Yuletide is a-comin’ in . . . .
I meant to post this sooner, and now it’s very nearly too late, since nominations close in about fifteen hours. But Yuletide nominations are open!
If you don’t know what that is, I’ll recap what I said last year:
Posts Tagged ‘yuletide’
Yuletide!!!!!
Travel and working on the book have kept me busy (and quiet) around here, but I should say something about Yuletide!
I got a lovely gift this year: “Ninth Life,” which is a Chrestomanci filling in the details of how Christopher stole his life out of Gabriel’s safe before the events of Conrad’s Fate.
On the writing side, I produced four full-length stories — my assignment, two pinch hits, and a treat — and four stocking stuffers for Yuletide Madness. If anybody wants to try and guess what they are, I can offer the following hints:
1. Two of the full-length stories were for books; one was for a video game; and one was for a play.
2. Three of the stocking stuffers were for movies; one was for a comic book.
3. I’d written for one of the full-length fandoms before, but the other three were new.
4. The same is true of the stocking stuffers.
Any guesses?
This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/605514.html. Comment here or there.
Yuletide signups are open!
One last post before I leave on my trip. (Okay, that might be a lie. I have no idea if something else will prod me into posting in the next twenty hours or so. But this is the last one I intend to make.)
Yuletide signups are open. If you already know and love Yuletide, go forth and have fun!
If you’re wondering what the heck I’m talking about, keep reading.
Dear Yuletide Writer
Trans activism, language, and Yuletide
I know, I know — that’s a very motley assortment of things to stick in one post. But I’m going out of town tomorrow, and the rest of today is liable to be very busy, so I’d rather combine them than let one fall through the cracks.
The serious and important one first: I have signed on to this statement in support of trans-inclusive feminism. Because I know several people for whom this is not a matter of theory or debate, but their daily lives, and anything I can do to make that easier for them is absolutely worth doing.
Signing a statement is a minor thing, but I hope that mentioning it here is a larger one. And yes, I am thinking about ways to reflect this in my writing.
On a lighter note, my post at SF Novelists this month is “Lingua universalis fantasiae”, on the tendency of fantasy worlds to default to a “Common Tongue.” Comments on that post should go over there on SF Novelists, por favor.
Finally, and most frivolously, Yuletide nominations are open. Yes, I know it’s only September; we’re on a leisurely schedule this year, rather than cramming everything into November. The Yuletide member community is here as usual, if you are looking for more info and discussion.
This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/597578.html. Comment here or there.
Yuletide reveals
A Happy New Year to all. I spent mine with my brother and sister-in-law, just having a quiet evening, which was about my speed this year. I hope yours was pleasant and enjoyable, too.
Since authors on the Yuletide stories have been revealed now, herewith the list of what I wrote:
Nobody guessed right this year, though one person guessed directly wrong!
notes on A Thousand Paths in a Single Step
the annual Yuletide guessing post
You have more chances than usual this year to guess what I wrote for Yuletide. If you guess right, you get, uh, bragging rights? And, I dunno — let’s say I’ll mail you a cover flat of A Natural History of Dragons if you want one, since I have a whole stack of them now, and no idea what else to do with them. 🙂
NaEverythingWriMo
My senior spring of college, I was taking three courses, one of which was my thesis tutorial. After I’d turned that beast in, I was down to two courses, one of which I was taking pass/fail. In other words: I wasn’t very busy. So — because that semester was also my last chance to write material for this award — I decided to see how much I could write in the final two months of college.
The answer ended up being “a novel and six short stories in seven weeks flat,” which is a total I don’t expect to equal again. But I spent most of November as a spinster hermit (kniedzw being in Poland for three weeks after I left), so I figured, as long as there was nobody around to look at me funny for working at all kinds of random hours and not having a social life, I might as well see how much I could write in the month of November.
As it turns out, I managed 59,144 words. (Which annoys me a little, since I thought I had hit 60K that final night. But apparently I did some math wrong in there.)
It isn’t NaNoWriMo. I will almost certainly never do NaNoWriMo; I don’t need the event to make myself write a novel (duh), and I know the pace would result in me writing a bad novel if I tried. Only 30,492 words of that is book, i.e. my standard working pace. The rest, the other 28,652, is a combination of other things: substantial blog posts (like the nearly 4K I wrote for my first ToM entry), promo stuff for A Natural History of Dragons, Yuletide material, progress on the short story that’s trying to kill me, the beginnings of a new Driftwood story, etc.
Even changing up my focus like that, 59K was a lot to churn out in thirty days flat. I’m not a slow writer, but I’m also not one of those people who can do 4K days for an extended period of time. It was, however, good to work on gear-shifting between projects — that’s something I’m not great at, and could benefit from improving. My short story production has fallen off substantially these last couple of years, because it’s hard for me to get my head out of whatever the current novel space is and find some kind of flow on a totally different setting and characters. There are more reasons for that than just gear-shifting, of course; it also has a lot to do with the increased investment my short story ideas are requiring, research and other things. But still and all: gear-shifting is a good thing to work on.
So that was my November. I still have two thirds of this book to go, so it’s going to stay busy around here for a while. But all in all, a nicely productive month.
five things make a jet-lagged post
1) I am so very, very glad that I flew from Krakow to Frankfurt to SFO yesterday, rather than connecting anywhere in the U.S. (Not even just the East Coast: the problems there have screwed up routing and plane supply all over the place.) We did have to divert half an hour further north to avoid the winds, but that’s minor compared to what could have happened with a different route.
2) My ideal would be to not leave the house today. Unfortunately, I’m not sure I have enough food on hand to make that work.
3) This rendition of the X-Men, as characters in Edo-period Japan, is pretty awesome. And if I didn’t link to it before, so is the artist’s previous take on the Avengers in the Sengoku period.
4) rachelmanija has posted notes/transcript from her panel on gender roles in The Hunger Games, so if you want to see what I sound like after a full weekend of conning and my brain is leaking out my ears, go read. On the whole, I think it was a really great panel, despite exhaustion on my part. (Warning: spoilers for the whole series, including Mockingjay.)
5) Due to a rollout of AO3 code, Yuletide signups have been extended to 9 p.m. Eastern time tomorrow. Get in while the getting’s good!
