cate chronicles

It's been a weekend of bookish controversy.

[This post isn't just about the iPad. Scroll down if you want to skip this bit.]

I was keeping an eye on the live coverage of the presentation (thank you, gizmodo!). And…it's pretty. The touch-typing is nifty. The iBooks are intriguing. I get the concept. Stephen Fry even gushed philosophical about it, and I can see how it would appeal.

I didn't at first think "feminine hygiene product" when I heard the name "iPad." I thought of "note pad" and "scratch pad," but it was an all-too-easy leap after that. "Are you there, God? It's me, Marketing" is my favorite of the jokes. The runner-up is "Will future versions be larger, have wings and dry-weave, and be called maxiPads?" Giggles all around because I am still twelve somewhere in my head. Did no one at Apple consider the possibly unfortunate name? Then again, if it was an all-boys club that built this thing and came up with all the marketing, let alone the majority of the presentation, I guess it wouldn't be on their radar. If there is token female representation on their marketing team, I guess she was ignored?

For whatever reason, the iPad is not geared to women, despite the name, and despite the fact that half the population is female and surely at least some of us know how to use a Mac computer and/or an iPhone, and therefore could make our way around this thing with some degree of confidence. Yet if you watch the official promo video, it's all white males talking about it and using it. The only women or girls in the video are in a couple of pictures in photo albums and a woman sitting next to a guy who is holding an iPad and she gets to hit the play button - and that's a neck-down shot that draws attention to her chest. Seriously? That's the best they could come up with to appeal to the masses? Are we suddenly back in the 1950s?

Please. If you're going to be sexist, at least be subtle about it. This was so blatant as to be appallingly funny. Bust Magazine has a hilarious play-by-play of the video.

Despite the above-mentioned stunning marketing blunder, I might watch movies on it. I'd try out iBooks. I can even see using it as a music tool beyond iTunes. My cello teacher tells me there are instrument tuner and metronome apps available for the iPhone, which I assume transfer to the iPad. I'd love to see an app that would let me download cello sheet music and then prop the iPad right on the music stand and play from that, with the metronome app going in the background, after having used the tuner app. No more lugging music books around (although how would I mark up the pages?). And then I could zoom in on a particular section of the piece of music if that's what I wanted to work on. Oh. Right. No multi-tasking capability. Sigh.

I use my personal laptop for three things: creating and storing documents, communicating via e-mail/Facebook/Twitter/blogging, and wandering around the Internet. I do have a lot of documents on Google Docs, but I've had the occasional problem with being able to open or save a file, so I still have back-up copies on the hard drive and/or on a flash drive.

Would I be able to access and use all the documents I currently have or would I have to convert it all to iWorks? Does anyone actually use iWorks? I've never met anyone who does, and I’ve yet to work for a company that uses it as the main document software.

Ultimately, I like the idea of replacing a traditional laptop, but I'm not sure this is the replacement I want because I still need and want to be able to do what I currently do on my laptop in addition to watching movies, reading books, and using it as part of cello practice. I don’t think the iPad can do all that for me. At least not yet. I’m open to the possibility if they are. Just shrink the border a bit, okay? At least to three-quarters of an inch. Half-an-inch, preferably.

And what is it with STILL only going through AT&T? I refuse to switch to a crappy service just to use a product, which is why I’ve not gotten the iPhone yet. And the service will only get crappier with even more people getting on it to use the new toy. So yet another potential market barred from using it.

And another thing, @rantyeditor is right: Saying something is "half-an-inch thin" doesn't make it sound thinner, it just makes you sound dumber.

Finally, you are not your gadgets. But enough about the iPad.

In other gateway news, one of my pulses apparently blew a fuse, acupuncturally speaking.

Karen-the-acupuncturist thinks the culprit was a series of sinus headaches that I had earlier this week. I started battling sinus problems when I started taking Lexapro. I’ve been off Lexapro since last fall, but I still have the sinus problems.

Lately, sinus flare-ups lead to panic attacks. Being the medical writer that I am, I looked this up, and it’s not an unusual chain reaction. One of the main symptoms of panic attacks is feeling like you can’t breathe; therefore, a lower oxygen intake due to stuffy sinuses could ring alarm bells in the psyche. I also saw a new doctor on Monday and mentioned my history of panic attacks and that I’d not had one in awhile, so for all I know, I merely jinxed myself.

