Thoughts on Writing and New Ideas

There were recently a series of posts online that took a different look at the horrible writing that we as instructors sometimes (often) have to grade (and by extension, the horrible writing that we, as students, hopefully less than often, hand in). I especially appreciated the discussions about how writing style can go down the toilet when people are struggling to make sense of new ideas. I am appreciating it as a student, as I find myself writing in circles as I tussle with new ideas, theories, and applications. And I'm appreciating it as an instructor, as I know my students are encountering ideas and information completely foreign to many of them (physical anthropology; 'nuff said). Here are the links; I recommend each of them.

Tenured Radical, So You Think You Can Write During The Semester. Well, yes I did. And it's difficult to the point of not happening, at least not re: The Book. Though I have written other non-class stuff, including conference papers, an article, a book review, and two grant proposals. All of these are good, productive things, but they've also been procrastination about The Book. There is navel-gazing going on over this issue that will hopefully result in unjamming the jam. Back to TR! Though a lot of what she writes is about academics and squeezing in the writing, I saw several places where prof and student writing lives were not that different (last minute-ness; hopes for a social life; being unprepared...).

And two really great posts from Dr. Crazy about evaluating writing and why it's important (and where students need more direction, specifically: take what you learn here and apply it Over There...) and about writing quality when students run up against Unfamiliar Things:

Yes, English Majors Submit Crappy Papers, Too
I Know This Sounds Weird, but Thank You Dr. Crazy for the C-

And Flavia with a follow-up: Bad writing ≠ bad writer.

I think I'll talk with my students about some of this in class on Monday, and share with them some edits on one of my (not bad but still inked-up with edits) papers.

*That's* Not Good!

I'm working on a grant proposal. Of course there was hardly any time between when I found out about the grant and when it is due. I finished a draft late Thursday and sent it off for comments.

The comments I got back from someone who I trust to know these things included "yikes," "dreadful" and "horribly awry." I have some serious re-writing to do...

Update 3/13/12: 5 drafts later, it's much better and on it's way. Fingers crossed!

Hallelujah

Suddenly, and really without warning, the pieces of my Why Wheels At All arguement have clicked into place. I still need to work out how to fit in the "What Other People Say About Why Wheels," but that's just literature review. And I don't think they're wrong, but are just looking at small pieces of this bigger thing, often describing the What of Wheels, and not the Why of Wheels.* The pieces just clickity-clicked together... and they're SO not the pieces I thought they were going to be.

Side moral: I'm learning that I really think best in and while writing. Apparently lots of things sound logical in my head, but fall to incoherent custard on paper.**

* Saying things are pretty because lots of similar things were pretty does not explain why it was important that those particular things were pretty.
** Nicked the phrase "falls to custard" from another participant in the Another Damned Notorious Writing Group. I like it; not as earth-shattering as going to hell, not as dire-sounding as going pear-shaped. I mean, custard's still yummy, even when it's not pretty anymore. It's just kind of sad.

Abstract Distraction (and a photo)

After much humming and hawing, I've finally mashed together an abstract for an upcoming paper. I'm never terribly fond of putting together conference abstracts because I don't have the paper written yet (obviously!) and I worry about writing something either too specific and limiting what I'll be able to write about when I write the paper, or writing something so generic that it's useless. Generally, though, I'm presenting after all the work is done, so I have *some* idea of what I'll be talking about.

This time, I'm presenting on the starting end of a project -- what we know, what we don't know, previous work, research questions. It's hard to write a paper (or abstract a paper) when it's not about having the answers, but about the process. Or thinking about the process.

If I don't have the answers, what am I doing? Well, I'm trying to introduce people to the site, and put the impending research into context, geared towards the contexts associated with the session I'm in.

And that right there is the clearest I've been about this thing. I'm going to go re-write my abstract. Again.

This is what abstract writing feels like.
Ausable Chasm, New York, October 2009.

Article Done!

After literally years of trying to secure image permissions, I finally was able to get an article written and submitted. It's just a short research note, that poses way more questions than it answers... but it's done!

And forms a small part of The Book (for which I was truly wrangling the image permissions)...

A nice relief, and now on to the next thing...

Scary To Do List

I think I may have over-committed myself, or at least gotten frighteningly close...

