Summer house

I went to the house again. I was in the neighborhood on a legitimate errand and I just wanted to drive by. And then I stopped. There were roses!! Great swathes of roses on the side of the house. And rudbeckia (which I'm not all that fond of, but still) and a million other perennials in sore need of weeding.

So I got out and took pictures with my cell phone until the memory was full, which was four pictures. I thought I'd post them here just for kicks. They're not very good, and they all look a bit like I applied watercolor effects to them, but they'll give you a bit of an idea, I think.


I'll start with the photo of the house that currently appears on the sale site, which is smaller, but has better clarity.







Clearly this is the front of the house.








The north side of the house with arbor through to good sized courtyard.








The south side of the house complete with roses and perennials.








From the back of the north side courtyard into the back yard. The stairs on the left go up to the big deck (newly repainted, thankfully), and behind the little lattice wall, you can see the pond. Beyond that is one half of the yard, which you can see is still quite extensive.









In wandering around in the late afternoon sunlight, I decided that I don't care what the inside looks like after all. With an outside like that, what could it possibly matter? That and I have a million plans for updating and adding on a bit. It's making my head swim. If anyone has, say, $99,000 just sitting around, I'd be happy to take it off your hands.

When poetry runs amok...

I do so love word geeks.

Another Lindskoog quote

It is amazing how much creative people need to be creative, although it isn't always practical to be creative. Sometimes it is costly. Many teachers favor students who have high intelligence but who are not high in creativity, students who are careful and don't come up with surprises and odd answers. . . . Creative workers are sometimes penalized instead of rewarded for having good ideas. Yet people will usually be creative if they can be, even if they have to hide what they created. Creativity is a built-in drive. It is necessary play. It often gives joy; and when joy is impossible, it gives relief from boredom and solace for pain.

-- Kathryn Lindskoog, Creative Writing: For People Who Can't Not Write

Considering creativity

I've just started reading Creative Writing: For People Who Can't Not Write by Kathryn Lindskoog. It's fairly interesting so far (in the twenty minutes I put in at lunch). I've got a story idea from a specific syndrome she talks about, an urge to go out and buy massive quantities of vitamin B6 to help remember my dreams even more clearly, a book I want to find, and several quotes I'd like to cross-stitch to something. I'll share just a wee snippet with you that I think is a lovely description both of creativity and of the way my own mind is wont to work (it also describes my sister...and several of my friends. Apparently the creative band together, eh?).

“John W. Gardner claims that highly creative people are not outlaws, but lawmakers. They are nonconformists in a special sense of the word. They allow their hunches and wild ideas to come to the surface, and they are willing to take risks, but in everyday life they usually conform to what is standard and look and act quite normal. Their independence shows up mainly in their ideas. There they are flexible, playful, and open. They live to discover relatedness and connect things that did not seem to be connected. ‘Every great creative performance since the initial one has been in some measure a bringing order out of chaos.’ ”

Uncanny Valley = fascinating

This is really interesting and also incredibly creepy. This woman is studying Dr. Masahiro Mori's "Uncanny Valley Effect" theory. Click the link to her live journal page for some really interesting images and videos, and be sure to also read the article that prompted her interest.

In which I reveal myself to be a plebian

I’m going to get tomatoed and booed and generally taunted for my lack of taste, I’m sure, but I have to say it anyway: I don’t like Gregory Maguire. I know, I know! Many of my friends really love his writing and his stories and his ways of twisting known tales around on their existing structure, keeping the bones but slapping on new flesh.

Don’t get me wrong; I am all about retelling old legends, rediscovering their relevance for our modern minds and timeless hearts. I don’t not like Maguire because he messes with the stories I love. I don’t care what people do with those stories, frankly. It’s usually quite interesting and I’ve got a few buzzing around in my own head.

Wee bit of background: I’m currently reading “The Green Man” anthology edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. It’s full of wild variants of the tale of this archetype, (one of my favorites).* Some I enjoy more than others, but I can appreciate all of them. And then arrives the Gregory Maguire story. I think, “Eh, whatever. People’s short stories are different and it’s this anthology, so I’m sure I’ll like it.” Oh, how very much I did NOT like it. And I figured out why--I think.

