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Another quick way to get your book on the Banned Book List is to write about alternative sexualities or genders.
These two didn’t make the list this year, but here are two children’s books I love that are frequently on the most challenged books list: https://www.iveyink.com/blog/2017/9/28/banned-books-week-day-4-of-penguins-and-guinea-pigs
One of the things Tsarist and Soviet Russia had in common was how many of their writers were famed for being banned or challenged - to have a celebrated Russian author that was banned, exiled, or imprisoned almost goes without saying.
I was a Russian minor and, as mentioned in yesterday's post, was pretty much left to my own devices for displays the year that we happened to be celebrating The Year of Russia with the Kennesaw State University Library System. Below are some of my banned author info cards and some of my "propaganda" cards that temporarily festooned the Year of Russia poster.
One of the things I miss the most about working at a library is making book displays. Banned Books Week was always fun to plan for. We usually started brain-storming several months ahead of time.
One of my favorite Banned Books Weeks was my last year at Kennesaw State University. We had two libraries on two campuses that needed to be decked out in all the Banned Books glory we could come up with. That year, as the head of the display committee and the only member of the display committee on the Marietta campus, I was pretty much left up to my own devices and put together what I feel were two pretty awesome displays.
Today I present my favorites from the rescue pet themed display - tomorrow I'll post pictures from our Year of Russia/Banned Books Week tie in.
I was inspired to do this rescue pet theme for Banned Books Week when my mom adopted a kitten - reading the little bios for all the cats and thinking about the “judge the deed not the breed” mentality for dogs that are harder to get adopted kind of made me think about people who raise a hue and cry about the content of a book without actually having read it.
Or, rather, books not behind bars. Yesterday, I stumbled across a list of books that have been banned in prison systems:
Some of them have reasons that seem to make sense (the concern the book might cause racial tension among inmates), some of them are silly (really, we’re not letting inmates read sexual content?), and some have no reason given, which makes the banning of The Diary of a Young Girl seem like an odd choice.
I was also intrigued to find that the list did not include books about escaping from prison, or about building bombs, which you would expect to be pretty high on the list of books that wardens don’t want inmates to read.
I was reminded of a scene in The Shawshank Redemption. Andy and a handful of other inmates are sorting through donated books, separating them out by category - fiction or hobby, trade, and educational. One of the inmates picks up a book and reads the cover:
“The Count of Montee Crisco by Alexandree Dumass. Heh. Dumb-ass.”
“What?” Andy asks.
“Well, that’s what it says!” the first inmate protests as others start to snicker. Andy takes the book and looks at it.
“That’s Dumas,” he says, pronouncing it “doo-mah.” He looks thoughtful for a moment, then hands it back to the first inmate. “It’s about a prison break - you’ll like it.”
“We oughta file that under ‘educational,’ oughtn’t we?” Red asks.
Not only is it Banned Books Week, it is also the 100th anniversary of Children’s Books Week:
In honor of this great conjunction of events, I’m re-posting one of my blogs from last year’s Banned Books Week about books that are challenged for reason of “unsuited to age group.”
https://www.iveyink.com/blog/2018/9/28/unsuited-to-age-group
More Banned Books Week fun to come tomorrow!
Hello, readers, welcome to Banned Books Week 2019.
While I will try to keep up my annual tradition of posting something each day this week, given our recent addition, I will be mostly re-posting from previous Banned Books Weeks in years past.
But, I will have something fun and new for you this week - some of my favorite Banned Books displays I’ve done in the past.
But for today, please enjoy my first Banned Books Week post from last year:
https://www.iveyink.com/blog/2018/9/23/banned-books-week-background
Hello, readers - I'm back! (Well, sort of*.)
As those of you who follow my personal Facebook page know, I gave birth to my first child in July. As you might imagine, the last seven weeks have been a blur. I've had very little spare time and have not been able to spend any of it working on blog posts up until now.
It occurred to me a few nights ago that Banned Books Week is coming up in a couple weeks. A few years ago, I made a point of trying to make 1 blog post a week every day of Banned Books Week. That first year I made it happen. There were a couple years I didn't - I had too much going on and just reposted the blogs from previous years. Last year I planned ahead and wrote posts during down time on our cruise because I knew I would be busy when I got back. I should have done that again this year - what I had on my plate last fall was nothing compared to a new baby!
I haven't quite decided yet what I'm going to do for Banned Books Week. I might repost some of my blogs from previous years. I might ask questions of my readers. I will probably share pictures from some of the displays I did for Banned Books Week when I used to work in libraries. I will definitely share articles and memes, as that's something easy to do one-handed while holding a baby who just fell asleep.
So be on the lookout - something will be coming. I'm just not sure what yet.
*Posts will likely continue to be sporadic for the next couple months.
