THE CONFESSIONAL

I truly would have not missed this birthday but I have been a little out of touch with the bare necessities of reality. However, the situation is not as if I am trying to remember all the birthdays of my mother's fifteen grandchildren. I do well to recall the anniversaries of the couple I gave birth to, and not the ten that are my biological nieces,nephews, and the five steps. My mother is an ex-Catholic. Enough said.
Where was I? I have recently been on medication for ear troubles and I tend to do ditsy things when off my usual sobriety like putting my computer into a coma because I was fooling around with the package manager on Ubuntu and scragged the OS kernel. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth and calling aforementioned mother on the telephone and saying that I wanted to end it all and my life, which involves being tied to the tenuous fickleness of a damn box, was not worth living. Woe is me.
Much thanks to my very patient spousal person who fixed the computer and retrieved my various documents. Lady Fortuna beguiles me once more, but I now know better than to trust that dirty bitch and to check the dependencies in the package manager one last time before hitting the "Apply" button.

So.....I am sorry to be late by a day but happy birthday to writer Andrei Codrescu.


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IN THE MEANTIME

I am writing for Demand Studios. The pay is not great but the writing gigs are steady and the assignments have a quick turnaround. The jobs are also something that I can do in whatever time margins I can grab because the incompetent Canadian school system has still not allowed my formerly home-schooled daughter to go full-time to classes. I,perhaps, should start billing those poor apologies for educational administration the time I have lost to their halting and stalling tactics. The school administration has choked my writing career and created a great amount of hassle and stress for my daughter and my family.
However, the gigs work for me because I am able to write about any subject that I choose. I like the flexibility in subject matter. This is not to write that the school administrators have given me any favours in their reluctance to provide my daughter with an education, but I can make the most of what little time I can manage.
I have stopped looking at job boards. Employers using these job boards too often want some poor and desperate worker with insignificant knowledge of the English language who will write for two cents or less a page in a search optimization content mill. Quality matters in writing and I do not pity those who hire substandard labourers.

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MAYBE HAPPY NEW YEAR...

Happy New Year! I have started 2010 with revision work on my second novel. The first is finished and under wraps. I have also gained some writing and editing gigs that pay (not a helluva lot of) money!

I am looking forward to the new decade with child number two full time in school and child number one a year away from finishing high school. I will have more time to dream and to write. However, being close to an emptier nest is somewhat disconcerting, but why do parents exist save for to give their children wings? The freedom will have salutary effects for all concerned but it is sad nonetheless.

I am anticipating the new year and new decade with mixed hopes and apprehensions.

I'll keep you posted. TWH

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THINGS TO KEEP THE DEMONS AWAY

I would feel depressed if it were not for the story writing that I do in my spare time. I finished yet another chapter in my second (unpublished) novel and am engaged with the long tight rope act of rearranging the text so the chapters make sense in relation to one another and are not higgledy-piggledy thrown into the air to land on the page in a disordered heap. How's that for slant alliteration? This is an author who definitely needs a chamomile tisane and some sleep.

I have been picking up some writing and editing gigs but the work is sparse. I have almost given up the ghost in terms of being fully employed. I either do not have the requisite years that an employer demands or my rates are too high. Excuse me, but am I Methuselah? How old do you have to be and how much experience do you need before an employer will hire? My rates are not (too) much over standard market but I never cut a bargain because, dammit, I am worth every penny. My prose and editing, of any sort, kicks it like a can-can dancer. I am a meticulous and hardworking editor who does not stop until I have crossed and stabbed the last unholy and obnoxious “t” on the keyboard. Sigh. There are no jobs for the excellent.

Another cuppa, bartender....

VICTORIAN FARM

I am happy that my favourite pyromaniac, historian Ruth Goodman, is in the follow up series to Victorian Farm. I am giddy because the series follows the triumphs and travails of three historians on a rural estate who survive only on what they can grow in the garden, or forage, or raise in livestock with the technology of the late Victorian age. The sequels will be A Victorian Farm Christmas and Edwardian Farm.

Ruth Goodman is a domestic historian who also was a presenter in A Tudor Feast at Christmas , a recreation of a sixteenth century Christmas banquet.

I cannot wait until the next series. The Victorian Farm was delightful and worth every minute of viewing.


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UPDATE

I am currently employed as a technical writer and editor. The work is more steady but it is also tedious. The challenges that I venture lack emotional interest. Technical writing and editing, however much I may gain in compensation, bores me.

I want to be off with the fairies, or at least with fliskmahoy mice up to never any good. I continue to write on the second book of a novel series despite the grim outlook for the publishing industry in these less than holy days of the winter retail season. Work does not salve over deficits in the generous waste yard of this blighted economy. I feel as if I should have a tin cup to beg my work when I accept those alms from hires. There is not any space to write what one wants but only room to write what one must. I struggle with loneliness and, depressed with the near morbid thought, ken I am not isolated in the abyss.

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WHERE ARE WE NOW

….stranded in the middle of Canadian school system purgatory. I am still homeschooling on part-time because the powers, in this temporal existence, that be retain my child on a yo-yo schedule for an hour and a half, then return aforementioned child home to a mother who is stressed for time in trying to pick up gigs and to write a second novel. I am picking up copy writing bits and editing shards but this is razing me to the white, skull-hued splinters of Joycean coloured bone.

What am I writing? For shame. I truly doubt the administrators who keep our family on the schedule’s leash would think in this manner, of James Joyce or anything connected to literature with regard to the dilemma. I cannot have an intelligent conversation with those rule-conscious minds that produce very little in real education. The schoolwork from this institution is not impressive. I have seen only the maths curriculum in the school district and it is not up to the standards that would prepare a child to go to the next grade level. There is not much one can do to maths to boggle the subject unless an incompetent teaches, and the school district has won the lottery with its failure to provide adequate subject matter. To quote my eldest, “This is baby crap!” The literature is similarly dreadful. I taught my child at home for a year and the“literature” the school provided was sunny and wholesome makelit about icicles and whatnot. Ew. I read to my child the works of Oscar Wilde, Stevie Smith, Emily Dickinson, and Heian era poetry ---among other choice morsels to feed the soul. The school prison does not give, with its rigid conformity, but scraps for the heart. Mine, certainly, now starves.

However, despite the hassles, I've kicked out another chapter last month in the novel and vetted another for inclusion last week. I have spotless turnaround time on gigs with perfect grammar and spelling. I will survive but these are the loneliest moments of my life.