rthstewart (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rthstewart) wrote2021-10-01 07:23 pm
rthstewart) wrote2021-10-01 07:23 pm
Entry tags:
tap tap! Is this thing on?
Yeah Covid sucks. but hello! How are you?
I've not been this busy with work since the days when I was a baby person doing litigation from the late 80s to early 90s. Damn.
Anyway, my spawn has graduated college and my spousal unit has retired.
The Narnia Fic Exchange is live and the collection is really really amazing this year. I have one story in it I picked up as a pinch hit and reveals will be on Sunday. I'd rec some things but I've not been able to go through the collection yet and everything I've read so far has been terrific and I'm just going through it i the order they are posted. So, just use that handy filter or read the summaries and dive in. It's so superior to practically anything.
I haven't had time to do more reading because all week I've been trying to mentor a baby hire in How To Write. My goddess, babies don't know anything even if they have had 4 years of college, 3 years of law school, and a specialist degree on top of that. How do you teach writing? I mean really, really teach someone to do it well? This isn't an entirely rhetorical question. I've got a BIG Milestone birthday this week. Like humongous. As in, OMG, aren't you grandmother yet?? People keep telling me I don't look a day over ... gasp choke... 50 so yeah. Do the math. Anyway I have an idea for a birthday gift to me. I'll post more this weekend.
Black Widow! Shang-Chi! The Expanse! Star Wars Visions! Falcon and Winter Soldier! Loki! Wandavision! Leverage Redemption! Fall baking shows! Top Chef! What have you binge watched and loved? What have you read and loved? What have you baked and loved? I've personally seen The Old Guard about 8 times. Before Delta hit, were you able to do something super fun?
I hope you are healthy!
I've not been this busy with work since the days when I was a baby person doing litigation from the late 80s to early 90s. Damn.
Anyway, my spawn has graduated college and my spousal unit has retired.
The Narnia Fic Exchange is live and the collection is really really amazing this year. I have one story in it I picked up as a pinch hit and reveals will be on Sunday. I'd rec some things but I've not been able to go through the collection yet and everything I've read so far has been terrific and I'm just going through it i the order they are posted. So, just use that handy filter or read the summaries and dive in. It's so superior to practically anything.
I haven't had time to do more reading because all week I've been trying to mentor a baby hire in How To Write. My goddess, babies don't know anything even if they have had 4 years of college, 3 years of law school, and a specialist degree on top of that. How do you teach writing? I mean really, really teach someone to do it well? This isn't an entirely rhetorical question. I've got a BIG Milestone birthday this week. Like humongous. As in, OMG, aren't you grandmother yet?? People keep telling me I don't look a day over ... gasp choke... 50 so yeah. Do the math. Anyway I have an idea for a birthday gift to me. I'll post more this weekend.
Black Widow! Shang-Chi! The Expanse! Star Wars Visions! Falcon and Winter Soldier! Loki! Wandavision! Leverage Redemption! Fall baking shows! Top Chef! What have you binge watched and loved? What have you read and loved? What have you baked and loved? I've personally seen The Old Guard about 8 times. Before Delta hit, were you able to do something super fun?
I hope you are healthy!
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Teaching writing is so damn hard. When I was actually still doing essays (lol!sob can't write that formal to save my life now), I tried. I'd take the raw crap the students gave me, do a red-line edit with why I made my suggestions, and they'd had me a steamy pile of the same the next time they asked me.
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Lovely to hear from you!
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Having taught writing for about fifteen years before I jumped tracks… you kind of have to give people formulas, to start. Boil the format down to its bones. For essay writing, that was “thesis (what are you claiming, arguing, trying to convey or convince) and proof (why do you think so?)”. Examples are critical. No one learns good writing in a vacuum. If you can dissect a few examples for them, explode the diagram and label the parts, that often helps too. Some people also need to be talked through their own thought process in re things like the proof, because they aren’t used to critical thinking and identifying why they /do/ think so. Then you can get to things like audience (will this particular kind of person believe you based on the proof you’ve given, and if not what else will they need).
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She's been looking at past examples of my own writing, which is good. I need to think about how to diagram this.
Something else I keep emphasizing is that to write well takes TIME. Don't rush. Be thorough. Right long and then edit. I find I need large chunks of interrupted time and you need to learn to look at your own work very, very critically. But all that does assume the basic skillset to get it down in the first place.
Thank you!
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I think if anyone could definitively answer How To Write, the advice blogs would at least be consistent. The only way I've ever seen work is fanfic, and lots of it. Even now, *mumbles* decades of practice later, I struggle to get STARTED, to remind myself it's okay to write rubbish scenes, they'll be edited into shape or torn apart to make better stuff later. Honestly half the reason I'm not terrible is that I've spent so many years reading fic and being annoyed at X writing habit or Y annoying tick. I'd ask if suppose Baby Hire is into any major fandoms they could binge a bunch of fic of, but I'm guessing that's not the kind of writing they need to learn.
