Havoc, various and extreme
My editor’s assistant is very on the spot, bless her, and while the copyedited ms of PEGASUS in all its red-pencilled, Post-Itted glory* isn’t due to arrive till Thursday**, she sent me the copyeditor’s queries last night so I can at least get started on the more or less substantive stuff, as opposed to the melting-down-over-the-question-of-semicolons stuff, which will have to await arrival of the large square boulder of typescript. Or printerscript.
I am, of course, hyperventilating.*** Deadlines crunch underfoot like the ice that I hope is not out there forming after yesterday’s rain and today’s temperature plunge. Anxiety, foreboding and self-doubt fleet gibbering past like wraiths. And I have a headache that feels like being thwacked repeatedly by the Chrysler Building †. And I may be getting a job tomorrow at the recycling plant, sorting plastic bottles and cardboard boxes. Or old computer components. I’m not fussy.
And I haven’t even told you yet about the latest edition of SUNSHINE which they’re shoving through in some kind of inside-out Douglas-Adams timeframe†† to take advantage of some opportunity for a special promotion last week or something, and they sent me the cover roughs today which there is no time to do much about except keep going and I recognise that they are hip and flash and attention-catching and even pretty on their own terms but I can’t even breathe this fast††† let alone make decisions and AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH.
NO PRESSURE OR ANYTHING.
* * *
OKAY. IT’S OFFICIAL. FEDEX HAS SCREWED UP, AND I’M NOT GETTING PEGASUS ON THURSDAY.
KILL ME. KILL ME NOW.
* * *
* Yup. Hard copy. I’m old and feeble and retro and sad.^ Most of this publishing doodah happens electronically these days, except among those of us who are old and feeble and retro and sad. We agreed to deal with the copyedited FIRE electronically, and it frelling near killed me.^^ Probably a great many of my mysterious aches and pains have nothing to do with hellhounds, large heavy potted plants, boxes of books, or cranky bells, but are the result of those pins various publishing people are sticking in wax figures labelled ‘Robin’. She gets her damn book in four months late and she wants the copyedit in HARD COPY? What did I do with those hat pins?
^ And I compulsively reread Calvin and Hobbes. When I get to the bottom of the pile+ I start over. Aside from the astonishingly high level of inspired lunacy Watterson maintained, I like the way Calvin’s parents sit around reading books. I read a strip today where Calvin’s mom is using a typewriter. The copyright date is 1987—that’s only twenty-three years ago! The usual date of the invention of the world-wide web is 1989, isn’t it? And PCs (and Macs) as more than a geek phenomenon are only about ten years older than that. I know, I know, the world does keep changing, but this is the first time I’ve been old, and I think the electronic revolution is pretty amazing.
Robin McKinley is on Twitter? Robin McKinley who was given a phone machine as a house-warming present back in Maine because her nearest and dearest were sure that after she and her phone-answering housemates went their separate ways they would never hear from her again?
I’ve been trying to find that joke about the bathtub and the phone: The bathtub was invented in 1850 and the telephone in 1875.++ This means you could sit in the tub for twenty-five years before the phone rang.
If you turned the phone off, you could sit in the tub for 125 years before your email pinged. You’d be pretty wrinkly by then though.
+ Of course I have them all. I am a card-carrying obsessive. You know this.
++ Except that the bathtub was invented either by the Romans in BCE quack quack something, or by Thingummy in 1883 who came up with the trick of enamelling of a large iron basin, and the phone really was invented in 1875 or thereabouts. Never mind. I still like the joke.
^^ Sheer chronological age is not necessarily the determining factor. Peter coped. I didn’t. And he can remember twenty five more internetless years than I can.
** IT HAD BETTER BE GOING TO ARRIVE ON THURSDAY. I’VE ONLY GOT TILL NEXT THURSDAY TO TURN IT AROUND. AS I SIT HERE, TWITCHING EVERY TIME MY EMAIL PINGS^, THE MS. HAS NOT YET ARRIVED AT MY PUBLISHER, WHICH MEANS MY PUBLISHER HAS NOT YET SENT IT OUT.
It’s bad enough that sodding Fedex delivers when they feel like it, so while they guarantee 48 hours, they don’t tell you which end of the forty-eight, so to speak, so Peter is going to house-sit while I’m hurtling hellhounds. On Thursday. If it’s Thursday. It’s looking bad for Thursday. OH. GODS.
