This that and the other thing...
Jun. 9th, 2017 09:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. There's an horror/sci-fi novel out there entitled Amish Vampires in Space and according to smartbitches its not that bad and not a parody.
The plot seems to be about a transport crew that picks up a cryogenically frozen scientist and her wrecked lab along with a bunch of Amish colonists, out in the reaches of space. One of the crew members fiddles about in the scientist's lab and gets bitten by something -- which turns him into a vampire. He feeds on the livestock and most of the passengers and crew, until before you know it -- you have Amish Vampires in Space.
LOL!
2. I couldn't think any more or focus on anything or listen to anyone by the end of the work day. Felt a bit like I'd been hit by a Mac Truck. So nixed going to the Psychology Lecture - entitled Mad World. (I honestly didn't care, I wanted to go home and be a vegetable.)
Tried to write some during downtime, but brain fog made it difficult. Haven't been sleeping well, which may be part of it. Don't know.
3. Current state of politics is confusing and headache inducing, so I've been ignoring it for the most part.
I honestly can't tell if last night's snap election in Great Britain turned out well, or if its up in the air. One thing tells me that Labor Won, another that no one won, another that the Conservative party is still in charge and now a nasty alt-right party got seats at the table. (Apparently they are the party from Northern Ireland -- sigh, why hasn't Britain just let Northern Ireland leave already...they appear to be more trouble than they are worth. I never understood why the Brits couldn't let go of Northern Ireland. I honestly think if Great Britain (and other European countries) had been a little less into imperialism and colonizing, they'd have had a lot less problems later. All that colonizing seems to have come back and bitten them on the royal rear-end. Then again, I probably wouldn't exist if they hadn't done it. Oh by the way, we have a schedule in our Federal and State construction contracts where a contractor legally confirms that they aren't doing business with and/or investing in Northern Ireland, it's required the MacBride Act. Somewhat dated, but still there. Also have an Iran divestment schedule.)
And I've no clue if the Comey hearings will get Trump impeached or just continue the status quo such as it is at the moment. The problem with Comey is...he was a bit of an idiot in how he handled things regarding Trump and Clinton. So, it's hard for anyone including the media to take him that seriously. Although it's not like he hasn't said anything we don't know already. The whole thing reminds me of the Watergate hearings, which I have a vague memory of, considering I was maybe five or six at the time.
My mother keeps saying he won't get impeached. But she didn't think Nixon would be impeached either and look how that turned out. (Technically he didn't, he resigned before they could impeach him and Gerald Ford pardoned him. I'm sort of hoping they impeach Trump and horse he rode in on. Best case scenario, he dies in prison for treasonous acts against the US. But I realize this is wishful thinking.)
All of this just makes me want to go hide in a cabin up in the mountains or do a Thoreau. Hell is other people.
3. Riverdale
Well, the season finale surprised me. The resolution of the Jason Blossom mystery didn't, I sort of figured out who killed him some time ago. Although they did plant a few clever red-herrings.
The show is sort of a hybrid of various genres, noir, mystery, teen soap, and a bit of the Surreal Twin Peaks/Graphic novel. The parents or adults are the villains in the piece.
With their kids navigating the stormy waters of their secrets.
I'm sticking with it. Rather enjoyed it. Doesn't require that much attention, I like the characters, and find their subversion of the bad trope interesting. Jughead is the bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks, but he's wickedly bright, not strong or tough at all, and a bit of a nerd, who loves to sit in a corner and write. A sensitive soul. And slight of build. Betty Cooper is the quintessential good girl next door, except she has a dark side, and her own secrets.
None of the kids look like kids of course. They all look like they are in their 20s. I think Stranger Things might be the only television series I've seen that employs actual teens.
4.) I have written 279 pages and 147,700 words on my novel to date. Which could prove problematic when I decide to publish it. If I publish it. At this rate, it may well clock in at a little over 350 or 400 pages and 199,000 words or thereabouts. I tend to write books about that length.
I am not a short story writer. And, while I dabbled with fanfic, I find it difficult to write.
I discussed it with my father once, who is also a writer. (I think it's the Irish blood, half of his side of the family are frustrated self-published writers). Anyhow, he said that he couldn't do it either -- he found it difficult to write about someone else's characters, world, or plot. It felt like you were playing their house with their toys, and there was just something almost...weird or discomforting about it. (It's probably worth mentioning at this point that neither my father nor I like to stay with people. We feel like we are imposing on their space. If he visits people, he will often insist on staying in a hotel and not with them. And we're both just a little uncomfortable in another person's space.)
