Girl Gone Wylde

Lost and found

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 05:34:51 GMT

I've been LOST for a while. Not, alas, in the happy wilderness of productive fiction writing, but in a bogland of for-hire freelance work and endless hours (too many, really) of relative wheel-spinning regarding my fiction. Stuck at the 90% complete point in my Opus, last 1/3 of book jettisoned wholesale and rewritten more than once. I have been not navel-gazing but navel-scowling, hence not posting here. I feel like I've been staring at one of those pointilist pictures that looks like nothing but a sea of dots until your vision focuses on it in a certain way. Then the picture jumps out clearly from the dots, even becomes 3-dimensional if you hold your gaze just so.

I've been waiting for my work to come into focus in this manner, but instead of that I have simply been baffled by the sea of dots.

Last year I started to re-work my way through The Artist's Way, because in the past I found it a superior fix for unblocking writing blockages. I let myself get derailed with that: excuse being, I became caught up in book-deadline related production writing, no time for self-work project. What was I thinking. Argh. Cue belated gnashing of teeth, tearing of hair.

I still need unblocking, worse now than before. Just had a major session of energy work with a body/energy worker on Monday. There is no way that so much that is jammed tight could be dissolved in one session, but it did become evident to me that I have been keeping various life traumas and personal losses over the last five years or so tightly stuffed away so they wouldn't interfere with my need to function on a day to day basis. Ok. Good enough for 9-5 brainless work, but now I'm in a space where that lock-down is also keeping some major internal energies locked away as well.

I can't even consistently maintain communications with friends, much less let words flow as they need to for productive writing (on book, for clients, for blogs: whatever). Throat chakra enters this picture, which I find ironic for a highly communicative writer and public speaker, but that is one of the elements of my boggle.

ANYway, as PeeWee used to say: what I have FOUND, at last, is a CLUE about my sticking point/s, and more importantly, how to unstick. So while I still attend to pestiferous client writing, and continue to have stare-down contests with my Portion of Novel That Needs Re-plotting, I can at least begin the process that should help me find my real Writer's Voice again. I guess I should commit to re-working The Artist's Way in full, but right this minute all I can bear to contemplate is a renewed commitment to daily morning pages.

Baby steps, baby steps. (But they will hopefully lead to bigger things.)

I hate it when this happens. At least I know there's a remedy. I think.

Republican Sex Scandals

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 01:47:22 GMT

Bad Habits

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:10:19 GMT

Mini-Me

Tue, 19 May 2009 17:43:25 GMT

My mouse Minnie had a little white mouse in her litter that looked JUST like her, only bitty. They'd do everything together: eat at the same time, side by side, go same places in cage together, try to both fit on wheel at once. So of course I had to call the little one Mini-Me. <g>

Then I recently had the (now weaned and nearly mature) young mice sexed by the vet, and it turns out Mini-Me is a boy. :/ So he has been ported to a neighboring cage along with his father Max. Now I have a bachelor mouse pad next to the girls' digs. I think Minnie and Mini-Me miss each other, but they're adapting and they each have company, at least.

Here's Mini-Me eating out of his food dish, which process entails him standing in the middle of it.

I'm dying of Kw00tons over here. ::grin::

And here's the mouse buffet I made, one for each cage.

This is a bit of canned cat food (for a dietary snack/change of pace), arrayed like mouse-pate on two little chopstick rests. Served in this form so they are less inclined to pile litter in the food bowl if they don't like it, which seems to be how they signal "yech! not to my taste!". Which you can see in photo #1: to the left of the food dish is a water dish with carrot bits tossed in, by which I learned they don't like carrots either. Picky little critters.

I am quite enjoying my Meeple. (Mouse People).

The probably fatally exploring tribble. Er, mouse-baby.

Sat, 09 May 2009 05:54:21 GMT

One of my tribbles, the most curious exploring mouse-baby who I am becoming fond of, has taken a mis-step today that is almost certain to be fatal. She managed to squeeze out of the bars of the cage (now taped around, but barn door/cows) and is now lost somewhere in my room.

I didn't notice this. What I DID notice was two cats growling at something between them on the floor a couple hours ago.

Eeek. Errant mouse-baby. Who of course fled me as soon as I made the cats back off. Between a box and books, and now vanished.

