Heart and soul

This is certainly not true of every writer, and it may not even be true of me, or not of every book I write - but right now I do feel as though I spend a lot more time fixing books than actually writing them. The writing-draft takes longer, in calendar-time: but between the rewrites and the edits and the copy-edits and the proofs, I swear more actual skull-time goes into the fixes than into the original.

Sometimes it frustrates me inordinately, but I always have been a malcontent: essentially, when I'm writing a draft I'd far rather be editing, and when I'm editing I'd far rather be writing original copy. Just call me the Rum Tum Tugger, and be done. It's just that if it's true that the time invested is disproportionate, then I spend a disproportionate amount of time wishing I was writing rather than editing.

Still: there is accomplishment to be sensed, even at this end. Today I fixed a very broken timeline in Being Small, and yay for a charming editor who actually noticed that Thursday was explicitly and textually followed by Sunday, hey-ho; and I proofed three stories and Geoff Ryman's introduction to my new collection Bitter Waters. You know, the one with the covetable - and attainable - cover art...

In other news, reversals

This has been going on so long, I may even have posted about it before: but you would think, after more than two years of living here and nearly-five of visiting for increasing periods of time, I would by now have learned which knobs on the cooker control which gas-rings.

Trouble is, to an English-trained sensibility, the knobs are exactly the wrong way around. Four burners in a square, front and back; four knobs in a line, left to right. In every cooker I have ever met, the outside knobs control the rear burners, and the inside control the front. It's been absolutely standard, all my life.

Apparently five years of exposure to a different mind-set is not enough to burn that default out of my hindbrain. I use these knobs every day, many times a day; and I still have to check every time, because if I just trust my fingers, every now and then I still light the wrong burner. Even when I'm thinking about it. It is too hard for me, this learning of new rules.