So if you consider or think of fanfic as invading another writer's house or space without their say-so, it's like that. I have written it, and I've read a lot of it of course, but I always feel a little uneasy about it. The uneasiness is not helped by my background in copyright and intellectual property law -- which for the most part permits fanfic, just not for commercial purposes unless the work in question is in the public domain.
There is by the way a lot of commercially published fanfic out there, from works currently in the public domain (of course). Recently saw a novel entitled "Mr. Rochester" -- basically his life story, before Jane Eyre. There was also a book about his first marriage - The Wide Sagrasso Sea. And there have been novel's written about Moby Dick's wife, Mr. Darcy, PD James wrote a mystery novel starring Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. And don't get me started on the wide number of Sherlock Holmes fanfic novels that have been published, the latest that I saw, was by Sherry Thomas, entitled Lady Sherlock. About a female Sherlock Holmes. Or rather a female sleuth named Holmes, who is called Sherlock, with her own Watson.
I think they've saturated the field with Jane Austen fanfics, Sherlock Holmes fanfics, and Everybody's Human Erotica Twilight fanfics (seriously you would not believe the number of Twilight inspired everybody's human AU erotica books that have been published.) I think the trend lost some steam. I no longer see shelves devoted to them in Barnes and Noble.
Anyhow, I think this why I'd have troubles writing for comics, television or being a hired fiction gun - script doctoring, ghost writing, or game writing for someone else's verse. I couldn't write a novelized version of a film or television series. Because I don't like being hemmed in by someone else's rules, boundaries, and world guidelines, it makes me twitchy. My Dad said the same thing. (So maybe this is genetic too somehow? I wonder sometimes how much of our personality is dictated by DNA.) I want to make my own when I write. I want to create my own characters, with their own voices, and shapes and sizes, I want my own crazy assed world. And I think...to an extent, it's about my characters speaking to me. They don't always or do it in spits and stretches of time. Someone else's characters don't speak to me as well.
The fanfic I've written, always felt off somehow. Discordant. Like some rhyme or beat was out of sync.
A friend told me once that he envied my discipline to sit down and write, and I responded, it's not discipline, it's a drive. A need. A craving. An itch. I get edgy if I don't. My Dad wrote on airplanes, hotel rooms, and trains when he was working 120 hour weeks. Traveling to and from meetings and consultations. He had a family, wife, a full-time job, but he had to write. And he's written until he can't any longer. He can't now. My heart breaks for him. But my Dad isn't a whiner, he seems to accept things, and just plow on. For me? I've written on trains, on planes, at my desk at work, in the bathroom, and at home. Sometimes I'll plot it out in my head and then jot it down later.
Writing for me is a bit like breathing or eating or sleeping. It's not..something I decide to do so much as must. I don't even know sometimes if it is any good or that any one will read or care about it. Just that I must write it. And when the muse gets blocked, the story stops, I feel this sense of...being stuck or constipated or at odds. Creatively backed up somehow.
It's hard to explain to someone who doesn't feel the same way. I think the drive to write sometimes is a curse. I was actually a better drawer/artist/painter than writer when I started out. But somewhere along the way, I fell in love with painting with words...far more so than colors or crazy drawn lines sketched haphazardly across a page.
I am a professional writer. I do a lot of writing for my workplace and everyone at my workplace views me as an excellent writer. Which makes me happy. It's not fictional writing per se, but it is writing.
The plot seems to be about a transport crew that picks up a cryogenically frozen scientist and her wrecked lab along with a bunch of Amish colonists, out in the reaches of space. One of the crew members fiddles about in the scientist's lab and gets bitten by something -- which turns him into a vampire. He feeds on the livestock and most of the passengers and crew, until before you know it -- you have Amish Vampires in Space.
LOL!
2. I couldn't think any more or focus on anything or listen to anyone by the end of the work day. Felt a bit like I'd been hit by a Mac Truck. So nixed going to the Psychology Lecture - entitled Mad World. (I honestly didn't care, I wanted to go home and be a vegetable.)
Tried to write some during downtime, but brain fog made it difficult. Haven't been sleeping well, which may be part of it. Don't know.
