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.
no subject
Date: 2017-06-19 03:37 pm (UTC)I occurs to me that some of the difference between our perspectives may have a lot to do with where we are living, not just countries, states, but also urban vs. rural. I read recently in one of TCH's post on livejournal, a history of the Tory party and how that party tended to be more rural...due to the need to protect land and agricultural interests.
It's similar in the US. The needs are different. In the rural areas, there's no threat of a rich real estate developer coming along and buying up units and evicting you. Okay, less of one, at any rate. If you live around a lake or in a great place, yes, not so much if you live out in Indiana or Kansas or the middle part of Pennsylvania or upstate New York. Also, doctors often are cheaper in rural areas...the local doctor you knew your whole life, or the local hospital. Schools are often cheaper as well. As are apartments and housing.
In urban areas, capitalism can be a nightmare. Because it's all about "location, location, location" and how much you can afford or pay. It's all supply and demand, and the market drives things. Rents sky-rocket, when someone comes to town and puts a $1 million down on an apartment in a neighborhood that was originally $900 - $1000 in rents. Things are valuable based on how much people spend. In the suburban communities, people will buy up houses, renovate, and flip them for twice the cost. The people who live well, are the ones working in the high finance, and working a 180 hours week, skipping vacations, then blowing money on high-priced condos.
We need regulations to keep all of that in check. That's why urban areas vote more liberal. It's just smart.
American Psycho was a satire of the American Capitalistic System.
But if you live out in the rural communities, you see a different picture. You think why do we need a left turn signal when only one or two cars even might pass each other? Or why do we need all these housing regs? And why is universal health care important? My local doc is fine, this is just more paper work for him to manage?
no subject
Date: 2017-06-25 01:09 pm (UTC)The examples you give around housing do not reflect the reality in southern England, nor to some extent the wider UK. House prices here in the rural south are somewhere around £350,000 for an average house. That's $447,895.00 at today's exchange rate. But there are hardly any houses priced that low in the truly rural villages - £500,000 is about the cheapest in my own village. There are perhaps three properties worth as little as that. And any small property that does come on the market is liable to be bought by a developer and enlarged into something worth £1,000,000+. The housing crisis is an ongoing nightmare for everyone. And it is caused, incidentally, by immigration and environmental legislation - everyone agrees about that, they just don't know what to do about it.
State schools and the NHS cost the same for everyone, private schools and medicine (to the extent private medicine exists at all in this country) are available to everyone at the same price and convenience since they always require travel so are not dependent on locality.
So although my rural outlook affects a lot of how I see the world, I don't think it is operating in quite the way you envisage.
One obvious difference between rural and urban life is that rural life is far more mixed, with friendships across the classes and ages being normal. I think that gives everyone a different outlook. The age profile is also older than in cities, and many people develop more right wing views with age.
The thing about rules and regs does probably apply. In rural areas, things are done more by custom and incomers are sufficiently few they can be assimilated, and thus written rules are seen as more intrusive. I can imagine in urban areas you need written rules or the constant flux of incomers would drive everyone mad all the time by not knowing what the rules were.
no subject
Date: 2017-06-25 01:32 pm (UTC)The prices that I gave were for "renting" apartments, one bedroom apartments and studios.
To buy a one-bedroom apt it is between $300,000 -$750,000.
To buy a house in upstate NY? It is between $500,000-$1 Million in some places.
Brownstones in NYC are $899,000 - $1Million
I can't afford to buy a house or apartment.
In some outlying areas it can be between $50,000 - $100,000 depends on which of the fifty states you are living in.
I don't know the property prices in England. But in my area, property taxes are $14,000 out in the Island, and many coworkers consider $550,000 fairly cheap.
Again some of the US is cheaper, but the cheaper homes are out in areas with no trees, no towns, and well, no one really wants to live.
no subject
Date: 2017-06-25 05:09 pm (UTC)Surely that isn't taxes of $550,000 per year???? Even $14,000 per year is an awful lot. Most property taxes in this country are a few hundred to a few thousand per year, and then a variable percentage on the purchase price when the property is sold (but crazily the stamp duty is paid by the purchaser, not the vendor - I have no idea why). So it looks as if our purchasing costs are much higher but then annual taxes are lower.
no subject
Date: 2017-06-25 09:00 pm (UTC)When I visited Britain in the 80s, the dollar was high and the pound was low. So I could get Peter Gaberiel tickets for 14 bucks, cheap. While in US they would have $150.
no subject
Date: 2017-06-26 06:34 am (UTC)It is interesting hearing you say this. My immediate reaction was to have little sympathy for urban people who have to move. I see city dwellers as people who have shallow roots and thus little to lose if they shift from place to place. Everything I have read tells me that they celebrate mobility and openness to outsiders and a constant influx of new people around them, and that they not only welcome this culture for themselves but wish to impose it on everyone else. And yet my personal observation is that urban people do in fact feel strong affection for their particular neighbourhood within the city, and can be just as hostile to external forces as other folk. It is as if the 'openness' story is to some extent a story you tell yourselves to try to convince yourselves. Maybe to try to make the constant barrage of strangers and change a little more bearable?