Sunday morning, looking around
Aug. 17th, 2008 11:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceI was (very) late to bed last night, which meant not early up this morning, which meant - oh noes! - hunger in the cats! No breakfast till half-past what-time-do-you-call-this?! I am a disgrace. Apparently.
Also, it was cold last night. I know this, because Mac had to slither down under the duvet and sleep in the crook of my knees; which meant that Barry didn't come to bed at all.
I feel that I failed them twice. If a man can't provide a warm house and meals on time, what use is he?
Also, my wrist is ouchie. But that's almost good, for it is a physical symptom of an inward andspiritual creative journey: for yes, I have been working. Since I got back from Away, in fact, I have been working; but this month I've stepped up a gear. I'm pretty much averaging 2000 words a day, which is rockin' for me.
It means of course that I've been doing almost nothing else. I made it to the pub twice last week, but mostly it's been me and the computer and the cats, and quiet evenings in. Novel-wrangling does that, in these difficult middle stages. [Also in the awkward starting stages, I find; also in the desperate closing stages. Um.]
However, every now and then something unexpected happens. Like, f'rexample, the phone might ring. This almost never happens (people understand, mostly, that I hate the phone and love the e-mail), but when it does I pick up the instrument and someone speaks to me.
And says, f'rexample, that he's editing an encyclopaedia of crime writing (this I know, he's been doing it a while; there's a lot to cover) and would I like to contribute a paragraph to the section on gay & lesbian work?
Okey-doke, I say: for yes, I speak like this. Sometimes.
So I wrote this, which I don't think he'll mind my sharing, as it's only a small moment in a far longer piece. Nor is it a strikingly original thought, but it is what he asked for, and it does have the grace of being true.
I've never described myself as a gay writer; there are too many variables there, I don't know what it means. I'm gay and I'm a writer, and the two facts are of course intimately linked, but not at all contiguous. To call myself a gay crime writer would be ridiculous; not everything I write is crime, not everything I write is gay. Sometimes, subjects and forms intersect: most conspicuously for me in "The Garden" (1990) - but that's about a straight man trying to build a gay relationship in an otherwise straight world. Some of the short stories in "Blood Waters" (1996) are more legitimately gay, where characters and themes, settings and even crimes all arise from the same sensibility. There is a distinct gay world, which inhabits the wider one; there is a gay aspect to my work, which inhabits the whole. And influences it, inevitably, as does my whiteness and my maleness and everything else that contributes to what I am. That's as close as I can come...
And now I am going to the local library - open on a Sunday! who knew? - to return books that should have been returned herebefore. And then on to the supermarket, because it may be a Sunday but I can still shop; and then home, and more working. The grandfather, the two eunuchs and the concubine. [She likes to say "consort", but you should hear the empress on that matter...]
Also, it was cold last night. I know this, because Mac had to slither down under the duvet and sleep in the crook of my knees; which meant that Barry didn't come to bed at all.
I feel that I failed them twice. If a man can't provide a warm house and meals on time, what use is he?
Also, my wrist is ouchie. But that's almost good, for it is a physical symptom of an inward and
It means of course that I've been doing almost nothing else. I made it to the pub twice last week, but mostly it's been me and the computer and the cats, and quiet evenings in. Novel-wrangling does that, in these difficult middle stages. [Also in the awkward starting stages, I find; also in the desperate closing stages. Um.]
However, every now and then something unexpected happens. Like, f'rexample, the phone might ring. This almost never happens (people understand, mostly, that I hate the phone and love the e-mail), but when it does I pick up the instrument and someone speaks to me.
And says, f'rexample, that he's editing an encyclopaedia of crime writing (this I know, he's been doing it a while; there's a lot to cover) and would I like to contribute a paragraph to the section on gay & lesbian work?
Okey-doke, I say: for yes, I speak like this. Sometimes.
So I wrote this, which I don't think he'll mind my sharing, as it's only a small moment in a far longer piece. Nor is it a strikingly original thought, but it is what he asked for, and it does have the grace of being true.
I've never described myself as a gay writer; there are too many variables there, I don't know what it means. I'm gay and I'm a writer, and the two facts are of course intimately linked, but not at all contiguous. To call myself a gay crime writer would be ridiculous; not everything I write is crime, not everything I write is gay. Sometimes, subjects and forms intersect: most conspicuously for me in "The Garden" (1990) - but that's about a straight man trying to build a gay relationship in an otherwise straight world. Some of the short stories in "Blood Waters" (1996) are more legitimately gay, where characters and themes, settings and even crimes all arise from the same sensibility. There is a distinct gay world, which inhabits the wider one; there is a gay aspect to my work, which inhabits the whole. And influences it, inevitably, as does my whiteness and my maleness and everything else that contributes to what I am. That's as close as I can come...
And now I am going to the local library - open on a Sunday! who knew? - to return books that should have been returned herebefore. And then on to the supermarket, because it may be a Sunday but I can still shop; and then home, and more working. The grandfather, the two eunuchs and the concubine. [She likes to say "consort", but you should hear the empress on that matter...]
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-17 12:05 pm (UTC)Hoorah for cross genre, non pigeoned holed cool writer people! :-)(unless we create a new genre just for you, simply called 'Chaz'?)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-17 12:12 pm (UTC)See now, this is what I always wanted: a section in the bookshop just for me. Which would have crime, fantasy, horror, SF, gay stuff, erotica, everything. Magazines with short stories by me. The Chaz corner. It could go in the corner, that would be fine. Is this, I ask you, too much to ask...?
Er, yup. Alas.
No breakfast till half-past what-time-do-you-call-this?!
Date: 2008-08-19 04:45 pm (UTC)Re: No breakfast till half-past what-time-do-you-call-this?!
Date: 2008-08-19 04:56 pm (UTC)