Musings

Feb. 15th, 2020 03:14 pm
pjthompson: (musings)
Some ignoramus has posted a video on YouTube showing Frank Sinatra with Nat King Cole actually singing the song, “L.O.V.E.” This is the wonderful and classy Nat King Cole:


*

Two hours without WiFi and I was hyperventilating. Fortunately, it was a simple fix, but I may have an addiction problem.
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Tommy. His eyes were actually a soulful gray, not blue. He was in his forties and had done his soldiering during World War I. He became a special police officer during World War II so the younger men could go and fight.



*

I found an old keepsake box buried amongst a lot of, well, junk. Some genuine keepsakes inside the box, but also some very old story rejection letters from some of the top magazines, stuff I sent out when I was probably barely out of high school. All form letters, of course. I decided my nostalgia did not stretch to holding on to those any longer. I Kondo'd their a*ses.
*

That feeling when something seemingly minor turns dark and deep and symbolic…



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I WILL NOT JOIN FACEBERG, no matter how many paranormal and Outlander live events they host. I WILL NOT become part of the evil empire! I WILL NOT! (Although I did succumb a little bit and joined Instagram. Mostly as a lurker.)
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What to do with all these calendars that people gave me because they didn't know what else to give me? I only need one and that's the one with kitties that I bought myself.
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Sometimes I look at my house and pity the person who, when I die, will have to clean out and dispose of ALL THESE BOOKS. But mostly I pity the books.
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Zero results from the Iowa Caucus are just about right if you consider Iowa's relative importance to reflecting the diversity of the United States. They give such outsized importance to Iowa and New Hampshire. Nothing against either of those states but they're hardly representative of the rest of the country. Yet because somebody gets defeated in either Iowa or New Hampshire often they're eliminated from the race.
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I get nonsense phrases stuck in my head sometimes. When I was doing research for the WIP on Nazi occult matters recently, the nonsense phrase in my cranial echo chamber was, "Otto Rahn on the Autobahn." Research earworms. I have a weird brain. Fortunately, "Otto Rahn on the Autobahn" made me laugh.
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Ray Bradbury famously said about writing, "Jump off a cliff and build your wings on the way down." I'm at that stage of my current WIP where I'm wondering if I've jumped off the wrong goddamned cliff.
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I’ve been reading Last Mountain Dancer by Chuck Kinder on and off for about a month. It’s both an interesting and irritating book so I'm not sure I'd wholeheartedly recommend it. I keep reading because it's about West Virginia where Kinder was born and raised and when he talks about that place, the book sings. Then he goes off into the woods talking about his extramarital affairs and his bad boy ways and it gets boring. (I am so done with middle-aged male angst.)

But yeah, when he talks about what a remarkable and strange place West Virginia is on so many levels it’s worth the read. He goes into many legends, those arising from the tragedies of Matewan and the coal mine bosses, as well as Mothman and other less well-known oddities. It turns out his mother was born and raised in Point Pleasant, WV, home of Mothman, and that her maiden name was Parsons—which will have some meaning to those who follow Hellier.
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I was watching a show on Hadrian's Wall and Vindolanda where they've discovered lots of messages to and from soldiers. In one of them the soldier refers to the tribes they were trying to keep north of the wall as "Britunculi": "nasty little Britains.” My people!
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Hellier has made me way too map conscious. Every time I see something weird about a place I always have to find out where it is in relation to Point Pleasant or Somerset or Hellier or whatever. And it's kind of amazing how much weirdness connects up.

I say this knowing full well how much the human mind longs for linkages and synchronicities.
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Lewis Black: "Trump is good for comedy the way a stroke is good for a nap."
*

