A thought, a plan, a canal, more posts

One part of that title is a lie.

I watched this 20/20 special yesterday about YouTube and the people who rise to fame and fortune because of it, I then talked with my Dad about it at lunch and what I was saying about providing consistent, regular content for your audience being the key to growing said audience struck a chord with me.  The thing is, that statement is not at all true about this blog at all. I never post and that’s because I’m lazy, particular about how my content looks, I agonize over every word and in the end it’s easier to post to Tumblr or Twitter. In writing circles we would say I struggle to silence my inner editor. That. Ends. Today.

My plan is to limit myself to thirty minutes for writing blog posts for one year.

If I have an idea that would make a good post I’ll do some limited prep (if there are pictures to download or vitally important links to gather) and then have half an hour to write and five minutes to edit it before I hit post. Period.

Does this mean the quality of my posts will suffer? Probably, unless it cuts down on my tendency to ramble. I’ll have less time to research, to find links or pictures to support my ideas and I ask your patience with that. Find evidence to prove/disprove me and put it in the comments, I’ll be doing the same.

Does this mean I can post more frequently? Absolutely. That’s the point of the exercise. I need to tell my inner editor to shush up about Appa (Avatar: The Last Airbender reference, I am incapable of saying shut up anymore, it always turns into that phrase) and just write. If it means I post three rambling posts that contradict each other, than that’s okay because I’m (hopefully) taking you though my thought process.

I’ve got over half of my thirty minutes left, but I’ve said what I had to say. With the exception of one post going up tomorrow (it’s already written and scheduled) I won’t take more than 35 minutes to do a post on this blog for the next year.

Please bear with me and understand that I’m trying to grow as a writer, not fill your feed readers with useless junk.

Geek Girls Travel in Packs

Yestereday on twitter Joey Heflich, or @MrBalls if you’d rather, decided to run a little geek survey. As ususal, there was a dearth of female geeks participating initially, so I (and a nice number of other ladies) decided to take part to give him a better sample.  Now, the core of this survey was the following scenario.

 

You see two geeks outside of a convention center.

Geek A is gesticulating wildly, talking about the upcoming release of The Dark Knight Rising, the new Batman movie. Geek A is a bit overweight, unkempt and pale. Geek A’s wardrobe is a wrinkled t-shirt and a pair of cargo shorts.

Conversely, Geek B is dressed up as superhero. Geek B is more of the skinny sort with nice hair to compliment a pair of glasses. A messenger bag is slung over Geek B’s shoulder to free up Geek B’s hands, which hold onto a book and a phone.

While Geek B appears to be politely listening to Geek A, Geek B shows clear signs of being disinterested.

 

We were then asked to identify the gender of the two geeks. I said both were male and so did a majority of the other responders, but Geek B was supposed to be female. As a matter of fact, Geek B was loosely modeled on Jill and Ali, Twitter buddies of mine. With the exception of the skinny attribute, Geek B could well be me, but I still thought of Geek B as a male, why is that?

Is it because we percieve a majority of geeks as male? Yes, absolutely, and that was the point of the survey (and this very nice response post), but I wondered if anything in the scenario suggested male geeks? I’d say yes, because the conversation depicted is between individuals and geek girls travel in packs.

Maddy and I hit a new (to her) comic book store yesterday and as we were pulling in I noted that the store is a really chatty place, she responded (paraphrased) “Of course it is, if you’re a girl alone in a geeky place, you’re going to get hit on.”

It’s true and to be honest, I don’t usually mind.  However, if I’m at a Con, a geek event or even hitting my LCS I’m likely to bring along a wingwoman. I don’t want to suggest that the geek community is an unfriendly or hostile place for women, but the situation described in the survey totally happens, it is uncomfortable and it’s much easier to get out if you can look over and say, “I need to help my friend pick an issue of Spider-Man” (Maddy always needs help picking out issues of Spider-Man).

Even when I hit geek events without a wingwoman I’m as likely as not to pick up a pack. If I’m travelling to visit a Con, I’m going there to meet up with people I know from twitter, I’ve developed con buddies on my own at MiniCon every year and I’m just extroverted enough to hop into a lively conversation if it looks welcoming.