Well, as many of you noticed, I did not post my July plans (more on that in my previous post: https://www.iveyink.com/blog/2019/7/3/irony ) at the end of June/beginning of July like I normally do.
My update of what I got done in June is... pretty much nothing. I wrote a few hundred words for Wolf and Sheath, and I've been working on "writing" a couple other stories in my head the past couple weeks. But with all the stuff we still have to do to get ready for the baby, I wasn't expecting to get a lot done (though, honestly, I was kinda of hoping to do a little more than I have).
My plans for July (now that we're already a week in and I've done nothing) are pretty much the same for June - do what I can, if I have time (which, again, may not be much).
I know that once she's born I most likely won't have the time or mental energy to work on anything for a few months. I submitted a flash fiction piece to a magazine a couple months ago and in my cover letter joked that flash fiction might be the only media whose scope lines up with my time since I'm expecting my first baby in August. I just found out this week the story didn't get accepted, so, while that's disappointing, that also opens up the ability to submit it elsewhere, as this magazine doesn't accept simultaneous submissions.
So, what else? I'd like to think that now that Jason and I should have all our baby prep nailed down within the next few days that maybe I'll find the time to work on stuff again... But I'm also to the point in the pregnancy where she really could come any time, and when she does all bets are off.
For the meantime, I will at least keep trying to do my weekly blog post and writerly quote... but if the next time I miss one or both, it's possible that means that we have a new arrival : )
A list of ironic things from the past few days:
-Monday I was going to send out an email to my coworkers with detailed info about the contingency planning meeting we were going to have on Tuesday. I ran out of time and figured I'd send it Tuesday morning. (See the rest of the following list as to why that's ironic.
-I got rear-ended (at low speed. I'm OK). I was on the way to a chiropractor appointment.
-Jason and I went to the hospital to get checked out, just in case. They decided to admit me overnight for monitoring, just in case. We had planned to pack our hospital bags that night.
-They wouldn't let me eat anything 'til almost 10:30. They expressed concern that Elianna wasn't moving as much as she's supposed to.* The next morning after breakfast she got up to the rate of movement they like to see. The morning nurse told me babies in the womb usually get active after the mother eats. *She is also OK.
-Everyone jokes about hospital food being awful. My breakfast Tuesday morning was fantastic.
-All throughout the pregnancy, my doctors have been saying, "Eat healthy. Don't go over-board - and extra 300 calories is all you need! Don't eat too much fat or salt. Eat a lot of fruits and vegetables. Limit your caffeine and drink more water." What do they bring the pregnant lady for breakfast? Eggs, bacon, grits, a biscuit, and coffee. No water, fruit, or veggies to be seen.
-My shin, which has been very painful at night the last 2 weeks was about the only body-part NOT uncomfortable due to the crummy hospital bed, strap-on monitors, IV, and butt injection.
-Last night, the second night after a car accident, I slept better, more deeply, and more comfortably than I have in the past 2 or 3 months.
Isn't it ironic, dontcha think? A little TOO ironic.
So, once again, I had to drive somewhere I'd never driven before and got lost. It really was not my fault this time - the road I was supposed to turn on had a completely different name than my directions. I figured it out in pretty short order, but still... It's like a superpower, except that it's not super at all.
More on my extremely "special" set of skills:
https://www.iveyink.com/blog/2018/6/17/the-non-super-superheroes
A Scene from My Day: 07/01/2016
I went out on an excursion today. I had directions from Google maps, which stated that it should take me 41 minutes. It was a long drive, but most of it was going to be on the part of 92 that has a 55 mph speed limit, and the area of 75 where the speed limit is 70.
Fast forward about 35-40 minutes.
I took exit 296. The directions said turn left onto Cassville-White Road. Easy - look, there's a sign for it. Then I was looking for Brown Loop on the right. Hmm... Lots of little roads going off to the right. Didn't see a sign for Brown Loop. I did see a road on the right that did not have a sign. I wondered if that was it, but by that time had already passed it, so I kept going.
After I had gone a while (or what we in the South refer to as "up the road a-piece"), the road made 3 right angle turns in quick succession, and I came to a - gas station? - that made me think I had traveled back in time about 80 years, except that there was a shiny new Chevy Suburban parked outside instead of a shiny new Model T.
I should mention that I have inherited my mom's sense of direction. However, since I did not inherit either her tendency to panic when lost, or my dad's utter refusal to ask directions, I pulled over at said gas station/ice cream parlor (and town hall for all I know). First I asked the shaggy-headed teenager who was leaving if he knew where Brown Loop road was. He didn't. But, you know, when I was a teenager, I didn't know road names either. I asked two ladies inside. They'd never heard of it. I asked two more ladies who were in a truck outside. They didn't know where it was, either. Now, in their defense, this intersection looked like the sort of place where if it was more than a mile away it might as well have been on another planet.
