Writing, society, magic… thought spirals out of control, comes back around, but is never the same
It is time once again for the annual “No, really, I can garden” attempt. This year it’s lettuce lining the sidewalk leading up to our house and flowers in the main bed in front of the windows. The lettuce that I planted a week and a half ago has started sprouting! Yay! The lettuce I planted two days ago has not, but then I hadn’t expected it to yet.
In other news, this might be the most awesomest video ever. OK Go and Syyn Labs rules. (And yeah, it’s real).
I’m trying to be a better housekeeper, and so like normal, I’m turning to a variety of sources to see what works. So far I have further proof that my husband is particularly attuned to all things Eastern. After learning about how to feng shui the “traveling” bagua of my home, I noted how we were sending energy into Venice and then went outside and stuck a stick in the ground to finish a missing energy line (or something like that). This afternoon my husband hops online to tell me that the “pie-in-the-sky” business trip to Italy (to the Veneto even) suddenly sounds really likely and he’s looking up plane tickets. The sad part about this is that the only plane tickets he could currently locate were $2000, which means I can’t afford to join him. So… I research, clean, energize, and put a stick in the ground, and my husband goes to Italy without me. FML.
I’ve also been continuing my love-affair with all things Norse, and I’m learning to read runes. They told me that in order to keep my house clean, I have to make a plan and stick to it with the strength of a wild ox, and then I will find joy and success. Go figure.
Finally, I had to laugh at how my research for housekeeping has kept me almost constantly on house-keeping for Jesus sites. I didn’t know JC was so big into hearth and home, but apparently he is. And I’m never going to be a true success because I refuse to get up fifteen minutes earlier than my husband (according to an astonishing number of websites, the Bible says I have to be an early riser, regardless of what God and nature instilled into my constitution) who gets up at 5:30 in the morning so that he can wander around the house in his underwear for 2 hours (you didn’t need that visual, did you >:) – would it help if I said he’s got muscles on top of muscles, ’cause he does. Re-visualize. Looks better now, eh?) . But other than that, I have gotten the most use out of a site created by a woman who homeschools her children because…. public school encourages Satan or something. I’m not sure whether to be slightly appalled that I am being electronically mentored by this woman or to remind myself that we can all learn from each other if we just open our ears and get past our prejudices. I think I’ll do both.
Saw it during the Olympics last night, and Scott and I about died laughing.
I’d heard that greeting card companies invented Valentine’s Day as a way to sell cards, and well, I didn’t believe it. So, as a budding romance novelist, I took it upon myself to look it up on ye olde trusty internet.
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, there were three martyrs named Valentine, two of whom died in the 3rd century (maybe) and one of whom died in Africa at an unknown date. None of them seem to have anything to do with love. But that’s where we get the name from.
Though there are many debates as to why the mid-February date (some claiming it has to do with when one of those Valentines was buried), mid-February is also the date for the ancient Roman Lupercalia, a fertility festival that was celebrated on the Ides of February (Feb 15). This festival, according to…. somebody at the University of Chicago (there’s like 3 names on the site, and I’m not sure who actually wrote the article)… involved sacrificing goats and puppies in front of a cave, then two virile young men (called the Luperci) approached the altar, painted each other’s foreheads with the sacrificial blood, wiped it off with milk, and then had to start laughing (which I’m guessing wasn’t hard, provided the sacrificing puppies didn’t get you down too much). Then everybody ate, got drunk, and the Luperci then ran through the town dressed in goat skins and spanked people (particularly women who wanted to get pregnant) with mini-whips made of more goat-skin.
Now that’s a Valentine’s party for you – two drunken, nubile men running around town in loincloths spanking women.
A Catholic legend (according to history.com), which tells why we send cards on Valentine’s Day, says that one of those martyred Valentines fell in love with the jailer’s daughter while he was in prison (some say for marrying couples against the Emperor’s orders). Before he was executed, he left a note for her signed, “From your Valentine.”