However you slice it, I’m not likely to be Geek B. I wouldn’t be standing outside a convention center in an uncomfortable conversation, there’s no way my pack would let me get cornered like that.

That’s my opinion and experience, but I could well be in the wrong. Let me know what you think in the comments, on twitter, or via email.

Books and Tweets in Large Quantities

Before I get to a discussion of what I am reading I’d like to mark a momentous achievement: I have just posted my 10,000th tweet. It’s sappy but I’m excessively proud of it. Twitter has been such a force for good for me that I really like to mark the big moments like this.

Anyway, now that that’s out of the way onto the important matters: What I have read so far this week, because being unemployed does wonders for your reading (warning, some of what I read is Jane Austen, my lingo may get all Regency on you, I apologize in advance).

First off, I scored the last copy of Alcatraz vs. the Shattered Lens (the fourth book in Brandon Sanderson’s epically charming Alcatraz series) from my local Barnes and Noble.  I know that I am a bad fan for doing this, that I should have pre-ordered it so there would still be a copy on the shelves to enchant some serendipitous child, but I’m lazy and it was sitting right there.  Alcatraz vs. the Shattered Lens was everything you expect from the series, laugh out loud humor, lots of action, a good heart, and crazy awesome magic.  This book has giant robots dressed as librarians, 13 year old girls with silver hair and giant swords, and bad math, magically bad math. However, since the last book both the main character and the writer have grown and matured.  Shattered Lens starts opening Alcatraz’s eyes to the fact that “the world isn’t split into good people and Death Eaters” and Sanderson handles it beautifully. The first person narration also got a bit more believable, not that it was ever bad, but it felt much more in character and also gave away a couple of secrets about the future.  It’s stuff that future Alcatraz probably wouldn’t think twice about writing, but that I as a reader was glad to hear.

Of course, that’s not the only thing I read since I last wrote briefly, I slammed my way through a gem from the most recent Audible $4.95 sale, Pride and Prejudice.  I’ve read it several times, watched the BBC/A&E/Colin Firth mini-series even more times, but somehow I had never listened to it before and in all the previous Audible sales the Pride and Prejudice was read by the narrator of my favorite edition of Jane Eyre and I couldn’t take hearing Elizabeth in what I hear as Jane’s voice.

As so often happens when I reread something in Audio the book was a completely new experience to me. I found myself identifying with Elizabeth less than usual.  I noticed her flaws more clearly than I had before, mainly her overreactions to events in the world around her. That sounds much harsher than I mean it to be, she develops decided (one might say, prejudiced) opinions about everything on the spot and holds to them doggedly until their incorrectness is flaunted in her face.  It’s something we all do. I know I react the same way to bad news, because I did so this evening and got it thrown in my face directly. I hope that by noticing it in Lizzie and myself, I’m growing past that way of thinking, like I have grown past her in age.

It didn’t bother me as much the last time I read Pride and Prejudice, but on this reread I was very conscious of being older than Elizabeth. It’s strange, because I feel like the same person I’ve always been, but I have gone beyond the Elizabeth stage. I graduated from College, got a job, moved out of my parents’ house and, shudder, grew up a bit (obviously not all the way, the first book I reviewed in this post is meant for 8-12 year olds). I still adore the book, but now the reflection I see of myself in the characters looks like a past me rather than the present me.

All of that introspection made me really want to reread Persuasion, which I have now started after downloading it from the ever-wonderful Hennepin County Library, but at first I tried to read something that’s been sitting in my Audible library for a few months now, Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn: The Final Empire. I’ve already read the Mistborn trilogy once, but I like to reread Sanderson’s books with his annotations, which are like a mix of writing master class and DVD commentary and The Final Empire has elements of Regency romance, so it felt thematically right.

