author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

With recent deadlines behind me and unstructured fiction time ahead, I'm working on "The Impact of Snowflakes." This is another story that has been through the critique mill several times; most recently it received the attentions of my current neighborhood group.

I'm developing a process for this. It's a gradual process, an unhurried process, a process involving itty-bitty bites at a time, a process above all involving very little pressure upon myself. Revision is not a task I approach gleefully. Any strategy I can use to Not Scare Myself Off is a good strategy.

Anyway, it's how "It's For You" got revised and ready to submit, so I'm doing it again. It goes like this:

First, the scribbled-upon hard copies get three-hole-punched and popped into a three-ring-binder. Yesterday I made this process More Fun by acquiring color tab dividers (to separate story from story) along with sticky tabs in fun quilt-print patterns (to separate copy from copy).

Next, the story finds a home in a new Scrivener project using the short story template. An RTF copy of the story gets pulled in under the "Critiques" folder.

Then, I annotate this critiqued draft by entering each critic's feedback as linked comments. Linked comments can be created in any color; I assign one color to each critic. If the critic left me any general comments, I'll type that into a new file that lives folder-wise inside the critiqued draft.

(Here is where I complain a little about Scrivener for Windows. The manual claims that Scrivener remembers which color you used last in a linked comment, such that it will automatically create the next linked comment in that color. LIES. Every single one comes up in default yellow. So it's Highlight text, hit Shift-F4, hope like heck I didn't hit CTRL-F4 instead, type in the comment, right-click on the comment, select "Purple"... and repeat.)

Lastly, I begin typing in the new draft. I use a horizontal split-screen layout so I can reference the critiqued copy and its comments below the split while I type in the new draft above. The new draft, of course, goes in the "Draft" folder, either as one file or many depending on whether I work the scenes out of order.

Right now, I'm in the annotation stage. I'm giving myself permission to go through a single critiqued copy per day. This means that the work goes very slowly. But it also means a certain amount of composting--that background-level "thinking about things" process--happens too. Each person's feedback gets a day and a night of subconscious chewing-over. Hopefully that means that by the time I begin working on the new draft, possible solutions to the problems raised in the workshop are beginning to bubble into consciousness.

And oh boy are there problems in this story. The main thing I'm wibbling about is the isolation of the main character. I mean, yes, you get somewhat isolated when you live alone and the Snowpocalypse is shutting down the world little by little, but there's phones and internet and TV and stuff, and emergency personnel with their vehicles with their flashing lights and sirens. This is not an intimate two-person story like "It's For You." This is a worldwide crisis story. Which means I have to populate the world in which it occurs.

*wibble*

When wibbling, it's so very helpful to focus in on small, bite-sized tasks. Nibble-sized tasks. Tomorrow, I don't have to worry about populating the whole world. All I have to do is annotate the critiqued draft with the feedback scribbled on the next copy in my binder. I cannot begin to tell you what a relief that is.

In other news, Lightspeed has already declined "Other Theories of Relativity" for their Women Destroy Science Fiction issue. Which means that story is free to go knock on another editor's door. And because it's always easier to knock on a stranger's door if you've got a buddy, I sent along "The Day the Sidewalks Melted," who's seeking a first reprint home, to keep it company.

The two stories are oddly similar. I'm trying to consider this a plus. It's not "oh, dear, not one but two stories about broken relationships and loss and disaster written in a sort of Second Person of Direct Address point of view, hasn't this author any other tricks?" No. It's "My, what a lovely diptych of microfiction this is." Yes. That's exactly what it is.

Hello from Chicago, a surprisingly bike-friendly city! And hello from Wrigleyville--as bike rides go, not as far from Union Station as I feared. Seriously, other than the last 5 blocks of my ride, which were residential so meh, there wasn't an inch of route that wasn't marked with bike lanes or with "Shared Lane / Yield to Bikes" signs. How did Google know? I told it "Union Station to Sheffield House Hotel," it showed me a route including the interstate, I told it "No, walking" because I am neither a car nor a bus, and it gave me this. You might note that the second appearance of Milwaukee Road involves going the wrong way on a one-way street; well, on that one-way street, there are bike lanes going in both directions. That's how good it is.

As for Sheffield House Hotel... Put it this way; it's no Hilton. But it's reasonably clean, tolerably functional, cheap, and in the target neighborhood.