• Revise article for regional journal, by end of April
• Write book review for topical newsletter, by mid-April
• Write short research note for topical newsletter, by mid-April
• Write article for sub-field journal, no distinct deadline, but needs to be done, as I've been exchanging email with the editor.
• Wrangle session for annual conference: participants confirmed, aiming for abstract submission for early May (hopefully I shall escape the curse of the 8am Sunday slot...)
• Write my own abstract for the session.
• Do research at OMGSuperCoolSite over the summer (June?) so that I have something to present at said conference; paper draft due mid-Novemberish
• Write paper for regional topical symposium, mid-May
• Skim notes for paper presentation at regional meeting, late May
• Oh yeah, The Book....
  

Hm... it's a lot, but actually not too bad, once I get out of April. I must not say yes to anyone else or find something cool to distract me for a while, though....

The Enemy of Good Work

More reading writing about writing. This is an excerpt from Squadratomagico. The parts about frustration and fear? Yeah... I have no idea what she's talking about...

So, what do I take away from all this? Above all, impatience is the enemy of good work. It leads to frustration and fear, and tempts one away from the creative play and curiosity that are essential to finding an innovative entry into new research. Trying to write this book in what seemed like an easy, obvious way — extending the previous articles, centering it on the most familiar elements — turned out to be a dreadful mistake for me. Instead, allowing myself the breathing room for free reading and open thinking helped more than anything else. A good book cannot be forced into a mold envisioned at the outset; a good topic makes its own demands; and a good historian has the sense to respond to them.

What I also noticed in this post by Squadrato~ and her previous one, "Thence She Came Forth to Rebehold The Stars" is writing makes one a better writer. I mean, Squadrato~ is a great writer, but these last two posts are really quite wonderful. All that hammering and forging and wandering and finding that she's been doing on her book is shining through in her blog. (I'd post a bit from "Thence She Came Forth..." but it's not terribly excerptable! Go read it over there...)

Vivid and Continuous

I'm reading Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamot. A friend loaned it to me, and I'm enjoying it. I've been a fan of Lamot's Shitty First Drafts since I clapped eyes on it (it's a chapter from this book). This passage re: plot caught my attention; though there aren't what you'd consider traditional plotlines in archaeological reporting, her process of the characters speaking to the author and of the story revealing itself in fits and starts really resonated (substitute data for characters and narrative for story).

And wouldn't it be grand if archaeological writing were vivid and continuous?

Your plot will fall into place as, one day at a time, you listen to your characters carefully, and watch them move around doing and saying things and bumping into each other. You'll see them influence each other's lives, you'll see what they are capable of up and doing, and you'll see them come to various ends. And this process of discovering the story will often take place in fits and starts. Don't worry about it. Keep trying to move your story forward. There will be time later to render it in a smooth and seamless way. John Gardner wrote that the writer is creating a dream into which he or she invites the reader, and that the dream must be vivid and continuous. I tell my students to write this down --that the dream must be vivid and continuous -- because it is so crucial. Outside the classroom, you don't get to sit next to your readers and explain little things you left out, or fill in details that would have made the action more interesting or believable. The material has got to work on its own, and the dream must be vivid and continuous (pp. 56-57).

RBOC Part 2... "Soon" = 1 week

Parking lot, Jacob Riis Park, Gateway National Recreation Area, New York, March 2011. When this parking lot was built in the early 1930s, it was the largest parking lot in the world. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Sooooooooo...... yeah. The week got completely away from me, and "Shortly" became a week. Here then is RBOC Part 2:

• I didn't follow-up on the job search mentioned in Part 1 because of impending grad school. Which I am very excited about. And the more things unfold, the more clear it is that the school I'll be attending is really a fantastic choice.
• I have to get The Book done. I'm starting to freak out a little, though mashing data from a chapter I've eliminated into a chapter I'm keeping for several hours this week has made me feel better. Now I have to write about what it means. And stop researching, already!
• There is hope. Squadratomagico recently posted some quite beautiful writing about writing. I think any writer knows That Place. And I rejoice that it is possible to find the way out, and that Squadrao~ has both found the way, and shared.
• I'm writing a book review. I agreed because I've never written one before, and the book is about something I'm interested in researching once The Book is done, and you know, in my otherwise copious spare time. As I jump in with both feet, thank goodness for Historiann and her mailbag (not, by the way, the first time this week that I've thanked goodness and H'ann herself for her professionalization posts). Advice for book review writing: here and here. I'll definitely be keeping the second in mind as I choose my words.
• OMGSuperCoolSite may be closer to being a reality for dissertation research (happydance). I really hope this pans out; I'm starting to get terribly invested.
• Stumbled on this blog through links of links of links of other peoples' blogs. Gorgeous photography, and I really liked her how-to. This particular one on shooting the light. I still aspire to good photography taken on purpose even with my Little Sh!tty Camera. Mostly what I take now are "take lots of shots of things that look cool and see what turns out."

