Ceallaigh's Blog

I'm moving into the 'STFU and finish it' phase of my edits, which likely means less activity on social networking, however that might manifest this time. But this morning I've found myself staring out the window at the storm-gray bay and thinking not so much on the beauty of this place I live but on its transformative power.

I've stood on the rocks at Peggy's Cove the day before a hurricane while the sun baked the water into salt on my face. I've gone raspberry picking in the Annapolis Valley and stuffed my face with huge, sweet berries on a hot, summer day. I've driven infant squirrels from Bridgewater to Seaforth because every life matters. I've taken suffering raccoons to a gentle death. I've released rehabilitated owls to the wild. I've encountered cougars on the road.

I've also put the mother tongue of my ancestors in my mouth and put their songs in my throat. I've played the bodhrán at a ceilidh at 1:00 in the morning while two kinds of Gaelic were spoken...

Novel edits are progressing slowly but surely. I'm working on the guts of the thing now, where the most important edits are happening, those having to do with plot changes and the like. Once I get past this hump, I expect the rest will be quite a bit easier.

I'm also settling into a blogging rhythm I like, now that I'm paying a little more attention to the thing. I've been trying to steer away from posts having solely to do with my writing by exploring issues I care about, which has the added benefit of giving me something new to write while I'm slogging through edits. I'm aiming for a weekly or bi-weekly activism update, a weekly or bi-weekly writing update, an occasional Gàidhlig update and the odd, interspersed note about whatever seems interesting to me.

Book II is beginning to take shape in my mind; I solved a major issue in the series yesterday, and I'm excited to find out how it will play out on the page.

And yes, I'm submitting Book I to agents right...

I read recently that it's impossible to be an activist without living in a constant state of grief, and I agree. People of conscience willingly expose themselves to the suffering in the world so they can act upon it, and in acting upon it they realize how very small they are. There are days when I sit at my keyboard heartbroken, knowing there isn't anything more that I can do than I already have, knowing it isn't enough in the face of the great machines of industry and apathy. But I post another social networking update, fill out another petition or send another letter anyway, believing that action is better than inaction.

Which brings me to the subject of slacktivism. I've also read a great deal recently about the fruitlessness of those social networking updates and the pointlessness of petitions, and I agree with that to some extent as well. When social networking updates and petitions are the entirety of an activist's work, the effort amounts to a kind of emotional...

I was planning to post this as a social networking status update, but it's getting too long, so I thought I'd post it as a blog entry instead.

Today, in addition to my novel edits, I'm reading about the headscarf controversy in Turkey. Some estimates indicate that as many as 65% of women either wear a headscarf or support the wearing of a headscarf, and yet women have been barred from public buildings, from working in the public sector and from attending university while wearing them. The ban on headscarves has been lifted and reinstated at least once in the last five years, and now it seems that university students are permitted to wear headscarves, primarily because they wouldn't have access to education in Turkey otherwise.

It's an interesting debate. From what I've read, Turkey works hard to present its government as secular and views the headscarf as a religious symbol. At the same time, many Turkish people want the right to wear headscarves freely. I would...

As I begin this post, I find that I have so much to say in frustration with PETA that I hardly know where to begin. So I'll start with the organization's most recent advertisement:

Trigger Warning: Depictions of Violence Against Women:

Now let's look at another PETA campaign from 2009.

Here's what the Huffington Post had to say about it. Here's what the Feministe blog had...

I've been working on refining my editing process for some time now, and as I put another chapter to bed, I thought I'd lay it out for myself and for interested readers. This is a long-form process, but I've used an abbreviated version of it for short fiction. I think it strikes a balance between drafting huge chunks of prose before editing, which I simply cannot do, and micromanaging my fiction, which I have done.

On a good day, I draft between 1000 and 1250 words. It's a modest, but achievable word count that ostensibly produces a book-length manuscript in under a year. The following day, I edit the previous day's work and draft another 1000 to 1250 words. At the completion of a chapter, I pass through the whole thing three times; once to take notes, once to make corrections and once with a text-to-speech program that reads the work aloud. They key to this part of the process is to draft only what I can edit the next day and still make my word-count goal. Any more, and I...

I am delighted to report that Sean, my oft-mentioned genius engineer husband, will be interviewed today about his transition from a childhood on a small farm where he raised and butchered animals for meat to an adulthood as a vegan and an advocate for animals. You can listen to his interview live at 5:00 AST on the Fire it Up with C.J. show or download the podcast afterward.

You can also follow him on Google+ if you're interested in approaches to vegan advocacy. He has a wealth of knowledge about the issue and a quick wit, as well. I'm incredibly proud of his efforts.

