#it's roughly 2-3 chapters depending on how i edit it down

[nonsenseramble]

Heads-Up, Seven-Up

Tagged by @squarebracket-trick! Thank you for the tag!!!

The last few lines I wrote were for my Gods of Creation WIP. I spent far too long smash typing this out at 1:00-2:00AM, but I still am pretty in love with how it came out. (Okay these aren't the last seven lines per se, more so the last seven little...uh...breaks? Paragraphs? Idk man)

“What do you mean by ‘sustenance’?” Time ask quizzically. “Well…we are able to exist idly. We can create others like us, just like how you created me. However, I’m…different.” Life pauses a moment, reflecting on themself. “I’m not sure I can create beings like you two can. Not yet, anyway. The beings I can create cannot just idly exist without a source to keep them going. That’s what this is for.” Life uses their thumb and middle finger to flick the wet substance toward Light. Little bubbles waft through the empty space. As they approach Light, the circumference of the bubbles slowly diminishes to nothing. Time and Light both look at Life perplexed. “I’m not sure I’m following, dear,” Light says with a slight chuckle. “This is all very confusing, but I am curious.” “It’s a life force. A sort of fuel to replenish lifespan. As long as they have this, they shall continue on living.” Light points at the star. “And this one. It’s not for the beings, but for their home. It’s warm and bright. It reminds me of how I felt when I first saw Light. I felt protected. I felt safe. I want them to feel that emotion as well.” Light tilts their head, their heart swelling with pride. Life had obviously inherited their compassion and Time’s wisdom. “So, what are they called?” Light asks. Life hesitates, but only for for a moment. “In honor of Time, The Sage Deity, their life-force shall be called ‘water’. In honor of Light, The Antecedent Deity, their star will be named the Sun. These two creations shall harbor living beings in, around and among them. And so it is.” “And so it is,” Time and Light echo in unison. And so it was.

Tagging: @elizababie, @dyrewrites, @mthollowell-writes, @stanrendipity, @stesierra + Open Tag! (I'm still learning everyones blog url's so y'all gotta work with me here >.<)

[theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin]

Hey! Was just in the midst of rereading "Lily" and I had a question about your rewriting process:

Was it hard having to replace all the "Harry Potter" elements? Are things REALLY different from "Lily" the fic, or is it just the basics? Is there still a school for magic?

The most important one, tho, is: Did you change Lily's name? I hope not lol

On another note, REALLY excited for the published book! Which actually brings another question, I looked at the word count, and I don't think you can make all of "Lily" one book, so is it gonna be a trilogy, cuz I remember once you said that there are three main arcs, or is it just gonna be a series?

Sorry about all these questions!

Feels weird answering this without having released anything to the wild yet but why not.

And no worries about the question, it's great to know people are still interested/interested at all. That fic is kind of... my ridiculous pet project gone wild that consumed my account for too many years.

Was it Hard Replacing Things?

Yes.

This was the main trouble/what took so damn long. The main story and characters (Lily and her journey and all of that) aren't really reliant on the HP framework, which why it was possible to convert at all, but it's dependent on there being known archetypes and tropes. I like to think I pull it off with a very stereotypical high fantasy setting but a lot had to change, while serving the interests of the story and characters, and also making internal sense.

That meant a lot of sitting down and thinking about the new world, how it works, and the new cast of secondary characters.

Are Things Really Different?

Yes and no.

The overarching point of the story is the same and the main characters go through the same major emotional arcs. The actual plotlines though are vastly different, the world is different, and the secondary characters are different (well, some are reminiscent of the fic but get way more speaking lines/some changes to personalities and others are new).

Basically, I had to write new content for most of it (but the beginning was sadly similar enough that we got the whole pulling down debacle that I still have to wait and see where that lands).

Some things are still the same in that there's still a prophecy, still a case of Lily having been dumped somewhere else for convenient reasons of convenience, and so on.

Is There a Magic School

Sort of.

It's Sir Not Appearing in Book One but does get quite a few name drops.

Is Lily's Name Changed?

She's still Lily and Ellie to start with but she has another name as well and the surname and middle name are different. I was too attached to Lily as a name to drop it by this point.

How Many Fucking Books Is It?

You're right in that it's a long story.

Fuck, it's a long story.

What I've got now for this to be published book is the first arc, roughly the equivalent of chapters 1-25 in the fic version for those following along (same major arc going on). In Lily I'd say while there's three major arcs it'd probably break down best into 4-5 books (though don't quote me, I'm bad at doing this stuff until I sit down to actually write it).

Once I finally get done with this editing business of book 1, book 2 is pretty well scoped out, I have a solid idea what book 3 would be, and then... could be one to two more as I have to sit down and really think about those (that's a future me problem).

[earaercircular]

She Burned It All Down, to Build the Perfect Dress.

Mara Hoffman ditched her successful swimsuit business in order to prioritize sustainability. Nearly a decade later, she’s reaping the rewards.

It looked like a normal dress, a nice one. Something you might wear to a wedding if you wanted to be a bit sexy. It was floor-length, the V-neck plunging into a rosette that swirled and gathered under the bust, and the spaghetti straps crisscrossed on a low-cut back, kind of like a sporty, 1970s swimsuit.

It’s the kind of dress Mara Hoffman, who has been in business for 23 years, could whip up without a second thought. But this particular version has been five years in the making.

Mara Hoffman

“Feel this,” Ms. Hoffman said at her Lafayette Street store in Manhattan[1] one September morning as she held out the coral-coloured fabric. It had the texture of peach skin. “If you go through the store and feel through all of our product, nothing really feels like this.”

The story behind the dress is not sexy — or maybe it is, depending on what you’re into. One of an edition of 35 currently for sale at $1,195, the dress is woven from a proprietary fabric made by a Virginia company called Circ[2], which has patented technology to separate and recycle poly-cotton[3] blends — meaning one part is polyester and one part is cotton — into fibres that can be respun into fabric.

This is a big deal in the world of fabric recycling because, up until now, it has been extremely difficult to break down and recycle blended fabrics, like your old T-shirts, stretch jeans and leggings. “Roughly half of all fabric produced is poly-cotton,” said Peter Majeranowski, the chief executive of Circ.

Circ sources fabric from a few places: factories and mills, which supply shirts that were damaged along the supply chain; charities with an excess of donated clothes; and partners like Patagonia[4] that have a take-back program, in which old clothes are repaired and resold. If those clothes can’t be resold, they go to a warehouse until a solution like Circ comes along.

Ms. Hoffman’s dresses represent what both companies are billing as the first time Circ lyocell fabric[5] is being used for a luxury product, as an alternative to silk, which she has eliminated from her offerings.

“I was longing for the feeling of silk,” Ms. Hoffman said. “It’s always been, how do we speak to this luxury that we really can’t get through our cottons and hemps, the materials that we had safe and vetted access to? What’s our alternative to black tie that isn’t a harmful garment?” In the next three years, Ms. Hoffman has committed to replacing all of the virgin lyocell in her collections with Circ’s recycled version.

Ms. Hoffman first encountered Circ in 2018, when Dana Davis, her vice president of sustainability, product and business strategy, attended the Global Fashion Agenda Summit in Copenhagen. Ms. Davis recalled that Circ’s original technology was developed for tobacco farms that were no longer supplying cigarette manufacturers. She was intrigued.

“We came from the biofuels industry,”[6] Mr. Majeranowski said. “We knew nothing about fashion, and they’ve been patient with us.”

For Ms. Hoffman, the Dress that Changes Everything, as she has christened the style made with Circ, is another chapter in the radical repositioning of her brand that began in 2015. Until then, Mara Hoffman had been the go-to purveyor of sexy psychedelic prints and bikinis for the Coachella crowd. Hers was a robust business that began in 2000 when, as a recent Parsons[7] graduate, she showed up at stores, including Patricia Field in New York, with a bag of clothes she made in her Murray Hill apartment. Her collection was originally called Circle.

“I did a strip show, tried everything on and they placed their first order,” Ms. Hoffman said.

As time wore on, Mara Hoffman the brand felt increasingly disconnected from Mara Hoffman the woman, on a spiritual and aesthetic level. The birth of her son led her to look at the future of the planet differently. “The True Cost,” a 2015 documentary that examined the ravages of fast fashion, shook her. She was disgusted by the overproduction and toxicity that coursed through the industry.

“I couldn’t design what I was designing anymore,” she said.

At one point Ms. Hoffman found herself crying on her couch, telling Ms. Davis that she wanted to close the business. Instead, they committed to an absolute overhaul, shifting from widely distributed hippie prints to a more serene and sophisticated collection — still sexy — with serious sustainability commitments. In the process, they lost half of their retail partners.

“Burn it to the ground,” Ms. Hoffman said. “That’s sort of my style. It’s not for the faint of heart.”

Changing the look of the brand was relatively easy. “I can design something new tomorrow and transform. I’m good at that,” Ms. Hoffman said. More challenging was getting all of her back-of-house sustainable dreams to live up to what the customer was used to. It’s been a process of trial and error, baby steps.

A first order of business was switching to organic and recycled materials whenever feasible. But that is not always possible. “We started working with a system that is still considered a Band-Aid for us, taking plastic bottles, turning them into polyester for our swimwear,” Ms. Davis said. The problem is that once a plastic bottle is turned into swimwear, it’s difficult to recycle from there. Now Ms. Hoffman uses Pyratex[8], a fabric made out of wood pulp with no polyester or nylon, for swimwear.

Ms. Hoffman introduced compostable packaging, but no one knew how to compost it, so the company switched to paper, which people are used to recycling. She started Full Circle[9], the company’s take-back and resale program. She designed extended sizes that went beyond a basic black dress. The stretchy, sexy Popcorn dress — available in a range of colours and silhouettes and in sizes XXS to 3X — was released in 2020 and continues to be a hit.

“It was a swim line before — now it’s a fashion brand,” said Rachael Wang, a former editor and stylist who started working with Ms. Hoffman to shift the visual identity of the brand in 2015. “I think creating a more splashy, fashion-y brand that has this intentionality was exactly what people wanted to see, what people wanted to buy into.”

Ms. Hoffman has run her business independently with no outside investment. But she hasn’t done it alone. Ms. Davis has been with her for 15 years, and they oversee a staff of 25. There’s also the broader sustainability community, of which they are vocal and active members. The Mara Hoffman website is encyclopaedic in its indexing of partners, policies and supply-chain transparency.

Ms. Hoffman was early to fashion’s awakening to the overproduction and climate crises, but she doesn’t consider herself a pioneer. “There were a handful of brands that we were able to see as beacons,” she said, naming Eileen Fisher, Stella McCartney[10] and Patagonia. “They were doing something better.”

Nonetheless, the Circ dresses represent impact, a real change to a system. Next month, Ms. Hoffman will receive the Environmental Sustainability Award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America[11].

