At TNEO this year I submitted a story that I got, well, from a dream. It's kind of embarrassing, because I am not one for metaphysical crap except in fiction and film, and even there it's got to work well. As explanations, I'll take a gene that causes these things (X-Men) over most anything else (take a hint, Nicholas Cage). But I wrote this particular dream down almost as I had dreamt it because it was too good not to. And even with 16 mixed reviews as far as character motivations, and a couple of plot-potholes, et cetera, it still works as a story. I'm not saying I had "instant story" or anything, but it's an interesting story and one that when completely revised could actually work.

This all started with a Codex thread about dreams, the gist of which was this: apparently creative people have really cool awesome dreams. Given the semi-success of my first attempt, I decided the next time I dreamt something AND remembered it (there's always a catch) I'd write it down and see what I got out of it. So far, I've discovered a backstory for a flawed and fascinating character, but a dream I had last week concerning an alchemist and the grandfather paradox (yes, my brain does hurt, thank you) would work either as a flash story, if I wrote it exactly the way I dreamt it, or as a longer story--which is the way I am writing it, with more character conflict.

This is kind of an interesting experiment for me. Since we've been working on the house, I've had very little time to write. So when i dream something, which also doesn't happen that often, and it turns out to be interesting, which is even more rare... Yeah. Absolutely. Spend some time and write it down. At the moment, with the attic and the bathroom gutted and awaiting insulation that's 2 weeks from delivery, I need to be motivated to write instead of planning the kitchen renovation, or trying to calculate how many sheets of drywall it's going to take to redo the dining area--things I can't do anything about until spring. If writing a couple of dreams down keeps me excited about writing--awesome. Maybe that means I'm doing more writing in my dreams than in real life.

Which, lately, is probably true.

Oh, and hey.  I started a new blog over at talesend.livejournal.com.  It's more of a directed topic.  You'll see.  But I get to indulge me dark side a wee bit.

So I'm doing the laundry tonight & I turn on the radio to make the task go faster, or at least more enjoyable.  Whatever.  In between Bob Seger's Night Moves & the Eagles' Take It Easy, though, there's this ad for something called Quietus.  Ding!  The Fake Latin Alarm goes off in my brain.  I stop folding towels & yes, it's an ad for homeopathic pills people can take to alleviate the symptoms of... tinnitus.  Apparently this ad has been out since August, but I guess I never got out of my technology-lite bubble long enough to hear it.

Now I know what tinnitus is.  I suffer from it myself from time to time although less frequently these days.  I understand the agony of having a constant buzzing or ringing in one's ears.  It's always there, it never goes away, not even when you bury your head between 2 pillows or jam plugs in your ears.

But this is my gripe (& possibly where I start to sound like a Scientologist /shiver/):  The medical community (God bless its lil heart) has made a living out of naming syndromes or diseases & inventing pills to go along with them.  To a point, this is good news.  There are a lot of people out there who need help with definite but unnameable health issues.  There are also a lot of people who don't really have issues, but can be scared into or convinced that they need this or that pill for whatever reason.

Unfortunately the homeopathic community has jumped on the medical PR bandwagon.  I realize this ad is not representative of the homeopathic/naturopathic community as a whole, but I think it represents a really bad marketing scheme.  The whole point of alternative medicine is to be, well, alternative. For example, the spousal unit and I shop at Whole Foods.  I love Whole Foods, as well as Trader Joe's, but I am completely aware they want my money (& use just as much packaging) as much as Martin's or Schnucks.  When it's time for the farmer's market again, I will go there.  When I can grow my own food w/o killing it, I might do that.  (Although I realize pasta does not grow on trees.)

My point is, there has to be a different answer.  Neither the website, which is really just a flash page, nor the radio ad tells you one of the best ways to reduce the effect of tinnitus is to reduce stress.  That can be handled with exercise, retraining, and the occasional glass of good wine.  Nope, the homeopathic community seems to following in the footsteps of the drug giants and the medical corporations. I applaud the idea of spreading awareness about medical issues--something that really wouldn't have happened a few decades ago--but I think both communities really need to proceed with caution here.  What that would entail precisely--I don't know. 