3. Current state of politics is confusing and headache inducing, so I've been ignoring it for the most part.
I honestly can't tell if last night's snap election in Great Britain turned out well, or if its up in the air. One thing tells me that Labor Won, another that no one won, another that the Conservative party is still in charge and now a nasty alt-right party got seats at the table. (Apparently they are the party from Northern Ireland -- sigh, why hasn't Britain just let Northern Ireland leave already...they appear to be more trouble than they are worth. I never understood why the Brits couldn't let go of Northern Ireland. I honestly think if Great Britain (and other European countries) had been a little less into imperialism and colonizing, they'd have had a lot less problems later. All that colonizing seems to have come back and bitten them on the royal rear-end. Then again, I probably wouldn't exist if they hadn't done it. Oh by the way, we have a schedule in our Federal and State construction contracts where a contractor legally confirms that they aren't doing business with and/or investing in Northern Ireland, it's required the MacBride Act. Somewhat dated, but still there. Also have an Iran divestment schedule.)
And I've no clue if the Comey hearings will get Trump impeached or just continue the status quo such as it is at the moment. The problem with Comey is...he was a bit of an idiot in how he handled things regarding Trump and Clinton. So, it's hard for anyone including the media to take him that seriously. Although it's not like he hasn't said anything we don't know already. The whole thing reminds me of the Watergate hearings, which I have a vague memory of, considering I was maybe five or six at the time.
My mother keeps saying he won't get impeached. But she didn't think Nixon would be impeached either and look how that turned out. (Technically he didn't, he resigned before they could impeach him and Gerald Ford pardoned him. I'm sort of hoping they impeach Trump and horse he rode in on. Best case scenario, he dies in prison for treasonous acts against the US. But I realize this is wishful thinking.)
All of this just makes me want to go hide in a cabin up in the mountains or do a Thoreau. Hell is other people.
3. Riverdale
Well, the season finale surprised me. The resolution of the Jason Blossom mystery didn't, I sort of figured out who killed him some time ago. Although they did plant a few clever red-herrings.
The show is sort of a hybrid of various genres, noir, mystery, teen soap, and a bit of the Surreal Twin Peaks/Graphic novel. The parents or adults are the villains in the piece.
With their kids navigating the stormy waters of their secrets.
I'm sticking with it. Rather enjoyed it. Doesn't require that much attention, I like the characters, and find their subversion of the bad trope interesting. Jughead is the bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks, but he's wickedly bright, not strong or tough at all, and a bit of a nerd, who loves to sit in a corner and write. A sensitive soul. And slight of build. Betty Cooper is the quintessential good girl next door, except she has a dark side, and her own secrets.
None of the kids look like kids of course. They all look like they are in their 20s. I think Stranger Things might be the only television series I've seen that employs actual teens.
4.) I have written 279 pages and 147,700 words on my novel to date. Which could prove problematic when I decide to publish it. If I publish it. At this rate, it may well clock in at a little over 350 or 400 pages and 199,000 words or thereabouts. I tend to write books about that length.
I am not a short story writer. And, while I dabbled with fanfic, I find it difficult to write.
I discussed it with my father once, who is also a writer. (I think it's the Irish blood, half of his side of the family are frustrated self-published writers). Anyhow, he said that he couldn't do it either -- he found it difficult to write about someone else's characters, world, or plot. It felt like you were playing their house with their toys, and there was just something almost...weird or discomforting about it. (It's probably worth mentioning at this point that neither my father nor I like to stay with people. We feel like we are imposing on their space. If he visits people, he will often insist on staying in a hotel and not with them. And we're both just a little uncomfortable in another person's space.)
So if you consider or think of fanfic as invading another writer's house or space without their say-so, it's like that. I have written it, and I've read a lot of it of course, but I always feel a little uneasy about it. The uneasiness is not helped by my background in copyright and intellectual property law -- which for the most part permits fanfic, just not for commercial purposes unless the work in question is in the public domain.
There is by the way a lot of commercially published fanfic out there, from works currently in the public domain (of course). Recently saw a novel entitled "Mr. Rochester" -- basically his life story, before Jane Eyre. There was also a book about his first marriage - The Wide Sagrasso Sea. And there have been novel's written about Moby Dick's wife, Mr. Darcy, PD James wrote a mystery novel starring Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. And don't get me started on the wide number of Sherlock Holmes fanfic novels that have been published, the latest that I saw, was by Sherry Thomas, entitled Lady Sherlock. About a female Sherlock Holmes. Or rather a female sleuth named Holmes, who is called Sherlock, with her own Watson.
