Background Check: smeddley.
Greetings, my cohorts. :-) I hope your weekends were everything you needed them to be. Whatsay we start this week off with a nice, juicy background check?
Today I am frisking and fingerprinting one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met in my life. She’s warm, funny, witty, adventurous, ridiculously smart and oh, so creative. There are few people in this world who seem to embrace their whole selves with no apologies, no excuses, and nothing held back (because let's face it, that can be scary and make you unduly vulnerable on the .Net), but unless I miss my mark, this chick is definitely one of them. She is a casual writer (though she’s finished many NaNoWriMo and book-length works), an avid reader, book reviewer, excellent crafter, sports enthusiast, icon maven, cook, wife, and LJ moderator who goes by the name… smeddley !
DQ: How long have you been on LiveJournal and your website?
smeddley: I’ve been on LJ since 2005, though I’ve long since deleted my sad, earlier attempts at blogging. I periodically delete older entries… I’d like to say it’s because a blog is a current and fluid medium, a form of artistic expression that needs to be kept fresh, but in honesty it’s mostly because I look back and think, ‘ugh, that’s crap!’ and delete it. I can’t bear to permanently delete anything, though, so I do have all the old stuff stored on my hard drive. Someday I’ll run a ‘best of Smeddley’ week and re-post the best of the old stuff. [Dynastic note: I am looking forward to that. Believe it.]
DQ: What do you write, and when did you first discover you had a passion for it? Is there any other genre you’d like to dabble in?
smeddley: I honestly don’t remember when I started writing. I started reading at the age of four and never stopped, and I think writing eventually evolved as a natural extension of that. But I didn’t get serious (well, as serious as I ever get) about writing until I started blogging.
I don’t know how you’d describe most of my stories. They’re pretty varied, although many of them do share one trait - I tend to kill off characters. I don’t usually mean to, but it just keeps happening. I did recently fulfill my goal of having a character kill off a bad guy with a knitting needle, so maybe I’m past that phase. We’ll see. [Dynastic note: *eyeing my own collection of knitting and crocheting implements and excitedly working out the mechanics of THAT, to the Norman Bates PSYCHO theme music in my head*]
I’m very, very proud of my Choose-Your-Own Adventure NaNoWriMo novel (it’s at path-of-undeath, pimp pimp pimp) and would like to write another one some day - perhaps an erotic one, to get over my squeamishness of writing naughty bits (though it would then have to be gender-specific, unfortunately).
I never have any intention of publishing, because 1) I don’t think I’m good enough 2) I freely admit I don’t want to put forth the amount of effort it would take (I don’t think I’ve ever edited past, say, a typo that was pointed out) and 3) much in the same way I don’t want to sell my crafts, I don’t want to turn a fun pastime into work. I only write when I feel like it (sometimes not for weeks at a time) and I like it that way. No pressure! I think the goal of my writing is just to entertain anyone who happens upon it. [Dynastic note: Absolutely nothing wrong with that idea, not wanting to turn a “fun pastime into work.” I rather admire it, in fact.]
DQ: What element are you really good at? What do you think you need work on?
smeddley: I don’t know what I’m good at, but if pressured, I’d say natural-sounding dialogue. What I need to work on is probably everything else, with a heavy emphasis on description (to a point, I have actually written plenty of snippets where I don’t describe the main character at all, which I think can be a good thing).
DQ: What writing rule have you broken, or do you think should be broken?
smeddley: Writing has rules? Really? Next you’re going to tell me I’m supposed to write from the left side of the page to the right! (Yes, my singular talent is writing backwards in cursive - for some completely unknown reason I practiced that as a kid.)
DQ: Do you have a writing routine, or do you work by muse? Describe your workspace.
smeddley: I don’t have a routine for anything! I write when inspiration strikes, where ever that might be. And however rare those occurrences might be (sadly).