Patrick Stewart was on Colbert the other week talking about when he was younger he and Ben Kingsley were here in LA doing Shakespeare, along with some other actors of the RSC. He said he and Ben went to Hollywood because they were excited to see the hand- and footprints at the Chinese theater (Sir Pat recently joined the famous hand- and footprints there). But the whole time he's talking I was remembering being a young undergraduate at UCLA where Sir Pat and Sir Ben were doing those Shakespeare performances. During the day when they were not rehearsing or going to Hollywood all of the actors from the RSC would come to classrooms where Shakespeare and theater were being taught, talk to the students, and give impromptu performances. I was lucky enough to be in two such classes. One was Shakespeare, the other on Modern Theatre. I snuck into a third class taught in the theater department and held in an auditorium, but the other two were small English department classrooms. I was lucky enough to sit no more than 6-10 feet away from Sir Pat and Sir Ben while they answered questions and did impromptu performances. Utterly thrilling, even though neither of them was famous at that time. They were just masterful actors doing amazing performances up close and personal. Sir Ben still had his hair back then. Sir Pat did not. But his voice was that rich dark chocolate even back then. PRESENCE, both of them, and I never forgot.
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There's hope, I think, even thought the GOP did not have the guts to do the right thing. During the impeachment trial I called my doctor's office and the answering service picked up. As she took my message I heard the impeachment trial playing in the background. America is listening. We won't forget. I hope they still remember next November.

Rejection

Aug. 16th, 2016 10:05 am
pjthompson: quotes (quotei)

Random quote of the day:

“To endure five years of rejection to get a job requires either a faith in oneself that borders on delusion, or a love of the work. I loved the work.”

—Bill Watterson, “Some Thoughts On the Real World By One Who Glimpsed It and Fled,” Kenyon College Commencement, May 20, 1990

 rejection4WP@@@

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

 

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Quits

May. 31st, 2012 09:36 am
pjthompson: quotes (quotei)

Random quote of the day:

 

“I’ve been rejected by every record company there was ten times.  I think people in life quit things too early.”

—John Mellenkamp, Biography

 

 


Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Quits

May. 31st, 2012 09:36 am
pjthompson: quotes (quotei)

Random quote of the day:

 

“I’ve been rejected by every record company there was ten times.  I think people in life quit things too early.”

—John Mellenkamp, Biography

 

 


Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

pjthompson: quotes (quotei)

Random quote of the day:

 

“Every rejection is incremental payment on your dues that in some way will be translated back into your work.”

—James Lee Burke

 

 

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

pjthompson: quotes (quotei)

Random quote of the day:

 

“Every rejection is incremental payment on your dues that in some way will be translated back into your work.”

—James Lee Burke

 

 

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

pjthompson: (Default)
I'm not sure equating rejection in romance with rejection of one's writing is an especially comforting thought, but Terence Cheng makes an interesting case. I've not been particularly lucky in love, but I have known love, and I do love. And yes, I am in-love with writing, not my own writing. I understand the difference.

That said, there are certain pieces of my writing that I love despite the flaws and rejection. They may never lead to the big, showy wedding day of publication, but they are my funny Valentines. Whether we ever march down the aisle together or just keep tripping over the the threshold, whether anybody else ever loves them, they're my special friends. They speak to a part of my heart, even if they aren't the best piece of writing in the world, even if objective opinion has people raising their eyebrows, saying, "Really?"

They're misshapen little lumps, they are, and I have no expectation of "bigger things" for them. But mothers love their lumps, even if everyone else thinks they're the ugliest baby they've ever seen. That's not romantic love, I realize. Sometimes I don't love the polished pieces that others like nearly as much, the ones closer to romantic expectations. The heart is quixotic like that.
pjthompson: (Default)
Random quote of the day:


"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing."

—Abraham Lincoln, letter to Isham Reavis, November 5, 1855



Both seen on the same day: This quote, plus this post.


Illustrated version. )




Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
pjthompson: (Default)
Random quote of the day:


"You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance."

—attributed to Ray Bradbury





Illustrated version. )





Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
pjthompson: (Default)
Okay, ow, of the day: Three rejections in three days. Universe, could you please space them out a bit more? Thank you.

But it's not so bad of the day: That just means I'm sending more stuff out, and once the initial blech was over, I moved on fairly quickly and sent more stuff out.

And finally of the day: I'm finally starting to get excited about closing in on the end of Charged with Folly. I finished off chapter 27 (redux) with a flourish and am actually anticipating the final chapter (or two) with eagerness. Huzzah!

It would be nice to finish this weekend, but I can't guarantee that. I'll just do the best I can.

Books I've just finished reading and will admit to in public of the day: Territory by Emma Bull. Hmm. Not sure what I think about it now.

