn't see what extra it could give me, on top of the more modern stories.

So I went to see The Fellowship of the Rings with some friends, and I hated it. I didn't get it. It was very long, and lots of people almost died, and some people actually died, and then it didn't even end. A three hour film, and all I got was a TO BE CONTINUED with no answers at all.

It wasn't that Peter Jackson had failed. On the contrary, I think he did an amazing job, and I thought it even then. He put so much into the film that I was overwhelmed. I went into it expecting just a long fantasy movie. I didn't realize I was being introducing to an epic, to stories coming from the imagination of one man, the result of a well-considered life during a turbulent time in history, and to characters and settings that have continued to live in the imaginations of generations. There was so much in the film I couldn't process it all, and so what I registered was superficial. I didn't get it. But I was intrigued enough by the reactions to my reaction that I finally read the books.

And then I got it. Because as far as I can see, Tolkien didn't just define the classic fantasy genre. He told a story that was so huge and important it actually spoke for "the world of men" (as he puts it.) Far from the insignificant treasure hunt of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings is about ourselves, what we're doing to the earth, how we treat each other, and power, war and friendship. And it isn't dated. These themes continue to be relevant. It may have started as a way for the author to pass time, but by the end he'd poured everything into it, and it shows. There might be nothing about the human condition you can't find in these books, and I bet there's an academic paper out there that proves it.

By the time The Two Towers was released in 2002 I was such a fan of the story I stood in a long line with my friends to see the very first showing, and I was actually sad when those three hours were over. So yes, I get it.

And what makes this Lord of the Rings day today? I saw a few people admitting on another blog post that they hadn't read Tolkien. It made me think. I'd like to say to them, Hey, it's okay. No reason you have to have read it yet.

But you should some day.

Public Lending Right

I grew up in a country where librarians regularly defend the idea that libraries are good for writers.

For instance, libraries are good for trying out an author's books to see if you want to buy more. They're good for making sure your books are visible, being a part of whatever theme your librarian has chosen for the display by the door. Donate one of your books to a library and many people have a chance to become your fan. And libraries are good for recommendations. When a book comes into a library one or more members of staff are going to flip through it, perhaps become interested, perhaps read it, and/or suggest it to a patron. Many times I've seen patrons pick up a book that has just been returned, because it happens to be there on the returns counter, in view.

Libraries are great for writers.

Now I'm in the UK, and I've just discovered something very interesting. It's called the Public Lending Right. Initiated in Denmark in 1941, it's now used in many countries, including Canada--although according to Wikipedia (which never tells a lie) it isn't popular there. The idea is that a writer registers their books and they receive a small amount of money for every time those books are lent at a library. There's also a cap. In the UK the writer receives 6p per loan to a maximum of 6,600GBP.

It's not a huge amount of money, but it isn't nothing, that's for sure. And now the Public Lending Right is being threatened and authors such as PD James are speaking out in favour of the scheme.

I don't know why I hadn't heard of this system before. I don't even know what to think of it. Spending my entire life justifying how libraries are good for authors apart from this scheme, I'm having a hard time adjusting my view. But I think it's important to know--for writers, for librarians, and for anyone who's ever read a book from a library.

Consider yourself informed.

My choice

Last week a good friend called me "The most prolific writer friend she has who isn't actually... uh..."

And this is where the description stopped, because my good friend was having a hard time thinking of a way to say what she meant without actually saying, "...who isn't actually living on her writing. At all."

I had to laugh because I knew what she meant and I was not offended. It's a hard thing to say, particularly when you know your writer friend would like to be living on their writing. Entirely.

I also had to laugh because just a day before I'd compared my word count progress to Leigh Russell's and realized we were just about neck-and-neck in our current books. And I said to my other friend, "Just think! We'll be at the finish line, writing the last chapter, and then done! And she'll say, 'Great, now I'll send my book to the publisher!' And I'll say... 'Oh.'"

When you're not currently enjoying a publishing contract for your books, your novel writing must come from a very different motivation. Not a deadline set by an agent or publisher, but yourself, if you want to set it. Not because you know you're going to get paid, but because either you think you might, one day years from now, or because of something else entirely. Something strong enough to brush away every negative comment from unthinking acquaintances, every skeptical glance from your significant other (who might be wondering when you're going to stop dreaming and make some real money) and every vicious doubt that bubbles up from your own creative and oversensitive soul.

What's that stronger thing? I don't know, what is it? It must be different for everyone. Either the hope of riches, or the aversion to "real" work, or--for me--the knowledge that it isn't really a choice at all.

Photo by voxeros on flickr

Friday Flash: "Vigil"

"Vigil"

by Jen Brubacher

She bought the house on the corner because it faced the neighbourhood twice, two lines of her property displayed to the world. There was her plum tree growing hard black fruit, and a little line of butterfly bushes along the path. She thought that this was a place where she could thrive.

She wasn’t hoping for a lot from her neighbours. Some kindness, some respect.

But the corner lot on a busy street was a thoroughfare. They cut across her path, over her flowers, and she’d find the plants uprooted and trailing from their beds. At first she thought to speak to the person—the people?—who had done this by accident but she could never catch them. They didn’t come through when she was there as witness.

She put up a few signs. Polite words. They went unread.

The fruit went missing from her plum tree as it ripened. She’d meant to make them all jam but there was never enough for that, just a few they’d missed and the empty branches, sometimes snapped. She tried to give the last black fruits to the passers-by but they refused, and shook their heads at each other as if they thought she was crazy for offering.

Was she crazy? She hadn’t thought so.

Night was the worst. Even when she sat at the window above the entryway and looked down at the lot, she could never catch them. It was as if they sensed her, and stayed clear of her land. But walking by was enough. They shoved empty Coke cans into the butterfly bushes, and dropped crisp packets on the pavement that blew up to her front door, greased silver pages she gathered in a fist.

What did they want from her? She began to sit outside more often to hear what they muttered as they passed. Crazy old bat. Crazy selfish old bat.

Selfish? Old? She felt her lined face. She had moved there as a young woman. Now traces of the years had pushed themselves into her cheeks and pulled down at her mouth. Had it been so long?

She stayed outside and watched them passing by. Stopped trying to speak. She hardened around her eyes, softened at the middle. Grew roots into the abused yard and still they wouldn’t look at her. They just scurried away and thought about the sweetness of the plums when they were taken in the night.

But she no longer had the patience or the dexterity to make plum jam, had she still wanted to. Around her fruit lay rotting, spreading slime over the scattered beds where flowers had once grown. She began to creak. Her toes were long and gnarled. And her bark grew thick and her arms stretched up. She cackled and filled the shadows. She stretched into the sky and took the sunlight.

Soon she was leaning over her neighbours from above. The lot was finally a place to thrive, so she did, and grew until she was pushing out over the sidewalk, branches and leaves trailing low where those who passed tried to walk in the darkening shade.

Beneath those branches they were forced to lean down as they passed her house. Her neighbours bowed and kept their eyes to the ground. And finally, finally, she had their respect.

---

In honour of my friend, who lived in London for too long.

Click here for my previous Flash Fiction.

Photo: Tree corner by Deb Collins on flickr