And as for biking, go me. I checked my bike on the train for the first time. I feel like I spent the entire week before my trip getting ready for that: buying tools, practicing removing or rearranging pieces of my bike, getting surprised by the need for new tires or the suddenly broken seat adjustment nut, & etc. But it was time well spent. When I got to Denver Union Station, it took me under 15 minutes to have the basket off, handebars lowered and turned, pedals removed, and the bike into the $15 box. They even let me stow my tool bag in the box, which Amtrak's web page says absolutely is not to be done.

Picking the bike up in Chicago was slightly more cryptic; you sort of just have to know that bikes won't come up to the baggage carousel, but that you have to go down to the basement in the hard hat area to claim 'em and put 'em together. And given that you're not going to ride away carrying that box, at least not as is, maybe you're resigned to buying a new one each time you check; maybe you talk to someone working in baggage retrieval and they agree to hold onto it for you. Maybe you stomp it into a flat 3" x 2" square and hope it'll reconstitute. Be creative.

But all of this is by-the-by. What I really wanted to blog about was how Amtrak is totally my favorite mobile writing retreat like ever. Which you knew, if you know me. But this trip totally rocked for writing.

It didn't look like it at first. The train ride started out... crowded. I mean, even for Memorial Day weekend. Crowded. Which is good; more people riding the rails means more likelihood of service expansion. But it also meant that they had trouble seating us all. Seriously, the train was rolling for a good 5 minutes before a crew member found me a home for the night. But that's OK; I never doubted they would. Amtrak wasn't my problem. No, we reserve that honor for Gripey McBickerson, father traveling with small son, who wasn't gonna let some Amtrak crew member tell him to wait in line like the other customers. Noooo.

Really, this is classic. Indulge me for a bit. You know that destructive nonsense about "the customer is always right"? Ever notice how customers who really believe it, bless their pointed little shoes, seem to think that they, themselves, are always more right than the other customers? In Whiny McSidlesneeze's case, he and his son were oh so much more important than the other, oh, 20 families including small children also waiting to board. He must be seated right now! Screw waiting in line like everyone else, seat him and his kid first! Before all the paired seats are taken! Such that he and his son end up at opposite ends of the train! Because Amtrak crew members can't possibly be adept at gently shuffling passengers around to ensure children remain safely with their parents!

I'm not going to go into the whole saga of Kvetching McSullenpants and his four year old son. Not here. It's not the point. Besides, the poor kid is clearly going to be embarrassed enough by his father as the years roll by; I shouldn't add to it. No no no no. The point is, when one of the coach passengers is obnoxious, suddenly no matter where you're sitting, it seems like you're bumping into them. And Mr. Whingiewoe Carp-n-Moan continued to be obnoxious after this point. He seemed quite sure that the rest of us would find his constant barrage of cynical, sarcastic commentary entertaining. And retold the saga of how some crew member tried to bully him around to one and all. And practically encouraged his kid to repeat the crew member's name with him, that they may remember it forever, that he might someday soon, any minute now, sic five lawyers on him for, y'know, not treating him like the special snowflake shooting star that he so clearly was.

And so on, and so forth, and this is my writing environment? But but but I must finish my rewrite before Chicago!

And yet things were wonderful.

So eventually, after the train's gotten as far as Commerce City, us last two end-of-the-line single stragglers are led to seats two cars down. And we settle in. And I take me, myself, and my computer, along with recently critiqued copies of "The Impact of Snowflakes," into the Cafe Car... where I discover, to my delight, that it's the sort with two outlets at every cafe table and two more at ever cluster of sightseer-style chairs. This is not to be taken for granted! On the California Zephyr, one never knows what the outlet situation will be in coach or in the lounge. By Summer 2011, all Superliners should have outlets at every seat (offical word from Amtrak rep), but until then, I tend to squee a bit when I see outlets. So I happily ensconce myself and read through my friends' comments. Then I sort of just sit there, composting it all in my head, and playing with the Mardi Gras silk that Avedan gave me for my birthday (depicted here with Birdseye Maple "Lily Spindle" purchased at the new downtown Boulder shop Gypsy Wool). It spins up pretty.