I've set out a mouse-lure, some bedding with her mother's scent on it and milksop bread (weaning food), in a carry-box. Maybe she'll sniff it out and check it sometime, and with any luck I can catch her in there. Otherwise...

The riskiness of adventuresomeness. Sigh. I hope it's not a fatal mistake, but with 3 cats in the house and a spacious room (lots of room for bitty mouse to get lost in), I'm not optimistic at this point.

Good energy to you, intrepid mouse-baby. :/

Eeek! A baby mouse !!!!

Tue, 05 May 2009 06:09:29 GMT

Oh no, I think.
Minnie my rescue* mouse was apparently preggers. Tonight I spied a single white furred miniature Minnie scuttling around outside the mouse-house she nests in.

Oh no.

There should be more. But I didn't see any when I last cleaned the cage. Did I throw baby mice out in my sweep and toss of litter?

???

I don't think so. But there's not usually just 1. Were they burrowed into the nesting material I *didn't* take out of her house when I cleaned?

Sheesh.
I need to clearn the cage tomorrow. Am not sure what I'm going to find. No wonder she has exiled her companion mouse Maxi to the upstairs condo-bubble. No wonder she was squeaking like crazy all night long a while back (giving birth, wanna bet?)

My practical sister said, "we could feed 'em to the snake. He's due for a feeding."

Oh no!
But...I didn't plan on having a gazilion pet mice, either. or figuring out which babies are boys and getting them out of there before nature multiplies them on me again. Maybe they will survive in the wild if I let them go outside?

