Viable Paradise and Rory the Roman
Oct. 15th, 2011 05:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aamcnamaraI have been to Viable Paradise, and I have returned.
They're right, the people who say it's a liminal space. You ride across on a ferry with the wind in your hair.
And then you're there, surrounded by twenty-odd other students and eight instructors (...eight and a half). Some brought their knitting, some brought their guitars (one brought her ukulele), all of them brought their stories and their brains.
There are six a.m. walks by the ocean, brisk pace set out and back, the sky lightening and changing color over the water. You come back wondering at the newness of the land now that you can see: this is the territory you walked unseeing through when it was dark.
There's a way in which that extends, metaphorically, to the entire week. Some of the things people said made me go "Oh!" about things I've done previously without thinking about them.
For me, the week got front-loaded. The beginning of A Returning Power got critiqued on Monday morning by a small group, and I had my one-on-one sessions on Monday and Tuesday afternoons. This was, I think, a good thing. I got feedback on my manuscript, and then I spent the rest of the week thinking about writing in a general way--though reflecting on my novel.
One of the challenges of the week was to write a short story in mere days. My prompt was "megacities", which I had trouble with for a while. I finally got out an SF story--which is like pulling teeth for me--and even though I'm not too happy with it, it exists. There are a couple of other ideas I came up with in the brainstorming/abortive beginnings phase that I'd like to keep thinking about and working on; they just weren't developed enough to write at that point.
The other requirement for the story was that they included one specific object: a toy we'd been given at random on Sunday. Mine was a 'vampire medallion', gold plastic star-shaped thing with a fake plastic ruby in the center. I hung it around my neck on the plastic strap for the next couple of days.
Tuesday evening, we convened and walked to a bridge over dark water. Squinting, trying to adjust our eyes away from the brightness of the near-full moon and the occasional car headlights, we craned our heads to watch little white glowing lights swim past. Phosphorescent jellyfish.
(A few minutes later, the cheap plastic my vampire medallion hung on ripped free. The medallion dropped, bounced off the bridge, and fell into the water with a plop.)
And... well. There are so many more anecdotes I could tell, so many things about which I could flail. For example, I have developed a Theory of Music Circles, to wit: claim a percussion instrument, and defend it with your life. That way you can participate even if you're the wrong generation for three-quarters of the music.
Yesterday I left in the afternoon. Part of the reason was indeed to have time to catch up on sleep (and brain), to study for midterms, to get homework done. (My physics syllabus has not been updated online yet, so I'm pretending that doesn't exist until Monday, I think.)
Part of the reason was this.
Geek daaaance!
(From left: Roranicus Pond, Amy Pond, Jenny, Madam Vastra, The Doctor, River Song)
There was this peculiar interlude where I stepped foot on campus and within five minutes was running halfway across campus dressed as a Roman centurion. Then it was just fun, and I forgot that I was exhausted and had been getting up at five-thirty a.m. for most of the week, and danced until one in the morning.
...also, we won the group costume contest. And I realized that my friends and I? We're the tight-knit group of upperclasswomen with neat costumes, like there was a Buffy group my first year here. Odd to look at that from the other side. (People we didn't know came running up to hug us. At least one person we didn't know wanted photos taken with us.)
And then I fell over.
In summation: this week I got to have my cake and eat my cake and I feel like I still have cake left over, possibly frozen and ready to be heated up and eaten. (Technically the pan cooling on the stove is apple crisp, but who's counting?)
Right now I'm hoping for time to work on revising "Lightening" soon; my goal is still to revise A Returning Power by the end of the year; and maybe I can write another short story or two. It's nice to have my writing-brain awake again. I will do my best to make sure that it doesn't fall back asleep on me.
They're right, the people who say it's a liminal space. You ride across on a ferry with the wind in your hair.
And then you're there, surrounded by twenty-odd other students and eight instructors (...eight and a half). Some brought their knitting, some brought their guitars (one brought her ukulele), all of them brought their stories and their brains.
There are six a.m. walks by the ocean, brisk pace set out and back, the sky lightening and changing color over the water. You come back wondering at the newness of the land now that you can see: this is the territory you walked unseeing through when it was dark.
There's a way in which that extends, metaphorically, to the entire week. Some of the things people said made me go "Oh!" about things I've done previously without thinking about them.
For me, the week got front-loaded. The beginning of A Returning Power got critiqued on Monday morning by a small group, and I had my one-on-one sessions on Monday and Tuesday afternoons. This was, I think, a good thing. I got feedback on my manuscript, and then I spent the rest of the week thinking about writing in a general way--though reflecting on my novel.
One of the challenges of the week was to write a short story in mere days. My prompt was "megacities", which I had trouble with for a while. I finally got out an SF story--which is like pulling teeth for me--and even though I'm not too happy with it, it exists. There are a couple of other ideas I came up with in the brainstorming/abortive beginnings phase that I'd like to keep thinking about and working on; they just weren't developed enough to write at that point.
The other requirement for the story was that they included one specific object: a toy we'd been given at random on Sunday. Mine was a 'vampire medallion', gold plastic star-shaped thing with a fake plastic ruby in the center. I hung it around my neck on the plastic strap for the next couple of days.
Tuesday evening, we convened and walked to a bridge over dark water. Squinting, trying to adjust our eyes away from the brightness of the near-full moon and the occasional car headlights, we craned our heads to watch little white glowing lights swim past. Phosphorescent jellyfish.
(A few minutes later, the cheap plastic my vampire medallion hung on ripped free. The medallion dropped, bounced off the bridge, and fell into the water with a plop.)
And... well. There are so many more anecdotes I could tell, so many things about which I could flail. For example, I have developed a Theory of Music Circles, to wit: claim a percussion instrument, and defend it with your life. That way you can participate even if you're the wrong generation for three-quarters of the music.
Yesterday I left in the afternoon. Part of the reason was indeed to have time to catch up on sleep (and brain), to study for midterms, to get homework done. (My physics syllabus has not been updated online yet, so I'm pretending that doesn't exist until Monday, I think.)
Part of the reason was this.
Geek daaaance!
(From left: Roranicus Pond, Amy Pond, Jenny, Madam Vastra, The Doctor, River Song)
There was this peculiar interlude where I stepped foot on campus and within five minutes was running halfway across campus dressed as a Roman centurion. Then it was just fun, and I forgot that I was exhausted and had been getting up at five-thirty a.m. for most of the week, and danced until one in the morning.
...also, we won the group costume contest. And I realized that my friends and I? We're the tight-knit group of upperclasswomen with neat costumes, like there was a Buffy group my first year here. Odd to look at that from the other side. (People we didn't know came running up to hug us. At least one person we didn't know wanted photos taken with us.)
And then I fell over.
In summation: this week I got to have my cake and eat my cake and I feel like I still have cake left over, possibly frozen and ready to be heated up and eaten. (Technically the pan cooling on the stove is apple crisp, but who's counting?)
Right now I'm hoping for time to work on revising "Lightening" soon; my goal is still to revise A Returning Power by the end of the year; and maybe I can write another short story or two. It's nice to have my writing-brain awake again. I will do my best to make sure that it doesn't fall back asleep on me.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-18 04:43 am (UTC)-T.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-19 12:51 pm (UTC)