Yesterday was the 25th anniversary of the day I began The Five of Cups, which pretty much made it the 25th anniversary of the beginning of my writing career. There was no party, no fanfare. But I thought I would mention it today. At Brown University, in the collections of the John Hay Library, there is the yellow legal pad I used that morning when I began making notes for the novel. The me of June 1992 would be flabbergasted by the improbability of that simple fact.
Today, I desperately need to make significant progress on the introduction I'm writing for a forthcoming edition of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, to be published by Centipede Press. This morning at breakfast a parallel between the novel and Frost's "Death of a Hired Man" occurred to me, this bit:
'Home is the place where, when you go there,
They have to take you in.'
I also need to figure out the ghost story I'm supposed to be writing, so I can get to that as soon as the introduction is completed. I need to find an idea. Or, rather, I need to stop dithering an choose which idea I'm using.
From Facebook:
6/7 ~ I'm very much want to like Westworld more than I'm actually liking it. It's watchable enough, and it has moments of actual inspiration. But I mostly watch it and think, "This could have been so much better." The writing is, for the most part, pedestrian. Television is better than this now, and much smarter, if it is good television. Of course, it all goes back to Michael Crichton, and I've really never cared for him.
6/7 ~ If ever I decide to write a nonfictional memoir, I shall title it The Twentieth Centuryist. No title could be more appropriate.
6/7 ~ Dear Cisgendered People (or, if you prefer, Dear Not-Transgender People):
At no point did all transgender people the world over get together and vote that we would be offended by the word "tranny," a word that many of us have used to self-identify since at least the late 1980s. And you should know that. Instead, a vocal minority decided to be offended at the word, apparently because a bunch of cisgender bigots decided to appropriate "tranny" as a slur, and apparently "we" are letting bigots dictate which words offend us. But you should know, cis humans, no vote was taken, and many of us are, in fact, not offended by the word. It is our word, created by transfolk, for transfolk. Though it can admittedly cause confusion, because "tranny" is also slang for an automotive transmission.
Later Taters,
Aunt Beast
11:12 a.m.
* See what I did there?