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Jun. 20th, 2007 11:21 amI'm mostly recovered from festival--the camping dishes are washed, the sleeping bags are aired out, and the tent's back in the attic. I don't have so much of that burning-up-on-reentry experience as I used to.
What do I mean by burning up on reentry? After several days of living in a little Pagan world in the woods, where the key structural elements in the day are ritual, music, and food, in that order of importance, it's really brainbending to come home to a strip-mall-centric suburb and live by clock time and the tides of Route 18 car traffic. Most years, there's also the physical exhaustion of having tried to fit a summer's worth of dancing into four days. (I took it easy on the body this year. No need for chastisement.) Some people, mostly the ones who don't sunburn as easily as I do, find it difficult to remember that they need to wear clothing to leave the house. (There was the year BD got home, shucked most of her clothes, and then watered all the plants on her apartment's balcony before her partner pointed out that her being topless might trouble the neighbors. Oops.) A few days of seeing everyone around you as the Goddess's perfect child can make the arbitrary constrictions of daily life seem even more absurd than usual.
Came home to find a rejection letter for a short story in my mailbox, and was discouraged all out of proportion. When you're already reeling with culture shock at a return to the ordinary, perfectly normal things like rejection letters seem to be freighted with significance. All this really signifies is that that particular guy didn't want to buy that particular piece. Which is fine. I don't cotton to everything he publishes, so why should he cotton to everything I write? Sometimes a sense of ordinariness is advantageous.
I didn't get in a big word count at festival this year. Really, the big word count of last year was a fluke, and I don't know why I expected it to be the beginning of a trend. What I did get was a much clearer understanding of the story I've been working on, such that I was able to peel out an entire subplot that just didn't belong there. I probably got 3000 words and many research hours closer to done, just by refining them out of the project.
What do I mean by burning up on reentry? After several days of living in a little Pagan world in the woods, where the key structural elements in the day are ritual, music, and food, in that order of importance, it's really brainbending to come home to a strip-mall-centric suburb and live by clock time and the tides of Route 18 car traffic. Most years, there's also the physical exhaustion of having tried to fit a summer's worth of dancing into four days. (I took it easy on the body this year. No need for chastisement.) Some people, mostly the ones who don't sunburn as easily as I do, find it difficult to remember that they need to wear clothing to leave the house. (There was the year BD got home, shucked most of her clothes, and then watered all the plants on her apartment's balcony before her partner pointed out that her being topless might trouble the neighbors. Oops.) A few days of seeing everyone around you as the Goddess's perfect child can make the arbitrary constrictions of daily life seem even more absurd than usual.
Came home to find a rejection letter for a short story in my mailbox, and was discouraged all out of proportion. When you're already reeling with culture shock at a return to the ordinary, perfectly normal things like rejection letters seem to be freighted with significance. All this really signifies is that that particular guy didn't want to buy that particular piece. Which is fine. I don't cotton to everything he publishes, so why should he cotton to everything I write? Sometimes a sense of ordinariness is advantageous.
I didn't get in a big word count at festival this year. Really, the big word count of last year was a fluke, and I don't know why I expected it to be the beginning of a trend. What I did get was a much clearer understanding of the story I've been working on, such that I was able to peel out an entire subplot that just didn't belong there. I probably got 3000 words and many research hours closer to done, just by refining them out of the project.
