standing on a star unstable

Oh hello. I wonder when and if anyone might read this--my friends feed is utterly empty. But sometimes you just want to write something down, and not chop it up into a million tiny bits. Facebook is (all but) dead to me, this is farrrrr too little to start up a blog for, and geebs, I could go through the long list of why every other platform is not suitable, but why.

"Robin's Complaint" -- as sung by Boiled in Lead is a song I enjoyed a lot as a youth with a lot of internalized misogyny. Nonetheless, as I was puttering around my writing retreat room this morning (Gladstone's Library in Wales for future me), I made it refer to men out of a sense of that--then I realized it works best genderless, if you just want to enjoy a song* about a person who clearly needs to think about the trauma-bound folks that they end up attracted to.

Beware of the people who grind up folks' hearts
They chew the four chambers and spit out all the parts
They paint their faces with such Byzantine arts**
And leave you used up in the morning

Beware of the people who promise blue skies
There's tornado warnings in the back of their soft eyes
Like a weather forecaster, practiced in their lies
They'll leave you a disaster in the morning

Beware of the people who open like fields
You can plow all the furrows and count up all your yields
But then John Deere comes by with their newfangled wheels
And leaves you with the children in the morning


* if I recall the liner notes, the lyrics are based on (or taken whole cloth from, I've never been sure) a Jane Yolen poem, but I feel like I must be mis-remembering that. Certainly, my brief searching came up with no answer to that. This is because Google sucks now and I lost patience to try other things. I'll look it up when I'm back home... in ten years, when I stumble across my stash of CDs in storage.

** alternate line: they paint the future with such grandiose arts 

(original binary rewrite was "they paint their future with such masculine arts" but that makes actually less sense)

I have read not much this year that was not for an awards jury, and it to me seems like spoiling the pool to say what I liked juuuuust yet. Of the things that are unrelated to awards juries, I prooooobably need some recommendations. And also, I don't have time to read much else right now.

SO if you have a short story recommendation--short stories only at this point--here is the place to make it! Please make it?

(I will note for the audience that I have published a whopping 2 things this year which I would like to remind you exist, regardless of awards, because I like my work to be read: Handbook for Dragon Slayers and "Zebulon Vance Sings the Alphabet Songs of Love" (audio version here).)

Anyone who has followed this journal (remember when we all used to post multiple times a day!?), you know I am Not Friends with Fall. I'm a spring baby, I grew up in a softer climate than the one I was born and returned to, and it gets darker, and I just, well, NEH. NEH, I DON'T LIKE FALL.

(I don't like winter, either, but that's out of respect for it wanting to kill me. Fall is just a jerky harbinger of the death season, as far as I'm concerned.)

I have duked it out--verbally, textually--many times with the fall and winter lovers, and I am old enough to know it's just how you feel. Just as there are morning people and night people, there are fall people and spring people.

I have started to come to some slightly better terms with fall now that I've realized: the fall equinox is a good time to take stock of the year. I might not love fall, but you can't ignore it; you can't look up and go, "Oh, my, how the fall has passed!" With every shorter day and falling leaf, it ticks down the clock of one's mortality and reminds one of the procrastinations of summer.

So. Let's take stock.

I wrote out some goals -- not ones that made it to the journal, I don't think -- earlier this year.

-find and apply for 3 grants by June 1
-set up 1-2 speaking engagements/workshops/classes/school visits, just to get them under my belt
-write proposals for ten books/projects
-devise, with agent, a strategy for JE
-make sure to at least remind people that one's work exists, come awards season

-find and apply for 3 grants by June 1
...So. Grants for early-career but already published, slightly more commercial than literary, non-MFA holding, genre writers? Hardish to find. I found one and applied for it, and that was by June 1. I have looked since then, and have missed the mark on the criteria in numerous ways. I even broadened my definition of "grant" to "residencies with a stipend" and there are many more of those, but none that didn't cost what I decided was too much money to merely apply to, and also would take too much time away from the dayjob if I did secure them.

So, this won't be making it onto next year's goal list--what will make it on is "quarterly, look for and apply for as many grants as one is eligible for." I'll set aside 4 afternoons a year to do it. That's a better goal.