But I know I'm not popping a pill to fix my ears.

No Scientologists were harmed in the making of this blog post... Yet.

Life since TNEO has been a blur.  Only since yesterday have I been able to sit down and write, even for 5 seconds. July 31 turned out to be an interesting day.  I got a somewhat personalized rejection from Weird Tales concerning "Automatic Pilot."  But it was signed by Ann Van DerMeer...  I didn't have time to wonder too much, because two hours later we sat down with our realtor & lender and signed a stack of papers 2 inches high to close on the house we picked out back in April. 

Most of our stuff was still in boxes from moving here last fall, so moving was just a matter of shuttling boxes, loading furniture & then unpacking.  We washed dishes, put up shelves, did laundry, put books back in the bookcases (so nice to see them again), arranged furniture, put the bed together, put the table together... the list is endless.  What's awesome is that the only things we haven't located yet are my printer cable and our Netflix DVDs.  Everything else is present & accounted for.  I think that's pretty cool.

The house needs some work, but it's a house we can live in and work on, and I'm totally looking forward to ripping up linoleum and sanding floors and stripping wallpaper.  And painting.  This is all stuff I can take care of, and stuff that I like to do. Gimme some good music and let me go.

My sister and her family came through from Massachusetts, and they helped move more furniture and boxes.  She asked me if I wanted to go sight-seeing with them today.  And I said no.  Everything is more or less in its place... Michael fixed up the wifi last night with some help from AT & T... the Linux machine is working again... so I politely declined.  Besides the stories on the shelves, there are others I need to tend to.

That's my job this afternoon--and my only one.  Woot!

After surviving some initial unforeseen complications, like not having my crits done before I got there (I tried!), the nagging cough from a 3-week gone cold, and my laptop's battery dying right at the beginning... I totally enjoyed TNEO.  Susan saved me with a spare laptop so I could finish my critiques.  Of course, she was also evil enough to remove the DVD/CD drive, and the laptop had no internet hookup.  So every night I'd finish a crit, then go crazy from having nothing to do after everyone else was asleep.  I swear, if I come next year, I'm bringing wall decs.  Or I'm going to finish all my crits so I can socialize more, and plan to see the inside of my blank-walled bedroom only for sleeping.  

I got to pal around w/ Odyssey friends and meet a lot of new people.  TNEO is so much more relaxing than Odyssey.  Writing time was waaaaaaaaaaay optional.  I don't know what the topic will be next year, but returning is a total serious consideration--if nothing more than the chance to kick around ideas w/ other writers or hang out and discuss funny crap.  And indeedy there was funny crap.

The topic of choice this year focused on characterization.  I discovered that I tend to write passive protagonists, or protagonists who change through the story but aren't allowed, for some reason or other, to keep that change.  Passivity is interesting to me.  Apparently my very cynical worldview seeps into my writing.  Yikes.  Which is all fine and dandy until someone breaks a nail and makes tons of smartass comments about it.   This doesn't mean all my characters are inactive.  I believe it's possible to have characters who are passive, and make them compelling---just maybe not 20 stories full of them.  No matter what my worldview is. 

Or maybe that'll be my schtick.  Dunno.  The novel I'm writing for Codex is, in essence, an exercise on how a passive character can influence another character; the second character then becomes more active and actually has a character arc, whereas the "inciting" character does not.  I'll be interested to see if I can pull that off. 

Meantime, I'm off to my favorite beach in the world tomorrow.  Then it's a train ride home, during which I'll shore up the basis for Jamie, my protagonist in the YA mainstream novel, who needs a spark or two lit up under her butt.  (Typical fourteen-year-old.)

Happy shiny fun writing time to all of you out there, and I better see you all next year in New Hampshire. 

The other night I was officially in Stage 5 Critique Burnout.  All critiquing and no writing makes me... someone people don't want to hang out with. I needed some me-writing time, but I didn't feel sufficiently creative enough to pull a whole new story from between my ears. Revising, though--that combines critiquing and writing powers.  I dug into my school writing class files.  I haven't touched 98% of these; I went to Odyssey one semester shy of my degree, and we all know Odyssey changes the way you think about your projects. Especially the crap you wrote to get a grade.

