Life Log #03: Strange Spines, Mites, and BEER!
The past five days have been…interesting. Yes. Interesting. Let’s go with that. So, what happened?
On Writing Projects: Decisions Decisions
In less than a week, I’m meeting with my friend, Jen, for a discussion about writing as part of a new podcast she plans to release on her Patreon page. Essentially, we’re trying to take a stab at actually writing something. For me, it’s a return. For Jen, it’s brand spankin’ new. In an effort to get started, I thought I might return to a project I had started but never completed. Maybe I wrote a paragraph or two. Maybe a few pages. Maybe I wrote an outline. For whatever reason, I never finished these projects, and they continue to haunt me the way fun projects do. So, I figure that coming back to something familiar — especially something I’m really passionate about — would make transitioning back into writing a little bit exciting. Currently, the projects that most interest me are on the playful side. As I mentioned in a previous post, I want writing to be fun, and “fun” for me means letting my imagination run wild. With that in mind, these are the five projects I’m currently looking at:
On NaNoWriMo and the “Work” of Writing
It figures that in the middle of my “writing brain reboot” session, the infamous NaNoWriMo would waltz into my life to taunt me. That’s an exaggeration. In reality, I haven’t paid much attention to it in years. I’ve only tried NaNoWriMo and NaPoWriMo (the poetry one) once. Both times, I failed. Both times were in high-production years for my writing. And both times left me totally exhausted by the whole process. Since then, I’ve come to the conclusion that NaNo just isn’t for me.
On Forgiveness, Bad Behavior, and Block Policies
If the post-GamerGate years didn’t change the way I interact with people in SF/F and online, the past year certainly has. From the election of a serial asshole to the endless parade of turdmuffins on Twitter, the last year has made it clear that “business as usual” just won’t work for my sanity. In fact, more and more, I’m learning that a lot of folks I know have even less tolerance for all sorts of behavior we all might have put up with a few years ago. Ann Leckie, for example, has for a while used this basic policy for handling responses to her Tweets:
On the “Right” Kind of Reviews
One of the things that often bothers me about the reviewing process is the idea that some reviews are inherently more valuable than others. By this, I don’t mean in the sense of the quality of the writing itself; after all, some reviews really are nothing more than a quick “I liked it” or are borderline unreadable. Rather, I mean “more valuable” in the sense that different styles of reviewing are worth more than others. While I think most of us would agree that this is poppycock, there are some in the sf/f community who would honestly claim that the critical/analytical review is simply better than the others (namely, the self-reflective review).
Life Log #02: Fulfilling Dreams, Reading Weirdness
This week is a strange one. One of my dreams has started to come true. Today, the people secretly indicted by Robert Mueller turned themselves in, revealing that major members of the Trump administration may very well have committed serious crimes against the United States. A lot of us have been waiting for this moment, and it’s just the beginning. I’ll continue to hope this cascades into something great; otherwise, this is a good start. Having one dream come true also reminded me of another dream I fulfilled earlier this year. As you may recall, I attended Worldcon 75 in Finland. On the way, I decided to make some stops in Germany and Sweden to visit friends and go on some adventures. One of those adventures was riding this beauty: