Star's Journal of Random Thoughts

Reading Journal: More Discworld, and a Request

Star — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 12:04:09 +0000

Over on the reading journal, I’ve finally read the latest Death book, and I’m looking for a good book: Thief of Time Recommendations Needed Post from: Star's Journal of Random Thoughts. The contents of this blog are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License unless otherwise specified.Reading Journal: More Discworld, and a Request

Post from: Star's Journal of Random Thoughts. The contents of this blog are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License unless otherwise specified.

Reading Journal: More Discworld, and a Request

Reading Journal: Diversity; also, Sidebar Stuff

Star — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 12:22:58 +0000

Over on the reading journal, I’m noting that the best thing about anthologies is that when you run across the inevitable piece you’re not that excited about, you can just skip it next time without missing anything:
Fragile Things

In other news, I decided to add my aimless little piece to the sidebar under Works in Progress. Because I don’t feel like I’m done with it just yet, although I don’t know where it’s going really, so… Why not?
I Wake

(Apologies for the mess in the sidebar; cleaning it up must wait until I’m at home with access to remove the redundant bits, and no, I don’t have any idea why I embedded them in the sidebar instead of just making them their own link category to begin with. If I could get my butt in gear and come up with a template that uses widgets I wouldn’t have this problem…)

Wandering Aimlessly

Star — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 18:55:50 +0000

Last week, I was thinking how I sort of missed writing fiction. I’ve been trying to write a little each day, but mostly it’s been blog or private journal entries. Which are still good exercise, as it were, but not in the same way that writing fiction is. What I should have done, I suppose, was work on Nia, but that’s in the planning stages of an edit and I kind of wanted to put words to the page.

So on Thursday I just sort of sat down with a blank Word document and started typing. All I had in my head when I started was a phrase: “I wake”. I didn’t know where it was going.

I stopped over a thousand words later because I was out of time for writing. I glanced at it again today, had a thought, and added another five hundred words or so.

I know something about the situation now. I know that my main character is named Judith, that she’s been told she’s been in an accident that damaged her eyes and something’s wrong with her throat. To her, her eyes feel fine, and they aren’t bandaged or anything; they seem normal. She can’t see anything, though, which has been acknowledged as the room being dark rather than a defect in her vision. Her mental processes are still a bit cloudy and confused. She’s talked (somewhat; her throat really does hurt badly) to two people, who seem to be her parents but aren’t quite right. I know, though Judith doesn’t, that they don’t seem quite right because they aren’t actually her parents. (I think her father may actually be dead, but she’s still so confused she hasn’t realized that he shouldn’t be talking to her.) I think the mental confusion might be lingering aftereffects of a sedative or some other kind of drug, but I’m not sure. (Hell, I don’t even know if that’s a reasonable assumption. What do I know about sedatives? I’m not getting too hung up on it for the moment.)

That’s all I know. I don’t know where Judith’s at, or why, or who the “they” that are assessing her condition are, or who/what her alleged parents are. I’m only half a step ahead of her, really.

It’s turning out to be sort of fun, just exploring this with no plan and no pressure to go anywhere with it. I think I’ll keep on with it and see where I go. If it turns into a finished story, great. If it doesn’t… that’s fine too.

Reading Journal: Wait, One More

Star — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 18:03:49 +0000

Writing about Sunshine prompted some unfortunate thoughts about a certain vampire series: I Want My Time Back Post from: Star's Journal of Random Thoughts. The contents of this blog are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License unless otherwise specified.Reading Journal: Wait, One More

Reading Journal: Sunshine

Star — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 17:29:44 +0000

Over on the reading journal, Robin McKinley isn’t perfect, but that doesn’t mean she’s not damned good: Sunshine Post from: Star's Journal of Random Thoughts. The contents of this blog are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License unless otherwise specified.Reading Journal: Sunshine

Assessment II: Socializing

Star — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 17:30:39 +0000

In middle and high school, I hung out with a reasonably-sized group of people. At school. The number of people I’d, say, invite to a sleepover or go to a movie with or whatever was generally about one or two. Maybe three. After high school, I made a few casual acquaintances at college, but still only had a couple of friends I’d actually do stuff with. Tim and I got married, and I sort of acquired a few of his friends in the process. We moved out into the country, and he started hanging out with them more and more while I stayed at home for the most part because, after all, they were his friends. When we moved back to town, I joined the group, and that was great for a while. Then Natalie was born, and I wound up back at home again.

I’m not complaining, not really. This is a choice I’ve made; I’ve never asked Tim to try to accommodate my hanging out with the group sometimes. I haven’t really asked him to watch Natalie while I go do stuff with other people much, either, though he’s indicated that he could. That’s on me, and I’ll own it and whatever comes of it.