^Fortunately I am not sitting in the bath. It occurs to me that the real reason I find myself incapable of going to bed at a decent, civilised hour, is because I like to lie in the bath and read. At mmmph o’clock in the morning the phone very rarely rings.+
+ Although Peter scared me silly ringing at 11:15 from Elsewhereshire this weekend. Eleven-fifteen is, of course, the mere shank of the evening by my standards, but anyone who rings me after about 9 pm~ earns my undying opprobrium. (I’m still not a big fan of the telephone.) Ordinarily I would make an exception for Peter, but what was he doing in Elsewhereshire this weekend when he should have been at home bringing me cups of strong hot stomach-quelling tea and frosted flutes of medicinal champagne?
~ Or before about . . . never mind.
*** The funny thing is that today is pretty much the first day that PEG II has not felt like a Giant Spiky Monster which is going to roll over me juggernaut-fashion and leave me a little blot on the carpet^, but a story I might conceivably manage to tell.^^ The last two or three weeks or whatever it’s been it’s been like, No! Go away! I’ve done all that! What do you mean it’s not finished! Of course it’s finished! I know when I’ve finished a novel! Sequel! I don’t frelling do sequels, and if you say that again I will make you eat my desktop!^^^
^ To go with various other recent blots on the carpet. What a good thing we go in for patterned carpets.
^^ I say nothing about finishing it by next autumn.
^^^Which is the computer whose email is still not working.
† Point down, of course. This is all part of the Giant Spiky Monster metaphor.
†† “Oh no, not again.”
††† Especially when I’m hyperventilating
Bookshelves and reality
A few days ago this email conversation occurred with my friend Tasmin, who is another writer. Another somewhat (ahem) book- and space-challenged writer.* She’s spent a lot of time (and money) over the last year or so in turning the second parlour in her old farmhouse into a library**, and now, finally, with the shelves in, she is beginning to unpack.
I asked her if I could use her email and my reply as a blog entry because I felt that rather a lot of you would understand what happened next. Indeed, will have already predicted what happened next. She graciously agreed.
And so I began, in true sympathetic, supportive friendship mode:
I’m not laughing. I’m NOT laughing. I’m NOT LAUGHING! MMMMMRMMMMMRRRRMMPH
—–Original Message—–
From: Tasmin Hohenzollern
Sent: 18 January 2010 23:09
To: Robin
Subject: Bookshelves are INADEQUATE
I know that you will understand this.
I’ve just about got the library bookshelves crammed full, and I have books that are Not On Shelves. Boxes of them. Thirty or forty boxes of them. “Oh, quelle surprise!” I hear you cry.
That would be pretty much what I’m crying, yes. Mmmmmrmmmrrrmph.
This is going to make me cull and cull again. Unfortunately it’s a slow process, culling.
Yes. You suddenly realise you have a crick in your back, need a pee, and are dying for a fresh cup of tea/coffee . . . and it’s two hours later, and you’ve been reading a book you decided two hours ago to cull. Yes?
Why, just this morning I got rid of PAVILION OF WOMEN by Pearl S. Buck and two of the three (why? Who knows?) copies of JANE EYRE.
Uh . . . I have several copies of JANE EYRE. I often have several copies, particularly different editions, of favourite books (aside from the dozen or so different editions of LOTR), and JANE’s definitely a favourite. Why should a good friend have only one suit of clothes?
At this rate it will take me… um… mathematically challenged, remember?*** this may take a moment or two… YEARS to reconcile the books with the space available on the bookshelves.
Yep. I still probably have a couple of months before I get to play this game at Third House. Atlas is Building Shelves now.†
Unless I make a clean sweep of the more prolific authors – Edgar Rice Burroughs, say, or Lovecraft, or Fay Weldon -
Not Lovecraft! Not Lovecraft!!! –But if you stick to just him, it’s not so bad. You can get rid of all the Derleth etc.†† I cut Edgar††† back in Maine–and I never developed the Weldon habit.‡
there is going to be a major, MAJOR space shortage.
Yep. Reality. Don’t worry, it’s just reality. Happens to all of us. Like breathing. Shortage of bookshelves. Breathing.
There are Too Many Books (and mind you, I haven’t even touched the contents of my office upstairs, or the bookshelves in my room or the one in the guestroom or the ones on the landing. Sigh. THERE ARE TOO MANY BOOKS!