I've watched Black Widow, Loki and Wandavision (of that list) and... all were fine, but I'm just so tired, I have no spark of interest/energy to watch them again, let alone fandom any of them. It's not just MCU either, I haven't been watching much; mostly replaying video games, which sometimes I find is better at a) distracting me from the world, since it requires more brain focus, and b) easier to write fic for after, because the feel of being the character is already sorta in my head.
And for whichever day it is: HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Lovely to hear from you <3
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Like you, I've been playing a lot of mindless games because it's just EASIER. And also so much work. We're all exhausted and suffering, at least in my case, a certain empathy deficit. So, you're not alone in, eh, maybe rather than watching/doing/writing, I'll just sit on the couch, pet the animal, and play on my phone. I hope you have a good weekend.
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And I think you nailed it; we're exhausted and by taking care of our own energy levels we necessarily lack the empathy for everyone around us.
Take care of yourself!
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Teaching writing, god I wish I knew. I can't even get my people to be more concise ("use fewer words. no, like, way fewer than that." does not seem to be working), much less actually communicate what they want to in a way that doesn't antagonize anyone. And I'm not doing complex legal stuff! I think the tip about using a lot of examples with explanations of why and how they work well is the best bet.
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Congrats to the spawn and the spouse though!
As far as teaching goes, that seems hard in general ... the closest I've ever gotten is tutoring in college, but teaching writing seems like another level. I hope you're able to figure it out.
Happy Early Birthday!
There is so much *to* watch and somehow I feel like I get overwhelmed by the options. I am watching and, for the most part, still enjoying Ted Lasso though. Doing some baking for sure, though less in the past few months than the first year. Even when things seemed to get better, I wasn't ready to take any real risks so I kept it and when the variant popped up, it didn't make a difference.
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TV-wise, I've really enjoyed Star Trek: Discovery, Word of Honor, and Leverage Redemption (I just realized part two of the season is in less than a week!) In terms of books, I finally got around to reading Martha Wells' The Murderbot Diaries - they're so good! I also loved KJ Charles's Subtle Blood and Tasha Suri's The Jasmine Throne.
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I've not seen Word of Honor so maybe I'll add it to the Very Long List. Thank you!
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jsyk, there is an epilogue to the series that's only available on Viki and Youtube at the moment (I'm not sure why Amazon and Netflix don't have it)
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I think we've all been really fatigued this last year - I know that I've been too tired to do almost any of my hobbies. A handful of games and watching a close friend play a bunch of others while I knitted has been my go-to brain rest through all of... this. I did manage to get a story in for NFE this year - it was very very hard and it was so late, but I did it! I'm ridiculously proud of that when I consider how tired I've been.
I've got my own birthday and a week of rest coming up and I'm fully intending to spend it reading Narnia fic and watching soothing animal documentaries. Can't wait!
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And I'm so sorry your wonderful, WONDERFUL story got hit with DP. That troll attacked me a number of years ago and sent me into a tailspin that I've still not fully recovered from. I ended up putting their name on gmail filter and anything with that user name goes straight to trash. They NEVER show up except during the NFE to rail against authors who dare to posit something different from the nihilism of TLB. They've gone after me, WingedFlight, Underscrored, and others. They never say anything nice but literally just look for stories they don't like and leave vitriol on them. So, congratulations, of a sort, for writing a story unique enough and different enough to attract their attention and ire. They NEVER comment on things they like. They ONLY go after what they don't. It's so bitterly weird and angry.
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I’m on my small holiday now and you’re right - there’s lots of interesting fic this year! I’m going to enjoy them and ignore the trolls.
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I'm fine other than spurts of rage at the way people in my area handle Covid, but you know. I barely watch anything anymore but I'm baking muffins nonstop.
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My big fannish interests of 2021 have been the Magnus Archives and Rusty Quill Gaming (both podcasts -- the first is horror and the second an RPG live-play), and more recently Victoria Goddard's books, which are a delight.
I have been having trouble with creativity -- a prolonged pandemic generates a lot of low-key chronic stress, gasp! shock! horror! -- and my current solution is working on paint-by-number projects. They help satisfy that "I made a thing! It's pretty!" itch without demanding a lot of mental spoons.
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And OMG Liz, your stories for the NFE are amazing. I haven't hit them all yet, I think, but I love loved loved your Susan going through the Wardrobe with Edmund and Lucy. It was an AMAZING Lewis voice and a wonderful depiction of Susan. I'm so glad you weere able to muster the spoons to participate so wonderfully. Oh and you did the wolf story too.!! I really enjoyed that. I also thought it was Songsmith who did it!
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AW YAY! Congrats to all!
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