So that was last night. This morning I woke up as we pulled into Omaha, about 6:20 AM or so (a bit behind schedule), and went into the wake-up routine: teeth brushing and coffee drinking and Morning Pages scribbling. And then a little more spinning. And then--"OK, no more procrastination! Must have this done by 3:00!"--sitting at another Cafe Car table to revise "Snowflakes" over the next... five hours, I think. Great leaping Gods and Goddess. Five freakin' hours.

(Mr. Sweetiepie and son showed up a lot, but they were Not Allowed to spoil the happy writerly buzz. Headphones are good. So is Determinedly Enjoying The View or Doggedly Staring Into The Computer Screen. Still, allowed myself a small amount of schadenfreude when overhearing dad admonishing tantruming son, "Hey now, no drama." Because goodness knows Kvetchy McMutterscoff never caused any drama.)

So as it turned out, I had not brought my Canon BJ-10sx with me in vain. I plugged in the printer upstairs in the lounge car and finished printing out that story about 45 minutes before arriving in Chicago. Then into the Priority International envelope it went, ready to be toted up to the nearest U.S. P.S. customer service lobby!

First thing I did in Chicago, other than retrieve and reconstitute my bike, was stick that story in the mail Priority International. Because I have a March 31 deadline I'd like to beat, thanks! I'll let you know how it goes.

So it's later and I'm hanging around the Sheffield House Hotel lobby, posting this. And on the one hand, I'm feeling like, way to go me! Today, I Was A Writer! Good job! You have Accomplished and now you may go play. Which I did. I biked over to Blue Bayou and said hi to my brother--who was not, in my opinion, nearly surprised enough to see me riding my bike in Chicago. He just said, "Hey, you're a little late, aren't you?" Meh. I'll do the crawfish thing tomorrow. Today I was just saying hi. And then I went over to North Clark to a Japanese restaurant I'd noticed on my way up from the station: All You Can Eat Sushi. That appears to be the actual name of the place. I ate there. Now, I hurt.

But on the other hand - and this is weird, I think - I'm feeling both addicted to stress and addicted to the happy. The stress is, "Oh my Gods I have to get this stuff DONE today," and the gut level of it isn't necessarily affected by having actually got the stuff done. I have to keep reminding myself that I did my assignment, really, I can relax now!

And then there's the happy. I like Feeling Like A Writer! I should do it again! I should spend another four hours revising something so I can pop it in the mail so I can get that feeling again!

Seeing as how it's eleven o'clock at night, I've been up since six, and I didn't sleep very soundly last night, those 'nother four hours are at the very least not going to happen right now. But watch this space for developments; a much shorter version of it may happen tomorrow or Monday.

P.S. I'm on Twitter now, Gods help me. Click the link if hearing me jabber interests you; I'm doing a good bit of it since I'm traveling. Meanwhile, my uber-rss should start feeding to Twitter via TwitterFeed. Let's see what happens when I post this...

I've been working my way through Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way lately. Today is Week Four, Day Two.

Why am I doing this? Mainly because it's been a long time since I could truthfully say, "I write every day." And that bothers me. At the very least, an honest effort to pursue Cameron's 12-week course will mean doing daily "morning pages" for at least 84 days straight. Morning pages may not be art, they may not be salable, they may not even be writing (Cameron says not; she says writers have the hardest time with her course because they do try to turn their morning pages into "writing"). But they are productive exercise. They're me thinking on the page, which is worthwhile; for having such a nonstop hamster-wheel of a mind, I have a tendency to avoid my own thoughts.

I'm trying to make a good faith effort on the weekly exercises, too. Stuff like "Describe your childhood room. Now describe your current room. Can you add anything to it from your childhood room?" and "Time travel: Imagine yourself at 80. What have you done since you were 50?" I often avoid these because they feel too twee, or because I'm sure I did them last time I went through the book (in, what, 2002?) and nothing's changed since (O RLY?). Or, worse, because I'm certain there's nothing there. I had a good childhood. My parents raised me to pursue my creative bliss. When I showed signs of wanting to be a painter, Mom bought me acrylics and canvas; when I started saying I was going to be a writer, Mom brought home a Fisher-Price typewriter. My teachers were all supportive and taught me how to submit fiction to paying markets. I've got a loving and well-paid husband who is happy to support my writing habit and likes me to read him my stories. Surely I have no "childhood enemies" stifling my craft, no super-ego foe planted by adult disapproval, no current environment devaluing my efforts. Surely?