I feel like I have tribbles.
Sigh.

~~~
* kept typing "recuse" mouse.
How Freudian. My mouse who recuses herself...

too much rockin? fuck 'em

Mon, 04 May 2009 07:04:28 GMT

ok so my existential angst du moment.

I live like a fucking church mouse. little personal income while I am pursuing my art. Living from the largesse of supportive relatives. feh.

alreeady that's a prob for me, who has been independent oh so many years, but needs that support now, materialistiacly speaking.

so tonight one of the few nights I am in The Garret playing music by myself...someone comes and says, at odd o'clock, can I please tone it down.

ok.

a) - didn't realize it was hear-able where they are sleeping. gah. would never have wanted to disturb.

b) - I have spent the last 3 yrs + in *headphones* so as not to disturb peeps around me. You know what? I'm kinda getting tired of fucking headphones. (tonite was a rare excursion via *speakers*. Silly me.)

c) - I want to live where *I* dictate my local ambiance, and don't need to be slavishly bow-ish to the demands of Others. But right now I am in living circumstances where I AM perforce slavishy bowish to the demands of others. Hear me melting down right about now about that...

d) I don't have an immediate OUT, because that is dependent on my writing, and that is not going very quickly. GAH

FUCKING A.

If there is ANYthing that will push my BUTTONS it is exactly this kind of situation. Suddenly I am cognizant that this so is not MY space, my place, my energy around me.
Headphones/ Fucking A yeah let's just superglue them to my skull because at this rate I can never rock out (where others can hear it) at 1 am which suites my creative milieu. MY needs are chopped liver, yes yes admittedly they may be disturbing to others'sleep cycles but the fundamental issue is, I am not in a situation where I can NEGOTIATE what "me-space" looks like.

Fucking A. Or did I say that already.

Snarly, over here. beyond perturbed about living space boundaries.

This is the kind of thing that makes me leap in a car and move 2,3 states away. Believe me, I've done it before. Unfortunately, at the moment, don't have a car. If I did, my nose-out-of-jointedness would probably propel me down the road in the next 5 minutes.

sigh.

OK.
end lament for now.
I dont know how to manifest lots of liveable cash cushion WHILE I create art (book), or I'd be outta here in a hot second to pursue the creating away from....People.

Period.

AAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGHHHH.

:(

and this, even while I'm grateful for the hosted space I have. Double ARGH.

:( :(

tornado evac, wasn't that fun

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 22:28:04 GMT

This afternoon I had my first "grab the pets and head to the basement" exercise as a tornado passed within just a few miles of my home.
Much devastation and some deaths in its wake 12 miles away, but it didn't veer any closer to us.
Much fun (ha) trying to collect squirrelly mice on short notice (to get them into carry-cage). . Their spacious permanent cage has too many hidey spaces. Sigh.

At least I had my sister along for the ride on this one.

Give me earthquake country any day, and just the need to stand in a door frame or hunker under a desk if/when things start shaking. Which, I might point out, is a RARE event that happens in predictable locations, not a COMMON seasonal weirdness that can strike anywhere the wind blows.

Gah.

little update

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 16:25:24 GMT

after being sideswiped by client writing crunch I am nearly done with that silliness and am getting back to the Book.
Still written into a corner about the ending, though. Much tearing of hair and navel gazing over here, need to sort out plot issues. I *have* an ending, but I don't like it, so it doesn't count. ARGH. Can't have it.

Must find my Genius around here somewhere....

Minnie the Rescue Mouse

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 00:23:46 GMT

Sister has pet snake that gets fed live mice once every other month or so.
Got a mouse tossed in a couple days ago which it chased around in a sluggardly manner, but eventually disdained (not hungry yet?), leaving a rather distressed mouse cowering in the corner of the snake tank.

I am now the proud owner of a mouse with a new lease on life.

:)

sad but true

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 23:27:03 GMT

http://xkcd.com/386/

interesting choice of words

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 22:36:23 GMT

From an article about Clinton's visit to Japan, her first call as SecState:

>>Last week, she had warned North Korea against any "provocative action and unhelpful rhetoric" amid signs the Stalinist nation was preparing to test fire a missile capable of reaching the western United States.<<

(full article here: http://news.aol.com/article/clinton-warns-north-korea-during-tokyo/344690?cid=12)

Excuse me? "Stalinist nation"??

We rarely called communist or socialist countries that even at the height of the Cold War.
What an odd construction.
Semiotics at work. Not as overly condemning (to American readers) as saying "communist", but still clearly labeling the same.

I must pay closer attention to if/how our rhetoric regarding North Korea is shifting in the media.
Very interesting.

word count, yes. book, no.

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 18:28:18 GMT

targeted word count reached but the story, it turns out, *is longer than that* and I'm still at it.
all train wrecks ocurring on schedule, should reach that elusive climax imminently nonetheless!
still looking for that XOR, I guess...

1 or 2 days left? is it possible?

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 09:13:02 GMT

my word count calculator in yWriter (which I use for my books and you should too! google it) - says I have 5800 words to go on the Opus, that's 1 day's work at present rate. Not sure that's quite true - the story arc may run on longer, but it's close to the mark. I have 1 evil client gig that will eat 5 hours of my time tomorrow. ARGH. So say this is maybe 2 days, then done. OMG is that even possible?

Can I hold my breath for two days and find out?

Holding breath now.....

Asagohan - Beethoven's 5th send-up

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 06:00:40 GMT

This is a hoot!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXgJBzUv_qU

If you don't speak Japanese you might want to read the lyrics first, here:
http://www.lyrics.s7r.pl/movie.php?id=NryjxsCcXP0

I'm having a scene in a whorehouse...

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 21:19:58 GMT

- which is not unlike pitchin' a fit in one.
Mired.

Do I:

- have a knock-down/drag-out with the security dude we hate?
- confront the management and make demands about getting my gf outta there?
or
- just take the girl down the road to my joint and let my boss there deal with the fallout?

hm.....

actually given the character that I am in this scene there's probaby only 1 right choice but it entails more writing than I want to do right now.

