Words are inadequate

Look, last week was a stressbomb shitshow, to the extent that I spent the entire weekend recovering and I'm not sure I'm there yet. Very little of it was my stress, at least, but: while Erin was down here visiting me things just Went Wrong: misplaced car keys, weird family drama at her brother's wedding, massive migraine attack that looked like norovirus, chaos at the farm that the farmsitter was ill-prepared for, etc etc. I'm glad she was here but oof. Insert old truism about needing a vacation from one's vacation.

The week before that was unambiguously good, though. Erin came down that Sunday (this is, um, two weeks and a day ago), and the next day we drove down into Washington state where Sherry the potter is. I then spent several days surrounded by trees and light and working potters, and it was Good For My Soul. I even got, mm, call it two-thirds through the initial comments on Blood On Her Hands that I've been sitting on since November.

Sherry's a working potter who makes mugs and plates and bowls and things for various faires and events and such. Erin has been getting back into pottery this past year, which has been lovely to see. I don't engage myself; I've not tried anything with clay since elementary school but I expect it would run afoul of the 'fine motor control sucks' thing and the 'visual arts are not my language' thing, and I'd get frustrated. So I looked in on what they were getting up to and wrote and cooked breakfasts and walked and relaxed somewhat.

Mostly I just enjoyed being in a space that felt right. There's green here but it takes a little doing to get to. And of course there's green up north. But conifers are not the forest of my heart. Apparently I did in fact imprint on a place as 'home' and that place is the Virginia Appalachians. More than that, though, there was light, and space to move and breathe, and just a sense that it was, I dunno. Safe, or something. That's not wholly right but it's not completely wrong either.

Anyway. I'm home and on my own here now, catching up on schoolwork and cat-petting, and seeing if getting out on my bike is in fact good for me. I feel like the last month or so was a jumble of not-much and I'm not sure why. Might need a meds adjustment. Might just need to poke myself into Doing Things a bit more. Will try the latter, and if that doesn't work then look into the former.

I've missed you. I hope you're well.

Words: 500ish, today?
Total words: 7400 or so
Neat things: My favourite Lebanese restaurant. Jack Ivey has a sweet tooth. Laine Hollister is nowhere near as good as she thinks she is.

I... appear to have a zeroth draft? It's full of holes but none of them are scene-sized. And I think the basic story works. Looks like I might make my secondary self-imposed deadline of "Friday" for a first draft.

I already know (or think I do) a couple of things I'll need to fix in revision. It's likely gonna need some chainsaw-type editing too, in addition to filling in those holes. Unless I decide to be happy with it at short-novelette length. I dunno, I have no idea how these things work. Honestly I have no idea what I'm even doing with this story. Sending it out, of course, but I don't have a particular market in mind.

Turns out writing is not easily a thing I can drop in and out of. This is at least a couple hours of Butt In Chair every day over the last four? days, plus just ... having the story at the back of my mind. Which makes sense, and it's an enjoyable place to be at least for now. It may make life difficult with school, though. Not to mention Actual Full-time Job.

Still. Story. Yay.

Fourth Street Fantasy may well be the con of my heart. It is small (somewhere over a hundred attendees this year), it's a single panel-track so you can talk about the panels with everyone and they probably saw them too, it's surrounded by walkable lunch and dinner options. Most importantly it is friendly. A few folks take on the role of Meal Ambassadors and during scheduled lunch and dinner breaks wrangle a small group off to a local restaurant. I continue to dislike Large Group Restaurant Meals but six or so people makes for good company, and there's plenty to talk about. I expect I'll be back next year, and for longer. (Perhaps the writing seminar on Friday, certainly the post-con party Sunday evening.)

My sociability is evidently still fairly rusty, so I found it easier to mostly talk to people I didn't know at all. But I did at least manage to say hello to everyone who I knew would be there. Part of going for longer next year is so that I can be both rested and sociable, and not staggering around feeling like I just got off a plane.

As always, hanging out with writer-types awakens the part of me that wants to write. So I've opened Scrivener for the first time in *mumble* years and ... I'm still fond of that one story that I haven't yet managed to put a satisfactory climax to. But it might be doable, now, at least doable enough that I wouldn't be too embarrassed to send it to someone and say "hey, can you tell me if this works?" I have time and space to do that in, too, I think.

