Sense, Nonsense, and Not-Sense

Greetings! This is the Write Every Day Check-In Post for 10 November 02019.

Today, I accomplished things in other than writing, a practice I usually refer to as "backburnering", because while I have a great few opening lines for this thing I want to work on, I still haven't yet figured out the gist of the story as things are going along. Some of the details will revel themselves to me over time, but it's sometimes nice to have a general idea of the place you want to go when you let the characters loose to play. I spent my time effectively and well, by which I mean I collected several achievements on a game that I'm not really sure I'll ever be able to do quickly enough to collect the speedrun achievement on it. Because a single successful sequence of it can take an hour or two if you stop and think about things as you go along and engage in the tactical necessities for it. Ah, well. Still, useful progress today on that.

Also spent time clearing out some tabs, and did some shopping, and also, after have realized that a fic I wrote predicted something that happened in the canon about a half-season later than when I had set the fic. And the pairing hasn't happened yet, but still, it's kind of weird to find out you have guessed correctly about a future canonical event entirely by accident.

Today is also the tenth day of November, so for the NaNo folk, they're hoping to be a third-way through the novel they intend to write, with a target just shy of 17k. I have written longer fic than that this year, but we're soon going to be getting into "longer than my longest fic" territory, even if we won't be getting into "longer than my longest series" until we're almost done with this month.

Here's the tally so far:

( Rally-ho! )

Greetings! This is the Write Every Day Check-In Post for 8 November 02019.

Have you ever been in a situation where you don't realize how much skill and ability you have amassed until someone else puts it into relief for you? The kind of thing where since you are the only reference point you know, you assume that you are average at things, if not below average, because you know that there are always going to be people better than you? (I am given to understand this is not the case for the meme-worthy "mediocre white man," but let's leave him aside for a moment.) The kind of skills that come from a long amount of practice, some study, and the occasional fight with a search engine to get it to tell you something useful. Where when you say something like "Yes, I have a functioning Linux system and have been running one for years," people stare at you like you have become a technical wizard capable of impossible feats. Even though, these days, there are systems that are built to be friendly to people who have no Linux experience at all?

Yeah, that's my workplace. Given that the entire profession mostly operates on the only permanent rule of Calvinball, there are times where someone asks a question, you say "I don't know off the top of my head, but let's take a look," tap a few words into your search engine of choice, and produce answers or relevant results. And then get stared at, because in a few keystrokes, you have done better than their frustrated searching for the last block of time. It's not magic, it just looks like it.

I am coming into this phase regarding a project I am running at work. I do not have any official experience or training to be a project manager. I have sat on other projects, herded people, produced results, and done other things that are important to project and committee work, but I haven't actually ever been trained on how to run the thing myself. Apparently, since I've been working in my capacity for as long as I have, the organization seems to think I've picked up the necessary skills through osmosis. And, really, unless I do something that clearly shows I should have been trained on that, they probably will continue to think that. And I'd like to believe I'm at least average at my work, so I won't make that kind of mistake. And the cycle perpetuates. I have a feeling, however, that if I explained what I was doing to someone just starting out in the profession, unless they had specifically taken coursework on managing people and projects, what I was saying was casually part of my day would seem like fantastic magic to them. Because everyone else around me is good at what they do, I am, too, but it doesn't seem like it. The level has been raised so much that the extraordinary becomes ordinary.

I sometimes wonder if this applies to aspects of my writing as well. I mean, I'm still new to transformative fanworks (except I'm not, not really, there's a throughline of transformative works wherever I go, and I should acknowledge that), but I've been told by others that what I think of as a normal juggling load of exchanges is not normal at all, and I suspect, again, that if someone just coming to fandom were to look at my collection of works, they might think I have more skill than I think I have.

I'm not sure if there's a way of figuring out how to get out of my own head and to see myself through the eyes of a newcomer, to understand how far I've come from my origin point, even as I'm gesturing at ever higher mountains and luminaries in the distance and saying "no, no, they're good. Just look at those works!"

If you have a beginner handy, maybe they can help give you some perspective.

Today, in writing, completion was on my mind, as I tried to get a few stories to complete draft status so that they could be shipped off to betas or otherwise be out of the "Panic!" mode that often accompanies a work that's not at least at the minimum threshold and drawn to a conclusion of some sort that will work. Yes, even though there are still weeks ahead, that's all revision time, and time that I can use for drafting on the next assignment that's come in. Layering exchanges on top of each other is a hobby of mine, even though that sometimes means I don't write as many treats as I probably should. (Strange word, should. Often indicates an obligation that goes unfulfilled and induces guilt rather than helping someone usefully look at what they are doing and already have done.)

Here's the tally so far:

( Rally-ho! )

Greetings! This is the Write Every Day Check-In Post for 6 November 02019.

Civic engagement was on my mind yesterday, in the sense of the first Tuesday in November is the day when most general elections happen in the United States. petra offered drabble commentfic in various fandoms for those who had voted in their last election, whether that was on the specific day or whenever the last election was for a person. (May still be offering?)