Not to be deterred, I hopped back in my spaceship and went back the way I came. There had been a bigger gas station just after I got off the interstate, so I went back there (again, looking for Brown Loop the whole way).
I stopped in at the other gas station, not having seen Brown Loop (or Brown anything, except horses) but wondering again if that little signless road I had passed was where I needed to be going. I asked the lady behind the counter and she wasn't sure. I was starting to wonder if I was ever going to find this place, but the door tinkled as another customer came in and she called out to him.
"Hey, Hotrod!" "Yup?" "You pretty good with the roads 'round here?" "Yup!" "You know which road Brown Loop is?" "Hmm..."
Fortunately, one of Hotrod's buddy's followed him in. He was pretty sure that Brown Loop was "the road with the old wooden bridge." I must have made a funny face when he said this, because Counter Lady assured me that she knew what road we were talking about now and the bridge was perfectly safe. I said I was less concerned about the safety of the bridge and more concerned about finding it.
By now about 3 or 4 people who looked like they were related to Hotrod (and also to my friend, Lee), had gathered around and were of a pretty strong consensus that Brown Loop was "just past the KOA" and was, in fact, the road with The Old Wooden Bridge. Since Brown Loop was not my ultimate destination, I also asked if anyone was familiar with Shotgun Road. Oh, yes, they all knew Shotgun road - it was on the left, just past the now-famous Old Wooden Bridge.
So back in the car, armed with directions that included "just past the KOA" (whatever that was) and "just over the old wood bridge," I set out again. It turns out the KOA was a campsite with a very nice big red sign. The little no-sign road I had passed twice was just past the KOA, so I took a chance and turned down it. And I found myself very glad I drive a tiny little Mazda 2. I've seen grocery store aisles wider than this road. And over the first rise, I finally saw The Old Wooden Bridge. Again, I was thankful for my tiny car. There was a sign that said something about a weight limit for trucks over 6 wheels. I snorted - more like buggies over 6 wheels, I should think.
I very much expected to start passing signs saying things like "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe" and "Hoover for President." And, just past the infamous bridge, there was a road on the left. With no sign. Taking a chance that this was the "just past the bridge" Shotgun road that I was looking for, I turned. I never did see any other indicator of road name, but I did find the address I was looking for. I guess if you have to ask for road names, "Y'ain't from around here."
Later, I made my way back, easily finding my route back to the highway. As I drove down the on-ramp back onto the interstate, the triumphant strains of Ride of the Valkyries swelled from the stereo, and I knew all was well.
Coming back home it too me exactly 41 minutes from driveway to driveway. Good job, Google maps.
It is the LAMEST super power.
Anyone who's ever had a pet knows they have their own little quirks and personalities. Some of you may have had conversations with your pets - little back and forth conversations you hold in your normal voice, and in the voice that you imagine your pet would speak with if they had vocal cords.
Of course, Jason and I had a Baldur voice. And a lot of times it was used to say things like, "You guys are the worst." (Particularly after we had just sung a particularly egregious song about him that we had just made up.)
We would also sometimes blame things on Baldur - things that obviously could not have been done by him, due to being about 2 feet tall and having no thumbs. Ascribing blame to Baldur was usually followed by, "Oh my god, you guys, you KNOW I can't reach that" (or just, "No, Dad!") in the Baldur Voice.
Recently, we have started blaming things on Baldur's ghost.
Something will go missing and if we can't find it, we'll just shrug and say, "well, I guess Baldur took it," or turn to Athena and say, "well, little girl, your brother stole the such-and-such again." It started out as a joke with the scissors.
I think the first Christmas we had Baldur, I had been wrapping presents, and went out, leaving the scissors on the coffee table - forgetting that we had a coffee-table-height dog. I came back home and was greeted by my happy boy with his tail wiggling, very proud of the new toy he had clutched in his teeth; he had the scissors gripped very precisely by the plastic thumb loop. Obviously, after that, Jason and I were very careful to leave the scissors on the counter or higher tables.
A couple weeks after Baldur died, we couldn't find the scissors we keep on the counter in the kitchen. We shrugged, suggested Baldur's ghost had taken them, and had a good laugh about it when we found them a couple days later exactly where Jason had left them in another room.
A week or two after that, they went missing again. We could not find them. We'd been doing a lot of cleaning, moving, getting rid of stuff, and breaking down boxes getting the house ready for the baby. We finally just assumed the scissors had been put down between two stacks of recyclables (we were using them a lot for the box breaking down) and had accidentally gotten thrown away. We bought a new pair of scissors for the kitchen.