There are NEVER too many books. THAT’S the problem. Shortage of bookshelves and breathing is just the way life works, badly planned and built as it is.
And that’s not even counting the many boxes of my own books – something I’ve always been religiously opposed to keeping around the house, but when you buy up the copies before they’re remaindered, well, damn, there they are, first they cost you money and then they’re right in your way in the form of a stack of boxes. Eek.
Oh, well, I DO keep backlist in boxes. You weren’t fantasizing wasting shelf space on BACKLIST were you?!? Are you feeling quite well??
Perhaps you should plan to come and spend a week or two helping me cull. It’s always much easier to cull other people’s books (and then you can take lots of them home with you, heheheheh).‡‡
Yes, THAT’s why it’s easier to cull other people’s books! I KNOW that scam!!!!
Doesn’t that sound like a lovely holiday? And just think how you would enjoy convincing me that I don’t actually NEED twenty different editions of specific books… only, of course, I DO.
Well, I think twenty might be the upper limit. Except for LOTR. And possibly JANE EYRE.‡‡‡
[Here ends the amusing bit of the email. The rest of it trails away into mutual inquiries about the behaviour of respective domestic fauna, meteorlogical insults, the inexplicable behaviour of publishers, etc.]
* * *
* Is there another kind? Well, Peter might be another kind, only he married me.
** Which is to say she too went through the Weight-Bearing Floor follies. She, however, was only dealing with the ground floor. No fabulously expensive additional staircases were demanded of her. No perfectly respectable second bedrooms were turned into cupboards with stairs running through them.
*** He has also begun building the brick planter in front of the cottage. So that the next time some moron in an SUV swings grandly out of the driveway across the road^ and slams into my pots, it’s going to hurt him a lot more than it hurts me. For a change.
^ Note that these are not my neighbours themselves, but they hang out with some overvehicled riffraff. The thing that totally gets up my nose is that for the four big, heavy pots I’ve lost . . . not one person has ever knocked on my door and said, Er, I’m really sorry but . . . And no, there is no way they can’t have noticed. These are—were—big heavy pots. Grrrrrr.
† Yes. Tasmin and I have a lot in common.
†† I can be cruel and decisive when there’s no longer space for . . . a bed^, say, and a kettle to boil water for tea.
^ In extreme circumstances, hellhounds could sleep on the bed.
††† Cruel! Cruel! Cruel! Especially toward writers who write by the yard. I got rid of my 1,000,000 E Phillips Oppenheim at the same time.
‡ I’m a cow, remember? Moooooo.
‡‡ Yes, I know. This is what happened the last time I visited Tasmin.
‡‡‡ And . . .
Not One of My Better Sundays
In the first place, despite the parlous state of my internal economy* the world is (surprisingly) not utterly cold, barren and friendless.** While I was clearing off the kitchen table *** I re-unearthed the latest catalogue from the company that had sold me the infamous Melting Vacuum Cleaner. In large brazen print the catalogue declares, Our phone lines are open 24 hours every day! So I rang them up at 3 o’clock on a Sunday afternoon, and said, I bought a vacuum cleaner from you several months ago, and it melted.
Why that’s terrible, she said. We’ll send you a new one.
Blah. You what?
And you can use the new box to send us the old one back, she continued, so we can pass it along to the factory. That’s a very good vacuum cleaner, we sell a lot of them, and the factory should know about a defective one. Er, she added (I could hear her typing busily), would you mind describing what you mean by melted?
Maybe the Easter Bunny is real too.†
Although speaking of friendless, Niall hung around after service ring this morning to snigger. My unwholesome new position is all your fault, I said, looking at him without favour.
It’s not! he said, aggrieved. Vicky said your name first!
And I suppose you’re going to expect me to learn to conduct, I said, unmollified.†† I do not want to learn to conduct, I said. I have never wanted to learn to conduct. Conducting as an aspiration passed me by, slick as an unyaktraxed person on ice. I would like to sing like Marilyn Horne†††. I would like to compose like Benjamin Britten.‡ I would like to write novels like me which outsell Edward Sparklyface and Harry Potter together. But I have no desire to learn to conduct touches of method ringing. I said.
Steve Coleman is really good on learning to conduct, said Niall.