As usual, Karen took care of it with one point near my left ear. That’s it. Just. One. Point. It’s a gateway point, and I guess the lock was stuck. Karen got it open and things got moving. My sinuses suddenly cleared, and I felt a wave of…something…flow down toward my feet. Odd feeling. When Karen read my pulses after the one needle, she said they were flooded (in a good way). I left an hour later feeling as though I'd had a really good nap. Seeing as I’ve only slept for a handful of hours in the past few days due to nocturnal panic attacks, it was a relief to finally feel rested. I’d had to put off cello practice because I could barely keep my eyes open.

It is a ganglion cyst, by the way. On my wrist, I mean. The doctor didn’t whack it with a heavy book. She recommends aspirating it, and can refer me to a good orthopedic surgeon. She’d have done it herself, since she’s aspirated a lot of things, but she admitted the one thing she’d never poked with a needle is a ganglion cyst. Go figure.

I’m not keen on the idea. Large needle plunged into my wrist is ewww, remember? But there really aren’t any other treatments for it aside from not using my hand for awhile. And that’s impossible because it’s my dominant hand and I, you know, use it do to everything. Hell, maybe the orthopedic surgeon will bash it with a heavy book. Is it weird that I'd prefer that to a needle?

So you get another knitted object picture. Aren't you lucky?It's a finished 16-button cardigan. (Count 'em if you like.) It fits well, and it's the first piece I've made in a long time that I really like and will actually wear. In fact, I'll wear it sometime this week after I've blocked it.

It occurs to me that I haven't shown you a gratuitous knitting photo in awhile, so, um, here you go:

Ever heard of Morning Pages? First thing in the morning, every morning, you write three pages (8 1/2 x 11-size pages) in longhand of whatever comes to mind. You don't worry about neat handwriting or punctuation. You can make lists, you can whine and complain, you can plan and daydream, you can outline ideas, you can go from topic to topic and back again. The point is to keep your hand continually moving across the page until you've filled three pages.

Some call it Brain Drain or Clearing the Decks or Writing Warm-up or Free Writing or Pre-writing or Meditation on the Page. Others call it Hell on the Page because it's far harder to do than you'd think. Other than what's described above, there are no rules. Get a notebook you like, get a pen or pencil you like, start writing, fill three pages. That's it.

The obstacles often run along these lines:

(Hmm, that headline reads like one of the subtitles of the later Steed-and-Peel Avengers episodes.)

Anyway. I made it to 50,000 words on November 27th, and I didn't even do it perfectly.

My goal was to write 2000 words a day in November, in anticipation of the inevitable slumps that occur mid-novel and other Life stuff that often gets in the way. This meant there were days when it was a feat just to get 500 words written. Most of the time, I was able to keep up with this daily word count, mainly because I am a morning person, so I could get most of it done before going to the day job. Dr Wicked's Write or Die software helped immensely, too. The thought of being subjected to That Earworm-inducing Hanson Song if I stopped typing for more than a few seconds was enough to keep me, well, typing.

My best writing session occurred on November 21st, between 7 and 10 pm. I went to a cello concert at a local church. They have an amazing music program and regularly feature guest performers. This concert featured Steven Doane, who is a world-class cellist. He played Bach, Poulenc, and Brahms. I scribbled in the notebook I'd brought with me while he played, and when I went home and typed it, it was just over 1500 words!

Having participated in NaNoWriMo twice before, my internal editor was at least familiar with the process, even if he is still bewildered by it. Have I ever told you about him? He's slightly taller than me, and quite good-looking with very dark hair, almost black, and he usually wears a dark turtleneck and khaki pants. His shoes are always polished. He sits in a high-backed chair near a window with the sun coming through and making a nice pattern on the hardwood floor in an otherwise empty room. I'm not sure where he came from or why he picked me (or got stuck with me), and I still don't know his name. And although he's wary of this high-speed drafting process, even after witnessing it three times, he's at least willing to sit and read and wait in the corner because he knows there will be a substantial draft for him to pore over and fix soon. He loves that bit.

