The Mystical Land of Pardes

I don't know how long it's been since my last public post, but you probably know that you shouldn't get used to it.

There are approximately a hundred books that I've always meant to read (or finish reading), eventually, once I got around to it--you know? Lots of people have things like that. Since "exercise every day" and "eat healthier" are a lot harder to get motivated for, I figured the intention I set for this year would be "read all those books you never got around to," instead.

But!

This list is special. You see, there are different tiers of the procrastination I have indulged in re: books. There are titles that have only been on the list for a year or two, titles that have been on the list for at least five years, and then ten, and then fifteen. Sooooo.... how should I title these categories? Hmm.

Note that with very few exceptions, this list will only include fiction. If we add nonfiction, I may as well move this to a spreadsheet.

Also, this list may expand as I remember titles. I'll try not to forget about it.

( Cut - because I just couldn't do that to you. )

No guarantee I'll read all of them, but if I'm ever at a loss for what to read next, I know where to look.

Sorry I've been away. I've been busy submitting stories and getting rejected, and having weird reactions to allergy shots. This all puts me in a bad mood.

However, because it amuses me to make fun of marketing AI, I thought I'd take the time to demonstrate how dumb SEO tools can be, and/or waste your time.

( Read more... )

This is a silly example. It doesn't have much to work with, after all, but I guarantee the readability score won't go up much as I type, usually for the following reasons:

1. Subheading distribution: I often type 300 (or more) words without dividing it into different sections.


2. Sentence length: sometimes I use more than ten words in a sentence. Commence pearl-clutching.


3. Transition words: good to have, but occasionally I don't use them because they don't make sense, and every goddamn paragraph has to start with one, apparently!


4. Paragraph length: too long.


5. Passive Voice: it'll ding you for using this more than 25% of the time. It might have a point. Maybe.

Now... to be fair, what this tool measures is search engine optimization (i.e., SEO), and it is meant to guide your writing in a way that gets good ranking on Google. Which is fine. Here's what I don't understand, though: all the raving in the comments about how this made various commenters' writing better, and their posts amazingly good, and so on.

If you're not a writer, I acknowledge that writing a blog post might be harder for you than it is for me. (Note I don't believe that's always true, but it's certainly a thing I keep in mind.) However, after working with this plugin for about seven posts, I've concluded that the nagging about passive voice is literally the only category that does me any good in terms of improving my writing.

Dividing your text with subheadings is fine when the subheading makes sense, and absolute garbage if you're only doing it because Yoast told you that it must happen every 299 words. Shortening your paragraph makes sense when you're dropping blocks of text on your reader and there are valid places within the paragraph to divide and transition. Writing 10-15 words per sentence is fine if that's your style, if it fits what you're writing, if it--well, this is style, in my opinion, and therefore subjective. Tons of short sentences can also make your work feel choppy and abrupt, which is bad for readability. Since readability is something this thing says it's measuring, that's a problem.

For me.

I'm picky.

Look, short sentences! Good jorb! But you've got no transition words. Bad jorb.

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Tl;dr, this plugin makes me angry. I hate seeing people put blind faith in a tool like this. It does function well for its purpose when used with care, but this is why you should have writers populating your business blog with content--because they'll know when to ignore bad advice.

For what it's worth, all of my posts score well on SEO, and that's in spite of the tool, not because of it. At least I'm developing good avoidance skills?

Or: working in retail/food service.

Making it "Retail: Killing the Soul" felt even more melodramatic, but on second thought, the title I stuck with is not much of an improvement. Relevant, though, because this is all about writing, even if it doesn't seem like it for the first few paragraphs.

I don't remember if I talked much about writing while working at Starbucks, and how it basically didn't happen at all. I worked there for about a year and a half, and during that time I wrote once or twice; plenty of story brainstorming went on in my pocket notebook during breaks, but when it came to actual prose, i.e. stringing enough words together to make a story, the practice didn't exist for me. Why?

Because I was so fucking tired.

