Category Archives: real life

Incapussitated

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Incapussitated (n) The inability to do the thing because there’s a cat in your lap demanding all the attentions.

It’s not in the dictionary, but it should be.  Happens frequently here, but then there’s always an excuse not to do the thing, whatever it is.  Take this blog, for prime example. I didn’t write anything for twenty minutes because there was a cat on my lap. Now, technically I could have continued writing despite the constant pawing for attention, but I chose to respond to the demands of my fellow living creature. Who, it must be known, finally had enough and jumped down to go elsewhere. Incapussitated (alt. incapurritated) is always a temporary condition.

Blind, crippling self-doubt? Yeah, that one’s always around. Yes, of course it helps to know that you’ve done the thing before and very well and can surely do it again.

And yet….

It never goes away. Not completely. In some ways it gets worse. When you’re first trying to do the thing, you don’t know you can’t do it. You don’t know that you can. That uncertainty actually works in your favor as a partial antidote to crippling self-doubt because you don’t know, and so neither does crippling self-doubt, and maybe you’re both a bit curious. So why does it get worse after you’ve actually done the thing? (Pausing to note here the obvious point that “the thing” can be anything from writing a novel to learning to play a musical instrument. It doesn’t much matter what the thing is because there’s always a new thing, and crippling self-doubt trying to ruin it for you.) I think it’s easier to argue with yourself that a skill was lost rather than never being gained. Sure, you did it once—pure luck—but I bet you can’t do it again. Or, sure you’ve done it a dozen times—obviously you’re played out now, just repeating yourself, best quit while you’re ahead, et many a cetera.

If there’s a cure I don’t know what it is, except just to do the thing anyway, one battle at a time.

Allowing for incapussitation, of course

Story Time: Doing Time in the Wild Hunt

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Today’s Story Time is “Doing Time in the Wild Hunt.”  It was originally sold to an anthology to be titled Splatterfaires from the first incarnation of Pulphouse Publishing, which went under before the book was published. From there it found its way into my first collection, The Ogre’s Wife: Fairy Tales for Grownups.

Here’s what I wrote about the story for the afterwards in the second (Kindle) Edition. I don’t think I have anything to add now.

 

“Happily Ever After” is the most difficult and dangerous part of the story, and yet it’s the part you almost never hear about. There’s a reason for that — marriage is complicated. Slaying a dragon by comparison is simple. Not easy, mind, but simple. Consider: A dragon is between you and your Fated One and you’re a hero/heroine in love. What do you do? Duh. Now cut to this scene after the fairytale wedding, because sooner or later it’s going to happen. Your love is pensive, unhappy. You ask what’s wrong and they say, “Nothing.” When pressed they will explain: “If you don’t know what you did, I’m not going to tell you!”

What’s the plan now, hero?

I was driving to work one morning in 1994 and saw a white doe in the woods near the Natchez Trace. Far from blending into the trees and brush nearby, the deer was about as hidden as a neon sign. It seemed odd to me how it had managed to survive so long against all the odds but here it was standing there, watching me drive by. A miracle. Or maybe the deer was just doing what it had to do and, with a little luck and care, getting along. Maybe that’s the miracle. I don’t know. I just wrote this story because, once upon a time at the beginning of my ordinary day, I saw a white doe. My wife told me that, of all the stories I’ve ever done, this was the only one that made her cry. Discarding the other possible explanations, I take that as a sign I got the story right.

Take that, dragon.

 

Usual Disclaimer: “Doing Time in the Wild Hunt” will stay up until next Wednesday, February 14. At which time I might be too preoccupied to take it down, but don’t count on it.

February Snow

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It’s a seasonal thing. I’m getting a later start on this blog because, well, it snowed last night. Not an unsual thing here in central NY state in February, but when it snows there’s snow, to state the obvious. Snow covering the path to the garage, snow covering the steps and sidewalk, snow covering the car and driveway. It has to be, as they say, “dealt with.” So I spent part of the morning shoveling and pushing snow from where it was to where it needed to be. Then a break for lunch and, now that the car and driveway were cleared, a trip to the store for supplies before the next round of snow hits. It’s sort of a recurring theme.

