If you're brave enough to fly

I have begun my reading for the Australian Women’s Writers Challenge.

With the most recent two offerings of the Twelve Planets series from Twelfth Planet Press.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

One of the things I’ve been doing for the past year or so is reading every book that the podcast The Writer and the Critic talk about.  Kirstyn and Mondy are amazing people and the discussions they have about books are always worth reading to.

I’ve read some amazing books via the podcast – many of which I wouldn’t have picked up or come across afterwards (and I am dead excited that they’re going to be doing House of Leaves this year!).

One of the upcoming books for the podcast happened to be one that’s been sitting on my to-be-read shelf for way too long – Zoo City, by Lauren Beukes.

I think I grabbed this first because of word of mouth about it’s awesomeness.  And knowing that it involved spirit animals of a kind always had me intrigued.  I snapped up a copy and then, as too many books tend to do, it languished gathering dust on my shelf for far too long.

I’m really regretting that time now, because the book is damn awesome.  I love that it features many POC characters, and I love even more that they don’t all get “cool” spirit animals.  The way this world works is just unique, and while I want to know about the mechanics of how people get Animalled (and why), the writer in me loves that Beukes never really explains about it, just giving just enough information to make the whole thing fascinating.

I’ve now picked up Moxyland , Beukes’ debut (which has also been languishing unread for far too long) and am already sucked into it after only a few pages.  I have no idea if Beukes is going to revisit the world of Zoo City at any time, but I really, really hope she does.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

Yesterday, to celebrate the new year, I cleaned out and organised my writing space.  Clearing out 2011, ready for 2012.

You will notice lots and lots of artwork by Ravenari, as well as stuff from Goddess Guidebook.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

Fiction

Generation X - Douglas Copeland

The Gaslight Dogs - Karin Lowachee (DNF)

Always Hungry - Inez Baranay

The Seventh Wave - Paul Garrety

The Emerald Tablets - Paul Garrety

Veronica Decides to Die - Paulo Coelho

Unnatural Journeys: Part One - John Ezzy*

Unnatural Journeys: Second Night - John Ezzy*

The Freedom Maze - Delia Sherman*

The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls - Emilie Autumn*

The Wilmont Chronicles - Paul Harrison

This Green Hell - Grieg Beck

House of Sighs - Aaron Dries

The Hall of Lost Footsteps - Sara Douglass*

More Scary Kisses - Liz Gryb*

Dead Red Heart - Russell B. Farr*

Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann*

Winds of Change - Elizabeth Fitzgerald*

Concrete Jungle - Brett McBean

Non-fiction

The China Study - Colin T. Campbell

Loud in the House of Myself - Stacy Pershall

Prozac Nation - Elizabeth Wurtzel

More, Now, Again - Elizabeth Wurtzel

Madness - Marya Hornbacher

A Passionate Apprentice - Virginia Woolf

Rough Magic: a biography of Sylvia Plath - Paul Alexander

Five Historical Feasts - Gillian Polack*

Zelda: a biography - Nancy Milford

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

Things have been quiet around here.  Mostly because I’ve been dealing with a recent fall into depression, which has effectively put a halt to life for me.

I think I have my medication sorted out now, and hopefully will manage to keep my head above water now.  This time of the year is hard – as a family, we’re facing the first Christmas without my father.  But there are good things on the horizon – a new niece who will be born early in the new year, and a wedding to look forward to.  Life goes on, and even with the hole in the world where Dad should be, there is good.

I am deep in Aurealis reading right now, which will be the focus of my work for the rest of the year.

And next year.  I am going to be signing up for the Australian Women Writer’s Challenge 2012.  I’m going to go for the Devoted Eclectic (as many genres as possible) at the Franklin-fantastic level (read 10 books and review at least 4).

Objective: This challenge hopes to help counteract the gender bias in reviewing and social media newsfeeds that has continued throughout 2011 by actively promoting the reading and reviewing of a wide range of contemporary Australian women’s writing. (See the page on gender bias for recent discussions.)

Goal: Read and review books written by Australian women writers – hard copies, ebooks and audiobooks, new, borrowed or stumbled upon by book-crossing.

Genre challenges: 
Purist: one genre only
Dabbler: more than one genre
Devoted eclectic: as many genres as you can find
  
Challenge levels:
Stella (read 3 and review at least 2 books)
Miles (read 6 and review at least 3*
Franklin-fantastic (read 10 and review at least 4 books)*
* The higher levels should include at least one substantial length review

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

Today, for the first time in far too long, I actually felt like a normal and productive human being.  Well, normal and productive for my own version of both

Which translated to: the house got cleaned, the kidlet got played with (though I didn’t do the majority of that today).  And I wrote, to the tune of 1,700 words, and it felt like good writing – for the first time in far too long I found the hole in the page.  I managed some reading, too, which is good, since I have a stack of Aurealis reading to do.  And I even got a short walk in – just in time for the weather to start warming up, at which time I can no longer tolerate walks.  Fneh.

It felt damn good to write.  Hopefully I can power through this draft now.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

Today, for the first time in a long time, I wrote.  1,200 words, and they were easy and they are good.  And lo, I am happy.