His writing always makes me feel dirty. It’s not that it’s dark—I happen to like dark quite a bit of the time. It’s that it’s dank. It’s like he takes every character and every situation and makes them as seedy and soiled as possible. In this particular story, the ladybugs were the only things I wanted to root for in any way, and they kept getting squashed flat. And what’s more, his writing seems almost gleeful about its grossness. It revels in the sourness. I find myself wanting entire kingdoms and worlds to just be destroyed because there is nothing to redeem them and I just. Want. Out.

I still want to see Wicked, though.




*New life goal: be included in an anthology edited by Datlow and Windling. Oh, frabjous day!

Words I love

This is by no means an exhaustive list, clearly. Also, please feel free to add your own words via the comments. (How I long for comments!)

Inglenook _____ twilight _____ dusk _____ filigree _____ imagine _____ flutter _____ cloud _____ razzledazzle _____ dark _____ wistful ______ facile _____ thought _____ wink _____ cozy _____ blurb _____ dangle _____ Venusian _____ folksy _____ weinerschnitzel _____ kinesthetic _____ poisson _____ twitterpated _____ kerfuffle _____ ballyhoo _____ puddle _____ pickle _____ dagger _____ dragon

[List subject to update at any time, with appropriate noting thereof.]

Flabbergasted #1

I've decided to start posting links when I find things that render me speechless. Or make my eyes go all wide and incredulous.

Things like this.

And it took him a year to notice?

Recognition

FF&W, numerous blogs, books, Writers Market, Writers Digest...they all recommend finding an author or two to give agents and/or editors something to latch onto about your writing. I've opened this up to those who know my writing as well as having some thoughts of my own. Quite an interesting list has been generated, including Robin McKinley (yay!), Shirley Jackson, Stephen King, and Alice Sebold. I can understand why all of them were thought of, and I agree that I have elements of each (except possibly Stephen King, but I think that suggestion was more in the vein of genre than actual writerly comparison), but something just didn't quite click for lack of a better term. Robin McKinley's Sunshine probably came the closest to doing so.

So. Now. There's a man named Jason in my writers group. He is the aforementioned nice man who thinks my writing feels like horror. He is a good writer. He's a pleasant fellow. He's almost surely an INTsomething on the MBTI. He has also given me the greatest gift of all.

Well, perhaps not. But he led me to something awfully shiny!

It was he who told me that my writing rather reminds him of Neil Gaiman. I didn't quite laugh in his face. Nonetheless, on his recommendation I checked out one of Mr. Gaiman's short story collections, Smoke and Mirrors. I'd only ever read his Stardust and I honestly don't remember it that well. Most of what I know about his writing is that he is all cult figurey and cool. Which characteristics really can't be laid at my feet.

However. I am. I'm Neil Gaiman.

That sounds remarkably presumptuous, so I'll add that I'm perfectly aware that I am in no way at his level, nor will I likely ever be (though I'll continue to try). But all of those things I was trying to figure out -- how does someone combine a sardonic sense of humor with wistfulness, add in a dash of lilting dreaminess, and wrap it all up in not-quite-horror macabre? Or rather, having done all of that, where and how do you market that? -- he's done them! First and better and successfully! It can be done!

I just hope it can also be done by me.

In brief...

No, really, I can do brief, I swear.

I've been wishing for a long drive in the dusk and evening, a roadtrip with friends, a garden with actual plants in it, a certain chicken dish that always brings to mind get-togethers with my best of friends, and a few other things. Over Memorial Day weekend, I got every single one of those things I've been wishing for. And I still smile when I think about it.

I don't know why my fairy godmother didn't introduce herself on the way by. If she's still around, I'll make one more wish: I wish for each of you, my friends, my readers few, a perfect weekend of your very own with those little things you crave that make it yours and no one else's perfection.