This past Monday, I was sick. Our little Chinese restaurant is kind of our go to when we feel bad, for their egg drop soup and (surprisingly light) chicken fried rice. Jason went to the kitchen to look at the take out menu, to confirm that they're only open Tuesday through Sunday. He came back into the room with an odd look on his face and handed me the unexpectedly heavy paper menu. Inside it were the lost scissors. The last time we got takeout from them was the day Baldur died. We laughed. I think we may have cried a little, too.
I'm not saying that we really think that Baldur stole the scissors and hid them in the menu. But it is sometimes comforting to think that our playful, goofy boy is still hanging around, playing jokes on us, now that he doesn't have gravity to confine him to coffee table height.
Well... Remember my plans for May? To get back into my routine and get my head back in the game? Yeah, not so much...
I did finish rereading the bulk of my Wolf and Sheath material - the main document and most of my snippets and tidbits that I haven't figured out where exactly they go in the main story yet. I think I still have about 10,000 words of new-ish material left to reread.
I also have been good about keeping to my social media schedule - writerly quotes on Mondays and and blog posts on the weekends.
But that's it - I haven't gotten any actual writing, editing, or submissions done this month.
And, granted, there are reasons for that. We've been making some pretty big preparations for our little girl, including having the carpet upstairs replaced today. I don't know if any of y'all have ever had the carpet replaced in a house you're currently living in. It's like moving - you have to get everything up off the floor and, even if the carpet people are going to be moving furniture, you have to get stuff off the furniture. That means knick-knacks off shelves and dressers, pens and papers off desks and - yes - books off bookshelves (and bedside tables and the floor).
As you might have guessed, as a writer, former library worker, and avid reader, I have a boatload of books. I wouldn't say I have enough books to sink the Titanic... but it might not be going too far out on a limb to say that I have enough books to plug the hole in the Titanic. And, as those of you who are also writers, librarians, or avid readers know from trying to move your own books, books add up quickly and are heavy in large quantities.
Even under normal circumstances, it would have taken us several days to pack and move everything we needed to to prepare for this. But in my third trimester, I'm not supposed to be lifting more than 20 pounds, and in the past week or so have gotten to where bending over, crouching, etc. is getting to be more difficult. Plus, going on almost a month now, I've been without A/C at work. So when I get home in the evenings, I'm hot, tired, cranky, and the last thing I want to do is spend all night cleaning and packing.
So Jason and I have been tackling this in small chunks, an hour or half hour at a time. And now we have to put it all back...
So June... We still have baby preparations - we have to get nursery furniture. We're meeting a doula tomorrow. My shower is in a couple weeks. And that's on top of plans to spend time with people before the baby comes...
So I'm not expecting June to be hugely productive. I'm not saying I won't continue trying to do what I set out to in May - just that I'm going to try not to give myself a hard time if I don't get a lot of writing done on top of all the other things that are pressing in on me.
I have never weighed what I'm "supposed" to. I've always gained weight easily and struggled to lose it. I lost 7 pounds in the year between when I got married and when my husband and I went on a delayed honeymoon cruise. I gained it all back in 2 weeks.
One of my big concerns when I got pregnant was that I might gain more weight than is healthy. Part of my concern was that I'd crave stuff all the time. Another part of my concern is that my body seems to react exactly the opposite of how it's supposed to - when I carefully watch what I eat and exercise, I struggle to lose even a portion of a pound. Weeks that I say "to heck with it - one of my coworkers brought donuts," I lose weight. One summer when I was in high school, we went to the beach and I consumed pretty much nothing but oysters, fried soft-shell crab, and cokes. I lost 5 pounds.
I was chubby and dumpy in high school. While I have never been "thin," I have learned to hide it well over the years. I dress in styles and cuts that tend to flatter and hide, rather than trying to force myself to wear something trendy that won't look good on me. You will never see me in a tucked-in shirt, white pants, or leggings paired with a top that doesn't fall to at least mid thigh.
It also helps that a lot of my weight is in my lower body. Many people who see or interact with me on a daily basis see me behind a desk or counter. I have slender hands and wrists, and good posture. On the rare occasion that I tell someone how much I weigh, they are surprised.
I've done well with the pregnancy, keeping my weight gain in the lower end of what is considered the normal range. While I have been careful about what I've been eating (I had my 3rd milkshake since December yesterday), I also haven't had much of an increase in appetite, and on the very rare occasion that I've gotten a craving, it's been for something like almonds, as opposed to a whole cheese pizza or chocolate cake.
Most people, when they get to their 30's, lament that they'll never weigh what they did in high school or college again. The week I got pregnant, I weighed precisely what my average weight in college was. Again, not thin (actually about 30-40 pounds more than what the charts say I'm "supposed" to weigh for my height) - just what my body seems to have decided what my default weight is. As of this weekend, I have gained 19 pounds which, at 29 weeks, which is considered to be the low end of average for this point in the pregnancy. I also happen to now weigh exactly what I did when I graduated from high school.