I’ve lost pretty much a solid month to this awful flu, and the fatigue aftermath.  Last week, the flu itself was mostly passed, but I was hit with bone-crushing fatigue.  Which meant that pretty much everything stopped.  On the worst days, I couldn’t read or focus on anything for more than five minutes.  True lost days.

Somewhere in there, ideas for Bone Girls started to come together.  I’m not certain of the story, but the general shape of its protagonist is starting to emerge.  Ideally, I’d like to have an outline put together by the time I finish this draft of Never, so I can go onto working on the first draft.  Yes, I appear to have become an outline writer.

We finally managed writer’s group this weekend (it had been delayed twice because I had been sick).  It was still hard, because I was one with the fatigue and fever (and spent part of the evening lying on the floor because of it).  I didn’t get much actual writing done, but just being with the other writers is something that feed my soul.  I have wanted a good writing group for so long, and I feel so damn blessed to know these people.  We’re all very different writers with different methods and inspiration, but they all feed me, and they’re all so damn talented with what they do.

Today I am tired, but it’s mostly lack-of-sleep-tired, not bone-crushing fatigue (and yes, they are two different things, and anyone who’s dealt with a fatiguing illness will know the difference).  Despite the sleepiness, I managed to clean the house, deal with laundry (and jag getting it all dry around rain), cuddle the kidlet a lot, nap while he did and begin the process of catching up on everything that I’ve put off for the last month.  I have a lot of Aurealis reading to do, for one thing, which means that a few other things (like my Her Worlds and Words project) are going to get put on the backburner for a while.

It is good to be writing again, oh yes.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

Tonight is Beltaine Eve in the Southern Hemisphere, a time when the veils between the worlds grow thinner.

It feels somewhat appropriate that I returned to work today after struggling with a horrible flu for the past few weeks.  As I type this, I’m still dealing with a fairly horrid sinus headache, which thankfully eased enough today for me to get some work done.

And so, back to this draft of Never.  The words came slowly at first, and then I found myself sinking into the page.  I finished the scene I was working on, and ended up with 1,500 words that I was happy with.

There was also reading – I finished up a reread of The Handmaid’s Tale.  And picked up Generation X, to prepare for the next episode of The Writer and the Critic.  I only managed a couple of pages before the kidlet woke up from his nap and demanded attention.

I am way, way behind on my podcasts, thanks to my habit of listening to them while I walk (and having not gone for a walk while sick).  Finally got to start the process of catching up today with the latest Galactic Suburbia.  And I didn’t come home with more books that I need to read, no.  Well, maybe

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

According to my calendar, I haven’t written properly in almost a fortnight.  Sickness meant that I didn’t have the focus, and depression added to the weight pulling me away from the page.  Today, I feel well enough (with the addition of medication), but a clingy kidlet kept me away from the computer instead.

It feels strange.  To not be writing, though I have been reading.  To be haunted by those days as they pass.  Haunted by all the shoulds: I should be further along in my career, I should be better/stronger/more than I am right now.

Meandering through my books brought me to the biography of Alice Sheldon/James Tiptree Jr, purchased a while ago and languishing unread.  I have been enthralled by her, absolutely fascinated by what made her.  She didn’t start writing seriously until she was much older than I am now, and look at what she produced.  There is still time.

Here is still time.

And the stories, they will come.

Yesterday afternoon, in a break between the unseasonable rain, I walked the land.  I hadn’t been out walking for too long, thanks to sickness, and I’d almost forgotten how much it makes me whole.  I follow a druidic path, and just being out beneath the sky and the trees, the earth beneath my feet feeds everything that makes me.

There are stories in the land, if you only take the time to see them.

Aided by my trusty Atrix, I captured some of them.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

I believe I forgot to post yesterday.  Things have fallen slightly out of routine these past few weeks as the flu has raged through this household.  The kidlet is still sickish and has been sleeping a lot – today was the first day he was back to his regular nap of 1.5-2 hours (as opposed to 3-4 hours), though he clearly needed more sleep than that and was a grump until he got to go back to bed.

A couple of decent writing days – I made 2,000 words yesterday, though I just scraped 1,000 today.  And I’m going to be playing with those thousand words again tomorrow, I think, since the two scenes don’t flow well as is and need to be rewritten into a single scene.

I’m still coughing a lot (and probably will be for some time, I think), but it’s so damn nice to be feeling somewhat well again.  It’s going to take me a bit of time to get back to exercising properly (a short walk today left me coughing to a ridiculous level, so much that the pressure from it was giving me a headache), but so long as I can write, I feel sane.  I’m newly enthusiastic about the writing, too, which is kind of awesome.

Reading: I gulped down Jon Armstrong’s Yarn in a couple of days.  Which was…quite extraordinary.  I’m not entirely sure if I’m going to pick up a copy of Grey, written in the same world.  Probably, at some stage when I don’t have hundreds of books waiting to be read.  I’ve moved onto Little, Big, which has been on my to-read pile for a shamefully long time, inspired to read it after listening to Cat Valente squee about it on the latest SF Squeecast.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.