So, I’m not gonna post so much, I say. But I will mention that I’m working on my first semi-post-Clarion story. I wrote some 5500 words of the story at the workshop, but that looks like perhaps even less than half of the thing, I’m realizing as I swoop in towards 8000 words. So anyway, it’s a story about East-Asian superheroes, riffing off the notion of Superman as a representation of America economic/military power. Superman’s an individualist, representing a kind of capitalist-like competition of free agents — he doesn’t make money off his feats, but he does gain a kind …
Category: WRITING
Fictional expletives, Foreign expletives
Such a list exists, at Wikipedia, of course. I’m sure other writers will enjouy. And for cusses in other languages, see here, though I cannot vouch for accuracy on the latter.
The Devil’s Language?
While looking up Japanese idioms for a section of my newest story draft, I found this interesying little tidbit on a site on the language: In the 16th century, St. Francis Xavier reported to Rome that the Japanese language had been devised by the Devil to prevent the spread of Christianity in Japan. Many who have attempted to crack the Japanese market and learn Japanese might agree with St. Francis! Occasionally I joke with Koreans that the Korean language was designed by the Japanese to make transmission of Western technical knowledge into Korea slower, as a part of their colonial …
Progress Bars & More
I’ve added a feature on this site to make up for the reduced posting coming your way in the future: it’s a progress bars section in the sidebar, which was created using the wonderful ProgressFly plugin courtesy of the Scribbling Damselfly. You may turn up at this page wondering if I’m still alive since my last post. Just have a look at the progress bars. As long as they’re changing every couple of days, you’ll know I’m still walking among the living. As of right now, I’ve redrafted one of my Clarion stories (the short one) and have 5 more …
Elevensies
Kat’s got a good post up about eleven things one should never put into an SF novel unless with the intention to undermine them. It’s actually a riff on a slightly different meme about fantasy novels, but like Kat I don’t write them things, so I’m gonna go with SF instead. Let’s see if I can cook up a list of the same, and not include anything already proscribed by the Turkey City Lexicon: 1. The ancient story of Earth. Okay, maybe sometimes it works. I’ve seen it work. But I’ve more often seen it flop. Either humanity knows where …
Twitchy
Looks like I’m not the only Clarionite-to-be who’s having eye troubles. I do feel somewhat better, and maybe it’s nerves, that are compounding the general fatigue, but my right eye — that is, my one good eye — is not doing so well these days. I credit lack of sleep, stress, and strain. The eyedrops the doc prescribed me are helping, but aren’t erasing my nervousness about it. I mean, when you have only one good eye, you kind of have to take care of it, you know?
The Rest of Semester
I’ve been looking for a way to work in a podcast into one of my classes, especially the Media English class, but there just wasn’t room this time around. However, I did a slight overhaul of my rest-of-semester-plans with some of my students. Here are the results: Students in my Media English class are making presentations. This is for most of them in lieu of the Media Diaries which they were supposed to start keeping in Week 2, but which most of them never really started. It adds a little to the workload, since they’re supposed to be getting their …
A Cappella and Other Thoughts
Yesterday I attended a concert on campus. There’s a shy girl in one of my writing classes who came to me, ticket in hand, and asked me if I would come and see her sing. She’s a nice kid, and a diligent student, so how could I refuse? Well, it turned out to be a cappella music concert. You know, where vocal groups sing without instrumental accompaniment (aside from a little beatbox work by some of the guys in the ensembles, and that’s still not really instrumental). Now, it may seem strange to those of you who think of groups …
Scattered Ideas
While I’m waiting for Lime to show up — her shift at the hospital just ended and I have feeling we’ll be watching a few episodes of lost, and having a nice dinner of my own devising tonight — I thought I’d sketch out some of the ideas that have been kicking around in my head as far as back-pocket ideas for the stories I’ll be writing while at the Clarion West Workshop this summer. They’re rough ideas, and I’ll need to do some research, but here are the ones that have been bouncing around most jouncily. A short story …
Too Late But Fun
During a marking break, I finally got a chance to experiment with the mashup tool that Yahoo created for the San Francisco International Film Festival. I was too late to be eligible for my video mashup to be entered into the contest and played on the big screen, but it was fun nonetheless. The mashup is in the gallery, and I registered under the name gordsellar. The title of the mashup is “(No electric sheep)” and it’s just a man’s dream about women. Silly, but it was fun to play with this technology. Too late but fun has two meanings, …