I also got to spend some time with Steph, and that was quite good as well. She's still in the same house she was in when I visited in 2006. As I'm now on my ninth residence since then I'm extremely impressed by the consistency. I loaned her Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans's 'goth Jumanji' comic DIE; she in turn loaned me Salman Rushdie's Haroun And The Sea Of Stories, which I am enjoying immensely.

I committed a minor tactical error in my trip back. My flight back left Minneapolis at ten and landed in Winnipeg shortly before midnight, and then left Winnipeg at six AM to get into YVR at seven. "That's okay," I told myself, "I can just sleep in the airport, there's plenty of benches there." I had reckoned without going through customs in Winnipeg and thus getting stuck on the wrong side of security. Airports have at least some measure of, I don't know, privacy or protection or something. Airport lobbies are deeply uncomfortable places to pass any amount of time. If airports are liminal spaces existing only to pass from one real place to another, the airport lobby is the liminal space's liminal space. In the end I slept for about an hour and a half, once the cleaning crew had left.

Mr Tuppert is pleased that I've come home. He's been politely demanding scritches and occasional bouts with the string or the red dot.

(lightly edited from a comment elsewhere)

The plan, to the extent that there is a plan, is to start actively building/rebuilding the life I want in June, to include actual writing.

I have an urban fantasy 'detective' story that's been theoretically done save for the Big Climactic Scene and some polishing for *mumble* years now... but the Big Climactic Scene keeps on just not working. It is possible I should ask for help on that.

I have a vague theme ("the prince kills the dragon and gets half the kingdom and the princess... what if the princess doesn't want to be gotten? what if the prince doesn't want her?") and a placeholder title (We Are Never Ever Getting Ever After) that have been rattling around for several months and are probably what I'll dig into first come June.

I have a bunch of disparate notes and scattered scenes from a secondary-world fantasy that started as "the dawn of the scientific method for magic" and somehow morphed into "Leverage, from the viewpoint of someone unexpectedly dragged into the con." That needs to be ruthlessly pared down and rebuilt before I write any more of it.

---

Packing in March, moving in April, settling in May, ready to go in June. Could happen, though it feels overly optimistic.

As I said elseweb: Back from Rainforest, with a story that's mostly done and a reminder that I a) kinda like writing and b) do not suck at it. I needed this. Yeah. After being Strongly Discouraged from attending the weekly write-ins last summer[1] I'd written literally nothing, fiction-wise. It felt really good to get back into that head-space.

[1] Steph chose to take sides in the breakup. I remain bitter about this.

It also felt really good to read back over some of my older stuff, and find out that I still like a lot of it. I mean, I'm not overly fond of "City of Memory" but ... that's partly because the voice isn't terribly natural for me and partly because it makes me wince in recognition at how blatantly it tapped my mental/emotional state for the first half of the decade (main character takes on some responsibility and then everyone else goes off to have fun lives, forcing her to take on All The Responsibility, oh and also cast away all her emotions IT'S NOT A METAPHOR metaphors have to be at least a little subtle). But my 2010 post-breakup NaNo novel is kinda fun and interesting, even though it's deeply first-draft-y and the ending's trying for an emotional/character payoff that wasn't set up in the text, mostly because I came up with it with two days to go. And my VP story... that one's good. I reread that and I can actually see why I got into VP.

I met/remet a few neat people: none of whom I connected with as instantly/solidly as Karawynn, but all of whom are more local than K, and one of whom is even in Vancouver(!). And I got to break out the viola on Saturday night for a fiddle-jam with G for awhile, which is fun, and very close to the ideal situation I'd envisioned when I started learning.

As always, the question is whether I can keep the momentum going. But now I know that I want to, when I hadn't been sure for quite some time.

So, I moved back in on Saturday.

That went remarkably well. Tranquility are still fantastic movers. Towards the end when I was starting to run down a few friends showed up to provide support, and we got the bookcases where I (think I) want them and the games on shelves.