I suggested the Great British Bake-Off, since the era that would be written in was the one where Mel and Sue were the hosts, and there was a lot of puns about bread involved in the 100 words. Which I could read in Mel and Sue's voices, and it was delightful. A great reward. (My state no longer gives out "I Voted" stickers, but instead has a tear-off strip at the top of the ballot for someone to work with, which is far less fun than being able to sport something about one's civic engagement. I personally would love for them to mail out stickers like "I Voted: It's like punching a Nazi, but safely," but there's that pesky thing about being nonpartisan. Admittedly, I would have thought that "Nazis deserve to be punched" was a nonpartisan sentiment, but these are the times we live in.

Today, in writing, I bounced through a couple different assignments. One is just getting started in its shape, so it's in the proving drawer at the moment. Another, I have an idea for set pieces and things that will be happening further on in the piece, aiming for a specific goal, but I have to fill the intervening space, and I'm following my own advice on this matter: Write the thing, no matter how odd or off it seems, so long as it gets you there, and then let your beta have at it to help you figure out if it makes any sense at all later. Draft first, revise second, tinker third. It's served me reasonably well so far, and it is likely to continue doing so as I run through this stretch of assignments. Still one more to arrive soon, and then it's going to be a little bit of a juggling act for the next few weeks.

Here's the tally so far:

( Rally-ho! )

Greetings! This is the Write Every Day Check-In Post for 4 November 02019.

A lot got done today, which is why I'm feeling somewhat run-down physically. Thank you to all of you that answered yesterday's question about exchange letters. As with many things, it turns out we all do it our own way, and that's the best way that works for us. I'm looking forward to receiving the assignment and going to work on it.

I got a couple of nice comments on old fic and new fic all the same, which is heartening. As December approaches, I'm going to start looking at my counts of various things and come to the conclusion that the Miraculous Ladybug fandom is singlehandedly responsible for a significant amount of my kudos count. Which is good, in that it's a big fandom, and big fandoms have lots of kudos to give. It also helps me put in perspective some things that start to creep in around writing - some things will have low hits and kudos counts, but they'll have great comments and people really enjoyed them. And exchange writing, it seems, tends toward smaller counts of everything, perhaps because there's not a lot of people who find it after the anonymity period is done.

Or maybe I'm just weird and multifannish and taking a little bit from everywhere instead of concentrating in a big fandom until it dies out or the stories all get told, and then moving on to a new space. (It might also be that I don't have a Tumblr, since that still seems to be where a lot of fannish energy is, even after the crackdown.)

Today, in writing, I put a few more words down on an assignment, getting it to a position right before the fun really begins. And by "fun," I mean "a person is going to have something happen to them that they're going to continually dismiss as coincidence or other factors, because their belief that the thing could do what it's doing is nil."

Here's the tally so far:

( Rally-ho! )

Greetings! This is the Write Every Day Check-In Post for 2 November 02019.

Criminy! It's November. That means I've got a month before the December Days writing challenge. Every year, I usually take the month of December to talk about a single topic in its various permutations here and around. Topics in the past have included my day job, the process of writing, and a three-year project that was talking about each of the 78 cards in a baseball Tarot deck.

Consider this a solicitation of suggestions for topics to write about. I can also piece together some shorter topic sequences into it so that the whole month gets done, but I really enjoy having a dingle topic to examine in depth during December, where possible. You may only know me through the WED posts, but don't let that be a barrier to making suggestions. You might spark what the eventual topic becomes.

Today, in writing, I went back to a non-assignment work and added some more words to it, getting this particular bit closer to its end, and just having a good time writing it. I like to have a good time when it comes to writing. The ideas come easier and the writing goes better when I'm not freezing up and trying to figure out how to power through a section that's just not writing.

Here's the tally so far:

( Rally-ho! )

Check and see if there are any missing things, or if dates need updating, or other such things.

( The Final Tally )

Greetings! This is the Write Every Day Check-in post for 30 August 02019.

I feel like I'm getting behind on a lot of things. You have to make decisions about what you want to do in any give any day, I suppose, but there's always more material that you could complete in a full day. I don't regret the decisions being made, but it always feels like there's more that I would like to do on any given whatever. Multi-tasking is tough to do on things that require attention and focus, though, so this is the way things are.

I remembered to post things in time for their deadlines. I had them completed, but since the Archive posts at the day they're posted, not the day they're revealed, apparently if you want them to show up somewhere maybe near the top of the list, you want to have them, as a publication day, be as late as possible. That's right impossible for a lot of megafandoms, but for smaller ones, it might help get them some readership if someone's following the tag or the fandom. Maybe. Truthfully, though, exchange fandom writing is often about seeing whether or not the recipient enjoys it, and anything else you get out of it is gravy and great to know that it has some wider appeal.