grrrr....

off to see who hits what.

Amazing megapixel pic of the inauguration

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 11:36:36 GMT

Astounding work by photographer David Bergman.

Inauguration

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:46:53 GMT

I am surprisingly moved by the inauguration I just watched.
I have been so angry for the last many years of having my country hijacked and driven into a ditch by those, those..."people" in office.

I feel like I just got my country back.
Wow.

21st century artist's business model

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 01:57:31 GMT

in response to my last post about social marketing, babytoaster asked such a great question, and I gave such a lengthy answer, I think it actually deserves its own post. so here it is.

**

I think the most empowering way to approach this is, for starters, to forget about classic definitions of being published. Those definitions de facto mean that you look to the established system to select your work out of the mass of works there, and elevate it to a place of public visibility, after which people will buy it (or be exposed to it). By this definition anything "else" is "less."

However, this is the model that is undergoing such radical shifts right now that entire media empires - from the Wall Street Journal to Random House to music industry companies - are reorganizing or collapsing all across the landscape because the locus of purchasing and media consumption has so radically shifted among the consumers.

That's us, who inhabit web-land and are interconnected in this manner.

So: ask yourself instead, "how can I get my work out to a large enough number of people that it finds its proper audience?" In the new model, once that happens your audience will connect around you and your work, and *they* will "select it" once you have made it public. (This doesn't mean you can't also approach traditional channels to get exposure; it just means you're focusing on this new model and not just waiting for the traditional machine to "pick you" - buy your book, cut your album, franchise your comic, whatever.)

When your work gains some traction, then you have choices: monetize it, if you want green; pitch your works to established publishers because now you can demonstrate real buyers and demand for what you offer. Or just keep doing what you're doing, as an independent artist.

These are just details. What matters strategically is that you think in terms of a radically different business model.

Here is a great series of posts to read, not specifically about social publishing but about this kind of new business model for creative work:

http://dreamcafe.com/words/category/artist-business-models/page/2/

Start at bottom of page, read the blog posts in order.

This is a 21st century artist's business model series of posts taken from a paper written by some new thinkers including Stephen Brust (astoundingly excellent sf writer) and his cohorts.

re licensing options, become familiar with the Creative Commons licenses (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/). That protects you as much or as little as you care to be protected, intellectual-property wise, and gives you the option to make your copyrights more permissive so that consumers can engage more personally and also creatively with what you offer.

What to do with my Trilogy!!!!

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 14:34:45 GMT

AH HA.
I've had a huge epiphany.

I have a trilogy in the works somewhere, but my publisher didn't like the sales of book #1. Although they've contracted for #2, they've asked me to write something in a different genre instead. I'm going to do that because I have a more pressing story I want to use that publication slot for, besides the fact that they don't care if they leave 2/3 of my particular fantasy saga untold.

Fans have asked, "where's the rest of the trilogy?" I could give them no joy - until just now.

I'm going to write it and distribute it *for free*.

Now, why would I do that and not just try to move it to another publishing house? Besides some tension between myself and agent about this work (agent also not enthused about it, not because of quality issues but sales figures). Here's the why. It is a conversation I come to belatedly myself, but I am perfectly in synch with this line of thinking about how our publishing industry is changing under our very feet:

Social Publishing.

This brilliant essay by Paul Hartzog sums it up: the old model was, 'select then publish'. The new model is, 'publish, then select.' He raises the interesting point that the top three Nebula award winners in 2007 were books all available in free ebook editions, before they appeared in print at all. And as we've been seeing more and more of in this genre, free books drive purchases of paper equivalents of same, and/or other works by that particular author.

So: I'll finish my trilogy and release it for free. Maybe it will just move a few copies. Maybe it will be like Accelerando with over half a million downloads. (!). Who knows. And it doesn't matter: it lets me get those books out of my system, brings closure to the story cycle, lets fans have a freebie that will fuel demand for my work across the board. I may even release them under a creative commons license so they can be picked up and easily reused/manipulated by others: again, that feeds interest in original work/author. Call it another one of my social marketing experiments. I'm already in the middle of 1 (regarding website/blog stuff), have 2 more planned for later this year; let this next be the book I write because I don't have to, in that morning hour before I do anything else. Wow.

I think I'm on to something.

YouTube muting video with unauthorized copyrighted music

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 16:22:10 GMT

This is going to flat-out squash vast swaths of YouTube content creators:

YouTube Now Mutes Videos With Unauthorized Copyrighted Music

I think I hear the screams of rage in the ether already.

The OMG-WTF Spectrum

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 20:33:42 GMT

Too true!

Amazing artwork

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 08:21:49 GMT

Stumbled across this guy, Tony Maxymillian in Portland OR: he does pencil sketching, but not like most people do. It's almost photo-realistic, with amazing textures of fur and qualities of light. What a talent! Check out his site here.

aaahhhh, new jeans!

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 15:57:34 GMT

Just got a belated xmas present that waited for the white sales after 12/31. Namely, new jeans.

ahhhh.

can one luxuriate in jeans? I am. I only have 2 pair and they were both falling apart. I feel decadently garbed in new clothes as I sit down for a day of website geeking and writing.

life is good. :)

Happy New Year, everyone!

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 04:25:25 GMT

I find myself kind of frazzled at the end of 2008. Here's to fresh beginnings for us all.
Huzzah!