Since then I've been spending a ridiculous amount of time and money getting the apartment, mostly the kitchen, to a functional state. I think it's nearly there: there's some random stuff I still want, like a dishdrainer or a trashcan (!) but it's definitely tipped over into 'functional.' And I need to do some serious grocery shopping, of the kind where I don't (wisely) give up halfway through because I'm hungry and tired and cranky. I also also need to get some spices, more than just "salt" and "pepper" and "cinnamon".

The spare room's a wreck, there are boxes of books all over the living space, and I still don't have a real dining-room table. But it's starting to feel like ... like home. Like my own place.

Still not sure how I feel about that.

Also I badly need a real bed. The queen-sized Ikea futonesque guest bed is alright but definitely not a long-term solution, and its replacement is worse. I threw money at Emily to buy a bed for the couple of months she had a renter in the condo, thinking it would be for longer. When I moved I left the other behind, planning to sell it to whoever moved into my room at Mya's. Turns out the new bed is a full-size not a queen, and it's the hardest and least-comfortable bed I've ever slept on. It's gotta go.

---

On Sunday the yoga studio had a special class and small party for people who'd done more than seventy-five classes last year. I was kinda startled to see that I'd done ninety-four, especially considering that a) I started in April and b) I'm gone one week in four or so.

I'm still enjoying yoga. Reluctant to quantify what precisely I'm "getting out of it" but ... I like it. I'm usually happier after a class, I like having a better sense of my physical body. It feels like it's worth waking up early for. And I may even be getting some flexibility in my legs, which is not something I ever thought would happen.

I suspect that my ideal yoga schedule is something like two days on, one day off. That keeps it fresh, keeps it from feeling boring or like something I /have/ to do, and gives me a chance to rest up a bit while not losing everything I've learned or developed.

---

I haven't been writing since I lost my writing group in the aftermath of the breakup. In fairness, I was barely writing for the first half of the year at all. But I signed up for the Rainforest Writers Retreat again anyway.

It's in mid-March; by then I ought to have my house in order (literally if not figuratively) and be able to settle into some sort of schedule. So if and when it provides me with a "right, this writing thing is actually pretty fun" kick, I can hope to be able to turn that into writing a bit each day. I mean, that or it'll convince me that fiction writing is, in fact, a thing that can safely be laid to rest by the wayside for now.

In some ways I don't feel like I'm in a holding pattern anymore, or not as much of one at least. Movement. Growth? Anchoring. Maybe having something that I can make into a temporary home, and doing the work of making it a temporary home, gives me the security to reach back out.

On Wednesday I finally got the home office area set up. Now I can work from home with an actual monitor and keyboard and trackball and standing-desk, rather than laptop on couch/bed.

It's all in acceptable shape, but only just. I'll need to drag in another mat or two to stand on, to get the desk to the right height. My Mac keyboard has lost the use of the S key and spacebar, but I've got a Windows keyboard which works well enough for now. The real problem is that Microsoft hasn't updated the Mac software for my trackball in several years, and it won't talk to the latest version of macOS. So the trackball works, but the buttons are ALL WRONG. I've found a couple of potential workarounds but they looked more involved than I wanted to get on Wednesday afternoon. Sometime next week, I expect.

The office is actually the back of the second bedroom. It's got yellow walls that desperately need some art hung, the (two? three?) TUCKER'S OFFICE boxen need to be unpacked onto desk / bookcase, and there's some other miscellaneous /stuff/ that needs sorted or scooted or something. But the window's nice (though glare is problematic in the afternoon) and it's good to start to feel like there's a space that's mine again. The 'office' in the New West place was that, more or less, but it was dim and stuffy and caught a lot of dust from the dryer vent. This room is substantially nicer, if more cramped.

There are things about this apartment that frustrate and irritate me: the laundromat-style laundry, the dining room being a little narrower than we'd thought, the kitchen in general. Overall, though, it's not so bad. It'll do for now.

---

I am also now the proud owner of a bass guitar (Freeway 4) and an amp. My friend Chani's partner had been talking about selling his bass and amp for, o, months now, and it's sort of been at the back of my mind since then.

I think I have this idea that it'll be faster to pick up bass than it has been for viola, or that I'll be more readily able to find places/people to play bass with than viola, or something. This of course all depends on me finding my way to the alternate universe where I have enough time to learn not one but two instruments.

