Thursday, November 21, 2002
Only nine days left until the move (not counting today), but at least the cold seems to be releasing me to wellness once again. I feel much less like ass today than I felt yesterday, which I take as a good sign. I even feel good enough today to write in paragraphs, which I also take as a good sign.
I got a package from Subterranean Press a couple of days ago, an advance reading copy of Poppy's new short story collection, The Devil You Know, along with ARCs of new stuff from Lucius Shepherd, Robert Bloch (edited by Dave Schow), and Charles de Lint. The de Lint, A Handful of Coppers, is a collection of his early short stories, heroic fantasy pieces, and I've been reading the author's introduction in my nonexistant "free time." It's giving me some fresh insight into my own editing work, and my own feelings, about The Five of Cups. Perspective is a precious thing. Also, something Neil said in the introduction he wrote for the reprint (and rewrite) of his "Feeders and Eaters" in the aforementioned Keep Out the Night anthology — that has been helpful as well. Neil writes that working on the rewrite of the story seemed to him "like a collaboration between me age thirty and me age forty-one . . ." In writer years, that's quite a gap. I would paraphrase that by saying that working on the editing (and occassional rewriting) of The Five of Cups feels to me like a collaboration between me age seventeen, and age twenty-one, and age twenty-six, but mostly me age twenty-eight and me age thirty-eight. It's a very weird sensation, the collapsing of the time in-between, the immediate connection of now to then via all those damned words. Reading the prose of a far less experienced, far less accomplished me, and trying to have patience with that past self, a past self who, I might add, had no frelling idea what a comma was or how it was employed.
I am a rambly thing today. It's mostly the can of Sobe Adrenaline I had with lunch.
My office is coming apart around me. Books going back into boxes. Drawers being emptied. Actions figures and knick-knacks packed away for the move. Disorder is disconcerting to me in the extreme and makes moves unduly stressful. Anyway, I need to go and help Jennifer take things off shelves, creating disorder. On the bright side, my new office, in the new loft, has enough space that I can double the number of bookshelves!
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