I have, though, sometimes wondered if there isn’t something a little wrong with that. What I’m saying here is that I essentially have no social life. I go to work, and I go home, and I run errands. Sometimes I go to a show with Tim (and sometimes other people, like Jen or my family). I have friends, technically, but I don’t see most of them much. I’ve wondered if I’m not a little too much of a hermit, if it wouldn’t be healthy to get out sometimes.

I tried. Sort of. I halfheartedly looked around for classes, thinking that they would help me develop some sort of skill while also connecting with like-minded people, but the idea of classes with people I don’t know makes me anxious. So I didn’t really make a big effort. Eventually I found a once-monthly Meetup group which included two people I sort-of knew from online. I gave it a try. I had fun at the first meeting, but at the second I started to feel sort of alone-in-the-crowd. I wasn’t able to go to two meetings after that, got out of the habit of going before I’d even really established it, and… well, here I am, back at Square One.

Here’s the thing. It isn’t true that I have absolutely no social life outside our household and my family. It’s just that I don’t have one offline. I have several good friends online, and I’m a part of at least one active community and in regular touch with people outside that community. Some of these close online friendships predate pretty much any offline friendship still active in my life; at least one even predates Tim. (As do some more casual connections.) I’ve got a bustling social life — online. It isn’t quite the same as having one offline, and it can’t substitute for an offline social life, but it’s interaction with people, it’s support, it’s meaningful connections to others.

I recounted my social history at the beginning of all this for a reason. I wanted to remind myself that, good or bad, it’s not a new thing for me to not spend much time going out with friends. It is, in fact, not a new thing for me to have more friends online than off; that happened almost instantly when we first got a Net connection at home fourteen years ago. I make friends more easily online, and that’s just sort of the way it’s always been. I ask myself: Do I feel like it was somehow unhealthy to do that then? No? Then why would it be now?

There are answers to that question, of course. I’m not sixteen anymore. That’s as true mentally and emotionally as it is physically. A thirty-year-old will need different things than a sixteen-year-old will. I also did still get out of the house more then than I do now. There are other things, I’m sure. But… If efforts to establish an offline social life consistently fail, is it maybe time to consider the possibility that they fail because it just doesn’t work for me? Life adapts to changing technology; has my life gone and done this on me without my noticing? Am I scrabbling to get a grip on something when I really just need to let go?

(The phrase “you’re not falling, you’re flying” has been repeating in my mind over the past couple of weeks. That’s partly because it’s a phrase I’ve heard recently which I like very much, but I also wonder if I shouldn’t be paying more attention. This isn’t the same thing, but it’s the same sort of perspective shift, realizing that you’ve been looking at something upside down and once you right yourself you find that although the details have not essentially changed the interpretation of them is completely different.)

I was going to ask the questions yesterday and today, and then ramble a little about figuring out answers tomorrow. The questions feel very rhetorical to me, though. I’m not sure I need to spend a lot of time agonizing over it. I think I just need to go reset my alarm and stop worrying so much about being “normal” (which you’d think I’d be over by now, anyway) already.

Reading Journal Stuff

Star — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 15:23:10 +0000

Over on the reading journal, not all writing from the early twentieth century has aged well:
The Diamond Master

And I totally forgot to plug a link for this entry a few days ago:
The Dark is Rising Sequence

Assessment I: Sleep

Star — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 18:11:17 +0000

(There are only two, a couple of things that have been kicking around in my brain and I think I need to get out. The other has to do with how much of an offline social life I actually need or want. It’ll get written sometime in the next couple of days.)

So my sleep schedule, on a normal worknight, goes like this. I aim to get to bed about 10, although often it’s fifteen to thirty minutes later by the time I do. My alarm is set to 4:50am, but it’s a last resort; I try to wake up at 4:45. I feed the cats, get dressed, comb and brush my hair, use the bathroom… And then go out and lie down on the couch and doze until about 5:20. At which point I get up and go about the rest of my morning routine.

This used to make sense, really it did. There was a time when I didn’t just go back to sleep. For a long time I used that time to get a head start on daily Internet activities. Then, after schedules shifted around a bit, I started exercising in the morning. It was a great way to start the day.

Then I had a few nights of bad sleep, or getting to bed late, or etc. etc. fill-in-excuse-here. I woke up exhausted. I meant to exercise, or at least do the computer thing, but… I was just so tired. So I laid back down for a while. A few days later, I felt better, but the exercise habit was broken. I struggled with it for a while. Eventually I decided that I was doing pretty well anyway, even without regular exercise, and that this was a fight not worth fighting. I had enough other stuff to worry about. And going back to sleep on the couch became a habit.

I’ve been bothered by this at some points. I feel like I’m being lazy, using that time unproductively, like once I’m awake I should be up and doing stuff, not napping. So, every once in a while, I’ll try to just get up and stay up. Last week, I managed two days out of five. I felt like it was a good start.