Except that I haven't written or submitted much since coming home from Viable Paradise back in October 2006. Clearly something's going on. And Cameron's course feels like a method of self-discovery I can have faith in. So I go through it in the spirit of play and, occasionally, surprise myself with an insight. "That voice in my head that wants perfection all the time, that needs to have its expectations met. Why's it there at all?" "Why do I so often say to myself in my morning pages, 'Yesterday I was a good girl; I did X, Y, and Z like I ought.'? Do I feel guilty about something? About having fun, maybe?"

And of course there's positive affirmations. One thing the student is supposed to do is listen for the Censor's "blurts" in the morning pages and come up with "positive affirmations" that counter the blurts. So if the Censor says, "Why do you even bother starting? You know you've got no ideas worth pursuing," I can grab that blurt and devise an affirmation: "I am a prolific writer. I write new stories every day. There is no end to the flow of story ideas." Then I can write it down five times in a row. Does it help? Maybe. It's too soon to tell. But it doesn't hurt, and it gets me closer to the end of my three daily longhand pages. So why not?

Do note that if you're the sort to scoff at exercises and "tricks to get you to write" that, y'know, real writers don't need, don't bother telling me about it. I don't particularly care.

In any case, I'm seeing real, tangible results in my "productive" (read: salable) writing. I'm rewriting and submitting again. Tomorrow evening, "The Impact Of Snowflakes" gets critiqued by my semimonthly writing group in Denver. And a few days ago I took the time to read through every version I have of "The Day The Sidewalks Melted" and began making mental notes toward a revision. I hope to submit both to commercial markets Very Soon. Also, I've been uploading to Constant-Content articles in my "Awaken to Dreams" series--and someone came along and bought the right to publish five of them on their website today. Which is another $50 in my pocket. Which is nice!

Only here's the snag. Week 4 in The Artist's Way is the infamous Reading Deprivation week. No reading. At all. No drowning out your creativity with the soporific effect of other people's words.

Sounds... easy enough. Well, it sounds painful. Reading at night is how I get to sleep. Reading blogs is how I stay in touch with communities I cherish; it's also my primary means of getting news of the world. But it sounds doable, right?

Except... I'm planning a series of pro-vaccination articles to make available for sale at Constant-Content. But if I can't read, I can't research.

Except... I was going to rewrite "Sidewalks," but I can't if I can't have the text-to-date open in front of me.

Except... there's also email! Instant messenger! Physical mail, including utility bills! Volunteer reading for AINC! And so forth! And so on!

So, I compromise. Today I wrote a rough draft of the pro-flu-shot article ("Ten Excuses People Give For Avoiding The Influenza Vaccine"), and it's full of red "[look this up later]" notes. I'll keep writing rough drafts all week, and next week I'll do the research and finish them. And the fiction rewrites can wait; I'll write new fiction this week and do the rewrites next week. And as for the reading that's necessary for daily communication... well, I'm not going to neglect my friends and loved ones by not reading their communications. And I'm not going to stint on the work I've committed to. But I'm learning that there's a lot more reading than I realized that can simply wait.

Truly this is the age of information. Written information. One can't get away from it entirely. But I guess one can take long walks, listen to music, knit more, and meditate.

And play more Puzzle Pirates! Right? Right?

(Seriously. Playing more YPP shortly. I've been a very good girl today. I deserve some fun time.)

John and I are on Maui. To be precise, we're in the town of Ka'anapali, just north along the shore from Lahaina. To get here, you follow highway 30 (the Honoapi'ilani Highway) clockwise around the south shore from the bay. This can be complicated if, for instance, the mountain is on fire. We arrived at Kaluhui Airport at 6:30 PM yesterday afternoon to find the highway had been closed; we had dinner and then found the highway had been reopened--partially; and we sat in a taxi in traffic for 3 hours before checking into the Westin Ka'anapali Ocean Villas at, depending on which of us two you ask, 12:30 or 1:00 AM.

Someone on the radio said of the fire, "They're saying it looks like you're on the big island watching the lava come down the mountain." It did. The entire edge of mountain was glowing with flames and embers. Burning trees looked like being lit up for Christmas. We got a nice long look at the devastation, waiting in traffic to reach the partially blocked stretch of Hwy 30.

