Yes, I was at Worldcon 2010. Yes, I was superninja on a panel with China Miéville. In my capacity as a postgraduate academic and reader/fan, of course. Precious few people recognise or acknowledge me as a writer, yet*. Anyway, it was a pretty strange place to be in, but I was okay about the points I made. No, I did not faint in fright when China Miéville shook my hand. Yes, I did manage to wash my hand later that night. No, I did not giggle like a moron!

I also presented an academic paper, and attended back to back panels with my beautiful cloth-bound journal adorned with Japanese cherry blossoms and a geisha girl bookmark. I scribbled tons and tons of notes annotated with my own comments and (sometimes) snarky analysis/thoughts/criticisms. I also collected phat lewt. Now, not everything here is from Worldcon, and some of these things I didn’t have to pay for. Especially the used books from the Melbourne Science Fiction Club which they were giving away for free. I did make donations, though. The pocket watch on a chain I got from Carrington’s over on Swanston Street, a place I’d visited before on a prior visit to Melbourne. I also got a gorgeous pashmina there, but the pashminas, along with the chocolates are not in this pic. As for the Worldcon 2010 name-badge, I’m going to miss having it around my neck. For five days, it felt like a magic talisman, protecting me from the Evils of the world, because I was in a place where all SF/F geeks congregated, and it was good.

*In case this sounds like I’m whinging, I’m not. It makes me appreciate even more the people who know who I am and those who have faith in me. You guys rock and I <3 you all. Also, I am determined enough that hopefully, this status quo will not remain for long.

You would think I had better things to do instead of calculating my reading average for the past seven years, and you would be right. I’ve been dividing my weekend up between reading texts for a conference paper and a panel I will be presenting at, drafting an academic paper, drafting a short story, as well as catching up on some reading for pleasure. The books that have given me the most pleasure this week have been Ursula K Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven as well as her Left Hand of Darkness. I’ve also enjoyed reading a collection of her critical writing, The Language of the Night along with some essays and interviews by Samuel R. Delany, and Helen Merrick’s The Secret Feminist Cabal: A Cultural History of Science Fiction Feminisms.

All in all, I am satisfied with my reading for the year, but it also left me curious about my reading patterns for the last decade or so. It feels as if I read slower now, but that is also due to the realities of being both a postgraduate scholar as well as an academic. Ironically enough, my years of teaching literature at a non-governmental organisation’s private college had me reading voraciously. It is ironic because I was teaching 15-17 hours a week, doing some admin stuff as well as running an editorial board for the college, but somehow, I still managed to find time to lose myself in texts. I would suppose it was because we had these hours between classes to fill, it was a shared office space and none of us were given individual computers. It was also partially because I tend not to have a very active social life. Which leads me to believe that my shocking low of only 33 books read for pleasure last year was due to the amount of time spent on a certain social networking apparatus that I’ve since jettisoned. Granted, there are things I often leave off the list. I did a hefty bit of critical reading last year, and the same applies to this year. Those books, articles, reviews etc will never go on these lists because there are far too many of them. Occasionally I will list primary sources or secondary sources that I actually enjoyed for its own sake, but otherwise, I’d feel it was cheating.

Anyway, I decided to use ordered lists for all the reading lists I have on this site. I actually have been keeping these lists since 2000, but since The Book Alcove was coded by hand and long-since jettisoned, those earlier lists have since disappeared into the ether. What I have here are my reading figures from 2003-2009, and just for added fun, I even calculated the mean.

1. 2003 – 46 books
2. 2004 – 42 books
3. 2005 – 68 books
4. 2006 – 45 books
5. 2007 – 58 books
6. 2008 – 78 books
7. 2009 – 33 books

Mean – 52.85 books per year

I don’t know about you, but I find this depressing. For someone passionate about books and whose path in life is all about books, that’s a depressing amount of reading. I’d love to make it to 100 books some year, but I know it won’t be this year. Fortunately, my reading figure for this year won’t be as grim as 2009, since I’ve already reached 40 books! I’m hoping to at least reach my average by the end of this year. Somehow, I think I can do it. I find hours spent just reading quietly to be very healing for me, and I aim to do more of this.

I prefer to build things, rather than tear them down. So when I dream of conversations, I dream of conversations of sharing and enthusiasm between builders and creators, or lovers of music and all form of minutiae where things are shared with passion. We’d all be away with the faeries under the stars, talking of how the music affected us and what change it inspired in us. We wouldn’t be afraid to bare our insides and wouldn’t feel like the act of baring our insides is a disgraceful act, a mar on the smoothness of polite, sophisticated small talk. We would accept each other as we are, warts and all. Even the whiny and cranky ones amongst us.