“I think we’ve figured out some really important parts that have longevity, so let’s push into that,” Ms. Hoffman said.

Source

Jessica Iredale, She Burned It All Down, to Build the Perfect Dress, in: New York Times, 18-10-2023 ; https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/18/style/mara-hoffman-dress-sustainable-fashion.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

[1] https://marahoffman.com/pages/nyc-store

[2] We are a motley crew of global scientists and business innovators, uniting together to tackle the hardest challenges in science and engineering. Where others see roadblocks, we see an opportunity for applied science. Our team has cracked the code on previously unsolvable textile recycling challenges, busting open doors for even bigger and broader change. https://circ.earth/about-us/

[3] Polycotton is a lightweight widely available fabric, you can get it with prints on but you can also get plain polycotton too. Polycotton is a cheaper alternative to cotton fabrics as it is a blend of both cotton and polyester, natural and synthetic fabrics. Often polycotton fabrics consist of 65% polyester and 35% cotton, but the blend can vary. It combines the breathability of cotton with the durability of polyester. https://www.thesewingdirectory.co.uk/what-is-polycotton/

[4] Read also: https://www.tumblr.com/earaercircular/730359554901180416/patagonia-circular-fashion-and-commitment-to-the?source=share&ref=_tumblr

[5] Read also: https://www.tumblr.com/earaercircular/727074991840067584/lyocell-milk-fibre-and-pineapple-leather-new?source=share&ref=_tumblr

[6] Read also https://www.tumblr.com/earaercircular/706145467107622912/circular-enterprises-what-they-are-and-how-they?source=share&ref=_tumblr & https://www.tumblr.com/earaercircular/653682660781260800/new-amsterdam-port-factory-converts-non-recyclable?source=share&ref=_tumblr

[7] https://www.newschool.edu/parsons/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=TNS_Search_Text_Parsons_Brand&gclid=CjwKCAjwnOipBhBQEiwACyGLuhou9rdHONarRYlt6azTTQMi6DmxSVpV3HdauT0mfvl1Zsj2HxeSkRoChT8QAvD_BwE

[8] PYRATEX® is an R&D company and supplier of natural performance materials. We are experts in the production of fabrics and knitwear made with natural, biobased and recycled compositions. Our supply chain is certified and ensures traceability starting from the fiber, while our localized production minimizes environmental impact. https://www.pyratex.com/

[9] https://marahoffman.com/collections/full-circle

[10] Read also: https://www.tumblr.com/earaercircular/714669369833160704/from-mushroom-to-luxury-handbag-will-fungi-soon?source=share&ref=_tumblr

[11] The Council of Fashion Designers of America, Inc. (CFDA), founded in 1962 by publicist Eleanor Lambert,[2] and headquartered in Manhattan, is a not-for-profit trade association comprising a membership of over 450 American fashion and accessory designers. The organization promotes American designers in the global economy. In addition to hosting the annual CFDA Fashion Awards, the organization develops future American design talent through scholarships and resources in high schools, colleges, and postgraduate schools. The CFDA also provides funding and business opportunities for working designers. Through the CFDA Foundation, the organization supports charitable causes.

[offbranddrpepsi]

Holy crap just how fast do you write? I've been lurking on your blog for the past few days and I noticed that you post 2-3 fics each day and honestly thats amazing (ur the definition of speeedddd) also I'm a big fan of your fics keep up the good work and don't forget to take enough rest!❤️

And if you don't mind me asking, how long does it take you to complete a piece?

It really depends on how in the groove i am for a certain idea/ time frame. For longer pieces (5k+ words typically) it can take any where from 2-6 hours to get the bulk of it however with my chamber long fic that chapter took roughly a collective 8 hours split across like 3 days. HCs/scenario post normally don't take me longer than an hour at most to do simply because i don't have to focus on telling a story but rather explaining a moment. I also really just word vomit then edit later so i don't have to worry too much about grammer, typos, if things make sense, or if a sentence is worded well enough. I also work on multiple fics at a time and editing takes me 30 min-2 hours based on how sleepy/aware i am at the time i also don't have beta readers so it cuts down on time editing, main down side tho is i sometimes miss obvious typos OR fuck up some minor detail. I'm really used to belting out pieces due to roleplaying, when i was in school (my claim to fame being finishing my graduation essay with no need for editing in a day despite having the entire year to work on it), and due to DND. I think typing test wise i range between 55-70 words per minute? Honestly I'm as miffed as all you guys are but I'm glad my speed goes noticed, I'm just some nerd in their 20s who has been writing 98% of their life

[nextraordinaire]

20 questions - writing edition

thank you so much @insertmeaningfulusername for the tag! these are so lovely and fun to do ♡

How many works do you have on AO3?

as of today, 33 on my main account.

What’s your total AO3 word count?

~347k words, of which, roughly ~43k are co-written.

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

three in total. on this account (including pseuds) it's two: X-Men (Alternate Timeline) and Generation Kill

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

1. April

2. Voice Recognition

3. shall never see a password as secure as poetry

4. Settled

5. A Winter in New York

which is a bit funny, because apart from April, those fics are far from what i personally consider my best work. but that only goes to show that sometimes, you don't know your own value (or what the audience appreciates!)

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

i try my very best to leave at least a heartfelt thank you, because i do appreciate each and every person taking their time to comment on my fics. sometimes, those replies can be... three years late? but yeah, better late than never!

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Working your fingers (bare to the bone) or To Spica With Love.

What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

depends on what you consider happy! very few of my fics end badly.

Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the craziest one you’ve written?

i'm not a fan of cross-overs where characters blend, but i have written a hogwarts au (it was back in '15) and a bones au, where only the setting remain and all the characters in the fic are from x-men.

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

once, but it was because i didn't tag for major character death.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

yes. mostly mlm, but also some hetero and threesomes.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not that i know of; probably not big enough of a name for that to happen, i don't think.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

yes, mostly in my tertiary fandom though. one person did give April a try though, and i appreciate the effort so much.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

yes, and currently knee-deep in an au.

What’s your all-time favourite ship?

gotta be cherik; they've been with me for almost a decade now

What’s a WIP you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

i do have this moonrise kingdom au i started back in '14 that i think i can't get back to. but then again, i thought dutch elm disease was going to never see the light of day, and now i've only got half a chapter left, so you never know!

What are your writing strengths?

description: of emotions, landscapes, weather. lyrical and poetic language. melancholy and hitting that bittersweet note.

What are your writing weaknesses?

dialogue. implying but never writing the thing out straight. humour; i can't be purely comical to save my life.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

oof. as a rule, don't like that. only exception is if the author is a native speaker (with english as their second language) and puts the translation in floating boxes.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

x-men: first class took all my fandom virginities

What’s your favourite fic you’ve written?

April, hands down; it's my magnum opus. i truly hit it out of the park with that one. even if there are parts i'd go back and polish now, six years later, it still holds up.

taggees include anyone feeling inclined! consider yourself tagged by me ♡

[rigelmejo]

7/16/2021 - other stuff:

I started translating the simplified print version of Guardian that has additional scenes! I am not sharing it yet, but may in the future at some point. (Notes for future reference: taking a picture in good light with the page flat, depending on if needed upping contrast so its darker/lighter in photos, then opening in OCR in Pleco works pretty well at converting the text to digital so I can make notes and edit and look up words more easily. Also so far 1 page takes 1 hour to translate roughly so keep that in mind ToT).

I am yet again tempted to to a full on Listening Reading Method ‘test run.’ By that I mean: picking a novel, (step 1) reading in english, (step 2) reading in chinese with chinese audio (repeating as needed), (step 3) reading in english with chinese audio (repeating as needed), (step 4) listening to audio only. Yes I’m still debating if I’d do step 3, then step 2 - since I tend to flip which I do first depending on the day. Also debating if I ‘prep’ first by listening only (I could call it step 0). Also still debating if I’d do instead: step 0 listen only, step 1, step 2, step 3, ~step 2 again~, step 4 listen only. Basically I did tiny tests with The Little Prince, and I’ve done 20 chapters of Guardian so far (which did help) but Guardian is so long I end up varying how I do it each day into whatever way gets me TO do it and Guardian is so long it will be months until I know what ‘completing a book’ is like for the process. The original forum creator of L-R Method would do like 3-6 hour books or like 10 hour books. Guardian is... much longer. Also, if I pick a book both harder than The Little Prince (so there’s more vocab to learn) and easier than Guardian (so I can get to a natural listening stage faster) I wonder how much progress I’d make. Right now books I am considering for a ‘test method’ run are: Harry Potter 1 (simply because someone made parallel text with audiobook videos already so it is super convenient to do L-R Method, also the book has  2600 unique characters and 7700 unique words so I would likely reinforce my hanzi knowledge and learn maybe a couple hundred more, and likely increase my vocabulary by several hundred to a couple thousand depending on how much I focus, I’m fairly sure I can blow through it quickly the only limiting factor is like The Little Prince I am not sure if the reading level is low enough that I may not pick up significant amounts of new words compared to how many I pick up from Guardian - https://youtu.be/NLu0JW6VtGM). Sherlock Holmes - The Hound of Baskervilles (the book is 7.5 hours so not nearly as long as Guardian, I could probably L-R Method it in 2 weeks, the novel is written for adults and a mystery genre so genre-words I may find more useful to me while also probably having a bigger vocabulary than The Little Prince,  P74 巴斯克维尔的猎犬 01 audiobook - https://youtu.be/hDKfUjienKA, full playlist of the sherlock audiobooks - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1QFMgv0n_Y&list=PLVyDH2ns1F757P-m8MHckuIFqWapl6y-1, and bilinguis.com has a parallel text which I am checking if it matches the audiobook - http://bilinguis.com/book/baskerville/zh/en/c1/). Bonus, just one day I’d love to test it with Alice in Wonderland in French since bilinguis.com has an audiobook and parallel text - http://bilinguis.com/book/alice/fr/en/c3/. Or Le Francais Par Le Methode Nature, since that also now has audio and text and one day I’d like to finish reading it - https://youtu.be/0uS5WSeH8iM.

Fun fact: I am listening to P74 巴斯克维尔的猎犬 01 (by  知识改变命运 ) in the background right now and the first thing I hear is “qinai watson” my dear watson ok. ok sherlock i see you. ToT. Aside from that I just keep hearing random words I know. If you plan to listen to a chinese sherlock audiobook though - I do recommend this playlist. I’ve found a few sherlock audiobooks and for some the audio is very rough like it was recorded from the radio, whereas this one is fairly clear and the reader speaks very clearly, and has a rhythm to sentences (which for me personally helps me listen easier and parse out words). So if you know some words they are much easier to hear, and if you are looking at the parallel text I linked on bilinguis it is quite easy to follow along. 

