beccadelarosa

Not forever, just for the next two weeks. I'm going to California to spend time with my dad, my new step-family, and all of my many thousand relatives on my father's side. I thought now would be a good time to make this post.

When I was doing my Leaving Cert (final exams, basically university entrance exams) history was one of my least favourite subjects. It was a three-hour exam, in which you had to write fast fast fast to complete five long essays. I remember at one point I dropped my pen; I was totally unable to pick it up again for a while, because my hand had cramped into the shape of a CLAW. Anyway, these essays were not spur-of-the-moment creations. They were learned by heart, taken (mainly) from books of history essays. Each one had to contain a set number of paragraphs, and a set number of points in each paragraph. It was a nightmare marathon exam. About half of the essays I learned by heart, I think, were Irish history, but up until a few weeks ago I had literally no memory of anything that had happened in Ireland before, well, my childhood. That's what happens when you feverishly memorise and then regurgitate a string of facts without context.

A few weeks ago I started reading about the 1916 Rising for story research. For those of you who don't live in Ireland or don't know much about its history, the 1916 Rising was this incredibly quixotic rebellion against the forces of British rule in Dublin. The rebels took numerous landmark and strategic buildings in the city, including Stephen's Green, the General Post Office, the Royal College of Surgeons, and Jacob's Biscuit Factory. They held out for a surprisingly long time, but were eventually killed or rooted out by the British army. It was chaotic, heroic, idiotic, appalling, hilarious, and, you guys, really freaking interesting.

I very much enjoy setting stories in Dublin. It's my home, it's beautiful, I love it. But as much as I write about myth and fantasy and surreal transformations in Dublin, I have never once written about the 20th-Century history that's so integral to what the city is today. This is mostly because before I started reading all these books about 1916, I never even considered it. There are mementos left from the uprising everywhere; it's not that I purposefully ignored these mementos, it's that they meant nothing to me, and so there was no point in registering them. What a waste of an incredible civic history! It baffles me that I could have let a dull curriculum wash away any interest I had in the story of the place I live.

So, at the end of all this, here is a very diminutive and reductionist walking tour of 1916 remnants, thanks to the first-hand accounts, newspaper articles, and exhaustive academic studies I've been reading for the last three weeks.

( Pictures for all! )

About three years after the rest of the world, I got myself a smartphone. This means NICE CAMERA. (Also e-books, Scrabble, and a Wimbledon app, because I love tennis season with a fiery passion that rivals my complete lack of sporting ability.) So these are the most random pictures from the last three days, because it's fun to document a life that is mostly my sister, my best friend, eating, public transport, Dublin city centre, and dogs.

( Snip snip for pictures. )

A bunch of you are also friends of my mom - lady_schrapnell - and I think today would be an awesome day to point out just how badass she is. And that is all.


Edited to add that the picture quality looks gritty and I am sad. Really they are good pictures! It's all Scrapbook's fault!

In 2009 I wrote this post, about the way writing is mythologised, and how that mythologisation marginalises anyone - including myself - who doesn't feel or act as though writing is as necessary as breathing.

Two years later, I still have huge doubts about my own validity as a writer. I still wonder about what I want and whether I deserve it. Right now I'm much happier than I was two years ago, so I'm more prolific, but that's prolific by my own standards, definitely not anyone else's. The important thing is that I'm finishing stories and novels and doing something about them. Or so I tell myself.

What's bothering me at the moment is going to sound incredibly stupid to a lot of people. Because I've been happier recently, I've been doing more with my time: I'm studying classics at university, taking classes to get my Spanish back in shape, and learning the guitar at a music school in Dublin; at the end of the summer I'm going to start singing lessons, too, and Latin in college, and probably some other kind of extramural course that strikes my fancy for a moment or two. I love all this. It turns out that learning new things is awesome (who knew?). And despite the fact that I love it, I still feel incredibly guilty that I'm not spending all my time trying to make myself a better writer, living as a better writer. Can I practice guitar and still be an artist? If I spend a certain percentage of my time studying, playing music, and reading Spanish, how can I ever live up to my creative potential? Is there any point in doing these things if they're only going to make me worse at what I supposedly love?

I know this is bollocks. Writing is like anything else, it doesn't occur in a vacuum. Creativity needs feeding, the brain needs to be stretched in different ways, and Emily Dickinson may have been able to stay inside forever and write (arguably) wonderful poetry, but I and many others would go insane living that life. I know that I am a writer. This perspective changes and dictates the way I see and live in the world. And still, anytime I read about the 'call' to write, the 'drive' to write (and this is something that a lot of authors seem to spend a lot of time discussing), I feel nothing but guilt. Yes, I love to write, but do I feel enough of a drive? Is there a quantifiable level of passion necessary before you can call yourself a writer? Am I just embarrassing myself by self-identifying this way?