-set up 1-2 speaking engagements/workshops/classes/school visits, just to get them under my belt
This one sort of just happened. I taught a workshop at Ann Arbor Book Festival, and was the author in residence at a young writers' conference. I consider this goal thoroughly met, and almost through no action of my own other than saying yes when someone asked. Next year's goal? Will probably be something like, "Earn $xxx from speaking engagements." Maybe even $xxxx!

-write proposals for ten books/projects
Um. I'm tardy on this, but that's what this last quarter is for? I've written the most of five? Six? I need to sit down and look. My contract with HarperCollins is winding up with the June 2014 publication of The Castle Behind Thorns, but there's the option clause in my contract, and I am super-happy with my editor, so... But I still want to write 10 proposals because that would be good for me to be thinking that broadly, I think.

-devise, with agent, a strategy for JE
Currently, the strategy is "We don't have time for that one..."

-make sure to at least remind people that one's work exists, come awards season
This had to be a goal because I'm terrible at this game. I did get "Zebulon Vance Sings the Alphabet Songs of Love" over to Escape Pod, which, as far as I'm concerned, is about the single best thing a gal with no big blog following can do to remind people one exists. I'm the chair of the jury that would have probably been my best bet to remind about Handbook for Dragon Slayers, so that's right out. But mostly, just remembering to cough politely and do my own write-up of my picks for awards season would accomplish this goal.

In an ideal world, I would write another book this year. I have only three months and change to do it, however, but one of those months is NaNoWriMo. But--yes. That would be nice.

But either way, I have to finish my galleys for Castle right now. And that's the goal for today.

Syndrome: A group of symptoms that consistently occur together or a condition characterized by a set of associated symptoms.

One does not merely walk into a publishing contract without seeing at least a few of the signs of impostor syndrome in oneself.  I've been declaring many of my symptoms not to be emblematic of the syndrome, because, well, I think one has to have some sort of Emperor's New Clothes feeling about the whole thing in order to get the firm diagnosis on the impostor syndrome.  All things considered, I have largely not felt that anyone was particularly looking at me, nor have I secretly felt that other people could see my clothes while I could not.

If anything, she grumbled to herself on occasion, I felt that people weren't taking me seriously enough: because I write kidlit, because I'm a gurl, because I'm not conventionally attractive, because I still work my dayjob, because whatever.  But they are rarely, if ever, people who actually matter to the course of my career.  Not really.  Does it matter if a mil-SF writer doesn't give me the time of day at a convention? No, it does not. I don't write mil-SF, and I never will.

Plus, at the heart of it, I have all the girls and women who write me the letters and let me know I made their lives better--or that they were at least a little bit in love with Dragos, whatever--and that is enough to keep me going.  (Yes, girls and women. I haven't gotten one fan letter from a boy or man.)  And when I started this endeavor to become a published writer of novels, that was the plan, see? To make people feel as great as my favorite writers made me feel.

So, when impostor syndrome is brought up, I usually go, "Hm, no, I'm fine."

But then I notice something--stuff like what provoked my last entry here, in fact, or finding oneself/one's work in a random list, casually mentioned, as if one had written something that everyone knew about (not the case)--and I blink and go, "Oooooh.  Impostor syndrome."

It's all those little moments working together that make the syndrome for me.  I never have moments of "I shouldn't be here" or "They're all going to find out, soon."  That's not how it works for me.  It never has.

I have the blessing and the curse of being an only child who is both a first-born and last-born grandchild, and I have a full repertoire of coping mechanisms for dealing with the real world not particularly thinking I'm as special as my family always made it out to be--one of those coping mechanisms is never believing that I'm less than anyone else thinks.  Haha, no.

So anyway. Call me a late bloomer.  I finally get why it's a syndrome, because it seeps into the cracks and gets you, rather than throwing you down the rabbit hole with something you could see on an MRI.  I get it now.

Drat it all.

My second book is out in a week, which kicks off a very busy summer--after Memorial weekend, which I'll spend with my mom.  Then, in order:

• Stepdaughter's high school graduation weekend


• A breathing weekend (I think). AKA gardening


• A week in North Carolina -- for a mini-20 year reunion, a reading at a local bookstore, and assorted fun, PLUS my ten-year anniversary with le husband


• Ann Arbor Bookfest (where I'm teaching a class)


• Book launch/reading/signing at the Library


• The Michigan State Young Author's Conference, where I'm the...  whatsit...  featured presenter?


• Independence Day weekend


• An actual breathing weekend, but by then I'll need to see my mom probably. If not, I'm sure my neglected garden will be interested in seeing me.


