pre-Write-a-Thon Nattering: Do the WaT with me!

By:  TempestWrite-a-thon
pre-Write-a-Thon Nattering: Do the WaT with me!

As soon as my page on the Clarion West site is ready I will start my sponsor begging in earnest. But I know that once I do, some of you out there will say, “I really wish I could, but I don’t feel I can afford it,” which is completely understandable. But there is something that you can do: be in the Write-A-Thon yourselves!

You don’t have to be a Clarion West alum to participate. You don’t have to have been to any Clarion at all. You just have to want to reach a writing goal (big or small) nand be willing to ask friends and family to sponsor you. Even if you only get one sponsor, you’re helping out!

Plus, it’s always way more fun to do things like this with other writers. We can form a little support group (there’s always a lot of fun to be had on the Clarion West forums around this time) and egg each other on to higher goals and better writing.

Check out Kate’s post here about signing up — the goal is 75 writers total. You should sign up soon. And again, you don’t have to set really high goals nor do you have to commit to raising a ton of money. Just what you can.

If you decide to sign up, let me know! We can do this thing together. :)

Pre-Write-A-Thon Nattering: How many people does it take to raise $1000?

By:  TempestWrite-a-thon
Pre-Write-A-Thon Nattering: How many people does it take to raise $1000?

Last year when I set my goal of getting $1000 in pledges I at first thought: “Maybe that’s too high. It would mean either getting a few people to pledge a LOT or far too many to pledge a little.” However, once I actually broke down the numbers, I found that to be untrue.

$1000 breaks down to about $170/week. So if I get 17 people to pledge $10/week, I can reach my goal. If 9 people pledge $20/week, I’ll make my goal and a bit more. Or, one could think of it in a flat rate kind of way. If 20 people pledge $50, I’ll make my goal. Or 40 people pledging $25. I know at least 40 people who can spare $25, and I’ll bet you each know 10 people who’d be willing to donate $25.

So really, this goal is not at all tough to reach. It just requires spreading the word and finding people who have a little money to spare.

If I were to raise my stakes to a goal of $1500, how many people would it take to make that happen?

$250/week. 25 people pledging $10/week. 13 people pledging $20/week. 40 people pledging $40.

It can be done.

My Secret Fandom Shenanigans…

By:  TempestGeekitude
My Secret Fandom Shenanigans...

I can’t remember how this keeps coming up, but recently I’ve said on more than one occasion that while I am an SF/F fan I rarely participate in fandom.

Partly it’s my addictive nature — if I ever decided to be really into Harry/Ron slashfic I would be INTO it and it would never stop. Same with anything else. There are lots of television shows, movies, books, etc., that I love. I could very easily love them so much that I fell into fandom and never crawled out. Of course, nothing in my life would ever get done as I would be up to all hours reading fanfic.

Another part of it is that I encountered actual fandom late in life for a geek of my generation. I’ve loved Star Trek since I was wee and always read a lot of kidlit that had fantasy elements, but rarely had chances to actually be with large groups of people who shared any of these passions. Early attempts at such were unsuccessful for various reasons (when I was 13 my friend invited me to join a Klingon “ship” but then I fell out with that friend). It wasn’t until I was in college that I met other fans, and the people at NYU’s Sci-Fi Club were rather snobby about certain kinds of fandom, anyway.

Last part is that the moment I truly found my “tribe” was when I joined the Del Rey Writing Workshop (now the Online Writing Workshop/OWW). These were people who loved SF/F but were also aiming to write it professionally. Coming into the community from that angle is really different than coming at it from the fannish angle, a thing which I did not understand until much later.

I also have to admit that a little of that snobbyness about fen and fandom carried over from Sci-Fi Club (though you wouldn’t think people in a SCI-FI club could talk. It’s SF, duh!). I didn’t read or have much desire to write fanfiction, had never heard of vidding until the last 2 years or so, and I have actually uttered the phrase: what in the holy hell is a Fan Mix?

I mentioned that I admitted to having written one piece of fanfiction during the Authorial Intent panel at WisCon and that I did it because I was so annoyed by Stargate SG-1‘s body swerve of the whole Christianity/Jesus issue in the SG universe.  For a long time I’ve maintained that this fic is the only outward show of fannishness I have, but then Monday night I realized that this is not strictly true.

I have committed fannishness on multiple occasions.

I was only at the vidding panel at WisCon for a little bit, but I was so, so impressed by the vids on display. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin doing something like that!” I’ve said many times. Vidders are damned impressive — especially those who’ve been doing this before the advent of widely available digital versions of shows and movies. But Monday night at WisCon it finally hit me that I’d made a vid once. Two vids, in fact! They were made with still images, but were nonetheless vids:

A Tribute to Aldo Kelrast and Aldo: A Look back In Anger

I think the reason I didn’t realize until recently that these were vids is that I didn’t realize that during 2005 and 2006 I was part of a fnadom. But I was! Newspaper comics fandom, to be precise.