When people--myself included--talk about the soul-killing nature of working retail, I think we're usually referring to the corporate element, or the customer service element, both of which are miserable. Every day brings good people, tons of neutral people, and one or two bad ones, so not everything is bad... although you always remember the bad ones, especially when they're outrageous about it. And everyone complains about the dictates that come down from "corporate," many of which are dumb and tone-deaf on the local level. Barnes & Noble, for instance, used to insist on mimicking their New York displays in every single store, even when the topic wasn't necessarily relevant anywhere else. (They might still do this, but I don't know anybody who works there right now.) Starbucks insisted that we push the current hot variety of coffee bean (example: the Anniversary Bled), even on the morning shift when customers were emphatically not there to buy coffee beans for any reason. District managers will ding you for not up-selling.

Never mind not getting paid enough for this shit, the lack of control over one's schedule, absence of sick time, and the trouble one could make for oneself clocking a piddling five minutes of overtime.

So yeah, all of that is shitty. None of that made me feel so bad I couldn't write, however. Asshole customers suck in the moment, but become epic stories later on. And, in the end, you don't have to take your work home, because you're definitely not getting paid enough to worry about it off the clock. What sucked, what killed my ability to write, was being tired. All the time. I hesitate to call it exhaustion, because I could still get up in the morning and function, but... it was a cumulative effect, like a gathering avalanche. Miss an hour of sleep here, two hours there, get up most days at four in the morning and try to sustain eight hours of constantly moving, lifting, talking, smiling, smiling again when some asshole thinks you should know how many pumps of mocha it takes to make something "super sweet" (anything from the regular three, all the way to the twelve I should've told the barista to put in there, because fuck that dude). Smiling again when another asshole asks for pastry recommendations, and then looks me up and down when I say I don't know (couldn't eat them for allergy reasons), and says, "yes you do," implying I was too overweight not to know every pastry in the case. Smiling some more every time I was called "sweetheart." And then being told by management that I don't smile enough and should work on that for the next review cycle.

I was tired all the time. I got home and went to sleep, got up to make dinner, and then went to bed again, and got up tired the next morning at four to show up for another eight hour shift. Lunch was at eight AM, unless the timing was wonky that day and I had to take it at six instead, which meant I didn't get to eat later when I actually needed it. Every once in a while I got scheduled for a closing shift and then an opener, precisely eight hours apart...but not always. Technically you're not supposed to do that (which might be a state-level law, and not the same everywhere), but it happened. All the time.

Starbucks treats employees surprisingly well, but don't be fooled by all of their publicized effort on behalf of employees: they still don't pay their people enough for the effort they're expected to put in for the customer, and the philosophies they're expected to swallow and then parrot back. You still can't live off of your earnings, at least in NorCal. Most of my coworkers had second jobs, or lived with their parents, were in a relationship with somebody who made more money, or had a roommate or two. More than you might think had advanced degrees, some in fields like chemistry, that made me wonder why the fuck they were working at Starbucks when they could have a real career. Only, it was for the same reason I did: there weren't any other jobs.

Eventually, I had to quit because my knee wouldn't stop hurting, and my insurance didn't cover shit like that. It wasn't a work injury, so Starbucks wouldn't have done anything about it--and that's fine, I didn't expect them to. For what it's worth, I know that the company does step up when necessary, because coworkers of mine have been hurt on the job. I just didn't qualify.

Once I left, I started writing again. Once I didn't need to sleep so long, that is. Once my life wasn't work, sleep, do all the cooking and shit, sleep some more, work some more... Some people can write through that, but I just kept getting sick. I don't think I do my best work when I'm sick or exhausted. I did what I could, when I had a few moments awake that didn't also involve some kind of work, but for a year and a half I didn't produce a story.

I don't feel bad about it. Or, to be more truthful: I do feel bad about it (or I wouldn't be writing this entry), but I am determined to kill that guilt, because I think it's misguided.

Fuck anybody who doesn't like that, in fact. I'm not interested in showing myself mercy most of the time, but in this case, I have to admit: it's awfully hard to write when you're asleep or in constant pain. By the end I couldn't straighten my right leg (too stiff, too much pain), and that took a few months to clear up and stop hurting. I once was forced to take a week off because of intense abdominal and/or back pain that they never found a reason for, but which inspired my doctor to tell me to find a different job. I caught every flu virus making the rounds via ringing people up, because god forbid anybody sanitize their hands after they sneezed into them, but before they handed their credit card to me. I never got enough sleep, and was always on my feet. I was so fucking tired it took me a month to learn how to function like a normal human being after quitting, and even then I couldn't walk without pain. So yeah, about that writing?

