March Is Question Month

[mallorys_camera]

March is Question Month, as anais_pf reminds us.

So go ahead: Ask me a question.

I'll answer anything -- even questions from anonymous readers of whom there are a few or so recent experience suggests. And I'll answer them truthfully.

Comments

[platofish.livejournal.com]

You clearly have more talent than most revered authors..... do you agree?

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

What a nice thing to say! Thank you.

It's odd. I almost always hate everything I write while I'm writing it -- the words I pound out invariably fall short of the platonic ideal in my brain.

I'm tempted to throw everything away. But instead I try to forget about it. By the time I go back to it a few weeks later, I've lost the sense of personal ownership. Huh! I'll think. This is very good.

I'm not talking about this LJ here but other projects. I never reread this LJ. The LJ is kind of the writing equivalent of practicing scales, and of course I use it to process emotion, and often I'm quite embarrassed by the memory of what I've written here. But part of the, uh, magic (for lack of a better word) is that I don't censor myself. Because it really does work for processing emotions and staying sane in the day-by-day.

[gringo-in-tj.livejournal.com]

A dish (either breakfast, lunch, or dinner) that you could eat every day...

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Dirty rice. Although maybe that answer is cheating because I prepare dirty rice differently every time I make it, according to what odds and ends are in the fridge. :-)

[john-xxx.livejournal.com]

When Japanese kids recite the Pledge Of Allegiance, do they say "One nation, under Godzilla?"

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

This morning I'm afraid it's, "One nation, under a tsunami."

[john-xxx.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my little joke fell really flat after the earthquake; we just woke up to the news.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

It's quite something, isn't it?

[sulphuroxide.livejournal.com]

why mallorys camera?

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

I've been keeping a diary since I was 12 years old.

At the time I decided to keep my diary online, I was writing a novel that began with the assassination of the Dalai Lama. Subsequent thrills and chills took Our Heroine to the Himalayas where she discovers... Mallory's camera, one of the great mysteries of mountain climbing.

George Mallory was an English mountain climber whom many people believe ascended Mt Everest 30 years before Hillary. His frozen corpse was found in 1999, huge event in the climbing community. Anyway, he carried a camera with him that would have documented the ascent. The camera has never been found.

Something about the metaphor of this cheap little camera that recorded Man's highest ascent and then disappeared appealed to me... :-)

[starlight-pf.livejournal.com]

Wow, that is a story that gave me goosebumps. Very interesting!

Did you finish that novel?

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Sadly, I did not. I should actually dig it up and try to finish it -- it's got great commercial potential and I modeled its heroine after a particularly interesting friend of mine.

[starlight-pf.livejournal.com]

I'd buy it.

[platofish.livejournal.com]

Oh, and do you still like hot sauce?

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

I love hot sauce.

Without Marie Sharp's Hot and Lottie's Bajan, this winter would have been absolutely unbearable.

[a1icey.livejournal.com]

when is the last time you had a pedicure?

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

May 2009.

[a1icey.livejournal.com]

no good! hmm you need to visit a town with a large chinese immigrant population, stat

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

My pedicurist was Vietnamese actually. :-)

I'm hoping to be in NYC over my birthday. Perhaps I'll have a pedicure then.

[jdquintette.livejournal.com]

Is there any answer I could possibly get here that I couldn't get by just picking up the phone and calling you?:)

[anais-pf.livejournal.com]

Shhhh . . . then the rest of us wouldn't have the pleasure of reading her answer!

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Yes. ;-)

[misslam2u.livejournal.com]

Where do you want to live? And are you making serious plans to make it happen for yourself once you can actually move?

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Excellent question.

My fantasy of fantasies is that one of these years, I will actually succeed in snagging a Stegner Fellowship to Stanford. I would so love to spend two years surrounded by writers, eating, drinking, breathing fiction.

Serious plan? Well, I've been faithfully applying to the Stegner people every year for a decade but no, I'd have to say it isn't a serious plan because it's such a long shot.

Robin wants to hightail it back to California as soon as he graduates from high school. He really wants to go to college at UC Santa Cruz. My oldest son Max -- whom I miss so much I sometimes feel as though my heart might break from missing him -- lives in San Francisco. And most of my really close friends live in Oakland and Berkeley, the East Bay, across the water from San Francisco. It's most likely that I'll return there.

Are we allowed more than 1 question?

[misslam2u.livejournal.com]

Why is it, do you think, that you've been overlooked for this position?

I know my ex wasn't selected for a lot of fellowships for medical stuff because he was "too old" while we were still in our 30s (!!!), which I think totally rots, he'd have been a much better selection than some 25 year old boy for the majority of the positions, because he already had so much practical experience, which, in a scientific field, you'd think would be a plus. But I guess that wasn't something they were looking for so much as someone they could really effect, which I think also rots.

Re: Are we allowed more than 1 question?

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

No, I don't think it has to do with age, actually. Harriet Doerr got in when she was 70.

Do you read The New Yorker? I've always modeled my submission stories after New Yorker magazine stories -- probably a mistake because it's not my natural voice. I use language more extravagantly than the typical New Yorker story and I also tend to have more of a narrative thrust. I kind of trade off -- one year I'll send them stories in my natural writing voice and the next year I'll send them faux New Yorker. :-)

Re: Are we allowed more than 1 question?

[misslam2u.livejournal.com]

What about a play (or dare I say it? a screenplay format)? Wouldn't that lend itself pretty naturally to your natural strength? I bet you could write one hellova play, darling.

Re: Are we allowed more than 1 question?

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Submissions are restricted to either short stories or poems. But I think I have a handle on it for this year. Perhaps you willl volunteer to be one of my test readers! I warn you -- you'll have to be ruthless.

Re: Are we allowed more than 1 question?

[misslam2u.livejournal.com]

No problem, I'm a ruthless editor. Of other people's work :)

Seriously, I've been fired by friends. Over shit like contractions and stuff.

I'll tell you the truth. For example: my husband and I are all crosswise right now because I'm totally dogging his new store's recipes, BECAUSE THEY ARE CRAP, and over priced. He's acting hurt, and I'm just like, DUDE, FIX IT and it'll be fine! And he's being a sensitive artist about it all, which annoys the hell out of me, so it makes me even more ruthless and mean, which makes him even more withdrawn. But I'm right about this and if *someone* doesn't tell them, a real rational review will come along and the place will be totally screwed and I refuse to stand idly by and watch some foreigner be the voice of reason when all someone had to tell them was, TAKE OUT THE BAD PARTS AND FIX IT!

So, see?
I'm so lonely for adult conversation. I really don't know how I stayed home for 10 years with toddlers.

Re: Are we allowed more than 1 question?

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Then you are exactly the kind of editor I'm looking for. Seriously.