I'm also looking into an ear-training app for the phone, for commutes and such. And perhaps some actual formalised music theory learning, instead of the ad-hoc bits Tegen's been teaching me.

I'm not sure why music's becoming more of a focus than fiction-writing. Maybe it's that I understand how to get better at music, or that I'm more comfortable with not being very good. There's something in there about smashing awful pots, too. With music I'm learning a skill; writing feels more like creating a work. And yes, I do know that there's a hell of a lot of skill inherent in writing, skill that improves with practice, but I've not figured out how to feel comfortable practicing my skills in fiction.

Or maybe it's as simple as music being what's pulling me right now. Being more interested in accessing a space without words.

It's not like I can make rent (well, "mortgage payment," which sounds even worse despite being a smaller number) on either of those activities in any case. So in that sense it doesn't really matter which it is, as long as I'm having fun with it.

As always, we shall see.

A thing I forgot to mention: when my grandmother died, my dad wound up with a beat-up violin that ... o, I don't recall all the history, I believe it's been in the family for at least a century. They got it refurbished and now it sits waiting for a budding Taylor-family violinist.

That's not me, but I did take it down and try it out while I was there. It's surprisingly playable with a couple years of viola under my belt. Mostly my fingers just feel even more gigantic and squished looking for the right notes. I can't imagine trying to play higher than about third position. I did a few scales, played through a few phrases of 'Canon in D' (NOT the cello part)

... although holy cow this "Antidote for the Pachelbel rant". James Ernest says there are two kinds of juggling tricks: those that look harder than they are, and those that are harder than they look. This is a cello trick that is harder than it looks. THE GUY IS HIS OWN CELLO TRIO.

... anyway, 'Canon in D' and a couple of easy Suzuki pieces. Nice to have a skillset. I don't know that I believe Tegen when she says violin is inherently easier than viola, but I don't know that I don't believe her either. Regardless, I certainly prefer the richer viola sound.

Also, tuning a violin with normal wooden pegs and fine-tuners ... difficult at best. The pegs are stiff and far too blunt an instrument, and the fine-tuners are in an awkward place. I have been seriously spoiled by the mechanical pegs on my viola.

---

On Friday afternoon at the VP reunion, I read, out loud, something I've written, to a bunch of writers.

I was pretty confident that it was decent. It's a good read-aloud bit: conversational, two people sniping at each other like you do while still getting the job done, amusing, not a lot of necessary context, and short. I'd read a fragment of it, unrevised, at Rainforest last year, and people enjoyed it. And reading aloud ... is something I can do well. It's just voice, and voice is just words in performance, and that's what I do.

I mean, I was pretty confident right up until the person before me stepped up to the podium, at which point my brain went into a minor panic. I am sure whoever was reading and did a fine job with whatever it was they read. I think I even applauded.

And then I was up. "Um. Hi. I'm Tucker, from VP 15." Brain locks up. "... My cats think I'm hilarious." Scattered laughter. "And ... this is from Blood on Her Hands And a Stone at Her Throat." And I was off.

And ... people chuckled in the right places, and 'A light-fingered dame in a red red coat...' got at least one gratifying "Hmm!" of recognition. And then it was over, and under the applause I heard Steve Brust say "That was /excellent/!"

So, you know. That went well.

---

Of particular note among the many noteworthy things read: Suzanne Palmer's "The Cover Letter", which was almost as much fun to watch TNH's increasingly horrified reaction to as it was to hear.

After the reading (after both Steve and student Karen A-- specifically snagged me down to say "that was pretty great") I went back to my room for a bit and collapsed, and then back out to dinner. And ... what I remember from the actual Viable Paradise experience, other than being totally overwhelmed, is usually the sense of having found my people. Thing is, most of that didn't come until afterwards. When I was actually at the workshop I was tired and battered and usually lonely. The first day or two of the reunion felt like that as well, both familiar and depressing.

But somewhere between the reading and dinner something sort of clicked over and I felt like I belonged. Dinner was wonderful, and musicking afterwards a delight. As an added bonus, someone played a couple of Dar Williams songs, "Iowa" and "You're Aging Well," and I got to make some progress towards reclaiming Dar from the emotional wreckage of the 2000s.