My muse, on the other hand, is a little girl. Sometimes she wears a dress; sometimes she's in a t-shirt and overalls and tennis shoes. She wears her hair up in pigtails with either outfit. She's always playing with something - dolls, train set, paints, legos, lincoln logs. I once found her attempting origami, but she was using construction paper, which wasn't working out too well. Her room is well-lit with plush carpet. Toys are scattered everywhere, and the shelves along the walls are all full of more fun stuff to fiddle with. I don't know her name either. I do know that if I show up on a regular basis, she's more willing to show up, and as long as there's something to play with, she'll feed me ideas. The internal editor looks on from his room next to hers, and I see him shake his head sometimes at what she comes up with. She doesn't think in terms of boundaries or plausibility. She just tosses out ideas and gives me a "take it or leave it" look.

This time, she gave me a realistic story. No fantasy. No ghosts. No magic. Just a this-could-really-happen story. The internal editor and I kept glancing at each other during the plotting process. This isn't the sort of thing I write. Jane Austen and a few other things aside, most of what I read has some sort of out-there twist on reality, hence its influence on my writing. Contemporary fiction just isn't my thing. But there was that "take-it-or-leave it" look, so what could we do?

I think the reason she did this was because I was out of practice with speed writing. I've spent the last two years writing from an academic, analytical point of view for my master's degree - even though it was a creative writing degree, there was a lot of scrutinizing how things were written - and a large part of that time was spent on my thesis, which was a big revision of my first NaNoWriMo novel. Rather a slow process all around.

I think she wanted to ease me back into the process. This real-life story is as basic as it gets - how things are, what causes them to change, struggle with the change, make decisions and take actions to deal with the change, what effect has it all had in the end. She wasn't having any of this layer of magical realism and whatnot.

Even though I had the whole thing plotted out ahead of time, I still started November doubting that I'd make it to 50,000 words by the end of the month with this story. Without that layer of twist, which perhaps I rely on too much, I worried that I'd run out of story too soon. But nearly every day, I managed 2000-ish words, and although I got to 50,000 words before November ran out, there was still a sizable chunk of story to tell. Since the average novel length is around 90,000 words, I'm not concerned that I didn't get it all down in 50,000 words. Amazed, yes. But not concerned.

So I'm spending December adding the other 40,000 words, which is only about 1300 words a day. I think I can comfortably finish the story in that amount of words and time, and it keeps my morning writing routine going anyway.

Weirded out by the whole experience, but we're managing.

Right. I'm a week into my third NaNoWriMo outing. I've been able to keep up with about a 2000-words-a-day writing goal. I do this solely because I know I will come to a dragging point somewhere in this month where I either won't feel like writing or can't get the words out or get bored or get stuck, so may as well get ahead now in anticipation of The Slump.

I'm a bit more tool-oriented with this attempt. I've been using Dr. Wicked's Write or Die software to do 500-word sprints, which makes getting to 2000 words a day that much easier. It gives real-time word counts as I type. It keeps me focused on getting words down and doesn't allow for distractions. Thank you, Dr. Wicked.

I did a lot of prep work - character bios, plot storyboards, and research - which helped me come up with more detailed characters and storylines. I wish I were a pantster like Joe-the-office-roomie is (oh, how I envy him!). But I'm not. I gotta plan. In fact, I nearly filled up an entire notebook with notes for this novel.

I'm posting my word counts on Twitter every day, too. Nothing like accountability to get one's fingers on the keyboard.

I also came across this great post about how to get the writing done. It's helpful, funny, and a bit, um, salty, in the language. I got my sprints idea from this article.

I've already noticed a few things about this attempt. In some ways, it's easier. I've done this twice before. I know how long it takes me to get out 2000 words a day. I know my procrastination tendencies. I know where I tend to get stuck in plots and ways I can get unstuck.

In other ways, it's harder. Coming up with yet another story. Grappling with an ever-more-vigilant internal editor (there are downsides to MFA training). Trying to make sure I don't neglect cello practice.

