From Twitter 11-15-2010

( Tweets. Scintillating, innit. )

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Mmmm. Brains.

Last week I was, by my own admission, an object lesson in what happens when one fails to maintain work/life balance. By Thursday I was about ready to fall over. Friday I gave class a miss because I felt like death, and the most I can say of my productivity over the weekend is that I put together a pair of flat-pack bookcases, went grocery shopping, and tried to get some writing in.

This week, I resolved to improve things. When I came out of yesterday feeling about as well as I did on Thursday, my response was to take it easy and have an early night. My body seems to have interpreted that as “Today we shall wake up at 2 AM to fevered delirium, chills, and pain.”

Oof.

So now I am on the sofa, surfing Spring Hill and Burpee’s online catalogs in an effort to plan new and exciting ways to dig up my yard this spring, and cursing that one apparently plants blackberries and garlic in autumn. Damn it. (On the other hand, bananas are good.)

This week’s revelations about my writing process look something like this:

1) While I can churn out words in bulk given 5-20 minutes to freewriting — I’ve literally hit nearly 2k before — I will actively resist doing this with something that I know the shape of. In fact, if I try to push the freewriting model onto a project, it breaks the project because I don’t have enough brain to free write and keep to the plan at the same time. I basically have to throw the words away because it’s like dropping a bucket of LEGO into my K’nex project. 9 times of 10 they just don’t fit properly. Freewriting isn’t a bad first draft generator, though. It’s just wildly unpredictable. It’s like reaching into my skull and pulling something out, sight-unseen.

2) I write faster and more confidently if I get to loosely plot out a few steps ahead, and if I have same for things that have happened. The black Post-It board is delicious sanity-saving goodness. We loves it, we do. Unfortunately, it’s not a very portable technology. I may have to look into the beta version of Scrivener for Windows.

~*~

And now, linkery-pokery:

- Read fast. Charlie Brooker is on his way to strangle us all.

- From BoingBoing, “My First Cavity Search.” Relatedly, the TSA is threatening to fine someone $10k for refusing to be screened.

- An Open Letter to MFA Writing Programs (and Their Students). Having been in an English department that encouraged even undergraduate students to seek publication, I’m a fan of programs offering education on how not to get screwed over.

- Aleister Crowley 2012. According to the site, “We realize that Aleister Crowley is dead. And British. And, moreover, not running for office.” OTOH, it’s hard to beat their holiday stockings.

- Don’t forget to support Dogboy & Justine. They’re more than halfway there, and working hard to make sure that everyone involved gets a slice of the pie.

- Another opportunity to support something cool: The Wild Hunt is doing a pledge drive.

- WTF, World Bank? Really?

- Best tea party ever.

- If you’ve ever read the Zombie Survival Guide, you know perfectly well not to set a zombie on fire. Why? Because they’ll shamble around setting other things on fire before they collapse. Apparently this is also true of cockroaches.

This post has been mirrored from Christian A. Young's Dimlight Archive. To see it in its original format, visit dimlightarchive.com

Dear Yuletide Author

Dear Mysterious Yuletide Person,

So I have never done Yuletide before. Last year was the year I figured out what it was, and that it's awesome. Don't be alarmed by my sort of blank-but-affable demeanor. I'm still trying to figure out which end of this thing I'm supposed to be holding.

You, however, are already seventy flavors of badass. I mean, Yuletide is about obscurity to some extent, and to my mind the things I asked for aren't obscure per se, but I expect they get shortish-shrift by fandom on account of being sort of common Western canon literature. I'm not sure if wanting to play with them is a recessive trait or not, but perhaps working on them in this context is. So! High fives to you!

What I Like
- queer themes handled gracefully
- wit, wordplay, and language I want to roll around in my mouth
- the senses
- playful exploration of the prompt
- romance/erotica that serves the characters and the story
- darkness or lightness which serves the characters and the story
- pie*

* Just in general. It doesn't actually have to be in the story or anything.

What I Don't Like
- tired queer stereotypes/narratives
- dumb/weird/offensive mistakes arising from lack of experience/knowledge
- bizarrely out of character choices (e.g. fluffy Harker/Dracula)
- romance/erotica in conflict with story or characterization
- holiday-oriented stories
- gratuitous cruelty, especially to animals

I think Twelfth Night lends itself well to happy endings, A Midsummer Night's Dream lends itself well to longing and strangeness and things which cannot be, and Dracula lends itself to some heavy, crazy darkness, but (with the possible exception of things like Dracula/Harker curtainfic) am ridiculously flexible and open to being delighted by the unexpected.

Thanks again, Yuletide Author. You're fabulous.