So it will probably surprise no one that I did not, in fact, finish and submit a rewrite of "Snowflakes". I meant to finish the rewrite on the plane and then submit it from the hotel, but the story needs a lot more work than I had time to give it, and I wasn't up for anything this morning other than staggering to the bed and falling unconscious.

The freelance gig did get completed, though, so that's good.

Right now, all John and I have planned is sunrise on Mt. Haleakala tomorrow morning and a luau Monday night. I intend to get rewrites of "Snowflakes" and the soon-to-be-renamed "Putting Down Roots" while I'm here, as well as do some read-throughs and critiques I've promised. Which should be very easily accomplished, as we don't plan to overstuff our week on Maui with stress and events.

Vacation rocks. So long as the rock isn't on fire.

Look! They're finished! The "Margaritaville Parrot Knee Socks" are finished! And they fit, and they stay up, and they look awesome.

Tree is leaving for Burning Man today. I gave the socks to her yesterday after finally grafting off the last cuff, sewing in the elastic, and basting on the bows. They really aren't graduation presents anymore. They're "My First Burning Man" presents. Tree will be the envy of the playa.

And now I can proceed to my Handknit Bikini Experiment.

Of course I can't just blog about knitting. That's not Actually Writing. Besides, these so-called "thumbnails" (click for full-sized, high-quality JPEGs) are too big for such a short blog entry. They'll hang down and stomp all over my blog entry about Nice Surprises. So, without further ado, Other Stuff that Isn't Knitting.

More Freelance Deadlines! Got another StyleCareer eGuide to complete for August 31. What is this one about? Wouldn't you like to know!

Short Story Revisions! I have two to do. As I've said, "Putting Down Roots" needs to be rewritten and submitted ASAP. However, between freelance gigs and knitting, life continues to happen. So I've slated it for the first week of September, which is A) after the eGuide deadline, and B) to take place in Hawaii. Not that John and I don't plan on doing Hawaii things while being in Hawaii, of course. But I do have a tendency to treat vacations as writing workshops, even when they aren't actual formal writing workshops. This is a good thing.

The other short story needing revision is "Snowflakes." Yeah, that still. I may have mentioned earlier that the webzine Firefox News publishes fiction? Yes. Themed fiction. For $.01/word up to $100. Submission guidelines are this-a-way. The current submission period calls for stories appropriate to the theme "It's the End of the World As We Know It," which is obviously perfect. Well, obviously to those who have read it (Critique Circle) or heard me read it (Borderlands Boot Camp Summer '06, Nancy Kilpatrick's Self-Editing Workshop at World Horror '06). Yes, it's not usually best practice to submit first to a lower-paying market, but in the case of synchronicity I will make an exception. Deadline: September 1.

Next: How I will manage to do 3000 words per day on the freelance gig and spend at least an hour a day on revising a short story until it's ready, every day until August 31. Hint: With much difficulty, stress, and pulling out of eyelashes.

But! Socks! So there.

So. I read stuff. Out loud. Like I sometimes do. A lot of other people did, too. The floor of the general meeting room was host to quite a few characters, some quiet and some loud and some jovial and some absolutely insane like guanola.

I read "Snowflakes" Version 2, because Version 3 is still stuck where I left off about a month and a half ago. And I was changing words here and there because them Critique Circle critters made me very consious of Version 2's inadequacies. But no one seemed to mind, because the narrator in that story is in the bat-shit insane category--or at least appears to be if you don't assume that everything she's telling you is true (except for the bit about Not Being Interested In Josh That Way)--and that can be a little distracting.

She was not the craziest of them, however. She was only crazy like Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart." There were others that were crazy. Crazy like Woody Allen. Crazy like Naked Lunch! (Do not talk to me about cockroaches and earwigs! Talk to this guy about such things! He will tell you!)

Tomorrow: Breakfast! Return of manuscripts to those fellow writers with whom today's scheduling did not grant me an audience! (Some writers I had in not one but two sessions; some I had not at all. We are all a little confused by this.) A closing speech from our instructors! Tearful farewells!

And--oh yeah--presentation of our completed homework assignments via a non-participating reader!

(Homework assignments, did she say?)

