More questions (5-10)
May. 2nd, 2005 10:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyBless you all for pandering to my ego.
Want to pander? Ask a question!
5. Have you ever played duets? If so, was it four-hands-one-keyboard, four-hands-two-keyboards, piano-and-something else?
Also, don't first-readers rock? Hmm. Maybe that's just mine. But I hope not.
First-readers rock the house down. Especially mine, who go above and beyond the call to be second-readers and sometimes third-readers as well.
I have played duets. Four-hands-one-keyboard. I don't remember the specific pieces of music since they were usually for recitals, and I have blocked my piano recitals out of my memory as much as I possibly can. But I do remember how much I loved playing them. I'm not usually very good with teamwork, but duets were different--maybe because it wasn't a matter of one person telling another what to do, but both players cooperating to do what the music wanted. And the intricacy of it--even in something suitable for the abilities of young and not very proficient pianists, where the individual parts are relatively simple, the duet is always greater than the sum of its parts.
6. If you could travel to an alternate world (one in which history went differently), which one might you choose?
Um. This really depends on whether I'd be able to get back to this world again, because several of the worlds I'd like to visit to find out what certain changes in history would do are not at all places I'd like to live.
But I would be fascinated, for instance, by a world in which the American Revolution never happened.
A world in which Mary Tudor was delivered of a child instead of dying of uterine cancer.
A world in which Mary Queen of Scots became Queen of France and Scotland.
Or in which she became queen of England and Scotland.
The one I might actually like to live in, though, is the world in which Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mahatma Gandhi were not assassinated.
I'd also really like to believe that a world is possible in which the American colonists did NOT treat the native population like shit. And I'd like to see what that world looks like.
Ditto for the behavior of Europeans toward Africans.
And in general for the behavior of the hegemonizers toward the hegemonized.
A world in which all Christians actually follow the teachings of Christ.
A world in which the Library of Alexandria was never burned.
A world in which the dodo is not extinct.
A world in which the Gunpowder Plot succeeded.
I don't know how you'd go about folding, spindling, and mutilating history to the point that the Stuarts were good kings, but, well--if Charles I died shortly after siring Charles II.
Along the same lines, a world in which Charles II's wife was not barren, or in which he coferred legitimacy upon one of his numerous bastard sons. Anything to keep James II off the throne.
A world in which the successors of Augustus Caesar were not varyingly homicidal, paranoid, deranged, and mentally deficient.
The battle of Actium. What if it had gone the other way and Cleopatra had become the Imperatrix of Rome?
What if Hannibal had won?
This is an sf writer's game, and I can play it all day.
7. ... were you able to write fiction while you were working on your PhD, or did that come after? Are you pursuing a professorly position, or have you decided to write fulltime?
I am writing full-time--although I'm going to have to get some other part-time job this summer because of that whole stupid money thing. I discovered in the course of my graduate school career that teaching makes me unhappy and (even more) neurotic and that, frankly, I'm not very good at it. So professoria is not something I'm interested in. At all. (A Writer-in-Residence type gig might be fun, but let's not kid ourselves about how likely that is.)
And, yes, I wrote fiction concurrently with my degree-work. I wrote the rough draft of the novel that became Mélusine and Kekropia the last two years of undergrad and the first two years of grad school and sold Mélusine about a month before my dissertation defense (meaning that I was working on revising and rewriting during my Ph.D. coursework and exams and dissertation conferences and so on and so forth). Also started selling short fiction when I was a dissertator. I think working on the fiction kept me from going utterly spare over the academic work.
8. What have you liked best about your life so far? What's your happiest or proudest moment?
Getting married; selling Mélusine.
Getting my Ph.D. diploma was probably my moment of greatest relief.
The thing I like best about my life is that I am what I wanted to be when I grew up. And I have more friends than I would ever have thought possible.
9. What is your answer to the question, "Why is the sky blue?"?
Ask Dr. Mike.
10. Rhymed, blank, or free?
For reading, blank. Shakespeare all the way, baby.
Free verse is the only thing I can write--insofar as I can write poetry at all--because English scansion is utterly beyond me. It's a fair cop, Mr. Frost.
Want to pander? Ask a question!
5. Have you ever played duets? If so, was it four-hands-one-keyboard, four-hands-two-keyboards, piano-and-something else?
Also, don't first-readers rock? Hmm. Maybe that's just mine. But I hope not.
