74 poems is good value for $12
Mar. 16th, 2005 09:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kleenexwomanI'm typing this in the library, having just come back from a poetry reading in the Baber Room. The poet in question was Matthea Harvey, author of "Pity The Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form". She honored the poetry fans at CMU with a selection of poems from her new book, "Sad Little Breathing Machine," as well as a couple of unpublished poems. I liked the unpublished poems best; topics included a Robot Boy who played Whack-A-Mole at a carnival, teenagers who cut animals up and then sewed them back together, and a field of flowers that were made out of ham. Mark Yakich had forgotten to arrange for tea and cookies, so we stood around afterwards and had imaginary tea and cookies and autographed things for people.
I always feel so inspired after a poetry reading. I'm going to go home and write some art. I just spent all of my money on a couple of her books. I have quarters for laundry left. Luckily there are only six weeks left, so I suppose I can budget just enough quarters for laundry, and then spend the rest on chai tea.
There will be another poetry reading soon, and this time I shall be the one on the podium. I got into the Central Review with "Every Friday." Not really surprised, since I did bring it in to the Poetry Collective and let everyone go over it with a fine-tooth red pen comb. It seems to be a major factor in the process of editorial approval at Central. A shortcut, perhaps.
I'm going to try more "From the Gods." I did finally get another original story idea. It is about time travel because it's a spin-off of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ghostgecko's Mary Sue contest. Funny, that. I've spent the last two years of my life in fandom trying to stop myself from writing Mary Sues (I used to write these really terrible Harry Potter Mary Sues, all sorts of shit about Voldemort's long-lost daughter and sassy American girl comes to Hogwarts. I thought it was so original at the time. Bleah, bleah, bleah, embarassing), and now that I want to write one, my ideas keep spinning off into original ideas.
So I'm writing in another fandom. I have time to, now that all my BttF stories are on my laptop, which is currently in the process of getting a new keyboard.
It's easier for me to jump fandoms when I'm concentrating on one. When I was in 10th and 11th grade, I was still writing Smallville fic and Animorphs fic and Harry Potter fic all at the same time. If I concentrated on just one for a while, or ignored one, I could use the excuse that I was just taking a break. No big deal, I was still an active writer. It was distracting, and I never got anything done unless it was a one-shot.
Now, jumping a fandom is quite a big deal for me. The last one I concentrated in was the Askewniverse. I produced two O.K. stories and one story that I'm still fairly proud of, and then...didn't write anything else. I simply ran out of things to say about Jay and Silent Bob and their relationship. There are only so many times you can write on a variation of the same theme, after all.
I still like the fandom, and I still read the list. It is a fun fandom, close-knit, supportive, and apparently free from the flamewars and drama that plague larger (or in some cases, not larger) fandoms. And Jay and Silent Bob is easy. It's not that much of a challenge to get them together; their relationship is practically canon, thanks to the in-jokey nature of Kevin Smith's mind.
(As a sidenote, the nature of canon in the Askewniverse is unique and disputed. Many fans say that "Dogma" and anything that comes after it is basically fanfic that Smith himself wrote, and indeed, "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" does seem like a fanfic written by two fourteen-year-old boys with sugar highs and a huge budget. The "Clerks" cartoon series is a stellar example of this; none of the cartoons have anything to do with any of the movies, and certainly won't be used as any kind of canon in the upcoming "Passion of the Clerks" movie. Which brings up another question: What do you do with fanfic created by the producer of the canon?)
In any case, my Mary Sue will be Re-Animator. I'm not jumping fandoms here, just branching out; I don't expect to write any more Re-A fics (well, maybe the Willard crossover if I can ever get the dialogue right), and this is for a special challenge.
I've decided on a premise, plot, character, and format (lab notes). What I don't have is two things:
A) A good way to get either Herbert or Dan to come into contact with a sociologist working on an experiment that would probably be highly controversial if they told anyone about it.
B) A good original sociological experiment that involves college students, isn't a retread of the Zimbardo prison experiment or the Millgram shock experiment, and either has some kind of thematic connection to re-animation and zombies or would involve the possibility of the students getting killed.
I suppose (A) will come to me as soon as I figure out (B).
I always feel so inspired after a poetry reading. I'm going to go home and write some art. I just spent all of my money on a couple of her books. I have quarters for laundry left. Luckily there are only six weeks left, so I suppose I can budget just enough quarters for laundry, and then spend the rest on chai tea.
