At first I’m like, “Where is a gorgeous sweater??” (I love those.) But a t-shirt works nicely in a more intimate, domestic setting.
@Argenti
IMO, she was too freaked out to even think about Hugo except for the prospect of being compared to him. I don’t know much about him other than he did terrible things to women in spite of pretending to be a feminist. What does he have to do with toxic online communities? Did he have one himself?
AAAAAAH GUYS MY CHECK CAME IN I HAVE SOLD MY FIRST BULK ORDER TO A MENTAL CLINIC AAAAHHHH SO EXCITED! *clears throat* Er. I mean.
RE: Auntie Alias
I remember running after them when I was a kid and catching them in a jar with holes in the lid and grass inside so I could watch them.
Yeah, I saw some of them when I was a kid in Texas, but then I… just stopped seeing them around. We didn’t move or anything, the fireflies just buzzed off, I guess. And I hadn’t seen them since until I moved here to Ohio. I really like it! Me and Sneak still go around trying to catch them.
Aw man, katz, that sucks. I kinda relate. I’m pretty good at selling stuff directly to my audience, but I am apparently SHIT at selling to actual publishers or entities. *spreads hands* For some reason, it just knots me all up and I get way more anxious about it than I do with my readers, and everything takes so much longer… *sigh*
If you say “But the Celts didn’t have runes” and the other person goes “So? It’s just a story,” what do you say to that?
The thing is, you could dismiss literally ANYTHING about fiction with “it’s just a story.” Your hero rapes and murders an entire civilization, so readers don’t like him? “Just a story.” You measure distance in parsecs? “Just a story.” You end your heroic Greek epic with everyone turning into bananas and having an orgy? “Just a story.” It doesn’t actually have any substance.
RE: Unimaginative
Actually, what I’ve read is that a combo of self-publishing and traditional publishing is where the best money is. And that the vast majority of writers make less than $1000 a year. I’m actually doing better than average!
I tried on the sports bras I ordered. They fit pretty tightly, but I’m assuming that’s normal for a sports bra. I feel so weird about the fact that I actually ordered bras for myself, but w/e.
Unimaginative
10 years ago
LBT, congratulations! I’m so excited for you! Hey, do you have an on-line store link we can give to people? I work in the same building as a bunch of personal counsellors. They run on a shoestring, so I don’t anticipate being able to prompt any bulk orders, but a trickle of income is still income.
Unimaginative
10 years ago
@Ally, yep. They squish everything into place so you don’t jiggle painfully while doing sports. I do find the girls ache a bit when I take a too-tight sport bra off after several hours, depending on my hormone cycle. Also, there’s a very fine line between “too tight” and “so loose as to be useless”.
Congrats, Ally! And don’t worry, as long as they aren’t painfully tight, that should be okay.
RE: Unimaginative
Hey, do you have an on-line store link we can give to people?
I do! 😀 My biggest sellers are my relapse-prevention pocket zines The Bad Day Book and Feeling Worthless? which I sell at a buck each, and depending on the size of the order (the one I just got paid for was 50 copies of each) I can give special pricing.
Auntie Alias
10 years ago
@LBT
Awesome!!! Congratulations! I loved reading “MPD for You and Me.” You have such a friendly, engaging writing style.
AAAAAAH GUYS MY CHECK CAME IN I HAVE SOLD MY FIRST BULK ORDER TO A MENTAL CLINIC AAAAHHHH SO EXCITED! *clears throat* Er. I mean.
That’s so awesome: You’re helping people AND making money! Best of all worlds!
BTW, did you end up getting the shorter version of Princess and Monster published? I remember you were pitching it to someone as a GLBT romance.
The thing is, you could dismiss literally ANYTHING about fiction with “it’s just a story.” Your hero rapes and murders an entire civilization, so readers don’t like him? “Just a story.” You measure distance in parsecs? “Just a story.” You end your heroic Greek epic with everyone turning into bananas and having an orgy? “Just a story.” It doesn’t actually have any substance.
It’s true; you could even dismiss things like proper spelling. But when it comes down to it, what do you say to a writer who insists that some fundamental thing isn’t a problem?
Katz, over the last couple of years, self-publishing has become more respectable and in a lot of cases more lucrative for authors.
Not for HF, unfortunately :/ The audience just isn’t there yet. It requires promotion.