Speaking of, I have been remiss in posting pictures for months now, though I've dutifully been taking them. The last few RBOC will consist of pictures:

The Peterborough Lift Lock (Trent-Severn Waterway Lock 21), built 1904, Peterborough, Ontario, January 2011. This is the highest hydraulic lift lock in the world. Cool for skating in the winter, pretty amazing to watch in action in the summer.

Tangle. Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge, Delaware, March 2011.

Disposing of an outbuilding, near Dover, Delaware, March 2011. When I called 911, they thanked me for calling, but the farmer was just getting rid of an outbuilding. Archaeological implications: yeah, taking note.

Two Steps Back...

I buckled down yesterday and spent several hours on the Why Wheels At All chapter of The Book. What I ended up doing was ditching everything I'd previously written and starting on a fresh page in a whole new document.

The result? Not as much as I'd hoped (I am always optimistic about what I can actually get done in a given period of time). But, the blank slate seems to have worked. I wasn't overwhelmed by the thought of reworking what I'd already done and trying to make it coherent (a condition that's paralyzed me for extended periods of time in the past), I just started over. And there was flow. It's a shitty first draft, but it's a flowing shitty first draft.

Lots more to write, but for now, I'm off to a Superbowl Party!*

* I am not a fan of The Football. I do, however, very much enjoy hanging with friends.

Writing... and writing... and writing...

A productive day so far in the world of writing, which is fantastic. I'm often easily distracted at home, so it feels good to get in a non-distracted groove.

• Made some revisions to a report for work and edits in another. Have to remember to email the files back to the office (I *hate* when I forget that part)
• Finished up edits (almost) for a paper to be sent out for publication in a regional journal. I hate conclusion sections, I really do. So I put that part off until tomorrow, along with manipulating the graphics into the necessary format. They said they wanted it by the end of January. Hey, January 31 is still January! Plus, I was a good girl and formatted that sucker exactly as they required in their guidelines for contributors.
  
• Worked on tackling a scholarship application for grad school. It's a leadership-based scholarship program not an academic-based program, so the format is different than what I've been wrangling lately. It is very strange to me (and a little uncomfortable) to be tooting my own horn about myself in contexts that don't have anything to do with archaeology (yes, baggage, thanks). One thing I've been coming to terms with over the last few years is that no one will toot my horn for me, so I'm just going to have to suck it up and do it myself. And I don't have a lot of time to fret about it, the application is due soon (making that deadline work for me!).

One thing I've noticed in all this writing is that I use way, WAY too many commas when I write.* I mean, I knew that, but damn. I could delete every second one out of one of the reports I was working on and you'd hardly notice. Mostly they're in places where, if I was speaking, I'd pause. (See? I just did it right there. And left it in on purpose.) But there were a few commas that really, truly made me wonder what the hell they were doing there. No surprise, I suppose, that I'm a fan of the serial comma.**

* Dear editor friend: You're right, this is not news.
** Especially see the funny bit under "Unresolved Ambiguity" re: Peter Ustinov, Nelson Mandela, a demigod, and errr... personal accessories.

Reflections, Resolutions, and the Big Four Oh

It's my birthday. The big 4-0. I didn't post a New Year round-up/resolutions post because, well, I didn't. So I'm going to do it now, all balled up with my holy-shit-I'm-40 post. I may decide this is too much personal information, at which point I'll take it down. *shrug*

I started this blog as part of an exercise in expressing my voice. There's a backstory, of course, but the upshot was feeling that everyone elses' stuff and voices were more important than my own. That I didn't matter. Sounds bleak, and it sucked. It's not a "poor me" thing; just how it was. Some of it was taught to me by others when I didn't know better, some of it was self-imposed as survival strategies that became less effective over time, and some of it was tied up in low self-esteem issues. I was getting by, and I thought that was enough.