Did I say I was chubby in high school? I was fat in high school.
It also helps that I'm a pack rat. All those wide, draw string broomstick skirts that I never got rid of when I lost weight? All those large and extra-large boxy t-shirts I never got rid of from high school? They're saving me money on maternity clothes.
Going back to how I hide it well - I'm fortunate that long, tunic-y tops have been popular for a while. I have tons of those. Tops that now I wonder, did people already think I was pregnant when I wore them?
It's also been kind of weird, though. I'm 5'1", and short in the torso, even allowing for my height. I expected that I would start showing early. I had a coworker last year who was about my height that at about 2 1/2 months (she hadn't even told us yet) we were all looking at her and wondering if she was pregnant. But it's taken me a while to start showing. Even a few weeks ago, I had people telling me "but you don't even look pregnant!"
And, honestly, I haven't looked specifically pregnant. Some women - women who are taller than me - get that perfect little "I'm hiding a volley ball under my shirt" sphere. My sister-in-law (who, admittedly, is 9 or 10 inches taller than me) looked fantastic at her baby shower at 7 1/2 months in her floor length floral dress and her perfectly-positioned little ball. The party-goes with balloons stuffed under their shirts for a game looked further along.
I, on the other hand, now that my wide hips and broad rib cage have finally gotten to the point where they don't hide the baby anymore, look like I have pilfered a pillow from the bed and tucked one end into my pants and the other into my underwire. Bigger, but not round. You look at me and you say, "is she pregnant or fat?" And I don't even mean that in a bad way. It's just not obvious - I'm not a capital P with that perfect little ball - I'm a capital D.
So, what does this have to do with writing? Not much, really, except reminding myself that reality has the luxury of not having to be believable. If I were to write a fiction piece about a 37-year-old, almost-7-month pregnant woman who weighed exactly what she weighed at 18, people would snort and say, "yeah, right."
I don't often read non-fiction, and even more rarely do I read personal non-fiction, like memoirs and autobiographies. Right now I'm reading The View From the Cheap Seats, which is a collection of essays and speeches by Neil Gaiman. Technically, I guess it's not a memoir, but many of his essays and speeches are autobiographical.
What I'm really enjoying about this book - aside from the fact that I like his style and his humor - is that Neil's stories about himself as a child or young man make him sound almost like a character in one of his books. He relates the tale of the "feral child raised by patient librarians" in more than one of these essays. He tells of the time that he and his friends encountered a Playboy-style magazine at the age of eight and he was much less interested in the fact that there were "naked ladies" in the magazine than he was by the fact that one of these was a magician's assistant. In the same essay, he discusses how he was called into the principal's office for repeating a joke he heard with the f-word in it and when asked what other four-letter words he knew genuinely assumed this to be some kind of vocabulary test and started naming every word he could think of with only four letters in it.
His descriptions of real people as characters he could have written extends to other authors he has made friends with. He relates Diana Wynne Jones's comically bad luck at travel and the time that he was with her when a door fell off their airplane (fortunately, before take off). He describes the first time he met Terry Pratchett. This was during a time at which both of them were still trying to figure out how to make their way in the world of writing, including each of them seeking out what Gaiman terms a "Proper Author Hat." Neil confesses he eventually gave up and bought a black leather jacket instead, while Terry finally found a hat that has become his signature look.
I'm maybe about half-way through the book and am looking forward to the real characters I have still yet to meet, including Gaiman's wife, Amanda Palmer. I discovered Amanda Palmer's music around the same time I discovered Neil's writing. The first song of hers that I latched onto is about a girl who creates a "coin-operated boy" because she has no luck with real men. The music video with its white-faced makeup, striped tights, and somewhat steam-punk aesthetic were right up 22-ish-year-old me's alley.
I actually don't remember what the first thing I read by Neil Gaiman was. But I think if you had told me 15 years ago that he was going to marry the singer who wrote "Coin-Operated Boy" I would have said, "well, yeah. Obviously."
A few months ago, my mom and I were having a conversation about the music they play at the store where she works. She was talking about how they've been playing the same mix for so long that she can tell the time by what song is playing. I've worked a lot of retail jobs where they had a mix that we were supposed to play for a certain length of time (during a themed promotion) or at a certain time of year.
"Now, don't get me wrong," she said, "it's a good mix. Fun stuff, a lot of oldies, some songs from movies. But it just gets old after a while."
"Huh," I said, a theory forming. "A lot of oldies?"
"Yeah - Beach Boys."