Robert
10 years ago
I’ve seen fireflies once in my life. Husband and I were staying briefly at a huge, dilapidated old mansion deep in the Pennsyltucky woods with friends, and one evening flocks* of fireflies appeared in the underbrush. If you’ve grown up without them around, they are absolutely magical to watch.
*Don’t know the name for a group of ’em. A conflagration?
There have been endless debates online and IRL about authenticity and world-building; maybe you could point your writer to one of those? What it really comes down to is that you have to make the reader suspend their disbelief. You can make up any unlikely shit you want, but it has to be internally consistent, and practical. If you mess up a real-life detail that you’re using to create your fictional world, then some of your readers are going to notice, and you’ll lose credibility with that reader, and with all the other readers they tell (in person, via review or blog, or whatever).
If getting that detail wrong makes a difference to the story, then cool, it will become apparent as the story develops.
“It doesn’t matter because it’s fiction” is lazy writing. If it doesn’t matter, then leave it out of the story. If it does matter, then get it right.
I loved reading “MPD for You and Me.” You have such a friendly, engaging writing style.
Aw, thank you! I really like making things that are useful to people.
RE: katz
BTW, did you end up getting the shorter version of Princess and Monster published? I remember you were pitching it to someone as a GLBT romance.
I didn’t. I’ve actually been kinda run aground on Princess and Monster for a bit. I do want and plan on finishing it, but right now, I’m basically stymied trying to restructure it. The events and such do not change, but the order I tell them in and how are totally being redone to make it a trimmer, more streamlined story, and it’s turning out to not be clicking with me lately. : It probably doesn’t help that I’ve been writing stories of less than 10K words for a couple years now, making long-form a little intimidating on my brainmeats.
what do you say to a writer who insists that some fundamental thing isn’t a problem?
Honestly, I’d wonder why the hell he wants an editor at all. Since you know, whole thing is a story. If you hire an editor, they’ll edit everything they see; it’s what you hire them for. If he can’t handle that, then… well, I’m not sure what to tell him except maybe get someone different who won’t call him on basic worldbuilding flubs.
(I realize the irony of a dude who writes a medieval European fairy tale populated entirely with Jews calling something unrealistic, but come on. I at least TRIED to mash that history together.)
RE: cloudiah
A sparkle of fireflies. Wow. That’s… that’s pretty true to life, really.
That… that actually sounds really neat, actually. One of my pet shames is that I’m still up the creek without a paddle when it comes to actual legit publishing, agents, and so on. I’d love to get a chance to actually get some formal training, rather than my flailing around. My writeathons are fun, but they are kinda limited to netting me maybe $100-$200, just because of human and financial limits. And sure, I’m disabled, but I’m kinda hoping maybe I won’t have to be on disability forever?
If they want GLBT diversity, Princess and Monster will HAPPILY supply! :B And the first chapter, at least, is good. It’s just… *vague gestures* reordering chapters and POV changes and shit that’s slowing me down.
Seriously though, if you’re going to angrily rant about how your space isn’t toxic and they’re abusing you in a way you’d never allow and HOW DARE THEY COMPARE ME TO HIM?! Maybe take five minutes and smell the hypocrisy?
As for Hugo. Fucking. Schwyzer. afaik he’s “just” a toxic person, not a toxic online group. But he did write for GMP so idk.
What really kills me about that though is the comments — how upset she is that staying on her site isn’t enough to prevent people from talking about, sorry, harassing, her. I mean fuck, I had some troll try a pathetic dox’ing attempt when I launched the Borg, and whichever idiot keeps trying to log into R’s company site as me, congrats on figuring out I did the design, good luck figuring out my password. Wtf did I do to “deserve” that? *waves at MRAs* I guess I really piss them off? Or one of them? Or I’m a feminist doing a thing? Idk, or care, it’s pathetic.
But someone well known in the feminist world (which I am not, remotely) gets emailed a thing about a reporter seeking a psych to help write a piece on toxic social justice stuff, including said feminist’s space, well, that’s a hit piece and disableist and a gross violation that makes her readers want to barf.
I’m gonna play armchair psych, and likely come to regret it, but it feels like her policing Shakesville the way she does has given her some false sense of security — anyone who attacks her there gets the ban hammer, she doesn’t have to deal with shit there, and it seems like everything she does is there (and feminism wise she says it is), so she can’t deal with her space being questioned elsewhere, where she can’t control the conversation.