And speaking of cello practice, it plays a large part in my story. As does Oxford. Two things that have made recent and strong impressions on me, although I'm still working out why that is. It's not quite "write what you know." It's more "write what you learn about and recently discover that holds your attention and enthusiasm." Karen-the-acupuncturist thinks that since I have British ancestors through my mom's family, something may have got jangled/resonated/woken up in my DNA while I was in the UK. It could happen. It could also be that I've been listening to too many Jacqueline du Pre recordings. She was an extraordinary cellist and was born in Oxford.

And in a lot of ways, it's different. Now that I'm on the completed side of an MFA degree, I scrutinize stories more than ever for pacing, plot, and how well description is balanced with action and dialogue. This is helpful as far as making sure all these things are covered, and hopefully will make revision easier. It does take a drop of fun out of it, though.

I'm pushing myself to write longer and more complex scenes. Really digging in for a complete picture of what's going on. I think having done all the detailed story planning has helped with this.

I can also tell as I work on this piece that I am a description junkie. I need a strong sense of character background and setting to feel anchored and oriented in the story (and I've always liked the adage, "write what you want to read"). This is probably why A.S. Byatt's Possession is one of my favorite books. Every character has a detailed back story that you get to read in the novel. Not to mention all the detail about research in academia. Some people find this tedious reading. I think it's fascinating. Probably too much so. But even now, I still find it hard to believe that Ash and Christabel don't actually exist. That's how well-written these two fictional Victorian poets are in the story. I think all the detail and description works in Possession because it's relevant to the story. I've adopted that as a writing strategy - I'm allowed to write all the backstory and description I want, provided it's relevant to the story. (I'll probably take half of it out during revision anyway.)

And finally, this year's attempt is contemporary fiction. And serious and slightly depressing contemporary fiction at that. No fantasy, no ghosts, no science fiction, no magical realism. That's a new one for me. And yet, I still want to write this story, so there must be something to it, right?

Oh, and there's something else.

Perhaps it's because I've been on hiatus for two years, but I'm noticing a lot of backlash to NaNoWriMo. "It's not 'real' writing." "A gazillion wannabe writers writing bad fiction which makes 'real' writers look bad." "Do these people have nothing better to do this month?" And those are the tame ones.

Hmm, I never realized that writing, or in a larger sense, creativity, was an elitist thing that only certain people should be allowed to do. I must have missed that.

I think NaNoWriMo is so appealing to people because it's accessible and fun. There are 152,897-and-counting people making an effort to write a story this month. Think of how much collective creative energy that is! And the organizers get big-name writers to write pep talks to e-mail to participants - people like Tom Robbins, Sue Grafton, Neil Gaiman, Philip Pullman, Katherine Patterson, Meg Cabot, Jasper Fforde. And quite a few people have revised and published their NaNoWriMo projects. (And no, not self-published; we're talking published by Harper Collins, Ballantine, Berkeley, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster, among others.)

People have all kinds of reasons for doing something like this. Some might have always thought they "had a book in them." Some might just want to check it off their bucket list, and could care less about revising it and getting it published. Some might be curious to see how hard it is to do. Some may have internal editors that are that mean and nasty and have made them stop writing novels countless times, and they hope this is the way to finally get as much of it written as possible, especially with the kind of support you get from the organizers and fellow writers. Some may be trying to quit cigarettes or alcohol or drugs and need a distraction. Some may be unemployed and need to feel like they're taking an action instead of letting themselves get worried or depressed. Some may have just found out they have cancer or some chronic or degenerative disease or that a relative has died and they need to take their minds off it or they need to write about it so they don't go crazy. Some might be trying once and for all to squash the voice of their 7th-grade teacher or their parent who said they were a bad writer and want to show them a thing or 50,000. Some may just want to write a story for their children or their family or for the kids they teach. Some may do it because their kids are doing it through the Young Writers Program and they've devised some sort of treat they'll enjoy together if they both finish. They're all valid reasons.