ETA: Duh! Territory is the first of two books. Everything makes sense now! This book is definitely worth the read: rich and complex characters brought vividly to life; a marvelous melding of Old West and magic without any of the hokeyness I feared might take place; good writing. One of the most original books I've read in awhile.

Random quote of the day:

"For dreaming may be the only method of initiation left to us: each night brings a 'little death' by which we acclimatize to the Otherworld, rehearsing the journey that all souls have to take in the end."

—Patrick Harpur, Daimonic Reality
pjthompson: (Default)
I got a perfectly lovely rejection from Strange Horizons today for "Eudora's Song," the kind of rejection you want to paper your wall with. They liked it, but it "didn't quite fit." Alas, it boiled down to "beautifully done" but "too slight." Which seems to be something of a consensus opinion for most of the Dos Lunas County story cycle. And I can't say I disagree. With the possible exception of the first story in the cycle (as in the one I wrote first, the one my gut wanted to expel), "A Tale of Two Moons," I'd say the rest of the cycle doesn't have the oomph that would make them the kind of stories you love rather than just like.

I say that not in an "I suck" vein but in a writer's judgment vein. It's taken me awhile to get to that place, but I rather like being there. A great deal of hard work was involved in achieving some kind of writer's judgment. When I first starting receiving editorial criticism on "Eudora's Song," for instance, I thought, "X just doesn't understand!" With much writing under the bridge, many other projects, I got to a place where I could see X's point of view—because it had also become my own. These stories have some fine writing in them, I think, but for the most part they are more incidents in search of a novel than true short stories.

I'm a long form writer, not a short story writer. I don't "get" short on some fundamental level. However, making attempts at them does appear to be part of my process. This Dos Lunas cycle is searching for a longer plot, but I don't think all of them will ever be folded into a novel, certainly not in their current forms, but they are explorations of some sort. I have a kind of plot for two or three novels based in this universe, but I don't think any of them really holds up, plot-wise. Not yet. At least one of them will get there eventually. There's a novella, "Hortensia's Man," that is already 30k and has some oomph—but I'd say it's currently unmarketable.

But I'll keep trying to market the other stories. It's good exercise—and I have gotten some really quite lovely rejections on some of them. Who knows? Maybe next time.
pjthompson: (Default)
So that's why we went down to Home Depot today to get a more solid, more kitty escape proof door to use in the entrance hall doorway leading into my section of the house. And why I'm cleanuing up and clearing a space for a cat box, and buying new window shades that actually lower and raise so the cat that's not coming into the house can sit in the window and look out. And that's why Min the Mercilessly Cute is looking smug.

In other news, like everyone else I got the rejectogram from FSF yesterday. It didn't grab JJA (no surprise there) but he did add, "There's some nice writing here." Haven't gotten that one before, and I'll take my paltry egoboo where I can get it.

That is all. Must return to my house bustle. And I'm very grateful to the roommate for allowing this compromise.
pjthompson: (Default)
Quote of the day:

This is what popped out of the random quote file today...

"You can't call yourself a writer until you have enough rejection slips to paper your den."

—Connie Willis

So I thought, "Okay, by that measure, I've got a ways to go. I could cover one wall, max." Then I ran into this quote when I was looking for a picture to illustrate the above quote so I could post it here at work:

"Ten years of rejection slips is nature's way of telling you to stop writing."

—R. Geis

And I thought, "By that measure, I'm in trouble."

I looked a little further and I encountered this short essay by Steven Swiniarski who has published many books under the name S. Andrew Swann:

http://www.sff.net/people/SASwann/text/fotnstory.htm

And I thought, "Yeah, who the hell is R. Geis, anyway?"

Which gave me an epiphany of sorts. Being a writer is, at the very least, an exercise in practical schizophrenia.

I'm going to return to my own little world now, the one of writing and sending it out. I much prefer it to the rationally-bounded world of R. Geis. It's not like I can stop, anyway.

This is the illustration I wound up using, btw. I choose it not just because it's a nice visual, but because it's about turning your rejections into something new and moving on.

Rejected )

ETA: I was discussing this with a friend who said, "Marketing is a side issue. You are a writer, and it's not like that's going to ever change. So just do what you have to do—write."