First-readers rock the house down. Especially mine, who go above and beyond the call to be second-readers and sometimes third-readers as well.
I have played duets. Four-hands-one-keyboard. I don't remember the specific pieces of music since they were usually for recitals, and I have blocked my piano recitals out of my memory as much as I possibly can. But I do remember how much I loved playing them. I'm not usually very good with teamwork, but duets were different--maybe because it wasn't a matter of one person telling another what to do, but both players cooperating to do what the music wanted. And the intricacy of it--even in something suitable for the abilities of young and not very proficient pianists, where the individual parts are relatively simple, the duet is always greater than the sum of its parts.
6. If you could travel to an alternate world (one in which history went differently), which one might you choose?
Um. This really depends on whether I'd be able to get back to this world again, because several of the worlds I'd like to visit to find out what certain changes in history would do are not at all places I'd like to live.
But I would be fascinated, for instance, by a world in which the American Revolution never happened.
A world in which Mary Tudor was delivered of a child instead of dying of uterine cancer.
A world in which Mary Queen of Scots became Queen of France and Scotland.
Or in which she became queen of England and Scotland.
The one I might actually like to live in, though, is the world in which Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mahatma Gandhi were not assassinated.
I'd also really like to believe that a world is possible in which the American colonists did NOT treat the native population like shit. And I'd like to see what that world looks like.
Ditto for the behavior of Europeans toward Africans.
And in general for the behavior of the hegemonizers toward the hegemonized.
A world in which all Christians actually follow the teachings of Christ.
A world in which the Library of Alexandria was never burned.
A world in which the dodo is not extinct.
A world in which the Gunpowder Plot succeeded.
I don't know how you'd go about folding, spindling, and mutilating history to the point that the Stuarts were good kings, but, well--if Charles I died shortly after siring Charles II.
Along the same lines, a world in which Charles II's wife was not barren, or in which he coferred legitimacy upon one of his numerous bastard sons. Anything to keep James II off the throne.
A world in which the successors of Augustus Caesar were not varyingly homicidal, paranoid, deranged, and mentally deficient.
The battle of Actium. What if it had gone the other way and Cleopatra had become the Imperatrix of Rome?
What if Hannibal had won?
This is an sf writer's game, and I can play it all day.
7. ... were you able to write fiction while you were working on your PhD, or did that come after? Are you pursuing a professorly position, or have you decided to write fulltime?
I am writing full-time--although I'm going to have to get some other part-time job this summer because of that whole stupid money thing. I discovered in the course of my graduate school career that teaching makes me unhappy and (even more) neurotic and that, frankly, I'm not very good at it. So professoria is not something I'm interested in. At all. (A Writer-in-Residence type gig might be fun, but let's not kid ourselves about how likely that is.)
And, yes, I wrote fiction concurrently with my degree-work. I wrote the rough draft of the novel that became Mélusine and Kekropia the last two years of undergrad and the first two years of grad school and sold Mélusine about a month before my dissertation defense (meaning that I was working on revising and rewriting during my Ph.D. coursework and exams and dissertation conferences and so on and so forth). Also started selling short fiction when I was a dissertator. I think working on the fiction kept me from going utterly spare over the academic work.
8. What have you liked best about your life so far? What's your happiest or proudest moment?
Getting married; selling Mélusine.
Getting my Ph.D. diploma was probably my moment of greatest relief.
The thing I like best about my life is that I am what I wanted to be when I grew up. And I have more friends than I would ever have thought possible.
9. What is your answer to the question, "Why is the sky blue?"?
Ask Dr. Mike.
10. Rhymed, blank, or free?
For reading, blank. Shakespeare all the way, baby.
Free verse is the only thing I can write--insofar as I can write poetry at all--because English scansion is utterly beyond me. It's a fair cop, Mr. Frost.
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no subject
Date: 2005-05-02 04:34 pm (UTC)I'm very impressed by this; it is quite an amazing accomplishment. I don't think that too many people can make the same affirmation.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-03 02:27 am (UTC)---L.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-03 02:46 pm (UTC)---L.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-03 03:02 pm (UTC)Sonnets.
Okay, so special exemption for 14-line poems in rhymed iambic pentameter.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-03 08:01 pm (UTC)---L.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-03 09:51 pm (UTC)Do you actually think I don't know that?
no subject
Date: 2005-05-03 11:53 pm (UTC)---L.