Category: Writing

Proserpinacrusish

Stephen claims that by stretching the Proserpina story out, I am forcing him to write stuff like this:

Proserpina gets so good at punching (after practice) that she finds herself able to punch not only physical objects, but concepts as well.

“Ow!” says Love. “What was that for?”

“You were never around.” And she is gone.

“My arm!” says Loneliness. “Why’d you hit me?”

She sits, and begins to stretch. “You never left.”

Hours later, she’s still swinging.

Her cel phone rings. “nnnnJello?” she answers.

“There are some skinheads sitting at the bar, and everyone’s super uncomfortable. Can you do something?”

“Watch them a minute. Don’t hang up.” She squints, turns her head eight degrees and points at a thin figure. “Are you Nazism?”

“Ja. Unt?” The figure stands defiantly, arms akimbo.

“Prosperina, what are you–hey, they fell off their stools! How did you–“

Several punishing jabs and an uppercut later, Proserpina picks the phone up off the ground. “Anything cool happen?”

“Their hair grew back! Then they started making out!”

“Pff. Nazis. ” She spat.

… which I think is awesome. Rest assured, Stephen, you are not helping your own case.

All the old blogs have been moved over to WordPress. People who blog or used to blog here: I’ll email you later with instructions and logins and stuff. When I find the strength. The Dispatch is a work in progress, as WP has no provision for importing comments except from other WP blogs, so I’m doing it manually. I didn’t realize it had this much content.

I’ve also uploaded the Idiotcams, all 278 of them, to Flickr. Now I just get to go through and retitle and retag every… one… of them.

I really miss NewsBruiser.

Hbleagh.

Okay, the highest-volume blogs are up, all content and categories and whatnot included. They also, regrettably, all look like WordPress blogs. I’ll fix that after I spend tomorrow importing the lower-volume ones.

With the exception of the calendar, category and random-entry pages, all the old links to everything SHOULD be working, so please let me know if you find stuff that isn’t. I’m tired. It’s almost 5 am here.

But there will be an Anacrusis later today.

I’ve fallen prey to the great Dreamhost CPU disaster and what that basically means is I have to change my weblog software. I’m very unhappy about this, but I can’t afford to move to a dedicated server and I don’t believe the situation would improve at another host. At least I won’t have to bug Leonard for help anymore (this is a lie, I’m writing him an email right now).

NewsBruiser did exactly what I needed it to do for almost four years and I’ll miss using it. Those of you whose blogs I host, I’m sorry; I’ll be sending out a guided tour email once I’ve got (sigh) WordPress or whatever up and running. The front page of NFD is static, so it will remain up for the duration, but everything else will go down later today.

Story Hacks: Fifth in a Series

There’s one thing every writer agrees on: child abuse is great!

Not real child abuse, of course. Real child abuse is tragic, and people who don’t love all its victims unconditionally are hideous monsters and probably pederasts themselves. This makes it very easy to find abusers in real life. Haven’t you ever asked your friends whether they’d spank their kids? Trick question! Good writers have no friends.

The thing that makes child abuse great in fiction, though, is that it’s worth infinity points on the badness-goodness scale. Is your hero not sympathetic enough? Do your readers say she’s “selfish” or “disturbingly violent” or “clearly you with your name spelled differently?” Reveal a history of abuse to explain everything forever! Or maybe you have an antagonist who just isn’t sufficiently evil–“I don’t think Wicca is that bad,” your readers might say, or “you psychopath, stop reading this garbage and let me go.” But make your villain a pedophile and watch their eyes glimmer with hate!

Aren’t you glad we’ve discovered this technique together? It’s like our own special secret! Just remember not to let anyone else know about it.

Today’s Hack in a Nutshell: Black and white is one color too many!

Ride the flavor horns. Dammit! I knew there was a better joke than the “hyperspace” thing in the last entry, I just couldn’t get the bat off my shoulder. Oh well. There’s always next year.

Thanks to all the people who have offered further sandwich suggestions in the comments. More! More! I should clarify that I am quite familiar with the unholy power of bacon, but will generally not eat sharp or nontoasted cheese.

I’m a twit now. I have an extremely small justification for this, as follows.

Part of the Anacrusis FAQ says “I’ll get to long-form when I’m ready for it,” and I’m ready for it, so I’m writing long-form–specifically, the South book. I hate it when people announce on their blogs that they are Writing A Novel, with slight exception for that one thing in November. But the fact is that my only successful projects are done a) with at least the appearance of rigorous scheduling and b) in the public eye, so I’m going to start microposting my daily page count. With luck this will keep me from going back and polishing the first chapter over and over. Seriously, guys, the first chapter is really good.

The twi–ugh, microblog is now a sidebar on the main NFD page, and it’s got its own feed, of course.