ieva melgalve » people

afterimages and anticipation

ieva — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 07:25:53 +0000

Last Saturday, I spent a beautiful day with Emma Jones, and am still digesting her book, slowly, a poem-on-poem basis. Emma is one of those people with whom I reach immediate contact—and have no way of adequately expressing it afterwards; or maybe I’m afraid to talk about it too much lest I shatter that gentle feeling of connection. It is a fleeting thing anyway since I very likely won’t meet her again, at least not in a foreseeable future.
My Trusted Reader (and a trusted friend), Russell, is coming to visit Riga on October. I have been reluctant to write about this, since it all feels very unreal to me. This is the backslash of modern relationships, I guess—the virtual connection is very different from the real one, and the mind just cannot translate it properly. So it’s waiting, stalled, like a rabbit preparing to jump just as soon as the passer-by gets close enough.
Up until now, I could have shuffled this to the background, but October is right around the conrner so I can’t do that any more. And now there’s almost zero chance something could go wrong with his journey. So yeah, I will see Russell in real life very soon, and it’s so exciting and confusing, and, above all, amazing.

I actually like the ending I’m about to have. Unexpectedly, I used one of less explored side-effects of the “magic” to bring it around satisfactory (instead of just using powerplay and relying on my villain’s good behavior). I expect it to be done next week, or maybe even this week if I really set my mind to it.

the first day of finncon

ieva — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 22:03:46 +0000

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.

screnzying on

ieva — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 11:09:42 +0000

I’m 31 pages deep into my graphic novel, and it is still going well. Not “OMG this is going so well!” well, but “I can do this if I write four pages every day, and I can write four pages every day. I am determined to.

Also, I’m going through a funny phase. It actually isn’t about me, not this time. It’s more about Latvian way of dealing with things (in many separate areas) that seems to be the main attraction this time. Nothing of it really concerns me–life seems to be flowing around me while I sit in a glass cocoon and write, and smile–but observing people is very interesting right now. Not just people, the way the social groups interact, how they form around simple statements and how their beliefs are tainted by the previous interactions with each other. I feel like watching spiders in a glass bowl, or probably large ant colonies fighting for territory. It’s amazing, and it’s (sometimes) terrifying, and very, very human. I wonder whether this close and complex relationship between social groups is something unique to small countries where everybody knows everybody else, or is it the same everywhere.

P.S. Oh, and I have slept four hours tonight. That explains the fuzziness of this post. And my English.

The Gatherer

ieva — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 11:32:27 +0000

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?

quick weekly recap

ieva — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 21:22:51 +0000

This week, I didn’t do particularly well writing-wise (two days I didn’t write at all due to death in husbands family and funeral) but on the rest of the days, I fared sufficiently (even today, when I was slacking for the most part of the day and managed to pull my act together rather late). I did almost everything I needed to write and learned a couple of things, both personal and writing-related.
- I got a small notebook for noting small glimpses of ideas, this seems to be working just great. Some ideas come from books I read, some from dreams.
- Got un-afraid from writing slow and literary (however, the simple tricks of raising stakes and sticking with people that matter seem to work here, too).
- While editing, I discovered that I actually make more sense than I thought (namely, some of my scenes that seemed pretty useless plot-wise actually are about critical character development stages. I’ll have to change them but at least now I know why I wrote them in the first place).
- Personally, I found out a marvelous thing: that you can communicate with people way more rewardingly if you open up and give them back relevant information, connect with them on levels that aren’t normally in place within first communication with a stranger. Well, that’s a weird thing to discover when you’re almost 30 (normal folks figure it out at 7 or so), but better late than never.
- Also, I found out that (except today) I waste little or no time at all. That’s sorta cool, but also a bit frustrating (it means that I cannot free up more time for writing, I must focus on doing more in shorter amount of time instead, and use a short-short breaks more effectively).
So all in all, this has been a fulfilled week.