gwynnega

Signal boost for rose_lemberg: Stone Telling needs submissions for the Queer issue (deadline February 20th). Guidelines are here.

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The Winter issue of Goblin Fruit is live!

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I've been doing some research on mid-1970s U.S. feminism (for chapter 19 of the Jo book). I've made two happy discoveries: 1) I own a ridiculous amount of source material on this subject (most of which I'd collected in the '80s-early '90s but hadn't looked at in years) and 2) JSTOR has all of off our backs magazine in PDF form. I have thus been geeking out looking at the September-October 1975 issue, which includes such fascinating items as Ellen Willis accusing Gloria Steinem of being a CIA front, and the American Dental Association attempting to track down Patty Hearst via her dental records. I was ten years old in 1975, but sometimes it really seems like another planet altogether!

I've been having a low-key weekend, though it was marred this afternoon by my Internet going down just as I was sending a lengthy email. I had one of those annoying phone calls with my phone company: "No, I see no outage in your area...[half an hour of tinkering later] Oh, yes, now I see there is an outage in your area." But now it is back up! ::clutches Internet::

It's overcast, threatening rain. A little helmeted girl is careening on her bicycle through the parking garage, doubtless to the distress of the Garage Kitty.

I've been reading Flush by Virginia Woolf and the delightful Girl From Mars by Julie Cohen, and poking at my vampire suffragette story and leafing through Shoulder to Shoulder for research for same. I do seem to have a touch of the post-novel ennui, and much as I'd love to be deep in writing work, my brain says it needs to recharge.

Today's Jo book words: about 600. Plus, a fair bit of research. I discovered this awesome resource (a week by week guide to popular culture), from which I discovered that the mild April day in 1976 NYC that I was writing about was in actuality an unseasonable, newsworthy heatwave!

The first draft of chapter 20 is about done, so now comes the Massive Work portion of the program. But since I'm only going to the office two days this week, I should be able to make some decent headway.

This morning I made Trader Joe's pumpkin pancakes, which were pretty darn good. This afternoon I drove to Skylight Books and bought The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker, which Eloise Klein Healy (a wonderful poet, and the former head of my MFA program) recommended to me on the phone the other day. When I got home, the Garage Kitty came running down the stairs to greet me and to meow for Fancy Feast.

Now I must unwind with some Georgette Heyer reading, because being hyped up with noveling energy is a surefire recipe for the dreaded Sunday night insomnia.

Work on chapter 18 of the Jo book continues apace. It's pretty much all brand new (i.e., it's not one of the chapters I've reworked from the first draft). I hope to get a rough draft of it done this weekend so I can fiddle with it. 10zlaine sent me some awesome archival stuff from the New York Times about Patty Hearst's guilty verdict, which occurs during chapter 18. Who knew that the New York Times called her "Miss Hearst" in the headline? ("MISS HEARST IS CONVICTED ON BANK ROBBERY CHARGES; FACES SENTENCE APRIL 19.") Maybe this was out of respect for her father Randolph Hearst? In many ways 1976 seems like such a different world, though I remember it well...

I've discovered a fantastic research resource for the Jo book: the Vanderbilt Television News Archive, which gives detailed rundowns of network evening news broadcasts from 1968 on, including the commercials. So when Jo sits down to watch the news on December 30, 1975, I can even mention that she sees a commercial for Geritol or Clorets!