I first tried it in 2005 because I had just broken up with a boyfriend. I needed to take my mind off it. I didn't want to be lying in my darkened bedroom for weeks on end. I didn't want to turn into a binge eater. I didn't want to mope and drive my family and friends crazy. So I wrote a ghost story instead. I felt like that much less of a failure after 50,000 words came out in a month. In fact, I cried once I'd passed the 50k mark. And I became addicted to writing. I participated in NaNoWriMo in 2006, and then I took a two-year break to work on my MFA. My advisor was all for me taking my 2005 draft and turning it into my thesis. I added 40,000 words to it, and revised and rearranged and fiddled with it. I now have a hefty university-printed version, and the manuscript is making its way electronically in the world. No takers yet, but I'm hopeful.

I didn't do it the first time because I wanted to write a novel that I could eventually publish. I did it because I needed help to get through my pathetic and unimportant-to-everyone-in-the-world-but-me little heartbreak. And it worked. Someone's actually going to tell me I had no business doing this because my reason wasn't good enough? Seriously?

What can anyone possibly have against a bunch of people who want to have a creative fling for a month? I say let 'em have fun with literary abandon!

How is everyone else's story coming along during NaNoWriMo 2009?

I spent Friday morning at the British Library, which is near St Pancras station.

Here's the church tower at St Pancras.



Here's a sculpture of Isaac Newton using a compass to measure the Universe - this is right in front of the British Library:


You know what I'm about to say about taking pictures inside, right? Good. I won't repeat myself then.

The library, just like the Bodleian in Oxford, is a copyright library, not a lending one. It holds a copy of everything printed or recorded in English in Britain. There are miles and miles of underground vaults that hold all this stuff, and they keep adding miles every year. Essentially, they're the UK's version of the Library of Congress.

You can apply for a reading card, provided you have some legit research purpose and can supply documentation and credentials.

So why bother going to visit it, you might ask?

Well...

They love to tease the public by displaying some of their holdings in a few dimly lit rooms, collectively referred to as the Ritblat Gallery. In these rooms, you can see (and hear) some amazing treasures.

There's Jane Austen's writing desk, for example, a small dark wood thing with slots at the top for pens and and ink bottle. On top of this is her handwritten manuscript for Persuasion, open to Chapter 24, as well a volume of her notebooks. Next to that is Charlotte Bronte's handwritten manuscript of Jane Eyre, opened to Chapter 38 ("Reader, I married him.").

There's a whole section devoted to Shakespeare, of course. Some of the earliest folios are here, as well as pieces by Marlowe, Donne, and Johnson.

I listened to recordings of William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, and Seamus Heaney reading from their work. Yeats read his "Lake Isle of Innisfree" as though he were almost chanting it, and his accent is wonderful.

I saw Oscar Wilde's handwritten edits to "The Ballad of Reading Gaol," a note written in Sylvia Plath's own, rather grade-school-looking, hand (fat letters with circles over i and j), and Virginia Woolf's handwritten notes for Mrs Dalloway.

You can also see handwritten Beatles lyrics - Help, Ticket to Ride, and Yesterday, specifically.

The Gutenberg Bible was impressive - not just because it was the first example of mass producing books, but also because of the illuminations decorating the pages.

Just beyond this was a case displaying pages from Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks. You can read his notebooks online, but it's not the same as seeing them with his drawings and doodles in them, and the writing in his own hand.

There's another little room dedicated to the Magna Carta. There are five or six copies in existence. This document is as important to the British as the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are to Americans.

Down the hall from this gallery is an exhibit that focuses on T.S. Eliot, since he was recently voted Britain's favorite poet. Not bad for a Missouri-born man who didn't become a British subject until he was 39. I loved seeing his typewriter - one of three he owned in his lifetime. There's a piece of paper still in it. I remember reading Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats when I was a kid (love the drawings by Edward Gorey!). And then I read "The Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock" in high school, and "The Wasteland" in college. Sometimes, it's hard to believe they were all written by the same person.

He worked for many years as editor for Faber and Faber. He was also a friend and mentor to Ted Hughes, whose writing I admire the more I read it. One famous photo shows Eliot and a young Hughes at a party with Louis MacNeice, WH Auden, and Stephen Spender. I wish the gift shop had had a postcard of that photo.

One of Ted Hughes' journals is displayed near this picture, and it's open to the page on which he recorded his reaction to the news of Eliot's death. He would have written this on 5 January 1965. Here's my transcription of it, as best I could get from his handwriting:

A told me casually "T.S. Eliot died yesterday" - like a crack over the head, exactly, followed by headache. Heavy aftereffects. I've so tangled him into my thoughts as the guru-in-chief, and dreamed of him so clearly and unambiguously that this will have consequences for me.