Nonsense, nonsense, such total nonsense. I quoted this in my last post, and I will quote it again (subtlety totally not being one of my strong points): a writer is someone who writes. An artist is someone who makes art, however he/she goes about it. That's it.

The reason I've been posting more often in the last while is that I decided it was time not to be so freaked out by the internet writing community and my place or lack of place in it. So I like to watch horror movies in Spanish and play Iron and Wine very badly on my guitar? I am still a writer, and I still work hard to improve my writing, and I always will, as long as I want to write. Just because I don't dedicate every waking moment of my life to my 'art' doesn't make me any less of an artist.

Yes, I may have said this all before, but it's important to remember. A reminder every two years isn't a bad thing.

(Also, how many times did I use the word 'writing' in this post? Like, a lot.)

Mini Marathon: completed.
Knee with torn ligament: yep, pretty sore.
Today: I will be watching The Others in Spanish, drinking tea, and reading Christopher Pike. I DON'T even CARE, his '80s teen horrors are awesome. This one is called Slumber Party and has a fiery snowman on the cover so you know it's going to be quality literature. Yay!

I rescued a copy of China Mieville's The City & The City from my mom's fair. I already have a copy - I just didn't want to see it packed away and sent on to another fete as though NOBODY loved it. Is anyone interested in a free delightful book? I can send it to you. Give it a good home :)

There are, according to the back of The Flickering Torch Mystery, 36 Hardy Boys Mystery Stories. I now know I have to own them all! How could I resist The Missing Chums or The Mystery of the Chinese Junk?







I worked at the YA section at my mom's church fair today, and got these amazing vintage Dixons FREE. If you can even believe it. (Ignore my red nose! It's been a long day and I am ill!)

Gracefully ignoring the more-than-a-year-long break I took from blogging, I am going to jump right in with a question. Preceded by some exposition.

I'm currently reading Seanan McGuire's first October Daye novel, Rosemary and Rue. At the front of the book she has a pronunciation guide, because the book is full of folkloric creatures of various types, and an awful lot of them come from Irish words. Pretty much all of the pronunciations are incorrect. For example, the pronunciation of "daoine sidhe" is given as "doon-ya shee". That's just, like, wrong. "Daoine", the Irish for "people", is pronounced "dee-nee" or "dee-nah" (or, for the singular, which is Duine, "dinnuh"). This is something that even the most basic Irish speaker – like me, after eight years! – knows. It's a common, modern word. I'm pretty sure she gets the Welsh wrong, too, but my Welsh is limited to, well, not much.

This is a nitpicky little detail, and I am still enjoying the book. I don't want to be overly pedantic; nor do I want to claim that it's ok for writers not to do their research. My question is this: does this kind of small mistake bother you when you're reading? What about if the mistake involves something that is personal to you, and that you have grown up with, like a native language or a hometown? I have to say, I found myself surprisingly indignant.

So, firstly of all, I'm obliged to say that I have a story up in the current issue of Clarkesworld. The story is January, and I'm very happy to have it up at Clarkesworld, and if you feel like commenting on it that would be super, because I have a paranoid fear of being that one kid sitting alone on the playground (in this metaphor the playground is the internet, apparently).

Second of all, Kick-Ass is highly awesome. No need to say anything more about that.

Third of all, I recently read Holly Black's new YA short story anthology, The Poison Eaters & Other Stories from Small Beer Press. My word about this should probably be taken with a slight pinch of salt, considering the fact that Holly Black's fairy books (Tithe, Valiant and Ironside) are guilty pleasures of mine - very guilty, very pleasurable - and I read them all repeatedly whenever I want to regress into the mindset of an angsty teenager. That said, I loved The Poison Eaters. Some stories are silly, a few are too clever, but they're all incredibly enjoyable, and the best are excellent. I think my favourite may be In Vodka Veritas. Not just because it mentions Veronica Mars.

Fourth of all I was totally taken in by this April Fool's Joke: Tim Burton to remake Little Shop of Horrors. It upset me greatly! That is all.

Because lists are good.

- Favourite book of 2009: Palimpsest, probably. But that one's always tricky.

- Favourite musical discovery of 2009: She Keeps Bees, most definitely.

- Favourite achievement: starting and finishing a novel, in June. For the first time since I was 18.

- Stories published: six, which is a nice even number, and exactly the same as 2008. This year, more! Better! Onward!

- Plans for twenty ten: write. Study. Write. Read. Leave Dublin. Come back to Dublin. Read. Write.

Happy New Year!

Ingredients:

- 7 of Ikea's Gosig Mice (they look more like rats). Priced at €1.09, €1 of each mouse goes to Unicef
- a handful of fat quarters I found at the bottom of my Christmas craft bag
- lots and lots of thread, a needle, multiple stab wounds, and a thimble rediscovered too late
- three gifts.

( Finished product... )