Theodora Goss

I’m very, very busy, so tonight I will give you a poem by Mary Oliver. Here it is:

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

I’ve always liked this poem. I suppose because it’s about how to live in the world, which is a very Taoist way: you do not have to repent, you do not have to despair, you do not have to curse or beg from the Fates. You just have to live. You can talk about your despair, but meanwhile the world goes on: the trees grow new leaves in spring, the roses bloom again, the wild geese fly north. Life continues, and if you stop, if you listen, you can hear it. You can participate in it.

Of course I’m writing this on very little sleep, in the middle of the end of the semester when I’m so completely swamped with work that I can barely breathe. I’m not living a particularly Taoist life at the moment! And this weekend I’m supposed to be in New York for a meeting of my writing group (The Injustice League: Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman, Catherynne Valente, Lev Grossman, Kathleen Howard, and Claire Cooney). And I’m trying to plan for the trip this summer (Budapest and London). So perhaps I’m reading this poem and responding to it because it’s exactly not what I’m doing right now. I’m not listening. I haven’t stopped. (Wild geese? What wild geese?)

But to be honest, I’m excited. I’ll be traveling most of the summer, researching and working on the novel, and there’s so much happening, so many changes to come. I just have to remind myself to, when I can, stop and listen.  Even if the wild geese I listen to are winging their way over Hungary.

I have a new computer, which I’ve been getting used to. One way I get used to things like new computers is to decorate them, which in this case means that I’ve chosen a lovely desktop image. Here it is:

It’s inspired my blog post for today, which is yet another round of imaginary Etsy shopping. At this point in the semester, all I’m doing is continually meeting with students and grading papers, so to be honest, I have nothing left in my head to write about. There’s simply nothing there, no ideas, no source of inspiration. Imaginary shopping is the best I can do. So here we go. I call this round of shopping “Into the Green,” and it’s inspired by the image above and the fact that it’s spring, although at the moment a cold and soggy one.

The first item I’m going to imaginary buy is this green vase by Suzanne’s Pottery Farm. Isn’t it beautiful? I’ll put it on a dresser or low table.

Then, I think perhaps this print called “Looking Forward” by Shirae. I like how the little girl is looking into the distance, into what I think is probably the sunset. I like how she’s holding her doll, exactly the way little girls do hold their dolls, and how the mushrooms match her dress.

I’ve fallen in love with this – is it a scarf or a necklace? – from The Faerie Market. I just love the pretty pinkish-reddish flower. I honestly don’t know what I would do with something like this, but it’s romantic and imaginative. Perhaps I would have one of my characters wear it. It’s the sort of thing Thea would wear, for instance.

Rowan DeVoe Arts gives us this photographic print called “Ophelia Siren Child.” This is the sort of image I might have over my desk, actually. It’s dreamy and inspiring. I don’t think of her as dead but as a sort of dreaming siren who is also Ophelia, in a watery womb, waiting to be reborn.

And finally, this is for us to wear if we want to be as romantic as all of these items, the vase and scarf and prints: a green gypsy skirt from Fashion Dress 6. I wouldn’t wear it like this, not with a tank top and flip-flops, which makes it look too ordinary, but with a filmy white blouse and ballet flats. It’s a skirt that deserves better, and needs to be twirled around in.

The next two weeks are going to be crazy, as I’ve written. I’m going to try to keep updating here, but my posts will be like this one. They’ll be about dreams rather than reality, because that’s how I’m sustaining myself right now.

I’m traveling more and more. In February I was at Boskone, which was a very short trip, just to the other side of Boston. In April, I was in Orlando for the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. And last weekend I was in Arkansas for the Arkansas Literary Festival, which by the way was wonderful. I was even on television! I appeared on Today’s THV, a morning show on Channel 11 in Little Rock, Arkansas. You can see the segment here: “Reading Up a Storm at Arkansas Literary Festival.”

The thing about traveling, for me, is that it’s exhausting. And sometimes I feel as though I don’t do it very well, particularly when I’m traveling a lot. I don’t eat well, or get enough exercise, or get anywhere near enough sleep. But this time, I decided that I was going to create some rules for myself that would make traveling easier and healthier. I’ve got a couple of rules already.

1. Sleep when you can. You really do need to sleep whenever you can, and that includes on airplanes. I slept most of the way home today. (I took four planes in three days: two there, two back. Boston, Chicago, Little Rock, Chicago, Boston.) You should never hesitate to take a nap in the middle of the day. It’s very difficult, when you’re doing these sorts of events, to get enough sleep. Sometimes you’re at a cocktail party at night, and then you’re on television early the next morning. And you want to do all that, it’s important to do, it’s why you’re there. But when you can sleep, do. And don’t be afraid to miss events. On the last night, I missed two events I had originally intended to make, but I knew that if I went, I would be out late socializing. And I had a plane to catch the next morning.