And that’s my problem with “safe spaces” — as was said already, it’s easy enough to enforce it on one or two axes, but even then you can run into the problem where the real world isn’t a safe space and if you only encounter whatever that issue is in a safe space…well, you’re welcome to ignore assholes offline, or get upset, or tell them off, or whatever, but forgetting that they exist and while it’s polite not to be an asshole (duh) you can’t make people not be rude, bigoted, etc? Prolly not so good. But, of course, it’s nearly impossible to spend all your time in safe spaces for even one axis, but I’m rambling now. In any case, you can avoid assholes, and should!, but they’re still gonna exist and be assholes.
I’m not making sense, I need coffee. The fish got fed and I never got to coffee >.< I went and let Puff nibble my fingers and he decided it was food time and went after a goby, so it had to be food time (after he got scolded, which is easy since he does NOT like fingers moving towards him)…now it's human food, and coffee, time!
serrana
10 years ago
Thanks for the story, LBT! I read it last night and loved it.
Oh hey, Argenti, I remember you being interested in Dreams and Nightmarathon. It’s ongoing right now if you want to toss a prompt at me! I already sold a Biff story yesterday!
Argenti Aertheri
10 years ago
LBT — 1) congrats
2) Biff…Beth…Biff…*head explodes* And bringing M.D. makes it LESS awkward? I’m gonna go make that coffee, and put my brain back in an IS shaped order!
Not really, but she was basically his meat shield to insure he actually did what he set out on doing, rather than just run off and set another car on fire. Actually, there’s another story that immediately predates Homecoming on the half-price list, the Bus to Georgia, which covers Biff and M.D.’s road trip across the South because they can’t take a plane.
It is NOT the best forty-six hours they’ve ever spent.
I tried going on a walk while wearing one of the sports bras I got. It was actually more comfy than I thought, but I was nervous because my bra strap kept showing due to the large collar of my shirt, and the whole time I couldn’t stop thinking “Everyone knows I’m wearing a bra. EVERYONE.”
Argenti Aertheri
10 years ago
Ally? Women with accidentally visable bra straps = a thing we all know happens, and polite people ignore. Congratulations, you’ve committed your first female fashion faux pas!
LBT — unfortunately I’m mega broke! The idea of either of them sitting remotely still for two straight days though…and M.D. was the responsible adult?!
We Hunted The Mammoth
@kitteh
At first I’m like, “Where is a gorgeous sweater??” (I love those.) But a t-shirt works nicely in a more intimate, domestic setting.
@Argenti
IMO, she was too freaked out to even think about Hugo except for the prospect of being compared to him. I don’t know much about him other than he did terrible things to women in spite of pretending to be a feminist. What does he have to do with toxic online communities? Did he have one himself?
AAAAAAH GUYS MY CHECK CAME IN I HAVE SOLD MY FIRST BULK ORDER TO A MENTAL CLINIC AAAAHHHH SO EXCITED! *clears throat* Er. I mean.
RE: Auntie Alias
I remember running after them when I was a kid and catching them in a jar with holes in the lid and grass inside so I could watch them.
Yeah, I saw some of them when I was a kid in Texas, but then I… just stopped seeing them around. We didn’t move or anything, the fireflies just buzzed off, I guess. And I hadn’t seen them since until I moved here to Ohio. I really like it! Me and Sneak still go around trying to catch them.
RE: Kittehs
You and Louis’s story has been posted!
RE: katz
Sorry, just wanted to vent.
Aw man, katz, that sucks. I kinda relate. I’m pretty good at selling stuff directly to my audience, but I am apparently SHIT at selling to actual publishers or entities. *spreads hands* For some reason, it just knots me all up and I get way more anxious about it than I do with my readers, and everything takes so much longer… *sigh*
If you say “But the Celts didn’t have runes” and the other person goes “So? It’s just a story,” what do you say to that?
The thing is, you could dismiss literally ANYTHING about fiction with “it’s just a story.” Your hero rapes and murders an entire civilization, so readers don’t like him? “Just a story.” You measure distance in parsecs? “Just a story.” You end your heroic Greek epic with everyone turning into bananas and having an orgy? “Just a story.” It doesn’t actually have any substance.
RE: Unimaginative
Actually, what I’ve read is that a combo of self-publishing and traditional publishing is where the best money is. And that the vast majority of writers make less than $1000 a year. I’m actually doing better than average!