I really want to get into the habit of some extensive reading with audiobooks (as in reading while listening) just because it speeds up my reading, and I pick up some words in reading while practicing listening. Its also somewhat doable, whereas just listening I may often get lost unless I know the material well. Last night I read chapter 1 of MoDu while playing the audiobook and following along - obviously I did not read as in depth as if I’d have done L-R Method and looked up all unknown words with pop-up english. But combined listening comprehension and reading comprehension I understood ENOUGH to follow the plot and keep reading, at a faster pace than if I only was extensively reading and at a much better comprehension than if I only listen. (My listening comprehension is a bit better if I’ve read the text beforehand, but that’s sort of artificial since i prepped by reading the text beforehand). Yes, I learn new hanzi better with slower extended reading where I have time to really slow down and look at the new hanzi a lot. But I’d like to aim for quantity of materials read for a while? I’d if simply reading more will help, but a lot of the general advice seems to be the more extensive reading you do where you can follow the main points the more you will improve. And hey, maybe that applies to simply ‘listening a lot more’ too?

A lot of articles I’ve found recently emphasize repeated listening, and I want to try to include that more in how I study. While I might not do it as intensively as some articles suggest, I can definitely continue to do it in Clozemaster and continue playing audiobooks of chapters I’ve read already (so I can follow the audio ok) in my downtime. A LOT of my chinese study lately has not been active, its been mostly just ‘playing audio in the background.’ So since I’m not studying actively much, I might as well try to get in more listening.

I checked out the cdrama Forward Forever recently and opinions: if you understand basic chinese JUST watch it in chinese because wow are the english subs a hot mess ToT. I tried watching with subs and there were so many clear ‘wrong’ portions I just had to turn them off, they were made from google translate though so I’m not super surprised (but Xin Xiao Shi Yi Lang has much more decent auto-generated subs so ToT). I’m not sure if I’ll watch more or not, but I can definitely tell it was adapted from a BL source material with the way the main two guys are immediately set up as characters and then meet. I also want to check out Secret of the Three Kingdoms but I’ve seen like 3 minutes and I already am pretty aware I’ll probably like the show so much that I’ll want to put the english subs on for clarity. Secret of the Three Kingdoms feels Very well made.

If I was gonna try to summarize what my study plan has been this month:  - Listen-Reading Method Guardian (its going fine), with some experiments on the structure of the activity - translate some of Guardian (not really study as I’m pretty familiar w the chapters so just rereading things, mainly its translating practice) - Doing a few random things in japanese: read Guardian in japanese, play japanese video games a little bit, watch japanese-teaching video game example vids a bit (basically more tiny bits of japanese I’d add up to idk under 6 hours? just me glancing at things) - Reading this japanese grammar guide (I’m 1/3 through) - https://sakubi.neocities.org/ - Listen to various chinese audiobooks, with and without text. - Read various chinese chapters, with and without audio. - Listen/Read a bit of French, in Gigafrench (i truly mean a bit like a couple hours), Dracula (just listening) - some Clozemaster japanese, and a tiny bit of Clozemaster chinese (mainly to pick up stuff in japanese, and practice shadowing in both) So - some random chinese stuff reading/listening/L-R Method, some japanese exposure/grammar guide/clozemaster, a tiny bit of French (mainly listening practice). 

[gra-sonas]

Five favorite works in 2020

I wasn’t tagged, but it looked fun, so I’m gonna do it.

Rules: it’s time to love yourselves! choose your 5 (or so) favourite works you created in the past year and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you brought to the world in 2020. tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want.

1 - this Malex gif set with a quote from The Old Guard

2 - this edit of a Vlamburn pic Jeanine shared (the edit is even used as the profile pic of the official Malex playlist on Spotify, so that’s pretty cool!)

3 - A Kiss a Decade in the Making, 5K Malex fic. Alex and Michael are actors. They’re cast for the pilot of a TV show about aliens. They’ll play lovers on the show and have to figure out how to create chemistry in a kissing scene that implies they’ve loved each other for a decade (if this set-up sounds vaguely familiar, you’ve guessed correctly 🙃)

4 - Sweatpants Dick, 3K Malex fic. Ngl, I still think this is the best title for a fic I’ll ever come up with, you can’t imagine how much joy it gives me to receive AO3 notifications stating that XY left kudos on Sweatpants Dick. Yep, I’m 12 years old and this delights me. 

5 - The World will be Different and New, 7.6K Malex fic. My contribution for the Malex Secret Santa exchange. I really struggled writing this (note to self:  don’t sign up for fandom events with a deadline in the middle of a pandemic, your stress levels will be Through. The. Roof 😳) bc my muse is a fickle thing, but I finished it and I’m actually really rather happy with how it turned out. With Vlamis so adamant about making Dads!Malex happen, I even felt inspired to write more in this verse (Just a Couple of Dads Catching a Buzz, 1.2K), and depending on how things go, I might add more in the future.

I wrote a couple more Tumblr ficlets in 2020 (which I will move over to AO3 eventually, sorry that hasn’t happened yet, I’m old and slow and I forgot 🙈), they are all tagged my fic, so I’m not gonna list them separately. There’s some Belmanes in there, also a Michael Sanders ficlet (bc it’s truly the best of Malex AUs, thanks, Lynne!)

~*~

As you can see, I wasn’t overly creative this year. Roughly 20K of Malex is something others post in a month, but like I said, my muse is fickle and writing is hard.

I got recently inspired to write a new fic tho. That one would be longer and probably multi-chaptered (aaaah, why I doing this to myself???). I’m currently mapping the whole thing out - which I’ve never done before for any of my fics, I’m very much a *sits down and writes the damn thing in one go* kinda gal, but since this would be a. more complex story, planning is required to figure out what happens when. Exciting, I hope I’ll get to writing the fic eventually. 🤞

Regardless of my creative shortcomings in 2020, I’d like to thank everyone who’s supported any of my “original” (LOL, if you can call them that) works. Be it by liking/reblogging here on Tumblr, or leaving Kudos or a comment on AO3. I appreciate all the support so much, especially when it comes to my writing. 

As a non native English speaker, I tend to struggle with my writing (A Lot™, on top of the usual “omg this sucks, I can’t write a sentence to save my life 😩” woes comes the added pressure of writing in a language that’s not really my own, very much an imposter syndrome situation tbh), it means the world to me when I get positive feedback. 🥺❤️

Not tagging anyone bc I’m pretty sure everyone else already did this, but if you want to do it and haven’t been tagged yet, I’m tagging YOU specifically. 

[ginger-and-mint]

Happy birthday Myx! 🥳🎂 Have Several questions because I Want To Know Things. ^^; Illness & Injury 6 for everyone, Whump 2 & 3 for everyone, and Writer's 2, 13, 19, and 46 for you!

thank you Mel! ♡ and oh my gosh I’m so delighted by this abundance of questions!

6. What is their go-to remedy for an upset stomach?

Kara and Bramley both like some warmth on unhappy tummy. They’ll make themselves tea, more for the warmth than anything else, and sip it while taking it easy. Kara is likely to get herself a little warm pack too if she can.

Malia tends to go straight for medicine or a tonic. She doesn’t like to be slowed down by her body, and so will opt for whatever she thinks will be most effective in the shortest amount of time.

Si, being a song-mage, was once surrounded by fellow song-mage friends they could ask to cast a stomach-settling healing spell on them. With that option off the table, they'll also look for a fast-acting medicine or tonic.

Grayson and Elliott both try to ignore an upset stomach for a little while in the hopes that it’ll settle. When that fails, Grayson will go get himself a tonic and complain to his friends until it kicks in, while Elliott will either try sitting quietly and sipping on water or tea, or if he can get away, just sleeping it off.

Ryder is knowledgeable enough to take a different approach depending on how upset his stomach is. For something minor, he’ll make himself a digestion-easing tea, like mint or chamomile. If he knows that won’t be effective, he’ll go straight to a tonic. When it’s something he’s eaten that’s not agreeing with him, sometimes he’ll just go make himself throw up to get it out of his system.

2. What is their pain tolerance? Do they close their eyes and block it out, or go into a full blown panic?

Grayson really hates tolerating pain, but if he has to, he can take a lot. Most of the time, he will remove himself from painful situations as quickly as possible and complain bitterly about anything that hurts. But if the chips were down, he would turn out to be a lot tougher than anyone expected.

Bramley is a Sweet Baby and We Do Not Harm Him is not really used to enduring pain and has a low tolerance for it. He would close his eyes and block it out rather than panicking, but not really be able to do anything except sit there and block pain until he was Helped. c’:

Kara is Pure Sunshine and We Do Not Harm Her Either has a pretty high tolerance for acute pain and doesn’t panic about injuries, but she has been known to get faint from them. She’s also easily worn down by chronic discomfort, like being too hot or cold or just having a constant dull ache of some kind.

Malia is the opposite. She can put up with low-key pain or discomfort for a long time, but an acute injury would freak her out a lot more than she’d like to admit.

Ryder has a high pain tolerance on all fronts, honestly. As soon as he feels pain, he looks for a solution to ease it, and if there are none to be had, he’ll grit his teeth and block it out.

Meanwhile, poor dear Si is not great with pain. Song-mages are primarily healers, and so Si is really used to having even little hurts soothed quickly and easily. They don’t panic when in pain, but they do get extremely miserable.

Elliott has a very high pain tolerance when the pain feels within his control; he can power through even the worst headaches or stomachaches, for example. But as soon as the pain feels out of his control (i.e. he gets injured), he panics.

3. How long do they typically take to recover from illness or injury compared to average?

Ryder and Kara, by virtue of Robustness and Being Sensible People who largely take care of themselves when under the weather, are quick to recover.

Grayson and Malia both heal quickly from injuries, but take a little longer with illnesses. With Grayson, it’s more a matter of him not being back to himself until his symptoms are completely gone (he is very much a Man Flu type of guy.) Meanwhile Malia will treat an injury with appropriate care, but is likely to push herself back to full capacity before she’s fully better from an illness, leading to a slower recovery.

As big and strong as Bramley is, he’s actually a little more delicate immune system-wise. He tends to be a slow recoverer, even though he’s good about looking after himself when sick or hurt.

Elliott and Si also tend to have slow and uneven recoveries, but in their cases, it’s due to hooliganery. Si takes good care of themself during the uncomfortable phase of their illness or injury, but as soon as they feel 90% better, they’re eager to leap back into life with their usual zeal. That’s not always a great idea and can lead to them prolonging whatever is afflicting them. Elliott, on the other hand, is just a stubborn idiot who doesn’t take care of himself. He’s particularly bad about this with injuries, often aggravating them and even making them worse because he won’t give them the rest they need to heal.

2.     Are you a pantser or plotter?

Usually I lean more towards plotting, although I do leave a lot of room for the new directions and ideas I know I’ll discover during the process of writing itself. But Ginger and Mint is the big exception -- I started writing it with zero plan whatsoever. I do have an outline for it now, but I was probably eight or nine chapters in before I made it.

