bullet points aren't nearly as much fun as the ticky box

[seraphcelene]

* Yahoo! News -- Cuomo to announce settlement with lenders

I wasn't aware of the student loan ... I don't know what to call it ... scandal until this morning. It's incredibly disturbing, to say the very least. I am also deeply concerned because I attended NYU. So the question is, when did all of this go down and how do I find out.


* yhlee is having interesting thoughts about Lindsey as Wesley in AtS. I don't have deep thoughts to offer but I am particularly drawn to this:

Angel takes Wesley in and models redemption for him (cf. "Five by Five" and "Redemption"). Angel takes Lindsey in temporarily and abandons him to his fate, allowing Holland Manners to bind Lindsey even more closely to Wolfram & Hart. (Really truly, I wrote Itineraries because Angel's treatment of Lindsey frustrated me so much, and I wanted to explore an alternate possibility.)



I am intrigued by the idea of character treatment by other characters as it relates to what we think of as social and/or moral obligation. If there is a hero ethic, are heroes obliged to adhere to it even when dealing with a villain? We know that as much as Angel can be very black and white, he also fills a very grey area (very superficially mediating the space between human and vampire). How do those shadings affect how we imagine or make presumptions concerning behavior towards another character or group? Ok. Did that make ANY sense at all?


* By way of yhlee -- oracne on writing:

The way to find out? Is to write. To try out that other pov and see if it works better. Also, to do what I did long ago with another project, and write some scenes out of order, to take out the stress of trying to find the ideal opening scene. Also, to overcome the fear of starting again. Because it is fear, every time. The fear of will this be any good? And every time, it must be overcome.



This resonates with me so awesomely. Can I say that? Usually I have a vision and I write. I've said it before, but I write what I see. The common denominator among all of my FB usually revolves around the use of imagery and there's a very, very simple reason for that. I vomit the images onto the page and then structure it afterward so that it makes sense and ties into whatever theme I see. My most recent projects don't quite fit that mold. Vex Not the Roses was written with *intent* that required an actual structure before I even began writing it. Same for Ever After, the frame and format are just as important as the content. Someday and the Angel post-NFA piece are giving me headaches because of the *way* they want to be written which doesn't quite seem to mesh with *my ideas* for what should be written because when I write, I scrap maybe 85 to 90% of what I put to paper because it's just not right. I know where I want to go, but getting there is turning out to be a bitch and that has a lot to do with the structure and the length. The pieces are longer than I usually write and I'm fighting with how to format them, how to put them together and string them along. I'm unsure about how much to spin out and how much to amputate, what's necessary and what's not.

The hard part has been starting over or starting over somewhere else. tkp and I have had this conversation and it's difficult to write without the frame, but I think oracne is right and sometimes you just have to write with no idea of what's coming or where it's going and you can't be afraid to just start over and that's the hardest lesson to learn.



* greygirlbeast is righteously indignant. Having just finished, and thoroughly enjoyed, the book in question I don't blame her. The reviewer has got things ass backwards. I don't care for using profanities like crazy but if it makes sense, if it "sounds" right for the character and for the story then it never bothers me. I never even noticed it in Daughter of Hounds because it was organic to the characters, if that makes sense. If it hadn't rung true then it would have jarred me out of the story. Never once, not one damn time was I ever jarred out of that story. Kiernan has a way about her. She's that writer that I want to become. When I grow up one day, if I drink all my milk, eat all of my spinach, maybe I'll be half as talented.

ETA That review was BAD. And I don't mean bad because she didn't like the book, but bad because it's just very, very, very poorly written. A poorly written review of an excellent novel ... that's just so wrong. If you're going to pan a book can you at least pay it the respect of writing a decent review of it, get it grammar and spell checked won't you!! Especially if you're doing it on the scale of something like Book Fetish. I'm just sayin'.

* Finally, National Poetry Month continues with

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

-- ee cummings