"And more recent stuff? Billy Joel? A couple songs from Grease?"
"Yeah!"
"And 'Professional Pirate' from Muppet Treasure Island?"
"Oh, my gosh - yes! Were they playing that mix when you worked there?"
"That's the mix I MADE for them when I worked there."
One summer, seven years ago, when I worked at the school supply store she's currently working at, my coworkers and I were lamenting that we had to play the CDs that we sold in the store - kids's songs, nursery rhymes, circle-time songs that in children's high-pitched voices became very grating very quickly. Someone asked why we couldn't listen to the radio. The owners said since we couldn't control what songs are on the radio - even the more family-friendly stations - or that there might be ads for competitors that they really didn't want to do that.
"What if someone brought in CDs?" one of my coworkers asked.
"Well, if everyone brought in CDs, we'd have to approve them all, and that would take a while, especially since we'd have to do it every time someone brought in something new."
"I've got a lot of family-friendly stuff," I said. "What if I made a mix, 2 or 3 hours long, and you guys could approve all the songs on it?" They decided that was decent idea, so I made a mix, kind of on the idea of a family-fun summer mix - the sort of thing you might have playing at a family pool party. I had imagined they'd use it for a few months and then I'd make another mix. But I got a full-time job with Cobb County Public Library shortly after this, and never really gave my mix more thought - until my mom brought it up. It kind of tickles me that they're still playing my mix so many years later.
I like making mixes. I made a playlist for my engagement party. Rather than hire a band or a DJ for my wedding, I made playlists for the "cocktail hour" (before Jason and I came to the reception) and for the reception.
I like making themed play lists that tell a story. I make mix CDs for my parents for presents. I remember back a few years ago, I mentioned this to a coworker (who was only slightly younger than myself) and she said, "aw, that's cute that you still make mix CDs for your parents." The tone kind of said, "how retro and quaint," and to this day I'm not sure if she meant that making mix CDs for other people was retro and quaint or that making mix CDs at all was retro and quaint.
That was a few years ago, before computers stopped coming with CD drives, back when buying a physical album and buying a digital album was probably still 50/50. Now it's getting to where physical media is a lot less common. I'm going to need a new laptop soon, and I have a feeling it won't have a CD drive or burner.
I made three mix CDs for my mom for Mother's Day this year - I don't know if I'll be able to do that next year.
Well, y'all, it's May. And it's been a while since I've posted project goals or updates.
Of course, if you've been following this blog, you'll know why the 2nd half of February, and then March and April went out the window, so I won't go into that again.
Last week I finally decided to start getting back into it. I started rereading The Wolf and the Sheath, to get my head back to where it was before the omelet hit the fan. (Yes, I'm stealing that phrase from Some Like it Hot.) I had written a decent amount of new material in early February and some of it I hadn't even reread yet, so some of this reread is to re-immerse myself in the world of the story, and some of it honestly is to say "what the heck did I write three months ago?"
I also looked into some submission possibilities and submitted one of my stories to a literary magazine, so we'll see if that goes anywhere. I got back two rejections during my downtime, which was really rough - not because when I sent them out I said, "this is it! This is a perfect fit for this story," but because I already had so much bad news coming at me it would have been nice to have a win.
So for May... I guess for May I go back to getting my head in the game. I may not write quite as much as the schedule I planned at the beginning of the year. At six months pregnant, I'm not sleeping well (not that I slept well when I wasn't pregnant) and we still have a boatload of stuff to do to get ready for our little girl. My evenings are full and my bedtime is creeping earlier. I need to remember to take the time to meditate, especially the next few weeks as work stress is peaking. Plus now that it's getting hotter, we usually wait 'til after dark to take Athena for a walk. So the 2-2.5 hours I used to be able to get in most writing evenings are shrinking - in the past week and a half or so that I've been trying to get back into it, I think two hours has been my best, and a couple nights it's been closer to 1.
But with a baby on the way, I know that in a few months I will look back on this time and say, "Oh, wow, I had so much time I had back then!"
I'm almost done reading The Bear and the Nightingale. The book takes place in medieval Russia.
The main character can see household spirits and talk to animals. Her step-mother can also see the household spirits - but she fears them as demons. In fact, we first see these characters - odd little Henson or Froud sounding creatures - from her point of view. The first described to the reader is a "demon" sitting on a stool in the corner mending a shirt. It seemed to me an oddly helpful and unobtrusive thing for a demon to be doing.
Later, when we see the same creatures met by Vasilisa, the main character, she is not afraid of them. She sees a little creature helping with the mending, and another tending the horses. I realized then that these were not "demons," but more like the brownies you have in old British* folk tales - helpful little creatures who come out at night when no one's around to tidy up around the house.
*I don't remember if brownies are from the Celtic or Saxon influence...
