And tonight is:
Plan B. Jeremy offers to help Alaric and Damon deal with Katherine, despite Elena's concerns about Jeremy's safety. Caroline and her mother share some rare quality time together. When Bonnie learns some new information about Mason, she decides to share it with Stefan, which leads to Damon taking action on his own.
This looks to have all my fave episode elements. We shall see.
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Or hopefully just travels! I've gotten a few emails now from people wondering if we'll be at World Fantasy in lovely Columbus next weekend after spotting Christopher's name on the program. The answer is: yes! We remembered to make hotel rezzies, but kept forgetting to mail in our registration (yes, ouch, expensive now*) and so will be doing that on site. Which is why we aren't on the membership list.
Jury's still out on whether we'll arrive Thursday evening or Friday morning, but look forward to seeing some (lots?) of y'all there. Yay!
p.s. Christopher has a reading at 5 p.m. on Saturday, which as all good people know is cocktail hour. Or therebouts. You should come to that, obviously.
*If you have one to transfer because you are suddenly not going, email me pleez.
That Libba Bray, she's right (and hilarious) as usual. This time offering advice on life/career track choices* to a high school senior who wrote her with a question:
What good is it to spend a life doing something you don’t like? That’s not living; that’s marking time. And maybe it’s that from where I sit, I have the benefit of having witnessed the many transformations of various friends, almost none of whom ended up where they thought they would but almost all of whom love where they are. (Quick sidebar: Auto-correct is telling me that last sentence should read: “All of who.” Auto-correct is wrong. “Of” is a preposition; a prepositional phrase demands the objective case. Therefore, “All of whom” is correct, says the daughter of the hardcore English teacher who forced me to use correct grammar. See? I did learn something! This sidebar is just to say, Fiona, that IF EVEN AUTO-CORRECT CAN BE WRONG, who the hell can tell you how to live your life to the fullest? Right. Moving on.) We never stop coming of age. We never stop growing and learning and changing. Hopefully, the road is long and paved with interesting choices and sidebars and unplanned magic and love and loss and joy and frustration. This is all good news, Fiona. Hopeful news. There is a lot you can do with hopeful news.
And another snippet, in case you were thinking of not reading the whole thing:
You asked for my advice, and I don’t want to let you down. I can’t tell you what to do or what would make you happy or whether or not you’ll accomplish all of your dreams or half of them or if your dreams will change over time. Only you can figure that out. Maybe you should travel the world. (Travel broadens your mind and heart.) Learn about other cultures. (It creates understanding and tolerance.) Work to make the world a little more fair in whatever way you can. (The world needs you.) Pursue work which fulfills you even if it means having another job on the side. (Who wants to just mark time?) Be kind when you can and forthright when you need to kick ass. (Benevolent bad-assery. It’s what’s for dinner.) Most importantly, keep learning, growing, reaching. Keep getting to know yourself as much as you can so that you will understand what makes you happy and what doesn’t and know to go about the former and avoid the latter. Being able to make yourself happy is a life skill that we learn as we go along. Live as honestly and authentically as you can because, in the long run, it’s a lot simpler and less anxiety-producing. Really, if you’re going to wipe out and fall on your ass on occasion (also a vital part of your education…along with getting back up), it’s better to fail as yourself than as somebody else.
Read the whole thing, regardless of whether you need career advice. It is honest, heartfelt, awesome.
Note: My math portfolio item in high school was an essay about why I didn't like math because it tried to narrow down a question to only one answer. Score.
*After I'd been working for a year or two, I got invited back to my alma mater** (at state school–holla) for a panel to give advice to students on entering the workforce, getting good jobs, etc. I remember distinctly how insane everyone acted when I said, essentially, "Don't make too many plans–you never know what'll happen, and if you have this whole thing you're attached to, then you don't see opportunities. You don't follow the weird choices life puts in your path. Just: Be interesting. Work hard. Remember people's names." There was a whole five-year plan contingent that uproared. But, you know, I stand by this. Especially from that vantage, thinking you know anything about what's going to happen next is more than a little insane. And that doesn't really change: you can never know for sure.***
**When I was invited back to networking day this year to talk about networking, I gave a talk about how I don't believe in networking, that instead I believe in being curious and interested in people. (And, as Libba says, in making friends rather than "connections.") My handouts were from The Onion. They will eventually stop asking me back, I'm sure.
