firecat

Snowflake challenge #2: Set some goals for the upcoming year.

First, the rant: Ugh, I hate the way New Year’s resolutions are done in US culture. It always strikes me as steeped in the attitude “I am flawed; it’s my moral duty to strive toward the mainstream ideal of a human being; and I must, in public, declare my flaws and commit to eradicating them. PS: conforming to the physical ideal is the most important aspect of this.”

That said, of course there are many other ways to approach goals and one needn’t throw out the baby with the bathwater; if nothing else it will clog the drain.

My goal for this year is to bring my “words of fanfic / original work posted to AO3” over 1 million. I posted more than that number of words (132,740) in each of the past 4 years because I loved writing fiction and how it makes me feel. I want more of that.

What is your relationship to New Year’s resolutions and goal-setting in general?

I’m trying out the inkingitout community in 2024. So far for 2023 I’ve almost made it to 200K words, and my primary goal is to match that in 2024, with a +25% stretch goal.

THE UP-GOER FIVE TEXT EDITOR
http://splasho.com/upgoer5/
CAN YOU EXPLAIN A HARD IDEA USING ONLY THE TEN HUNDRED MOST USED WORDS? IT'S NOT VERY EASY. TYPE IN THE BOX TO TRY IT OUT.

Shakespeare simplified:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.


Are you, my love, just like a summer's day?
You are more pretty and more calm than that:
High winds do shake the growing things of May,
And summer's time has all too short a date:

Sometimes too hot the fire of sun will burn,
And often does his color grow less bright;
And pretty things become less so, one learns,
when bad things happen or with age's night;

But your not ending summer will not die,
You won't become less pretty than you are,
If Death says you are with him it's a lie,
When in long lasting lines to time you're barred:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and you alive can be.

Details in this post by sylvianq:
http://community.livejournal.com/wiscon/229543.html

every year Aqueduct Press produces a volume covering the WisCon for the previous year. Timmi Duchamp has asked me to edit the 4th WisCon Chronicles, covering WisCon 33. It's a great honour, if somewhat daunting!

Anyhow, at the moment I'm formally calling for materials for WisCon Chronicles 4.

She is looking for panel reports and "overall personal views" of the con, among other things.

SF writers are supposed to be good at building compelling and believable worlds. So why is it so hard to build a world featuring working class characters in working class settings, especially given that a lot of SF writers come from that kind of background? What has worked, for you? What hasn't? Who clearly hasn't tried? Who has tried, but failed spectacularly? SF fans have done a good job of demanding better–written women and minorities in SF; what about their working class counterparts?

Panelists: Eleanor A. Arnason, Chris Hill, Michael J. Lowrey, Diana Sherman
Moderator: Fred Schepartz

badgerbag has detailed notes on most of this panel here. I'm including my notes from the beginning of the panel. My notes aren't verbatim so don't blame the panelists for any words I am putting in their mouths.


Panelists introduce themselves:
Eleanor: Writes science fiction and fantasy
Diana: Writes for a video game company
Fred: Novelist, cab driver, union organizer, shows communist party card
Chris: British working class origins
Michael: Union organizer, NWU


Fred: We aren't going to have a debate on class because that panel has been done before and it hasn't worked well. But let's define "working class"

Eleanor: Can get fired by boss, doesn't own means of production
Diana: Personal schedule is defined by job, can be fired
Chris: Opportunities are limited by upbringing and attitudes
Michael: Economic well-being is at the mercy of someone else


Fred: What's the status quo with regard to working class characters in SF?

Eleanor: Blue collar workers are not represented -- there are no plumbers in the future, e.g. Shadow economy is represented. Blue collar work is repetitious and doesn't include creative problem solving (e.g. in construction -- because you don't want creative problem solving in construction work). So it's not inherently exciting. SF came out of pulps, and has a bias toward stories of individual action.

Diana: Working class people exist in SF&F but are usually a secret prince or an apprentice who saves the planet. They are "hidden" and then they "leave." Working class job is seen as a trap. SF is escapist adventure.

