ieva melgalve

I think it was yesterday that, at a panel on writing, people touched the myth of “writing is a lonely business”, with the similarly mythified (I know it’s not a word, but is there a word in English for “forcibly made to be a myth?”) addition “it doesn’t have to be”.
I remember my mother who used to lock herself in a room for hours because she was working (writing or translating), and nobody was allowed to mess with her. And that was what I wanted, that’s what I still want. To lock myself in and to cry a bit, and ignore everybody. That’s what I’m doing right now, or as close to it as I can get: not attending the party, sitting on a terrace, crying a bit, and wondering whether and how could I morph this horribly lonesome feeling into a simple fantasy novel about horse racing.
(Yesterday, I called my husband and, among other things, asked him what should I write about. Newil is shaping slowly and is becoming a horribly complex piece. I don’t feel ready to write it now, since I’m already discouraged by The Virgin mess. And my husband said I should write about horse racing. Predictably, I said “damn it, and screw you”, but by now I have a skeleton of a plot, a map, a Mary Sue-ish main character, a conflict and the stakes, so I guess that I might as well write it and see how it goes.)
Probably I’m so tired because I have de facto worked full time. I suppose that cons are meant to be fun and relaxing, but instead I’ve been soaking every little thing in, weighing it against my experiences, and have overloaded myself. It seems that I am quite incapable of taking things easy. Or, rather, that I can shape myself into that confident, easy-going, fun-having person, but this person doesn’t write.
Yesterday, Pat Cadigan told me that writing should feel good, and better with every time. I know that’s true, but I don’t know how to do it. (Probably by allowing myself to sit alone and cry a bit, and write a sad post, and then opening a fresh document and typing away.)

Well, the first day has officially ended for me. The others, mostly, are still drinking over there at Sohvi–but I realized I don’t want to get drunk if I don’t have my husband to curl up to when I get back, so I passed most of the fun. I have met horrible amounts of impossibly nice people here, and I’m probably simply overwhelmed with the experience.
Notably:
- lil Alma who reminds me of my daughter Lia, so I’m volunteering to babysit her when I get a chance. I’m talking in Latvian to her, because Latvian and English are similarly gibberish, and I miss my language a lot. And her writer parents, Sara and Marku, being The Perfect Family,
- Johanna, who is an amazing person having a lot of common with me (hence I like to talk to her, because I can pretend I’m amazing as well) and Jonas The Swedish Guy From The Basement,
- Pat Cadigan, who is The Guest Of Honor and yay, I went ahead boldly to have a two-minute talk to her, and had a whole writing-course advice stuffed into a short conversation from her (whoa!),
- Irma, who is Generally Sweet and, being my first impression of Finnish folks, has given me the best impression possible (and her husband Jussi who’s creating poetry of fridge magnets…gotta do this at home!),
- Johan, the Blond Swedish Linguist Guy, and his fried whose name I missed (darn! but I’ll meet them at finncon, so I’ll try to pry his name),
- Hanna who’s probably coming to Riga, so I’ll take her to the Real Non-Touristy places,
- Toni The Tattooed Editor who seems to be on his way on being hungover tomorrow, which is a real pity…but probably Tattooed Finns (most of the Finns are tattooed, by the way, and in really striking ways) don’t have hangover
- and Jarek and Saija (sp.?) of Fantasy Novel Names
- and, of course, Ellen and Delia, and Cheryl The Intimidating Cool People whom I have been gapingly observed (well, STALKED) for so long that it would be actually embarrassing to talk to them.

Well, there have been great panels and stuff, but the information is always available online. What’s unavailable online is the flavor of personalities, and challenge of actually talking to them, and, well, this acute homesickness I’m having. And mother-language-sickness.
But I’ll be home soon, and until then, I’ll savor every minute of this.

So I’m sitting in a bus (with a wi-fi connection), waiting to depart from Riga to Tallinn, leaving for Finncon. I think I’ve checked a hundred times whether I have my passport and tickets. Right now, I’m a bit past worrying and have come to a calm acceptance of my fate, whatever that might be.
Yesterday, I realized that this is actually the first time I’m traveling alone–which says a lot both of my sedentary habits and the enormous support I’ve had from my friends. Right now, too, there are may people who have helped me out with this journey–my husband and Russ, and Irma and Tiina in Finnland.

I really don’t know what to expect from my first con… Currently, I’m trying to set my mind in a “losing con-virginity is exciting and I’ll never have so fresh perspective again” route rather than “ohgosh everybody will think I’m a total noob, and justly so” one.

