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You know, there's a lot I want to say, but in the end it's just whistling into the wind. I bought books, I chatted with people, and I shared some feminist rage. Who knows if the rage is for the same reasons or not. :-)
I had a good con. It was awkward trying to balance Jack with everything else, and I'd like to thank Linda, Davina and Jen for helping and sharing so much of the work. I know you guys probably didn't think of it as work, but seriously, it is! It was lovely being able to leave him in your capable hands for decent amounts of time while I tried to remember that I am more than a mother, that I have other interests, and that I can do stuff.
The programme was kind of lacklustre to me. It meant that I didn't mind spending time locked in hotel rooms just hanging out with people. It meant I wasn't stressy if we rocked up at 3pm on Sunday (like we did. *grin*)
I had a great time talking to lots of people I knew periphically... as in, I knew their faces and their names but probably not really had a chance to chat before. I enjoyed the Last Short Story panel, but I have attention span problems and had to run off. The only panel I made it 100% through was Rustle's Marketing 10101 which I enjoyed. It was a good panel, and it's great to see the basics laid out like that. He did a good job.
I was given a present for Vinnie. I love my friends. It's a real.... security blanket feeling, I guess, to have friends who know me so well, inside and out. Lucretia came up and said "quick, we need to give her some tissues first" and handed me a tissue, and then gave me the most beautiful handmade quilt. Her mum made it! I did cry, too! I have a pic, which I will upload behind a cut later.
I won a Tin Duck! I'm just so ... OMG! I'm so ... proud and pleased and just ... it's hard to describe. The short version is: I used to win awards for writing in highschool. And then I stopped. Now I've started again. And I just won an award for writing again!
I put some art into the artshow! This is a bit of an achievement for me. It's taken a few years of de-contructions (back to highschool issues again) for me to be able to enjoy art for it's own sake rather than for the attempt to produce something other think is art worthy. But those beasties we made at femmeconne were just so awesome!
Still here? Gosh. We missed the dead dog. I feel sad. But I felt worse last night. :-) We were just tooo shattered and fractured to be able to do it. Happy birthday Callum!
Hmmm... what else... my other child and house were wonderfully looked after by Chesh's mum. The spa area is almost ready for the spa to be moved. It looks great out there anyway, and I am hoping that one year we can volunteer ourselves for the dead dog party. But not just yet. :-) It was lovely to have a night without Jack. The launch for 09 was short and sweet and to the point and I liked it. I bought Fannish Journeys, Ju's NAFF fundraiser, 2012, Magic Dirt, ASIM... all sorts of stuff. (Some one may have taken advantage of my vague and hung over state.)
One thing about a programme where people are unhappy... it does mean that there will be a lot of interest next year. I know there are already plans afoot. :-)
I had a good con. It was awkward trying to balance Jack with everything else, and I'd like to thank Linda, Davina and Jen for helping and sharing so much of the work. I know you guys probably didn't think of it as work, but seriously, it is! It was lovely being able to leave him in your capable hands for decent amounts of time while I tried to remember that I am more than a mother, that I have other interests, and that I can do stuff.
The programme was kind of lacklustre to me. It meant that I didn't mind spending time locked in hotel rooms just hanging out with people. It meant I wasn't stressy if we rocked up at 3pm on Sunday (like we did. *grin*)
I had a great time talking to lots of people I knew periphically... as in, I knew their faces and their names but probably not really had a chance to chat before. I enjoyed the Last Short Story panel, but I have attention span problems and had to run off. The only panel I made it 100% through was Rustle's Marketing 10101 which I enjoyed. It was a good panel, and it's great to see the basics laid out like that. He did a good job.
I was given a present for Vinnie. I love my friends. It's a real.... security blanket feeling, I guess, to have friends who know me so well, inside and out. Lucretia came up and said "quick, we need to give her some tissues first" and handed me a tissue, and then gave me the most beautiful handmade quilt. Her mum made it! I did cry, too! I have a pic, which I will upload behind a cut later.
I won a Tin Duck! I'm just so ... OMG! I'm so ... proud and pleased and just ... it's hard to describe. The short version is: I used to win awards for writing in highschool. And then I stopped. Now I've started again. And I just won an award for writing again!
