Why Superheroes Are Necessary: Touchstones of Strength

Every now and then I tell myself, "Fake it till you make it, Mare." And, you should, know this is a terribly useful device should you *not* want to slide into some undesirable set of behaviors or, gulp, mooooooods. But the whole "fake it " part is often dang difficult to convincingly get down. Because if you knew how to be golden boy Gallant, then you wouldn't default into wack-a-doodle Goofus all the time! So, what really, really works is using some inspiring frame of reference. ...A frame of reference that isn't Gallant because that kid is too much of a wedgie-needing sycophant for me, never mind I'm not real up-to-date on his activities post all those Orthodontist office visits when I was 13 years old and had access to stacks of spittle-laden Highlights from the waiting room anyway, so I can't endorse what I don't know.

NPR reporter Jaime Tarabay, for example, used Buffy from Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a role model while in Baghdad. Much like a frightened, small-boned boy trying to get through a rough-and-tumble school day with a Superman tee worn under his regular clothes, Tarabay privately clung to Buffy when dealing with mental stress of needing to do her job away from home in a confusing and violent environment. Tarabay just thought of Buffy's courage and cobbled together an imitation of Buffy's integrity as best she could.

I listened to the story this morning and realized I'm actually due to switch up who I use for my own personal superhero inspiration. I tend to rotate a set of four or five of them over the course of year, and I even keep a small collage of these wickedly wonderful souls, both actual and fictional, in photo frame on my bookshelf. So I've got some thinking to do this next week. And, as if referencing Buffy and Highlights' Goofus & Gallant wasn't a big enough display of geekitude for you, I'm going to warn that the Doctor from, yes, Doctor Who may be chosen, ultimately, as one of my personal role models, too.

Essential Items Need Not Be Essential

My Mom is all about throwing out the things you don't need. She's condensed the most important aspects of her life into a room, in fact, just in case a fire goes down (disasters, you see, are guaranteed in my family's estimation, so you best be ready). The financial records and other special information are all tucked into a locked fire safe box, at the ready, near her sleeping place. A heartfelt reader, she routinely parts with books so as to keep her space utterly uncluttered. For her, it's mentally healthful and downright essential to only keep what you need around you.

So, you'll understand how startled and touched I was to see that she'd kept some photos of me from when I was a kid. She even sent me a digital image of them all.

Yeah, my Mom totally loves me.

Tilting Forward: Spring and Summer Readings for Clarion 2008 and Beyond!

This morning I woke up with a concentrated sense of purpose. Since I returned from a long stay with family in Florida, that sense of purpose has been there, showing up clear and bright on some days and only dull and dim on others. What’s pretty damn delectable is it has been there in some form everyday.

But it’s today I’m focusing on. This morning to be exact. I’m gleefully going through all my books, you see. Clarion makes a wise suggestion that you ought be familiar with the instructors’ work, and I’m quite happy to say I mostly am.* Of course I aim to be as thoroughly familiar with them as possible before workshop.** However, my primary objective—the one that is absolutely non-negotiable—is filling my head with all varieties of material that are smash-bang ideal for my future creative projects . After all, what’s a better gift for a teacher than getting to read peculiar and exuberant first drafts than fraidy-cat first drafts written in snoring prose? So the books I’m pulling out are odd. From wack-a-doo articles on pseudoscience to dense examinations on highly social animals, from blissful works of YA fiction I fixated on as a kid to those novels I’ve freaking been meaning to read forever but could not fit in because of graduate school and whatnot (don’t we just loathe the whatnot!). Because I’m a Bookmoocher and frequenter of Haslam’s when in Florida, I already have most of these items and they sit on my bookshelves. Waiting.

Whatever makes me giggle like a little devil is plucked from the shelf and tossed onto the floor for further perusal.

A sampling.

A well-worn copy of Stonewords: A Ghost Story by Pam Conrad is a tale that won the 1991 Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America is not sitting on my shelf and is now on my violet-gray shag rug. Why? 10-year-old Mary couldn’t get enough of it. The Scariest Stories You Ever Heard volumes I and II, Caroline B. Cooney thrillers, and some eerie non-Time quartet Madeleine L’Engle books are also in the shag, accordingly.

Slippery and unsettling tales by grand dames are there, too. Second-hand copies of stories by Shirley Jackson, Daphne DuMaurier, Alice B Sheldon (James Tiptree, Jr.) and Rachel Ingalls that I’ve mostly read.

Jazzed about reading more Octavia Butler works, plus works that also promise to be fiendishly fun, Flora Segunda by Wilce, Twilight by Meyer, and Titus Groan by Peake.

Ages ago, I spot read through most of the Conjunctions issue on the New Wave Fabulists. Mary Burroughs can read the rest now. Also spot read through the McSweeney joints, Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories and Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales. Hanging out with these books are Strange Dreams edited by Stephen R. Donaldson and The Colour of Space: Tales of Cosmic Horror by Lovecraft, Blackwood, Machen, Poe, and Other Masters of the Weird.***

An undergraduate workshop member and friend told me that some aspect of my writing reminded him of Roald Dahl. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More is therefore nestled in the shag. By way of story collections, there’s plenty of King, Garcia Marquez, Le Guin, Mieville, McCullers, Vonnegut, and Parker to mess with my head, too.

Italo Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees lands on the shag because I don’t know Calvino well-enough and because Kevin Brockmeier recommended it, so my mother, who greedily read two Brockmeier novels in the span of 24 hours, is in a rage about me reading from Brockmeier’s touchstone list. There are other books people I love need me to read, so included are The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, and Crossing Antarctica by Steger and Bowermaster.

Outfoxing Fear: Folktales From Around the World, Bulfinch’s Greek and Roman Mythology, Scandinavian Ghost Stories, and The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales. But I’d very much like to have Gulf of Mexico folklore from Nora Zeale Hurston.