In my 38th year, with my eye on the Impending Forty and catalyzed by a series of events that I have a hard time passing off as merely coincidental, I had a good hard look at my life. And I didn't like it. I wanted more... to be happy, for one. To pursue my interests. To find my voice. I poked my head out of the tiny little existence I'd built for myself, and holy shit, there's a whole amazing world out there!

I made a lot of changes. Left a long term relationship. Got back into reading and researching. Cultivated a social life. Applied for grad school. Piped up and pissed a few people off. Piped up and apparently scared a few people off. Piped up and got misunderstood some. Piped up and made some new friends both in person, via email, and in blog-land. Piped up and met some great people both within my field and in others that share similar research interests (also in person, via email, and in blog-land). Started taking pictures again. Had FUN! Ups and downs -- deaths, divorce negotiations, good days and bad days, neighbors who shovel their snow behind my car, health scares.

Overall, though, life is pretty good. I laid a lot of groundwork over the past couple of years, and things are looking up.

My resolutions for 2011 and my 40th year:
- Speak up
- Speak out
- Do things that scare me
- Get out of my head and into the world

They served me well last year, so I'm dragging them out this year too. Ya gotta do what works, ya know?

It's not really about wheels...

I've been hammering away at The Book. I'm happy to say I've made some progress. I'm sad to say it hasn't been in the parts of the book that need it most. That is to say, I've spent a lot of time tweaking parts for which I already have a Shitty First Draft. What I need to be doing is buckling down and writing Shitty First Drafts for the parts that I have notes for but no text.

At least I've been able to reconsider the structure of the thing. There's been enough work on the subject that I no longer need a chapter Inventing The Wheel: Chronology, and I can therefore collapse two chapters into one. Instead, I'll write the chapter, Wheels Are All Round But Not Necessarily The Same Thing: Dating Your Wheels Is More Complex Than It Seems. Or at least jam the discussion somewhere into The Book.

Really, the only chapters I have left are:

• The Introduction (write this last)
• Why Wheels At All, Really? (the Bear in the Book. OMG. I have over 100 pages of notes that are freaking me out. I need to just bite the bullet; I suspect they will condense nicely. I don't need to regurgitate everyone's take on Wheels, just summarize and refer. Right? Right.)
• Wheels Are All Round.... (as I write this post, I'm mentally condensing this chapter into a blurb and incorporating it into a Case Study Introduction section that I didn't know until right this minute I'd be including)
• Special Wheels: The class of Wheels that won't fit right into my overall organization of Wheels, but which make their own easily identified, tidy little class
  
• Case Study: The Necessity of Wheels
• Case Study: Variations in the Use of Wheels by Religion
• Case Study: Variations in the Use of Wheels by Ethnicity (possibly too uncritical a use of "ethnicity", but pretty sure this isn't the place to resolve the nature of the concept in historical archaeology)
  
• Conclusion: Aren't Wheels Cool? Future Directions in Wheels.

Hmmm. That looks like a lot. I'm confident I can get through the Case Studies pretty easily, as long as I don't think about stuff TOO hard, and go off on TOO many tangents. I need to do the Why Wheels At All chapter. That's my hangup right now.

And I'll get right on it, as soon as I've finished messing around with my Really Early Wheels chapter.

Applications: Done!

I submitted my last grad school application this evening.

Whew.

Now... the waiting. Patience is something I'm working on and the next couple of months will be an exercise in it, for sure.

In the mean time, more work on the book, apply for an outside "take it with you" fellowship, and (gods help me) write a book review. Because I volunteered. Because the book looked cool, and I've not written a review for publication before.

One Word

I stumbled on Reverb10 via Clio Bluestocking's faboo blog, and thought that it might be just the thing I need. It's been a hell of a year, and it isn't over yet. I'm hoping this exercise will help me with some perspective. Hopefully, I won't lose points for handing in my December 1 entry a day late!

December 1 One Word.
Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word. Explain why you’re choosing that word. Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2011 for you?
(Author: Gwen Bell)

My word for 2010 is upheaval -- in the sense of big changes, not necessarily in the sense of bad things (though there are bad things). The biggies this year: break-up of a long relationship and subsequent pending divorce (and negotiations over property and cats); grad school applications and good noises about having an academic home next year; a couple of publications; the sudden decline and pending death of my father; deaths of a friend, a colleague, a grandmother, and a pet of two decades; new and surprising hobbies that I love; some great new friends and renewed connections with old friends; finding myself and being myself a little more; active pursuit of my mental health, with good results; and in the last few months, actually feeling happy.