I mentioned that regency element on twitter and had a bit of a chat with Laura Fitzgerald (she works for Tor, so you know she’s awesome) about other fantasy books in that vein.  She brought up Shades of Milk and Honey, which I’ve been hesitant to pick up, probably because Pride and Prejudice and Zombies left a pretty awful taste in my mouth in some respects then I get home last night and the Hugo Award winning author of Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal, had tweeted at me about my concerns about the book, eventually using etymology to prove that she knew her stuff from a historical accuracy point of view. 1) This is just so cool. I totally appreciated her taking the time to tweet at me. 2) Of course I immediately reserved a copy of the book from the library (what? I’m still wary/chary about the book, and if I like it I’ll buy a copy to keep). 3) This is more or less my favorite thing about twitter, how the things you say resonate across the cacophony and reach people who want to hear them.

That’s enough from me for now, I have a bunch more to say about Austen, but I’ll save that for tomorrow because it’s long and, I think, far more self contained than this mess of a post could ever hope to be.

Explaining Two Sentences in Five Paragraphs

Ugh. 0 words written on Project Rizzo Allen today.  I mean I did a lot of things, I applied for a bunch of jobs and played a little Kingdom Hearts (replaying these games is good for my mental health, I swear it is) and I continued my experiments with alcoholic ice cream floats, just no writing.  I imagine that a few of the things in those last few sentences are confusing, allow me to explain.

Project Rizzo Allen

Doctor Who artist Matthew Dow Smith mentioned on his twitter that he uses Muppets as code names for projects he doesn’t want to talk about in detail yet. This makes a lot of sense to me. I don’t mind talking about what I write, but I don’t make up titles easily, no writer should get too attached to any title, and, honestly, I freaking love the Muppets in just about every form. So I’m using Muppet code names. Don’t ask me where the Allen part came from because I made it up in August and I have no idea what the purpose was at the time*, but I like it enough to let it stand.  In fact, if anyone wants to guess at why I put “Allen” at the end I will accept any silliness you all come up with as truth.  I updated the sidebar with the Muppet codenames for everything and I’m glad I have a way to talk about things without having to make up official titles for them. I hate naming things as is, so having a pool of names to pull from makes my life easier, as the Muppets so often do.

I Applied for a Bunch of Jobs

Here’s the thing, I’ve been working as a contractor for over a year, so I’m getting used to minimal job security. This one snuck up on me during November. I’m applying to my top tier aspiration jobs right now, gonna do more extensive searching next week when I am actually unemployed, and I’ll probably use my bartending certification in more than one way before this month is out.

Alcoholic Ice Cream Floats

Speaking of bartending, I blame NaNoWriMo, late nights, and twitter for my latest little obsession.  I was struggling on Monday night to hit 25,000 words according to my sense of justice (I put some outline words in for padding because the NaNo site kept eating away at my word count in the official validation) and twitter gave me two ideas for celebration.  Matt was having Scotch and Mitch was having a Root Beer Float, so I combined the two and you saw the results yesterday. I’m working on a new one, I will say it’s Orange Soda based, but I’m going for a complex flavor that I haven’t worked out yet.  It’ll be cool if I can make it work.

No Writing

This isn’t strictly true. I write very intensive cover letters that I edit very poorly (I’m a terrible self editor, remember that if I ever ask any of you to beta read a book. Terrible. Self. Editor.), I tweet constantly and I’m writing this here blog now. So what I meant was that I did no writing on Project Rizzo Allen, but I did do some nice worldbuilding on Project Pepe during my commute.

It’s exciting because I had all but given up on the world Project Pepe is set in, the original story (it was the NaNo novel from 2006) was a bit Mary Sueish and came darn close to X-Men fanfiction. I’ve always desperately wanted to do something cool there, because I like a lot of the worldbuilding, the characters and I think this world needs more Super Hero novels.  What I couldn’t figure out was how to mitigate the elements of, well, bad fan fiction until this week. I had a couple of those “What if I changed this?” thoughts that completely coalesced the story for me. It was what I like to call the coda book. I went through a period where all of my series had a main sequence and then a coda afterwards to give me some closure on the decisions I made during the series.  Anyway the coda, Project Pepe, is another feel from the Super Hero High School trope I was playing with originally and it’s so much better.  There is more meat to the story and I get to keep the parts of the world that I like while losing the baggage. I’ve spent months trying to work out how to do this world justice, and now I’ve figured it out and it feels really good.