I was an avid reader of The Comics Curmudgeon, a blog all about the comic strips you see in daily papers. I don’t know how I stumbled onto the site but I was completely hooked within minutes. I spent many hours going through the archives and laughing my ass off. The site is still there, still funny, and still a major part of the fandom1.

It doesn’t end there.  As I was re-tagging my music recently I found a folder called FanMixes which contained downloads from an LJ community dedicated to such. And then I remembered that one of these mixes was mine.

Some People Want It All - A Kimber-Stormer fanmix cover

Some People Want It All back cover and track list

(click on the second one to see readable text — it’s the track list.)

And yes, those are characters from Jem & the Holograms. If I was going to be in one fandom forever, it would probably be that one. Incidentally, Kimber/Stormer was my first ship, spontaneously generated from watching the episodes as an adult (for the first time in over 10 years) and going: “Wait… this whole episode is totally about them falling in love!”

But again, at the time I did not see myself as doing something fannish, just putting together a list of songs about the imagined lesbian relationship of two children’s cartoon characters OKAY YES I KNOW.

So the end of all this is my admission that I am sometimes fannish and there’s not a damn thing wrong with it. I had a ton of fun making those vids and that fanmix and writing that fanfiction. I don’t know that I will ever engage in these kinds of activities in the future, but I am not discounting it.  Hell, if I thought I could edit video worth a damn I would get started making a Doctor Who vid right now that utilized Dennis Leary’s song “Asshole”.

Footnotes

  1. The videos linked above are from the summer of 2006 when a storyline on Mary Worth became the blog’s obsession because it was completely hilarious and fucked up and so weird for Mary Worth. (I think there was some new writer who was trying to draw in young, hip people. hahaha)  Mary’s boyfriend went off to work for Doctors Without Borders for a few months and a new guy moves into her exclusive condo community: Aldo Kelrast. Very, very quickly one of the commenters pointed out that Kelrast was Stalker spelled backward and Josh, the blog’s proprietor, declared that the Aldo storyline was going to be AWESOME. I had my doubts, but the man knew what he was talking about. Aldo stalked Mary until she got her self-righteous friends to confront him, intervention-style, which caused his alcoholism to resurface which caused him to drink and drive himself off a cliff. Now, alcoholism is not funny, and I think the strip was trying to make a point about it… but all ti did was make us all go: ALDO, NO!! I hated Mary Worth and her evil friends so much after that I left the fandom to recover. I am serious. [⇧]

Pre-Write-A-Thon Nattering: Books, Books, Books

By:  TempestWrite-a-thon

Here’s a picture of some books.

wat-books01

Here’s another picture of some books.

wat-books02

I have quite a few books that I am ready to part with. (Many of them sent for the Tiptree.) I’ve been building up the fortitude to drag them downtown to The Strand to see if I can sell them, but now I have a better idea! I will give them away as pledge-incentives for the Write-A-Thon.

Details will come soon. But take a close look at those books there (click for the hi-res versions). Start coveting one (or more) of them right now!

I am the Mary Sue of this journal

By:  TempestConventions

My WisCon report will come later this week. I have a day off Thursday. But before that happens I need help!

So the Not Another F-ing Race Panel was da bomb diggity and so many awesome things came out of it. One of them was my answer to the question about what kind of companion animal I would want: a white pony with blue eyes and long, flowy hair to prance around behind me as I went through my day.

On Monday (and please forgive my fuzzy brain) someone showed me a drawing they did of this very thing!  yes, a prancing pony following me around! OMG.  I have completely forgotten who that was (fuzzy brain!) but I’m hoping they read my blog because I adore that picture to death and would love an electronic copy. From it I will make my new default icon: I am the Mary Sue of this Journal. (Another line from the panel, kinda.)

Pre-Write-A-Thon Nattering: Shiny Things

By:  TempestWrite-a-thon
Pre-Write-A-Thon Nattering: Shiny Things

As I mentioned a little while ago, I’ve been brainstorming on ways to entice people to sponsor me. I came up with several different “prizes” for different levels, but the one I’m most excited about is my jewelry idea. Every week, after I’m done editing my story, I’ll make a small piece of jewelry based on that story. Earrings or a bracelet or a pendant. Something I can finish in a day. It will provide a nice, relaxing coda to my creative efforts and, I hope, will be pretty.

If you’ve not seen my jewelry before, check it out in The Raven’s Nest.