I think they've saturated the field with Jane Austen fanfics, Sherlock Holmes fanfics, and Everybody's Human Erotica Twilight fanfics (seriously you would not believe the number of Twilight inspired everybody's human AU erotica books that have been published.) I think the trend lost some steam. I no longer see shelves devoted to them in Barnes and Noble.
Anyhow, I think this why I'd have troubles writing for comics, television or being a hired fiction gun - script doctoring, ghost writing, or game writing for someone else's verse. I couldn't write a novelized version of a film or television series. Because I don't like being hemmed in by someone else's rules, boundaries, and world guidelines, it makes me twitchy. My Dad said the same thing. (So maybe this is genetic too somehow? I wonder sometimes how much of our personality is dictated by DNA.) I want to make my own when I write. I want to create my own characters, with their own voices, and shapes and sizes, I want my own crazy assed world. And I think...to an extent, it's about my characters speaking to me. They don't always or do it in spits and stretches of time. Someone else's characters don't speak to me as well.
The fanfic I've written, always felt off somehow. Discordant. Like some rhyme or beat was out of sync.
A friend told me once that he envied my discipline to sit down and write, and I responded, it's not discipline, it's a drive. A need. A craving. An itch. I get edgy if I don't. My Dad wrote on airplanes, hotel rooms, and trains when he was working 120 hour weeks. Traveling to and from meetings and consultations. He had a family, wife, a full-time job, but he had to write. And he's written until he can't any longer. He can't now. My heart breaks for him. But my Dad isn't a whiner, he seems to accept things, and just plow on. For me? I've written on trains, on planes, at my desk at work, in the bathroom, and at home. Sometimes I'll plot it out in my head and then jot it down later.
Writing for me is a bit like breathing or eating or sleeping. It's not..something I decide to do so much as must. I don't even know sometimes if it is any good or that any one will read or care about it. Just that I must write it. And when the muse gets blocked, the story stops, I feel this sense of...being stuck or constipated or at odds. Creatively backed up somehow.
It's hard to explain to someone who doesn't feel the same way. I think the drive to write sometimes is a curse. I was actually a better drawer/artist/painter than writer when I started out. But somewhere along the way, I fell in love with painting with words...far more so than colors or crazy drawn lines sketched haphazardly across a page.
I am a professional writer. I do a lot of writing for my workplace and everyone at my workplace views me as an excellent writer. Which makes me happy. It's not fictional writing per se, but it is writing.
Re: Writing
Date: 2017-06-12 12:31 pm (UTC)That is partly because my processes for both are very different and the questions I am answering with fanfic are more character based while in meta I am normally expounding on some detail of anachronism, continuity or plotting. But there are exceptions in both directions.
While, I tend to examine character via meta and fiction, along with other things. Probably the English Lit major background. I was taught how to write meta in college. Wrote my thesis examining the characters of Molly Bloom (Ulysses) and Caddy Thompson (Sound and the Fury). Also wrote a paper on the black humor in the television series MASH. And a paper on a collection of Welsh folktales and ghost stories collected in Wales, along with one examining ghost stories and folk tales in Colorado. So I came to it naturally, more or less. I also analyzed films in school.
Most, not all, of the major meta writers were/are frustrated English Lit majors or professors. Or so I discovered. A few classicists. A couple were philosophy majors or professors.
There was one economist/mathematician - TCH, who is also writing a lot about British politics and economics on his LJ. And a Buddhist monk, who was sort of interesting. Ran across a few geneticists - who looked at everything almost a wee bit too literally, and a social Darwinist who pissed everyone off. A lot of lawyers, like myself.
Re: Writing
Date: 2017-06-14 11:19 am (UTC)I never had much to do with ATPOBTVS, partly because I was always a season behind and partly because I hated the formating of the board. It is one of my regrets though because the standard of meta there was so high.
I have met a lot of scientists and mathematicians in fandom, covering just about every speciality. I am aware that there are an awful lot of English Lit graduates out there - I probably knew half a dozen librarians in my peek fandom days. Never knowingly met a lawyer before. I am the only blue-collar manual worker that I know of, but there may be many others out there keeping a low profile as to what they do.
My degree is in Geography and I didn't study any English lit ever, not even an O Level, so my meta and fiction were entirely self-taught and so probably have quirks accordingly. But fandom provides an excellent amateur training in every aspect of fiction so it was a good learning environment. I even learnt to punctuate (I didn't know I couldn't until a beta reader broke it to me that my punctuation was dreadful).