Tonight: Working on said homework assignment like it's sundown on November 30th!

I'm afraid the rewrite of "Snowflakes" isn't ready to be submitted today. Haven't even finished the new draft type-in, so I can't even update the word count. Just as well; I really ought to order the latest issue of Farthing before I try to submit. Best practice and all.

Still, slight disappointment. The story was so clear while I was just thinking about it. Once I got into the rewrite, it sorta... muddled. I'd try to address a problem one of the critiques pointed out, and I'd find myself adding like three paragraphs of highly suspect first draft. Then I'd try rewriting something no one else had a problem with, because I didn't know whether I liked it better with the adverbial phrase up front or at the back of the sentence.

And I expect to be able to do this with novels?

Well. I shall be out of town this weekend--going to Seattle mainly for my sister-in-law's housewarming party and additionally to catch up with friends old and new. I'll be heading to the airport in about an hour. For once, I'm not bringing my laptop with me--or my husband's laptop, whatever--so there will be no weekend bloggity. There will be story revision, but it'll be the old fashioned way: pen, ink, paper, print-outs. Hopefully there will be something to submit, somewhere, come Monday.

Ta-ta fer now.

Which seems obvious on the face of it, granted, but I just actually realized it tonight. I just read through the critiques for "Snowflakes" and as a result I can practically see the finished, publishable draft hanging in front of my face like a shiny bright jewel. This is not a revision session that gives me Doubts. This is a revision session that gives me Great Glee.

I think it has to do with the way the shape of 1900-ish words fits in my head all at one time a lot more nicely than the shape of 50,000 words do.

Anyway, I'll print everything out and sleep on it tonight, and then I just might get this sucker revised and in the slush. Farthing just happens to have a reading period open until end of June, which means if nothing else a quick-ish response. (Also, it being a UK market, it means I have extra cause to be grateful that one of the critiques came from a non-USian who was unfamiliar with Memorial Day. It's good to for me to be reminded that some concepts are unique to particular countries. Duh, Niki!)

Oh. And. By the way. 1100 words written today on one of the work-for-hire manuscripts. Oh yeah. I's a good girl.

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!

The story workshopped Saturday has been committed to email as of nine hours ago. As for myself, I am in the Emeryville train station, ready to be committed to rail in about an hour.

Before leaving San Francisco, before finishing and emailing my story, before sitting around half the night in the Hospitality Suite at the Dead Dog Party knitting and watching Adult Swim, I actually got out of the hotel for a bit. I started out by asking the hotel staff, "How do I get to an Amtrak bus stop tomorrow morning?" Oddly enough, the staff member seemed aware only of the Ferry Building stop, and the only way he seemed to know how to get me there was allll the way down Van Ness on a southbound #47 to Market Street, and then alll the way back over on the Market Street cable car, forming a nice big "V" shape over the map of downtown San Francisco in doing so.

"What about Pier 39?" I asked, because Amtrak's pamphlet showed it would pick up passengers there too, and the northbound #47 bus would go right there. Believe me, with my luggage, I didn't want any more transfer points than were strictly necessary.

"Look, all you need to do is get to the Ferry Building, see?" He redrew the "V" shape. "Like that."

"And there's no route to just get me there straight?" I drew a line across the top of the "V" from the circle he'd drawn at the Holiday Inn to the circle he'd drawn at the Ferry Building. The line that capped the "V" went along a street I'd become familiar with, California, as I'd taken the #1 bus along it to the hotel on Thursday morning after checking out of the Green Tortoise Adventure Hostel. It was one of the cross streets that demarcated the block containing the Holiday Inn. "Nothing runs directly along California between here and there?"

"Not that I know of!" he said cheerfully.

I was doubtful. I decided to scout things out for myself. I took the northbound #47 up to Pier 39 / Fisherman's Wharf, found the Amtrak bus stop there, and said to myself, "A-ha!" Then I commenced to putter. I was at Pier 39, after all. There were supposedly all sorts of fun things here. Restaurants, and candy, and an arcade, and a merry-go-round, and seals! Well, actually, sea lions, you can tell the difference because they're smarter and have visible ear flaps and so forth, but--seals!!!! Like fifty or sixty of 'em, laying out on the platforms between the piers and barking at each other and scritching themselves behind the ears with their foot-like flippers and lounging with their furry bellies in the air and--wow! Sea lions. Dude.

