Happy Holidays!
Minute Over the 25th
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Yearly Archives: 2007
Wil Wheaton Saves My Christmas
Wil Wheaton, apparently you were my only hope, and you have saved me from holiday music hell!
Over at WWdN: In Exile, Wil talks about Christmas with his family–glad you got the days off, Wil!–but also shares his holiday music playlist. It doesn’t look full of muzak crapola that often makes me ill whenever I shop or turn on the radio over the holidays–for instance, instead of the traditional Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer motif, he lists Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer Mambo instead.
I am hip to find all these on Amazon MP3 Downloads or iTunes (with a distinct preference for the former) and put them on one of my USB keys, then take it downstairs to play on my Early 21st Century DVD player, which can play AVIs, WMAs, MOVs, and any other format you can throw at it, and has a USB port.
Once again, thank you Wil!
My Artificial Pre-Lit Fiber Optic Bad-Ass Tree of $40
Huzzah, pictures! Unfortunately, grainy because of the low light conditions, but you can get an idea of what it looks like:
With both the normal lights and fiber optic lighting on.
I love my tree! It rocks!
The bird is the only distinguished ornament. The rest are 16 not very exciting ball-type ornaments with simple designs–plastic, not glass, so they’re “shatter-proof” as the packaging proclaims… ookay–and 20 candy canes of all flavors.
The best thing I love about my tree is the fiber optic lighting. With it around you don’t need garlands or tinsel, both of which are extremely annoying to handle (and clean up, in the case of the latter).
Anyways, there is my tree. Admire it. I know I do.
I Got an Early 21st Century Tree
Artificial tree, six feet tall, thinnish but not too thin.
And pre-lit, with the usual colored lights from the late 20th century.
And… a secondary lighting system of fiber optic lighting, with five different color-change settings.
$40. (Markdown of 50% as it’s the 23rd. Guy at the counter offered me a bigger discount if I took the one on display, but I said nuh. Would like the box.)
Rock on!
Unfortunately my camera battery is completely dead, so while it’s recharging, the tree might have gotten decorated (slightly) in the time being.
But there shall be pictures [tomorrow]!
Christmas Meme Flu 2007
Kate tagged me (well, all of AbsoluteWrite anyways) with this Christmas meme, so here I am, fulfilling it.
What ho, what ho….
The rules are thusly:
1) Link to the person that tagged you, and post the rules on your blog.
2) Share Christmas facts about yourself.
3) Tag 7 random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs.
4) Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
So here we go.
Storytellersunplugged » The Dark Night Of The Soul
If you’re a writer, go read this.
Other people say it made them cry; I was highly skeptical and read it.
It made me cry. And it made my day.
Go.
Writing: Brainstorming Characters via the Tarot
We writers go through great lengths to get ideas, because we know how hard it can be. Sometimes these can be physical, like cards. Here, I’m thinking tarot cards. This is the method I used over November when I had to come up with characters with differentiated personalities, quick.
If you’re uber-superstitious about the tarot, skip this article. For the rest of you, we’re going to talk about using a small part of the Tarot for character creation. This is a simple exercise, one I used in November for brainstorming characters.
My deck of choice for the purposes of generating fiction is the Quest Tarot.
The Tarot is split up into the following useful sections:
- Trumps: life-changing events, meetings, and influences, the “set pieces” of life;
- Minors: day-to-day events, meetings, and influences; and
- Court Cards: characteristics of people.
We’ll be using the court cards.
Remove the court cards, and look at them while reading their descriptions in the book–it helps to have picked a Tarot deck that comes with a nice hefty book explaining each card in detail, which the Quest Tarot does. Then assign a card to each character.
Here are some extra guides:
The personality of each court card is partly based on its rank and suit.
Each rank (King, Queen, Princess, Page, or whatever is available in your deck) carries different implications of age and force of personality. Note that gender does not necessarily have to match between character and card, nor do physical characteristics have to match.
Each suit (Swords, Cups, Pentacles, Wands, or whatever is available in your deck) is like a family, with similar characteristics carrying through its court cards. Families of characters, of course, can still spread across multiple suits.
Note that in many decks, cards have two readings: an upright, usually positive reading, and a reversed, somewhat opposite reading. You can pick and choose, using both positive and negative characteristics as a basis for a well-rounded character.
After you’ve picked out the card, then do some free-writing about your character, stream-of-consciousness brainstorming, turning off your inner editor completely.
That should help with the character ideas.
Fazing Friday!
The Commune: Thank you for the little things
Lori reminds us to not look over the little things people do for us:
For a long time, I intellectually knew that small things mattered. Things that I thought little of doing, because they were no time or effort, mattered more to others than the things I spent a great deal of time and effort doing. It was the little things that people remembered and treasured.
My Midnight Muse: A Festivus Miracle
Chapters 6 and 7 from When the Stars Walk Backwards!
It wasn’t a nightmare anymore. He was wide awake, eyes open, heart racing. The shadows screaming in the night. The death. Everyone dying. It was real, and it was happening again.“You knew!” Bryce spat the words at the small computer on his desk. “You knew exactly what was going to happen, all this time!”