I was thinking about this, though, and I started to wonder. Do I need to be awake then? Why do I feel I need to be awake then? I’ve been doing this for long enough that my morning routine has adapted to accomodate not being awake then. If you assume it’s probably 10:45 before I actually get to sleep on most nights, then I’m getting… Geez, a whole six hours of sleep if I sleep all the way through and get up at 4:45.

There are other things I can do — meaning, there are ways I can be better about getting to bed on time. But I’m wondering whether it doesn’t also make more sense for me to just stay in bed for an extra half-hour off the bat most mornings, if I’m just going to go out and sleep on the couch anyway. It’s not like I’m using that time productively anyway (which is OK; rest and sleep are important too, I must remind myself), and not interrupting my sleep as I do now might help make that extra half-hour count for more.

Reading Journal: Of Stories and Spiders

Star — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 14:03:27 +0000

Over on the reading journal, I’m at least nominally reviewing Anansi Boys, although in reality the post doesn’t say that much about it except in comparison to American Gods: Anansi Boys Post from: Star's Journal of Random Thoughts. The contents of this blog are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License unless otherwise specified.Reading [...]

Presence

Star — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 17:25:47 +0000

In my last entry, I talked about the role of women in fictional media these days. It got me started thinking about my own writing. I haven’t paid any real attention to such things when writing, so I wondered how my work measured up. Looking at the three novels-in-progress:

Tynan has virtually no female presence. Only one major character is female; others occur, but don’t have that much to do.
Nia is difficult to classify, sort of. I’d say there’s a pretty strong female presence, but it’s not really overt. Janet Kathleen and the narrator are present throughout the book, but their roles are not that active and/or not consistent across the whole novel. Nia takes center stage and shares it with Jamie, who is male. I’d say it’s neutral; women don’t have a hugely significant role in it, but men don’t dominate it either.
Alex… Oy. Who knows. Oh, it’ll pass the Bechdel test. More than two women will have names, they will talk to each other, and not about a man. I feel like in general, though, it’s very male-dominated. Alex herself might be female, but all those closest to her and her personal role models are male. There are other women in the story, but with few exceptions she just doesn’t connect with them very well. Women are present and accounted for; strong women with a significant presence in the story are a little harder to come by.

Good thing there isn’t a test on this; looks like I’d probably fail. I refuse to shoehorn in extraneous women just to increase the presence of women in anything I write. I hope that was clear from the last entry. But… At the same time, would it make sense to try to include more women in more significant roles in any of these works? I think it’s an interesting exercise to look at that possibility anyway, though you could substitute any change for “more women”. Just sort of… If I change this, what happens? Does it improve the story? Make it worse? Does it spark any other ideas?

Tynan… No. I don’t think so. It’s a kind of a small-scope story, which means there’s not a lot of room for adding more characters of any description, especially not in any significant role. I could maybe, possibly make Clarinda’s brother a sister instead. That has possibilities, actually, in its own way. I’m not sure it really adds much, though. I could increase the presence of Clarinda’s maid, but let’s be honest. They’re mostly going to be talking about Tynan. A man. I just don’t think it’s going to work.

With Alex, it’s still in progress, so to some extent it’s something I just have to work out as I go along. I will say, though, that there are reasons why things are the way they are. She defies the boundaries her society sets upon women, and naturally the good little girls at court don’t want to associate with that. Even within that setup, though, not all of the women who aren’t running around defying boundaries will be shallow brainless idiots, obviously. So I think as long as I keep it realistic I’m probably OK here anyway.

Nia. Nia, Nia, Nia. This is the one where the concept of changing intrigues me. The story’s all about women (Nia, Janet Kathleen, Betsy, Susie, and the as-yet-unnamed narrator; even two of Nia’s three interviewees are female), and yet Nia is the only one who has a big active role to play in it. Initially, my instinct was to make Nia’s best friend Jamie female. On further reflection, though, I don’t think that’s the answer. If anything, Jamie needs to stay male to keep a little balance in. The roles of the other women, though, could stand some reassessment. Making those other women a more significant presence will not just make for a better female presence, it will strengthen the whole work.

And that’s really what I was talking about, I guess. It’s worth looking at the role of women in any given work (just as it’s worth looking at the role of men, children, cats, little green apples, whatever) to see if making a change might improve the work as a whole. It’s change for the sake of change that I object to. As a writer, albeit one just about at the opposite end of the spectrum from “professional”, I have some responsibility to be aware of the message my work is sending. I just don’t think that it’s necessary or effective to artificially manipulate the work to achieve a desired message.

Post from: Star's Journal of Random Thoughts. The contents of this blog are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License unless otherwise specified.

Presence