My desk at home tends to be covered in all sorts of detritus, from crochet hooks to hair ties to rubber duckies. Hey, something about a disorganized space being a sign of a creative mind? [Dynastic note: This is a woman who knows her rubber ducky, my friends. The "military officer and a gentleman" duckies she sent for my collection remain my favorites to this day. Hoooooo-rah!]
DQ: What makes your favorite character just that?
smeddley: The same thing that makes my favorite people - down-to-earth, likeable, and with a quirky sense of humor. And I like the unexpected.
DQ: What’s in your To Be Read pile right now?
smeddley: I have about 500 books in my to-read pile… I told you I had a reading problem! They range from non-fiction (statistics and disease) to romance to mystery to sci-fi and fantasy. I’ll pretty much give anything a try.
DQ: Who would enjoy your blog and website?
smeddley: People with a lot of free time on their hands who’ve run out of paint to watch dry and have tired of watching grass grow? Also, perhaps, people in need of a cache of crappy icons (though that’s the only part of my website that’s been updated, it’s seriously a work in progress!). [Dynastic note: Friends, my attention span is about as short as a blip, so that’s proof that either A) she is quite entertaining or B) I'm into self-torture. Pssst... I'm not into self-torture.]
DQ: What would people be surprised to know about you?
smeddley: I’d like to think that if people even knew me a little, very little would surprise them. My weirdness knows no bounds, and I think that becomes clear pretty quickly. But to people just meeting me (especially in person) I think just about everything seems to surprise them. I guess I look very little like the kind of person I am - I mean, people apologize for swearing in front of me! Me, the person who can look into the depths of the internet and not flinch. As if a few curse words are going to bother me. Pshaw!
*****
Someone once described smeddley as “Martha Stewart with an engineering degree.” I’d say that’s pretty accurate. And she does put the “friend” in Friend’s List, indeed. You’ll find this goddess of potholes and puddles (it took me a while to realize this was a reference to her job-ha!) hanging out on her To engineer is human… to annoy-divine blog, and in Smeddley’s World.
Th-th-that’s all, folks. Until I sneak up behind someone else.
Today I am frisking and fingerprinting one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met in my life. She’s warm, funny, witty, adventurous, ridiculously smart and oh, so creative. There are few people in this world who seem to embrace their whole selves with no apologies, no excuses, and nothing held back (because let's face it, that can be scary and make you unduly vulnerable on the .Net), but unless I miss my mark, this chick is definitely one of them. She is a casual writer (though she’s finished many NaNoWriMo and book-length works), an avid reader, book reviewer, excellent crafter, sports enthusiast, icon maven, cook, wife, and LJ moderator who goes by the name… smeddley !
DQ: How long have you been on LiveJournal and your website?
smeddley: I’ve been on LJ since 2005, though I’ve long since deleted my sad, earlier attempts at blogging. I periodically delete older entries… I’d like to say it’s because a blog is a current and fluid medium, a form of artistic expression that needs to be kept fresh, but in honesty it’s mostly because I look back and think, ‘ugh, that’s crap!’ and delete it. I can’t bear to permanently delete anything, though, so I do have all the old stuff stored on my hard drive. Someday I’ll run a ‘best of Smeddley’ week and re-post the best of the old stuff. [Dynastic note: I am looking forward to that. Believe it.]
DQ: What do you write, and when did you first discover you had a passion for it? Is there any other genre you’d like to dabble in?
smeddley: I honestly don’t remember when I started writing. I started reading at the age of four and never stopped, and I think writing eventually evolved as a natural extension of that. But I didn’t get serious (well, as serious as I ever get) about writing until I started blogging.