To make it fair, everyone who pledges at a certain level will be entered in a drawing for that week’s piece of jewelry. Once you win, you can’t be in the drawings anymore. I hope I will get more than 6 people pledging at the appropriate level. If not, we’ll put everyone’s name back in the pool and start over again once everyone has won.

I’m getting mroe and more excited about the Write-A-Thon this year! I am ready to get these 6 stories out the door and off to markets so they can be published! If I raise some money and make shiny things and bring happiness to people in the form of shiny things and books along the way, more’s the better.

Million Writers Award: Vote!

By:  TempestMy Peers
Million Writers Award: Vote!

Remember when I talked about the Million Writers Award notable list and how my story was on it? A few weeks ago Jason Sanford made his choices for the top 10 stories of the year and fellow Fluidian Kris Dikeman’s story “Nine Sundays In A Row” is on it! *confetti!*

There are only two genre stories on this list, and one of them is behind a subscriber lock (yes, it’s Peter Beagle, but I’m not tempted to pay for that issue…), so I’m sure that Kris’ will be more read. There are many good stories also in the top 10, so you should check it out. Then vote for the one you really think is the best. I’m sure you will agree with me that Kris’ story is far and away the winner. Vote!

(P. S. My story did make the short list, which is a yay for me! I have never been on anyone’s short list :) )

My Shelf

By:  TempestMy Fiction

I have a shelf on one of my bookcases where I put books and magazines my stories or non-fiction pieces appear. Recently this shelf grew a bit with the addition of stuff that debuted at WisCon. Though my shelf isn’t vast, I am prodigiously proud of it. Here’s a pic:

The Me Shelf

You can’t tell from the spines, but somewhere in there are copies of Farthing 2 and 3, a Cafe Irreal sampler with my story Elf Aware in it, and I think I cut off the rightmost book which was a showcase of award-winning writing from my high-school district. I has stuff from that far back, yes.

Those of you who actually come over to the site will note that on the left sidebar I put the covers of all the things I’m currently in because, OMG, look at all the beautiful covers. I can’t decide if EV or SG6 is my favorite zine cover and Federations is definitely my favorite anthology cover (but Interfictions remains awesome). I have lucked out quite a bit in the cover department.

Gearing Up for the Write-A-Thon

By:  TempestWrite-a-thon
Gearing Up for the Write-A-Thon

The 2009 Clarion West Write-A-Thon is about a month away, I think. Kate sent me an email about it and I talked to some people at WisCon about it and I’m excited all over again.  For those of you who don’t know about this event, I shall quote from previous years:

“…a write-a-thon is a lot like a marathon. Instead of sponsoring me per mile, you sponsor me per week. If I reach my writing goal for the week, you pledge to send a certain amount of money. There are six weeks of write-a-thoning to mirror the six weeks of workshopping at Clarion West.

Also for those who don’t know, Clarion West is a writing workshop in Seattle where 17 students have the opportunity to spend a week with 6 or 7 professional writers and editors to improve their craft.”

I will most likely again be raising money for both Clarion West and the Butler Scholarship.

This year I’ve decided my Write-A-Thon theme will be Finishing Things. I have more than 6 stories in need of minor to intermediate polishing/editing/whathaveyou in order to get them out to markets and selling like hotcakes. It’s disgraceful how long I’ve let some of these linger! No more. I will choose the 6 I like best and each week I will finish one and send it off to some market.

I’ve been thinking about ways to tempt people to pledge. My current idea is that for every story I complete, I will make a small piece of jewelry. Earrings or a bracelet or a necklace. Something I can complete in a day. For everyone who pledges $20/week or a flat $120, maybe I’ll hold a drawing for the jewelry.

Last year my goal was to get $1000 in pledges. Here’s what I wrote about that:

“It breaks down to about $170/week. If 17 people pledge $10/week, I’ll make my goal. If 8 people pledge $20/week, I’ll make my goal. You can also do a flat amount. $60 only if I reach all of my six week goals. Or $100. If 10 people pledge $100… you get the idea.

I’m looking for 8 – 17 people who can do $10 – $20/week or $60 – $100 overall.”

I’ll let that marinate for a bit.

You will hear a lot more about this as the time gets closer (and Clarion West gets their official Write-A-Thon pages up) so don’t worry yet. Right now I’m brainstorming other cool things I can offer people who pledge.

Make Story, Make Song

By:  TempestMy Peers

I know I’ve mentioned before that I’m sharing the Federations TOC with some amazing writers, including my friend Cat Valente. Cat is always doing really amazing stuff with her fiction (you’ve seen me go on and on about S. J. Tucker’s musical contributions before) including finding neat ways to add extra meta stuff to it. For Federations, she created an awesome, awesome mix of music and reading and techno and stuff and you should really listen. Then buy the book!