• Then the Mythcon 44 weekend, since The Princess Curse is up for a Mythopoeic award

Since I'm coming down with a cold right now, this sounds dreadfully busy.  It also doesn't pack in copyedits for the third book, proposals for my option book, or any other promotional work I should do for the book.  Or anything I might be doing for SFWA in my doughty volunteer roles.

It also doesn't mention the, you know, day job, which is 40-hours-a-weekish per usual, though hey, at least there are 2 paid holidays in there, plus a handful of vacation days.

So, if I don't want to DO anything this summer? Or fall? This eight-week stretch is why.

I don't have them.  But I think I should make them. In public. And have some accountability, like, for every goal segment not reached I have to donate a dollar to a charity I hate.  The Tea Party?  And what's a hurtful number of goal segments? $100 isn't enough. I'm thinking $250.

More later, as I figure this all out. Suggestions for figuring this out welcome!

...as I have decluttering on my mind.
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Bold the ones you have and use at least once a year, italicize the ones you have and don't use, strike through the ones you have had but got rid of. (Raye's addenum: things in plain text with no change are things I simply don't have and never did.) (Mer's addendum: offset with asterixes are 'broken and no longer functioning and we should get rid of)

"I wonder how many *pasta machines*, breadmakers, juicers, blenders, deep fat fryers, egg boilers, melon ballers, sandwich makers, pastry brushes, cheese boards, cheese knives, electric woks, miniature salad spinners, griddle pans, jam funnels, meat thermometers, filleting knives, egg poachers, cake stands, garlic crushers, martini glasses, tea strainers, bamboo steamers, pizza stones, coffee grinders, milk frothers, piping bags, banana stands, fluted pastry wheels, tagine dishes, conical strainers, rice cookers, steam cookers, pressure cookers, slow cookers, spaetzle makers, cookie presses, gravy strainers, double boilers (bains marie), sukiyaki stoves, ice cream makers, fondue sets, healthy-grills, home smokers, tempura sets, tortilla presses, electric whisks, cherry stoners, sugar thermometers, food processors, bacon presses, bacon slicers, mouli mills, cake testers, pestle-and-mortars, and sets of kebab skewers languish dustily at the back of the nation's cupboards."

What of Dutch ovens, *immersion blenders*, pizza cookers, comals, stand mixers, handheld mixers...?
----------------------------
We have a lot of stuff, but we use most of it. As for the broken pasta machine, it's in the garage; I believe I could get the part for it made on a 3D printer, and it would function just fine, but we have since gotten the pasta attachment for our stand mixer, and it's pointless. So. Anyone want a totally awesome pasta machine that needs a replacement part? Yours for the price of shipping.

I have never used the bamboo steamers, but I store garlic and onions in them, so no biggie. And I MIGHT. I do not actually use the fondue set once a year, per the requirements, but I have used it so often at parties that I consider it a must keep.

The immersion blender was a hand-me-down from my mom; it's slightly cracked, and it doesn't work that great. Should get rid of.

But for the most part, I use stuff. I go on tears and use certain things a lot for a week or a month, then cycle into something else before coming back around--the unlisted waffle iron being an example of that--sometime last year, I tried to cook everything on it (verdict? leave your cinnamon rolls as cinnamon rolls, and it's no substitute for a panini press if you're just trying to make a hot sandwich; cookie dough sticks; waffles work best). The slow cooker sees nearly weekly use. The melon baller gets appropriated to a lot of other tasks. The deep fryer is maybe once a month, but when you want tasty fries, it's the go-to.

I will note that of the other unused items, they were items my husband brought to the relationship.

Not my own cancer, but my dad's.

It was my 11th birthday card in which my father informed me he had cancer, couched in terms of "You've probably heard by now I have Hodgkin's."

I hadn't heard, btw. My mother had only heard rumors, and one does not inform their only child a parent is ill based on rumor; one waits for facts. (One might go and seek facts, if one were a different person, but my mother is not me.)

Of course, I remember lots of life events prior to age 11, but so much happens in that tween range, those 10-12 years that set your personality like an aspic sets in the icebox, that I honestly do not think about my life in terms of pre-Dad's cancer and post-Dad's cancer, as people do who come to cancer later. I grew up with a sick dad. I also grew up with an absent dad. He was fairly absent before cancer, and he was way more absent after, but it wasn't like the illness was the tipping point--but I forget, sometimes, that as he was going in and out of remission, and I wasn't being told about these changes until months later, that he was battling something huge.

