There are no man-eating cormorants in this envelope.

So, the universe says: carry on, be brave, and have some nice new thought toys to play with. Highlights include:

*Listening to a lecture about simplifying one's prose and having Steve Brust speak up from behind my head & tell me that I should ignore that bit. (I sort of wish I remembered the actual wording, but it started with "Not you.")

*Cumulative socialization, starting from finding a group to go write amongst, followed by starting the impromptu hair dye party and discovering that when I left the door open, other people would wander in and start cool conversations.

*Sitting wedged into a corner by the body of Patrick's guitar with a succession of other people coming and going and Steve Brust across the room doing that person-who's-been-performing-for-decades thing and singing along to songs I'd never heard before in my life. It is possible that there's a level to which I'm getting decent at this music thing, too, even if every new group of people seems to have a different repertoire.

*Having a spiral staircase all my own in the room!

*Steve Gould's increasingly creative Thing-identifying tests.

*both Jim Macdonald & sartorias reporting thinking "Oh, sigh, another Tam Lin," followed by, "wait, that one worked."

*"Let's go someplace that's not here" small group dinner conversations. (Not that the other dinner conversations weren't awesome-- but it definitely was worth bringing my car for the ability to shift scenes with ease.)

*In the middle of a fairly silly story for a writing assignment, realizing that I'm getting bogged down in a neat idea that gets boring in the full implementation, and throwing it over for something else that did work as an end. Now to work out how to do that to my "Mary Sue" story...

*Having a context in which people are constantly making obscure construction-of-language references.

*the wind & waves on the ferry (and having people to share it with!) I think this may also be the most delighted-looking picture of me taken since the ragamuffin one in this icon:



*aaand, some other stuff. But the labyrinth is a lie, just so you know. There will be Readercon reunions.

The other list is of posts I need to make in the next week or so as my brain settles (and feel free to prod me if there's anything in particular you want to read about!):

*probably at least a week out, but the latest edition 10 rules for writing
*list of things that make me randomly happy (with commentary on the semi-euphoria of driving back from a week with awesome people to rejoin the awesome person I married, & the depressing thought that some of this is actually release from house-stress, which I need not to fall back into.)
*mental context as important to writing (something we didn't get a lecture on, but that I think about a lot)
*The goals I somehow managed to slip out without promising in that conversation about what we're next working towards.
*starter list for girly YA must-reads (since our list of books that make one happy got taken over by guys & scientists... not a bad thing, but there was a particular feel we digressed from)
*possibly some of what I'm still trying to shake out about how Steve Brust's theory of writing is totally what I need to be reminded, probably at regular intervals. (short version: someone who says "writing is all about the cool bits" is exactly what I need to talk me down from deciding I have to make consistently Serious Plot Choices in a story about talking mice.)

There are no man-eating cormorants in this envelope.

So, the universe says: carry on, be brave, and have some nice new thought toys to play with. Highlights include:

*Listening to a lecture about simplifying one's prose and having Steve Brust speak up from behind my head & tell me that I should ignore that bit. (I sort of wish I remembered the actual wording, but it started with "Not you.")

*Cumulative socialization, starting from finding a group to go write amongst, followed by starting the impromptu hair dye party and discovering that when I left the door open, other people would wander in and start cool conversations.

*Sitting wedged into a corner by the body of Patrick's guitar with a succession of other people coming and going and Steve Brust across the room doing that person-who's-been-performing-for-decades thing and singing along to songs I'd never heard before in my life. It is possible that there's a level to which I'm getting decent at this music thing, too, even if every new group of people seems to have a different repertoire.

*Having a spiral staircase all my own in the room!

*Steve Gould's increasingly creative Thing-identifying tests.

*both Jim Macdonald & sartorias reporting thinking "Oh, sigh, another Tam Lin," followed by, "wait, that one worked."

*"Let's go someplace that's not here" small group dinner conversations. (Not that the other dinner conversations weren't awesome-- but it definitely was worth bringing my car for the ability to shift scenes with ease.)

