New Post Tomorrow

@ Tracy Bradley – condolences on your puss ;(

David, would that be the same troll that was plaguing a thread at freethoughtblogs. Where he said “I will only cloak my IP address once”?

@Pecunium

Yeah, I wear mitten-gloves outdoors (with koalas on because I am secretly five). I’m usually OK indoors – more so here because we don’t actually have a working freezer, as long as there’s some central heating. Although I lived one year in a Young Ones-style* house, where we couldn’t afford gas or electricity most of the time. In fact it was the year of the 4-month snow, and I was writing my dissertation wearing 4 pairs of socks, two pairs of leggings, jeans, pyjama bottoms, three t-shirts, two jumpers, a hoodie and a dressing gown, a wooly hat and a pair of gloves. It was also a very old and poorly-insulated house.

(*I hope this reference translates to US-ians)

@ nat

I had no idea that I had Reynauds at the time, but when I was at the boarding school of “suffering will toughen you up” in Scotland I used to sleep in a thick jumper, wooly socks, a hat, and gloves, because it was so fucking cold. And then one winter the dorm window was jammed open and they decided that we didn’t need heating till January, so we experimented with leaving milk and cream cheese out to see if it was actually cold enough for perishable foods not to spoil (it was).

o_O

…did it toughen you up?

Probably? It also gave me bronchitis that lasted for at least 6 months, though. I do think that still being required to play hockey and lacrosse in the rain and snow while I had bronchitis was a little unreasonable. Basically it was kind of like a military school, but with mandatory ballroom dancing lessons.

Jesus wept. That does not sound fun at all. How old were you?

I think 12 when I got sick? 11-17 while I was there. But hey, I never got bronchitis again after that, so maybe it worked!

(Please note – no, this is not actually a good way to protect children from illness.)

Hey gang, I know I’m late to the party, but I’d love to jump on the beta reader bandwagon. I’d be happy to critique or just read & encourage anyone who tried nano or just wrote something.

I’d also be happy to send my novel to people who are interested in reading and/or critiquing it; it’s gonna be about 110/120k all told and the first draft should be done by the end of the week.

I think it should be worth reading; LBT can vouch for me 🙂

Still slaving away on my nano; 84000 right now. I want 100,000 by Friday. Make it so, number one!

…but I’m not sure anybody would actually want to read an angry screed that starts out as a kind of Charlie Stross ripoff sorta thing and then gets into an angry screed about religion and sexuality and punching zombies’ heads off. And then there’s a twist, and it turns out to be an even ANGRIER screed against religion. And so on.

I think I was working out some personal issues there. Cheaper than good therapy. And hopefully better written.

Hey, has anybody seen the #1reasonwhy hashtag on twitter and the articles that it’s generating? It’s women in the video game industry talking about why sexism in the video industry is a problem. Of course, it’s bringing a lot of clueless misogynists out of the woodwork, especially on noted man-cave Kotaku.

As somebody who works in a notably woman-friendly video game company, this is of serious interest to me.

That’s pretty much how much my NaNo entry came about; some personal shit happened, and it all came out in a story. I agree, it IS better and cheaper than therapy. 🙂

@inurashii–yes, and the number of people who’ve actually said some variation of ‘what? wow, I had no idea’ is kind of … heart-warming and infuriating, all at once?

@ inurashii and howard: on the plus side, Carla Brunei says there’s no need for feminism anymore, on account of she’s quite happy being a stay-at-home mom. So, you know, I guess our work here is done.

Still slaving away on my nano; 84000 right now. I want 100,000 by Friday. Make it so, number one!

…Wow. And I thought I was doing well (59k).

katz- I know, right? Now that’s some serious dedication!

I’ve heard of people doing double or even triple nanos, but I’ve never myself laid eyes on one before. *back to typing*

Neither have I *also does more typing*

Well, back in 2007 when I did my first one… I discovered that I work well under pressure.

(this has also had some effect on my work life)

So now I just live for November. I spend months pre-planning. Because I get more done in one month than I do all year because the whole WRITE WRITE WRITE RIGHT NOW motivation factor works better for me than anything else I’ve tried.

I really need to try NaNo sometime… I’m just so lazy… :p

JOOOOOOOOOOOOOIN UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!

Me too, Bagelsan… that’s why it works so well for me. Because it breaks me out of routine and forces me to confront the laziness head-on. It might work for you too…..

All the cool kids are doing it. Wait, are we the cool kids? Or are we those weird nerdy kids that the cool kids make fun of? And then we get total revenge because we mature into beautiful swans and they just get old and uncool.

Either way, JOOOOOOIIIIIINNN UUUUUUUSSSSSSS!

I’m not going to lie; it’s taken a bit of a toll on my schoolwork, but I know I can catch up. 🙂

I’m going with weird nerdy kids turned swans. At least, that’s certainly true in my case.

I remember when I was young and cool.

No, wait, I remember when I was young and on the student newspaper and asking earnest questions and BEING A TOTAL FUCKING ASSHOLE RIGHT-WINGER.

….I can only hope I ended up being something other than that. Swan, nerd, I’ll take it.

PS: once a nerd, always a nerd. In youth I participated in contests to see who could memorize more digits of pi. You… you can’t take that back once you’ve done that.

Very true, howard. I now embrace every bit of my nerdiness. Whenever someone gives me shit for being a nerd, I point out that without nerds, the world would still be in the Stone Age. Who else would invent cool stuff but the nerds? 😀

How many decimals did you get to? And can you still remember them all? (My dad, who just turned 75, can still remember the poem he had to memorize in Grade 3.)

I also was pretty right-wing when I was younger. Fortunately, I grew up a little, and gained compassion and (some) wisdom, and became less easily satisfied with the simple answers.

Grr, I’m completely stalled. I’m stuck in the “bonding” part of the story where not that much happens but people get to know each other. It’s hard!

I’m slowly working my way towards the ending. I decided that some of the other parts were getting boring, and that I would fix them later during the editing process. I just want to see how my whole story plays out. Sorry you’re having troubles, katz. *inspiration vibes* 🙂

I can remember the first ten or so still. In the same sing-song I used to memorize them. It’s… annoying.

I wrote my ending last week. It helped me dump about 10,000 words a day for a while… the big climax will always help you do that.

Now I have some painful reversals to work out.

So I totally want to write a short story about the Cornish Owlman. Who thinks that would be fun?

Oh, Kotaku. The site that wraps up misogyny, racism, and utter contempt for anyone outside the treehouse up into one obnoxious package, and then insists on trying to deliver it to all the other Gawker sites any time anyone mentions sex or games, despite repeated attempts by all the other sites to return said package as undeliverable.

U

*cough* sorry there

I’m almost done! 45k (of the novel’s 2nd half)! 😀

@inurashii
NO U