And I have to allow as how she's right.
pjthompson: (Default)
You know the kind, where laying your head on the railroad track actually seems attractive. Off with her head—that's where all the trouble starts, so off with it! Too much thinking is a deadly thing. And that's what I was doing yesterday. Nearly killed me. I'm better now.

The thing is, when it's a too much thinking kind of day, the least thing can send the train careening down the wrong track. And sweet reason gets pulverized by the fast moving freight of worry and paranoia; no consolation is strong enough to stand against that rushing onslaught. "Run fast! Jump off the train!" Or lie down and let it roll over you.

But I've learned a thing or two in this process of living, and a day's derailment rarely turns into a downward spiral anymore. The train was back on track this morning and I didn't feel like laying my head on the track ahead of it.

An editor said she liked the world I'd created and wanted to see more; someone else who rejected the same novel spoke disparagingly of its "type." I didn't take that personally. I really didn't think she meant me personally, just the type of fiction I was writing. But it made me wonder why I'm writing what I'm writing. Those are only two opinions, no matter what position these people occupy in the publishing world. But I tortured myself with thinking, "Is it a trend? And which way is the trend trending? Am I obsolete before I've even finished the journey?" The wheels go round and round; the high, lonesome whistle sounds; clickity clack clickity clack.

I've been doing a storm of writing lately. Usually that's enough to ward off the whangdoodles of uncertainty. After so not wanting to write a few weeks back at the beginning of my chapter 14, it came barreling through me and practically wrote itself—a blessed feeling, rich and rare. Chapter 15 has been much the same. I've now passed the 56,000 word mark (SMF), really in the zone, feeling pretty durned good about things. But it's another one of those "types" of novels and I'm well aware of the prejudice against them out there in certain quarters. Why am I writing it? Because it needs to be written. And the momentum is such that we should be arriving in Kankakee, ladies and gentleman, by morning. If that makes some editors happy—good on me. If it makes others unhappy—such is the price of your ticket, ladies and gentleman. Don't blame the conductor.

And to put things in a completely different perspective, I was almost run down in the parking lot of Costco the other day. In fact, I was run down in the parking lot of Costco. The inattentive woman in the Mercedes who was wheeling around a car waiting for a parking space hit my purse rather than my hip and sent the purse careening rather than my body—but it was a matter of inches. She refused to roll down her window, but that's okay. I enunciated very carefully. I'm sure she read my lips quite well before stepping on the gas and high-tailing it out of there.

I'm really glad I'm not really the Anna Karenina type. I'm really glad my last moments on the planet were not spent in the parking lot of Costco. Although who knows what the future holds? A friend of mine always used to say, "Irony is the leading cause of death in this country." I never quite understood what he meant, but I understood it well in that Costco parking lot the other night. I'd envisioned a somewhat more picturesque ending: perhaps reclining on a divan, coughing demurely between bouts of belting out a Puccini aria.

But life rarely gives you what you want in exactly the form you want it. Even your death.

Sometimes the scenery out the window is nice, though.

Letting Go

Aug. 29th, 2004 09:26 pm
pjthompson: (Default)
So I hit a wall today. It's a good wall, though, and I think I may smash myself against it a few more times until I'm sure the lesson has taken hold. It's about letting go. But because it's me, I'll probably take a roundabout way to explain what I mean.

I went marathoning this weekend—no, not in Athens. I locked the door on a crappy week Friday night and didn't open it again until this afternoon. I holed up and marathoned on my novel, working hard on the sentence-level stuff. I cut either 1750 word or just over 2500, depending on which word count method you use—and I only got through chapter 7. I managed to accomplish that without doing harm to my very complex plot structure.

A little of that reduction was fudging the document format so it's closer to 60/250, but most of it was just cutting extra words, streamlining, getting rid of relics from the rewrite process. So the novel is still too long, but I'm hopeful it won't be quite as long by the time I'm ready to send it out. Getting it below 150k would feel like a major accomplishment. It's just under 152k now.

At some part in the process, though, I started to be plagued by doubts. (Because it's me, it would have been more unusual if I wasn't plagued by doubts.) My doubts went something along this line: it's too long, they're never going to buy it, I've done all this work and it's all going to come to nothing. You know, the usual.