I think this is a bit of a sign I should start again. Well, keep going rather. I don't imagine I'll be producing Tin Duck worthy stuff every year, but my faith in my own ability to string two words together is somewhat stronger now. I've always downplayed my own urge to write I think, not really comfortable with the whole wanna be label. I used to write novels in high school. It took me six months then. It seems somethings don't change! Every time I listen to professionals talk, I wonder what buttons I need to press to write for them. I wonder how my own work would rate. I highlighted every writing panel I saw in the hopes of learning something. I didn't make it to most, and the ones I did didn't fulfil my need for instant data (I'm a LOT impatient these days. I will calm down when Jack's a little older I think) and I think that was one of my frustrations with the writing panels. I don't need to know where inspiration comes from. I have a million ideas I can turn into novels. And every Swancon I come away with more! What I want to know is how *do* you structure that story? When should there be a climax? How do you create an interesting character without getting adjective heavy or overly verbose? Key indicators of TELLING versus SHOWING. I have ideas on all of these things, but I want to know what other people think too.
My writing is only at first draft stage for anything I write, which is also why I was surprised and so pleased to win for the Zombie thing. I re-read it after being reminded I had written it, and it *is* creepy. But it's not something I wrote and then polished and edited and redrafted. At the moment, there is *nothing* I have polished or edited or redrafted yet. I might let friends read some of my stuff but nothing I would consider worth showing to someone in the industry. I completely forgot Babalon edits for Borderlands! Otherwise I might have been shyer about showing her my stuff too! But Babalon has been a huge influence in me keeping going. (Babalon and Aphd3l are my ra-ra team. If you don't have one, you need to either get one or figure out why you don't have one. They keep you going when you hate your characters LOL)
Oh, and for your patience...the first long fiction I wrote was fanfic. And ... amusingly enough given the Masquerade this year... it was Labyrinth fanfic. Jareth had a twin brother Jake. And they both wanted Sarah..... ... .. . ..... and I was about fourteen, possibly thirteen when i wrote it. I wrote my first novel Keri Kit and Laura when I was about 15. I still have it. (No, it wasn't porn, it was SciFi.) And I wrote on demand in highschool too; I wrote love letters for other people, poetry, short stories for friends, and erotica where they set the scene and I wrote it for them. In uni I wrote erotic poetry for friends. I forgot all the things I used to write. My friend said the other day that he'd recently re-found a short story I'd written him a long time ago. Unfortunately in all the mess it may have been thrown out. I don't know if I would feel that deep sense of shame when i re-read it or if I would be divorced enough from the text to be able to see it for what it was.
Nano was good for me, because for so many years when I re-read my own writing I had a deep sense of shame. The words just didn't do what I wanted them to do. I could not divorce myself from the text. Nano made me ... just ... write. Turn off the internal viewer, just do it. Fix it later. You can't fix something that doesn't exist. And now it feels more like the words are doing what I want them to do. It's not perfect, and I am l kind of looking forward to my 23rd manuscript (That's an injoke I don't know if any one will get LOL) but I am looking forward to the ride. I enjoy language and enjoy typing and loved writing. But every time I hear my editor friends talk about how crap some manuscript was that they just read, I always wonder if it's anything like mine.
I know I shouldn't. There's a whole of stuff involved with this issue as well, but so many of my friends are too close to the coalface, and would either be nodding away or horrified that maybe I mean *them*. And I don't. Rustle's rule number 1 in marketing is "You can't polish a turd" and he is 100% right. My goal over the next five years is to make sure that the polishing I do goes onto something that aint turdy! LOL
My writing is only at first draft stage for anything I write, which is also why I was surprised and so pleased to win for the Zombie thing. I re-read it after being reminded I had written it, and it *is* creepy. But it's not something I wrote and then polished and edited and redrafted. At the moment, there is *nothing* I have polished or edited or redrafted yet. I might let friends read some of my stuff but nothing I would consider worth showing to someone in the industry. I completely forgot Babalon edits for Borderlands! Otherwise I might have been shyer about showing her my stuff too! But Babalon has been a huge influence in me keeping going. (Babalon and Aphd3l are my ra-ra team. If you don't have one, you need to either get one or figure out why you don't have one. They keep you going when you hate your characters LOL)
Oh, and for your patience...the first long fiction I wrote was fanfic. And ... amusingly enough given the Masquerade this year... it was Labyrinth fanfic. Jareth had a twin brother Jake. And they both wanted Sarah..... ... .. . ..... and I was about fourteen, possibly thirteen when i wrote it. I wrote my first novel Keri Kit and Laura when I was about 15. I still have it. (No, it wasn't porn, it was SciFi.) And I wrote on demand in highschool too; I wrote love letters for other people, poetry, short stories for friends, and erotica where they set the scene and I wrote it for them. In uni I wrote erotic poetry for friends. I forgot all the things I used to write. My friend said the other day that he'd recently re-found a short story I'd written him a long time ago. Unfortunately in all the mess it may have been thrown out. I don't know if I would feel that deep sense of shame when i re-read it or if I would be divorced enough from the text to be able to see it for what it was.