So there, five paragraphs on two brief sentences about my day. How in the world did I manage to lose NaNoWriMo?

*ETA: I think I figured out where Allen came from, and I think the codename was originally for a completely different project set in the Project Pepe universe (thanks Evernote for keeping all my story notes sitting around), but at this point I’ve named so many parts of Project Rizzo Allen so many things that I’m just gonna run with it as is.  A gold star to anyone who guesses why I used Allen now.

Dear Blog

Dear blog,

I’ve missed you. I know, I know. I left you for Twitter and I’ve dallied with Tumblr for years as well. I truly love microblogging and I left you in the dust.

That being said, there are some things only a blog can do. I miss writing “Profiles in (Fictional) Knitting” for the late lamented Daily Chum and I’d like someplace to spew whatever incredibly pretentious thoughts careen through my head while I try to figure out how to write a book, and I frequently get annoyed at reviewers of just about anything because it seems like no one gets why things I love are great. I don’t knit as much or as steadily as I once did, a side effect of graduating school, working all day, and not watching much TV. It’ll still be a part of what goes on here, but less than it was in the past.

I also keep hearing that writers write better if they warm up and sell better if they engage.  So, dear blog, I’m giving this another go. I won’t commit to anything, I might lose interest again in about 10 minutes, but you are like a robot created by a very add scientist living alone on an asteroid, you don’t have anyone else to work on you, so you have to wait for me to get my butt in gear and work on you.

Thats more I’s than anyone should have to bear with, blog, so let’s close with the hope of more to come, forgetting how very often your author has abandoned you in the past.

Ever Cordially,

~Erin

Summer… at last?

School’s over, finally.  Second semester really kicked my butt this year, everything was pretty brutal but Creative Writing was the worst because I did so much writing for it that it took away all my drive to write elsewhere (like here or the chum) and no matter how badly I wanted to write my chum column or a blog post I just didn’t have it in me.  It was also pretty defeatist because I really am not meant to write fiction that literature snobs will like.  I’ll stick to popular fiction, where my desire to blow things up is seen as indulging my audience’s desire for excitement rather than a precursor to a murderous rampage across campus (imaginary violence is the next tobacco, mark my words).  On the bright side, my other classes were pretty good, my business law class actually has me re-thinking the path of my entire life (I did unexpectedly well).  Between doing well in law, hating creative, and my failure to actually do anything for the Chum being a lawyer seems easy, and more up my alley than publishing.

Speaking of the Chum, man, ch-ch-ch-changes going on over there.  I’m the new Online/Technical editor, which is nice, but I’ve always been wary of being labeled the tech-head and it’s not great for that.  I am the most webbish of the lot of us, so it makes sense, but I’d hate to get pigeonholed into something that isn’t really my strong suit.  Of course, I did build a pretty wicked sweet twitter bot today, entirely from the ground up, so I’m not too bad at the job, it’s just not the most ideal thing in the whole wide world.

I would say “speaking of the most ideal thing in the whole wide world” here, but I think it’s time to cut to the chase.  As you might know from the title of this blog and everything, I kinda like reading, and as it is summer the really god thing is that I have a lot of time to read, nothing else that I have to read (a problem during school) and I usually end up with a pretty good stock of books to read in summer.  So anyway, in order to try and make myself write on this blog/read more in general this summer I’m gonna gush about every book I read here on the blog. Not review outright, because I don’t want it to be a review thing, but more chronicle my feelings about what I’m reading.  I’m going to try and avoid rereading anything I read this summer (which means I read what I want, including stuff I’ve already read, but not gush about anything twice, except for one exception I’ll get to when/if it happens), and I am not going to gush over single issues of the comics that I read, but I will count trades and/or reading whole arcs together (like 5+ issues) but I will try and at least list the comics I buy each week.   Along with knitting and talking comics I think I should be able to have enough gushing to do to update 5 days a week or so, I’ve got a 4 book backlog to get through already and there are so many books that I want to read that content shouldn’t be a problem (and if it is I’ll do a series on every podcast that I listen to). The fun starts tomorrow, see ya then!