I took a break and surfed the net. I came across an interview with Anne Perry, the mystery writer. She talked about how long it took her to break in—twenty years. She said, "The Cater Street Hangman, the first of my books to be accepted for publication, came out in 1979. I don't know how many books I wrote before that." (My italics.)

At first, this just fed my funk. Twenty years...many books rejected...oy vey. At some point, though, when I'd gotten over myself a bit, I realized this was a good news story, not a bad. Twenty years, several books, but she finally did break in. Not only that, but she's consistently on the bestseller lists. I'm sure each of those rejections disappointed her, but the point is, she didn't give up. She kept trying and she broke in.

That's when I took the next step in that journey. It occurred to me that my current novel may be destined for rejection. I may not be able to sell it. But you know what? I've written three novels, but I've got a lot more novels in me—some of them partially done, some just forming up—but all just waiting for their turn, their shot. My job is to give them that shot and not give up, even though sometimes that's really hard to do. As I've maintained many times, the work is always the remedy, even when sometimes it's the cause of the malady. I have to keep writing.

So I let go of my doubts and worries. Worrying about whether or not my novel was too long, whether or not it was going to sell was doing me no good. The work was doing me good, the effort to make the novel better was doing me good. The thought of finishing and shipping it off to its fate...well, that was giving me some heebie jeebies, but eventually when I do ship it out, that will do me a lot of good. Because I'll be letting go and moving on to the next work. It doesn't mean I think any less of it, that I won't work hard to make it the best work I can, or I that won't be really disappointed if it doesn't find it's way. But I know that I cannot afford to put all my hopes into one basket. At some point I have to let go and move on.

It eased my mind considerably when I got to this place. It isn't about the success. It's about the work. It's always been about the work. The success would be nice. I definitely want me some. I'll keep trying, doing the smart thing when I can, playing the game as much as I'm able. But sometimes I've got to let go of that, too, and concentrate on the only thing I really have any control over. I've got to keep writing.
pjthompson: (Default)
Hmm. I may have to come up with a story to go with that title.

Anyway, I've been trying since Friday to finish a story I started in November '02. Today could be the day! But we'll see. Every time I get to the last jump, it refuses and goes around to some new material that I didn't know existed before. But it's close, damned close, and I thought it was worth delaying the novel rewrite a few days to get it done. This story is called The Green Ones, and it's a contemporary horror comedy with science fiction overtones—in other words, my usual cross-genre mess. It hasn't got great literary merit (in fact, it may actually have anti-merit), but it's been enormous fun to write. It has a kick-ass, bitchy heroine and a truly goofy premise. So we'll see if it's fit to post after it's settled for a month or so. And after I've finished it, of course.

I haven't worked on it steadily all this time, naturally: three or four bursts of concentrated energy followed by long hiatuses (hiatusi?), my typical work pattern. Which is why I prefer to say my unfinished works are on hiatus, not abandoned, because eventually I get back to them. Sometimes years later, but I get back to them. In fact, after I'd concluded earlier last week that Ramona was going on hiatus I decided to finish out the week by working on more short stories before heading into the massive rewrite process of Shivery Bones. So I turned my attention to an old story, The Horse My Father Rode, and cleaned that up a bit. I dunno about that one. It has some good elements but I'm just not sure it works. It is most definitely not a comedy and I'm just not sure about it. However, way back in the misty days of yore I sent it to a lit magazine and got my very first encouraging personal rejection from an actual editor, so there's something there. I'm just not sure what or how much.

You know, an encouraging acceptance would really be welcome at this point in my non-career.

So I've hauled out the xerox box filled with the draft of Shivery Bones plus all the reviews. (Yeah, I'm so un-Green for not keeping everything electronic, but I just need to edit on paper. Sorry! I do recycle the paper once I'm through with it, though.) I haven't actually pulled anything out of this xerox box yet. I keep looking at it out the corner of my eye and shying away like a horse mistaking a hank of rope for a snake. This rewrite process could be ugly. The finished first draft is just over 151k. Ugh! I foresee a whole lot of cutting in my future. That's okay. It'll be much better without the excess. I don't mind revision on novels so much. It's torture for me in short stories because I always wind up horribly confused about what should stay and what should go; what tells too much and what not enough. Somehow I don't have that problem as much with novels. It's much more obvious to me in a novel context what should stay and what should go. Novels, of course, have their own methods of torturing me, but that's another story...