***This doesn't mean don't have goals, obviously. But goals aren't everything. Life is a process, and it can't be just about ticking ticky boxes and checking items off a list. Especially someone else's list.****
****I officially apologize to all my long-suffering high school and college instructors (I was a good student, but probably a, hmm, difficult to manage one at times). I liked to argue. I was already doing the self-education by book, ignoring math whenever possible, reality hacking thing by seventh grade. Oddly, I was convinced until I became an adult that I was lazy, but it turns out I probably wasn't ever lazy. I just only worked on the things I prioritized, and sometimes those didn't match up with what I was supposed to be doing and so that read as laziness. But I was always doing stuff… and I believe the right stuff. I was blessed with parents who supported me despite this contrarian quality. And I wouldn't take any of it back. I'm happy to be here.
Catching up on various things after being out of town and (relatively-speaking) out of commission with the most creaky of neck cricks last week. Back soonest.
The Florida Writers Foundation is having a fundraising auction, with the online action kicking off this weekend. I donated a 50-page manuscript critique, which you can read more about here, and see what else is up for the taking. (I'll probably be a cheap date for your novel.)
The auction bidding opens Saturday and closes Tuesday at 10 p.m. Eastern.
For the NBA noms, which are all really interesting this year (I always love it when everyone is WTFing the adult fiction category–it's a tradition). And the young readers category is great:
Paolo Bacigalupi, Ship Breaker (Little, Brown & Co.)
Kathryn Erskine, Mockingbird
(Philomel Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group)
Laura McNeal, Dark Water (Alfred A. Knopf)
Walter Dean Myers, Lockdown
(Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers)
Rita Williams-Garcia, One Crazy Summer
(Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers)
Paolo's and Rita's are two of my very favorite books of the year and I'm so glad to see them both up for this. And I've heard nothing but wonderful things about Mockingbird, and look forward to tracking down Lockdown and Dark Water. (Also note: Way to go Amistad imprint.)
Stop playing Fallen London (effing nightmares!) or whatever productive activities you're engaged in immediately. It's time for Dear Aunt G to answer some more questions for the upcoming ish of LCRW. Entrust your burning inquiries to Gavin within the strictest of confidences.
Note: There has been a rash–an outbreak, really–of questions of the, shall we say, meta variety. We can only handle so many of these. Surely you've got a few more specific conundrums to feed the advice-o-tron.
Everyone's favorite weekday (besides Friday, obvs) is here, and not a moment too soon:
Kill or Be Killed. While Stefan and Damon argue over how to handle the Lockwoods, Tyler learns more about his Uncle Mason and the family curse. Despite Elena's wishes, Jeremy gets closer to the Lockwood mystery by hanging out with Tyler. Sheriff Forbes receives some shocking information from Mason, leading to a chaotic night.
I love it when the boys bicker. Plus, chaos!
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Michael Cunningham has a fabulous essay at the NYT about the ways in which all acts of writing and reading are translations:
Here’s a secret. Many novelists, if they are pressed and if they are being honest, will admit that the finished book is a rather rough translation of the book they’d intended to write. It’s one of the heartbreaks of writing fiction. You have, for months or years, been walking around with the idea of a novel in your mind, and in your mind it’s transcendent, it’s brilliantly comic and howlingly tragic, it contains everything you know, and everything you can imagine, about human life on the planet earth. It is vast and mysterious and awe-inspiring. It is a cathedral made of fire.
And another snippet (Helen is a waitress, and devoted leisure reader):
I began to think of myself as trying to write a book that would matter to Helen. And, I have to tell you, it changed my writing. I’d seen, rather suddenly, that writing is not only an exercise in self-expression, it is also, more important, a gift we as writers are trying to give to readers. Writing a book for Helen, or for someone like Helen, is a manageable goal.
It also helped me to realize that the reader represents the final step in a book’s life of translation.
Well worth the time. (I'm at the stage of my current draft where I feel like I'm trapped inside the cathedral of fire, but there are worse places to be.)
Edited to add: See also the wonderful Tiffany's related post.
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