But there’s a reason why dreamers like me dream, and why we like to build things. I hope some of you will join in one manifestation of my dream – the Mythic Folk community, and I hope understanding where I’m coming from will unearth that some of you dream these same dreams too. Some day, I hope to have a real life manifestation of this community, but I suspect this will be a long time coming. But it will happen. And there will be snacks, as Andrew Bird, that fine man, would say.

Last.fm says I should listen to Department of Eagles, Daniel Rossen (of Grizzly Bear)’s band. I think I should, too. This song just gave me my happy feeling back. Yay!

Other cool stuff: The tenth issue of Cabinet des Fées is now up and there’s a lovely selection of poems, short fiction and articles to read. I was very pleased to note that Erzebet had also acquired a nifty article about Shirley Lim and the Hang Li Po legend for this issue. There’s also a teaser for the project that we’ve been working on and which I’m really excited about, so hopefully I’ll get some time in June to finish writing the article for it. I’m also beyond thrilled to bits that not only did we (I feel a little goofy saying “we” within this context, given I’ve been a fan of CdF for so long!) get mentioned on Terri Windling’s blog, but my name got stuck in there as well. Brain. Cannot compute!

These are the things that are good for happy making. Because one must be happy in order to be productive!

Oh, more new music for me to explore, My Brightest Diamond. Lovely!

I’ve spent most of this weekend being a convalescent, keeping to flannelette peejays and coughing in an annoying fashion. However, I’ve also managed to do some creative writing, which is always good for the soul. Let’s face it; a happy Ninny is a productive Ninny. And a frazzled Ninny needs to write fiction and poetry in order to be happy. I think this is justification enough for me, and I am tired of being so overwhelmed by guilt every time I want to be creative, because I have deadlines hanging over my head and a thesis to write. This weekend I said enough was enough. I needed to be selfish in order to thrive creatively. Heaven knows, guilt hasn’t stopped anyone else. Anyway, I think working on my novel is far more productive than wasting time on social networking

Writing Updates: Saltwater Orphée has been returned to the back burners for now, as I’ve returned to working on The Apothecary’s Casket. Yes, I know it used to be The Apothecary’s Box and before that The Apothecary’s Seal. The title will likely change again before I start making proper and hopefully relatively flawless submissions. Realizing that the reason why I had been so intimidated by TAC was because of its relative intricacy, I perused two versions of the draft and found that the careful, methodical structure I made circa 2006-2008 really was better than the thematically stylized version of 2009. Granted, the writing of the newer version was better. The solution? Integration. Because I had so many scenes floating around and multiple structures, it took me the better part of Saturday, but I reached 61k. There will be months of editing, but I now have Page Four to help me, and I’m feeling positive about this for once. It’s a pretty handy, stripped down novel-writing software. I tried a couple of others but they were too fiddly and more oriented for the D&D kind of writer. I like my stories to have a more organic feel about them, though it doesn’t make me any less meticulous when it comes to storyboarding. I can be really, really anal.

On the subject of software, I’ve also tried a couple of the games on The Humble Indie Bundle. I enjoyed and love the storyline, music and graphics of Aquaria and Penumbra is also intriguing, although I have never fared well with the “eye of the beholder” p-o-v in games because of my astigmatism. There’s a couple of days left, so give these indie games developers some love. They’re allowing you to set your own price as well as pick how much their favourite charities The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child’s Play Charity get. I think it’s a win/win situation and they’ve already collected half a million dollars, so hurray!
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So, there you have my weekend; instead of wasting time on bloody FB, I reclaimed a novel and even have a decent word count! I also did stuff with my Flickr account and reclaimed my Dreamwidth account as well. I drank a lot of tea, especially since I finally have a teapot which I found really cheap and which is quite adorably plain and played a couple of games, inclusive of a certain game slated for a Cataclysm later this year, mostly because I wanted to finish some quests before the topography of those areas changed. I am also sleeping regular hours, so I decided to compound this by having work-free weekends. This of course means that the Sunday night blues are in full force right now. But I am glad for a stay-at-home weekend full of productive play. I find it is important to have a life in balance, and as our schedules and rhythms shift, this balance will also shift. The best we can do is be kind to ourselves as well as to others. Although, I will add a caveat there; there are limits to one’s goodwill and patience.

Signing off for now. I suspect it’s time for an early night; tomorrow I return to my thesis’s Chapter Four. And run a few errands pertaining to paperwork. AND start drafting a conference paper. I also have a book to read for an overdue review, which I have to say, I am not enjoying because the narrative is making me twitch. And not in a good way. Snark-galore.

P.S.: For those of you who actually keep note of these things, I did submit the overdue chapter mentioned previously. Am now awaiting feedback on it, but will be working on another chapter returned with feedback. Then, write the conference paper. Then, more red-tape. Will probably start a new thesis chapter in June. Fingers crossed, since I also have another conference paper to write for coursework purposes.