Thankfully I discovered at least one of the plays I wrote really wasn't crap.  It's a project I'm still proud of and one I think has plenty of potential--a little 10-minute spot about the lives of librarians.  (I swear we're really not boring.)  I miss the people I used to work with.  It's rare when you go into a library and the librarians are louder than the the library users.  :) Usually we had people coming up to the ref desk to tell us to be quieter.  Or they'd go to circulation and an aide would pass on the complaint.

I'm looking forward to TNEO next week.  After it's over, we've planned a mini-vacation with my sister's family and our friends from Virginia. So I'll be depriving the Midwest of my presence until August, although I have left overseers to rule my province in my absence.  When I return, hopefully the spousal unit and I will be able to close on this house and get moved in.  Then I can set about ignoring unpacking in favor of polishing up projects, finishing up the YA novel & the apocalyptic novel, and start sending stuff off--like this 10-minute play-thingy.  I'll probably work on some stuff at TNEO, but I'm not what you would call a multi-tasker or task-switcher.  Nay, not by a long shot.  So any marketing will have to take place at home base.

That's the news, and since I leave on Monday for wild, weird New England... I am outta here.

Getting critiques done for TNEO has meant getting back into the swing of critiquing, Odyssey-style.  I haven't had a lot of practice these days; we just started up a writer's group in The City, though, so that will change.  TNEO crits are definitely more detailed than the Odyssey 1-3 pagers.  More like 5-6 pages.  When I started critting this time around, I couldn't nail down a format.

I finally got the rhythm down, though, and figured out a format.  I finished a couple of "new" crits, then went back and took the time to retrofit the other crits I'd already done.  Consistency is a good thing, right?  And so are details. 

I took time off from critting yesterday and today and scrolled through my files-in-progress.  Of which I have quite a few.  I tooled through a feature-length screenplay I completed about nine years ago and before I knew it, bam.  I was editing and rewriting it.  And it made me so happy to revisit it.  I've jotted down notes about it here and there, what should happen, what should get cut, and to find myself actually intuitively doing that the other night was awesome.  There's nothing like writing at night at 2 am with music plugged into your ears and what needs to get on paper is actually showing up on paper.  Or screen, whatever. 

With everything that's been happening this summer, I'll be too late to enter it in the Austin Film Festival--my original goal back in 2000-01--but I'm going to shoot for next year.  The screenplay has been my baby for a long time, but kids have to grow up sometime. 

Still no word from a certain magazine about "Automatic Pilot."  Keeping my fingers crossed.

My car is where I most often listen to the radio--at home it's atunes playlists, CDs, and myspace music pages (about the only thing myspace seems to be actually good for...)  I heard the below-mentioned Foo Fighters song and cringed.  I like Foo Fighters, I like the song, except for one line.  One word.  It's so bad I have to turn the radio down at the song's bridge. 

Without further ado, the beginnings of a list:

Madonna--"I Like New York" (Confessions from the Dance Floor, 2006).  "I don't like cities/But I like New York/Other places/Make me feel like a dork"...Besides the poor rhyme, it's difficult to imagine the Material Girl ever feels like a dork.  It also makes me feel like when Madonna comes to my city, I'm personally responsible for making her feel like a dork. ;)  Okay, you caught me, just kidding, I don't care.

Foo Fighters--"The Pretender" (Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace, 2007).  In the bridge:  "I'm the face that you have to face..."  I'm issuing an official word repetition citation.  When I'm reading a story, I can read it once and be done with it, but songs play on forever, over and over and over... otherwise Third Eye Blind wouldn't still be getting airplay... C'mon, Dave Grohl, couldn't you have said something a little cooler and saved some... face?

Steve Miller Band--"Take the Money and Run" (Fly Like an Eagle, 1973).  Grammatical error, very first line:  "Bobbie Sue took the money & run".  Then there's the "Texas/taxes" rhyme in the verse describing Billie Mack.  But the facts that a) I can write all those lines from memory (which I will demonstrate if you ask) and that b) I sing along with the song speaks volumes... about 70 decibels.