Sometime in there, my mother went to work on an experimental cancer ward (it was supposed to be an easier kind of nursing than the ER, ha ha), and I spent a lot of time around her patients and their families. Most of the patients died. (You don't go experimental on a curable cancer.) We kept in contact with their families for years afterward. One year, when Mom and I both had pneumonia over Christmas, the only thing that fed us was the cheese gift basket sent by a family of a patient--we were too sick to go to the store.

So when I say I grew up with cancer, I really grew up with it.

As a result, I UNDERreact about cancer. I never have anything useful to say when people get diagnosed, because I'm too busy feeling my own feelings. I know how meaningless the word is, in terms of how someone's life can change. I also know how meaningful the word CAN be. So mostly, when I hear about cancer, I'm frozen like a rabbit, trying to figure out what's going on, just like I froze all those years ago and tried to figure out what was going on, and all the other times I froze when I heard remission was over. (Twice, I think, but I seriously can't remember. I remember so many things, but there are some empty spots around this subject in particular.)

Cancer stole a lot of things from me. It stole my 11th birthday (the card) and my 26th (when I learned my father had died), and in some ways, stole my dad and a lot of the years in between. I've often wondered why my dad didn't try harder to parent me, and I often erase from my memory that he was seriously ill most of my life. It's not an excuse, of course, but it could be a reason, or part of it. How he chose to "tell" me was also a theft. He only ever addressed the subject directly with me once, in that card; other people told me stuff about his cancer AROUND him, the rest of his life, sometimes through layers of three or six people. A game of telephone about my father's health.

So. Growing up with cancer. I remember watching Dad light up a cigarette when I was 13 or so, and wanting to jerk it out of his mouth and stomp it into the dust, and I swear, every time I see anyone smoking, that's my reaction. I watch my lymph nodes hawkishly with a combination of anger and fear. And I underreact, frozenly, to other people's major illnesses.

That's the legacy.

Well. Something else to take to therapy, I guess. Something else to work through.

Just performed a trim of the list. I can't pretend this journal is not asymptotically approaching defunct, so I cut judiciously.

If it turns out I deleted you--largely because I didn't think you were reading and I didn't think you were posting--and it has materially affected your life for the worse, do let me know and I'll rectify. But I wouldn't expect there to be a ton of content interesting to anyone other than the people who really care about my specific mundanity.

And now that Handbook for Dragon Slayers is delivered and accepted, and I have a bit of time on my hands until copyedits come back, I get to play around in my sadly neglected New Words Sandbox.

So. This meme!

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Fairer (MG fairy book)

fairer, not fairest
wiser, not wisest
kinder, not kindest
better, not best

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Queen of Thonos

I hadn't been married three months before my husband got himself kidnaped by a demon.

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The Courts of Arcanum

I was drowning.

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"The Spell-Hedge" or maybe The Spell-Hedge, I just don't know

The Infant Orphling Home of Condolence Falls had one child left, and that was a boy the monks had named Billy Bays.

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The 64 Kingdoms book

"You aren't really inviting sixty-three princesses, are you?" I asked Mom, dropping to the chair beside her desk and mopping the sweat from my nose with my sleeve.

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untitled YA comedy of manners

"No one wants to go to college a virgin," Lexa said, jamming her fork into a crouton. She pointed the crouton at me. "Not even you, Taylor."

---

"Madison Schofield's Annotated Wicked Fairy Peerage"

This is a wicked fairy peerage. This is my updated and revised version of the famous DeLong's Wicked Fairy Peerage that was supposed to keep me safe from wicked fairy peers. Mostly, that one worked? But kind of not really, because here I am, as you see me.

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"The Kindest Month"

One time we celebrated the New Year in April because we were being medieval. We reversed the dates, too, so all throughout the night of December 31st instead of wearing sparkling doodads on our heads and breathing into noisemakers, we played pranks. When the Times Square Ball dropped on TV and everyone else in our time zone counted and kissed, we shouted "APRIL FOOLS!" and taped paper fish to each other's backs.

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Mending

On the first day, I woke up in the great hall's hearth, curled in the warm ashes of the fireplace.

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Last Girl on Earth

Every time I wake up, but before I open my eyes, I think: it didn't really happen.

But it did.