Caitlín R. Kiernan

Spooky is all a twitter this afternoon, because our copy of the last Harry Potter book is set to arrive sometime today. She keeps checking the tracking number on the UPS website (or something). The coming of Potter the Last is slightly problematic, as we began a new Lemony Snicket last night, The Vile Village. Likely, it will be set aside, poor Baudelaires. And it was no end of reassuring, just now, to "google" the name Baudelaire and see all the top hits come up for Charles, not Violet, Klaus, or Sunny.

Yesterday was the slow sort of writing day. I did 526 words on The Dinosaurs of Mars, getting myself back into the story after a ten-day absence during which other things were written and attended to. And much of my afternoon was spent researching the geology of the southern part of Elysium Planitia, and the area just south of Apollinaris Patera. I will not say it was a bad writing day, as low word counts do not equal bad writing days. Bad writing days are days when you mean to write and can't, or are interrupted so frequently that nothing gets done. I'm disheartened at how often I see the blogs of aspiring writers bemoaning how slowly a book or story is coming along. They have somehow gotten it in their heads that writing is a thing done quickly, efficiently, like an assembly line with lots of shiny robotic workers. The truth, of course, is that writing is usually slow, and inefficient, and more like trying to find a cube of brown Jello that someone's carelessly dropped into a pig sty. Five hundred words in a day is good. So is a thousand. Or fifteen hundred. A good writing day is a day when one has written well, and the word counts be damned. Finishing is not the goal. Doing the job well is the goal. And I say that as someone with no means of financial support but her writing, as someone who is woefully underpaid for her writing, and as someone with so many deadlines breathing down her neck that she can no longer tell one breather from the other. Sometimes, I forget this, that daily word counts are irrelevant, that writing is not a race to the finish line. One need only write well if one wishes to be a writer. A day when one does not do her best merely so that more may be written, that's a bad writing day.

Oh, and my thanks to Anne Sowards, my editor at Penguin, for sending me the cover for the new edition of Murder of Angels, due out next April (behind the cut, unless you're reading this via MySpace):

( Niki, many years later )

I've reached that stage in the cycling of my insomnia where I'm actually sleeping (at least eight hours last night), but not until late (after 3 a.m.), and then I find it impossible to wake up and spend the day in a haze. Not as bad as dreamsickness, but aggravating. My grogginess laughs at coffee beans and Red Bull.

Maybe it's time the platypus gave me a good shot of adrenaline, straight to the heart...

Postscript (1:43 p.m.): I just ran across a new interview with William Gibson at (sigh) Amazon.com, and I feel the need to post this excerpt, regarding book proposals and not knowing the end of a story when one begins writing it. I feel not so alone now. Anyway, it's behind the cut:

( William Gibson )

Here's something I wrote on this day in 2003 (from the Blogger, pre-LJ):

It is my job to write a book, not to concern myself with what people will think of that book. What they will think is neither relevant to the act of writing nor to the merit of the book. Public opinion cannot be a guide, ever. All it can tell me is that lots of people like X, which can mean anything and may mean nothing at all. John Grisham and Dean R. Koontz and Michael Crichton and Robert Jordan and James Patterson are not better writers than Thomas Ligotti or Kathe Koja or Ramsey Campbell or China Mieville, and the New York Times bestseller list and public opinion and market stats can all go fuck themselves. The world wants oatmeal. It is not my job to give the world oatmeal. It is my job not to be a hack. It is my job to try to make the world chew, lest its lazy jaw muscles atrophy and its collective mandible withers and all its teeth fall out. It is my job, as a writer, to give the world toffee and peanut brittle and tough steak and celery. I write peanut butter sandwiches, not oatmeal. And every time some dolt whines, "I'm confused" or "I don't understand" or "This doesn't make any sense," I should smile and know that I'm doing my job. Not because it is my job to be opaque, but because it is not my job to be transparent.

And I know when I am making sense, and whenever I allow the dolts to spin me round, blindfolded, until I've accepted the disorientation they spread like lice, I am to kick myself in the ass until I can find true north again.

This is not a pep talk. This is simply the truth that I forget, because publishing (more often than not, writing's moron pimp) seeks forever to confuse quality and quantity, accessibility and art. And now I am only remembering.

I do not spend much time here writing about the "craft" of writing, as I do not believe there is a "craft" of writing, sensu stricto. And that's not what this is. It's just something I came across earlier today and realized it was the sort something I needed to remind myself that I already know. And if anyone else out there needs to be reminded of it as well, then all the better. Three years is a long time in writer years. And it's also no time at all. Particles & waves. Tiddley-pom.

So much of yesterday was consumed by work on Sirenia Digest, and then the work of getting it e-mailed to all the subscribers, and then managing the mess that Yahoo made of the mailing...when it was finally all over, about three-thirty p.m., Spooky and I really weren't good for much else. We had tickets for the Serenity screening at LaFont Plaza and had planned to get dressed in our browncoat finery, because we really wanted to see the film on a big screen again. But after the digest, we were both too beat. At least the money went to a good cause, so I don't feel bad about having bought the tickets and not used them. I think more than anything else, I was not up for the company of so many people. My fanboy/fangirl/fanit tolerance was too low to risk such an excursion.

So we stayed at home. After dinner, we had a very nice twilight walk. There were clouds and a brief respite from the heat (which has returned today). We talked to cats and found this male stag beetle (Lucanus capreolus) on the sidewalk, ferociously brandishing his mandibles. He measured about 3.5-4 cm. Spooky took the photo:



Farther along, near the edge of Freedom Park, we passed a house, a house we like a lot. Three sets of wind chimes hang on the porch. Note: the air was very still. There was no wind. Spooky said she smelled paint, that someone had painted their house. I pointed to the house with the wind chimes and said I thought maybe the trim of that house's porch had been painted. And, while we were both looking at the porch, the largest of the three sets of wind chimes, and only the largest, moved and jangled rather dramatically. The other two sets were perfectly still. No one was on the porch, and, as I said, the air was quite still. A sudden gust surely would have moved the two smaller sets before the larger, but they made no sound at all and did not stir. We stood there a moment, staring at the porch, feeling that familiar strangeness, that feeling one gets from having had so many encounters with things which are, as Mr. Fort said, damned. Damned, and yet also entirely mundane. Wind chimes on a porch.

Back home, we watched Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events for the third or fourth time. It is a wonderful and brilliant film. This time, we watched all the deleted scenes and outtakes, as well. I wish to grow down to be Violet Baudelaire. A Nebari Violet Baudelaire.

I think I got to bed about two. I took an Ambien CR, which kept me asleep until about 9 a.m. Those things really ought to be good for more than seven hours. Though seven hours was plenty enough time for "nightmares" which, Tardis-like, unfolded over many months and months. They've faded away now. Increasingly, my dreams seem more like memories.

Okay. Gotta go. I have a birthday cake to bake. But here's the link to the eBay auctions. Please be so kind as to have a look. The Low Red Moon ARC set and the hardback of the subpress edition of Low Red Moon both end later today. Thanks.