I don’t know how you’d describe most of my stories. They’re pretty varied, although many of them do share one trait - I tend to kill off characters. I don’t usually mean to, but it just keeps happening. I did recently fulfill my goal of having a character kill off a bad guy with a knitting needle, so maybe I’m past that phase. We’ll see. [Dynastic note: *eyeing my own collection of knitting and crocheting implements and excitedly working out the mechanics of THAT, to the Norman Bates PSYCHO theme music in my head*]
I’m very, very proud of my Choose-Your-Own Adventure NaNoWriMo novel (it’s at path-of-undeath, pimp pimp pimp) and would like to write another one some day - perhaps an erotic one, to get over my squeamishness of writing naughty bits (though it would then have to be gender-specific, unfortunately).
I never have any intention of publishing, because 1) I don’t think I’m good enough 2) I freely admit I don’t want to put forth the amount of effort it would take (I don’t think I’ve ever edited past, say, a typo that was pointed out) and 3) much in the same way I don’t want to sell my crafts, I don’t want to turn a fun pastime into work. I only write when I feel like it (sometimes not for weeks at a time) and I like it that way. No pressure! I think the goal of my writing is just to entertain anyone who happens upon it. [Dynastic note: Absolutely nothing wrong with that idea, not wanting to turn a “fun pastime into work.” I rather admire it, in fact.]
DQ: What element are you really good at? What do you think you need work on?
smeddley: I don’t know what I’m good at, but if pressured, I’d say natural-sounding dialogue. What I need to work on is probably everything else, with a heavy emphasis on description (to a point, I have actually written plenty of snippets where I don’t describe the main character at all, which I think can be a good thing).
DQ: What writing rule have you broken, or do you think should be broken?
smeddley: Writing has rules? Really? Next you’re going to tell me I’m supposed to write from the left side of the page to the right! (Yes, my singular talent is writing backwards in cursive - for some completely unknown reason I practiced that as a kid.)
DQ: Do you have a writing routine, or do you work by muse? Describe your workspace.
smeddley: I don’t have a routine for anything! I write when inspiration strikes, where ever that might be. And however rare those occurrences might be (sadly).
My desk at home tends to be covered in all sorts of detritus, from crochet hooks to hair ties to rubber duckies. Hey, something about a disorganized space being a sign of a creative mind? [Dynastic note: This is a woman who knows her rubber ducky, my friends. The "military officer and a gentleman" duckies she sent for my collection remain my favorites to this day. Hoooooo-rah!]
DQ: What makes your favorite character just that?
smeddley: The same thing that makes my favorite people - down-to-earth, likeable, and with a quirky sense of humor. And I like the unexpected.
DQ: What’s in your To Be Read pile right now?
smeddley: I have about 500 books in my to-read pile… I told you I had a reading problem! They range from non-fiction (statistics and disease) to romance to mystery to sci-fi and fantasy. I’ll pretty much give anything a try.
DQ: Who would enjoy your blog and website?
smeddley: People with a lot of free time on their hands who’ve run out of paint to watch dry and have tired of watching grass grow? Also, perhaps, people in need of a cache of crappy icons (though that’s the only part of my website that’s been updated, it’s seriously a work in progress!). [Dynastic note: Friends, my attention span is about as short as a blip, so that’s proof that either A) she is quite entertaining or B) I'm into self-torture. Pssst... I'm not into self-torture.]
DQ: What would people be surprised to know about you?
smeddley: I’d like to think that if people even knew me a little, very little would surprise them. My weirdness knows no bounds, and I think that becomes clear pretty quickly. But to people just meeting me (especially in person) I think just about everything seems to surprise them. I guess I look very little like the kind of person I am - I mean, people apologize for swearing in front of me! Me, the person who can look into the depths of the internet and not flinch. As if a few curse words are going to bother me. Pshaw!
*****
Someone once described smeddley as “Martha Stewart with an engineering degree.” I’d say that’s pretty accurate. And she does put the “friend” in Friend’s List, indeed. You’ll find this goddess of potholes and puddles (it took me a while to realize this was a reference to her job-ha!) hanging out on her To engineer is human… to annoy-divine blog, and in Smeddley’s World.
Th-th-that’s all, folks. Until I sneak up behind someone else.