There will be another poetry reading soon, and this time I shall be the one on the podium. I got into the Central Review with "Every Friday." Not really surprised, since I did bring it in to the Poetry Collective and let everyone go over it with a fine-tooth red pen comb. It seems to be a major factor in the process of editorial approval at Central. A shortcut, perhaps.
I'm going to try more "From the Gods." I did finally get another original story idea. It is about time travel because it's a spin-off of
ghostgecko's Mary Sue contest. Funny, that. I've spent the last two years of my life in fandom trying to stop myself from writing Mary Sues (I used to write these really terrible Harry Potter Mary Sues, all sorts of shit about Voldemort's long-lost daughter and sassy American girl comes to Hogwarts. I thought it was so original at the time. Bleah, bleah, bleah, embarassing), and now that I want to write one, my ideas keep spinning off into original ideas. So I'm writing in another fandom. I have time to, now that all my BttF stories are on my laptop, which is currently in the process of getting a new keyboard.
It's easier for me to jump fandoms when I'm concentrating on one. When I was in 10th and 11th grade, I was still writing Smallville fic and Animorphs fic and Harry Potter fic all at the same time. If I concentrated on just one for a while, or ignored one, I could use the excuse that I was just taking a break. No big deal, I was still an active writer. It was distracting, and I never got anything done unless it was a one-shot.
Now, jumping a fandom is quite a big deal for me. The last one I concentrated in was the Askewniverse. I produced two O.K. stories and one story that I'm still fairly proud of, and then...didn't write anything else. I simply ran out of things to say about Jay and Silent Bob and their relationship. There are only so many times you can write on a variation of the same theme, after all.
I still like the fandom, and I still read the list. It is a fun fandom, close-knit, supportive, and apparently free from the flamewars and drama that plague larger (or in some cases, not larger) fandoms. And Jay and Silent Bob is easy. It's not that much of a challenge to get them together; their relationship is practically canon, thanks to the in-jokey nature of Kevin Smith's mind.
(As a sidenote, the nature of canon in the Askewniverse is unique and disputed. Many fans say that "Dogma" and anything that comes after it is basically fanfic that Smith himself wrote, and indeed, "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" does seem like a fanfic written by two fourteen-year-old boys with sugar highs and a huge budget. The "Clerks" cartoon series is a stellar example of this; none of the cartoons have anything to do with any of the movies, and certainly won't be used as any kind of canon in the upcoming "Passion of the Clerks" movie. Which brings up another question: What do you do with fanfic created by the producer of the canon?)
In any case, my Mary Sue will be Re-Animator. I'm not jumping fandoms here, just branching out; I don't expect to write any more Re-A fics (well, maybe the Willard crossover if I can ever get the dialogue right), and this is for a special challenge.
I've decided on a premise, plot, character, and format (lab notes). What I don't have is two things:
A) A good way to get either Herbert or Dan to come into contact with a sociologist working on an experiment that would probably be highly controversial if they told anyone about it.
B) A good original sociological experiment that involves college students, isn't a retread of the Zimbardo prison experiment or the Millgram shock experiment, and either has some kind of thematic connection to re-animation and zombies or would involve the possibility of the students getting killed.
I suppose (A) will come to me as soon as I figure out (B).
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-17 05:39 am (UTC)Another example of someone making additions to their own fandom that seem fanficish is Orson Scott 'The Fuckhead But Good Author Mostly' Card and his Shadow series books: Ender's Shadow that runs parallel to Ender's Game, and then Shadow of the Hegemon and Shadow Puppets and that new abortion he's got coming out soon. Though in my opinion Ender's Shadow was excellent and the rest just suck asscock in hell forever.
But what I also love is that OSC has boldly condemned fanfic, particularly of his work, and I read the BEST underage NC-17 Ender's Game fic... I hope he finds it and freaks...
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-17 05:45 pm (UTC)D'you read Heinlein by any chance? It just occured to me that at least three of the books he wrote juuuuust before he died were basically fanfiction of the worst kind, and not even in his own universe...
Underage Ender's Game fic? Where?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-17 04:40 pm (UTC)I shall think on the experiments. I just read "Opening Skinner's Box" and highly recommend it despite the florid prose and authorial navel-gazing, just because the nature of the experiments is so damn interesting.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-17 05:47 pm (UTC):checks library catalog:
Ah-ha! They have a copy. I still haven't been able to find one of "Fire in the Brain," though. Damn public libraries.