Lenny Kravitz--"Fly Away"--I'm with the song until he repeats the ending chorus 500 times:  "I want to get away, I want to get away... I want to fly away.. Yeah, yeah, yeah..."  Jeanne would censor him for using chorus verses like exclamation points.  "You used up your lifetime quota.  You need to say something meaningful and wrap it up."

Gerardo Mejia--"Rico... Suave"--This song is kinda like "Ice Ice Baby." We know who sang it, we can recall the lyrics, it's fun to make fun of.  And I will continue to make fun of it.  And anyone who rolls in a 5.0 with the backtop down so his hair can blow.

Okay, done.  Add your own...

Last night I took the laptop and headed away from home base to get some critiquing done.  Since we fixed up the Linux machine (for lack of a better name) I've used my laptop sparingly.  I need it to last through TNEO, but it still has screen-flicker issues ("to annoy or not to annoy?"). 

So here I was in the middle of a nice QUIET EMPTY library, music playing and earbuds in, stories to critique, initial impressions to type up from notebook pages, and although I managed to get 1.5 critiques done in the space of 2+ hours, I kept wondering at the crap stuck in my keyboard. I turned the laptop upside down a couple of times and shook it out.  Among the items stuck under my keys: some dog fur (beagles shed no matter what the dog encyclopedia tells you), a few teeny scraps of paper from said notebook where I'd ripped out pages, some crumbs, including a piece of walnut (or pecan, I can't really be sure since I decided against a taste test), part of a mangled plastic paper clip, a piece of pencil lead and the chipped corner of a well-worn book.

No money though.  I assume that comes later. 

This morning, in the middle of running errands, I pulled off the road and went for a hike in a little conservation area in the middle of the city.  The trail was packed solid from yesterday's rain; honeysuckle and wildflowers lent a sweet-but-not-cloying scent; and even though various bugs landed on me I managed to ignore them (more or less).  Once I followed the trail down the other side of the first hill and into the woods, I couldn't hear traffic anymore.  A little way down the bluff, in the middle of the woods, I sat down on a bench and just let myself be. 

I watched an ant crawl up a tree.  Listened to a woodpecker knock itself silly trying to get elevensies.  Off to the left water tumbled down the bluff on its way to the Missouri River, which I could barely see for the trees.  And even though I could hear other people on the trails, there was a wonderful sense of isolation that had nothing to do with glass, brick, wood or cement; no radio, no TV, no computer, no video games.  No cell phones.

As a kid, I was outside All. The. Time.  We had cable TV but anything Nintendo-ish was an unaffordable luxury.  I rode my bike, explored the creek, went to the park, climbed trees, splashed in rain puddles, played Laser Tag.  I came in to eat, do (or pretend to do) homework and watch my favorite TV shows (back before we had a VCR-thingy).  Most nights Mom and I would go for a drive or hang out in the back forty looking at stars or watching meteor showers.

And now I go from the house to the car to work back to the car to the store and back home again without stopping to admire the way birch bark curls and peels away from the trunk, or the way a bumblebee selects just the right flower, or how soft ferns or leaves feel.  I don't quite know when I became Inside Girl.  And now I'm not sure why I don't spend more time outside (except, of course, for the occasional 100% humidity...). 

The scenic route is just... better.

Automatic Pilot is back home, albeit accompanied by a nice rejection notice.  Unfortunately the one thing the editors didn't like is the one thing  the story hinges on.  I'm not ready to change the overall message just yet.  I guess I'll base that decision on a few more rejections, because to change the POV would change all of it. 

So, now that Weird Tales has reopened to subs, I'm going to kick AP back out the door tomorrow--in traditional dress this time;  no electronic SUBMIT button required.  Just a plain ole comforting properly stamped manila envelope.  

I'm not quite a technophobe, I swear.  One of these days I'll prove it and buy an iPod--most likely at precisely the point where people get chip implants and download music directly into their brains.

Chewey, I've kept you through 3 LJ overhauls.  I don't want to have to do this, but I might have to fire you.  I've seen live goats look more hopeful than that.  Usually when food is in front of them, but there ya go.  Shape up or ship out kid.