Another recurring theme this time of year is that it’s 1099 time, which means publishers that paid you for work last year send the proof. Not quite as good a reminder that you really are a writer as the original checks, but in the same vein. Considering that I only published two original stories last year* (not counting the originals that went up during Story Time) , it was a bit of surprise to discover that both “In Memory of Jianhong, Snake Devil” and “On the Road to the Hell of Hungry Ghosts,” published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies last year made the Locus Recommended Reading List in the short story category. That was a pleasant surprise. Not a huge deal but still a lot better than a poke in the eye.

More snow is predicted for tomorrow night. Best to make sure one knows where one’s shovel is.

* Edited to Add: Actually, there were three. The third was “The Cat of Five Virtues” in Tales of the Sunrise Lands. Amazing how much trouble I have keeping track.

Stanley Theater

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Vault, Stanley Theater

First Reader and I took a trip on Saturday to an Antique sale being held at the old Stanley Theater in Utica, NY. It was our first time at the Stanley, but probably not the last, since these days it’s a venue for concerts and special events. It started out as one of the grand movie palaces of the earlier days of motion pictures, back in 1928. The first movie ever shown there was a silent picture titled Ramona, starring Delores del Rio, fairly appropriate since the style of the theater itself is described as “Mexican Baroque.” The exterior (which, alas, I didn’t get a shot of) is sort of a cross between the Alamo and a papal palace.

Vault Detail, Stanley Theater

While the theater started as a movie palace, it didn’t stay that way exclusively. Concerts and special appearances started very early on, as it hosted everyone from Jeanette McDonald to Gene Autry. The Stanley narrowly avoided destruction when all the movie palaces in the theater district were bulldozed in urban renewal projects of the 1960’s and 70’s, owing to the fact that it had been built four blocks away. It was later taken over by a local arts group and now serves as host to the Mohawk Valley Ballet and Utica Symphony, among others. Its stage has seen everyone from Jerry Seinfeld to George Carlin, B.B. King, Aretha Franklin and Third Eye Blind.

Photo by Carol Parks

Maybe I was more impressed with the Stanley than I should have been. After all, in the early days of motion pictures nearly every theater was a grand palace. I have vivid memories of the old Temple Theater back in Merdian, MS, which was still showing movies when I was a kid and was designed to resemble an Egyptian palace. It’s still there, I believe, though taken over by the Shriners as a meeting place years ago. It’s just that there are so few of them left, and with modern mutli-plexes and narrow seats it’s hard to remember what an event going to a movie actually was back in the day. It’s good to have these reminders, especially when they serve as arts hubs for entire communities.

Perspective

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I’ve been playing a game of “dueling temperatures” with an old friend via email. I moved to New York State from Mississippi. My former home does not handle winter well. That is, when actual winter conditions occur, which is rare. But a lot of the south, from Texas to Georgia has seen significant snowfall, whereas here the temperatures have varied from -17F to +43F. So snow one week and rain the next. Then everything freezes. The difference is, an inch or three of snow down there is a “We’re all gonna die!” situation. They’re not equipped for it because it happens rarely and you don’t spend your budget on snowplows that are (almost) never going to be needed. So how difficult things are is mostly a matter of perspective.

Which applies to almost everything.

Whenever I’m feeling down about how little I’ve accomplished, it’s good to stop and remember that there was a time, writing wise, when I had accomplished exactly nothing, except to write a bunch of beginner stories that no one other than I and much put-upon First Reader were ever going to see. When I had written novels but never sold any, but then graduated to an entire four book series. Now when I’m holding fire on three novel projects, I can remind myself that I can do this, I’ve done it before, and there was a time when none of that was true.

It’s too easy to forget that, no matter what stage you’re at. If you’ve written stories but not sold any (if that’s your goal), at least you’ve written. Same for writing a novel. Maybe you’ll publish, maybe you won’t, but most people who start a novel never finish it, and maybe you did. That’s something, and it’s a whole lot more than nothing.

Perspective.