Monday, September 29, 2008

West Hollywood Book Fair and Editing Progress

I attended the West Hollywood Book Fair for a little while on Sunday afternoon in order to try to research more publishers and writer's resources. The size of the fair was a lot more manageable than the annual L.A Times Book Fair at UCLA and there was the added benefit of free parking at the Pacific Design Center across San Vicente Blvd. I walked around and while I did not find any likely publishers, which didn't surprise me, I did find a little cove of writer's groups that offer workshops, networking opportunities, etc. I signed up to receive email info from all of them and I took literature so I can see if I think they would benefit me to join. I also joined up for the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society e-newsletter.

I am up to page 420 in my Parsifal book edits as of this morning, making slow and steady progress. I've been glued to the news today reading about the European bank nationalizations and the failure of the U.S. bailout bill, but I hope to work more on the book tonight. My pretty fantasy book is more than a little happier than the current global reality and I'm looking forward to getting back to it for a while tonight.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Self-Editing

I reached a milestone in my current book edit of Parsifal - I'm up to page 400, two-thirds of the way through. This edit cycle is excrutiatingly slow, because it's the very first one. I forgot how much work there is to do on the first run-through after completing the manuscript draft. I finished writing my previous book back in 2004, and edited it over the next two years, in fits and starts between moving and dealing with Hurricane Katrina and life in general. Then I put it down and wrote this one. It was more than a year before I picked The Flower of Knighthood back up, and I had done several drafts of it to that point, so it was fairly refined before I looked at it again earlier this year, and it STILL took a huge amount of effort to polish it to my satisfaction. So, I am sure I have a lot of work ahead of me, but as I always say, it's worth it to me. What else would I be doing if not this? I like to write more than anything except making and enjoying music, and I'd rather spend my time refining my own work than doing anything else, except maybe making more artwork. I want to live the life of a productive artist more than anything in the world - it's the only way of life that makes me happy and it's worth any amount of hard work.

Speaking of music and productivity, I posted a review of the show I went to last week - it's up now on my music blog, at:

http://fleurdamourmusic.blogspot.com/2008/09/one-trick-ponymarvelous-toydivisadero.html

Friday, September 19, 2008

Places to Go and Things to Do

I'm very glad we have reached the weekend. I am going to go see a band tonight, Marvelous Toy (http://www.marveloustoy.net/), at Pehrspace in Echo Park. I reviewed them a while back for Performer Magazine, and they have a CD release party this evening. After that, I plan to kick back for the weekend. I want to work on setting some laptop stuff up and editing my book (I'm past page 350 in Parsifal) and just general clean up and catch up. I also need to work on my next pitch letter for my travel article - the inflight magazine has not bitten yet on the France trip, but I have several more places to contact. I am behind schedule on that, but I went on another short trip last week and I've been really overwhelmed with details since I got back. The artist grant I am interested in applying for needs my attention, too. I printed out the application form and plan to look at it tomorrow to start formulating ideas of how to frame my pitch for the award.

I just want to say, too, that I have been looking at one small press after another for The Flower of Knighthood, and one small press after another says that they are not currently looking at manuscripts because their slates are full. Just another nudge toward putting it out myself.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Mid-September Check In

I've been Twittering much more than blogging lately because I've been busy since I got back from France, but I wanted to make an effort at an update post. I've been working on edits for Parsifal and am more than 300 pages into the manuscript. I've been writing a little on The Engagement of Sir Gawain, too, and I'm researching some artist grants that are coming up. I'm still struggling to write the description of my trip - I did so much that I've just been taking it one activity at a time. I made a couple of other brief trips lately and I've been doing a lot for the artist's community where I live. I've also been re-reading a favorite book The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism by Henry Corbin. It's really speaking to me, and it seems important at the moment. There are some incredible parallels between a climactic scene I wrote for Parsifal and a mythological thread described in that book. Again, it's all archetypal, coming from a common layer in the human psyche, and again, Parsifal may have a Persian origin. Persia = Iran, so the connection is clear to me. I'm still finding interesting cross-pollinization between Islamic mysticism and medieval culture, and I'll be following that vein for a very long time. I'm still freaking out a little, too, on what a medieval studies professor from Toulouse in southern France told me - she said that the French universities have discontinued a lot of their medieval studies programs. The period has apparently fallen out of favor, pushed aside by more modern concerns. Also, it's not just France that's lost interest in the Middle Ages - other countries in Europe have followed suit. This is why I never was tempted to become an academician. The field has become too trendy, focusing on intellectual fads rather than substantive work. Giving up on one of the most important and formative periods in history is inexcusable. It would almost be more understandable if American universities were guilty of that, it's the new world after all and we have our own history and culture, but for Europe to give up on European history is mystifying to me. Not only is it a renunciation of their own heritage, studies of that period could help understand the current realities with the strained relations between the Islamic and western worlds. The seeds of present conflict were planted back then, and we need to understand that in order the resolve our differences.