author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

So apparently my problems are a matter of table structure, not lost data. Whee.

Confession: I have been woefully bad at keeping myself educated as my ISP traveled upward through the MySQL versions over the years, and the tables I created back in the 3.23 days, when the default was ISAM, did not play well with the move to 4.1, where ISAM is deprecated and MyISAM is preferred. I ought to have converted them over, but I have been ignorant and did not know to do so. So to fix things, I think I need to be given access to the backups from earlier in the month so that I can insert the data into manually recreated MyISAM tables. Because I really don't want to make the support staff at my ISP endure the pain in the butt of taking care of it for me. Because it would be a big pain in the butt for them, and not one they're contracted for. They'll take it on out of the goodness of their hearts, which I only come to appreciate more and more as situations like this painfully educate me about MySQL programming--but they oughtn't to have to do so.

So we're still working on it. Hang in there, Story and Dream Vortex participants. All will be as it was before, give or take the last two weeks of Story additions.

Meanwhile, still no progress in the writing. It's damn hard to concentrate when your little web mini-empire (mwahahaha! empire) is lying in chunks around your ankles. Did you notice that my entire domain here went down today? Just a glitch, but on top of everything, seeing one of those slimy "Your Web Site Here!" pages show up instead of your blog can be a real downer. (OK, it wasn't all that slimy, as such pages go. But it did have that annoyingly ubiquitous list of search terms and all.) I've been playing a lot of mind-numbing puzzle games and hitting the "get new email" button in Thunderbird with great frequency. (Sorry, Comcast.)

Tomorrow, Sunday, I hope to improve my productivity. I have lots of notes scribbled all over "Putting Down Roots" and will email it tomorrow night, in whatever form I've got it into, to the Borderlands Writer's Boot Camp. So my motivation to get hopping on the rewrite is to avoid getting told what I already know is wrong with the story, and instead get told things about the story I didn't already know. Otherwise, what a waste of an enrollment fee it would be!

Behold! Sock. Sock on foot of newly graduated and duly celebrated Tree. It fits! And it is both rainbow and sparkly, as requested by its recipient. I call it "The Margaritaville Parrot". It is made with two different skeins of Sockotta to achieve the rainbow color sequence, red and blue reinforcement thread, and Trendsetter Yarn's "Spruce" added in every fifth row or so in the cuff.

In this picture the sock is only crew length. I've got it off the needles on a bit of string for the sake of letting Tree try it on. I am now extended it to knee length. There will be more pictures when the sock is done.

So, I am a good knitter.

But I am a bad, bad writer-wife.

Back in 2002, I dug up an old science fiction cum horror story called, at the time, "Quiet In The Night" (after a line from Yeats's "The Two Trees", stuck in my head thanks to Loreena McKennitt), and gave it a thorough revision in preparation for the Weird Tales Short Story Contest--winners to be announced at that year's World Horror Convention in Chicago. It was my first year attending, and it only occurred to me to go because Neil Gaiman was a guest of honor that year.

At the time, my husband was living temporarily in Las Vegas for reasons to do with work. I sent him a copy, now entitled "Putting Down Roots", after I submitted the story to the contest. And for months and months, he didn't read it, also for reasons to do with work. He was working from home when he wasn't in the office, and falling asleep at the keyboard was a daily occurrence. He did not have a lot of time to read fiction, not even his wife's fiction, and this was a story he'd already expressed some dislike for.

A brief pause for synchronicity: In Chicago, across from the Airport Radisson, there was a Mediterranean restaurant that served gyros and falafel and the like. They also served fried perch. I had not hitherto associated fried perch with Mediterranean cuisine. I associated it with summer weekends at my Dad's friend's fishing camp on Lac Des Allemands, upon which memories I had based the setting of "Putting Down Roots". There's a scene in there in which perch are caught and fried and eaten. Although I didn't even place in the contest, and Weird Tales decided not to publish the story, I couldn't help but interpret the odd menu item as one of the ways the Universe has of patting me on the back. "Good job, Niki. You wrote it, you finished it, you submitted it. You went to a convention and met people in the industry, too. You, my dear, are on the right path."

And then months went by, and John didn't find time to read the story. Finally I morphed into my Mr. Hyde phase and began badgering, pestering, and guilt-tripping him until he finally agreed to read it and call me back with comments. I am not proud of myself as Mr. Hyde. It isn't the best side of me, and it makes me wonder why this man continues to stay married to me. I can be a real bitch.

Well, in spite of or because of my bitchiness, he read it. And he called me back. And he gave me a lot of good critique. I mean, a lot. Better than I deserved. I took notes all over the back couple of pages of my current writing notebook, and I resolved to do a new rewrite on the strength of my husband's comments.

Flash forward to today. This is the story I want to bring to the Borderlands Press Writer's Boot Camp to workshop. But since I haven't touched it in four years, I want to do the rewrite I promised myself and my husband that I would do.

And I can't find those notes.

I've flipped through every notebook I've filled since WHC02. And they just aren't there--or else I'm too blind to see them.