Granted, not all of the creatures that Vasilisa and her stepmother, Anna, can see are helpful or benevolent. Some are neutral - stay out of their territory and they won't bother you. Some are a little more sinister, though Vasilisa makes friends with rusalka and prevents her from drowning someone on at least two occasions. Then there is the Bear - the bringer of storms, pestilence, and fire; fear incarnate, essentially. Both Vasilisa and Anna can see him and are rightly terrified of him, though Vasilisa takes a more active approach against him and his minions in an attempt to protect her family and village.
There are many other times that Vasilisa takes the more active approach, and gets into trouble for it
Vasilisa has always been known as a little strange, as had her mother before her. While no one hears her speaking to the horses or sees her interacting with the household spirits, they can tell something is different with her. Certainly, her way with horses is uncanny.
People in the village start to distrust her more as she gets older, in part due to the goading of the new and charismatic priest that has come to the village. Things come to a head one day when her betrothed comes to take her home with him.
Vasilisa's fiance has a beautiful, but somewhat skittish and wild horse. Her own horse trusts her implicitly and lets her ride without saddle or bridle. Vasilisa also has a young and reckless nephew. Vasilisa and her betrothed are walking in the woods when they hear a commotion - her nephew has just vaulted onto her horse, throwing her into a panic. The mare runs away and, thinking only of her nephew's safety, Vasilisa jumps onto her finace's horse and races after him. No one but her finace has even been able to handle this horse, but he carries Vasilisa sure and true as if he's known her for years.
Vasilisa catches up with her panicked horse and rescues her nephew seconds before he would have been thrown as her horse leapt a ditch. The villagers who watched the scene react with trepidation. Even her finance is shaken. Vasilisa reacts in much the way the reader does - why is everyone upset? She did a good thing - neither nephew nor the horses came to harm. Why are people suddenly afraid of her?
Reading this scene, I thought it would be interesting to see what happened if you moved it to another place and time. If this scene took place in a historical fiction piece set in the 19th century on the American prairie, or in a Western, the main character would have been lauded. Here is a woman with good "horse sense," who doesn't lose her head in an emergency. She'd be a good one to have around in the event of a stampede or a raid. You'd have farmers and ranchers lining up to offer her work or a marriage proposal. Instead, you have her superstitious neighbors starting to wonder if she is a witch.
Certainly, much of her neighbors’ reactions come from the "a good woman is seen and not heard, and stays in the house" kind of mentality. I think it's interesting to see the different values of a time and place when I read historical fiction. If you had a young woman today who stood back and watched while her nephew was put in danger and didn't try to help, she would be seen in a more negative light than one who tried to take action and save him. But the society and culture of Vasilisa's time sees it as "wrong" for her to have reacted in such a proactive way.
It's been a while since I've posted. As many of you who follow this blog know, over the past couple weeks Jason and I have been dealing with the loss of our dog, Baldur. It's left us with, among other issues and emotions, a lack of motivation or desire to really do anything.
As you also know unless you've been living under a rock all week, Notre Dame cathedral caught on fire on Monday. The world held its breath, wept as the spire collapsed, and then breathed a collective sigh of relief on Tuesday and Wednesday as images and reports started coming in: the building stood. Many statues and pieces of art had been removed for cleaning as part of the renovation project - some as recently as a week before the blaze. The bees that lived in hives on the rooftops survived. Even most of the fabulous stained glass windows are still intact. Millions of dollars have already been pledged to the rebuild. Documentation - photos, videos, digital recreations of the cathedral - have been offered up to assist.
At first, people were saying what a tragedy it was that such a beloved and sacred space burned at the beginning of Holy Week. But I think it is more, and better, than that. I think it is a fitting reminder of death and rebirth.
Monday night, after we had heard the news of Notre Dame, Jason had a dream. He dreamed that he had come into a large amount of money, and he took it and bought a run down cathedral in Baldur's name. In the dream, our boy who had always been so good, had been named a saint. Baldur had always been so good with small animals and somehow, with the mysterious way that animals sometimes know things, small animals - squirrels, cats, other little creatures - began to flock to this sanctuary. Jason took care of them. Other, larger animals started coming. Word spread and people would bring their ill and injured animals, while other people started to come to the sanctuary to offer their services. Soon Jason had a staff of veterinarians and other animal caretakers. He also had an "army." This army would go out and hunt down injured animals and bring them back to the sanctuary to be treated.
Jason almost never remembers his dreams, and he never remembers them in this kind of detail.
It is comforting to think that something good, something constructive, can come from something tragic and destructive.