If you're listening, Jon, my confusion may have something to do with discovering the theme prior to writing, which I don't do. That doesn't nail me in novels so much because with a work that long I think trying to force a theme up front can queer the whole deal. In a novel the theme tends to reveal itself over time and, for me at least, is much richer for that journey through my psyche. That's not so much the case with shorts, but since I'm incapable of saying, "This is the theme," and working from there (tried it several times, failed miserably), I guess I'm screwed.

And on the Go-Ahead-Reject-Me-I-Don't-Care front, I got my "no grabee" for Sealed With A Curse from Mr. Adams at F&SF as expected on Monday—this Monday, not last. The delay may have been my fault: I was semi-brain dead when I sent the package out and after mailing it, had a vague notion something was wrong with it. I'd done something very stupid with the SASE, which I won't detail here—too embarrassing. But the curt note scribbled on the back of the envelope indicates a certain irritation . . . How to win editors and influence associate editors. :-/

I had zero expectations that they'd accept that story, but that mutant seed hope just can't be crushed completely. SWAC will go back in the drawer until I'm ready to face it again. Increasingly, I'm convinced I'm a novelist and shouldn't waste my time with stories, but they do make a nice break from the long stuff, and there's a certain sense of liberation in finishing something short. So no rule which says I can't write them, but I may have to face the fact that I won't sell them.

I will push on with my literary demerited story today and see what happens.
pjthompson: (Default)
Forgive me: I'm still processing this trip and it's probably going to keep spilling over here.

Someone asked what the high point of my trip was. There were so many things that made such an impact, but I suppose if pressed I’d say the most impressive was Tintagel. The place is breathtaking, even if you don't buy into the Arthurian associations—and I'm not sure I do, although recent excavations there have produced tantalizing clues that seem to support some Arthurian-era associations.

Tintagel village is a little place, heavily influenced these days by the New Age shops, although they haven't gone completely mad with it, thank God, and it still retains some of its village feel. To get to the "castle" (13th century ruins), you have to first go down a long, steep path into a kind of seaside gorge. You can go even further down to the actual rugged beach itself with its spectacular sea-carved caves lining the cliffs, but that's a pretty strenuous climb down then back up and you'd better be prepared to get there early in the day and eat your Wheaties if you want to do both the cliffs and the castle. We wanted to see the Castle and then decide about the rest, so we turned away from the sea path and headed towards the "island" on which the castle sits. Once we'd climbed up, then down from the castle we were too tired to climb down (then back up) from the beach. Hell, we were too tired to make that steep climb back out of the gorge. We decided to say, "Screw pride" and pay the enterprising man with the Land Rover to drive us back up again.

Actually, the island is a big hunk of rock once linked to the headland by a narrow land bridge. The top of the land bridge has eroded away but the National Trust folks have erected a metal bridge for folks to cross over it. It's a steady uphill climb to get to the bridge and the day we were there was moody, gray skies, threatening rain, the wind blowing strong and cold, the sea pounding against the black rocks of the cliffs below and sending up giant spumes. Crikey! The genuine Daphne du Maurier atmospheric Cornwall experience. Perfect!

Once you've wheezed over the bridge (also an upward climb) you still have to scramble up the cliff face to get to the top of the island and the castle. I'm talking very steep steps, chipped out of the rock and then lined with slate—nearly vertical in some places. Okay, okay, okay, so there's a very sturdy, multi-layered handrail, but you do feel rather out there on the cliffs. We had to stop for many "photo ops" along the way—our running joke whenever we were seriously out of breath, begun when I actually faked photo ops earlier in the trip so no one would see how winded I was getting going up the steep hill at Chysauster. I actually raised the camera to my face for fake pictures, but later confessed what I'd done to much hilarity. (Fortunately, we scrambled up so many hills, et al., on this trip that by Tintagel I was in pretty good wind--but it was a challenge for all of us.) Was it worth the climb? You betcha.