I've also not really figured out what a good metric to use for figuring out whether something's good. Is it mass counts of things? Fine-tuned ratios? I mean, even AO3 offers some user tools for calculating ratios, with suggestions on where the "good," "meh," and "aw, shoot" points are. If I use the default ratios, a lot of my works are in the "good" category, even if their counts of kudos, hits, comments, or bookmarks aren't all that high. There's probably a statistician's thesis statement in trying to figure out an approximate formula that takes into account hits, kudos, comments, bookmarks, and tries to figure out whether something's good. (With, perhaps, a corollary about outside-the-Archive recommendations, should you ever discover them, and how that might influence the formula.)

I did some writing, too, today. I got through a chapter that I think might be a little weak compared to other ones, but that means I'm at Climax Mode for this particular work, and so the next chapter is going to have to flow relatively well if it's going to be a satisfying payoff. Which makes me worried that it's going to splat instead, but I'll know how it goes when I get to the writing part of it. I know what the approximate beats are, at least, so we'll see how good I am at stringing the set pieces together.

( It's tally time! )

Greetings! This is the Write Every Day Check-in post for 28 August 02019.

The Topic Gods decided thy were going to smile on me today, because I got in quick succession, the removal of John W. Campbell's name from at least one of the awards given out at Worldcon, after several of the recipients, most recently Jeannette Ng, pointed out the incongruity of the old white racist and fascist having his name on an award increasingly being given to a community that looks nothing like him and holds very different values than his, Laurie Penny, in WIRED magazine, describing the beats of her life from furtive fanfic reading on the nascent World Wide Web to being in the Writer's Room where it happens, even though a lot of the time along the way for her and her friends was filled with a world trying desperately to shun them and make them feel like they were weirdos, and fairestcat providing a retrospective of about ten years of Wiscon, building a space where people interested in transformative works could talk about them, could watch vids for a very long time, and eventually where transformative works have become so ingrained in the culture of fandom that they're just part of the conversation, are equally as super well-attended as other panels, and no longer sent off to the late-night or the last-day of any convention that isn't specifically about them. It's also about how AO3 and the OTW were a prominent entity in the change described, and how the Best Related Work Hugo that AO3 won is a capstone of the changed landscape of fandom and how transformative works won the argument for their inclusion.

It's no longer weird to see panels on transformative works at cons. It's no longer weird to hear guests of honor talk about their transformative works at cons, or how being part of the community of transformative works helped them when it came to the original works or licensed property works they're working on now. And it's no longer weird to see panels composed of plenty of people of color talking about the experiences of being a person of color in fandom, or helping people who don't have those experiences to (at least try and) understand those experiences and why reading books by #ownvoices authors is a superior experience. It's way different.

Hell, it's possible for me to be mistaken for a brony because I had My Little Pony fanart in my satchel. (And that it's possible for someone to draw that conclusion says a lot about the available spaces for people to be in, whether they're good spaces or terrible ones.)

Its different out there now, and for as much as there's going to be the reactionary element that insists spaces like games and SF/F aren't for and never should be for anyone who isn't a straight peri white male and will do as much damage as they possibly can while they lash out, that element is losing. Has already lost, to a large degree, and are being loud and throwing highly destructive tantrums as the losers.

As for writing, I didn't do a lot, although I noodled a little bit on the third part to a series whose first part just recently jumped 100 kudos, making it the third work in all the ones I've ever done to reach that platform. It's exciting to see a work hit a century, and for those in cricket-playing countries, I think I have about the same level of excitement as when a partnership or a single batsperson reaches a similar milestone in their innings.

( It's tally time! )

Greetings! This is the Write Every Day Check-in post for 26 August 02019.

( Somewhere between a whine and deep thought, maybe. )

As for actual writing, I finished up the Giving of Grief post today and plunked a couple of words into a WIP that got it to the point where the action should flow a little bit better, but I didn't have the drive to do the writing at the time, so I gave myself permission not to do it at that moment, and it's probably going to turn out better for not having pushed myself in that particular regard.

Four days before we head somewhere else and we get to hear from other people about their experiences and what sort of things come across their lives.

( It's tally time! )

Greetings! This is the Write Every Day Check-in post for 24 August 02019.

We are in the home stretch for Write Every Day here! Which means it's time to see if any of you are willing to host the next month's festivities in your own space. This traveling carnival doesn't stay in the same place for very long, and the more people give it a hosting gig, the more people are exposed to the concept of it, and perhaps will join in themselves. And you get to see all sorts of different perspectives on writing, the struggles and successes of authors, and build up a list of names sufficiently long that it breaks the character limit on mobile versions of your e-mail service. (Which is not a benefit, just a reality.) If you are interested in hosting for September, please, by all means, throw your hat into the ring.

Today didn't go more than a sentence or two in fiction, but I more than made up for that lack by going at it with a vengeance clearing out tabs and providing commentary to them. That'll probably post tomorrow during the day some time. And, having given my brain a bit of a rest on the fiction-writing front, perhaps it will come back with interest in things. Or, perhaps, I'll decide I need to power through another chapter of the Giving of Grief, which is also a project I should probably be getting back to soon.

(After the initial burst on yesterday's work, today it probably fell off the front page, defined as "as far back as anyone wanted to scroll", and will now settle into being something that may steadily accumulate kudos over time.)

( It's tally time! )