Re: Writing
Date: 2017-06-14 01:17 pm (UTC)I thought you were a gardener? Maybe that's blue collar? My paternal grandfather was a carpenter, and that was. I just don't tend to think of them as such for some reason. Interesting. At any rate, my father once said that the sole purpose of college or education was to teach you how to learn. Once it did that, you could teach yourself. I've met people who went to Harvard, have multiple degrees, yet appear to have no common sense, which blew my mind at the time. (We call it the difference between street smart and book smart, I guess.)
ATPOBTVS had a wide variety. (I was on it and Buffy Cross and Stake, I started on Buffy Cross and Stake.) There were a lot of navy nurses though. And a lot of nurses. Most of the people on that site seemed to be in college, professors, nurses or navy nurses. Which I found odd.
Re: Writing
Date: 2017-06-15 05:49 pm (UTC)I have seen a more cynical take that university is a way of proving who is a conformist. But my university gives all graduates a higher degree three years after they graduate without taking any further courses or exams. Many people consider this outrageous, but actually I think it is fair - once you are set on the right path of learning it becomes a lifelong thing that you do for yourself.
Maybe it was the 'cross' part in the name that attracted them :D
Re: Writing
Date: 2017-06-15 06:11 pm (UTC)Education over here is quite different. We don't have the same testing that you do, we have it, it's just...different. And we don't do the "vocational" schools. Actually the education in the UK and Europe is more advanced than in the US, or so I've discovered.
I work with a lot of blue collar or manual laborer, many of which only graduated from high school or have an associates degree, and quite a few of them make twice my salary -- just due to overtime. Weirdly, education varies.
Quite a few of the people who have Masters Degrees in Business - have no idea who Winston Churchill was. (Which blows my mind.) Mainly because they skipped history, geography, etc, and just focused on math and business.
Re: Writing
Date: 2017-06-16 03:54 pm (UTC)Re: Writing
Date: 2017-06-16 05:26 pm (UTC)Part of the difference between the US and Europe is we don't put much money in our public education system. (Another example of how a unregulated or privatized system can be problematic.) In the US, you get the education you can afford. So going to a state school, depending of course on the state, is often less than the education you'd get from a private, regardless of the level - elementary through university. My niece and sister-in-law went to private schools -- their education was far and above what I had or my brother, who went to public. And we went to public in a rich county. But our school district still could not afford the level of teachers and talent that private could.
Vocational School...is available here, and often online. But it's privately funded not publically, so affordability may well be an issue.
Re: Writing
Date: 2017-06-17 06:56 am (UTC)But obviously like all research the next study may come along and show the exact opposite.
Most vocational education here is privately funded, and it can be very difficult for apprentices and students on vocational courses to even get loans. So the main vocational routes are employer funded, and the government does at least provide various tax incentives to encourage people to take on apprentices. But as I think I said above the system was very run down so it is going to take a long time before it is really fit for purpose. Also they keep making really stupid decisions like when they abolished bursaries for student nurses.
One thing that your system seem to have, which I admire, is that as a culture you seem very ready to accept that people can retrain and switch careers throughout their life. In this country it is very much frowned upon to switch career much after 35 - it is seen by employers as a sign the person is not reliable. It is becoming a little more normal in recent years, but there is still a stigma and very few educational facilities to facilitate it. That is another thing that we need to change to get us match fit as a modern economy.
Re: Writing
Date: 2017-06-19 06:45 pm (UTC)One thing that your system seem to have, which I admire, is that as a culture you seem very ready to accept that people can retrain and switch careers throughout their life. In this country it is very much frowned upon to switch career much after 35 - it is seen by employers as a sign the person is not reliable
Really? How odd. Here, we have people become psychologists, lawyers, teachers, etc at the age of 45 or 50.
We're also a bigger country, so there's that. Employers don't usually care and often consider it something to admire -- because your range in experience is more varied and interesting than the person who planned it out. Also shows flexibility, ability to learn, and to change. Here - ability to learn, change, think outside the box is highly regarded.
The people who can't do this...often end up unemployed. In US, people often change careers three or four times in their lifetime.
Re: Writing
Date: 2017-06-25 11:22 am (UTC)Most British people would claim they regarded those things highly, but the reality is most employers still want a high degree of conformance.
There is also presumably a gender angle to this. Women who break their career to have children need to be able to reenter the workforce without additional penalties. If there is a culture of mistrust for those who change career, that becomes even more difficult.
I don't know what the answer to this is. I can understand how laws can be changed to alter systems and economics, I have no idea how people can bring about cultural change.