On the island there are really layers of ruins, from 5th century Dark Age foundations, to 9th century monastic ruins, overlaid with the ruins of the 13th century castle. Apparently Richard, Earl of Cornwall, built a castle there as a show piece because even by his day the Arthurian associations at Tintagel were well known. Whenever he had important visitors, he'd send out a legion of workers a week in advance to the castle at Tintagel to bring in all the luxurious furnishings and what-not and then take people out there to show off. As soon as the visitors left, he'd remove all the good stuff and leave a small cadre of guards behind to look after the place most of the year. It was just too windswept and dramatic for a full-time presence.

And that, more than the ruins, is what makes Tintagel a magic place. Breathtaking—not just from the climb, but from the views along the coastline--black and gold slate rock topped by bright green turf, pounding surf, angry white-capped sea, gulls screaming and gyring. It's just one of those places that makes you vibrate with the raw power of nature. It made me feel insignificant while at the same time making me feel part of the continuum of nature and of the ancestors who struggled to survive in such places. It really did strip away a lot of the modern pretensions because I realized, looking at that untamed coast, that no matter what man builds up, nature has the last word. We can build our show castles, but in some places, it's a constant fight just to stay even.

Oh yeah, we have a tendency as a species to try to conquer nature, but we rarely succeed at that long-term. We can destroy a place, change it utterly to suit our short-term needs, but ultimately . . . the rust never sleeps. What was there may not come back again the way it was once we've laid our heavy hand on it, but something else will come along that we have to fight against. A place like Tintagel reminds me, if I need it, that humankind is not divorced from nature. We sometimes have the illusion that we are, but nature always has the last word. We can't survive in a world we've destroyed anymore than any other endangered species.

And speaking of places destroyed . . .

Low Point: Bath. When I visited it fifteen years ago, I really liked the place. It was a graceful, beautiful, historic city with loads of interesting things, a lovely river, well-maintained. When I visited it this time, I was distressed by the heavy invasion of American-Internationalist stores everywhere: The Gap, Starbuck's, Orvis, etc. Store after store cramming those once-graceful streets, making it like any ol' mall anywhere. I mean, I can understand the residents wanting to be part of the modern world, not wanting to live in a museum, but I think they've lost something precious along the way. I spent two days in Bath on the last trip. This trip I couldn't wait to get out of town and realized I would probably never go back again.

Fortunately, most of the things I was interested in for this trip are not heavy tourist destinations. Oh yeah, Stonehenge and Avebury. But they've managed those places really well, not let the rapacious internationalist conglomerates take over. The National Trust has kept commercialism very much to the minimum, very discreet, and I was happy to see that these sites (which I also visited fifteen years ago) had not changed much. Avebury is still the coolest because you can go right up to the stones and lay hands on them and it was a thrill, even though we were marching around them in a pouring rain. And Stonehenge…well, what you've heard is true. They seem smaller when you first get there, it's crawling with tourists. But again, they've managed it well and although you can't walk amongst the actual stones, you can get quite close to them and walk all around them. You can manage a genuine Stonehenge experience (if you keep an open mind and lowered expectations) and it can still be a mighty impressive place.

My biggest disappointment regarding Stonehenge is due to the weird, near-dissociative experience I was having in all the places I revisited from the previous trip. It was like I was seeing it through two different windows in time, having trouble sometimes jibing old with new. The first time I saw Stonehenge it was autumn, past the tourist season, and I remember driving through the undulating landscape approaching it, cresting a low hill—and there it was right by the roadside, stark and dramatic against a blue-gray sky. You still do come over a crest and see it, but they've planted a coppice of trees in the middle distance, so the dramatic effect of Stonehenge against the sky has been smudged and diminished.

Everything changes, nothing remains the same. You can't step in the same river twice. Or the same Stonehenge.

Oh, and on a writing note: I received a reply from Anna Genoese at Tor on my novel in only two weeks. =:0 The letter was waiting for me when I got home. She passed on it, but she wrote me a very encouraging personal note. She loved the title, loved the setting, thought I'd done an interesting take on vampires, but the characters didn't captivate. However, she did say she'd love (her word) to see my next work. So I'm consigning this rejection to the plus column—and really, I'm not at all upset about the rejection. No, I'm not putting a brave face on things, I'm not in denial. I truly didn't think this novel was up to snuff, but I promised myself that I'd give it one last shot (I've sent it out numerous times) and if AG passed I'd move on to other things. Like my next work, my just-completed novel, the one I may well send to her when I've got it polished up.

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