Below are the most recent 5 friends' journal entries.

Wednesday, August 20th, 2008
rsadelle	7:11a	Fan fiction taught me everything I need to know about writing. (Voice edition.) My writing group changed its format recently. The first half of the meeting is devoted to a particular topic of writing technique, complete with a pre-assigned writing exercise, and the second half of the meeting is devoted to the critique of one person's piece of writing. Because of people's summer schedules (I was gone much of June, both of the other women were gone much of July), we've only had one two (it's been a while since I first wrote this entry) meetings with the new format. Our topic for the first one was "voice": Each writer has a distinct personality. Hemingway, for example, would never write like Mark Twain. How does a writer develop her/his voice? What is the difference between voice and style? A writer must master narrative voice. How is it done, and what exactly is it? A story's voice is created by some fundamental tools a writer must have in their "writer’s toolbox." We will discuss these and look at how this all works. Our assignment was: Create a narrative voice that is distinctly different from your own by changing a key element of the character. If you're a woman, write in a man's voice. If you're under thirty, create the voice of a character over sixty. Make a change in appearance or education or background. As you probably already know, I'm not a big fan of change, and as you may not know, writing assignments make me nervous, so my first, snarky response was, "Oh, geeze. That's what I do all the time!" Snarky, yes, but true, too. I suspect that there are few things fan fic teaches you as well as it teaches you how to write in someone else's voice. Because, really, that is what fan fic often comes down to: someone else's voice. Whether you're writing about actors or hipster band members or vampires, fan fic usually means writing about someone who is "distinctly different" from you, and, in the case of FPF, writing about someone who was originally created/written/presented by someone "distinctly different" from you. (Comment on this)
Sunday, August 17th, 2008
saizai	9:18p	What does the Bible care about, by volume? I have a simple question: What does [insert Main Religious Text here] care about, in terms of volume? (Relevant texts: Bible, Book of Mormon, Quran, Bhagavad Gita; add more if you like) For example, the Bible has up to a couple dozen verses about homosexuality depending on how generously you count (there are probably ~3 main passages); I would guess significantly more about serving the poor (viz http://zompist.com/meetthepoor.html). What I would like is a statistical overview. How many passages (or verses) are spent on each of Yahweh's (/ Allah's / Buddha's / whatever) various interests? My googlefu fails to provide me an answer for this, though I'm sure that someone has done it many times over by now. So, O Ye Blogosphere [whose googlefu exceeds mine], could I get an answer? (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 13th, 2008
rsadelle	7:24a	A look inside this neurotic reader's mind. You may never have noticed this, but I like to read in themes, by which I mean that I like to read books that flow together. So, the last week's worth of reading looks like this: 8/4-8/5 Changing Pitches by Steve Kluger - Good, but so similar to The Dreyfus Affair, which was published eight years later, that I have to wonder if Peter Lefcourt read this before writing his novel. 8/6-given up on 8/8 Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins - I tried, really. I liked the plot, but not the writing style. 8/8 Body and Soul: A PsyCop Novel by Jordan Castillo Price - I'm really, really enjoying this series now. 8/9 Almost Like Being In Love by Steve Kluger - Excellent (although not quite as much as My Most Excellent Year). Having read three of his novels, I can now pick out recurring plot points and references. 8/10-8/11 Tale of Two Summers by Brian Sloan - Okay, and a good transition from Steve Kluger because it takes place in the same geographic area. I didn't think until I started microwaving my lunch on Monday that I knew that the next blog entry I was going to start reading at lunch (the whole book is alternating blog entries) starts with one of them talking about having sex. Luckily people don't read over my shoulder. 8/12 The Hookup Artist by Tucker Shaw - This would have been much better if (a) the main character weren't so completely stupid (he's so stupid that I cringed and skipped most of the pivotal scene because I couldn't stand it), and (b) it were about the couple that goes on a date at the very end of the book (I knew the moment we met the person who was the other half of that pair that this was where the book was going [This reminds me of the bit in Tam Lin where Janet and Molly are completely bemused by Emma. Tina reads the first chapter and says, "Emma marries Mr. Knightley, of course."]). If you notice, everything in that list, except for the unfinished Tom Robbins book, can fit under the category of gay fiction, and the last two are young adult novels. So this brings me to the neurosis: I have two real possibilities for the next book I'm going to read: Schooled by Gordon Korman, which would continue the YA theme, or Closet Devotions by Richard Rambuss, which would continue the gay theme. What a dilemma! I've put Schooled in my bag to take to work for three reasons: I need some good YA lit to take the taste of The Hookup Artist out of my mouth, metaphorically speaking, and I know Gordon Korman can write. I can probably finish Schooled by bedtime, and dive right into Closet Devotions tomorrow. If I read Closet Devotions, I'm going to feel guilty about not reading my Dewey Decimal Project nonfiction for August, which has double guilt attached to it because it's also a book on loan from someone who I haven't talked to or seen since she loaned me the book back in May. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 12th, 2008
rsadelle	6:19p	Recs Request: Novel-Length Fic (Of a fandom of your choice.) So now that I'm quitting my job I'm spending a lot of time reading gay fiction instead of writing it. (I read something the other day about defining what makes someone a writer. One person suggested the criteria of "someone who writes every day," while another countered with "someone who feels guilty for not writing." That second one is me.) Even with interlibrary loan (which I use a hell of a lot more now that I know I can do it online and don't have to actually go spend the time/energy to talk to a librarian and write out my name/address/phone/library card number for every book I want) supplementing my ebook habit, I'm running out of things to read. So rec me. Criteria I'm looking for novel-length slash, preferably first time and/or with a really good plot. I'm making no rules about fandom, so feel free to rec anything, even if you're sure I won't know who the characters are. This is, after all, why we have Google. (11 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, August 8th, 2008
saizai	3:57p	Error in QGoogleVisualAPI + patch for same Error: Two graphs, of same type, will not render on the same page with a fast computer ( Read more... ) (1 Comment |Comment on this)