While the final product is definitely not as a polished as it would’ve been if I’d planned it from the start, it was honestly super refreshing to not worry and just write. I’ve been trying to bring a little of that experience over into my more serious writing -- it’s so easy to get caught up in plotting and forget to leave room for writing itself to be a generative process.

13.  Describe your writing process from idea to polished

Have idea. Whee!

“Mark out” the things I want to happen in the story or chapter:

I usually do this by writing out short snippets of prose or dialogue related to the ideas I’ve had about each moment. For example, let’s say I know I want a moment where Grayson talks to Ryder. I’d type up a couple lines of dialogue and/or maybe a line about Grayson encountering Ryder and noting what he’s doing or how he’s looking -- whatever’s relevant to the scene. Basically, whatever ideas I have about that scene will be represented in writing in the “mark.”

I have all these marks ordered in the document in the same way the scenes will eventually be chronologically ordered. For me, having visual space is important for my ability to think, so I hit the enter key enough times between the marks that I can see only blank space when I want to work with a certain moment.

Build out each mark until I have a full scene. I do try to go roughly start to finish, but definitely jump back and forth depending on what I’m feeling most inspired by or what my brain seems to be spitting up ideas about. I also skip ahead whenever I feel stuck, which is both a blessing and a curse.

Go back and string the scenes together. Add transitions, fill in any missing pieces, etc.

Re-read the full thing from start to finish and make final edits. Yay, done!

19.  How do you keep yourself motivated?

goooood question fam

I struggle with this as much as the next person (see: 2.5 year G&M hiatus). I haven’t discovered a foolproof method of motivation yet (pls advise if you have), but I do tend to feel inspired whenever something reminds me why I want to write this story. That could be thinking about a scene I’m really excited to share, re-reading a scene that reminds me why I enjoy portraying a certain character or environment -- anything along those lines.

46.  Do you reread your own stories?

Yes, the ones that I like! Some things I’m not particularly proud of and don’t go back to very often, but re-reading pieces of writing I do like helps me feel motivated, inspired, and confident.

[missmaxime]

17! 18! 30! 32! 38! <3 <3 <3

Thank you for these! 🥰 17. How obsessively do you sit and stare at your fic after you’ve just posted and wait for feedback? I don’t. Well, not immediately. I try to distract myself for at least half an hour to an hour after posting because by the time I post I’ve already gone mental from finaFinalreRerereadFiNaldefDEFDEF.def x34 and I need to calm down. But after that I compulsively refresh AO3 (for the Beth/Rio tag) and depending on the time of day I start replying to comments or wait for it until morning. I don’t re-read my own fic until at least the day after (and inevitably fix some v obvs spelling mistakes I got blind for during edits). 18. Do you have a WIP that you keep telling yourself you’ll eventually get back to, but deep down you know that’s probably a lie? A little while ago I would have maybe said Wild at Heart, but I recently started editing the new chapter and now I’m feeling that story again (I got a bit lost with it over season 3, and it’s a long fic I’m not really used to writing – I had no oversight in my notes and outline and ugh). I think when I do publish it might have a bit of a different tone, especially because I think I progressed a lot over the past six months as a writer. But I have by now accepted that I will never re-write those earlier chapters, so I’m just going to move on and continue the story. BTW. If someone can recommend a/their Word Processor to get a better oversight in longer WIPs, please do! There’s no published WIP I won’t get back to from what I see now. I have a few in my WIP-folder that are a lost cause, main reasons are either because I either forgot I wrote it to begin with, or because I don’t like my style or plot anymore. 30. Post a snippet from you’re a current WIP without context - no more than 300 words. From a WIP I definitely won’t abandon, but one that’s also taking me crazy long to write (because world-building):

Annie swallows everything down, but keeps the bowl of candies protectively close to her chest. “I can’t believe they reached out to you twenty years later,” she says, plopping down next to Beth. “I can’t believe they subpoenaed me.” Annie sits up. “Technically they summoned you—” Beth gives her a look that immediately shuts her up. “You know, it’s good they did. They probably got a notification that you got rid of your Dean-shaped baggage and thought: Presto Matcho, and let’s go!” “Maybe I don’t want to be matched up.” “Relax, sis. Just go out on a date, get those cobwebs cleaned out if he’s a seven or up, and move on with your life!” “Annie!” “You’re right, maybe don’t be that picky, make it a six.” Beth’s all fired up to blow a gasket when a man with a bird tattoo sprawled on his neck enters the waiting room, accompanied by a dark-haired woman in a suit. They’re in a heated discussion, going through a pile of papers that’s full of marked segments and bookmarks. Beth’s getting a bit lost in thought, looking at him when she feels Annie leaning her head on her shoulder. “I served him too,” she whispers in Beth’s ear, pulling her back into reality again. “You!” she hears the guy say, pointing at Annie, who immediately throws her hands up in defense, totally forgetting she was holding the candy bowl which immediately tumbles onto the ground, scattering its contents over the floor. “Hey, I’m just here for my sister, don’t come at me bro!” she tries to laugh it nervously away. He doesn’t think it’s funny. But his gaze lingers on Beth a longer time than might be appropriate before turning his attention back to the woman beside him. 32. Copy and paste your top three favorite lines/jokes/sentences you’ve ever written. What fics do they come from? I can have different favorites varying on the week / day. It usually changes when I post a new fic. Sometimes I’m not even super in love with a line when I post it, but it grows on me when I re-read later. So just three random ones: Regardless of his repeat observation of ‘you’re so tight, baby’, she’s definitely not going to indulge him with the Snoozefest Saga of her sex life of the past decade.  – from Stuck in the Middle It’s a decision he almost immediately regrets. Apparently, Elizabeth is very convinced of her (faulty) navigation skills. And mind you, he has an essentially AI-worthy navigation system build into his (“Is this what you drive? Don’t you think it’s a little… out there? Like, surely you don’t really need something so preposterous to arrive in?” she had laughed cutely after that, but he felt slapped in the face – and not the kind he might be paying her for) G-wagon. – from The Girlfriend Experience “Yeah,” he smiles. “We real good friends too, aren’t we?” he says suggestively. (It’s just, he can’t help it, knows it’s dumb and petty but ugh. He’s suffered through Mick’s eye-rolls enough after returning from a No Elizabeth Murder Night again. The other guy casually looking up from polishing his custom ninja throwing stars - don’t start about it, it’s a whole thing, and Rio’s convinced the man can’t even get them into a wall a three feet away if he wears that one jacket - waiting for Rio to cock his head and ask: “What?” “Nothing,” he had replied, dipping a cloth into the jar of polish. “’Nothing’?” Rio had repeated – a little more petulant than he intended. “What are you, my wife?” Ever so slowly, the corners of Mick’s mouth had turned upwards. “Heard spot’s taken.” Rio may have keyed Mick’s car that night.) Beth smiles back stiffly. - from I See Your True Technicolors I don’t know, I really like doing these kinda scene-in-scene (or sentence) things, I don’t know if this has a name. 38. What does your writing process look like? How chaotic is it on a scale of 1 (very tame) to 10 (you can’t handle this kind of chaos)? Hmm that kind of depends what part of the process we’re talking about. Let’s roughly break that up in three parts: 1. Working out the idea (8/10): Really, really chaotic. This is just days or weeks of just flashes of ideas and plotpoints and lines of dialogue shooting through my brain. Haphazardly writing those down in various docs, on paper in between my work notes, or in the notes on my phone. When I finally know the rough outline of the story I go into; 2. Writing the fic (4/10): I’m a super chronological writer, I really move from scene A to B to C until I finally arrive at Z. But when I start writing I often only really know A, D, E, J, O, Q, Z – the rest will just grow or appear organically as I write. Sometimes it does mean I won’t write for a few days because I circle back to step 1 for a certain scene. A good example is the Artic Hunter Fairytale Beth tells Jane in Chapter 2 of  I See Your True Technicolors. I knew up front I was going to write a scene where we would see how this seemingly unweighted moment for Beth – she’s just telling a nighttime story – had a massive impact on Jane. There were some themes and motives I felt like needed to make an appearance: the more tangible reason of Jane’s quest, how young kids often hold their parents’ word as truth, and I needed it to be a true heartfelt moment between Beth and Jane. But before I wrote the first line of that scene I had no idea that would be the scene that it became.  So I do outline a bit, but I need to create enough room for myself for moments like that to happen. It’s one of the things I enjoy most about writing. It’s a bit of an organized mess within a tighter frame/outline. 3. Editing (7/10): I’ve really been perfecting my Editing skills over the past 6/7 months  – it’s not perfect, but you live and you learn. I spend more time working on the fic after I ‘finished’ it, really ramped up the spelling and grammar checks (I love you Word editor, but I also hate you), and take more and more care to make sure that all my dialogue feels IC ánd distinctive enough per character (especially the latter I feel like lacks in earlier WAH chapters). So, work in progress, but I feel pretty confident in this one.   Again, thanks for sending these! <3

[rhetoricalrogue]

all 10 for the writer asks 💕

THANK YOU!

1. How do you approach worldbuilding (if it’s an AU) or research (if it’s an established canon)?

I usually make some preliminary notes if it’s an AU on what main sort of things I would like to have happen, for example, looking up fashion trends, top music hits, and some sort of big current event that an everyday person would be aware of.  Then I’d sort of spiderweb out (80s AU: who wore popped collars and khaki shorts? Which character from this fandom would fit that? Who would throw a watch party for Luke and Laura’s wedding or talk endlessly about who really shot JR? If these characters were going through a recession and changing politics, how would they react? What sort of jobs would they have and/or be getting laid off from? Is there a chance to have a Mr. Mom character?) to form the meat of the story’s details.  Of course, this means going through research rabbit holes and spending hours finding things that I only use for a throwaway line, but that’s usually the way it is.

For established canon research, I’m usually pulling up Wikis, looking up fansites for details, checking out maps or guides to remember plotline specific missions, or pulling the old reliable “Oh NO. I have to play/read/watch this thing AGAIN. WhatEVER shall I do?”

2. What do you do to understand the characters better and get into their head space?

I usually pull out those boring party icebreaker type questions and throw them at the characters. I”ll also make playlists or moodboards and just list out random little personality facts and character quirks until things start to take shape.

3.  How long do you usually spend writing a chapter? (considering only the actual hours you spend writing/typing!)

Actually typing? It depends on how much free time I have. A chapter/one-shot normally takes a week or two total to write during a busy work week, or roughly anywhere from 8-10 hours on a weekend if I have uninterrupted time and energy to focus on something for a solid block of time.  Lately the norm has been 5-10 minutes here and there pecking on my phone at a rough idea so that whenever I do have time set aside to write, I’ll already have most of the main idea laid out, even if it’s full of [insert big, dramatic scene here] or [LET THEM KISS] notes to myself in the middle of actual written paragraphs.

