ieva melgalve

Today is the first day of my vacation. Curiously enough, I’ve managed to keep myself fairly busy with stuff, writing, editing and kids.
Anyhow, the bottom line is… well, there are two bottom lines:
1. I seem to be quite unable to Do Nothing, Really Nothing except when I’m totally burned out.
2. I seem to be able to work on my writing ~5 hours a day, if I get an uninterrupted time. Impossible with the kids though.

My plan for tomorrow is to switch writing and editing around, thus getting more time for editing (I can write in a mess and mayhem at home, but not edit). This means carrying the horrendous bundle of Vega to a cafe, but whatever.

Also, I started a brand new project, did 800+ words on top of lots of worldbuilding and am fairly excited about the thing. So yay. Widget comes when I make sure this one’s a keeper.

I’ve decided to abandon, at least temporarily, writing Virgin.
This wasn’t an easy decision. I truly love the world, the problem is perfectly set up, there is a tension and conflict, and I feel for all the people in there. However, even brainstorming about why have I stopped writing brought up a big glaring I AM AFRAID and a host of little scary notes on what do I feel towards this novel and the protagonist. And myself, too. Also, it brought up the clenched jaw and upset stomach and trembling hands and the horrible feeling that I’m going profoundly crazy.

It seems that this wasn’t day job that brought me to a complete burn-out, it was this novel with its modest 250 words per day.

I think I will write this thing down, someday, when I’m older and wiser and when I know a way to deal with all these things that I was trying to solve on paper instead of my own life. Maybe I’ll write it every year for a month or two until I reach the end.
It’s not uncommon; after all, there are books that I read slowly, chapter by chapter, instead of rushing through in one big gulp. Virgin certainly isn’t a gulp-able thing and it seems that I can’t write it fast and remain a functional, sane human being. (This is the point where I appreciate the idea that writers should go to a writers’ resort and write for a month…except that writers’ resorts are full of writers. Going drooling-mad among writers is one of my prime nightmares so thanks, but no.)

Anyhow, I’m switching over to something lighthearted and easy-peasy, zero research, stupidity and easygoing stuff. Some sort of alternate reality/urban fantasy/something. Something that doesn’t drive me crazy. Something that I wouldn’t be afraid to mess up because it’s so easygoing and wasn’t meant to be serious. Something that I write not to get to the heart of it but to scratch the surface.

Something I’m not profoundly afraid of.

Yesterday, I did three things, all of them connected to the first.
1. Demanded a vacation, starting next Tuesday. (Normally, I’m too worried about my projects to take a week off. This time, I was too worried about my sanity.)
2. Got a couple of words done on Virgin. Nothing much, but I did it.
3. Got a new, simple and funny idea for a fantasy story; nothing major but cool nonetheless. Actually, I got the idea when I told my daughter a fairy tale, and this morning I woke up with the feeling that I had the idea but I forgot it. So I hunted my yesterday up and down to retrieve that one piece of revelation.

And today is Saturday, and I have a feeling this will be a good one.

Dārgo skolēn! Ja Tu esi iekļuvis šeit, meklējot informāciju par “obligāto” referātu, kas jāraksta par mani, lūdzu, izmanto šo failu.

An update: it seems that the student (with the irrelevant questions) was forced to do the presentation on me as a part of an obligatory assignment. Hence, it’s not her fault, but the fault of Latvian educational system that still forces people to feign interest into authors they don’t care about. Hence a wrote one for them to copy&paste as they’re expected to.

