Petronia

Since everyone else is doing a count.

( I only listed stuff I read a significant chunk of. )

Did about a book a week at a steady clip for the first part of the year, then read almost nothing during June/July, then very little again Sept/Oct/Nov as work got insanely busy. I basically gave up on logging progress during the second half of the year, so some of these (esp. the comics) are very much from memory. Most of the serializations equate to 2-3 skinny hardbound collections, which in time turn into 1-2 massive paperback collections. Say maybe 30 book-length reading units.

Pascal's Sphere

TRIPPING BALLS!!11! I feel bad that Andy Warhol never got to see Twitter, and that Borges never got to see a Mandelbox. Well, he wouldn't have been able to see it anyway, c r y i n g

Via dira, the first lines of my last 21 10 stories in reverse chronological order. ( This takes me up to the last time I did this meme, I think. )

Not sure there's much to conclude, other than that I like to jump straight into things -- I'll always tell you who in the first two sentences, almost always where, and most likely what. A lot of these just state what the entire story is about. PS: You know, I didn't realize that This Means War mentions two wars -- the impersonal and the personal. I totally thought I named this fic after that terrible Tom Hardy/Chris Pine movie meant to do that, I swear.

Blank slate for this week -- not going to bother to do questions -- I didn't read at all, I was trying to get something written for Clarion/Clarion West. Which I failed at, for the record. XD;; Like, very-last-minute, if-I-only-had-two-more-hours failed, which isn't very clever. On the other hand, the ending isn't quite there, so if I'd managed to submit it I wouldn't have expected to make the cut. I mean, surely they'll be able to meet their quota easily with short stories that have proper endings? XD;

( Cut for frowny writing natter bit )

***

I did watch The Life of Pi, though! Parts of it were annoying, weirdly paced, or throw up ideas that are then poorly executed, but I suspect I'm taking issue with the book (which I haven't read) rather than with the film. The film totally deserves its Oscar for best achievement in large CG felines.

More to the point, this weekend I'll have birthday parties, and next weekend I'm headed to Cuba with my sister, where my only concern will be which book to read on the beach.

Very quickly -- commentary to be added later.

What are you reading/watching now?

Bentham on Torture and Unfinished Tales still (both nearly done). Re-read a bit of Captive Prince when the books came, like everyone else in the known LJ-verse.

What did you just finish reading/watching?

Books:
David Wondrich, Imbibe!

Movies/TV:
Mama
Cabin in the Woods
Evangelion Rebuild 2.0 and 3.0
Princess Tutu 1-5

What will you read/watch next?

Who actually knows. XD; Finish the ones I've got, then I'll see.

BONUS QUESTION: what books/movies did you acquire?

S.U. Pacat, Captive Prince 1-2 (technically I bought these a while back, but the Amazon box only came this week)
JRR Tolkien, Unfinished Tales
Jo Walton, Among Others
David Wondrich, Imbibe!

From flamebyrd and a couple of others:

Pick a trope from this list and provide a fandom/pairing that I'm familiar with and I'll tell you something about the story I'd write for that combination (i.e. write a snippet from the story or write not!fic or tell you the title and summary for the story I would write).

1. genderswap
2. bodyswap
3. drunk!fic
4. huddling for warmth
5. pretending to be married
6. secretly a virgin
7. amnesia
8. cross-dressing
9. forced to share a bed
10. truth or dare
11. historical AU
12. accidental-baby-acquisition
13. apocalypse fic
14. telepathy
15. high school / college

Fandoms/pairings: anything really, I reserve the right to inform you that what you have picked is not sexy. XD (Especially "secretly a virgin," I've never really understood that one. Does the person have to actively lie about not being a virgin to secretly be a virgin? Also, either it's not that surprising, or it feels like OOC fic, no?)

Since I know I have to get out of here in 1/2 hour and I won't have time to answer them all XD; (work has been insane today, but at least I have had some good $$$-related news *ahem*). Questions asked by ayalesca.

1. your imagining of anime genderswap sherlock :DDDDDD

( Read more... )

2. fashion/personal style

( Read more... )

3. favorite alcoholic drinks

( Read more... )

4. places I need to go if I ever hit up Montreal

( Read more... )

5. favorite tropes in fiction, all forms of (yeah I'm asking a lot of people this XD)

Part 2!

6. the next thing that you would like William Gibson to write

( Read more... )

7. most surprising/counterintuitive thing you learned in business school

Part 2, again. XD;

LJ is back up sorta, have some content. Lots of content.

( days 25 to 28 )

29 – What is your current project or projects?

I finally feel like I can write, these days, but I have shockingly little time to do it in. XD; I am going to do my best to beat the stuffing out of the Madoka story by the first week of August! Was actually going to post the first bit to carnet but LJ DDoS etc.

