All systems... warming up, at least

My revamped medication is producing a) extreme nausea, especially after eating, b) dizziness and vertigo such that I cannot usually tell which way is up, and c) sanity and the ability to get out of bed for fair quantities of the day, beginning at a reasonable hour. Given c), a) and b) pale into total insignificance, though I certainly hope they go away again after an adjustment period. It's been less than a week, so there's no reason to expect they won't.

In other words, so far so good, and I'm managing to actually be, well, vaguely productive. I have an essay idea to write up and try to send to IROSF, and I have a poem that I've decided is worthy to be cast to the mercies of the market. I've never sent out any poetry before.

It's interesting-- when I was a kid, writers were some kind of Mythical Being, who came down from their mountaintops every so often to share wisdom with us poor mortals in obligatory school-presented lectures, and who undoubtedly shared some kind of real estate block in the Empyrean, from which they could pooh-pooh the puny attempts of the rest of us at Literature. It was a hereditary caste, too-- I think there was a visible mark of a typewriter on the forehead, or something. The whole thing is rather representative of the presentation of some of the Taoist immortals. My elementary school instilled, aided and abetted in this concept, and it was only reinforced by my high school, at which the one moderately famous writer who had a child in our lower school always attracted a small whispering crowd behind him of schoolgirls who didn't actually dare to speak to him. (I think he hated it passionately.) I am speaking here of writers of fiction and popular nonfiction, mark you.

Poets-- poets weren't even mythical. Somebody's grandmother claimed to have seen a poet once, by the dark of the moon, in a howling wilderness, but everybody knew better than to believe it. Poets could only be captured by the thoroughly pure of heart, and their used ink cartridges were said to cure scrofula. One might, blushingly and tentatively, express ambitions to be a fiction writer, or a garden-variety essayist, but poetry was an adolescent endeavour, not to be taken seriously after one's obligatory appearance in the high school lit mag: you can't make a living at poetry, dear, so why even bother to try selling it?

The hell with that.

I've sold a story now, and a lot of my adolescent insecurities went straight out the window of an instant; no one can tell me anymore I'm not a writer, which is a thing people were fond of doing till I left for college, so I may as well try to extend my reach more thoroughly. I've been reading poetry voraciously since I was two and writing poetry avidly since I was six, and I'm sick of it being hobby-work, the work I pass around to my friends and then file. It is evidently not at all impossible to be a fiction writer and a poet at the same time (admiring glances at sovay and Yoon): consequently, as of now, I'm a poet.

Maybe I should buy a hat or something, so that those in need of a cure for the King's Evil know exactly where to find me. At the moment, I'll settle into doing market research.

All systems... warming up, at least

My revamped medication is producing a) extreme nausea, especially after eating, b) dizziness and vertigo such that I cannot usually tell which way is up, and c) sanity and the ability to get out of bed for fair quantities of the day, beginning at a reasonable hour. Given c), a) and b) pale into total insignificance, though I certainly hope they go away again after an adjustment period. It's been less than a week, so there's no reason to expect they won't.

In other words, so far so good, and I'm managing to actually be, well, vaguely productive. I have an essay idea to write up and try to send to IROSF, and I have a poem that I've decided is worthy to be cast to the mercies of the market. I've never sent out any poetry before.

It's interesting-- when I was a kid, writers were some kind of Mythical Being, who came down from their mountaintops every so often to share wisdom with us poor mortals in obligatory school-presented lectures, and who undoubtedly shared some kind of real estate block in the Empyrean, from which they could pooh-pooh the puny attempts of the rest of us at Literature. It was a hereditary caste, too-- I think there was a visible mark of a typewriter on the forehead, or something. The whole thing is rather representative of the presentation of some of the Taoist immortals. My elementary school instilled, aided and abetted in this concept, and it was only reinforced by my high school, at which the one moderately famous writer who had a child in our lower school always attracted a small whispering crowd behind him of schoolgirls who didn't actually dare to speak to him. (I think he hated it passionately.) I am speaking here of writers of fiction and popular nonfiction, mark you.

Poets-- poets weren't even mythical. Somebody's grandmother claimed to have seen a poet once, by the dark of the moon, in a howling wilderness, but everybody knew better than to believe it. Poets could only be captured by the thoroughly pure of heart, and their used ink cartridges were said to cure scrofula. One might, blushingly and tentatively, express ambitions to be a fiction writer, or a garden-variety essayist, but poetry was an adolescent endeavour, not to be taken seriously after one's obligatory appearance in the high school lit mag: you can't make a living at poetry, dear, so why even bother to try selling it?

The hell with that.

I've sold a story now, and a lot of my adolescent insecurities went straight out the window of an instant; no one can tell me anymore I'm not a writer, which is a thing people were fond of doing till I left for college, so I may as well try to extend my reach more thoroughly. I've been reading poetry voraciously since I was two and writing poetry avidly since I was six, and I'm sick of it being hobby-work, the work I pass around to my friends and then file. It is evidently not at all impossible to be a fiction writer and a poet at the same time (admiring glances at sovay and Yoon): consequently, as of now, I'm a poet.

Maybe I should buy a hat or something, so that those in need of a cure for the King's Evil know exactly where to find me. At the moment, I'll settle into doing market research.