Then I figured I'd just walk along the Embarcadero to the Ferry Building. It was good exercise and pretty too. I located the Amtrak stop there as well, ate an Ahi sandwich and worked on the workshopped story at a restaurant in the Ferry Building, and finally turned inland to get on the Market Street cable car.

And then I found out that there is a public transit route that caps the damn "V" that the hotel staff member drew. I found the damn rout that runs right along California. It's the California cable car, duh, and it runs practically from the Ferry Building right out to Van Ness and then stops.

Rather a convenient line of public transportation for the hotel staff to be completely unaware of, don't you think?

At this point in the narration, the author pauses to regale you with a nightmare. I don't have many nightmares. When I do, they tend to fall into one of a handful of categories. There's the airplane or car trouble dream, in which I can't brake or steer or land worth a damn--I had one of those Sunday morning, finding myself awakening at the controls of a Boeing 757 which I had absolutely no training to handle or certification to pilot and which my husband was steering within mere feet of the water. I had to grab the yoke to force us into a wings-a-tilt position so we'd fit underneath a bridge coming straight up. "Why are you flying so close to the water?" I screeched; "Because I'm more comfortable there," he said. I corrected this as soon as I could, but we were not in VFR conditions and I didn't know what to do other than land and wait for help. I later told the jet pilot who came to take the plane home, "Really, I swear, I just sort of woke up in the cockpit. I don't know how I got there."

So that's the vehicle trouble dream. It used to take place in cars, but now it almost exclusively takes place in airplanes because, well, piloting stresses me out more.

Then there's the nightmare of pursuit in which some monstrous person or thing chases me at a walking speed, knowing I can run but I can't hide. That one has happened only very, very rarely since I got into my 20s.

And the nightmare of being unprepared for school happens fairly frequently. It almost always puts me back in high school, not college. I've heard others say the same. We form more of a stressy connection with the school our parents chose, maybe, than with the school we chose to escape to. Or maybe high school is more grounded in the subconscious, being usually in our home neighborhoods and associated with rites of passage like the sweet sixteen, learning to drive, and so forth.

Well, you probably recognize all those dreams. Especially the school one. And you'll probably recognize this one, too: the nightmare of falling. Only when I have it, it's special. It's quite precise. It very rarely involves a straight freefall; instead, it begins on an inclined plane. And I'm in a vehicle of some sort: a roller coaster, a car, a bus, maybe even a waterslide. And I am going down or up a very steep incline, so very steep and increasingly so that inevitably my vehicle's wheels (or, in the case of the waterslide, my butt cheeks) lose contact with the road (or track or slide) and begins to fall as though the plane had become perpendicular to the ground.

The entire way up Nob Hill while riding the California Street Cable Car, I kept thinking, "Greeeeat. Fresh fodder for my falling-off-an-inclined-plane nightmares. Just what I needed."

Because California Street is pretty damn steep. I'd wager 10%, some of those blocks. And the cable car is two-thirds open to the sides. My entire stay in the Holiday Inn, I'd fallen asleep and woken up staring at a Photoshop-filtered picture of people riding a San Francisco trolly (ding! ding! think Rice-a-Roni!), and I'd marvelled at the way they some of them stood on the running board and held onto the side pole as they rode. Was that allowed? Was the driver aware? Yes the driver is aware, and it is in fact expected, and it is not the norm for someone sitting on the bench in the open bit to clutch the side pole and the back of the bench with white knuckles and shaking arms as the car rides up past Chinatown.

Yes I'm a wimp. What's your point?

On my way back to the Ferry Building with luggage this morning, I sat in the enclosed section in the middle. I still did my share of white-knuckling, especially when a young lady stepped right out onto the running board in preparation for her stop about two blocks above the heart of Chinatown. I suppose people get used to the darndest things.

Hell, I suppose if I can get used to steering an airplane, or to chatting with Big Name Authors at conventions without going all "hrrrr dahhhh thhbbbb uh You Rock, Sir! i er ummm....", or with reading my own fiction aloud in front of a group of strangers (which group includes said Big Name Author(s)), other people can get used to seemingly death-defying feats such as hanging out the side of a cable car going 10 miles an hour down a 10% grade incline. Each to their own.