Important Note

The episode of This American Life that inspired this blog entry has since been retracted. It appears Mr. Daisy fabricated many of the personal experiences he had while in China and lied to Ira Glass and his staff when they asked him for his interpreter's contact information. So in the interest of full disclosure, I think it important that you listen to This American Life's Retraction episode before proceeding with the rest of this blog entry. I still think much of the information here is worthwhile, but I'd want you to hear the truth of things before you read it.

All the best,
 Ceallaigh

Original Entry

I am a geek married to a geek who works in technology. So we like our electronics; desktop, laptop and tablet computers, MP3 players, cameras and GPS devices. We're not upgrade-at-the-slightest-provocation types;...

I've muddled though the Drupal Comments feature, added some custom CSS and PHP and successfully enabled comments for blog entries on my web site. This means you'll be able to comment on blog entries there (which I prefer), on LiveJournal (which is okay, too) or anywhere else the entries are syndicated (Facebook, Google+ and Twitter, at present).

Web site comments are not screened, and you don't need an account to make them. LiveJournal comments continue to be screened for anonymous users, which is great for catching spammers who want to sell watches and handbags to my readers.

In other news, my quarterly newsletter for Imbolc goes out to subscribers on February 1st. If you'd like to receive it, you can sign up using the Newsletter box on the right sidebar of my web site.

Yesterday, among the many Saturday errands I was running, I picked up a wounded Great Horned Owl in West Northfield for transport to the Hope for Wildlife farm in Seaforth. On my way there, Allison at HfW called to ask if I would be interested in exchanging the owl with her for two rehabilitated Barred Owls in need of release on the South Shore.

Of course, this is the ultimate purpose of our work, that moment when those animals we can help are returned to the wild, still wild. We want them to flee from us, forget us and go back to the lives they were meant to have. So releases are special (and somewhat coveted among volunteers). I've never done one before, so to be offered two in a single day was really something, especially since one of them was 'mine', an owl I'd received from a DNR officer a couple of months ago and transported.

Allison and I met in Bedford to exchange the owls, and then I was off to Tantallon, where one of them had been found initially...

This morning, our beloved cat Samantha went to be with Bast. She was seventeen and frail with end-stage kidney disease. For the veterinarians among my friends, her blood count was 10, and her eyes and gums were white. For the non-veterinarians, this means her kidneys had stopped producing erythropoetin, a hormone that tells the bone marrow to produce red blood cells. She had also begun to smell slightly toxic in spite of her sub-q fluids, and she was weak and sick. The only thing I could get her to eat was tuna. If we had waited any longer to end her life, she almost certainly would have gone into respiratory distress and begun developing ulcers in her mouth and esophagus. There is no recovery when kidneys fail in cats, and it's a hard, ugly death.

But I'm being clinical. Let me tell you about Sam.

She was born in my apartment during a 1994 eclipse and would have died of her mother China's neglect if my ex-husband hadn't fed her warm milk and massaged her little body...

In the last couple of months (since completion of the novel), a number of unavoidable issues have cropped up and limited my writing time, and this has frustrated my efforts at revision considerably. However, in the last week, I've managed to clear my plate of several outstanding projects and substantial chunk of life-detritus so that I can proceed with something more closely resembling a regular schedule. To that end, I fear I must make an Internet Pronouncement of the sort one reads from time to time in the blogs of other writers.

I'm presently putting together a marketing packet for my novel and working my way through revisions. On the heels of that, I have major plotting work to do for the rest of the series and a second novel to start. In the past, I've had the luxury of putting down my work for a day or a week if necessary in order to take care of other things. However, if I expect to be taken seriously as a professional, I can't afford to do that anymore.

...

I read once that Islamic artists deliberately leave imperfections in their work, because only Allah has the right to be perfect. I also read once that stories are never truly finished; they are merely abandoned. In the spirit of these things, I progress through the final edits of my novel.

Bi-la kaifa.

Some of you might remember that I participated with a number of local Gaelic singers in a recording of traditional songs at the An Cliath Clis milling frolic last spring. The CD that was to be made of that recording is on indefinite hold for various reasons. Should anything change on that front, I'll post a note.

However, I do have word from Siol Cultural Enterprises that the short film Ruidhle An Fhìdhleir will be out soon. That's the film the usual suspects among us helped to finish as sound extras one afternoon last summer. When it's released, I'll post a note about that as well, along with a link for purchase.

I've just returned from closing ceremonies at Hal-Con 2011 and can finally announce that I'll be appearing there next year as a guest. It's a fun convention, and I'm delighted the committee has offered me this opportunity. I'll also be putting together a workshop or two for the con between now and then and will post more information about that when I have it.

Last night, I finally completed section edits for Part III of TWSP. I still hope to get some planning done for whole-novel edits this evening using a very fine spreadsheet Sean created for that purpose. Tomorrow I'm occupied with a number of errands, but I'll begin the final pass through the book on Tuesday and start polishing a synopsis. I hope plan to have it polished and ready to send out by the end of the calendar year.