The word I would like for 2011 is resolution.


December 2 Writing.
What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it?
(Author: Leo Babauta)

I do a lot of things every day that don't contribute to my writing (and I define my writing as writing for me, as opposed to the writing I do for work). Working takes up a lot of time as does sleeping; but both of them do contribute to my writing in terms of paying bills and staying functional. I watch tv, but not a lot; not contributory to writing, but usually occurs when I'm too fried to do anything else. I spend a lot of time surfing the Internets instead of firing up my writing. It's easier to skim emails and read Facebook than to open Word and do something.

Thing is, not writing just makes me feel worse about not having written. Which makes me more unlikely to write. It is a vicious cycle of inertia. Can I eliminate it? I can work at it. I'll try leaving my writing open on my computer; if I don't have to work to find and open the files, perhaps I can get something done.

Social Annihilation

America was a very interesting place in the very late eighteenth/early nineteenth century; interesting, at least, from the distance of two hundred years.

Fresh out of the Revolutionary War, riding early waves of the Industrial Revolution and snowballing scientific discovery, Americans sorted out what it meant to be American. We left our small towns, and pushed west; we mined coal and built canals to carry it to increasingly industrialized cities, our manufacturing no longer dependent on water power. We built railroads, and new towns sprung up along them like a string of pearls. Free of the Church of England, we sought our own meaning in utopian communities and home-grown religious traditions.

It all sounds very progressive and romantic. But there was, of course, a price. When a person's world was limited to a couple of days ride by horse or buggy on shitty roads, and they knew or were related to pretty much everyone they encountered, they (and everyone else) knew exactly what their place in the community was. As people began to travel further, move to industrial centers, or set out to make their fortunes, communities became very fluid. Members of families who had lived in one place for generations would move away; people who had no family ties to an area would move in, or just stay a spell before moving on. The social order was in flux, and there were so many strangers...

It became necessary to wear your social rank and status on your sleeve; to visually advertise to the strangers around you, where you placed in the social pecking order. There was an entire ballet of right clothing, right mannerisms, right pursuits, right language that, it was assumed, only true members of the elite could pull off. But because none of these things are inherent within a person, social rank and status became contested -- people of lower social rank and status emulated the social ballet of the elite, and when too many of them got close to being good at it, the bar was moved. This even played out in cemeteries:

... the working poor tried to assure themselves a place in funerary society by securing burials in cemeteries or churchyards that were equivalent to those of the bourgeoisie, or within bourgeois cemeteries in inferior graves and spaces. The alternatives - to be sold and/or stolen, dissected, and/or displayed in a museum, or to be dumped anonymously in a mass grave in a potter's field - represented social annihilation. The dissected body was nothing but a collection of body parts and waste, a thing; potter's field was a dumping ground, a place of exclusion…. For working men and women, burial in the cemetery or churchyard symbolized inclusion in the social order. (Sappol 2002: 35-36)

It was important to be important enough that your body was not exhumed by the Resurrection Men and sold to medical schools for dissection or dumped in an anonymous paupers' grave. Funerary display was one way that families could assert their place in society; that they could show, by virtue of having All The Right Trappings, that they belonged. I think the idea of social annihilation is an interesting one in the context of material status display and negotiation.


Significant sources for the above include:

Baker, Faye Joanne
1977 Toward Memory and Mourning: A Study of Changing Attitudes Toward Death Between 1750 and 1850 as Revealed by Gravestones of the New Hampshire Merrimack River Valley, Mourning Pictures, and Representative Writings. M.Phil Disseration, George Washington University, Washington, D.C.

Halttunen, Karen
1982 Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830-1870. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut.

Hoffman, Frederick L.
1919 Pauper Burials and the Interment of the Dead in Large Cities. An address read at the National Conference of Social Work, Atlantic City, N. J., June 4, 1919. Prudential Press, Newark, New Jersey.

Sappol, Michael
2002 A Traffic of Dead Bodies: Anatomies and Embodied Social Identity in Nineteenth-Century America. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey.

Shively, Charles
1988 A History of the Conception of Death in America, 1650-1860. Garland Publishing, Inc., New York. PhD dissertation, Harvard University.

