...Am I the only one who thinks it would be fun to read/write a book about acceptable masculine and feminine behaviors (and the power dynamics/sexual issues) in romance novels? Specifically called Rakes and Hos?

..My brain is an odd place sometimes, yes.

The next story I write involving elves or faeries of any kind going to be titled:

That's What Sidhe Said

In a fit of foolishness, I decided to see where I'd be, page-wise, if I changed my font to Courier New. I jumped from page 14 to page 19. Even dropping the font from 12 to 11 left me at 16.

So tempting...

I'm got going to do it though. For one thing, I'm not 14 anymore. For another, I haven't even gotten to the point where I begin tearing fandom to shreds for its latent sexism. (Don't worry, I've said some very nice things about fandom thus far). I'll need the remaining 5.5 pages shortly.

Tonight, I vomit words onto pages. Tomorrow, I go back, edit, cite relevent theory beyond "this is what all my friends say," and play with footnotes for the first time in my life.

All right. Nose, meet grindstone. Maybe I'll just put everything into Comic Sans and be done with it.

dqg_neal's local writing group is doing a short story contest. The final round of Critiques will be done by Ellen Datlow and Hildy Silverman.

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ddrpolaris, shogunhb, ladyscience, how_low_am_i, eenamae and everyone else who would just like to: please do not let me flake out on this. Nag me until I scream--but I will have a submission-worthy piece by May first. And if I don't--well, start by berating me severely and then work from there, okay?

I wish to repeat this so that there is no confusion. What follows is NOT MY FAULT; it stemmed from this comment: "Any Austen-sequel author who says they're writing something other than fanfic doesn't understand what fanfic is. We're all writing fanfic. It just has a negative connotation when you say that, because it implies you threw some Ron/Harry mpreg slash in there or something." (Which I agree with).

However, that juxtaposition of Austen and mpreg got me thinking...

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( I wrote this long before I'd read LuciferCollapse )

( I was a...sophomore? in collegeCollapse )

( Breaking this up for youCollapse )

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You got through it? Congratulations! Any suggestions on what I can do to make it sound LESS like I cribbed everything from Lucifer? The problem is, we're both basing our character around Milton's Satan. And popular mythology around Lilith involves her bearing numerous children that become demons and diseases.

*I love going through old notebooks; I find the best things sometimes. For example, it one of my old Shakespeare notesbooks I have

"Fucking Aristotle, that whiny, rules-lawyering bitch"

*Funny how I see all names ending in -ian as girls' names. Except Darian, of course.

*Trying to come with a good name for Polixenes. I've changed Leontes into Count di Leontes, but I'm a little stuck for a suitable change for Polixenes. Maybe I'll change it to Burt, or Al, or something that means, "I didn't bang your wife, dude, seriously."

*Neither Doricles nor Florizel are suitable names for a hero. Of course, Perdita's not real great, either, but I'll be changing her name, too.

EDIT: I'm thinking of renaming Florizel to Demetri. Is it close enough to be "get-able"? I mean, can you get the connection?

Beasts, Joyce Carol Oates

Words are like bullets.

In writing, I have serious flaws that I'm working on fixing. Specifically, I write too much--this is why drabbles are so good for me. Saying everything I want to say in 100 words...I can rarely contain myself to 100 words exactly, but I do (generally) try to keep them below 1000. It is hard to write a story in 1000 words or less--at least for me. You read my LJ, you know how verbose I can be; I make a three hour tale out of a limerick. I give the set-up, then the punchline, and then go out on to explain the joke. It's not that I don't trust my audience--it's more that I don't trust myself to have told it properly. It's for that same reason that I abuse italics and adverbs. This way I know everyone will understand what I mean.

I am convinced this is one of the reasons I'm not good at poetry.

If words are like bullets, then my words are like buck shot--lots at once, that scatter so when they hit, they don't do much damage or penetrate very deeply.

Joyce Carol Oates, on the other hand, her words are jacketed hollow-tipped bullets shot from a high-powered sniper rifle. Not only does she not bother explaining the joke, half the time she'll give you maybe half the punchline (or none at all), and expect demand that you figure it out your own damn self. I almost felt as if the book were a race, and I had to run to keep up with her--her prose is so quick and fast that you have to pay attention or it slips right by you. Much the main character, Gillian, I felt lost and disoriented while reading, as if there was so much more going on, hovering at the edges of my senses.

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I will never write like Joyce Carol Oates. She's a master artist, and the closest I could come would be weak imitation. I don't really want to write like her (I am a lush description kinda girl myself), but it's humbling to read her work anyway. She polishes each word till it gleams and then uses them to cut. It's beautiful, the way really good poetry is beautiful. This book is profoundly disturbing, and only gets moreso the more you think on it. She writes like an iceberg, and only after you put the book down and have time for reflection can you get to most of what's hidden beneath.

5 stars

I've got to get 1 more of my experimental drabbles in by midnight tomorrow. Then I'll have fulfilled four out of my six February goals for dec_thru_oct. Unfortunately, I'll be in a conference all day until 6pm tomorrow with evening plans, so I don't know if I'll be able to get to it. I'll be bringing a notebook along to handwrite stuff in. Who knows? Maybe I'll finish the drabble AND the second part of my V-day fic in, and get home just long enough to type it all up really, really quickly.