Woke up this morning from one of those long, complex dreams which faded immediately except for the last scene. I was back at the prep school where I'd been a boarding student during the declining years of the Age of Disco (waves to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) jtdiii), except this wasn't the Choate of my memories, but some ur-Choate of my subconscious.
I'd found my way into a bar on one of the dorm floors — we had those, but they were generally hidden away from faculty eyes, not operating with their own liquor licenses as in my dream. I was nursing a glass of wine and watching the ruckus in the hall settle down as evening study hours came into effect, when I realized the very large, amiable man in the red sweatshirt behind the bar was in fact me, seen in a mirror. I was shocked at how big I'd become again.
I'm still not sure how I served myself wine from the other side of the bar.
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Last night I dreamt that ericjamesstone and I were hanging out. (Which would be fun if it happened IRL.) We’d had lunch and gone walking in a greenspace on a college campus, talking politics. He went to his car to get something, and I was mugged by a drunk homeless guy and his dog while Eric was gone. I was mortally afraid this idiot would punch me in the gut, where my surgical seam is, so I ran into a classroom building, where I met Vonda McIntyre. Moments later I was in a seminar room full of Pacific Northwest writers — brendacooper, Jim Fiscus, Jerry Oltion, a bunch of other folks. I’d been scheduled to moderate a panel on shared world building, and was utterly unprepared, and even unaware.
Is this the writer equivalent of the college anxiety dream about having to take the final exam for the class you thought you’d dropped before the semester started? I woke up laughing at myself.
Originally published at jlake.com. You can comment here or there.
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Awake way too early in order to head for the airport to go to Omaha. Last night I dreamt I was at WFC. I was hanging out with matociquala, and I had some dreadful honey whiskey I was pushing on people. (jackwilliambell, are you listening?) She was being polite about it. Then we had to follow her sister, Elizabeth van Tronk, across the entire length of the Con hotel to fetch something very important. I was only wearing a bathing suit, and kept getting sexually harassed by Larry Craig lookalike fans, so I lost track of Bear and van Tronk and wound up in some guy's room trying to send email off a 4GB SDHC card. (No, this doesn't make sense to me, either. Also, it didn't work.)
Meanwhile, mme_publisher was working a salmon boat for arcaedia, who held the master commercial license. I wound up discussing boat deployments with arcaedia and matociquala. And there was this plot to improve fandom via teratogenic compounds injected in the chicken fingers being served in the hotel bar.
Off the airport in this state of mind!
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Dear Diary —
Last night I dreamt about land and money and primary education. Somewhere in there danjite tried to sell me a very tricked out low-rider. It was a lime green 1964 Impala with a hydraulic kit to lift the body off the frame. I wound up in a New Orleans bordello which was heavily decorated with Socialist Realist murals of the age of steam railroads. I was in a dining room with a hooker who looked remarkably like Anjelica Houston, along with six or seven other patrons. We were having a sort of Mad Hatter's Tea Party with the makings of Caesar salad, which we were preparing rhythmically to the sounds of "Rasputin." The Boney M version of that song. I missed the eggs when they went round on the lazy Susan.
My moral dilemma is, should I be ashamed that I recognized which release of "Rasputin" was playing?
(singed)
Doubtful in Dallas
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I just woke up, dreaming that I'd run into my grandfather Lake at a party. He passed away in 1977, and he'd be in his 90s if he were alive today. I was so very glad to see him.
I wonder if I was displacing my father in time, or pulling my grandfather forward.
I also managed to be unspeakably rude to danjite and unkind to davidlevine in that same dream. Clearly I need to get out more. Or possibly less.
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Last night I had a very funny publishing anxiety dream. I had gone to visit Tor in New York. casacarona had arranged a reception in my honor, and I was to speak for an hour. I wound up in a room full of people from Tom D all the way to the newest intern, and I just freaking died. I mean, dead house. Jay not funny. Audience not laughing. People wandering away or chattering amongst themselves.
It was hilarious in a humiliating sort of way. Painful, too. Sort of like the beginning of Funny Bones [ imdb ] (a movie I highly recommend).
In case you don't know me in real life, I have pretty much zero fear of public speaking, and am in fact quite capable of being a terrible mic hog. In other words, this wasn't a speaking anxiety dream, because I simply don't have those. I do however have some perfectly lovely publishing anxieties, which apparently decided to go out for a walk in the dream park last night.
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The dream poll seems to be cooking along, with some terrific comments. Go vote, if you haven't, and read the comments even if you have voted.
I have this half-baked theory about dreaming. I've noticed that I can doze off at 5:07, wake up at 5:11, and have experienced a long, complex dream. I think that dreaming is perhaps heavily encoded while it's going on, and only in remembering or reviewing the dream experience after the fact do we unpack it to symbols our conscious mind interprets, themselves drawn from memory and imagination. Sort of like running machine code on a chip, and having to interpret it up to the application layer. In other words, what we see in dreams is a second order filtering of a much deeper process in the subconscious.