4. How does your writing happen? Do you visualize scenes playing out in your head, or do they come out in words as you type?

Usually I’ll have an extremely vague idea on where I would like the story to go and then keep everything as flexible as possible in case characters decide to go out onto left field and start doing their own thing. Sometimes I’ll have a very set “this is how I want the story to end” and sometimes it’ll just...stop all on its own. The middle parts are usually the most difficult to pin down, but what I’ll usually do is write until I get stumped, make an [IDEK where this is going, future!me, help!] note for myself, and then move on to another part. Eventually, I’ll get to a point where I can tie things together, or if I can’t, then I can decide if I want to keep going with the story as-is, or if I want to cut and paste what I have to salvage for something else later and then start fresh. If I’m stumped, I’ll read back what I’ve read and try to visualize what’s happening as a scene in a movie to troubleshoot what’s not flowing correctly for me.

5. How long do you spend editing each complete chapter/story?

It depends! If I’m pressed for time (or if I’m tired of writing and just want to be done) then I’ll spend about 15-20 minutes. I usually regret that time frame because I’ll hit Post and then find so many typos or half-finished sentences and whole paragraphs I wish that I would have structured differently!  Normally, if I’m not working on deadlines, I’ll finish writing and then let a day or two pass, maybe even a week, for me to forget details and then I’ll spend an hour reading through it with a fresh set of eyes to catch inconsistencies or grammatical errors.

6. When you write emotional scenes, do you feel what the characters are feeling?

Sometimes? I mean, if you’re asking if I’ve ever made myself cry writing something, then the answer is yes.  Then I usually go wail in a mutual’s messages because if I have to feel all the things, they do too. That’s the rules.

7. To you, what is the most important part of writing a romantic relationship?

Building on mutual trust and respect and then showing little intimate moments, like Character A remembering what Character B’s favorite food from this one place is so they can surprise them when they know they’re having a rough day or Character B leaving little hearts in the steamed up bathroom mirror for Character A to find when they get out of the shower, that sort of thing.

A relationship is not all sunshine and rainbows. Writing them having arguments and disagreements, but then understanding the other’s stance and coming to a compromise or apologizing. Having them work together to solve a problem.

Making their relationship a part of them, but not the end all, be all of their characters. They’re whole characters unto themselves, a relationship just so happens to be a facet of who they are instead of the linchpin of their personalities. Making them “Significant Other of Character A” and not elaborating on who they are when they’re not with Character A makes them flat, IMO.

8. What are three things you’re proudest of when it comes to your writing? Dialogue, descriptions, humour, romantic fluff, kisses, action, pacing, worldbuilding, setting, anything! Even small things like sentence structures and the way your characters banter counts!

Answered here

9. What are three weaknesses in your writing that you’re very aware of, that you’d like to spend time working on to improve your works?

Action scenes, especially fight scenes

Working on taking more time to edit and catching things before posting

Trying to plot longer multi-chapter stories with arcs instead of one-shots

10. If you were to visit your past self now and give them a piece of writing advice, what would that advice be?

Answered here, but what the hell, here’s another one: don’t be afraid to reach out to fic writers or fan artists that you admire. 9 times out of 10, you’re going to find that the people that you’ve been too intimidated to talk to were just as nervous about talking to you too and there’s a possibility of making new friends.

[shinylitwick94]

Finished “The Way of Kings”, by Brandon Sanderson, first in the Stormlight Archive.

I liked it, but the things that annoy me about the way Sanderson writes didn’t magically stop annoying me. Go figure.

Warning: Spoilers ahead for the whole book! And very long post!

Dislikes:

1. This book is far, far too long.

It’s 1000 pages long and...not much happens. It’s mainly worldbuilding and setup for future books. A few things do happen, of course, but they’re mostly concentrated at the end of the book. Almost nothing happens in the entire middle portion.

It depends on the POV characters of course, but really, you could remove almost half of it and have a better book. Dalinar’s story is the only one where I feel you wouldn’t have to cut out much. Shallan could easily be 1/3 shorter. And in Kaladin’s case you could (and IMHO opinion should) remove half of it.

Kaladin’s story in particular I found was repetitive and dragged down the pace of the book. You could remove or condense half of those small incidents and still keep the story. Same for his flashbacks. You could have had 1 flashback or maybe 2, and still keep the same elements, instead of what felt like 20.

I’ve had this complaint about a lot of other fantasy books (Wheel of Time, Malazan, Memory, Sorrow, Thorn, even ASOIAF...), but the fact is that the genre is far too willing to tolerate barely edited 500+ page monstrosities. Yes, sometimes it’s justified, but most of the time it’s really not. This didn’t bother me as much when I was a 12 year old with nothing else to do, but as an adult, having to push through 500 pages of fluff to get to a story pisses me off.

To contrast, as usual when I complain about this, the entirety of LOTR is also roughly a thousand pages long. Frodo went to Mordor and back in the time it took Kaladin to get out of Sadeas’ warcamp.

2. I have multiple issues with Sanderson’s writing.

Two major problems here: repetitiveness and action scenes too detailed for my taste.

Sometimes both at the same time.

By which I mean stuff like this:

“Ten heartbeats after the passing of the guards, Szeth Lashed himself to the wall. That direction became down for him, and he was able to run up the side of the stone fortification. As he reached the top, he leaped forward, then briefly Lashed himself backward. He spun over the top of the wall in a tucked flip, then Lashed himself back to the wall again. He came down with feet planted on the stones, facing the ground. He ran and Lashed himself downward again, dropping the last few feet”

(quote thing not working, so italics it is)

This sort of paragraph makes my eyes bleed. And Sanderson’s action scenes are unfortunately always full of this stuff. This was the primary thing that made me decide not to continue with Mistborn and was also the thing that made me drop this book the first time, because the first chapter is like this.

Basically what happens here is that Sanderson really likes his worldbuilding and his magic. So he feels the need to beat you over the head with them again and again and again and again.

It’s most noticeable in action scenes like this, and granted I’m not super fond of action in the first place and tend to skim it,  but it also happens in regular prose, since he also apparently thinks his readers have the attention span of a goldfish and so repeatedly explains something he already explained three chapters ago.

In the first ten chapters I felt like he taught me how spheres worked a good 4-5 times.

It just makes me feel like I’m going through a forced tutorial and being treated like a child. FFS trust that your readers can pick up on stuff on their own.

From what I’ve seen a lot of people actually like this overexplaining BS, so it’s clearly a matter of taste, but it sure as hell isn’t to my taste.

Things I’m neutral on:

Characters

The characters land themselves in neutral because while there are some very good ones (hi Dalinar!), most of them are just kind of meh.

Looking at our POV characters, I’d class both Shallan and Kaladin as meh. They’re interesting enough, but not really captivating to read. Just very standard archetypal characters. Nothing wrong with them, but also nothing stands out.

Dalinar and maybe Szeth are the only POV that I really enjoyed as characters on their own.

The secondary cast is fine, with some characters I really liked (Navani, Jasnah, Sadeas - yes, I know, I’ll get to that in a second) and a lot of others that were just ok.

Bridge Four for me falls into this last category. I mentioned in an earlier post that this part of the plot brings to mind Spartacus, Gladiator and now that I think about it even prison movies. Essentially things where an heroic main character is dumped in with a group of dispirited hopeless men and tries to do something with them, which is Kaladin’s whole story here. More importantly, the characters in Bridge Four also largely follow the archetypes for this kind of setting - you have the Gentle Big Guy, the Clever Guy, the Guy Who Does Not Trust The Hero, The Unexpectedly Cultured Guy, The Old Veteran, etc.

Which at the end of the day meant I had trouble connecting to bridge four because I couldn’t look past the archetypes.

To get back to Sadeas - he’s introduced as such an obviously evil character that I really hoped he’d turn out to be something else up until the very end. It would have been far more interesting to have him be a genuine if rahter unscrupulous rival than a very boring, very predictable traitor. This hope is what made me like him so much at first. Alas, it was not to be.

Things I liked:

1. Worldbuilding

Of course.This is what Sanderson is best at and it really shines through here.

Roshar is massively detailed at every level and Sanderson makes sure his big choices regarding the world’s setup are reflected in both the natural world and the societies he creates.

I loved the focus on the natural world, in particular. It’s an aspect that most other fantasy authors don’t usually devote a lot of time to, but Sanderson clearly loves it.

Forget adaptations - I’d kill for an Attenborough-esque documentary on Roshar’s fauna and flora!

The worldbuilding feels a little bit shallower when it comes to peoples and societies, but really this is just nitpicking on my part, it’s great overall.

2. Plot

The plot itself is pretty interesting, even if the pacing could use some improvement.

I particularly liked Dalinar’s part, and Shallan’s once it actually picks up speed.

The ending was also very intense and a lot of fun to read, with what I felt was a good mix of action and big reveals.

Honestly, regardless of my complaining above, I enjoyed this book and had a great time reading it. It’s fun, it just takes a while to get there. And I will be picking up the rest of the series eventually.

For me it’s a solid 4 stars.

As for recommending this, I’d say it’s good for people who already enjoy fantasy a bit, are looking for something completely different and don’t mind a slow start. Oh, and people who want a series that is ongoing but very likely to be finished in a timely manner. Sanderson delivers when it comes to his writing. No Martin/Rothfuss surprises here.

[igotablankpage]

Working with beta readers #2

Preparation and goals

Last week I spoke about the importance of working with beta readers (read it here,) and what they do. This week, I want to show you how to prepare your manuscript, and setting goals for your beta readers.

Format

It's your choice on whether or not you do this, but I always ask my beta readers which format they would prefer the manuscript in. PDF, googledocs, .doc etc. They are doing me a favour, so the easier I can make it for them, the better.

Of course, this depends entirely on what writing tools you have access to. You may decide that you will only use one format for everyone. But you need to ensure that every beta reader is okay with the format chosen. Some people may not have access to one, or more.

I also make sure that the manuscript is double spaced. This makes it easier to read, and to make comments, especially in google docs.

Beta goals and deadlines

The most important thing you need to do is ensure your beta readers are aware of the goals and deadlines you have for your manuscript. Try to avoid ‘there’s no set deadline,’ or ‘as soon as you can,’ because that could suggest to the beta reader to take as long as they like- and ultimately forget. (Not to say that this will happen, but why risk it?)

You may have an idea of what aspects of your novel needs work, or you might not. Every writer is different after all. But if you have any areas you specifically want your beta readers to pay attention to, you need to let them know. Whether it's looking for plot holes, character arcs and likeability, or setting and tension.

Some beta readers will dive right in and do some really detailed reading, picking up on things you may not have even thought about. Others may only read on the surface. The quality of comments you'll get is something you don't know until you get them.

And speaking of comments, make sure your betas are aware of what type of comments you're looking for. You want your beta's to critique where they think you're weak, and praise where they think you're strong. It's important that they explain why they didn't like something, not just that they didn't like it. Yes/no/maybe answers aren't helpful to you. Believe me.