So apart from being busy at work, busy with (good) personal life changes and stuff, I have finally found my way back to actual writing. Not the scribbles I sometimes do or an occasional poem (gah!), but something that could be, umm, of some value.
It’s nothing big yet, not even grown to a zygotic stage yet, but yes.
It’s stemming one of my stories (actually, a series of stories) set on a bizarre&hazy SF world loosely based on Bible (it being one of the things I have never been comfortable with, even when I actually was a Christian). The story is named Chana (after the heroine, because I’m so original and creative), and I just typed it from my longhand-notebook. (Note to self: longhand is cool as long as you don’t want to show the thing to anybody else. For stories? Not so much.)
I am not sure I like the story. But I have the basic feel of the characters, and the mystery of this strange plane of existance with humans and lizards and the bloodless, and cyborgs and whatnot. I have the premise of the story, the grain of sand from which the story grows: an evil Buddha. Well, and evil Buddha-as-a-child.
I have his name, Newil. And the first line (one that will probably go away at the edits, but damn me if I’m going to think about edits now): “All the little living things should be cherished and preserved, for they are hard to duplicate.”

That’s a lot more than what I usually have when I’m thinking of starting something new, so I’m good.

(Also, I’ll have to have something to write on my long, long way to Finncon – it seems that I’ll be spending a full day on bus and ferry and train.)

So. The Final Turn is once again bravely headed to markets unknown. I love that story and I am not ready to give up on it (even though for a long while, I thought I might). Also, I’ve been catching up on critiquing, wondering where could (or should) I send Demonhunter that needs only a light editing and all in all, I’m somewhat back on track.
And all it took was a 30-second brief exercise of imagination, one that said, “OK, baby, tomorrow you will play a role of a happy, non-afraid, non-psycho writer, all right? Don’t worry whether it’s true. It’s just for a day.”

I have been so swamped in my day job & my whattheheckisthatcalled that goes on in my head that I barely manage to surface to breathe. Not good for writing. The good news is that I’m reading a lot (the best thing to relax during lunch breaks or at evenings) and half of these books are non-fiction on subjects like “Japanese psychotherapy”. Of course, that does not unclutter my mind too well, but somehow it helps: a sentence from this book, a sentence from that, and something starts to shift and shape itself.
Not an excuse for not writing though. I think that I either have to come up with a really, really good excuse or get my backside on the work. After all, it takes just half an hour to write another page in my comic, for example, and I have half an hour in every day, no matter how swamped and horrible it is.

The past few days have been rather intense–I’ve been meeting people, writing things (mostly non-fiction, for freelance gigs and whatnot), some editing etc.. The contrast between this and the last weeks, no, actually months of doing much less that I could is surprising; I don’t even know whether in a good or a bad way. There are still things I have to catch up to (most notably, that darned comic I am stuck with, and Virgin that I still want to finish even though it’s so scary).
Also, I have decided that I’ll go to Finncon this year, making arrangements and stuff. This will be my first con abroad, so notably scary.

Other than that, I’ve been reading a lot, and partying a lot, and, of course, being my usual haphazard, half-witted self. Sometimes I really wonder how I manage to get by day by day when life around me seems so chaotic, and I’m struggling to keep up at least some sort of appearances. But then again, I think that’s how it is for most people.

So, I have written what I think of as my first horror story. (I’m not counting a bloody and severely disgusting spin-off of a classic Latvian stage play I did when I was fourteen.) It’s about… Snow White. The idea was conceived three weeks ago, and took a horribly long time to mature. I had to translate it from “concept” to “tangible characters and world”, something that apparently takes much more time than translating a brilliant vision to something that has an idea underneath.

This has been time that’s more like a pond than a stream. Only, in my case, it’s been that sort of a pond that is rumored to have an abyss in its bottom, or a sunken castle, or both. I have thought much, learned much about myself, and by sheer thinking about who am I and what am I made of, I’ve uprooted the writing nerve and made it so raw I can barely touch it. Everything I’ve written seems to be so egocentric, and obvious, and irrelevant, and alien at the same time. No wonder I haven’t been able to produce new words, except those I write at the day job.
Of course, this is going to pass as soon as I realize that my writing isn’t about me. Well, it is about “me” as the deep and ever-changing thing that I am; but it’s not about “me” as I think of myself in everyday life.
Writing isn’t about “writing what you know”. Writing is “writing what you hadn’t realized before”. Since I’m so keen on realizing things right now–and my thoughts move faster than my stories do–I seem to do most of the self-revelations by thinking, not by writing. Robbing myself of the mystery and the miracle that is writing.

I won’t spend long in this beautiful castle of thinking about myself, basically because it gets really boring after a while. The good stuff is that what glitters dimly through the blue-green waters of the pond, peers through the weeds and the algae. As soon as you drag it out, clean it, examine and define it… it becomes a museum stuff, and a museum of me isn’t as exciting as I assumed it could be.
So yeah. I’ll be back in the game. I hope it’ll be soon.

..which is the best estimate of my current position.
I have cold so bad that every time I cough I keep expecting my lung to fall on my keyboard.
But I’m alive, and it’s a lot.

This spring is beautiful though. Every sunny day after work, my husband and me spend fifteen minutes (or half an hour) sitting on the bank of Daugava river, watching the swans and the reflections in the water. There’s something soothing about the spring air so warm that it flows into your lungs like water; and you’re drowning in life.
Drowning in life. It is good. It is infusing me with life.
And I’m alive.