At least...
25 May 2005 17:51![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kinzelat least we aren't property owners at Camp Ellis, Maine, with waves breaking over the rocks and Surf Drive all too accurately named as it turned to rubble.
Elsewise, the weather here is rainy yet again, helping perpetuate a kind of gray world-view. The gray seems to slide in the doors when it can -- and against it I have my office lit as if were 5 PM in mid-December's bleak darkness, and have on some music.
Making the office not as cheery as it might be are my ongoing efforts to overcome one of my genetic handicaps -- this one with the initials CCCD -- for Comfortable Creative Clutter Disorder. There's something about a room being not quite perfectly neat that eases my mind.... especially when I'm in the midst of finishing a story.
Alas, no matter that I can usually find the things I'm looking for, after awhile the room and the clutter go beyond comfort and by then it's nearly painful to go through the piles of stuff and retrieve space and dignity, even though the cats seem to like the room better once it has been controlled a bit.
I called this genetic, and indeed, my grandmother suffered from the extended version of this problem, to the point where it was difficult for her to throw away even daily newspapers -- against the necessity that she might want it some day. I gather that cleaning her apartment out when she moved was a dumpster-laden chore.
I started exhibiting similar behavior during my time at Randallstown Elementary School (this in the days before children in school were routinely psychoanalyzed and sent for management drugs); there were times that homework -- done, and done right -- sat lost in my desk for weeks. I even managed to lose entire notebooks worth of stuff -- done -- and thus got lower grades -- by not getting it out of the desk and onto the teacher's pile of papers. Oddly, once I got into college and began a regimen of writing my own stuff... things got organized, for awhile. I got file cabinets (small) and put things away and recorded my submissions.... But now there are about 30 file drawers in the house, mostly full, so sometimes it's hard to remember to put things away...
But I digress.
The project at hand is my third or fourth attempt in the last two years to *finish* cleaning my office. I still constantly store away things against projects I'm going to get to; I'm amazed at the number of them I've actually done. Still, perhaps I don't need those two extra network hubs in my office, nor the five modem cords, nor the 1998 version of the AAA autoguide to Maryland.., and I still haven't found the long-sought shelving so I can turn the toys and knick-knacks from clutter to keepsakes. RSN, RSN, that's the song for me...
But, so far this week, two large bags of removable paper sediment have been removed (soon to be joined a couple of those now highly amusing 1997 or internet how-to guides...) and then maybe onto one of those need-to-get-to projects: scanning all those 1970s and 1980s photos of Baltimore area fandom.
On the side, I'm working on writing, and rereading The Tomorrow Log, and waiting for a proof to come back so I can run it into the printers and get a chapbook out.
Now, anyone want a copy of Railroad Engineering, Volume One, by William H. Hay? -- (1953, John Wiley and Sons)-- guess I need to get together an EBay offering....
version .66
Elsewise, the weather here is rainy yet again, helping perpetuate a kind of gray world-view. The gray seems to slide in the doors when it can -- and against it I have my office lit as if were 5 PM in mid-December's bleak darkness, and have on some music.
Making the office not as cheery as it might be are my ongoing efforts to overcome one of my genetic handicaps -- this one with the initials CCCD -- for Comfortable Creative Clutter Disorder. There's something about a room being not quite perfectly neat that eases my mind.... especially when I'm in the midst of finishing a story.
Alas, no matter that I can usually find the things I'm looking for, after awhile the room and the clutter go beyond comfort and by then it's nearly painful to go through the piles of stuff and retrieve space and dignity, even though the cats seem to like the room better once it has been controlled a bit.
I called this genetic, and indeed, my grandmother suffered from the extended version of this problem, to the point where it was difficult for her to throw away even daily newspapers -- against the necessity that she might want it some day. I gather that cleaning her apartment out when she moved was a dumpster-laden chore.
I started exhibiting similar behavior during my time at Randallstown Elementary School (this in the days before children in school were routinely psychoanalyzed and sent for management drugs); there were times that homework -- done, and done right -- sat lost in my desk for weeks. I even managed to lose entire notebooks worth of stuff -- done -- and thus got lower grades -- by not getting it out of the desk and onto the teacher's pile of papers. Oddly, once I got into college and began a regimen of writing my own stuff... things got organized, for awhile. I got file cabinets (small) and put things away and recorded my submissions.... But now there are about 30 file drawers in the house, mostly full, so sometimes it's hard to remember to put things away...
But I digress.
The project at hand is my third or fourth attempt in the last two years to *finish* cleaning my office. I still constantly store away things against projects I'm going to get to; I'm amazed at the number of them I've actually done. Still, perhaps I don't need those two extra network hubs in my office, nor the five modem cords, nor the 1998 version of the AAA autoguide to Maryland.., and I still haven't found the long-sought shelving so I can turn the toys and knick-knacks from clutter to keepsakes. RSN, RSN, that's the song for me...
But, so far this week, two large bags of removable paper sediment have been removed (soon to be joined a couple of those now highly amusing 1997 or internet how-to guides...) and then maybe onto one of those need-to-get-to projects: scanning all those 1970s and 1980s photos of Baltimore area fandom.
On the side, I'm working on writing, and rereading The Tomorrow Log, and waiting for a proof to come back so I can run it into the printers and get a chapbook out.
Now, anyone want a copy of Railroad Engineering, Volume One, by William H. Hay? -- (1953, John Wiley and Sons)-- guess I need to get together an EBay offering....
version .66
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no subject
2005-05-25 15:54 (UTC)Now that's interesting. I, unfortunately*, am the exact opposite -- if the place isn't clean, it nags at me and I can't concentrate on the story.
*Unfortunately because I'm not the neatest person in the world and the husband tends to leave things scattered hither and yon. If I was super clean person, I'd have no problem.
no subject
2005-05-25 17:10 (UTC)By the time I finish -- not so much.
I think there's a paper, here, though. It seems to me that, the more difficult the project, the more Mess is generated. The fascinating question being -- What generates the Mess, exactly? I mean, all you're (or at least, I'm) doing is sitting in a chair, staring at a screen and wiggling your fingers from time to time. How does that add up to four distinct archeological layers of paper on every available surface?
no subject
2005-05-25 17:31 (UTC)I did, for awhile, try to work in a very clean office and it didn't work. Need that distraction....
I should mention that Roger Zelazny had a great big fancy office in the basement of his house in Baltimore.. and found he couldn't work there because he couldn't see out a window. *Needed that window* bigtime, needed the distraction. So he used a cheap portable typer perched on coffee table or lap and looked out the window while his Selectrics sat in the basement for final drafts...
ever hopeful
2005-05-27 20:13 (UTC)Yes? Yes!! Does this mean a sequel is percolating? Please???!!! I also volunteer to read anything and everything you might need help with.
VERY hopeful,
Joy
no subject
2005-05-28 06:16 (UTC)Re: ever hopeful
2005-05-28 06:29 (UTC)Our agent is also currently circulating several proposals to other publishers, but a face-to-face meeting with MM offers an opportunity for a quick decision. Since our agent *is* circulating other proposals (and since we have several other potential proposals brewing at home), if we get a "tell me more" at a meeting I may want to be able to talk sensibly about a book I last read about eight years ago, and if I might have to "whump up" a quick three-chapter-and-synopsis to finalize things it'd be best to be thinking about it now....
Nothing is yet writ on paper, much less stone; the thing is that since we aren't traveling much this year the BEA may be our last face-to-face meeting with this publishers until February 2006... so I want to be prepared.