Chris: It's a generic truth about literature that working class people don't generate story unless they are escaping. Dickens gets a cooking for writing about the working class, but actually all his working class characters were either tragic or comic.

Michael: Soldiers are working class people who show up in SF. Roots of SF are in American pulp literature, which has a bias against collectivism. Leader stories are about leaders, not the movement. Exception: Some Harry Turtledove, and Eric Flint's 1832 series. (Eric Flint was a union organizer.) There is potential for greatness in working class people, so unleash it in your writing.

Fred: Labor struggle is difficult to talk about in America because it's difficult for us to talk about class. Some writers are working class but write escapist SF because they want it or think audience wants it. Also to portray a labor struggle requires an ensemble cast which is harder to write (more characters).


Fred: Will there be a working class in the future?

Michael: Who built the Death Star?

Audience: Robots!

Eleanor: If robots built the Death Star they would also do the fighting. In Charlie Stross book Saturn's Children, only robots are left. People are versatile/cheap. (So there will continue to be a working class.

Diana: Humans are more flexible than robots.

Chris Hill: People are cheap. In utopias, who is doing the work? These societies are often untenable because the author is not interested or isn't thinking about those issues.

Michael: Writers of magic utopias should be required to work at jobs where they have to maintain something. "There's no such thing as 'away.'"

(badgerbag's blogging begins here)

During this section of the panel I was thinking about Jeanne Duprau's book City of Ember (which is also a movie), because it's all about work. ( spoilers ) A number of jobs are described including courier, maintainer of electrical systems, maintainer of water pipes.

In a later section of the panel, one of the panelists was describing a story by Kornbluth about a Puerto Rican dishwasher who is a math genius. The panelists were lamenting that this kind of story is no longer being written. But it reminded me of a story in Walter Mosley's Futureland in which a technical genius is born into a poor family. So maybe some of them are being written again.

(If you are wondering where poems 1 and 2 went, they are friends-locked.)

I didn't expect to be inspired to participate in elisem's "Nine Things About Oracles" project but after I had gotten a few lines written on this one I realized that was what it was about, and added the title. I'm not entirely happy with it yet, but here's where it stands for now.
( Read more... )

For folks reading this who have had their poetry published - where do you submit your poetry (and, for extra credit, why there)?

I've read almost everything that Bujold has written and have liked most of it, but I have a few reservations. In http://epi-lj.livejournal.com/1728122.html - a discussion of Bujold, specifically Falling Free - I commented "Bujold's works sometimes have nastiness that bothers me." phantom_wolfboy wanted to know why, so this is my attempt to think out loud about it.

( This part has spoilers for Bujold's Vorkosigan series )

Bujold is known for saying at cons that part of the way she writes is to get her characters into a particular position and then ask herself "What's the worst that could happen to them now?" and then write it.

I think possibly something else she does is to ask herself "What's a really controversial or taboo or emotionally loaded thing that I could introduce here?"

Much of the time I like that she does that; it means she addresses some things that other books don't, in ways that other books don't, and it's thought-provoking.

But I think I've gotten kind of sensitized to these things in Bujold's writing, to the point where sometimes when I'm reading her books I sometimes get tense in a way I don't enjoy, because I'm anticipating something that will feel uncomfortable to read.

11/01/07

733 out of 50,000

11/02/07

912 out of 50,000

11/03/07

2103 out of 50,000

Widget from gngr here.

Other:

• Started 3 Garage Band pieces and finished four others
• Finished a sleeve of the Heartbeat Sweater
• Started the second sleeve of the Heartbeat Sweater while watching one of the dumber Original Star Trek episodes ("The Naked Time")
• Knitted several rows of the Tidal Wave sock (and ripped half of them out again) while hanging with Serene in a cafe in San Francisco
• Finished one Tidal Wave sock (it took two tries because I misread the instructions the first time and produced a too-short toe)
• Finished the second sleeve of the Heartbeat Sweater and started the neckline
• Started the second Tidal Wave sock
• Started and ripped a lace shawl (my own design)
• Finished the Heartbeat Sweater
• Finished the Tidal Wave socks
• Started a sekrit winter gift project