Another feature on display is the book collection of George III. The books are housed in glassed-in bookcases in the very center of the library, and the cases go up several floors (I think there are six floors in the library). George III willed his collection (65,000 printed volumes, pamphlets, manuscripts, and maps) to George IV, who bequeathed it to the nation, and it remains the library's "core," hence its placement in the center of the building.

I'm generally not one for gift shops, although I know the Doctor loves them and thinks every place should have one. However, I made an exception for the British Library's "little shop," because it was packed with books you won't often find at a regular bookstore. I managed to contain my purchases to Oscar's Books and The Hawk in the Rain and a bookmark, but there were so many others I would have gotten, had it not been for the thought of having to haul them back to the States in my luggage. I wonder if the Library of Congress has a gift shop...

I really thought I had a good handle on museums, having grown up visiting at least one Smithsonian museum every year on school field trips. And then I encountered the British Museum. I couldn't even get the building to fit in the viewfinder of my camera. It's like all the Smithsonians packed into one huge building. I only had an afternoon to see it, and almost immediately, I gave up on trying to see more than what was on the ground floor and first floor.

But guess what? You can take pictures inside! Yay!

One of the first things you see is the Rosetta Stone:



And then to the left and right are large rooms with Egyptian sculptures:





These heads are taller than a tall person, so imagine how big the entire statues would have been:



There were quite a few walls of Humerian relief sculptures:



Relief sculptures from the Parthenon, also referred to as the Elgin Marbles:



Greek statues:





Some Roman British archeological finds:



This was found near Dorset in Hinton St Mary:



I was too overwhelmed at this point and had to leave, especially after I walked through a room that looked like one of those old-time reading libraries with dark wood floor-to-ceiling shelves and display cases with all kinds of neat archeological finds. It would take an hour or two just to see everything in that room. I will need to come back and spend at least two days just wandering through this museum alone.

Since it was my last evening in London, I decided to have a look around the South Bank.

This is The George, one of the oldest pubs in London. Shakespeare and Dickens spent time here. Shakespeare probably even performed here in his early acting days.



Here's a better view of the replica of Francis Drake's ship, The Golden Hinde, in which he circumnavigated the globe. From what I've read, it was far from a pleasure cruise.



The remains of Winchester Palace (this is the west end of what was the Great Hall):


Kudos to whoever realized this was worth preserving.


There's a kitschy prison museum called The Clink - I had it on good authority that it wasn't worth going in:



I wandered through the Borough Market. There was so much to see (and eat) there. It reminded me of Lexington Market in Baltimore.

Shakespeare's troupe used the upper floor of this pub for dressing rooms and costume changes, before dashing next door to the original Globe Theater:



Speaking of which, The Financial Times building (the shiny building - you can just see the FT on the side of it) sits on what is thought to be the original site of the Globe Theater:


I tried to get tickets to see something at The Globe, but since I was visiting in the last days of their performance season, tickets were not as readily available as they would have been earlier in the season.

The cream-colored skinny building with the red door is Christopher Wren's house. He lived here while he was building London.


It just happens to have a great view of what he considered his greatest achievement - St Paul's Cathedral (as seen from the new Millenium Bridge):



I had dinner at the Ebury Wine Bar, which is next door to the hotel. Maple-glazed duck with spinach and mushrooms, and dark magenta-purple blackcurrant sorbet for dessert. Dee-lish!

Saturday morning, I had one last breakfast at the hotel, and then I caught the bus at Victoria Station to get to Heathrow.

So there you have it - my week-long tour of London. I saw just about everything I wanted to see, and I was glad I had a couple of out-of-town trips as well. The highlights for me were the British Library and Oxford. I'll definitely go back. And of course, now I need to see the rest of England. And Scotland. And Wales. And Ireland.

I realize the US has historical places and things to see, but nothing like what you'd find in England, where you can see things that are thousands of years old, not merely hundreds of years old.

Paris next year for my 35th birthday, I think.