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Poll #964285 The dream poll
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All Do you remember your dreams? How do you wake up? If you're a writer, poet, artist, etc., has your ability to remember your dreams changed as your skills have developed? Do you dream in color? Do your dreams have music? Are your dreams...
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Dear subconscious,
I don't really mind dreams about Nigerian spammers, mudding in old Geos, and various excessively Freudian symbols. That's your job, after all, integrating the detritus of my daily experience. But given that you have always been dedicated to ensuring that I dream in music, could we please get a different freaking soundtrack than disco-funk mashups!!!
Love,
Jay
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Another day in paradise here at Rancho Lake. The state of working on a novel has become so pervasive for me that being between books feels very odd. I've still got about four short stories to write, then I'm off on Black Tulip. I find my head jumping a lot creatively right now. This is probably due to a lack of deliberate focus. In the last two days I've read the most recent of Cherryh's Foreigner books, and Laumer's collection Retief of the CDT.
Reading. Goodness. What a concept.
Last night I dreamt matociquala and I were rearranging my bookshelves, except for some reason my Dad was around, and he thought she and I were having a violent, noisy date. It was just like being in a sitcom!
The Fireside writers are meeting tonight. I'll probably be doing marketing, writing the cover letters for one last big round of Mainspring [ Powell's | Amazon ] ARC sendouts and some short story sendouts. Sometimes I think I need another hobby, like knitting, then I think, where would I fit it in?
Time to go on some photographic walking tours, methinks.
If you write novels on a regular schedule, what do you do between projects?
If you don't write novels on a regular schedule, why not?
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The Canticle for Lebowski thread is still open, but I've cut off the threshold for eligibility for the giveaway. Feel free to read and comment indefinitely. The poll is going to be, erm, large and complex, so it almost certainly won't be up til tomorrow.
Dreamt last night that I was watching maryrobinette open her mail. As in, cut open envelopes and pull the bills out. Even with my foetid imagination I can't find an arch or clever interpretation for that one.
More later. Work now.
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Another heavy at the day job today. I'm becoming something of a subject matter expert on the underpinnings of SMS, which is a knowledge base I'd never really thought to need.
I have social engagements tonight, and I'm not sure I'm going to get to Stemwinder this afternoon, but I expect to finish the line edit by tomorrow morning. Then I'm going to step away from it for a few hours to revise and send out a couple of short pieces, tackle a couple of collab commitments, and draft the next IROSF article by specficrider and me. (We generally take turns popping out the first drafts.) That ought to be Saturday sorted, hopefully in time to return to the book. Otherwise, Sunday.
Had intense dreams last night, which I cannot now remember anything of, except that they involved some very elaborate position of physical elements, sort of like building a house of cards. Given that I score at the low end of average/normal on any test of fine motor skills, that's an odd thing to be dreaming about.
I have ordered the Star Wars ep. I, II and III DVDs for the_child. I rather detest them as movies, but they're beautiful to watch, and most of what gets up my nose about them will probably go right by her -- she's into continuity and production big time, but scripting and dialog are just part of the scenery still. (So to speak.)
"Aye, he's a canny wight, full of gorm and feck, and most well-gruntled." Discuss.
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Woke up this morning thinking someone had just opened the front door of my apartment. That's not a pleasant feeling. Of course, I'd just been dreaming that the_child and I were witnessing the wreck of a runaway rail car, from far too close at hand, so I think I was in trouble either way. Closer inspection proved there was no one here but me and the cats, and the rail car was easily dismissed as imaginary. (For the peace of mind of garyomaha and kevinstandlee I will mention that it was a short, two-axle European goods wagon, probably WWII era.)
Ranchwhile back at the mean I'm finally more or less in my swing of things again. I'll be writing this evening at the coffee house with karindira, davidlevine and whoever else from our informal group makes an appearance. I'm all done with the close read of Stemwinder. I need to do the page notes, and the rewrite notes -- there's a couple of missing scenes, some foreshadowing to be retro'ed in, the little problem of having two characters named Paolina and Pao in a series of scenes together (what was I thinking?), and some philosophical conundruua to explicate. Then it's off to beta readers, and my own personal dioscuri of casacarona and arcaedia after that.
There've been a couple of comments on my assertion last night that a manuscript is never finished. That thought's been at me a bit more. I don't see how it can be. You can always give yourself another line edit, or go deeper and doink with the plot threads or characterization or something. People say finishing a novel is the hardest thing, and in a sense I agree with them, but "finishing" doesn't just mean getting to the other end of your 100,000 words. It means stopping.
When I was first breaking in, I adopted a conscious strategy as a variant of "dare to be bad." ("Dare to be bad" is the way Nina Hoffman and some of the other Wordos describe the process of fast writing, without stopping to edit during the draft process -- as most of you know, I'm a huge believer in that.) In this case, I was applying "dare to be bad" to the edit/rewrite process. Essentially, I gave myself permission for the story to be 85% as good as it could be.