I'm deeply ashamed. John was exceedingly patient with me in spite of my Mr. Hyde phase; he took the time out of an exceedingly busy working life to read the story; his critique was exceedingly thorough. And I can't find the notes. I wasted all that generosity. All I remember of his comments is a vague sense of the expository bits being long and boring.

So... I guess I'll just be rewriting the story from my own current reread, with only my own 4-year-detached eyes and instincts to go on. And although he's heard this several times already, in person, I'm just going to continue apologizing to my long-suffering husband for having lost the notes.

And when I have time I'm going to read every effin' page of those notebooks until I find those notes. Dammit.

Heyo. Long week of recovering from after-travel. This happens. You'd think there's nothing to do on a train but relax, y'know, sleep and eat and knit and read and sleep some more? But maybe I suppose the train is stressier than it looks: what stop are we at? how long do we stop there? is there wi-fi nearby? how long until Denver? how far behind schedule are we now? is it dinner-time yet? Sort of a low-grade undercurrent of time awareness and schedule anxiety that makes real relaxation an impossibility. Possibly. In any case, on my first day back home I didn't manage to do anything more than lump.

Got a bit more news about stuff. Fantasy Magazine will not be publishing "Heroes To Believe In", for one thing. Sadness. On the other hand, I got good news from Borderlands Press, regarding my submission of "The Impact of Snowflakes"; I will be attending their "boot camp." Interestingly, one of the instructors who'll be there that weekend was in fact on the judges panel at the Flash Fiction contest: F. Paul Wilson. I am, shamefully, unfamiliar with his writing, which is why I didn't think to mention him in my big "Squeeee!" post, but I aim to rectify that matter shortly.

So I have plane tickets to buy, and I need to submit the story I actually want workshopped. I'll be sending them "Putting Down Roots" after digging up my husband's thoughtful comments on it for a brief rewrite. I haven't looked at that story in almost 4 years now; I need to make sure it isn't embarrassing. (Embarrassing from a craft point of view, OK, it's already embarrassing from the "OMG there's sex in it!" point of view, and I just need to get over that.) I also need to bring it down to under 5,000 words for the purposes of the workshop guidelines. If I can't, well, I guess they'll be critiquing "Heroes" instead.

And that's all I know for now. Lots of work to do over the weekend. Look for revisions to the stories mentioned above, further work on The Golden Bridle so that the next two chapters can be ready for review after the first two get crittered, and the completion and presentation of Tree's Graduation Socks. Busy busy busy! No lumping allowed! Busy-busy!

I am not entirely sure that I believe in omens, good or otherwise, although I do tend to think that the coincidences and absurdities around us are susceptible to the same sort of interpretation as dreams. But I do think--believe--know this for sure: That we want very much to do a thing indicates that the universe wants very much for us to do that thing. A writer's ache to write is evidence of the Universe's need for the stories that only that writer can tell.

(Talk to Barbara Hubbard about it. I happend to use an interview with her from Magical Blend Magazine to fill up my half-hour of volunteer reading this week, and I was all like, "Yeah, yeah, self-rewarding work, the need to create, all that, totally, yeah!" only I was also like "OK, you and Mr. Langevin get to sit in the time-out box for insane overuse of the word 'co-create.'")

So while I make no claims about portents and signs in the sky, I do feel justified in taking that triple rainbow Boulder was treated to today as a sign of encouragement. (Triple? Yes! If you look closely, you can see green through purple repeated at the bottom, one rainbow on top of another, both of 'em below a faintly hovering third.) Kind of like the elements sort of conspired to give me a gentle nudge in the direction I was already going.

(Did I ever tell you about "Putting Down Roots," the 2002 World Horror Convention, and fried perch at the Greek restaurant across the street from the airport Radisson? ...Right. About that, more some other time.)

Of course, my camera decided to kaput at me. The collage you see here is entirely thanks to a super-sweet neighbor of mine who did not turn and run the other way when I asked him if I could have copies of his pics. (It was totally the batteries. Put new batteries in, and the camera worked fine. There's enough juice left in the batteries to power the TV remote, maybe even a stereo walkman, but not the camera.) To him, many thanks, and the hope that he's OK with me posting these beauties.

And the novel? A good 800 more words. Not the same as a pathetic 800 more words. These were good. This was a good blend of the dominant "Oh, whatever will we do?" theme plus a leavening of humor to keep us from tumbling too far, too irrevocably into the self-pitying abyss. There were tears, there was laughter, there were hugs, there was snot on Todd's sleeve. It's all good. Tomorrow, Brian'll show up and the angstometer will rise a whole bunch.

Chapter 7 is long. I'm not sure if its huge length relative to the first six chapters is OK, or if it's a hint that I need to pack more Stuff into 'em all. I reread Chapters 1-3 and realized that there's a lot of cool foreshadowing of lovely subplottiness that, sadly, totally fails to show up in Chapters 4-7. For now, I'm ignoring it. But just wait until the next pass-through, the one after this rewrite is complete. Those seeds will sprout if I have to yank them out of their fartin' seed-cases myself.