As we struggle with getting back into our normal routine, getting back into the things that we normally want to do, I have also been struggling with whether to go back to The Wolf and the Sheath, or whether to work on something else for a while. There is, of course, the obvious problem of the canine connection with Baldur, as wolves figure prominently in the story. There is also the problem that not only are there characters who die in the story, but there are also characters who are dealing with grief even prior to that. Am I ready to go back to rereading and writing that?
But there is also the fact that this story is, in fact, a story of rebuilding after tragedy. The main character inherits the leadership of her aunt's realm. But that inheritance could not happen if someone hadn't died. The kingdom is still reeling from an epidemic that hit two years prior - but new people are moving into positions that would not have been open to them before; new friendships and alliances are being forged. Perhaps this is the time, perhaps this is the story that I need to be working on. Perhaps it is time for me to begin rebuilding.
So it's probably time I give everyone an update on our boy. If you want the background info, you can read my last post, here: https://www.iveyink.com/blog/2019/2/24/baldurs-saga
Sadly, the results of Baldur's biopsy were not good. He has stage 3 hemagiosarcoma, which is an aggressive vascular/bleeding cancer. With treatment, he has 4 months, tops. Without treatment, we would be looking at a matter of weeks.
We started him on chemo last Monday, and he is getting other medications in addition. So far he has done well - eating enthusiastically most days, and excited to go on walks and see his friends around the neighborhood. That in and of itself makes it worth it - he is already feeling better than the few weeks before he had his spleen out.
I'm finally able to sit down and write this now. Obviously, we were devastated to receive the news. We've both cried a lot, and it continues to creep up on us at times. It would be hard enough just dealing with this, but the timing makes it worse. We are preparing for the death of our first fur baby at the same time as we are preparing for the birth of our first human baby.
In an odd twist of fate, our oncologist has twin 9 month old daughters - and he lost a dog to cancer shortly after they were born. If anyone understands what we are going through, it's him. I think that he will be a great help and comfort to us, especially as things get harder.
So, what does this have to do with writing? Because Jason and I now have limited time to spend with our boy, and on top of that will also have to be spending a lot of time preparing to welcome our baby girl, that means something has to give. That something is going to be writing. I'm not saying I won't write at all during this time - the great thing about having a laptop is that I can sit on the couch with my boy and do stuff on the computer. But emotionally the spark will likely not be there and I'm not going to force it.
This blog will become sporadic - maybe even disappear for weeks at a time. I wanted you, my readers, to know why and to know that I will eventually be back. But for now, I need to focus on myself and my family.
Well, guys, I somehow missed making my beginning of the month project update for February - by the time I realized this, I figured I might as well wait for March!
My goals for January were to "get my head back in the game" after Christmas, and to do better about sticking to my new schedule. I was very good about sticking to only writing "business" on Mondays - writing-related social media, researching places to submit, etc. Wednesdays and Fridays, without the distraction of "ooh, I wonder if anyone has clicked on my last post," I was able to get a good chunk of things done. Jason and I had a few occasions where we went out and did things on Wednesday or Friday nights and I was very good about making up the time I missed some other evening.
I also submitted two different stories over the past month and a half. That actually doesn't sound like much, but I've been more judicious about making sure the places I'm submitting to are good fits, looking for places that offer payment without also having to shell out a lot of money to enter a contest, etc.
I wrote a lot of new material for The Wolf and the Sheath in the first couple weeks of February - some of this was to go complete or transition between recent material that I wrote in November, and some of it was completely new. The main document now stands at over 60,000 words, and that's not including probably 10,000 words from the secondary document that I (mostly) wrote in November that still need to be copy/pasted in, and maybe 2,000-5,000 more little snippets in various other places.
But that was all before mid-February. The last thing I worked on that was writing related was to submit a story on Feb. 18. That was the night that we realized that Baldur was more than just "under the weather," and I have not had either the time or the emotional energy to work on anything since then. (For more on what's been going on with my boy, see my previous post: https://www.iveyink.com/blog/2019/2/24/baldurs-saga ).
As of the typing of this, we are still waiting on his biopsy results and I am just physically and emotionally exhausted.
But with that said, I have probably been more productive this February than last February. I don't remember getting a lot done early last February (for some reason last year, it took me a long time to get back into the swing of things after Christmas). Then, again in mid-February, we adopted Athena. The first month or so that we had her, she needed near-constant supervision and also had some separation anxiety, meaning that Jason and I pretty much alternated nights of who had a trembling doggy on their lap. (She has improved so much you guys, I can't even tell you.)
As of the 18th, my plans for March were to stay the course. I was starting to think I might actually be able to have a complete rough draft of Wolf and Sheath before Jason and I have our first (human) baby in August. But, depending on what happens with Baldur, I may dial back writing time in order to spend more time with him. There's a lot that is very much up in the air right now.
How is it that the shortest month always has so much crammed into it?