What does 85% mean? Heck if I know. It just sounded good to me at the time. Even 90% seemed like a subspecies of perfectionism. Maybe I'm like those Kashmiri weavers who leave a deliberate flaw in the rug so as not to offend God. The key was that I could quit messing with it before it was perfect.
Perfection is the death of creative endeavor. Discuss.
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Well, dark, really. Sun's not up yet.
According to weather.com it's 10 degrees out there, with a windchill of -5. All I know is that yesterday afternoon it was so cold my teeth hurt walking from the rental car (well, SUV) to the building.
Woke up this morning from a tangled dream of driving around rural Minnesota in a stolen Camaro with Mother of the Child and M. (from Omaha), trying to buy washing machines. Sort of Dukes of Hazzard meets Fargo. Go figure.
Also, have you ever tried to fit three washing machines into a Camaro?
Up early, so I don't have to pell mell through the first part of the morning. I'm going to start reading Ink today. And I may write a short story tomorrow, on the plane home, just to remind myself that I can. When I get back to PDX, I'm off to the coast immediately for a writing retreat, which will probably be more of a reading retreat as I am now blessed (!?) with post-novel ennui. 'scool, I will be in the company of writers (kenscholes, bravado111 and lisamantchev, weather permitting), and we will probably be discussing kenscholes' excellent new novel draft at some length. That one's a real barn-burner, btw. Amazing.
Might be back before I slip into the frigidaire to go to work, might not.
:: waves ::
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Last night brought the startling revelation that bram452 and jennawaterford were CIA agents, and I had somehow (a lottery?) won a tour of their secret underground bunker, which happened to be beneath my old house in Austin, much to my surprise.
Amateur Freudians can comment as they see fit, but I'm more curious why flist has been populating my dreams lately. Too much lj?
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Morning has come once again. I dreamt that rosefox was showing me around Austin in her Audi A4 convertible with the snappy custom airbrushed paintjob. (It was more or less mermaid colored.) I have to hit the office early to prep for some all day marketing strategy meetings, so no wisdom this morning, though I was poking Google for statistics on presidential church attendance. (Unsuccessfully thus far.)
Also got a fan letter for "Little Pig, Berry Brown and the Hard Moon", in DAW's The Magic Toybox, ed. Denise Little. It said in part, "I loved the story and thought it was a woman who wrote it. I was surprised it was a man." I'm rather flattered by that.
Work today, Omaha Beach Party tonight.
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( In which Jay dreams of things better left unconceived of. )
Didn't seem to be much point in going back to sleep then, so I went for a walk. Cold.
In other news, I was thinking while I walked about the story I wrote yesterday, "Promises." It's a very emotional, character-driven story, which is a bit unusual for me. I considered writing a short story in the Mainspring/Stemwinder universe as well this week, but I've realized that's probably Fred telling me to get cracking on the next novel. Watch this space for more details.
Off to the office in an hour or so.
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I drag myself out of bed with a comb and a brush and bowl full of mush. All I need now is a quiet old lady whispering "hush."
Dept of writerly anxieties and illness-induced sleep deprivation: Last night I dreamt I was on a three-way date with matociquala and truepenny, watching a Fan-produced show of Chicago. I had also recently assassinated my father, and was still trying to hide the body parts. Mother of the_child kept trying to off me with an air rifle. And we stumbled on a secret colloquium my publishers had organized to discuss my life and work, one to which I had decidedly not been invited. All at the same time, in a cityscape which seemed to be a mashup of Taos Canyon and downtown San Francisco.
Anyhoo, off to the North Coast Redwoods Writer's Conference in Crescent City, CA. Back on Sunday evening, off to Omaha Monday. Back from that trip Friday midday, off to Foolscap instanter. See some, all or none of you whilst I'm on the road. Meanwhile, talk amongst yourselves.
PS - Camera is still in the repair shop. Grr.
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I woke up dreaming. I was on Hawthorne Street, the hip/post-hip shopping district here in Portland (where davidlevine amd kateyule live, coz they're cool). Except it was a sort of post-apoclayptic Hawthorne Street, sort of like a scene out of Hardware, or maybe Mad Max without the explosive crossbows. No one had cars anymore, the buildings had grown these sort of excresences out into the street, and there was a full-on Third World souk selling the relics of our culture.
Standing in the street wondering where to go next, while tillyjane shopped in an ironmongery, I saw something very tiny get dropped by a bird. I bent to look and realized it was a black kitten, not much larger than a flea. I whipped out my digital camera (hey, it's my dream!) and tried to get a photo, wondering how I was going to get something in the image for scale. The kitten hopped around much like a flea. I managed to keep chasing it until it hid behind a peep (one of those Easter candy chicks) someone had dropped on the pavement. I circled the peep, camera ready, but the kitten was gone.
The ironmonger told me the kittens all lived in a certain store down there street, so tillyjane and I headed that way, but then I had to get up and go to work, so I never learned what it was all about.
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