*In the middle of a fairly silly story for a writing assignment, realizing that I'm getting bogged down in a neat idea that gets boring in the full implementation, and throwing it over for something else that did work as an end. Now to work out how to do that to my "Mary Sue" story...

*Having a context in which people are constantly making obscure construction-of-language references.

*the wind & waves on the ferry (and having people to share it with!) I think this may also be the most delighted-looking picture of me taken since the ragamuffin one in this icon:



*aaand, some other stuff. But the labyrinth is a lie, just so you know. There will be Readercon reunions.

The other list is of posts I need to make in the next week or so as my brain settles (and feel free to prod me if there's anything in particular you want to read about!):

*probably at least a week out, but the latest edition 10 rules for writing
*list of things that make me randomly happy (with commentary on the semi-euphoria of driving back from a week with awesome people to rejoin the awesome person I married, & the depressing thought that some of this is actually release from house-stress, which I need not to fall back into.)
*mental context as important to writing (something we didn't get a lecture on, but that I think about a lot)
*The goals I somehow managed to slip out without promising in that conversation about what we're next working towards.
*starter list for girly YA must-reads (since our list of books that make one happy got taken over by guys & scientists... not a bad thing, but there was a particular feel we digressed from)
*possibly some of what I'm still trying to shake out about how Steve Brust's theory of writing is totally what I need to be reminded, probably at regular intervals. (short version: someone who says "writing is all about the cool bits" is exactly what I need to talk me down from deciding I have to make consistently Serious Plot Choices in a story about talking mice.)

Xposty from dreamwidth, but yes, I'm still here.

Goals are good.

#1: Holly said before I left that I was about to miss the fun part, where the whole house came together; as it turns out, very little happened last week. Electrical wiring went in, but the service change over that was supposed to happen last Monday hasn't, and the light at the top of the stairs no longer works, either. The basement stairs are in, but they're still not going to jack up the house to replace the center beam until next week, which on the whole I would have liked them to do while I was gone... and a long list of other things that haven't happened and should have by now. In any case, the reason all this is on my list is that I let this stress & nonsense put me off writing for the last two months, and that's stupid. So the most important goal is not let that tension creep back in.

#2: One of the things I came away from VP with was actually the sense that I submitted the wrong thing. So, I think the novel I should have submitted is actually pretty close to beta-ready, and I want to do my last poking at it, probably break it up into chapters, and then get some feedback. I think I can do my part of this in the next two weeks if I actually work on it. So, goal: finish tinkering & send to beta readers before I start NaNo.

#3: That's an interesting question, now isn't it? I've got a few possibilities for NaNo, and some things I should think about finishing, and I did want to do something about my website. I'll keep thinking about this one as I work on #2.

#4: Once I've got feedback from #2, there WILL BE revisions, followed by submissions. This will not happen in November, but I'm hoping for January.

Goals are good.

#1: Holly said before I left that I was about to miss the fun part, where the whole house came together; as it turns out, very little happened last week. Electrical wiring went in, but the service change over that was supposed to happen last Monday hasn't, and the light at the top of the stairs no longer works, either. The basement stairs are in, but they're still not going to jack up the house to replace the center beam until next week, which on the whole I would have liked them to do while I was gone... and a long list of other things that haven't happened and should have by now. In any case, the reason all this is on my list is that I let this stress & nonsense put me off writing for the last two months, and that's stupid. So the most important goal is not let that tension creep back in.

#2: One of the things I came away from VP with was actually the sense that I submitted the wrong thing. So, I think the novel I should have submitted is actually pretty close to beta-ready, and I want to do my last poking at it, probably break it up into chapters, and then get some feedback. I think I can do my part of this in the next two weeks if I actually work on it. So, goal: finish tinkering & send to beta readers before I start NaNo.

#3: That's an interesting question, now isn't it? I've got a few possibilities for NaNo, and some things I should think about finishing, and I did want to do something about my website. I'll keep thinking about this one as I work on #2.

#4: Once I've got feedback from #2, there WILL BE revisions, followed by submissions. This will not happen in November, but I'm hoping for January.

Xposty from dreamwidth, but yes, I'm still here.