So-so-so, Tim's critique is tomorrow morning. Everyone send positive emanations his way.

He went on a hike in the mountains today and went into an abandoned mine. He said it was pretty cool, going into the mountain like that. I'm both jealous and relieved the mountain didn't fall in on him or anything like that!

Nah. Just call 'em on the phone.

Mandy, what a coincidence: my goal is also to finish stuff. I think we need to organize an uncool workshop for people who write but don't finish anything. We'll hold it in your café/bookshop!

...Except that means I would probably have to finish writing up invitation letters, thereby disqualifying myself.

Shawn wants to open an Irish pub. Maybe after the as-yet-nonexistent kids are in college.

Socks rock.

I kinda like the fact that Tim’s board is getting actual traffic, even when he’s not around. It’s kinda novel. It’s important to remember that many good things often have rocky starts. In fact, this may be what Tim gets for putting a line like ‘I know you're a recluse. You know that's no excuse’ on the gateway to his board.

I can’t have a goal to join a workshop yet, because my goal is still to finish stuff. But if you guys put something together, I might have to come hat in hand to see if you’ll take people who write extremely slowly and have yet to publish anything. I don’t know if I’m New Weird, though. Weird, yes, but the right kind of weird to be a cool kid? Probably not. *sigh*

I want a café/bookshop too, though. With a nightclub/performance space, and a smoking lounge on the roof. And, separately, a big house in the country somewhere that’s good for cool people to go and chill in.

Also, a boat.

I need to win the lottery.

So, Tim didn't do much between when I talked to him this afternoon and when I spoke to him tonight. He took a nap, which was a bad idea (he's usually bewildered and cranky after a nap) and read. They had some sort of chicken for dinner, with poached pears in some sort of brandy creme for dessert. It seems to be all about food there, and, frankly, I'm jealous. Wanna know what I've been eating the past two nights? PB&J. I'm pathetic as a single person these days; I've lost the knack of it.

Anyway, he called me over an hour after he said he would because they were watching some hoppping Chinese vampire movie that Tim said was really good (!). He wanted me to understand that it was a Chinese movie, not American.

Oh, and I gave him your advice, Zakbar, and he said that Maureen McHugh was slated to cook later this week; he thinks it's an Indian meal. Tomorrow night they're putting him to work as a "sous chef" which means, of course, chop-chop-chopping.

Oh, and he had Ken Wharton buy him an alarm clock in Taos. It's clear, with liquid crystal clock hands that tell time in the analog fashion, if that makes any sense at all.

Man, can you tell that I'm procrastinating here? I've got a novel and a collab that need doing that I stared at tonight, each for about fifteen minutes. My mind is so rambly and unfocused. I blame all the peanut butter.

What I want to know is why black socks aren't sold in bulk packages like white socks are. I dunno about the rest of you, but black socks go better with my wardrobe than the white ones do, and I resent that they're more expensive.

That said, I will let you know my black sock secret: Old Navy. Still not as cheap as white socks, but at least you can buy them in packages of three there.

What, are ya scared, Scott?

Here are some really old, expensive socks.

Greg: So long as we don't debate the relative merits of knee-high, mid-calf, and ankle socks, I think we'll be okay.

Edited by author 06-09-2003 07:36 PM
Heather Dear - I'm thinking about you and sending you "Don't be too lonely" vibes. Just think of his little trip as some time to devote to your own writing. Think of all the good info. (gossip?) he'll be bringing home, too.

And... Dang, I come out of an sinus infection induced fog and find friends involved in a knock down, drag out online war. You are all wonderfully clever and imaginative writers and the world would be diminished without you. Please... take Zakbar's advice and add a second drink on me.

Tim likes monkeys too.

You know what I'm thinking? Yup, that's right:

SOCK MONKEYS!

I'm feeling the love.

Christopher, yes, I remember our discussing the new writing workshop we wanted to put together, yet, of course, we never did. I'd made a draft of an invitation letter (putting the cart before the horse) after we got back from Wiscon two years ago, and Rowe and I had settled on calling the workshop Diving Upward. Unfortunatley, that mock invitation letter has been lost throughout my several moves in the past two years. :(

But the gist of the letter was this: Even then, two years ago, a lot of us had been feeling our way into writing speculative literature in ways that were, well, different than what was currently being published en masse. Note that qualification: There have always been new and different authors slipping through the dominant paradigm of what fantasy and science fiction literature is, but they're writing is viewed as an exception to an unsaid rule about how genre stories should be told (and sometimes it's not unsaid, but blatantly shouted out in other webboard venues, which I'm sure all of us have been witness to).

In any case, Diving Upward was a term that we'd been thinking of as an indication to the process of how to read these New Weird stories (I like that term, personally, because there will always be a Next Wave after a Next Wave, but will they be *weird*? Maybe they'll be New Pulp, as Charlie Finlay and Ben Rosenbaum have been calling for). The imaginary Diving Upward workshop was going to be for writers of the New Weird, mostly. For writers whose stories called for new reading protocols. I had an image of starting out at the bottom of a body of water, and diving up through the murk to the surface, stories which start out in dark murky places, relying on a lot of subtextual reading capabilities, and slowly but surely bringing the story to the surface. Often, I think the reading norm is to start in medias res, in a reading situation based in action between characters, which is a Wonderful place for stories to start, but not the only place, really.

Okay, so this is going on longer than I wanted, and it's not as good as what I'd drafted two years ago, and lost, but we should put together a new workshop that's interested in not only the *best* story you can write, like Sycamore Hill has a protocol, but the *weirdest*, or one that is relatively weird in some fashion or another: if not in content, then form. Or both. Something to that effect.

Everybody likes socks. That's the whole point. Everybody likes socks.

I love the idea of a DIY workshop for weird neo-pros. Anybody live in a big house somewhere real nice?

Thanks, everyone. I'm already feeling calmer :-)

Barzak, I read your post immediately after getting off the phone with Tim, so I didn't tell him about Maureen's cooking! I will endeavor to remember to mention it tonight, when he calls. Last night he had handmade ravioli and . . . um, shoot, can't remember. He says just walking to the river makes him out of breath because of the high altitude, so he's passing up the opportunity (so far) of going on hikes. He's also happy things are chilling out on his board.

Man, though, we both miss each other so much already!

Greg: I like socks.

Barzak (and everyone else), I love the idea of having our own workshop full of the new weird or what ever you want to call it. In fact, recently I was listing off things I'd like to own with Tim. Cafe, bookshop . .. when I got to Bed and Breakfast he snorted. "Too much work." he said. "Yes," I said, "But I was thinking about how cool it would be to close off a week or two every year and invite all our writer friends to come stay and workshop with us." He agreed that this would be an awesome thing to be able to do. I daydream about it often, especially after cons like Wiscon . . .

Socks are cool. But what's really cool, as Hobbes the Tiger said, are smocks. Smock smock smock.

Chris and I talked workshops in the car on the way back from our first WisCon a couple of years ago, remember that Barzak? "Diving Upward?" You should post the first part of that invite you worked up, as it's got a lot of resonance with all the slipstream/New Weird/Next Wave/thingamabobbie stuff that a lot of people are talking about these days.


(Um, scores can be posted here:)
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