2. Eat small meals frequently. First of all, you’re going to get small meals. You’re going to get crackers and cheese at a cocktail party. Or a free continental breakfast at the hotel. Travel is expensive, and you want to take advantage of all the free meals you can. You also want to try all the foods you don’t usually get to. In Little Rock, for example, I had a chai frozen popsicle covered with chocolate. It was very good, and not something I’ve ever had before. The trick is never to eat too much at once, and to eat at frequent intervals so that you’re never either full or hungry. You’re going to be so busy that you need constant energy, and small meals are best for that.

3. Bring short-sleeved shirts and sweaters. I inevitably find that I’m hot outside and cold (often painfully cold) inside. Planes are cold, hotels are cold, anywhere conferences are held are usually air conditioned. So I find that I need to be ready for both the heat and the cold. The best way to do that, for me, is to bring short-sleeved shirts to wear underneath and sweaters to wear over them. I also find it very useful to bring scarves. They fit into small spaces, and yet they can add color to basic black clothes and warmth when you’re cold even in a sweater. Otherwise, I travel in jeans. Jeans and black skirts of various lengths will take you through most events you need to attend, as a writer.

So those are some of my travel basics. It’s very hard to stay healthy, physically and mentally, when you’re naturally an introvert and you have an intense travel schedule that involves meeting a lot of people. The more travel tricks you learn, the easier it is . . .

(Oh, one last trick. Never try to read anything serious on an airplane. You may have the best of intentions, but you will inevitably give up. Trust me. Magazines and murder mysteries are best.)

Yesterday, I asked a question on my Facebook page:

“How do you all find time to write? Seriously, I’m starting to wonder how people do it. I know you’re supposed to make time, but out of what, thin air? It’s frustrating . . .”

I got some wonderful comments about how to find time, and some that recommended things I was already doing: for example, I don’t watch much television anyway. But reading through them, I realized that the real problem wasn’t time. It was energy.

The real question is, how do you find the energy to write? Because honestly, some days I can’t even write a blog post. Part of it is my schedule: I teach four writing classes, and I have a two-hour commute to the university. Those two things by themselves take an enormous amount of time, but they take even more energy. At the end of a working day, I often just want to lie in bed, under a warm blanket, and do nothing. I’ve spent the entire day interacting with people, solving problems, dealing with whatever issues come up, and I’m exhausted. Perhaps I’m different from other writers in this way, but I need a clear head to write. I need energy.

You’ve seen “Blanchefleur,” right? Well, that’s my first draft. And while I don’t want to praise my own writing, that’s the way it comes out: what I type up, for a short story at least, is usually close to a final draft. But when I write, I’m never sitting there, idly scribbling. It always takes my complete focus. An hour or two of writing can be exhausting, although at the same time it can also be exhilarating enough that I continue on, sometimes beyond the point where I’m about ready to fall over.

So I think the real solution isn’t to find more time, but to change my life so that I have more energy to write. That partly involves making sure I’m doing writing that pays, so I can justify not taking on other paying work and focusing on the writing. That means writing novels, and I’m certainly going to focus on novel writing next.

So here’s the plan. (You knew there was going to be a plan, right? I am an inveterate maker of plans. And, often, those plans work.)

The plan is to get through the semester and then finish the novel over the summer. That will mean a lot of work, a lot of writing, all over the world since I’m going to be traveling. But I’m looking forward to it. I know my characters, I know quite a bit of the story I want to tell, and I’m looking forward to that sense of full immersion I get when I’m really going, when I’m living in the world I’ve created.

I want to spend time with my girl monsters.

The visual I’m going to give you tonight is Sarah Bernhardt:

Why am I giving you Sarah Berhardt? Because in a way, she identified herself as a girl monsters long before Lady Gaga came along. She slept in a coffin and she sculpted an inkwell with an image of herself as a gargoyle. That takes guts.

I have an enormous amount of respect for Sarah Bernhardt. Maybe I’ll write her into my novel, somehow . . .

The problem, of course, is that I’m exhausted.

It’s been building up for weeks and weeks. Well, at least the last two weeks. And when I’m exhausted, I don’t have the energy to write. I just do what I have to, which at this point is work. I’m struggling even to keep up with the writing work: I have stories and interviews I owe people.

I keep trying to answer emails, but I get almost a hundred a day.

And of course, since I’m so tired, I’m not exercising or eating as well as I should be.

I think I’m just really struggling right now. Once the semester is over, I should be able to get my life cleaned up, get back on a better track. Because I simply can’t keep doing this.

The PhD is over, right? Things were supposed to get better. But I think that once the PhD ended, all the things I’d been putting off suddenly started to happen – especially all the writing things. I literally can’t even keep up with the requests for reprints and translation rights. And there’s a special project I’m supposed to be working on that is going so much more slowly than I would like. And sometimes daily life is just a mess. (I totally forgot about Easter, and had to run around tonight buying Easter things for Ophelia, and spent way too much money – as one does, trying to do anything at the last minute.)