Today, I was an ass, writing a rather short-tempered reply to a student writing on me, a student who apparently hadn’t done her research. So this is an Easter Egg entry for you if you have actually bothered to read my blog as I suggested in the very beginning. Dear Other Readers: you are welcome to take a peek at the questions a writer is commonly asked.
Regarding the themes of my stories: this is a question I don’t answer because, while I have an opinion, it is flawed by my perception. I see in my stories what I want to see, what I meant to write but not necessarily did. My opinion would not be helpful because, in the worst case, you’d just copy it and be done with it, in the best case, you’d feel intimidated by it and avoid forming a different opinion. This is why, when I write book reviews, I don’t ask the author what she meant, I write what I have found in the book. (This presumes you’ve actually read what I’ve written.)
Regarding authors that inspire me: for current inspirations, the “read this blog and see at least five authors I admire” suggestion still stands. For my Latvian-writing period, I’d name Kurt Vonnegut, Lao Tzu, Hans Christian Andersen (for the “Heart of Ice” novelette), Carlos Castaneda (his “Journey to Ixtlan”) and Latvian poet Anna Auziņa (her first book, “Atšķirtie dārzi”).
Regarding funny stuff: actually, you could find some stories if you look for them in this blog, depending on your sense of humor. I was apprehensive because jokes are to be told in one’s own voice. I’d feel uncomfortable telling funny story about somebody, unless I get the essence of the joke very well. If I didn’t feel the joke as “my thing” it would be closer to mocking them. Call me vain, but I wasn’t amused by an idea of a host of students staring blankly as you “tell a funny story” about me.
Regarding “telling something to my readers”, this blog is about things I would tell them. I’ve changed a lot since I wrote in Latvian, I think that anything I would tell now would differ greatly from what I wanted to tell then.

Oh, and two of my short stories will be published in Spring, one in A Cappella Zoo and another in Fusion Fragment. These are not technically “awards” but surely feel like that to me.

Do your homework. Do it to the best of your ability. Don’t waste your (and my) time on trying to find shortcuts.

This morning, I looked at my Virgin file. Due to untimely shutdown, my last scene and most of the next-of-the-last scene were gone. I looked at the single sentence hanging, and thought, yes, this is the whole scene, 12 words. That’s it. There’s everything I need for this scene.
Then, during the day, I received two e-mails from people whom I usually try to forget (the way Bee forgets), and I wrote to both of them, ending the letters with thanks for contacting me / thanks for not forgetting me. And I meant it.
Then, as I was eating dinner, a video for REM “Everybody hurts” came up, and instantly, I recognized that feeling, I recognized that eerie, detached sorrow.

I knew what Virgin is about.
It’s not about a society with unreasonable (or all-too-reasonable) rules, it isn’t about silently destroying you because you’re different.
It’s about love, and about marriage, and the day-to-day struggle of life as it is.

The funny thing is that my husband knew it long before as I did. He looked at an early plot draft, and he said, now where did you get that idea? I grinned and said, that’s just a twist, I don’t know what it means.
Right then, I wasn’t ready to acknowledge what my novel was about.
I am not sure I am ready for that now.

Sometimes, when I (the average unaccomplished, unripe and only moderately successful person) have big dreams, I stop yourself and say, now, dear, you look like a fool right now. You have such big hopes and goals and you reach for the stars, but in the end you might very well die still being average. Statistically, that’s the most likely outcome anyway.
So chances are I look like a total delusional fool, right?
But then I realized that if I’ll die being an average, people wouldn’t bother much about whether I look like a fool or not (except those who care about me; and from those, I’ll look like a fool only to those who don’t like me too much). So, all in all, there’s no use to worry about how do I look for a mostly uncaring world (and it isn’t a bitter thought, it’s actually quite a reassuring one).
So if it doesn’t matter either way I’d rather have big dreams and fail miserably (or succeed grandly) than have tiny dreams and tiny failures and tiny victories. The latter seems just…boring.

But it’s not about that, not only about that.
Today, I had a meeting with my boss, and she seemed to be impressed with my progress as a copywriter. Of course, it’s due to many reasons–great colleagues, diverse pool of clients, marketing changing in ways I actually can dig, writing constantly–but I wondered, what had changed inside me during past year that the progress at work is noticeable? The only major shift has been the change in thinking, the shift from self-awareness of “I will look like a fool if I do this or say that” to a dreamer’s “this is what I believe in so I’m saying and doing it”.
When I stopped worrying whether I’m a fool or a genius, I started working better, and I started writing better. Actually, I started living better. I’m not that anxious any more, I’m not dwelling on past mistakes, and I’m not taking to heart whatever others may think of me (or, if somebody cares to offend me, I shrug it off more lightly than before).
It’s not some magic tool, and it’s not always easy. But it’s way better than the constant self-questioning.

What’s best, I know from personal experience that people driven by dreams are way more inspiring to others than people driven by their own mediocrity. And it doesn’t matter in the least whether they are actually successful or just wild dreamers. It doesn’t matter even, if they look like a fools. They matter to me, they change me, and even if I don’t like them they leave an imprint in my life.
What more could one dream of?