Foxes, Hedgehogs, Squirrels, and A Carnival

1. Creatures.

Back at the beginning of August (holy crap, it's almost over already...) I posted about being mostly foxy with shades of hedgehog, and admitted in public to being a splitter, not a lumper. JaneB posted a comment that I find very interesting: in her field (which is, I believe, quite unrelated to mine, only a close enough relative that she was able to instruct me on the correct way to eat dirt, for which I continue to be grateful) foxes tend to be lumpers, not splitters.

I suppose that makes a certain amount of sense... when foxing from subject to subject, how CAN you be a splitter? How can you spend enough time with a subject to split it all out, rather than going "big picture" and looking at general trends? This caused me to rethink my self-imposed pigeon holes (oh! another critter...). I still say foxy with hedgehog tendencies AND still a splitter. But my splitting is at the dirt and artifacts (data) level, not at the subject-matter level.

The caretaker over at Notes From The Field ponders whether she is Fox or Hedgehog, and concludes that she is a Squirrel: "...What has become most clear to me as I look through my research notes, and find myself using things I wrote down years ago - not because they were pertinent to the project at the time, but because somehow they seemed relevant and worth keeping - is that I am neither a hedgehog or a fox. I am a squirrel. I seem to have a habit of finding useful sources and connected ideas, and putting them somewhere safe for me to go back to in the winter." I like it.

2. Carnival
Samia, over at 49 Percent, has posted the zomg grad school!!!1 carnival. It is chock full of posts about choosing and surviving grad schools. Including a guide to free food sources. I'm applying for PhD programs for Fall '11, so this came totally at a perfect time. I'm so ready to do PhD, that even lessons on how to line your pockets with ziplock bags when fresh veggie platters are on offer has not put me off.

I will post more grad school application stuff. This will likely become A Theme. Look! I gave it a tag :D

3. (Bonus) Grad School Application progress:
- tentative campus visits awaiting final scheduling. One meeting with prospective supervisor scheduled for upcoming conference.
- transcript requests completed, and wrangling of transcript request payment systems begun ("Yes, I know I need to pay online. No, the system won't work for me. Yes, my student ID number has 9 digits instead of 7. Yes, I've been out of school that long. Yes, I'll hold...)
- GRE Round 1 complete; Round 2 scheduled
- Funds secured to pay for this application process (thank you, Giant Online Auction Service)

To Do:
- Everything else.

4. (Added bonus whine and tentative victory dance):
Why chapters are HARD. But I think I have mine pegged.

Next Book,What?!?!?!?!

I was driving around this morning doing errands and chatting with a friend when the conversation turned to a subject that I suddenly realized would be a cool topic for a next book. It is COMPLETELY different from the one I am currently working on, but is a offshoot of things I've been dealing with and glancingly interested in for a long time. The goal would be to construct it so that it has enough research value to be useful and attractive to historians and historical archaeologists, and be accessible and interesting for a general audience. I think the particular topic I have in mind could straddle these two universes quite nicely.

Of course, I need to finish the current book... and apply for grad school. But I shall start a research file.

It's an interesting sensation when scattered pieces that have been part of your reality for a long time suddenly come together and become An Entity...

Going to Write

I've been less than productive on The Book lately. A combination of inertia and real-life, both significant losses (sudden and ongoing) and significant gains (omg, is that an actual social life? How novel!).

And so, I am going to bust out of Grading Jail for a few hours and go do some Book Stuff. Including an update to my editor. I've been procrastinating, wanting to write more so I can report having done more... but I actually think it will be a very useful exercise. I might even surprise myself!

I also need to prep a lecture for Wednesday, but eh, it will have to wait.

Published!

I'm very excited, for today, the article I wrote about the things from halfway around the world that found their way to my site was published!

For all the work I'm doing to get The Book finished up, so that I can get it to a friend of mine who is a kick-ass copy editor who actually -gets- archaeology (sie is freelance, drop me a note if you're looking for someone), so that I can get it to my press editor (who has happily resurfaced after an extended absence)... Well, for all that, it is Really Satisfying to get something finished and out in print.

So satisfying that I might just have to do it again. Did I mention ritual concealments (yep, multiple, and close on each others' heels, too)? There's also tale about a watering hole waiting to be told, and something about things that used to float...