I’m afraid this blog post is all complaints. Well, so be it.

Today, I actually slept most of the day, because I was so exhausted from the week. Here I am, at around two in the afternoon, in the bathroom mirror. I have not yet brushed my hair. Sad, isn’t it?

This may be a strange post for me to write, considering that I’ve been posting images from the photoshoot I did down in Florida. Those images are explicitly fantastical. They’re meant to be.

They’re fantastical representations of a fantasy writer, and I had a lot of fun doing them.

But something happens when you’re a writer, and you write fantasy, and you have an online presence. In some ways, you start to become a fantasy. You’re no longer the person you actually are. People imagine you in different ways, often as slightly larger than life, more magical. And that can become difficult, when they realize that you’re only human after all.

A human being trying to do magical things, which takes work and time and effort.

The thing about being a writer, even a fantasy writer, is that you have to have a very firm grasp on reality. You have to understand how the world works, what motivates people, how they sometimes fool even themselves. You have to have the magic inside you, which is a kind of sensitivity to the world as well as to language. That’s how you make it happen.

Writers like to spend time together because they understand one another, in ways other people sometimes don’t understand them. They know that everything in their books was once inside them, and that it took tremendous effort to bring it out. That the magic happens inside and on the page. That when people expect them to be fantastical creatures, they’re locating the magic in the wrong place. When writers get together, what do they talk about? All the dull, technical things they would talk about if they were in any other profession. Who has a new agent. What’s up for an award. Advances.

When they get together, writers are as mundane as plumbers. The magic happens inside, and for the most part we don’t talk about it. Except as craft, in workshops. (But it’s magic nevertheless.)

We are human, so when people want us to be fantastical creatures, I think we try to look the part. Fantasy writers tend to be photographed in fantastical ways. Look at photographs of Catherynne Valente sometime, or China Miéville. At some level, we start to look like characters from our own stories. This could be an older version of Thea Graves, for example. (When I write about her going to the Shadowlands, she’s just out of college. She’s not quite this sophisticated yet.)

(This is of course a picture of me from the photoshoot.)

But of course we’re not characters, but the ones who create characters. The music makers and dreamers of dreams. And that means we get up in the morning, in our pajamas, and eat a bowl of oatmeal, and sit down in front of the computer, and check to see what we wrote the previous day, and how good (or bad) it is. And then we take a shower, thinking about the writing for that day. And then we sit down in front of the computer again. For hours and hours and hours.

The magic happens inside. And hopefully on the page.

Please excuse the appearance of this website. I’m in the process of updating certain things, including the general look of the site. It will probably be changing over the next few days. I want to make it more contemporary. And I’m going to be using images from the photoshoot I did with Walker1812 Photography. I’ll write a bit about that today.

Here, by the way, is the author photo that came out of that shoot:

What do you think? I like it a lot, of course, although it makes me look more glamorous than the typical author headshot. But there’s nothing wrong with glamor, is there? What I particularly like about it is that a lot of personality comes through. That’s what I’m like, minus some of the glamor. Looking at the world in that sidelong way, as though it’s somewhat, but not entirely, amusing.

So what is a photoshoot actually like? First thing that morning, I met the photographer. I was wearing no makeup, just SPF 30 because of the Florida sun. When we arrived at the location, I went directly to makeup. That was a fascinating process. I always assumed that the makeup used on photoshoots and in movies is fundamentally different from the makeup we use every day, and I was right. Oh, the makeup itself is the same (Mac, in this case), but it’s applied differently. By the end of the process, I looked as though I had been photoshopped. In the photograph above, my face doesn’t look all that different than it did in the original shot, although of course the photographer performed his post-shoot magic on it. I don’t think I’ve ever had such a perfect complexion.

And then there were five hours of taking photos in different settings and positions, with three costume changes. What you won’t see in any of the photographs is the assistant who dragged the boat around in the water. There were times when I couldn’t sit up by myself (after lying in the boat for an hour with my head propped on the wooden side, for instance). There was also a behind the scenes video being shot at the same time, which I’ll show you once it’s done.

I think I learned a lot from the process. I definitely learned, a bit late because I didn’t see the photos until after they were uploaded onto the computer, how I should stand, how I should turn my head – what works and what doesn’t. I learned about my own angles. That will be useful if I ever do a photoshoot again. If I do, I will focus more on telling stories. In the end, the photographs I liked best were the ones that told stories, either through action or through a facial expression. Even reaching out to touch a branch, or looking behind me, could be a story. In the end, I want images to make me think and feel, in the same way I want prose to make me think and feel.

That’s what I like about the woman in the headshot above. You can see her – me – thinking. What is she thinking? Ah, that you’ll have to tell me . . .