Now, some beta's won't pay attention to this- they'll answer 'no,' regardless of what type of comments you've asked for. They'll give negative critique without any explanation as to why. It happens. And if it does, it's imperative you contact them to see if they can elaborate.

Types of feedback

In my experience there are two ways beta readers can give feedback- through in line comments on the manuscript itself, or by answering a short questionnaire at the end. How you want your feedback relayed is up to you, although I find that using both gives a wider range of comments and critique to use.

In line comments tend to be shorter, which isn't a bad thing. It lets the reader get their thoughts out straight away on any issues they have, or ask questions on anything confusing or may need clarification. Be wary, as some betas will line edit (which is where they make changes to how you've written something,) or grammar edit (where they'll pick up on any grammar issues,) which is something you don't want them doing- that's not their job.

Questionnaires are where you can ask specific questions relating to plot and character for the betas to answer. Was the protagonist's motivation clear throughout the novel? Were there any unanswered plot threads? Did the magic system make sense to you? And so on and so forth. It's where you can question every weak spot you feel you have, and hopefully get some detailed answers. An 'any other thoughts,' question can let the beta's detail any other issues they have, that you haven't already asked about.

Sending the manuscript

It seems a little silly, but I will always reiterate when I send the manuscript that it is a volunteer, unpaid position. There are some people out there who professionally beta read- they charge you for their services. So make sure your betas are aware to avoid any issues further down the line.

How you send your manuscript is up to you. Most people will send a few chapters each week. Some may send the entire manuscript. Do whatever works for you, but make sure you're not giving your beta's too much work- they do have their own lives after all.

The first time I sent out Nephilim to beta readers, I sent the entire manuscript with a five week deadline. It worked, but the wait for the questionnaires was long.

The second time I did a beta session, I separated my manuscript into Acts 1, 2, and 3, with a total 8 week deadline. 2 weeks each for Acts 1 and 3 (roughly 10 chapters each,) and Act 2 with four weeks, (with 18 chapters.)

This meant I could start working on Act one revisions while my beta's were reading Act 2 and so on. This worked well for me, so it's how I'll keep doing my beta sessions going forward.

In part three. we'll talk about how to deal with the feedback you receive, and how to make it useful.

Good thoughts and happy writing!

[aurum-auri]

State of the Aurumvirate

Just a little update for all my followers!! You’ll notice I’ve been a little more active lately. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep this up, because I’m really inspired lately :D 

Anyway, below the cut, you’ll find the current plan of attack for the next few months. This plan is subject to change depending on a variety of factors, including your own feedback, but it is roughly an outline of how I intend to devote my writing time. 

Get to the last item on the list for a special surprise announcement ;)

Priority 1: finishing the first half of the prompts from the extravaganza, leaving the remaining half to post between each subsequent thing I finish. I’m trying to shave the length on these down to get to them in a more timely manner but sometimes the muse strikes and I get carried away. We’ll see how it goes! Many of these are related to AEOM ;)

Priority 2: finishing a few wips I have laying around. I have at least three that have half-written chapters and need only a few thousand words more and some editing to post. I would like to wrap those up and get them out very soon. 

Priority 3: another piece for the chase series, which is roughly outlined and will likely be about as long as the other pieces. 

(hopefully by this time I’ll have more prompts finished becaaauuusseee)

Priority 4:  a new long fic! That’s right! I’ve got another long fic in the works, which I will start as soon as I tie up a few loose ends on some other things. While this won’t be aeomverse, I do intend to tie up that particular fic through a few fics I’ll post while this fic is updating. Stay tuned, I’ll be dropping hints about this new behemoth I’m planning ehehehehe.

Important things to note! 

I am exactly that kind of person who has six documents open at once to bounce between. I’m saving a handful of prompts to continue working on as I post the half-finished wips so if your prompt has not been posted yet, please continue being patient with me! I promise I’ll get to all the prompts in due time. 

Thank you all for sticking with me and I hope I can continue to write pieces for you to enjoy  🙏🙏💖💖💖

[analogscum]

SCUM IN THE AISLES #4 (The House That Jack Built: Unrated Director’s Cut)

Sometimes, in order to seek out the weirdest discarded slices of celluloid trash that cinema has to offer, one must leave the confines of their crappy apartment, and go to an actual movie theater. This is a column recounting my excursions into the b-movie wilds. This is Scum in the Aisles!

PART 1: ANTICIPATION

“You’ve all bought tickets for a Lars von Trier film, so you know what you’re getting yourselves into.”

With this, Justin Timms, the founder of the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, and our host for this evening in a dark and chilly corner of Greenpoint known as the Film Noir Cinema, ceded the floor to the film we had all gathered to experience, The House That Jack Built. A two and a half hour art house serial killer epic by perhaps the most controversial filmmaker alive. A film that prompted both mass walkouts (anywhere between a dozen and a hundred people, depending on who you ask) and a ten minute standing ovation when it premiered out of competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. A film which has since been decried as a gruesome, sadistic, mean-spirited slog by some, and praised as a beautiful, self-reflexive act of provocation by others.

Timms, for his part, had just seen the film for the first time along with the crowd from the first screening of the evening, and he looked positively shell-shocked. All around me, the crowd buzzed with nervousness and excitement. What sort of celluloid horrors awaited us? Would we be able to stomach what was splayed up on the screen? Would cinema’s angry Danish trickster god once again succeed in getting under our skin and raising our cockles? Or had his flagellations, both towards himself and the audience that improbably keeps coming back (myself included), grown tired and stale?

Our host had claimed that we knew what we were getting ourselves into simply by showing up to watch a Lars von Trier film…but did we?

PART 2: SYNOPSIS

The House That Jack Built follows Jack (Matt Dillon, turning in a career best performance) over roughly twelve years of a very eventful life. Jack lives somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, he’s an engineer who dabbles in architecture on the side. He comes from a wealthy family; his inheritance allows him to buy a large plot of land by a picturesque lake and build his titular house. However, what Jack really loves, his true passion in life, is annihilating other human beings. Jack is not just A serial killer, he is THE serial killer. Dude makes Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy, both of whose real life exploits are alluded to via Jack’s activities in the film, look like slouches.

As von Trier likes to do, the film is divided into five chapters and an epilogue. The five chapters are each devoted to a specific murder out of the nearly hundred he commits that is supposed to make us understand why Jack does what he does. I’ll get to the epilogue later, because I have FEELINGS about it. Similarly, as von Trier also likes to do, Jack narrates these chapters in the form of a confession, in this case to a man named Verge (Bruno Ganz). With the first two chapters, von Trier catches us off guard by deploying humor. Aside from the violence, which is indeed quite brutal, von Trier manages to wring genuine laughs out of the absurdity of these situations. In the first chapter, Uma Thurman plays a rich woman with a flat tire who is so unpleasant and annoying that you can’t help but root for Jack to kill her. In the second chapter, Siobhan Fallon Hogan makes the mistake of believing Jack when he knocks on her door, first pretending to be a policeman, then incredulously switching gears and pretending to be an insurance salesman, before a comedy of errors involving Jack’s cleanliness-based OCD, a very annoyed local cop, and a telltale trail of blood ensues. The audience I saw it with tonight ate these moments up, partially laughing at the jokes themselves, then perhaps doubling down when we realized how inappropriate it was to be laughing in the first place.

However, the laughs quickly dried up once chapter three began. This chapter involved the shooting of children, and was the focus of much of the ire directed at the film after Cannes. Indeed, especially in a post-Sandy Hook world, the violence in this section was almost unbearable. Aside from seeing children gunned down in graphic detail, Jack then conducts some, shall we say, amateur taxidermy with one of the corpses, making for the second time in two films that von Trier has given us the nightmare image of a child with a horrifying rictus smile (shoutouts to the baby from Nymphomaniac Vol. II). Chapter four details the gruesome fate of Jack’s one and only girlfriend, played by Riley Keough. Von Trier ratchets up the tension here to near intolerable levels, foreshadowing a horrific act of mutilation a good ten minutes before it happens, and then showing it up close, in nauseatingly graphic detail. Most of the audience, myself included, watched this scene through our fingers.

Now, very quickly, I’ll say that, yes, for most normal moviegoers, the violence in this film will definitely be a lot. But speaking as a connoisseur of horror movies and weirdo genre experiments, it wasn’t anything outside of the ordinary. In fact, I found the violence in Antichrist to be way more upsetting and visceral than most of what you see in this film.

Chapter five sees Jack conducting a gristly experiment in his industrial freezer involving full metal jacket bullets. He also picks up a spiffy red hooded robe. This is where we catch up with the beginning of the film, and see Verge for the first time. As it turns out, Verge is here to chaperone Jack to the fires of Hell. This is where the Epilogue kicked off, and where the audience, myself DEFINITELY included, started to get a bit antsy. I seem to recall an old maxim that goes something like, you can do anything to an audience aside from bore them. Well, unfortunately, I found this Epilogue to be almost unbearably boring. Aside from some stunning imagery, it was mostly tedious and pretentious, straining for some sort of higher message that was just unnecessary. If I had to sum it up in one sentence, it would be: Tarkovsky by way of Tim and Eric. Normally that would be a compliment coming from me. All the pretty pictures in the world means nothing if the audience is reaching for their coats.

PART 3: INTENTIONS

So what is von Trier trying to tell us with all of this madness? What does he want us to take with us once we leave the theater? If you follow his filmography, it’s not a big scoop to say that von Trier’s most recent work, starting with Antichrist and continuing through Melancholia and the Nymphomaniac films, have been somewhat autobiographical, sort of his version of State of the Union addresses. The House That Jack Built feels like the culmination of this stage of his career. In this film, von Trier puts himself on trial, with Dillon’s Jack as his surrogate. Just like with the Nymphomaniac films, there are many, many, MANY flowery, pseudo-philosophical digressions on a number of topics, accompanied by slides and bits of archival video (I’ll bet someone out there is kicking themselves for ever having introduced von Trier to Shudderstock), including the poetry of William Blake, photography, love, deer hunting, gothic architecture, and Glenn Gould. One especially epic digression finds Jack opining on dessert wines, the Third Reich architect Albert Speer, and finally the artistic integrity of von Trier’s own cinematic oeuvre, complete with clips from his previous films. Ballsy, no?

