... ssshhh. Be vewy, vewy, quiet. I sweah I saw a wabbit hop past ...
April 4, 1999
8:11 a.m.
I had just finished updating this journal yesterday, when Brigid walked up. "Can we do something?" I had put her off a time or two already and she was in that weekend bored state that kids can get into when they've got 50,000 channels but nothing's on. "Sure. What would you like to do." "I don't know. I'll go look at the games." then she was gone, and the door to the game closet opened, and I could hear scratching and rumbling. Eventually, she returned with the bag of marbles Lisa and I had gotten her last year when we stayed over in Beckley, West Virginia after Baltimore's WorldCon. I flashed back to when we bought those marbles. They were in a long table sorted into probably thirty bins, blue ones in one cubby, clear ones in another, white and red ones next to that. They were fascinating, those marbles. Irresistible. I watched people walk past that table, and I swear that every single man in the place had to stop and run his fingertips over them. They would smile, and their eyes would haze over, and I could see them kneeling on the floor to line up their shooter with their target, their cheek planted on the floor, their tongues probably planted between their teeth in concentration. I'll admit, I was pulled by those marble's allure, too. So I was pleased to see Lisa fall prey to temptation, too. We spent the next several minutes picking through the table and buying marbles for Brigid. We played with them quite a bit right after we returned home, but by now it ha been awhile. Brigid and I took the bag upstairs and spread a ragged circle of string out to contain the targets. I took the clear shooter. Brigid took one that was white with maroon swirls. It took her a little while to get going again, her thumb not responding well to the challenge of shooting, and her marble going in directions that were impossible to predict. "Take your time," I told her. This didn't elicit the response I wanted, but we pressed on. Brigid started rooting against me, hoping that I would suffer an equal fate as her. "We should always root for the other guy," I said. "Don't hit the blue one," she replied. "The blue one is my favorite." "Brigid," I said. "It's okay to want to win, but we don't root against our opponents. That's bad sportsmanship. Besides, it's fun just to see how good you can make each shot." Now that the game was stopped, she listened a bit more. "It's more fun to win when the other guy has played his best than to win just because no one was good enough to challenge you." I would like to say that a bolt of lightning from my innate wisdom struck her at that point, and that she immediately turned around and cheered me on. That, however, would be a lie. What really happened took longer. Several games, actually. First, Brigid started shooting fairly well. That helped. Then she won a game. That helped more. Then we got into THE GAME. The marbles round to end all rounds. Both of us were shooting well, both of us encouraging the other. Both of us actively wanting to win and trying our best. It was a close game, too. My pile grew, as did hers. We have 41 marbles. We counted the marbles at the end of the game, I had 21, Brigid had 20. Brigid looked at me and growled lightheartedly. "Ooooohhhhh!" Then she smiled. "Can we play again?"   Writing is like that, too, you know? It's so easy to get jealous because someone else is doing well you you're not. But writing is like marbles. It's a game played mostly within. You get down on the carpet and take aim at your character. Let your thumb rest lightly on the keyboard. Concentrate. The other characters and situations lay around your target, and you'll need to get to them before it's all said and done. But right now, it's just you and your character. And you know what? Whether someone else is doing better than you or not doesn't make a hill of beans difference when you're writing your own stories, except in one way. It's more fun to cheer the other guy on. It just makes me feel better. And I don't know about you, but when I'm feeling better, I write better. And when I write better . . . Lots of good news yesterday on the "The Disappearance of Josie Andrew" front. My copy of FORUM was in the mail (unaccompanied by any rejections or whatnot), and I see DJA has eked up the Nebula charts. A short while later, I found Elizabeth Barrette's review on the Tangent Online site:
All the standard issues about criticism aside, I always find it interesting to see how other people view what I wrote. Of course, it doesn't hurt when they say some fairly nice things. :)  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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"It's so hard to explain. I know my loss is someone else's gain." Cowboy Junkies From "Hard to Explain", Pale Sun, Cresent Moon |
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