Plenty of nonfiction work is by the folklore and fairy tale pile. Works like Wanderlust: A History of Walking, Status Anxiety by the wit Alain de Botton, Adam’s Navel: A Natural and Cultural History of the Human Form by Michael Sims, Giving Good Weight by the pensive John McPhee, and An Anthropologist on Mars by genius Oliver Sacks.

I can’t bring myself to type up samples from the various weighty prose novels and rollicking graphic novels/ comics I’ve placed on the floor. I think I'm a touch spent from peaking in all these books, and I haven’t exercised yet which tends to pep me up. Just know that they’re there hanging out with the other books.

*Did I say mostly? Pretty much is more accurate term. Pretty much.

**To be more precise, I’ve read excerpts or short pieces, at the very least, by all of the lovely souls. I just want to have read one or two hefty works by everyone on the instructor team before nosing my way into class. And rereading the various aforementioned shorter works isn’t so bad an idea either.

***I mainly got it for Ambrose Bierce’s stories as I dug the wry, dark humor in Devil’s Dictionary as a teen.

Film Scores and Writing

I have to say, listening to Got Radio's The Big Score station with -- you guessed it -- nothing but musical scores from movies is utterly pleasurable. It's like slipping in narrative during the day. All of a sudden I feel the need to laugh or to hide a mysterious falcon statue, but I don't know why. It's the music! Not so great to listen to while writing though as it totally messes your pacing up.

And we can't have that!

Often, there's a dang cat trying to mess me up anyway.


Note the memento mori. Nothing like being reminded to write by a friendly visual sign that communicates how everyone's time is limited on this Earth.

On Loneliness

As I'm typing away on Celtx for my graphic novel script during the morning and in WordPerfect for my copywriting gig, I can get a touch lonesome. Well, not so much during my actual creative writing, but definitely during writing copy. Sometimes I listen to podcasts to remedy this. NPR's This American Life, the Bob and Sheri Show, French language learning, TED audio, so on and so forth. The squawking of voices can be soothing. But what if I didn't have those podcasts? Eek!

Here are two beautiful animated shorts that take different routes on what being solitary can do to you.

Slipping Into Clarion 2008 at UC San Diego

Somehow I managed to slip into Clarion, and I'm so stinking happy about it. If you don't know what Clarion is, here's a tidy summary, borrowed from the Clarion Foundation's website:

Established in 1968 by Robin Scott Wilson, Kate Wilhelm, and Damon Knight, The Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop is the oldest workshop of its kind and is widely recognized as a premier proving and training ground for aspiring writers of fantasy and science fiction...

Workshoppers will be housed in college apartments on the UCSD campus, and classes will be held in quiet, spacious seminar facilities. Dates for the 2008 workshop are June 29 to August 9.

Our 2008 writers in residence are:
Kelly Link
James Patrick Kelly
Mary Anne Mohanraj
Neil Gaiman
Nalo Hopkinson
Geoff Ryman

For the past several, several, *several* weeks, I've devoted myself to being overwhelmingly industrious. I'm talking waking-up at 4:30 a.m. to get in a healthy block of creative time. I sketch for practice, fun, and to brainstorm for story ideas. Then, I write. All in total, I work this way for about five hours. (After that I exercise, shower, eat, and get ready for writing that makes me a wee bit of money in-the-now -- copy writing, of course.)

The whole reason I mention these facts here and now is because when you're on a roll, you're sort of insulated and pleased with thrill of being productive. You're having fun inventing, so much so, that you forget all you've applied to! Which is what I did. So when the e-mail popped-up in my Gmail account with "An Invitation To Attend Clarion" one week ago, I was totally disoriented. I had to read the dang thing a good three times before I understood that it was what it was, that it was addressed to Mary-Freaking-Burroughs (!), and that I would potentially get to go to this workshop I've privately fixated on. (By fixated, I don' t mean to, like, you know, suggest Miss Mary doing anything unhealthy, per se; I just read and read and read about it over the past few years.) I wound up sputtering, in the writerly sense, about it to a friend online (we were fixing to play Euchre because it's what all the cool kids do on Wednesdays). I then did a few, well-chosen Superman poses, which is the way my happiness manifests, apparently.

What's especially thrilling about being taught by those particular individuals is that each one investigates certain subjects in their nonfiction and fiction that I'm truly obsessed over. When I taught a summer undergraduate literature course, I even used several of the writers' stories in the class! The roster was an uncannily awesome collection of minds, which was why I applied in the first place! I looked at the list last year and said to myself, "You have to be kidding me with that roster. I can't not apply. Damn." So I did. I want to go, badly.

The only way I can go, essentially, is if I get some financial assistance from the Clarion Foundation or Carl Brandon Society. Being in post-MFA status plus recently initiating my independent contracting business does not make for a wealthy lady. Which blows, but I'm happy to be productively working with food in the fridge and a roof over my head. Hmm, I'm now stroking my beardless chin. Maybe I can offer portraits or illustrations in exchange for donations? I'll have to properly think about how to set-up such a thing, and I have several days yet until I hear about my official scholarship status. Here's to hope! (Go Hope, you saucy, intangible thing, you!)

What My Mangled Hands Can Do This Week

Allo my pets, allo!

I saw Beowulf yesterday and it was fricking grand. Amongst the many things I've been thinking about after having seen it, I've been especially thinking about movie epics and cheesy end credit songs. I'll muse on that a little later on.

I should also be putting-up some images of sketches and/or cartoons this week, too.

As for right now, my hands and elbows are a bit sore from all the drawing, writing, and typing I've been doing for work and my own enjoyment. So I ought to get do some more work before having writing fun.

More later. And see Beowulf if you haven't yet.