I decided it could wait.

It's funny that The Writer's Guide to Beginnings doesn't have a terribly compelling opener. Beginnings ARE hard, but I mean... good job.

I picked the book up because I need some inspiration. Writing books tend to remind me of things I already know, but for some reason have forgotten. Over time I've discovered that the only two books I really need, if I'm having craft issues, are the same two books I've had all along. Everything else is just a new way to say an old thing--and that's why they're such effective reminders.

Anyway, there's this story that's been a weight around my neck for seven or eight years. I've mentioned it once or twice. You wouldn't be interested because I'm not willing to tell you enough about it to catch that interest, but let's just say that I actually like the way it turned out--I've liked the direction it was going for quite some time--and that feeling is the most paralyzing problem I've ever encountered when working on a story. It means either a) the story is shit, or b) it's decent, but will probably still get rejected by everyone and rip my soul apart in the process.

Either way, I don't really want to know. That makes finishing it very hard.

I'm also paranoid, because I put the story up for critique once, in a locked community that I believe was built of trustworthy people, but... still paranoid.

tl;dr, someday soon I'll make myself declare the story finished and start sending it out, and then there'll be a post about revision, and how you should never do what I did, or at the very least never let yourself end up on the same kind of timeline.

I just need to get the beginning where I want it.

And no, I'm not nitpicking; it's the last part that really does need work before I can tweak the language and say good-bye.

There’s a story I found during my university days, early in that period when I had nothing better to do than spend four hours in the library between classes. I lived too far away to go home. I spent most of that time on the fourth floor, seated by a window with a lovely view of the quad, where grass, pines, and windswept cypress made layers of green between banks of fog. This was early in the morning, when the sky was still gray and, sometimes, the orange lights still hadn’t gone out. I’d stare out there for a good long while, still half-asleep, before I started looking at books. My table was right next to the shelves with obscure religious texts. By obscure, I mean apocalypses like The War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness (not as epic as it sounds), excerpts from The Zohar, wide volumes of The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. That sort of thing. Even several volumes of the Talmud, which arguably isn’t obscure, depending on who you are.

In one of these books, I found a story about Elijah after his ascent to Heaven. He has a reputation for running around amongst rabbis and other citizens and variously helping or punishing the deserving. Once, he wrestled with the Angel of Death. He’s an interesting figure who unfortunately is used often to tell moralistic tales.

There’s one in particular running through my head on repeat right now. I will probably retell it badly, but here goes. ( Read more... )

Take a look at the opening explanation if you haven't already. What I define as critique/concrit might not be what you expect if you've been pointed here from a fandom source.

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The message here is, essentially: consider why an author has decided to show their work to you before you comment.

Imagine you have just finished a story or article you’re proud of. You take it to your nearest friend or reader, ask them to have a look at it. What do you think? you may ask. You might be interested in their initial thoughts, or maybe you just want someone to see what you created. That’s okay, by the way.

Instead of delivering a few comments, your reader launches into a full-on critique of the work, complete with discussions on how it can be improved. That’s awesome, because we want our criticism to be delivered with ideas on how we can address the problems being outlined, right? Right.

However… maybe you weren’t ready for that level of commitment. There is a difference between asking for someone’s opinion and asking for a critique. ( Read more... )

Take a look at the opening explanation if you haven't already. What I define as critique/concrit might not be what you expect if you've been pointed here from a fandom source. Granted, I'm several years out of date on fandom, so who the hell knows. Maybe now I'm preaching to the choir/totally wrong.

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Critique and "constructive criticism" are--in my experience--contentious topics in online writing communities. I'm speaking mainly of fandom groups, but not just those. You could say I have ~feelings~ about it that I’d like to express in a pointed fashion. While I have never received a deliberately hostile critique, I have had several critique experiences that I found less than helpful, for reasons that I think can be fixed with some consideration from both parties. When you offer a critique to an author, I assume you’re doing it because you want to help them. I know I do.

So let’s be helpful! I’ll start the series off with an obvious point, which a whole lot of people still miss. Not everybody, just… a number of people that isn’t negligible.

