Whispers

So it’s a new blank space because when I looked at my old website, I just didn’t want to go through the work of updating it or cleaning it up, so I didn’t. If I like this space, I’ll update my main domain name to point here soonish.

Very ish.

Love you all. Hope to pick up being communicative again.

Oh, and crossposting is on to DW, which should be auto-crossposting to LJ to catch everyone. I’ll see if I can get my Imzy to pick up the RSS feed too. We shall see.

What I'd like to do today/over the next few days:

• Prettify my docket
• Write A Game for the Gods
• Sketch out One Good Storm, remixed
• Beta a fic for a close fandom friend
• Bookmark a bunch of 2009 fills on comment_fic

Hope y'all have an awesome weekend!

Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.

So let's just say the move caused an ill-timed rearrangement of funds and I didn't even notice my website wasn't paid until I got internet back. But after I paid it, my site is back and it didn't take so long that the data was gone. Yay.

I consider April's numbers lost. They can't be correctly assessed at this point without more work than it's worth.

I'm still tired and involved in the last bit of the moving process and getting the home computer set up, etc. and still have the trope bingo, so don't expect much out of this brain fried individual just yet, but at least I live?

I have written some poetry and fanfic this month and I'll try to track the month at least. Next up on the reading docket is stuff from friends.

How is everybody?

Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.

Publishing

So I’ve been collaborating and publishing these last few days, and my fingers are itching to get back to my cover art to get it corrected for Createspace. I’m ready to order my proofs and get it off to bed, seriously.

Blogging

In the meantime, I discovered again a deplorable lack of information out there about genre. Most of the intensive information is workshops and classes. I want a reference book. So I’ll be adding into my already over-scattered writing schedule to put together a reference work called The Indie Author Guide to Genre, where I get to cover BISAC, Amazon, cross-genre, subgenres, and examples of how broad the scope of these genres can really be.

Then I’m also going to start putting together some tutorials on the Pods CMS plugin for my own benefit due to the fact that it is deplorably underdocumented and I use it extensively here and exclusively for my new series bible setup. I don’t know PHP. I don’t know SQL. I want an awesome site. Surely that's not too much to ask. :grins:

I’ll put both of these series under cuts so you can skip them if you want.

Writing

Didn’t do so good today, but it was a busy workday and I had to run to break on lunch. I got a chapter tweaked though and it’s off to the collaborator for editing and/or general assessment.

I look at how fast other writers produce and how they do it and I find myself wondering what in the world besides overthinking is holding me back, but then I remember it’s not always overthinking but sometimes sheer ignorance that must be rectified before my thinking actually produces anything of value again. Why do I insist on writing things that require me not to be ignorant?

Scribbling snippets here and there and not big ones, but they're coming.

Series Bible

As mentioned above, I think I’ve got a decent series bible setup now. It’s sparse because I’m focusing on canonical data and current WIP and building the site before focusing on filling everything out, but it exists. This is good.

Fandom

Sign-ups for the Invisible Ficathon start tomorrow. Yay!

Word Counts

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Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.

A/N: So this post got lost in email to self oblivion, but since I just remembered it existed, I hereby post it for your enjoyment. I wrote this on November 18, actually.

So Catherine Caffeinated talking about blogging because you had something to say, and it got me to prop my metaphorical chin on my metaphorical hands, plunk elbows on the edge of the desk, and think about why I write. Do I write because I have something to say?

I have often thought about what would make a good blog for a fiction writer and finally thrown up my hands in disgust and realized I hadn't the foggiest idea. My nonfiction and fiction interests are separate and apart. Writing is for writers, not readers. But this made me think about: what is it I have to say when I write fiction? A lot, actually.

I said it once before: I write fascinated. I have found that I am interested in the same things that differentiate literature I love from that which I fangirl. I am interested in cost and sacrifice, power and strength, and mastery of oneself. I prefer the twists of complexity, characters who make hard decisions and pay high prices but accomplish their goal. I love order and making logic of chaos and impossibility. Fiction puts my world into perspective: it enables me to see the underlying patterns and constraints grant the freedom to make those hard choices. Selflessness, love, resolve, endurance, the ability to stand persecuted and not defend oneself—these things are power and a power I wish I had.

But how to put that into blog posts? M.C.A. Hogarth does it with meta and does it beautifully, but I have never been able to write meta. It pulls my characters out of their worlds and makes them constructs. They do not exist in my world to talk to me; they are not voices in my head, but people in their worlds. They are flesh and blood and mind and bone and heart and spirit and blood. I have tried meta and cannot do it.

I have written fanfic but that always becomes simply fic. I dislike writing descriptions of their history unless it is answering a question. Most readers do not read endless fic upon fic on a blog if it is not a serial. I'm fascinated by words, but even I am bored by other conlangers posts about the lexical features of their languages. I love the social structures of my worlds, but best when shown in fic.

En brief, I have a lot to say about love and power and strength and romance and angst and tragic choices, terrible sacrifices, and efficient success with terrible consequences, etc., but I say it in fic. I still don't know how to blog it.

But it has me thinking.

Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.

Because I copied the post to a new draft. I can't believe it. I still have the email version of the comments, but...

I'm starting to really hate technology sometimes. Really.

Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.

If your comment on the wordpress site gets eaten, email me: info at liana mir dot com.

Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.

Dear Yahoo,

You have never listened to any feedback I've ever sent you; you have never respected my privacy; and you  have never cared, so frankly, I don't expect you will now. You used to have one redeeming quality: you put out the one decent email program left.

Gone, gone, gone. As of today gone.

Not only am I required to downgrade to the BROKEN version of Mail that I kept telling you was broken and I wouldn't upgrade to until you fixed certain very nasty bugs, but with it, I am now required to let you rifle through all my mail and read it and use it to target ads to me that I will never click on. Unless there was a way to export my entire decade's worth of mail, which of course, there isn't.

Not only am I required to let you read my mail to make ads, you have moved the ads to the side so that I am required to never be able to move a blinking ad out of my line of view.

Not only am I required to downgrade to your lousy idea of an upgrade, but it's because you aren't supporting Classic anymore. Guess what? I didn't need support. It worked, unlike this new mail that only works if I have Messenger, chat, and photo slideshows active, which I hate and will never, ever, ever, ever use except to delete the spam messages you force me to have to look at.

Not only am I required to downgrade to the new Yahoo! Mail, but I'm required to use the Full Version I don't want because the Basic is so broken you can't even click "Previous Email."

You now have no redeeming qualities. And I still can't export all that mail that I need to keep handy since I used my email as a hub of operations before and now don't know how I'm going to hub without it.

No love,

the scribbler

P.S. Whoever invented infinite scrolling should experience ten levels of purgatory for making it cryworthy to try and clean up 14,000 emails in an attempt to actually see the number of emails in my inbox in the header.

Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.

New job and writing time has collapsed in on itself until I get my routine sorted out. I am writing, but haven't finished anything to satisfaction enough to post more in the Challenge. I have spent more time cooking...

But this isn't a journal about cooking. :grins: See y'all with more stories soon!

Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.