Upon Reflection: Literary Doodling, Part 4
Ed, brave man, shares with us a piece of high school writing: a heartfelt love story, “The Odd Couple”.
Deep in the heart of an unknown swamp in the darkest Africa lay the bones of a French airplane pilot, killed when his single-engine plane crashed. His bone had lain among the weeds for over ten years. Mud had covered them and moss and weeds grew in the mud. Then one day. The bones quivered and rose.
Thingymablog: Twas Teh Nite B4 Catmus
Mary translates to LOLcat another time-honored classic!
Oh hai. Wuz nite B4 Catmus and all thru haus
No one wuz busy, not even bad maus.
Ceiling cat wuz hiding up high sum where
Hoping Santy Paws soon be dereAll gud kittehs were asleep in dere beds
Tasty and nootrishus thoughts dances in dere heads
Even teh lolrus and kitten who haz a hat
Had settled in fer a nice happy nap
CarrPeeDiem: Many Posts
Carrie: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! – James Patterson & Exclamation Points
The Quickie was an excellent book! The plot was fast-paced! There was a twist and turn on every page! The chapters were 3-4 pages long and that really helped it move fast! There was a lot of action! There were a lot of moments I didn’t expect! And, as you can guess, there were LOTS and LOTS of exclamation marks!!!
Pete: You’re All Worthless and Weak – Please excuse his incoherency, he’s obviously on meds, bless ‘im
We interrupt your regularly scheduled life to offer you this stunning interpretation of a timeless and artistic song, blended with the finest in video artistry. Your life will never be the same. [more]
Spontaneous Derivation: Crime and Violins, Part 5
The segue into the Fugue in C major didn’t.
“Excuse me?” said Zene, glaring down at her, his bow still. He regretted stopping immediately; this woman was obviously what Arcady had been trying to prepare against when looking for a cellist who wouldn’t stop at anything.
Straining Inspiration from the Interwebs
Over at Jenn Hollowell’s blog, she asks: what blog or blogs inspire you the most?.
I put a pretty long answer in the comments, and you should visit her blog and add even more links!
Below follow the substantive links I mentioned, copied & pasted here:
[profession]‘s block is always a bear… I’m just a writer, not an artist, but here are a couple of sites I find helpful; perhaps they can cross over to the artist side.
Creative Writing Prompts. Just hover your mouse over a random number, and a popup with an inspiration should appear.
Ficlets: Inspiration. Part of the Ficlets website (fun to read from time to time; the blog is quite good, and is mostly posted to by John Scalzi). The pictures are fun.
Not a site, but I got The Observation Deck, just for fun. It’s a bit expensive, but has a lot of writing tips from all kinds of authors. I just like inspiration that is concrete (literally, I guess, with the cards and the accompanying book) from time to time. :)
Blogs I subscribe to:
Deep Genre. By numerous fantasy and scifi writers, updated from time to time with thoughts about writing in all sorts of mediums, as well as reviews. I don’t know if the 13-line critique program there is very active right now.
SF Novelists. By numerous scifi writers, including folks like Charles Stross. They talk much more about writing than about scifi in particular.
Swivet. Many writing links posted often. Also if you know of a job opening in her area, please let her know.
westerblog. YA author of scifi, although some of it I would put more towards the fantasy side (like his vampire book). I like his blog a lot.
Whatever. John Scalzi’s blog, right now he’s doing a month of writers — guest blogs from all sorts of writers all over! It’s great to read! Plus his blog is just fun to read. His very old entries–which are hosted somewhere on the site–talk quite a bit about writing. If I find them I’ll post the link here. Many of his old entries about writing are now in a book that’s hard to get but has just been reprinted. But it’s in high demand so I don’t know if there are any copies left. Probably no more signed copies, but there are plenty of cheaper unsigned ones. Were, anyways.
Hope you like the links!
Spontaneous Derivation’s First Baby Podcast
My very first Podcast. Done with no extra equipment apart from my MacBook Pro, which has a decent internal microphone and comes with GarageBand. I even generated a happy little jingle. Or a weird little jingle. The initial baseline needs more boost, I know.
This podcast is only five minutes (and a bit) long, but is enough for an introduction for me, a little tiny bit for my website, and my podcasts.
The process of recording was fun, but took some time to do. And I can definitely say that they aren’t kidding when writers script the talk shows: you can only talk coherently with prepared material in front of you (which I did do).
AND I promise to get a good microphone, really!
In addition, Mary at Thingymablog for the five random facts about yourself ring. My answers are in the podcast. I proceed to tag the following folks:
So enjoy! It’s 8 minutes or so, short and sweet. And you’ll also find out about my dreams about Sherlock Holmes.
And yes, that’s my voice. No, I’m not doped up on cough medicine. Well, okay, maybe I am doped up on five cups of Tension Tamer tea.
Here’s an embed for the website:
http://odeo.com/flash/audio_player_gray.swf
powered by ODEO
Here’s the direct link:
