(no subject)
First and foremost, hi to everyone I just met over at the...
!POKEMON FRIENDING MEME!:
There's still a bunch of people I'm having some awesome chats with, so I don't want to make anyone feel left out or anything with a list of names. Buuuut I just want to say all of you seem like super-cool people, so I'm looking forward to awesome tiems for all.
Second, the not-so-daily-because-I-fail NaNo word count:
32149 / 50000 words. 64% done!
I think the most exciting thing that happened in today's segment (yesterday's being full of a semi-climactic battle against a dragon made of shadows and one of the characters going, "WTF JUST HAPPENED" a lot) was the fact that Jane conjured up a tube of toothpaste.
No. It's really not a case of Better Than It Sounds.
So, I'm going to try my hardest to make that into a Chekhov's Skill because... yeah.
(Oh, uh, I did forget to mention that I have a fondness for TV Tropes. On the positive side, at least I'm not linking to each article, amirite?)
Still, looking forward to 50k. I'm a couple days ahead of schedule, and I've been consistent about making the 1667 limit. But I still sort of want to get the rest over with already. Luckily, I've got about 8k left before I start pulling out all the big guns. I mean, to be honest, it took me awhile to reach today's count because I just kept getting distracted.
Third, finally started actually coding documents for Keeper. Six days left, guys. I swear, it's going to be up this time.
Fourth, a little icebreaker exercise, stolen from hippyjolteon:
The Rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen authors (poets and comic book authors included) who've influenced you and that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes.
(Listing the names first and going back with reasons after the fifteen minutes. BRB~!)
1. Edgar Allan Poe
No, not for cliché reasons, either. Not for the angsty poetry or the horror short stories or even the detective fiction. Rather, the entire reason is in the fact that he wrote one of the primary pieces of advice that always springs to mind before pretty much everything else: "do not put a word in a story that doesn't serve an overall purpose." It was part of his rules for writing short stories, and I do believe it ties in with the rule about how a short story needs to be only so long that it can be finished in one sitting. But either way, the point was that everything you put into a fic needs to lend towards some kind of effect in the story. Like Chekhov's gun, only with EVERYTHING.
2. Stephen King
On Writing is my Bible.
3. Douglas Adams
It's not so much for the absurd humor of The Hitchhiker's Guide or the bitter commentary or what-have-you. Rather, it's for the quality of the tone of voice. The Hitchhiker's Guide tends to have factual infodumps that you KNOW lead up to something funny, and the actual funny bits are delivered dryly. It's made me rethink how comedy and comic relief are actually done.
4. J.K. Rowling
Ironically, this isn't a point about my writing. For whatever reason, good ol' J.K. just didn't shape me as a writer or an editor one way or another. It's not that I didn't like Harry Potter. (I did and still do.) It's just that I didn't walk away from her learning anything. The reason why she's on this list is a personal one. I met a lot of friends (some of which I still keep in touch with) through the Harry Potter fandom, and a lot of my early online life is centered around chatting with a bunch of fangirls on this one message board I used to go to. Our only common interest was Harry Potter, so I read a lot of their HP fic and fangirled a lot with them. This is also how I was introduced to concepts like slash and lemons.
5. Neil Gaiman
For Good Omens but also for the gritty, modern feel of a lot of his stories. American Gods, Anansi Boys, a ton of his short stories... all of the ones like those have this kind of urban fantasy feel to it, so a reader can sort of grasp what's going on. It made me realize that sometimes, fiction is most effective if the completely modern reader ISN'T completely alienated from the work by removing settings or concepts most familiar to them.
6. George Eliot
As much as I didn't care for the pretentiousness of my senior seminar, I liked Middlemarch completely because of the same dry humor about it. Eliot has this sense of subtlety. You aren't aware that she's being witty unless you go back and look a little harder. Same kind of concept with Adams and Pratchett, but I try to keep Eliot's tone in mind specifically because of that subtlety and how fantastic it is to catch a person off-guard.
7. Gregory Corso
Gregory Corso killed a lot of my bad habits with his poetry. I realized that a lot of poetry isn't so much about the images as it is about what the images are supposed to represent. This was back when I was a teenager, so I wasn't aware of this otherwise obvious statement beforehand.
8. Charles Simic
The other poet who helped shape the way I write poetry. Simic's work taught me that you don't have to pound the emotion into a reader's head and that you don't have to use insanely convoluted imagery to have effective poetry. You could, quite literally, be talking about a sandwich, and that can be more effective as a poem than one that's filled with angst and synonyms for darkness.