The next morning I said what goodbyes I could, rode the ferry out with a few other folks, and thence home. And it was good.

---

As an added bonus, I read over the scattered fragments of Blood on Her Hands, and surprised myself with how much I like it. Hard to say definitively that there's a good story in it in this state (though I think there is) but the individual scenes are just fun to read.

And I had what may be the insight I needed to break open the recalcitrant soggy ending, that being: if you're going to model your protagonist after John Constantine, model your protagonist after John Constantine. Laine Hollister is a bastard and she had damn well better start acting like it.

The Viable Paradise twenty-year reunion occurs this October. It appears that there are still spots and hotel rooms available, at least for another twenty-four hours.

I suppose I ought to decide if I'm going.

Pros:

• A chance to see people that I've not seen in years, and miss.
  
• I'm planning on going back east this fall anyway.
  
• Autumnal Massachusetts.
  
• I felt like me when I was at VP.
  

Cons:

• It costs money. This is more in the nature of an excuse than an actual con.
  
• It takes time away from a potential Blacksburg trip. Meh. B'burg will still be there next year.
  
• I might need my vacation time to pack/move. Ha. I mean, maybe, but planning around the Vancouver real estate market suddenly becoming a little more rational strikes me as a fool's game.
  
• "So, what have you done writing-wise in the last five years?" "Well, for three years I was finishing up burning myself out, and then I spent a year mostly-recovering from that. And now I'm not sure but I might be burning out again. So, not much."
  
• "Oh, and I haven't been able to expand/fix that story you said you liked, either. I did finish a couple of other stories, but I seem to have run out of markets for them to get rejected from."

Bah. The cons are all along the lines of being afraid of not being a Real Writer. Which is a real fear but probably not worth skipping the reunion.

Besides, maybe the impending need to have something to show off will push me to get somewhere with this %&$ novel.

Over the weekend I helped writer-Steph run the blue-pencil/pitch-practice room at Creative Ink Festival. Mostly we made sure that the newbie writers and the editors were in the right place at the right time to talk to each other, and ran sign-up sheets, and spelled each other when there were panels we wanted to go see.

The panels I got to were alright: on the level of your better small-con panel, I'd say. Nothing earth-shatteringly amazing but worth attending. More usefully, the couple of pieces that I put in for blue-pencilling (aka "reading by someone who doesn't know me") went over very well: one got a small amount of useful feedback, and one got mostly gushing and "no no no, this is clearly not a flash piece, it's the prologue to a novel, and I WANT TO READ IT." Which was pleasantly validating, enough so that I've resubmitted both of them to story markets after a hiatus of *mumble* months.

Our Wednesday writeins may have acquired another member, too. I suspect that I really do need to find a critiqueing group, mostly so that I have some motivation to bloody well finish something, but the writeins are better than nothing.

---

What are you reading right now?

I haven't technically given up on Mieville's Embassytown, I guess. It's a puzzle-novel: here are the aliens who can't lie, who can't talk to machines but only to empathically-bonded pairs of humans; here is an alien who is learning to lie; here are a bonded-pair of humans who unintentionally(?) drive the aliens mad by speaking to them; what's going on? Turns out I don't like puzzle-novels, at least not when they read as slowly as Embassytown does.

This is my third Mieville, and I've disliked them all for different reasons. (King Rat had a plot that resolved itself by the antagonist self-destructing, which I detest; Un Lun Dun was decent but unmemorable, and I couldn't shake the feeling that it was an attempt to rewrite Neverwhere and give it a plot this time). I should probably stop but I want to try The City & The City first.

What did you just finish reading?

John Christopher's Tripods Trilogy, nearly fifty years old and still decent. I mean, the characters might make it to the level of 'cardboard cutouts' if they strained a bit, the prose is serviceable at best, and in the entire trilogy I think there's a single named woman and maybe three unnamed ones, but they read quickly and have some neat worldbuilding going on. They can stay. I don't know that I'd recommend them to anyone who didn't grow up with them, though.

What do you think you'll read next?

This weekend I picked up both of Katrina Archer's fantasy novels, so I may as well read Untalented.