Tuesday, October 21, 2003
It's a bright fall day outside. If each season has a particular sentiment for each of us, then, to me, the sentiment of Autumn is sorrow. Spooky would strongly disagree, but fall has always seemed a reminder of the end of things. It scatters my thoughts, the too-blue skies, the dying, falling leaves, the changes in the quality of sunlight and sound, the days growing shorter and colder. It becomes very hard to concentrate, with Autumn all around me, constantly reminding me. I do not exactly hate this season, though I do wish it were followed by spring instead of winter. I can barely endure winter. Today, the sunlight is making me think of places I should be today, places far to the north and east, but for the bumping of my knee against a doorframe.
So, my mind seems everywhere, all at once. Yesterday I talked with Bill Schafer about upcoming projects and then sat down to begin a new story. But it occured to me, suddenly, that I didn't feel like writing and that, by all rights, I shouldn't even be here. So I spent the day doing something that I wanted to do, just because I wanted to do it. I worked on Nebari.Net for the first time in ages. The Nebari Prime page should be up in the next day or so, and the beginnings of an encyclopedia sort of thing. Writing things that no one will ever pay me for can be very, very liberating. Things that are for me and me alone, and are only incidentally meant for others. I can escape the tyranny of readers that way. It doesn't matter if what I'm doing seems, even to me, trivial and fannish. It isn't. Not really.
We had pizza at Fellini's for dinner last night. I've fallen in love with their mushroom-spinich slices, peppered with big chunks of fresh, only slightly roasted garlic. Spooky and I spent most of the evening reading. First Bruce Sterling's amusing and timely "In Paradise," and then Ian MacLeod's "Breathmoss." I really loved the latter, and it, and the work on Nebari.Net, has me thinking again about science fiction and how I think that's the direction that my writing has to start to take.
And that leads, rather directly, to worries, to my doubts about Murder of Angels, how it's different, and the crap Poppy's been getting from some of her readers, the ones who only want more of the same when she knows, as all writers know, that stagnation is death. I cannot write Gothic novels all my life. In fact, I suspect I have exactly and only one more left in me. And I have to hope that, after that one, that my readers will follow me to other sorts of stories. It should really come as no surprise. After all, my first two short fiction sales, way back in '93 and '94, were sf — "Between the Flatirons and the Deep Green Sea" and "Persephone" (reprinted in From Weird and Distant Shores). It's a place I've been meaning to get back to for almost ten years. I did write "Riding the White Bull" this past spring, an sf story which will appear in the first issue of the new incarnation of Argosy.
I know these thoughts are rambling. It the damned weather, the damned sky, the low humidity.
I'm still waiting for my agent's opinion of Murder of Angels.
Waiting is, absolutely and without a doubt, the worst part of being a writer.
A rather important news story on CNN.com was brought to my attention yesterday. It came as no surprise. It's exactly the sort of discovery I've been predicting since my days teaching undergradute biology labs. It's the sort of thing I predicted back when E. O. Wilson was being crucified for the foresight of his closing thoughts to Sociobiology. I've always been of the belief that mind is body and, gradually, biology is bearing this out. Yes, it's only one study, for now (but there have been other pertinent studies), only a very little bit of vindication. For now, it is enough, though. I've often been chided by others who saw my belief that gender and sexuality have a predominantly biological basis as something born of an unwillingness on my part to take responsibility for "choices." But, mostly, I suspect that "choice" is another sort of illusion, one that many of us cling to so ferociously because it reinforces cherished ideas about freedom and freewill and keeps unpleasant thoughts of Fate at bay. I've rarely needed the comfort of choice. I do what I do because of all the things that have happened before any given moment of decision, all the things that I have lived through, that those before me have done and lived through, ad infinitum (and, I sometimes think, because of things that will be done in the future). Actions are, perhaps, almost inevitable. Being who we are, we make the choices we do, and every choice reaffirms who we are and echoes what we've experienced. We may be helpless to do otherwise. I don't find this unsettling. But I'm am going on, aren't I? Sorry.
It's the weather, and the aborted trip. It has everything running kind of sideways. Last night, just before dawn, Spooky awoke (I was already awake), and we had a strange little conversation about bowling alleys. It occured to me that Deacon Silvey had once worked in a bowling alley, and I asked if there were bowling alleys in the northeast (I am ever ignorant of Yankee ways). Spooky said that yes, there were most certainly bowling alleys in the northeast, and then she mumbled something about "Bowling with Jesus and The Dude," and I realized she wasn't really awake. I dozed off again and dreamed that I was, simultaneously, living in an episode of Buffy, The Vampire Slayer and Scooby Doo and that I was the villian. I woke up before my undoing, which was kind of a disappointment.
I think today will be another day spent doing what I want to do. The next story is fermenting in my head. It needs the time, as do I.
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