9. Ernest Hemingway
As much as I hate Hemingway, I appreciate the fact that he was straightforward and didn't overload his prose with fluff. I've always seen his stories as being effective in their own right because of the same principle Poe was talking about: nothing goes into his work that isn't absolutely necessary for the story in some form. In other words, even if I seriously don't particularly care for his work (and sorry if anyone of you does -- it just doesn't float my boat because I always feel like a lot of it doesn't go anywhere), it paradoxically represents the kind of literature I think actually gets it.
10. Ambrose Bierce
This man taught me aaaaallll about mindscrew. He got me interested in experimenting with timelines and messing with reality, basically.
11. Ann M. Martin
Judge all you want, but I grew up with the Baby-Sitters Club until I left elementary school and found Harry Potter (which, weirdly enough, didn't provide that much of an impact on my writing style for some reason). While I was interested in reading beforehand, it was the BSC that really got me into collecting books and burying my nose in pages whenever possible. Somewhere during this era, I also started realizing I sort of liked writing. So, I guess you could say Martin was the one who got me started.
12. Jack Kerouac
There are phrases and scenes of On the Road that I always think of, but in general, it made me realize that an element of realism actually is a GOOD thing for fiction because it grounds a reader and forces them to imagine what's going on as if they're observers to the scene. Also, it's a personal level because a lot of On the Road is also a summary of what I'd like to do in life. I'll let you figure out what I mean by that one.
13. Michael Crichton
A recent addition to my awesome authors list, seriously. Crichton's style is so precise, so scientific, and so straightforward that it gets away with being full of infodumping while keeping the reader going. Why? Because it's so methodical in taking apart what should be a complete and utter horror and describing each piece like some kind of scientific specimen that the narrator takes on a certain level of creepiness itself. And that's just cool.
14. Luka Delaney
Kagerou, the webcomic that taught me to screw conventions I have money. It's also reminded me that characters are still human on a level with all kinds of problems and baggage that they've all got individually. Or, in other words, lesson in characterization.
15. Fanfiction authors
Too many to list, and no, it's not cheating. Fanfic comms have been a consistent source of friends for me AND of opportunities to develop. Without other fic authors serving as critics, I wouldn't learn what to do and what not to do in fanfics, and in some cases, I've secretly been emulating fellow authors' styles. (No, I won't name which ones, and no, they're not in the Pokémon fandom.) In short, fic authors are awesome.
!POKEMON FRIENDING MEME!:
There's still a bunch of people I'm having some awesome chats with, so I don't want to make anyone feel left out or anything with a list of names. Buuuut I just want to say all of you seem like super-cool people, so I'm looking forward to awesome tiems for all.
Second, the not-so-daily-because-I-fail NaNo word count:
32149 / 50000 words. 64% done!
I think the most exciting thing that happened in today's segment (yesterday's being full of a semi-climactic battle against a dragon made of shadows and one of the characters going, "WTF JUST HAPPENED" a lot) was the fact that Jane conjured up a tube of toothpaste.
No. It's really not a case of Better Than It Sounds.
So, I'm going to try my hardest to make that into a Chekhov's Skill because... yeah.
(Oh, uh, I did forget to mention that I have a fondness for TV Tropes. On the positive side, at least I'm not linking to each article, amirite?)
Still, looking forward to 50k. I'm a couple days ahead of schedule, and I've been consistent about making the 1667 limit. But I still sort of want to get the rest over with already. Luckily, I've got about 8k left before I start pulling out all the big guns. I mean, to be honest, it took me awhile to reach today's count because I just kept getting distracted.
Third, finally started actually coding documents for Keeper. Six days left, guys. I swear, it's going to be up this time.
Fourth, a little icebreaker exercise, stolen from hippyjolteon:
The Rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen authors (poets and comic book authors included) who've influenced you and that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes.
(Listing the names first and going back with reasons after the fifteen minutes. BRB~!)
1. Edgar Allan Poe
No, not for cliché reasons, either. Not for the angsty poetry or the horror short stories or even the detective fiction. Rather, the entire reason is in the fact that he wrote one of the primary pieces of advice that always springs to mind before pretty much everything else: "do not put a word in a story that doesn't serve an overall purpose." It was part of his rules for writing short stories, and I do believe it ties in with the rule about how a short story needs to be only so long that it can be finished in one sitting. But either way, the point was that everything you put into a fic needs to lend towards some kind of effect in the story. Like Chekhov's gun, only with EVERYTHING.
2. Stephen King
On Writing is my Bible.
