Demand Studios

I just signed up for Demand Studios. It's $15 an (approved) article on simple topics, no minimum quotas, so it sounds doable; we'll see how it goes in reality. Eric ordered new $400 glasses today, so extra cash sounds good to me.

Penguicon 7.0

We're back from Penguicon, plus a long nap. Penguicon was fun--the hotel was large but not quite large enough, so apparently a bunch of people had to stay in neighboring hotels and the game rooms were smaller than people would have liked, but oh well. They had the consuite on the first floor, which was nice, but it wasn't as well-supplied as the Confusion one and closed before the con did, which annoyed us. And I never did get to the nitrogen ice cream. But there were interesting panels and interesting people, and a live performance of "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog" (with a few scenes cut out, to dispense with characters, I think). The lead was fantastic--he sang well, he acted well, he interacted with the audience and rolled with technical goof-ups well. The woman who played Penny sang beautifully but didn't have any lines otherwise, and the man who played Captain Hammer did his best but didn't sing nearly as well as would have been nice. He did have the right attitude, though. Somebody in the row behind us commented about halfway through, "If this were better it wouldn't be nearly as good."

The workshop was most of what I did--nine to twelve-thirty on Saturday and ten to one-thirty on Sunday--and was interesting; I've never done an in-person writing workshop before. I now know that I need to write up my critiques differently, at least for presenting out loud--we each had about three minutes (supposedly) for talking about each piece we critiqued, and that called for a summary rather than a detailed description. I learned a lot from doing the critiques, and from hearing other people critique--especially the facilitators, Jim Hines and Catherynne Valente. I apparently have no confidence issues as a reader so it didn't bother me that my takes were different from other people's, but it was interesting to hear how we differed. I got some very useful feedback on my own story (the beginning of Shoelace), which, fortunately, doesn't seem to necessitate giving up or redoing the whole thing, which is nice since I should be very close to finishing the first draft. (Also learned that Festivus is something from Seinfeld? I used it as a name for a holiday but three or four people commented on it, so evidently I'm going to have to find something else. This is the problem with never watching TV: not knowing pop references.)

Tonight I'm unwinding (we ordered a pizza, despite an annoying bill from the OB/GYN, because I just don't have the energy to think of something to cook) and finishing up an article for the business journal I've been doing occasional freelance work for. The source for this article wouldn't do the interview unless I promised to send him the rough draft before sending it in, so I did, but he hasn't responded and it's due tomorrow, so he's out of luck.

Sold

I wrote an article on balance in spinning (the fiber kind) about a year ago and sent it to a couple of places. I got no responses, and that was pretty much that, because as you might imagine the audience for articles on spinning is fairly confined. However! I got an e-mail today saying that one of the places is interested in it for publication in the spring. I was quite pleased with the article and its combination of fiber geekiness and physics geekiness, and I'm excited it found a home.

Writing, fiction and non

So I thought I had solved my problem with Shoelace by taking out a small but apparently key bit several scenes back. Only it turns out I didn't because there's a major logical flaw I missed while I was plotting this out and by rights the protagonist's semievil semiplot should be ending right here. Dammit. Now I don't know what to do. Maybe I can recruit the real villain to help me out.

In the meantime, I have been critiquing my brother's first writing assignment. Several weeks ago, he said, "I feel like my writing skills are getting worse. So I was wondering if maybe you could give me some assignments and help me out so I could practice." I found this utterly charming and assigned him three paragraphs on the history of ice cream. He sent me his three paragraphs a couple of days ago and it's evident that he needs some instruction along with practice. His grammar and sentence structure are fairly decent, but I get the feeling that he never quite got the idea that writing is used primarily for communication. I admit I did not explicitly say "This is a strictly informative, semi-formal essay" but it's my belief I shouldn't have had to. His essay is nonlinear, overly informal and joking, and isn't focusing on communicating information, even though that's what I asked him to do. I'm not sure what its focus is. I don't think he does either.

So I'm sending it back with a bunch of comments (and a couple of corrected commas and semicolons, but there are no misplaced apostrophes so I'm pleased there) and suggestions on how to improve it with reasons why they would improve it, and I'm going to ask him to revise it. After that, I have plans for more assignments to work on informative writing, persuasive writing, and descriptive writing, using examples he might actually use--memos to employees, cover letters, advertising copy, a letter to his daughter, and so on. I hope he's willing to stick with me enough to get through this. I think he could do really well at writing--I was talking to Mom about this and apparently she and a lot of her family have always been good at it; why didn't I know that before?--but he needs some guidance to get there.

I'm also bemused to find that while I still don't think I'd be a good teacher, I'm enjoying planning out lessons as a tutor. Luckily it's not fiction we're talking about, though, since I don't exactly feel qualified to teach about that these days.

Fear

So since Shoelace is rolling nicely (for now), I decided I would appoint Mondays and Thursdays as Work on Nonfiction days. I decided this last Thursday but didn't put it into action--I had what I thought was a genuine reason but I don't remember what it was. Today, then, was to be my first nonfiction day. As the hour of nine o'clock--writing time--approached, I felt myself get actually nervous. At about ten to nine Eric pulled me into some random Internet silliness, and I let myself be pulled in, even though I knew it would take a while (end time, ten fifteen), because I didn't want to work on writing today. And not because I don't want to write; because I'm nervous about working on nonfiction. Why is this? I don't know exactly, except maybe that I'm starting from scratch in this--that and timidly venturing on a path that I dream about but have never actually done anything about. I don't know why I'm afraid to start, rather than eager. I'm also not sure whether to try again tomorrow and make myself buckle down, or wait until Thursday to see if I can figure this out.