Funeral Day

Woke up this morning and put on a collared shirt and tie, good pants and shoes that were not sneakers. I drove to the far side of the city and admired the kangaroos in the gardens, avoided a gathering crowd of people for as long as I possibly could. At ten o’clock, right on schedule, we started my father’s funeral service, and the rest of the day was a blur of mourning and people offering their condolences. First, at the crematorium, and then at the small pub around the corner where we decamped for dad’s wake.

Tomorrow, I go teach classes. Meet with my PhD supervisor, try to write some things, and start the process of getting our flat in order after three or four weeks of neglect.

It feels–rather oddly–like coming back from holidays, that same process of gathering the loose tethers of routines that were ignored while away and trying to weave them back into a familiar life.

It started, this afternoon, with a few hours on the computer: opening files, catching up on the works in progress that ground to a halt three weeks back, and checking my blog reader for interesting things.

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Here are some of the things that made me happy this afternoon

Nora Roberts posted a long write-up about her writing process as a Facebook note earlier this week, and it’s interesting reading for both the way it highlights the work ethic that underpins her productivity and the way she debunks some of the mythology that has built up around her (most notably, the idea that she finishes a book every 45 days). Recommended reading for writers.

Oren Aks, the designer responsible for the look and branding behind the Fyre Festival, does an interview with Fast Company about what it’s like to be behind the branding of one of the most high-profile scams of the last few years (and his dismissal of any suggestion of culpability just makes me more excited for Mike Monterio’s Ruined By Design when it drops in a few weeks).

I’m teaching Georgette Heyer’s Venetia in tomorrow’s tutorial, and it’s been an immense pleasure to quickly dip back into the book and start picking things to talk about on the craft front. One of the things that really leapt out on me this read-through is Heyer’s use of exposition in the opening chapters to lay out a lot of information quickly, and I’m looking forward to talking about the how and why it works to pull us through the story.

Junkee has an interesting thinkpiece about the new era of musical bio-pics and the increased micromanaging bands employ to control their narrative and keep their greatest hits prominent. It’s been prompted by the release of the Motley Crue biopic on Netflix–a film I both enjoyed and wished had been something a little less slick and glossy. The article is worth reading, even if it’s just for the films he recommends within the biopic genre (particularly Todd Hayne’s work on Velvet Goldmine and I’m Not Here).

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And with that, I’m going to start clearing a three-week backlog of email from my account and see what else needs to go on my to-do list.