3. Douglas Adams
It's not so much for the absurd humor of The Hitchhiker's Guide or the bitter commentary or what-have-you. Rather, it's for the quality of the tone of voice. The Hitchhiker's Guide tends to have factual infodumps that you KNOW lead up to something funny, and the actual funny bits are delivered dryly. It's made me rethink how comedy and comic relief are actually done.
4. J.K. Rowling
Ironically, this isn't a point about my writing. For whatever reason, good ol' J.K. just didn't shape me as a writer or an editor one way or another. It's not that I didn't like Harry Potter. (I did and still do.) It's just that I didn't walk away from her learning anything. The reason why she's on this list is a personal one. I met a lot of friends (some of which I still keep in touch with) through the Harry Potter fandom, and a lot of my early online life is centered around chatting with a bunch of fangirls on this one message board I used to go to. Our only common interest was Harry Potter, so I read a lot of their HP fic and fangirled a lot with them. This is also how I was introduced to concepts like slash and lemons.
5. Neil Gaiman
For Good Omens but also for the gritty, modern feel of a lot of his stories. American Gods, Anansi Boys, a ton of his short stories... all of the ones like those have this kind of urban fantasy feel to it, so a reader can sort of grasp what's going on. It made me realize that sometimes, fiction is most effective if the completely modern reader ISN'T completely alienated from the work by removing settings or concepts most familiar to them.
6. George Eliot
As much as I didn't care for the pretentiousness of my senior seminar, I liked Middlemarch completely because of the same dry humor about it. Eliot has this sense of subtlety. You aren't aware that she's being witty unless you go back and look a little harder. Same kind of concept with Adams and Pratchett, but I try to keep Eliot's tone in mind specifically because of that subtlety and how fantastic it is to catch a person off-guard.
7. Gregory Corso
Gregory Corso killed a lot of my bad habits with his poetry. I realized that a lot of poetry isn't so much about the images as it is about what the images are supposed to represent. This was back when I was a teenager, so I wasn't aware of this otherwise obvious statement beforehand.
8. Charles Simic
The other poet who helped shape the way I write poetry. Simic's work taught me that you don't have to pound the emotion into a reader's head and that you don't have to use insanely convoluted imagery to have effective poetry. You could, quite literally, be talking about a sandwich, and that can be more effective as a poem than one that's filled with angst and synonyms for darkness.
9. Ernest Hemingway
As much as I hate Hemingway, I appreciate the fact that he was straightforward and didn't overload his prose with fluff. I've always seen his stories as being effective in their own right because of the same principle Poe was talking about: nothing goes into his work that isn't absolutely necessary for the story in some form. In other words, even if I seriously don't particularly care for his work (and sorry if anyone of you does -- it just doesn't float my boat because I always feel like a lot of it doesn't go anywhere), it paradoxically represents the kind of literature I think actually gets it.
10. Ambrose Bierce
This man taught me aaaaallll about mindscrew. He got me interested in experimenting with timelines and messing with reality, basically.
11. Ann M. Martin
Judge all you want, but I grew up with the Baby-Sitters Club until I left elementary school and found Harry Potter (which, weirdly enough, didn't provide that much of an impact on my writing style for some reason). While I was interested in reading beforehand, it was the BSC that really got me into collecting books and burying my nose in pages whenever possible. Somewhere during this era, I also started realizing I sort of liked writing. So, I guess you could say Martin was the one who got me started.
12. Jack Kerouac
There are phrases and scenes of On the Road that I always think of, but in general, it made me realize that an element of realism actually is a GOOD thing for fiction because it grounds a reader and forces them to imagine what's going on as if they're observers to the scene. Also, it's a personal level because a lot of On the Road is also a summary of what I'd like to do in life. I'll let you figure out what I mean by that one.
13. Michael Crichton
A recent addition to my awesome authors list, seriously. Crichton's style is so precise, so scientific, and so straightforward that it gets away with being full of infodumping while keeping the reader going. Why? Because it's so methodical in taking apart what should be a complete and utter horror and describing each piece like some kind of scientific specimen that the narrator takes on a certain level of creepiness itself. And that's just cool.
14. Luka Delaney
Kagerou, the webcomic that taught me to screw conventions I have money. It's also reminded me that characters are still human on a level with all kinds of problems and baggage that they've all got individually. Or, in other words, lesson in characterization.
15. Fanfiction authors
Too many to list, and no, it's not cheating. Fanfic comms have been a consistent source of friends for me AND of opportunities to develop. Without other fic authors serving as critics, I wouldn't learn what to do and what not to do in fanfics, and in some cases, I've secretly been emulating fellow authors' styles. (No, I won't name which ones, and no, they're not in the Pokémon fandom.) In short, fic authors are awesome.