Nano was good for me, because for so many years when I re-read my own writing I had a deep sense of shame. The words just didn't do what I wanted them to do. I could not divorce myself from the text. Nano made me ... just ... write. Turn off the internal viewer, just do it. Fix it later. You can't fix something that doesn't exist. And now it feels more like the words are doing what I want them to do. It's not perfect, and I am l kind of looking forward to my 23rd manuscript (That's an injoke I don't know if any one will get LOL) but I am looking forward to the ride. I enjoy language and enjoy typing and loved writing. But every time I hear my editor friends talk about how crap some manuscript was that they just read, I always wonder if it's anything like mine.
I know I shouldn't. There's a whole of stuff involved with this issue as well, but so many of my friends are too close to the coalface, and would either be nodding away or horrified that maybe I mean *them*. And I don't. Rustle's rule number 1 in marketing is "You can't polish a turd" and he is 100% right. My goal over the next five years is to make sure that the polishing I do goes onto something that aint turdy! LOL
I put some art into the artshow! This is a bit of an achievement for me. It's taken a few years of de-contructions (back to highschool issues again) for me to be able to enjoy art for it's own sake rather than for the attempt to produce something other think is art worthy. But those beasties we made at femmeconne were just so awesome!
Still here? Gosh. We missed the dead dog. I feel sad. But I felt worse last night. :-) We were just tooo shattered and fractured to be able to do it. Happy birthday Callum!
Hmmm... what else... my other child and house were wonderfully looked after by Chesh's mum. The spa area is almost ready for the spa to be moved. It looks great out there anyway, and I am hoping that one year we can volunteer ourselves for the dead dog party. But not just yet. :-) It was lovely to have a night without Jack. The launch for 09 was short and sweet and to the point and I liked it. I bought Fannish Journeys, Ju's NAFF fundraiser, 2012, Magic Dirt, ASIM... all sorts of stuff. (Some one may have taken advantage of my vague and hung over state.)
One thing about a programme where people are unhappy... it does mean that there will be a lot of interest next year. I know there are already plans afoot. :-)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-03-25 05:49 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2008-03-25 05:51 am (UTC)From:*blushes*
no subject
Date: 2008-03-25 06:30 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2008-03-25 08:31 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2008-03-25 05:58 am (UTC)From:You won a tin duck!!! You won a tin duck!!! YAYAYAYAYAY!!!! I'm so pleased and excited for you!
*runs around showering you with lots of love and hugs* Thank you for your advice Saturday night :) I loves you for it.
no subject
Date: 2008-03-25 06:14 am (UTC)From:=-)
But good. It's the sort of thing that needs to be said more often I think.
:-)
no subject
Date: 2008-03-25 06:25 am (UTC)From:I figure I didn't do too badly when the gay guy across the room tells me I look beautiful and someone else at the end of the night comes up to me and asks me if I know that I am a very attractive woman. Somewhat flabberghasted, but very pleased.
And I'm sure at some point of time over the weekend, I was pretty much buried in your cleavage so if looking was the worse you did, my only complaint is that you just looked! :)
no subject
Date: 2008-03-25 06:32 am (UTC)From:Glad you had a good time, glad you've got some feedback that your writing is worth continuing with and that you got to spend social time. Jack is awesome - wish I could have helped more :)
no subject
Date: 2008-03-25 08:31 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2008-03-25 09:39 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2008-03-25 09:51 am (UTC)From:I remember reading your LJ story - I thought it was good. :)
no subject
Date: 2008-03-25 09:52 am (UTC)From: