stuff, nonsense, fests, nifties
Today is a not so good day; I woke up at 3 am and at 6 decided it might as well be morning. But I have pretty cards on my desk to cheer me up, thanks to accioslash and 
sofiaviolet!
Like many of you, I am bouncing up and down nervously waiting for yuletide uploading to begin. My story is ready! It's ready! I wanna post! I want YULETIDE! Meanwhile, I am making the (I hope!) final edits to my festivids vid, which I am OMG excited about as well.
Okay, I really don't want to embarrass my Seekrit Vid Beta, but - as those of you who have so kindly allowed me to beta-read your fic know, I tend to be, shall we say, not shy about giving my opinions. And I usually have a lot of opinions. And sometimes I feel kind of bad about sending back a story that is twice as many pages long due to my annotations in blue text between every paragraph, and I worry, "is she going to look at my comments, cry, and hate me, and swear to never write again?"
Well, I looked at her comments on my vid, and I was tempted to cry, and hate her, and swear to never vid again - except of course she was absolutely right, and she pointed out all the places I knew had problems and told me what the problems were (which is the sort of thing a beta is invaluable for in writing as well, because it's often really difficult for the writer to pinpoint what exactly is wrong with stories that have structure or pacing problems) and made suggestions on how to fix them (which again, I always feel guilty about putting words in the writer's mouth, so to speak, but man, so useful!) and I took a deep breath and opened the file, and it turned out to be not nearly as horrible to revise as I had first thought. Under the painful beginner mistakes, there were the bones of something good, which she pointed out as well. I am learning so much about vidding - just as, I hope, beginning writers learn a lot about writing from the beta process. (Heck, I still learn things about writing from the beta process, and I'm well past the beginner stage.) The moral of the story is: YAY for beta readers and beta viewers!
Speaking of small-fandom holiday fests, I am really enjoying yuletart. Even though I don't know many (most!) of the fandoms, I have been looking at most of the posts because 1) they're being dribbled out two at a time, so no overload, and 2) how long does it take to look at an image (or several), anyway? Some of the non-traditional art - dolls, knitted goods, sculpture - is astonishingly creative, and many of the paintings and drawings are just stunning even though I have no idea who the people in them are.
Other entertainment: Catguyver - starts a little slow, but then there are crazy cat feats of derring-do - via beck_liz, and an octopus on the half-shell, via, oh, EVERYBODY on my flist and FB.
ETA, oh duh, this was the main reason for this post: I'll be running the C6DVD card exchange again this year. Just a heads-up for those of you who are into one or two Canadian fandoms but might not be following the C6D communities on LJ, so you can start thinking about your requests and offers!
Good morning! Good morning! How are you?
Also posted on Dreamwidth where there are
comments.
sofiaviolet!
Like many of you, I am bouncing up and down nervously waiting for yuletide uploading to begin. My story is ready! It's ready! I wanna post! I want YULETIDE! Meanwhile, I am making the (I hope!) final edits to my festivids vid, which I am OMG excited about as well.
Okay, I really don't want to embarrass my Seekrit Vid Beta, but - as those of you who have so kindly allowed me to beta-read your fic know, I tend to be, shall we say, not shy about giving my opinions. And I usually have a lot of opinions. And sometimes I feel kind of bad about sending back a story that is twice as many pages long due to my annotations in blue text between every paragraph, and I worry, "is she going to look at my comments, cry, and hate me, and swear to never write again?"
Well, I looked at her comments on my vid, and I was tempted to cry, and hate her, and swear to never vid again - except of course she was absolutely right, and she pointed out all the places I knew had problems and told me what the problems were (which is the sort of thing a beta is invaluable for in writing as well, because it's often really difficult for the writer to pinpoint what exactly is wrong with stories that have structure or pacing problems) and made suggestions on how to fix them (which again, I always feel guilty about putting words in the writer's mouth, so to speak, but man, so useful!) and I took a deep breath and opened the file, and it turned out to be not nearly as horrible to revise as I had first thought. Under the painful beginner mistakes, there were the bones of something good, which she pointed out as well. I am learning so much about vidding - just as, I hope, beginning writers learn a lot about writing from the beta process. (Heck, I still learn things about writing from the beta process, and I'm well past the beginner stage.) The moral of the story is: YAY for beta readers and beta viewers!
Speaking of small-fandom holiday fests, I am really enjoying yuletart. Even though I don't know many (most!) of the fandoms, I have been looking at most of the posts because 1) they're being dribbled out two at a time, so no overload, and 2) how long does it take to look at an image (or several), anyway? Some of the non-traditional art - dolls, knitted goods, sculpture - is astonishingly creative, and many of the paintings and drawings are just stunning even though I have no idea who the people in them are.
Other entertainment: Catguyver - starts a little slow, but then there are crazy cat feats of derring-do - via beck_liz, and an octopus on the half-shell, via, oh, EVERYBODY on my flist and FB.
ETA, oh duh, this was the main reason for this post: I'll be running the C6DVD card exchange again this year. Just a heads-up for those of you who are into one or two Canadian fandoms but might not be following the C6D communities on LJ, so you can start thinking about your requests and offers!
Good morning! Good morning! How are you?
Also posted on Dreamwidth where there are
comments.