I would be lying to you if I said I understood everything that von Trier was trying to convey with these digressions. However, it is definitely clear to me that this film is meant to function as sort of a statement to the jury in the court of public opinion. Von Trier has always put himself at the forefront of his films more so than most directors, displaying his name alongside, or sometimes above his actors (hell, for this film, he even devoted an entire poster to himself). This, of course, means we the audience tend to read his films as glimpses into its maker’s psyche more than we would for most other directors, which is not entirely fair in my opinion, but it’s a blessing and a curse that von Trier has brought on himself. So what does he want us to understand about himself after we’ve seen The House That Jack Built? It seems to be something along the lines of, yes, every awful thing you’ve said about me is true, and you could never hate me as much as I hate myself, but I only answer to a higher power. Which, yeah, ok...but is that enough? Or, to put it more succinctly, is that even that interesting of a conclusion? We’ve now sat through nearly ten hours of von Trier’s cinematic therapy sessions over the last decade, and he basically ends it all by pulling a Tupac on us: only God can judge me.

PART 4: MISANTHROPY

The best and most succinct description of von Trier’s modus operandi as an artist that I’ve yet to hear comes from the excellent YouTube movie review show Welcome to the Basement. During their most recent episode, while giving a (largely negative) critique of Dogville, co-host Matt Sloan describes von Trier as “a provocateur that has the talent to back it up.” Indeed, if von Trier was entirely the sum of his detractors claims, then he would’ve been forgotten a long time ago. He does indeed have the cinematic bonafides, and they don’t let him down here: the camerawork in this film is gorgeous and intimate, the editing is kinetic and fast-paced, and as usual von Trier knows just how and when to perfectly deploy a pop song for maximum disarmament.

The most resounding jibe against von Trier is that he is a raving misogynist, due to the almost ludicrously awful levels of suffering that he puts his female protagonists through. For his part, von Trier has defended himself in the past by saying he is actually fighting against the patriarchy by showing the awful trials that women must endure in a society run by men. It’s a fair, if slightly dubious claim. Personally I’ve always been kind of dumbfounded that we seem to hold von Trier to these moral standards based on the fates of his fictional characters that we just don’t with other directors. What makes him an exception in this case? Wes Anderson and Yorgos Lanthimos depict gruesome animal deaths left and right in their films, but does anyone legitimately think that they hate pets? However, when it comes to The House That Jack Built, I cannot and will not defend von Trier against these accusations of misogyny. Almost none of the female characters in the film are even given a name, and the one exception, Keough’s “Jaqueline Simple,” is derided constantly by Jack and called stupid because of her last name. It becomes especially stark and uncomfortable when, at one point, Verge observes that the women Jack has discussed strike him as “unbelievably stupid,” as if they somehow deserved to die because of that. Jack just shrugs and says that he also killed men, but he just so happened to choose these stories of killing women “at random.” Mhmmm. Not buying it this time, bucko.

Then again, you could argue that, since this story is told from the perspective of a man who unapologetically murders women in the most gruesome and debasing of ways, it would be dishonest or nonsensical to show them otherwise. But that brings up a whole other can of worms: what does it say about von Trier himself that he seems to seriously identify with a mass murderer? At one point, the film alludes to, and seemingly tries to make excuses for, the infamous press conference following Melancholia’s Cannes premiere during which von Trier compared himself to and jokingly sympathized with Hitler, an act of provocation which earned him an unofficial “ban for life” from the festival (obviously this did not last). And perhaps I’m reading too much into this, but the scene where Jack experiments with killing multiple people at once with a single full metal jacket bullet reminded me of a director at work, setting up his shot, changing the angle, making sure everything is just right, except in this instance, the camera is replaced with a high powered military grade rifle. Jack does remark at multiple times throughout the film that he sees his killings as a sort of art. Does von Trier relate to this sentiment? Does he see the creation of art as an act of love, as Verge does, or more like Jack, as an act of decay and degradation? I’m guessing more the latter than the former.

PART 5: DAMNATION

As good as Sloan’s summation of his modus operandi on Welcome to the Basement was, I have my own go-to log line: von Trier’s story is the story of a man who got everything he wished for, but was still miserable. For the first part of his career, von Trier was determined to an almost psychotic degree to be seen as one of the great auteurs of cinema. Anyone who didn’t agree was the fucking enemy. When his 1991 film Europa, which was up for the Palme d’Or at Cannes, won the Jury Prize instead, von Trier lashed out, calling that year’s jury president, Roman Polanski, “the midget” during his acceptance speech, and later hurled his trophy into the French Riviera in anger. But then his luck began to change. His next film to play in competition, 1996’s Breaking the Waves, won the Grand Prix and was nominated for an Oscar, and 2000’s Dancer in the Dark finally won him his long sought after Palme d’Or. After years of angrily bashing the world cinema establishment over the head with his own inflated opinion of himself, von Trier was finally one of the most respected and discussed filmmakers of the day.

The thing is, once you’re on top, there’s only one way you can go. He never finished his proposed “Land of Opportunities” trilogy, completing only the first two installments, Dogville and Manderlay, both of which were met with mixed to negative reviews. Von Trier soon found himself spiraling into depression and alcoholism, twin demons that he has wrestled with cinematically over the course of the last decade. It would not surprise me if The House That Jack Built was von Trier’s final film. On one hand, it feels like the thesis statement, the grand summary, of what he’s been trying to say with all of his films. On the other hand, in recent interviews, the guy just looks terrible. He’s frail, he’s got the tremors, his hair is unwashed and ratty and his clothes look ill-fitting and dirty. Despite getting sober not long after the Melancholia press conference debacle, it’s clear that alcohol abuse has taken quite a toll on him. Perhaps its gauche and inappropriate to speculate from afar on von Trier’s mortality, but he’s already done it himself, by making The House That Jack Built.

EPILOGUE: FUTILITY

Now that I’ve reached the end of this jeremiad of a review, I have to wonder, what was it all for? You’ve probably already made up your mind about whether or not you’re going to see this film. You’ve probably already got a very strong opinion on Lars von Trier, both the man and his work. Some of you are probably judging me for even having paid money to see this film, which is your right. Odds are, whatever you think about this filmmaker and his films are not going to be swayed either way by anything I have to say. And even if you did want to experience The House That Jack Built like I did, you can’t: last night was the only night that von Trier’s “Unrated Director’s Cut,” the one that screened at Cannes, is going to be shown in theaters (a stunt that has apparently landed IFC Films in hot water with the MPAA), before an R-rated version is released next month. Was this a shameless promotional ploy? Yes. Did it still give us weirdo cinephiles the feeling that we were part of a super naughty super secret club? Absolutely. I didn’t know anyone in that dark and chilly corner of Greenpoint, but I feel connected to them for life, since we all went through this cinematic journey to Hell together. So, then, now that we’ve descended into the flames, how to describe The House That Jack Built? It is vibrant and stuffy and brilliant and maddening and hilarious and terrifying and pretentious and vulnerable and prescient and infuriating and awful and a masterpiece. In other words, it is a Lars von Trier film. You know what you’re getting yourself into.

[gsasustainability]

Mycelium Making

Alison Piper, MLitt Fine Art Practice

Alison's 2021 Postgraduate Digital Showcase

 How might an artist showcase a moving image work out with the safe confines of a cinematic screen? 

It was important to me that I spent time during stage three of my MLitt Fine Art Practice ¬considering how my work as an artist filmmaker might develop in an exhibition setting, and how I might show films out with the safe confines of a cinematic screen. With my expanding interest in the aesthetics of the natural world, I attended the GSA Sustainability Symposium in early July and was bewitched by the rough texture and creamy tones of mycelium sculptures, showcased by Iain Findlay of The Aurora Sustainability Group, who has a workshop on site at GSA’s Highland Campus in Forres.

The next day, I contacted Iain and Marianne from the campus at Forres and organised a workshop to get hands-on experience making mycelium, with the intention of moulding a surface that my films could project on to.

With the support of GSA Sustainability who funded 50% of the cost, I organised a small bespoke workshop for this purpose and spent a week at the highland campus working with Iain.

I invited other students to get involved and was lucky to be joined by Theo Stevenson, a 3rd year undergraduate painting student from the School of Fine Art, who had an interest in working with sustainable materials.

#1 PREPARING & GROWING

We began with a 20KG bag of hemp shiv shavings and prepared the hemp substrate in a large mixing tub by adding water. We aimed to reach a required moisture content of 60% and periodically checked the moisture content by taking 100g and steaming the moisture down on a hob, aiming for the weight of the substrate to settle at 40g. 

Next, the prepared substrate material is divided into specially designed mushroom grow bags and sterilised in an autoclave. It took two runs of the steriliser unit, and each run takes 2-3 hours, so this was by no means a quick process. One of our batches was sterilised at 100°C and one pasteurised at 80°C

We then lifted the autoclave (a bit heavy pot, about 25KG fully loaded) into the room with the Laminar Flow (LAF) Unit.

Once they had cooled, the substrate bags were removed from the autoclave and placed in the laminar flow unit, so that once the bags were opened, they were only exposed to sterile air. At this point we wore Tyvek suits, gloves, and sterilised our hands with IPA whenever we touched the mushroom bags. We were not doing this to protect ourselves, but to protect the mycelium from contaminants on our skin.

The next step of the process was to inoculate the hemp substrate with mushroom grain spawn that Iain had prepared in advance. The process for growing grain spawn involves inoculating a grain like rice or barley with agar, and is a similar process to growing mycelium by inoculating hemp with grain spawn. The inoculation involved pouring the grain spawn into each bag, and (to use the technical terms) shoogling, squeezing, and manipulating the bag to spread the grain spawn down the edges so that it will grow evenly into the entire hemp substrate.

Finally, we sealed the mushroom bags with a heat-sealer. At this point the substrate is protected from contaminants and the bags can be removed from the LAF. Mycelium grows in the dark and so it’s important to find a dark space for the mushroom bags to sit at room temperature and with a level of humidity, (fruiting conditions). We put the bags in an unplugged fridge and left them overnight for two nights.

And so, two days later, already I could see the mycelium beginning to grow and spread out into the hemp substrate. I travelled back to Glasgow and kept the fourteen bags of mycelium in my airing cupboard for a further seven days, spraying the cupboard with water each day to retain a level of humidity.

 #2 MOULDING

After seven days in the airing cupboard, it was time to prepare the mycelium to be moulded. In an ideal world, this part of the process would also be done in a laminar flow unit. However, I did my best to create as sterile conditions as I could manage in my home. Following Iain Findlay’s advice, before each moulding session I showered, wore clean clothes and an apron, wore a mask, rubber gloves and sterilised my surfaces, tools and my hands before opening the substrate bags. 

The next step of the process is to open the bags, break up the mycelium, which has already begun to bond, and mix with 3% rice flour. I weighed each bag and measured out enough rice flour to combine with the substrate.

*It’s important to note that at this stage, I made an error and combined 30% rice flour with the first batch of mycelium instead of 3%, the results are… interesting, and discussed fully in the final chapter of this blog.

Mycelium loves rice flour, it feeds off nutrients and amino acids contained in rice flour and will grow more rapidly with this extra help. The process of breaking up and mixing the mycelium also helps to evenly distribute growth across the entire substrate once it is moulded and compressed.