There’s a funny thing about “writing rules”. It says, “here’s a rule, don’t break it unless you are…” and inserts a name of some great author (Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman, Cory Doctorow or just about any other notable author there is or ever was). In my opinion, it’s bullshit.
I don’t argue that there are some “rules” that describe the thinking of a reader as it’s established at the present time. For example, right now readers prefer close 3rd or 1st person, but don’t get omnipresent; readers usually can’t stand shifts in time or voice in the middle of the scene; they usually are bored about weather description and what not.
Great writers break those rules and get through to the reader due to their talent and craft and, I guess, passion and daredevil attitude regarding (or, rather, disregarding) petty rules. Everybody except those great writers is supposed to shut up and lay down because they’re not that great. Obviously, they said the same thing to some rather awesome authors, like Daniel Handler whose Lemony Snicket books got rejected for being too dark. I think there’s a rule for that as well. Something like “ignore everybody” © Hugh MacLeod (”unless you are a loser”, © not Hugh).

Anyhow, barring angst and stuff, there’s a rational reason for taking into account what the great writers are doing and putting it to use. The reason is this: these writers have found a brilliant new way of communicating with today’s reader, and chances are that what they are doing as a novelty today will be a trend tomorrow.
So I say, if you see a writer you absolutely like, breaking the rules and reaching you in profound ways by doing so, learn from him (or her).
Figure out what the author wanted to achieve.
Figure out how the breaking of rules was executed and why it worked (exactly how Dan Simmons switched from past to present, exactly when Neil Gaiman head-hopped, exactly what Lemony Snicket says when he celebrates misery in children).
Note it as your own rule: if I want to achieve this mega-cool effect, here’s how I do it (and don’t be ashamed of stealing, all writers are thieves).
Use it. This is the thing you, as a writer, owe to your favorite authors: use your own writing to establish and expand their style, their findings, their new and brilliant rules. Do your own thing to make them immortal. And say your thanks to the authors you love, not the rules you obey.

Now, first, I realize that it’s never a good time to take a break when writing. However, right now:
- I’m slowly falling ill with absolutely no idea what’s wrong with me. My body&mind fail me in small ways but nothing so big that I can say that I’m really sick.
- I’m reading Hyperion by Dan Simmons and it’s so close to “the novel I really really want to write” that I suspect my writing nerve is really engaged in reading, digesting and learning. It’s not a good excuse but then again I know that when I read something engaging I inadvertently start writing in that style.
- Also, I’m stuck

So yeah. I’m taking a break to figure things out, do some much-needed planning instead of writing, and generally bring things to balance again.

I just came home from a loooong night out. I hadn’t done any writing, nothing useful at all (blame Michael Crichton). So under three beers and something-dunno-what, I’m staggering to the car, and my husband says, how much can you do? Can you do ten words? Ten-and-a-half? Can you do half of a word?
And I said, yes, of course I can do half a word.
I ended up with 268 words that moved the conflict forward.

I know my husband meant to be a tease, and a nasty guy pushing me when I’m clearly not up for anything, but…thanks.

Yesterday, I was sitting with a friend, talking about various things (mostly gay sex…it’s research, all right? Being a writer has some perks), and I mentioned the hunter/farmer theory.
„And then there are the gatherers,” he said.
„Wha?”
„The gatherers. There were entire societies made of them, people gathering things, both the ones they could use right now, and the ones they could probably use later.”
„All right. I’d say that a farmer has to think four years ahead at least; a hunter lives in the moment, but for how long does a gatherer think?”
„Providing for all his life. See, I’m a gatherer. I just collect things, drag them to my cave. Books, for example. Do you remember those old-fashioned glass baby bottles?”
„Yes,” and I do. Those were made from thick glass, had designed measures (instead of printed), and were impossibly heavy.
„Well, I saw people throwing them out. I gathered them all. Probably I’ll need them.”
„Oh.”
„And an old wrought saucepan. It’s really useful.”
„Right.”

And I thought of myself; how not so long ago I really used to drag everything home, and how lately I’ve tried to abandon that instinct because, honestly, we don’t have that much room. I am still gathering some things—books, Moleskine notebooks, paper supplies, index cards—but it’s not like when I was a teenager and anything that had some artsy value in it ended up in my room.
I’m thinking that the Gatherer is another major way of thought, and writers can be gatherers, too. But how does that work for them?