To be honest probably most of my ideas are origfic at this point, because I've been marinating in large fandoms I don't really feel the need to write for. All the WIPs are origfic, except for the Madoka and the GitS. One thing I've been thinking of doing - and I know I've talked about this - is a straight rewrite of The Blind Banker to make it not stupid. XD;;; As a Genuine Chinese Person(tm) I have a slight leg up on this one, I guess. My other options for Sherlock are to do "Scandal in Bohemia" which I clearly won't because it'll ruin the upcoming canon for me, and Inception-universe fusion AU even though I don't read Inception fic. They're all massive-scale concepts, is the problem. It's more tempting to go "fuck it" and write about Charles and Erik eating sandwiches or something.

Though I always meant to compile the posts here when I was done. I'm glad I'm coming to the end of this - it was fun, but I feel as if I've been a massive bore nattering on about myself every day. XD;

25 – Music – Do you listen to music while you write? Do you make playlists to get into a certain "mood" to write your fic? Do you need noise in general? Or do you need it completely quiet?

If I really get a good flow going, then the playlist peters out and the tea gets cold. Music is an important element of the thought framework for basically all my stories, but I do my important (curatorial) listening before and after the actual act of writing. Anyway I don't listen to as much music on the computer as I used to. Even when I did it wasn't so much to set the mood as to stabilize it, as one might use caffeine or alcohol or even sugar.

There are some specific stories where I remember an album being a lucky crutch - Brian Eno for the Blind Go fic, notably. I know I've tried "sexy" mood music but IDK exactly what. XD;

26 – What is the oddest (or funnest) thing you've had to research for a fic?

I enjoy research. I wouldn't like to drill down on a single topic to the extent of a PhD, but the scattershot approach inherent to fiction writing is always fun, and I'm more comfortable with finding information than making it up. So, yanno, what is odd? XD; The interior design of a specific IRL boutique hotel in Berlin (Lyonnesse)? The stimulant drug trade in Southeast Asia (Traffic)? Genetic algorithms for solving go games (A Proof By Contradiction)? Italian breath mint flavours (Honour)?

27 – Where is your favorite place to write, and do you write by hand or on the computer?

I actually am one of those people who write best with a pen in a paper notebook at a sunny cafe table surrounded by strangers, with a bottomless drink at their right elbow. Rather, I'm sure the vast majority of my stories made a start on paper, but I have to take the draft to the computer at a fairly early stage, just because the pen isn't efficient for the way I correct and refine and correct and refine. Those of you who've received my postcards would be surprised at what the "creative" handwriting looks like. I also - and I would love to know if anyone else is like this - find it really hard to judge my own product if it doesn't at least look like a printed page. Wordperfect 6.0 (or whichever one was first black Times New Roman on white, instead of white screen text on blue) did more for my writerly ambitions than any factor before or since.

Writing on the computer would be more efficient if there were no Internet. But being on a computer with no Internet feels to me like being in a room with no possibility of air circulation.

23 – When you post, where do you post to? Just your journal? Just an archive? Your own personal site?

Things are admittedly sort of fragmented. XD; Everything up to 2007 is on my personal site (the earliest posted stuff was probably around 1998). Everything from 2002 and beyond is somewhere on this LJ. Everything between 2002 and 2007 is on FFN, unless it was too short or too PWP. Everything after 2007 is on AO3, plus a couple of the "important" stories, plus some "b-sides and rarities" that were never archived anywhere. So everything should be mirrored on the Internet at least once. I don't want to be in every conceivable archive - I mean, I could have tried for an account at Teaspoon or the like, but I'm lazy. XD And it's hard to keep track of, when you have to prune and maintain your "social media footprint" huuurgh.

If I were posting a fic tomorrow, it would go up here, be mirrored at DW, then linked from a post in the major active fic comm (if that exists) a few days later. (There are optimal times and days for posting to fic comms, aren't there? XD Wednesday and Thursday, mornings or early evenings EST.) Then, once I was sure I wasn't going to fiddle with the text anymore, it'll go up on AO3.

20 – Do you ever get bunnied from other people's stories or art in the same fandom?

Reading other ppl's fanstuff (including meta, random comments, whatever) refines my ideas, as I've mentioned. Fanon is an ongoing conversation! If we're talking direct inspiration, though, then no - I'm rarely directly inspired by one single anything. I wouldn't eg. write a fic describing a scene depicted in a piece of fanart (well, I did image prompts for SSBB, but I wouldn't normally).

21 – Sequels – Have you ever written a sequel to a fic you wrote, and if so, why, and if not, how do you feel about sequels?

I had to think about this. XD Yes - I wrote a sequel to Demi. That was the first and last time I wrote a standalone story, someone (Tania) asked me for a sequel, so I sat down and wrote a sequel (unfinished). All my other story arcs and open-ended universes were intended as such from day one. If I wrote four fics in a (loose) sequence, chances are I mentally sketched out fourteen. I don't know if that makes them all "sequels" of the first; certainly I don't always start with the first event in the overall timeline. I don't like creating more than one 'verse per fandom, because I'm lazy. XD

I guess I like sequels as a reader? I mean, if you liked the first one of anything, you'll check out the second unless someone tells you it sucked, right? I almost never read all the books in a long series, though.