TMI stuff relating to underthings:
I tried on the sports bras I ordered. They fit pretty tightly, but I’m assuming that’s normal for a sports bra. I feel so weird about the fact that I actually ordered bras for myself, but w/e.
LBT, congratulations! I’m so excited for you! Hey, do you have an on-line store link we can give to people? I work in the same building as a bunch of personal counsellors. They run on a shoestring, so I don’t anticipate being able to prompt any bulk orders, but a trickle of income is still income.
@Ally, yep. They squish everything into place so you don’t jiggle painfully while doing sports. I do find the girls ache a bit when I take a too-tight sport bra off after several hours, depending on my hormone cycle. Also, there’s a very fine line between “too tight” and “so loose as to be useless”.
Congrats, Ally! And don’t worry, as long as they aren’t painfully tight, that should be okay.
RE: Unimaginative
Hey, do you have an on-line store link we can give to people?
I do! 😀 My biggest sellers are my relapse-prevention pocket zines The Bad Day Book and Feeling Worthless? which I sell at a buck each, and depending on the size of the order (the one I just got paid for was 50 copies of each) I can give special pricing.
@LBT
Awesome!!! Congratulations! I loved reading “MPD for You and Me.” You have such a friendly, engaging writing style.
That’s so awesome: You’re helping people AND making money! Best of all worlds!
BTW, did you end up getting the shorter version of Princess and Monster published? I remember you were pitching it to someone as a GLBT romance.
It’s true; you could even dismiss things like proper spelling. But when it comes down to it, what do you say to a writer who insists that some fundamental thing isn’t a problem?
Not for HF, unfortunately :/ The audience just isn’t there yet. It requires promotion.
I’ve seen fireflies once in my life. Husband and I were staying briefly at a huge, dilapidated old mansion deep in the Pennsyltucky woods with friends, and one evening flocks* of fireflies appeared in the underbrush. If you’ve grown up without them around, they are absolutely magical to watch.
*Don’t know the name for a group of ’em. A conflagration?
Apparently, it’s a “sprinkle” of fireflies.
There have been endless debates online and IRL about authenticity and world-building; maybe you could point your writer to one of those? What it really comes down to is that you have to make the reader suspend their disbelief. You can make up any unlikely shit you want, but it has to be internally consistent, and practical. If you mess up a real-life detail that you’re using to create your fictional world, then some of your readers are going to notice, and you’ll lose credibility with that reader, and with all the other readers they tell (in person, via review or blog, or whatever).
If getting that detail wrong makes a difference to the story, then cool, it will become apparent as the story develops.
“It doesn’t matter because it’s fiction” is lazy writing. If it doesn’t matter, then leave it out of the story. If it does matter, then get it right.
RE: Auntie Alias
I loved reading “MPD for You and Me.” You have such a friendly, engaging writing style.
Aw, thank you! I really like making things that are useful to people.
RE: katz
BTW, did you end up getting the shorter version of Princess and Monster published? I remember you were pitching it to someone as a GLBT romance.
I didn’t. I’ve actually been kinda run aground on Princess and Monster for a bit. I do want and plan on finishing it, but right now, I’m basically stymied trying to restructure it. The events and such do not change, but the order I tell them in and how are totally being redone to make it a trimmer, more streamlined story, and it’s turning out to not be clicking with me lately. : It probably doesn’t help that I’ve been writing stories of less than 10K words for a couple years now, making long-form a little intimidating on my brainmeats.
what do you say to a writer who insists that some fundamental thing isn’t a problem?
Honestly, I’d wonder why the hell he wants an editor at all. Since you know, whole thing is a story. If you hire an editor, they’ll edit everything they see; it’s what you hire them for. If he can’t handle that, then… well, I’m not sure what to tell him except maybe get someone different who won’t call him on basic worldbuilding flubs.
(I realize the irony of a dude who writes a medieval European fairy tale populated entirely with Jews calling something unrealistic, but come on. I at least TRIED to mash that history together.)
RE: cloudiah
A sparkle of fireflies. Wow. That’s… that’s pretty true to life, really.
If you want, you might try tossing Princess and Monster to Pitch Wars. There were a lot of mentors looking specifically for GLBT lit and diversity.
RE: katz
That… that actually sounds really neat, actually. One of my pet shames is that I’m still up the creek without a paddle when it comes to actual legit publishing, agents, and so on. I’d love to get a chance to actually get some formal training, rather than my flailing around. My writeathons are fun, but they are kinda limited to netting me maybe $100-$200, just because of human and financial limits. And sure, I’m disabled, but I’m kinda hoping maybe I won’t have to be on disability forever?
