The One Who Watches

Of course, we know that Pratchett was talking about witches when he said they’re the one who watch and the one who does.

At the same time he was, of course, also talking about writers, because I don’t know if he’s ever met a witch as they exist in his universe, but I know he lives full time in the mind of a writer.

The mind of a writer is a terrible place to live. Mostly, because you can never live something fully. You can never immerse yourself in the moment. Worse, you go through life suspecting yourself of insincerity. How can you suspect yourself of insincerity? Easy. Say, your beloved grandmother just died and you’re plunged into darkest grief (actually started to understand the mourning clothes thing, since any bright colors made me feel distraught.) At the same time, you notice yourself observing yourself grieving. And making notes.

It’s hard not to despise yourself in those circumstances, but I have it on good authority that every writer does this. Or at least every writer that’s even halfway as obsessive as I am.

This intrudes on every moment of life. I believe when giving birth I lectured everyone on the fact that pain was essential in the process of attaching to your child.

It also intrudes – sigh – on winning awards. It felt unreal and strange. I was the one who would be receiving the Prometheus but at the same time I was the kid growing up in Portugal, who knew she could never be a writer, much less win an award.

What this does, however, is also give you a sense for… the dignity of the occasion. I’ve posted here before about what I chose to wear. And part of it absolutely was “well, it’s my chance to dress up” but the other part was more than that. I’ve seen Heinlein give speeches when he was the guest of honor here and there. I’ve listened to them as it’s my only chance to hear the man, barring time-travel.

Now, I haven’t gone so completely around the bend delusional that I think that I am Heinlein. But I do think that my kids or grandkids, or even perhaps great grandkids might listen to this speech someday. You wouldn’t want them to think I was a slob.

Beyond that, there is … how do I put this? What you owe the award itself. I am a winner, in a chain of winners. Yes, it is a Libertarian award, which means it’s amazing no one has shown up to receive it naked. But in the same sense you dress up to attend someone else’s wedding (and for a given meaning of dress up, depending on the groom and bride. New jeans might be dressing up) not because you couldn’t attend it as well in your pajamas, but because you owe it to them and their occasion to look nice and like it’s a special moment – I felt like I owed it to all past winners and all future winners to translate into my attire how important the occasion was to me.

And now, I look at the pictures and I think “Gosh, that’s not me receiving that award. That’s clearly someone important.” So, there is that. I think my speech was incoherent, as I forgot half of it. I might have said that it was a bad thing to legislate equality, instead of specifying that equality before the law was fine – it’s equality of results that’s bad to enforce. BUT at least I looked the part and future people won’t know how scared I was.

More on the convention and the friends I got to see again for first time in years later. For now, I’ve got to go and clean the house which is drowned in cat hair and finish painting the fence (no, no neighborhood kids want to pay to do it. They’ve all read Tom Sawyer.)

And that’s the other part of being a writer. Reading Grumbles From The Grave I kept gritting my teeth and going “Okay, then. WHY was he building these water features, instead of writing another book? Didn’t he know he had limited time?”

But of course it is doing these other things that feeds the writing. If you sealed us in a chamber that took care of al our physical necessities and made us write, we’d soon stop, or go insane.

After all, my characters clean house, change litter boxes and paint fences too.

And I’ll be taking notes.