Give the good with the bad when you critique.

No, this doesn't mean you should praise the author. (For some reason, this is always the first assumption. Why?) It means you should bring attention to the good things about their story in addition to the bad things.

( Read more... )

I highly recommend taking a look at that Zen Habits article if you offer critique in any context. It's perceptive and definitely worth reading.

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As promised some time back in September, I'm locking down the majority of my old entries. Here's what you should know if you're interested:

1. A select set of entries will be unlocked again. Here's the list.


2. Friends-locked entries from January 2016-onward are exempted.


3. I'll take requests to re-open others, but no guarantees.


4. I probably won't cross-post new entries to LJ, but I'm still thinking about it.

This process may take a few days. I'm not exactly in a hurry.

And uh, yeah. Guess that's it. Comment if you have any concerns, but I'm just going to plug away at this task while I'm still motivated. Feelings of motivation often die suddenly and horribly when I least expect it.

EDIT: But why the hell is LJ adding random number hashtags to my tag lists on edited entries? WTF. Not all of them, just some.

*

02.06.2018 - done.

Brought to you by the mystery novel formula, although the post isn't about mysteries of that sort.

In the end, I had to give my Tales of Zestiria obsession a little outlet. Not too much, because the last thing I need is an epic on my hands, but something. I found out I'm pretty rusty when it comes to fan fiction. I also noticed a few other things.

1. It took approximately 0.05 seconds for me to slip right back into the Pairing Fanfic Formula.

2. I hit the same story/characterization triggers every other Zestiria author does, though I didn't know that until I looked at the AO3 archive afterward.

3. Gasp, this... is not actually a bad formula.

I also realized that I open original stories differently, but that's another topic. Short stories - at least as I write them - involve more plot, and therefore need more precise openings... not that I always manage to make that happen.

The formula I default into isn't a bad formula by itself. It has setting, buildup, and payoff, which is why it can be satisfying to read; it can, and often does, have some kind of "emotional turn" that makes the scene feel complete-- like something happened. (I don't recall which writer gave me the phrase "emotional turn," but it has served me well every time I've bothered to use the concept while writing.) It just so happens that in pairing fic these elements are focused on cuddling instead of something else. It's actually not a bad basic structure for individual scenes.

I think this would still be true if the content is entirely fluff. You can still have a transformation of mood and/or emotion in the scene, which satisfies the requirement for "change" in fiction, which I know people loooove to argue with. Stories don't necessarily need conflict! Shit doesn't have to change! It can still be interesting! And I guess that's all true in fan fiction, when a reader might want to just wallow in their obsession with Mikleo Sebastian Maglor a character they love, and see some stream-of-consciousness contemplation on a canon event. I don't think that's very interesting, but whatever. Some people do. Point is, it's more interesting if something changes, even if that change means we're just moving from contemplation to happiness, or giddiness to contentedness, or some other minuscule difference. The formula can do that.

Which isn't to say I think I should write it all the time. It IS a formula, and if I write ten things according to this formula, they're all going to sound the same, since those ten things will definitely all be pairing fic. Somehow this doesn't happen if I use it for the basis of my scene structure in a longer story, because there are other things happening (and how exactly is a Sorey/Mikleo makeout session not something happening, I mean really) and the formula becomes a vehicle for other elements of craft.

So yeah. I haven't come up with an excuse for #2 (automatically falling into all the cliches) yet. Give me a few more hours for that one.

Wow, rain. It's coming down hard.

:D

Tales of Zestiria has a decently interesting world. It saw fit to explain very little of that world, unless I missed a ton of skits or scenes. Now, I'm not saying this is a bad thing; it told me what I needed to know, and anyway, a world like this, with so many mysteries, is exactly what I would've loved writing fan fiction for. It leaves room for creative speculation.

( One thing I would've liked to see explained further, though, is The Five Lords... )

In Zestiria's defense, I did try to finish the game quickly; I might've missed things. I tried not to, because I like completing things, dammit, but I had limited time. :/ I went for the prize, and didn't take the time to do the thing with Edna's brother, or the crucibles, so I dunno, maybe those explain more? (Although the crucibles looked more like gameplay challenges.)

So whatev. Either these are dumb questions, or the game needs a sequel, so I can buy it.