If they want GLBT diversity, Princess and Monster will HAPPILY supply! :B And the first chapter, at least, is good. It’s just… *vague gestures* reordering chapters and POV changes and shit that’s slowing me down.
Congratulations, LBT!
Oh, serrana, I posted your story!
Auntie Alias — well, I expect more! XD
Seriously though, if you’re going to angrily rant about how your space isn’t toxic and they’re abusing you in a way you’d never allow and HOW DARE THEY COMPARE ME TO HIM?! Maybe take five minutes and smell the hypocrisy?
As for Hugo. Fucking. Schwyzer. afaik he’s “just” a toxic person, not a toxic online group. But he did write for GMP so idk.
What really kills me about that though is the comments — how upset she is that staying on her site isn’t enough to prevent people from talking about, sorry, harassing, her. I mean fuck, I had some troll try a pathetic dox’ing attempt when I launched the Borg, and whichever idiot keeps trying to log into R’s company site as me, congrats on figuring out I did the design, good luck figuring out my password. Wtf did I do to “deserve” that? *waves at MRAs* I guess I really piss them off? Or one of them? Or I’m a feminist doing a thing? Idk, or care, it’s pathetic.
But someone well known in the feminist world (which I am not, remotely) gets emailed a thing about a reporter seeking a psych to help write a piece on toxic social justice stuff, including said feminist’s space, well, that’s a hit piece and disableist and a gross violation that makes her readers want to barf.
I’m gonna play armchair psych, and likely come to regret it, but it feels like her policing Shakesville the way she does has given her some false sense of security — anyone who attacks her there gets the ban hammer, she doesn’t have to deal with shit there, and it seems like everything she does is there (and feminism wise she says it is), so she can’t deal with her space being questioned elsewhere, where she can’t control the conversation.
And that’s my problem with “safe spaces” — as was said already, it’s easy enough to enforce it on one or two axes, but even then you can run into the problem where the real world isn’t a safe space and if you only encounter whatever that issue is in a safe space…well, you’re welcome to ignore assholes offline, or get upset, or tell them off, or whatever, but forgetting that they exist and while it’s polite not to be an asshole (duh) you can’t make people not be rude, bigoted, etc? Prolly not so good. But, of course, it’s nearly impossible to spend all your time in safe spaces for even one axis, but I’m rambling now. In any case, you can avoid assholes, and should!, but they’re still gonna exist and be assholes.
I’m not making sense, I need coffee. The fish got fed and I never got to coffee >.< I went and let Puff nibble my fingers and he decided it was food time and went after a goby, so it had to be food time (after he got scolded, which is easy since he does NOT like fingers moving towards him)…now it's human food, and coffee, time!
Thanks for the story, LBT! I read it last night and loved it.
LBT: Pitch Wars buddies? *fistbump*
Oh hey, Argenti, I remember you being interested in Dreams and Nightmarathon. It’s ongoing right now if you want to toss a prompt at me! I already sold a Biff story yesterday!
LBT — 1) congrats
2) Biff…Beth…Biff…*head explodes* And bringing M.D. makes it LESS awkward? I’m gonna go make that coffee, and put my brain back in an IS shaped order!
^ *does not have prompts! or coherent thoughts*
A part 2 maybe?
RE: Argenti
And bringing M.D. makes it LESS awkward?
Not really, but she was basically his meat shield to insure he actually did what he set out on doing, rather than just run off and set another car on fire. Actually, there’s another story that immediately predates Homecoming on the half-price list, the Bus to Georgia, which covers Biff and M.D.’s road trip across the South because they can’t take a plane.
It is NOT the best forty-six hours they’ve ever spent.
TMI kind of:
I tried going on a walk while wearing one of the sports bras I got. It was actually more comfy than I thought, but I was nervous because my bra strap kept showing due to the large collar of my shirt, and the whole time I couldn’t stop thinking “Everyone knows I’m wearing a bra. EVERYONE.”
Ally? Women with accidentally visable bra straps = a thing we all know happens, and polite people ignore. Congratulations, you’ve committed your first female fashion faux pas!
LBT — unfortunately I’m mega broke! The idea of either of them sitting remotely still for two straight days though…and M.D. was the responsible adult?!