During the Middle Ages, Chaucer made a reference to Valentines Day and love in a poem (potentially the first connection between the two) when he wrote:
For this was on Saint Valentine’s Day When every bird cometh there to choose his mate.Though why birds would be choosing their mates in February is anybody’s guess (and, according to wikipedia.org, he in fact wrote this for the engagement of two 15 year old royals, an agreement that was arranged on May 2, 1381)
Shakespeare includes a reference to Valentine’s Day during one of Ophelia’s rants… and the part of the play where (most people interpret) we find out that a lot of her crazy comes from Hamlet rejecting her after she, uh, gave it up:
To-morrow is Saint Valentine’s day,
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your Valentine.
Then up he rose, and donn’d his clothes,
And dupp’d the chamber-door;
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more.
So, I’m going to go with pretty clearly, Halmark did not, in fact, invent Valentine’s Day. So no matter how you choose to celebrate it – cards and chocolates, deflowering innocent virgins, marrying off teenagers, a good old fashioned spanking (and I do mean old fashioned), or taking the new wave train of finding a way to say “I love you!” to yourself – I hope you have a good one!
“Multitasking can actually lower your performance on IQ tests — by about 10 points. Smoking a joint only costs you 4 points. So if you have to choose between multitasking and marijuana, the choice should be clear, although your boss and your government probably see things differently. Bosses and governments love multitasking.”
- from Randy Ingermanson’s article “Organizing: Does Multitasking Make You Stupid?”
I don’t know where he got his statistics from, so maybe this is full of it, but, personally, I’d buy it. Now, for clarification, I have a dirty little secret. I’ve lived in Austin, TX for fifteen years now and never gotten high. Yes, I am a strange beast. So my opinion on the quote might be as suspect as the facts in it. Buy I have noticed that while 2 glasses of wine have suspect value for my editing ability, they can make drafting a heckuva lot easier. I can focus, I don’t care if I sound stupid, I just type and type and type and type. And the results are usually not as bad as one would expect, and regardless it’s down on paper, which is more than I can say for a lot of days.
Not that I usually write under the influence – I have no aspirations to be one of those drunken, maudlin writer types – but I gotta admit there’s a certain fun to the occasional tippled typing.
However, I cannot write – drafting or editing – while chatting, talking on the phone, listening to a song that I want to sing along with (when I’m really mentally deep into my writing, music helps. When I’m not that deep into my writing, music hurts), or even while worrying about my calendar or the query letter I will one day write or the brilliant marketing strategy I’ll only get to use if I ever get this thing published. And once I let myself get distracted, it’s gone. I have the hardest time getting back in.
I feel bad sometimes, because I’ll finally be rolling along, and Scott will poke his head in the room and say something. Scott has a habit of doing hit and run conversations – he says one thing, expects a response, and then walks off. Then he’ll come back five minutes later, say one thing, expect a response, and walk off. And I don’t want to be rude to my most wonderful of husbands, but I don’t want to lose this thought train that was so hard to get onto (especially while drafting – I can hop on and off the editing thought train much easier). So I’ve got a choice. Ignore him with a “talk to the hand” (too rude, I can’t do it – besides, even registering a conversation has started the derail), grunt a suitable sounding response based on his tone of voice (but not actually the words he said – if Scott ever came by and said “my company folded today” in a happy tone of voice, I’d probably grunt “Great!” at him) and take 30 seconds or so to get back into the draft, or hop off the train completely, ask him to repeat what he just said so that I can really register it, give him my full attention and a thoughtful reply, watch him walk off, and then turn back to my screen with no idea what to type next. And about the time I’ve almost gotten my rhythm back, he’ll come by for another drive-by. Make me want to scream and throw things.
Multi-tasking. I just can’t do it. And I’m finding more and more studies (with more statistics than the above) backing that while multitasking may increase the amount accomplished (or it may decrease it), it significantly reduces the quality of everything done. Can we get a Twelve-Step Program for those who want to move away from chaotic, multi-tasking dependence and learn to free our minds for good old fashioned one thing at a time?
[ request from Ingermanson that this be included with quotes:
Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, "the Snowflake Guy," publishes the Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, with more than 19,000 readers, every month. If you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction, AND make your writing more valuable to editors, AND have FUN doing it, visit http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com.
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