I've made it home and plan to write a post about Quebec City soon, but for now (and until after I settle in) here's a pile of miscellaneous news I didn't feel like posting via iPad.

Professional News

My first quarterly newsletter went out to subscribers on October 31st. You can read it here, and you can subscribe by visiting my web site at csmaccath.com.

In other news, I've come away from my holiday with a powerful sense of having let my writing career and my home suffer in the last month for the sake of other things. It's my intention to remedy that going forward by placing my writing career and my home at the front of my life rather than making time for them at the back. With this shift in priorities will come a shift in my available time, with apologies in advance to any people who might be affected by it.

...

Greetings Everyone,

Welcome to Issue #1 of my quarterly newsletter, posted to www.csmaccath.com and e-mailed to subscribers on Samhain 2011.

Novel News:
Twilight of the World Sea People is now a completed draft, and I'm hard at work on revisions. I hope to send the novel out to prospective agents soon. More on this at Imbolc.

Poetry News:
My poem entitled, "When I Arrived, This Is What She Said" is now available in the autumn issue of Goblin Fruit. Of interest, the sound backdrop of the piece contains part of a traditional Gàidhlig milling song I sang with friends at the An Cliath Clis milling frolic last spring. If you're interested, you can watch a video of the...

I know where sirens come from.
Born in the foam of a green-water wave
to fold their lissome bodies over the rocks.
"See?" they sing, "There is no pain in this."

Turn away, lover of women, while you still can.
Wipe the salt from your lips before you taste it.

Revised for accuracy on October 20, 2011.

So, I read my last blog post to my genius engineer husband, who had something of an epiphany when I finished.

Genius Engineer Husband: Can you revise the projects you have on the Lulu.com site?

Me: I think so.

Genius Engineer Husband: Why don't you replace the contents of those projects with your blog entries?

Me: (o.O) That's a great idea! You heat up dinner, and I'll go see if I can do that!

I went upstairs to my desk and logged into Lulu.com. Turns out that even though I can't delete my projects, I can change the covers and contents of those projects as part of a revision process*. So I kept the covers of my projects intact, but the contents are very different now. They're the history of my quarrel with the company, comprised of the blog entries I made about...

Several years ago, I printed two books for myself via Lulu.com. They were mementos of my early writing, intended for me alone, and I made sure they were private. Today, as part of a personal data sweep and planning session, I checked in with Lulu.com and found they had both been made public and were both for sale on the web site. Not only that, an 'author' page had been created for me (I need a Lulu.com 'author' page like I need to be shot in the foot), and the books were listed on it.

Naturally, I made the documents private again and even tried to delete them. But Lulu.com won't let me delete the completed projects or the files they were created from. I can't find a customer support phone number anywhere on the site, and I've read through various web searches that the company doesn't answer e-mail inquiries (though I do intend to try e-mailing customer support this evening).

Now, there's nothing personally incriminating about any of my old stories and poems. They're...

Ingredients

• A crock pot full of apples, cored
• 2-4 tsp. cinnamon, to taste
• 2-4 tsp. nutmeg, to taste
• 3-4 cups sugar, to taste

Instructions

• Core the apples.
• Add spices and sugar.
• Put mix in crock pot.
• Cook on high for 1 hour.
• Cook on low for 9-11 hours.
• Remove lid and cook for 1 more hour.
• Blend mix with an immersion blender until desired smoothness is achieved.
• Try not to eat it all at once!

Last Wednesday, I began an intermediate session of TIP (Total Immersion Plus) Gàidhlig classes through Sgoil Gàidhlig. Tomorrow, I begin the Atlantic Gaelic Academy Intermediate I Gàidhlig session of classes via Skype. I confess I didn't study nearly as much through the summer as I had planned, but I still believe my Gaelic has improved tremendously in the last year.

I like the combination of formats I'm utilizing to learn the language; the informal Sgoil Gàidhlig classes that focus on speaking skills and the formal AGA classes that focus on grammar. However, I should stress that I've come to believe it's not possible to achieve fluency via grammar-based classes alone. Here in Nova Scotia, I meet with other Gàidhlig speakers and learners once a week, and I also have the opportunity to interact with fluent Gàidhlig speakers quite often in social settings. So I believe my most meaningful learning is happening...

Ruidhle an Fhìdhleir (web site|Facebook) premiered last night as part of the Atlantic Film Festival. Sean and I went to see it along with the set of short films it appeared with. It was the best of them, inasmuch as I could be an objective critic, and it was lovely to see so many familiar faces on the screen. I was also pleased to find my name in the credits!

When the film is available for purchase, I'll post a note with information about it. In the meantime, here's a link to another of Marc Almon's Gaelic films, Faire Chaluim Mhic Leòid (The Wake of Calum MacLeod), which is also excellent.

To watch Faire Chaluim Mhic Leòid, click here.
...