The headache saga is about to come to a close--at least until I become immune to Claritin, or this year's allergy season ends mid-June, whichever comes first. I've joined the ranks of those citizens who inhale Claritin-D as a second job. Last night the spousal unit found an urgent care center and we got some help for my headaches. Or shall we say, sinusitis-induced migraines that make me feel like half my face is going to slide off (ala that scene in Resident Evil--you know the one).  The doc sent me off with prescriptions for antibiotics and Claritin-D.

Drugs have earned me some much-needed productivity. Today I've been able to move forward on my third and last TNEO story. Why is comedy so easy to write until you introduce a plotline? The challenge has been trying to keep the main character funny even as he introduces the reason for the main conflict and urges the secondary main character to aid him in his semi-serious mission.  Personality, baby, personality.

I'll also be able to enjoy the three-day weekend coming up. And that's a total plus. Bring on the killer robots, the live-action museum exhibits, and the Renaissance Faire. 

Your results:
You are Uhura

Uhura 70% Geordi LaForge 55% Mr. Sulu 50% Jean-Luc Picard 50% Worf 50% Deanna Troi 50% Chekov 45% James T. Kirk (Captain) 40% Mr. Scott 40% Data 36% Leonard McCoy (Bones) 35% Beverly Crusher 35% Will Riker 35% An Expendable Character (Redshirt) 35% Spock 27%

You are a good communicator with a pleasant soft-spoken voice. Also a talented singer.

Click here to take the Star Trek Personality Test

Time's slipping away... the next TNEO story drop is almost here. I'm trying not to pay too much attention to reality at the moment. Not that I normally pay a lot of attention to it, but I've got about 14 pages left to write on Story #2. I was waylaid by a) freakish sinus headaches (grrr) b) lack of knowledge on my subject matter c) the inability to properly research my subject matter due to certain sensitivities d) horrible weather that makes Daisy cower and pee on the couch & e) ...reality, in the form of vast amounts of paperwork. Read this, sign here, read that, sign here, here and here. I think even Echo's Dollhouse contract amounts to one page. Why can't /I/ get the simple version? Oh wait... Hollywood (even if it is in the Jossverse).

But I'm confident my homework's not going to be late, and neither will it be fulla holes. At least, not any big enough to allow a semi through. So there. Maybe a coupla pinpricks though.

Plus, I really like procrastination. It's a challenge. Most people know I hardly ever plan ahead. Maybe it's a miracle I got through college. Eh, I dunno, and it's too late now--the diploma's on my wall. suckaz.

I think this story is pretty cool; I got the idea from a dream of all places, following on the heels of a certain Codex thread, and I decided to tweak it. And lo and behold, I got a story. From my own subconscious. It's shaping up rather nicely, too.

But I know people who know people who know people, and they'll be the judge of that in a coupla months.

Chin up, Chewey.

see more Funny Graphs

There's just something weird about electronic submission v. paper submission. Is it weird that the first method of story submission seems too easy? I have more of a problem doing that than shoving a story in a manila envelope and letting it slide down the throat of a blue USPS box. I can let it go and not worry about it...

It's that SUBMIT button. I don't like it. Not just for punny reasons either.

Yeah. See. For once my mood icon agrees with me.

Been giving myself a refresher course to try to figure out what math my protagonish might have been learning in eighth grade (there's no way I remember that). And for the most part, I was doing really well--better than I did the first hundred times I had math in school. I was even having a good time--until I got to fractions. Mixed numbers, multiplying, adding, reducing, GCDs, LCDs, doubling or halving recipes--whatever. As far as I know "LCD" refers to wristwatches, computer monitors or TV screens.

Fractions are really just ancient torture devices the Babylonians or the Egyptians invented as a subtle weapon of revenge that would span thousands of years, knowing there would come a time when those frustrating fractions would be freely disseminated throughout society, nay, taught to every public-school and home-school kid, chemist and would-be cook! I know some scholar/warrior is back there somewhere looking at me in his scrying pool and cackling his head off. Look out, here comes Chewey.

While I have worked part of this into the novel itself, I'm going to exercise Author Ownership and say my character can move on to something else. Sigh.