Steve Coleman. Yes. Steve ratbagging Coleman would be good on frelling learning to frelling conduct. Steve Coleman is a Ringing God. To those of us over-identified and over-involved with words on a page he’s probably the ringing god. http://www.ringingbooks.co.uk/ I have had his other three books almost from my first lesson in rope-handling because of course I was going to need them all eventually.‡‡ I did not order the fourth. The one which is about conducting. I did not order it because I did not want to learn to conduct.
I ordered it this afternoon. This may explain why I then had to spend several hours lying down.
* * *
* This Living (some of) Your Life on the Internet is a complex business. Okay, for you guys who don’t follow me on Twitter, I’ve spent a lot of today horizontal on the sofa under a thick blanket of delighted hellhounds, I feeling somewhat urpish. Hellhounds, meanwhile, are improving, but they have taken the long route to this destination. Friday night after I signed off the blog, Darkness followed Chaos into . . . well, into darkness and chaos. They will cry to go out if their bowels are troubling them, but they throw up in silence. This is perhaps partly because vomiting is not covered adequately in the standard housetraining module, but also, I assume, because it happens too fast. Granted it’s also nowhere near as nasty as the more comprehensively processed effluvia . . . but it’s still not a joyous way to start your morning. They did not in fact howl in the night—although they went out smartish when I stumbled downstairs very late in the morning at last—but that didn’t stop me waking up every quarter hour thinking they had. Sigh. That made three nights in a row I hadn’t had enough sleep—and I never get enough sleep Saturday night because of frelling^ service ring.^^
Peter is in Elsewhereshire visiting throngs and clusters of family^^^ this weekend.~ I had had this notion, before events caught up with me, that I was going to burn through the hip-high pile(s) of Ancient Magazines~~ at the mews while he was gone and thereby delight his eyes upon his return.~~~ I didn’t get too far, but I did quest down through a few geologic strata and took an armful of the result to the sofa with me. There were a couple from 2005. There was one from 2003. That magazine has been through two house moves. I’d better frame it.
^ As Deputy Ringing Master calling it ‘frelling’ is probably illegal.
^^ Possibly today’s stomach-ache therefore has nothing to do with cross-contamination+ but is my body saying lie down or we’ll make you. So what was that unscheduled two-hour nap yesterday then? Oh, don’t talk to me about sleep debt.
+ And I’ve been so CAREFUL. I’m always washing my hands. Because I’m always absent-mindedly petting hellhounds.
^^^I’ve told you about the Dickinson clan. As the grains of sand upon the shore.
~ Not a one of whom has thrown up on the carpet. Fancy.
~~ My ancient magazines. Peter has his own (smaller) piles of ancient magazines.
~~~ Feh. He won’t notice. At least not until he’s caught up on the blog.
** I told you that Peter has deserted me.
*** Ahem
† I’ll take the Easter Bunny over Santa Claus. The Easter Bunny is categorically welded to manifestation of chocolate. Santa Claus might get it wrong and give you Lego or something.
†† He agreed, didn’t he?
††† Or Maddy Prior
‡ . . . Or Maddy Prior.
‡‡ And when the ME closed me down and I stopped ringing, and when, a few years after that, I was doing major weeding and culling and clearing out for the move into town, I did not get rid of them, even though it had been five years since I’d touched a bell rope.
Blogmom needs your help
Hi, all – the mods and I have been trying to contact the page admin for this older Facebook page but without success. If you know the admin or, better yet, are the admin, please email me at blogmom@robinmckinleysblog.com.
As you no doubt know by now, this is Robin’s new and shiny official Facebook page. Thanks for your help!
Guest blog by Jeanne Marie
Proud Teacher, Part 2
Monique is 50-something, and grew up in a household that did not enjoy or experience music. Her dad did not appreciate “noise” of any sort, so her family did not play the radio, or listen to records, or play instruments in the house – nothing of that nature. Nevertheless, when she was in junior high school, Monique decided to sing in choir. After a few rehearsals, her choir director told her she couldn’t sing, and therefore should drop choir and take up the clarinet instead.* Things you are told by important and powerful people like teachers tend to stick with you, especially when you are told those things at an impressionable age. Monique believed her junior high choir director, and stopped singing entirely for nearly 40 years.
One Friday afternoon, almost six years ago, Monique sat next to me in our mutual chiropractor’s office. We discovered that it was the secretary’s birthday, and I led the office in a round of “Happy Birthday” – but, Monique didn’t join in. When we finished the congratulations, I turned to Monique and asked why she hadn’t been singing with us. “Oh, I can’t sing,” she responded. “Yes, you can,” I replied. “No, really, I can’t sing, “ Monique insisted. “I’ll bet you five dollars a week you can sing,” I asserted. After a bit more bantering, Monique took my bet and my phone number, and did indeed call me to schedule her first ever voice lesson.
Roughly two weeks later, Monique and I had her first voice lesson. I asked her about her musical history, and she told me about growing up in a silent house, and about the impact of her junior high choir director. She told me about playing clarinet,** and about not having done much of anything musical since then. She told me that she had always WISHED she could sing, because she liked music, and wanted to participate in singing.***
When I begin working with a new student with a non-musical history, I always start by checking to see how accurately they can actually hear different pitches. I ask them to close their eyes, and I play two notes on the piano, asking them if the first is higher or lower than the second. Monique was mostly accurate, except on half-step intervals. We then worked on listening to the differences in sound between matching versus non-matching pitches – I would ask her to sing or hum any note at all, and then I would match it. We did this a number of times, so that she could hear what it sounded like when we sang the same pitch. Then, I’d ask her to sing a note, but I’d intentionally sing a half step off, and ask her to listen and describe how that was different from when we were matching pitch. This kind of work has never yet failed to help students of mine, even previously non-musical students, begin to match pitch with greater accuracy.
Next, we did sirens – vocally sliding up and down the scale, as far as possible in each direction. Not only does this serve as a vocal warm-up, it also teaches how to adjust when you aren’t matching pitch accurately. I would do these vocal sirens with her, then we worked on stopping the siren at a single pitch, and I taught her how to slide her voice up or down, just as we’d done with the sirens, until she was matching my pitch. To her utter astonishment, I informed her that she was NOT a low Alto, which she had always assumed, but was in fact a soprano!
We sat on my piano bench side-by-side, and sang through a couple of hymns that she was familiar with from her church, and I asked her to listen especially carefully to my voice, using the skills we had just practiced, to see if she was accurately matching my pitch. By the end of the first lesson, she had become confident enough to sing hymns with me, even if she wasn’t always matching pitch accurately.
Because of her study on the clarinet, Monique was familiar with scales, so I decided to teach her solfege* as a way to increase her pitch-matching accuracy, and as a way to work on music reading skills and on hearing intervals. She took to it immediately, and found it very helpful as we worked on singing hymns and folk songs. She would look the music over and would write the solfege syllable over the notes, then we’d sing through the piece using solfege syllables, and work on specific intervals as needed. After a few runs with solfege, we’d switch to the text of the song.
It has now been almost 5 years since Monique began voice lessons. Her confidence level has gradually but steadily improved, as has her ear and basic vocal skill. She has progressed to being able to sing with me with MUCH better breathing and greater pitch accuracy. With her stronger confidence level has come the willingness to experiment with singing in front of people other than me! She led an office party rendition of “Wild Thing,” and this Christmas, she asked me to help her make a CD for her mother.
Monique is the kind of singer I most appreciate teaching. She loves music, and loves to sing, but for so long, didn’t think she had “permission” to sing. Teaching her has been so moving for me, as I watch her levels of confidence and self-respect grow, and as I watch her catch fire about music and singing in a way she had not been able to before. Her willingness to be vulnerable, to sing with me, even when she believed she couldn’t, is a real testament to her indomitable spirit, her courage, and to the fact that you are NEVER, never, too old to do something if you really want to do it.
So, if you can talk, you can sing. Don’t believe me? Ask Monique!
++++++++
* no offense to clarinet players, but GRRRRRRR…
** she stopped clarinet classes after less than two years
*** I didn’t discover this until much, much, much later, but just weeks before meeting me, Monique had sent out into the Universe the desire to find a music teacher…ask, and ye shall receive!
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solf%C3%A8ge. I’d had this conversation with Jeanne Marie and she was going to explain solfege and then I lost the plot and she got engaged, http://robinmckinleysblog.com/2009/12/18/guest-post-by-jeanne-marie-4/ and it’s now midnight-thirty on a Saturday night when I need a guest post, so wiki will have to do. Apologies –ed.