Next, I sterilised my moulds as best I could with IPA and firmly filled each one with mycelium substrate, then gently compressed the bricks using my hands, making sure the corners and the edges were tightly packed. After this, I wrapped each mould tightly in four-to-five layers of clingfilm and poked several holes roughly one inch apart in the top of the clingfilm with a sterilised blade. The moulds were placed back in fruiting conditions in the airing cupboard and left to grow for another four days.

#3 DESIGN FOR PROJECTOR SCREEN 

I played with different design ideas and settled on a honeycomb shape made from connecting hexagons. It felt appropriate to step back from the traditional rectangular shape and look for a precise, geometric pattern that feels human-made, but is actually found in the natural world.

It would prove very costly to purchase / make enough hexagonal moulds for my ideal design, so I settled on a combination of large hexagons and smaller square bricks that could be cut to shape.  

I left myself open to perhaps even making more than one screen, depending on what kind of shapes my films suited when I projected them on the mycelium.

 #4 DRYING

 After another four days, the mycelium had spread evenly into the corners and edges of the moulds, colonising the hemp substrate, and bonding it together. The surfaces became pure white and slightly slimy to touch.

The mycelium bricks were removed from their moulds and dried in the open air for two days. At this point they are still alive, still growing, and if left in dark conditions for another week I would have seen Oyster mushrooms begin to fruit from the surface. 

Finally, each mould was baked at 80°C for roughly forty-five minutes. This process completely hardens the bricks and renders the mycelium inert (or dead, if you like). Baking will preserve the bricks in their current shape and state. If the moulds are not dried and baked properly there is a chance that mushrooms can sprout and so this can be controlled by weighing the bricks before and after drying, to check they lose 40% of their weight. I found that my bricks took around 90 minutes in the oven to completely dry.

 #5 INSTALLATION & EXHIBITION

When it came to the installation of my screens, I decided that my 16mm film Minn Beach would suit projection on to a large single hexagon, and so I mapped the video to hexagon shape and masked the light overspill with cinefoil.

The installation of the screen for my film The Earth Talks About Me Like I Am Not There happened concurrently with the projection. Firstly, with the help of Russell in the woodcutting workshop, we edged off the square bricks and cut them to hexagon shape. I realised I only needed one large hexagon for Minn Beach, and so I sacrificed the other three large hexagons, each one could be cut to make four small hexagons and gave me additional bricks to work with. 

I projected the film on to the wall and adjusted the projector until the film projection was in the correct place. I screwed metal brackets into the back of each mycelium brick then stuck them to the wall using a combination of sticky fixers, guerrilla tape and eventually superglue.

The hexagons were stuck to the wall while the video played as a guide –I paced specific bricks in place so they would isolate my body and connect it to different elementals within each landscape. The editing of both films took place concurrently with the mycelium making process - the films respond to the screen and in this way the screens and their films are single works of art. 

During my time with Iain Findlay at The Aurora Sustainability Group, both Theo and I learned more than we had anticipated. Although he has a practical interest in mycology and teaching mycelium making, Iain’s main focus is teaching sustainability and circular economy. During our week in Forres, Theo and I read from textbooks Iain had in the workshop: ‘Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms’ by Paul Stamets, and ‘Radical Mycology’ by Peter McCoy. We also learned about circular economy from Fergus-Fullarton-Pegg, a staff member from the Innovation School who stopped by several times to see what we were up to.

I became quite quickly fascinated with the mycelium network and its function as a food source for the natural world, but also its function as a communicator. The more I learned about mycelium, the more I felt drawn to write in response to raw footage I had shot on a field trip, the month previously.

During this trip I had looked for elements of myself in the natural world, for peacefulness and connection, and I undertook several performances to camera, in which I filmed myself attempting to dissolve into the landscape, to somehow assimilate with the ecosystem.

It struck me that just as mycelium connects everything that grows from the earth, it had all along been connecting each bed of heather that I lay in, each root structure that I photographed.

When I began editing my film ‘The Earth Talks About me As If I Am Not There’, I drew inspiration from the mycelium network’s ability to distribute nutrients on a needs basis, and also to cut off nutrient supply to aggravators and terminally infected flora. I wrote from the perspective of the earth as if it were just discovering humans as a species, which within its relative lifespan, feels quite possible.

I wanted to make a film that encompassed the feeling I had of a person growing through their relationship with a place, and which also conveyed how damaging humans are to the earth, and perhaps how the earth will cut off our nutrient supply and outlive the human species if we damage it too much.

By making my own surfaces to project on to, I felt like I had made a narrative of the process. The film illuminates the screen and therefore the process; the mycelium screen is a mirror; it holds itself before us and reflects our fragilities as a species but also our potential to nurture the environment through innovative use of biomaterials.

Mycelium bricks are flame retardant and strong enough to stand on, but if discarded will decompose within six days. In this vein, It felt exciting to incorporate a sculptural element to my practice

 #6 DE-INSTALLATION, ERRORS and OBSERVATIONS.

Every morning of the physical showcase until the final day of the exhibition, bricks would fall down overnight, and I would stick them up again the next day. Naturally, the day after the exhibition finished, I arrived at the Stow Building to find that all the bricks had for the very first time, remained stuck to the wall. In hindsight and with more time, I would have installed a plywood wall in front of the brick, which is a much easier surface to stick to. 

Inevitably, some of my mycelium bricks became contaminated.

As I mentioned previously, I accidentally and embarrassingly added 30% rice flour to the first batch of mycelium. I had more mycelium than moulds and so I managed to turn around my moulds. I had two large hexagon moulds and ten small square moulds.

Once the first batch was taken out of the moulds to dry, I cleaned the moulds and began the process again – breaking up the mycelium, mixing with rice flour and moulding the substrate. To this end, I had four large hexagons, (which didn’t become contaminated at all). I also had ten square moulds with thirteen days of growth at 30% rice flour, and ten square moulds with twenty-one days of growth at 3% rice flour. With a total of twenty square bricks, three became contaminated before the baking and drying process, and five became contaminated during the installation week, leaving me with twenty-five in total after the three large hexagons were also cut to shape. This was not unexpected; Iain had prepared me that some moulds were likely to become contaminated and that I should make extra to compensate.

Observation of the first batch noted faster growth than the second batch, but even after baking, the mycelium started to get mouldy halfway through my degree show. Thankfully the contamination never grew on the surface I was projecting on to, only the reverse - the backs of the bricks facing the wall. They also became a wee bit smelly, although I do think this added to the atmosphere of the exhibition and many people kindly described the smell of the mycelium as ‘earthy.’

The second batch grew more slowly after moulding, but still turned out well because they had longer to grow in their sterile mushroom bags, and were baked after twenty days of growth. These moulds did not become contaminated as rapidly.

It is hard to determine whether the additional rice flour or the less-than-sterile moulding conditions were the cause of contamination.

I had hoped to keep all the mycelium bricks and re-install my screens at a later date, but it became clear during the show that not all the bricks would survive as more were becoming contaminated. After de-installation, I sprayed some of them with black mould remover, which seemed to do the trick, but most were too far gone. The one large hexagon that I used for Minn Beach is (thankfully) intact, and not contaminated at all. Only three of the small cut hexagons survived.

The rest have been left under the trees in the ‘garden’ outside the GSA Stow building to become one again with the earth, and if we are all lucky, perhaps some oyster mushrooms might grow – students returning to campus in 2021, keep your eyes and your nostrils open.

Alison Piper

12th September 2021.

More on Alison's Digital Showcase

[publishingsolo]

WHAT IS GHOSTWRITING?—PART 1

Have you ever wanted to hire a professional ghostwriter? What is ghostwriting actually? Ghostwriting involves the possibility of a professional writing your book for you. A ghostwriter researches, organizes, and writes your book in your name. Highly successful people without time or skills to write their own book, commonly use ghostwriting. They are inspired with important information to impart, or a dramatic story to tell.

Fulfill the Impossible Dream to Publish a Book by Using Ghostwriting Services

Do you dream of becoming a published author, but do not have the time or know-how? You likely do not want to incur the inevitable rejection of your manuscript by a traditional publishing house. Hop, skip, and jump over the money, time, and rejection game with the help of a ghostwriter (and a ghost publisher).

Understandably, you would not be the only one who suffered the rejection of a manuscript. Many best-selling authors were also rejected before landing publishing deals—as seen in Top 10 Most Rejected Bestsellers. Can ghostwriting help you? Most certainly! With your leadership, a ghostwriter does the heavy lifting while allowing you to continue to work on your day-to-day job. Now, busy professions and celebrities need not be distracted by the procrastination and time consumption involved in writing their book.

Advanced Authorship for Busy & Successful Professionals

With modern-day print on demand (POD) and digital publishing, you no longer need to endure the rejection that comes with submitting a book to a traditional publishing company. Democracy has finally entered publishing—writers may become published book authors without negotiating through the endless constraints of publishing houses. Combining self-publishing and ghostwriting is an advanced way to quickly publish and market your book to Amazon Books.

Increase Your Net Worth & Self Worth by Becoming a Published Author

Consider the small investment necessary for self-publishing using ghostwriting services combined with print on demand. Only one book is printed at a time with POD—and at a small cost. Therefore, with ghostwriting services plus independent publishing, you will be able to increase your net worth by branding yourself as an author. The investment for a small physical book—not an e-book—beings at about 10K.

Traditional publishing houses, by contrast, spend up to 300K for printing alone. Then, when distribution and sales processes start, even more budget is necessary. Therefore, publishing on Amazon Books using print on demand is a relatively small investment. If hounding publishing houses for a book deal does not seem doable to you, hire a ghostwriter and self-publish.

When are Ghostwriting Services Right for You?

Do you have the bandwidth or time to write a book? As a successful professional, you do not have the desire to learn a new career. Perhaps, you are a celebrity, speaker, or entrepreneur unable to interrupt your rising career to publishing a book. However, you know you possess special secrets and need to share them with the world. As a television or YouTube host, blogger, or speaker with previously recorded material, the book content is already done. Ghostwriting services provide you an expert who will reorganize and rewrite your information into proper book form.

Hire a ghostwriter to compile your material while you maintain your successful career without majors interruption.

10 Qualities of a Good Ghostwriter

1. How Much Time Does Writing a Book Take?

A long timeline is required to write a book. Writing a book can take years—no way around it. Yet, the time can be cut in half with digital publishing. You may expect the writing project to go on for at least 5 months—maybe up to a year. Indeed, this depends on the length and content of the book. In cases where the client offers a mountain of material, the ghostwriter will organize, edit, and polish the content. Furthermore, the ghostwriter will help you add front and back matter such as dedications, foreword, testimonials, etc. Depending on the length, difficulty, and initial direction provided, this process may take up to two years.

2. Does the Ghostwriter Properly Price Their Services?

Recognize that when hiring a ghostwriter, this will cost you. Expect to spend, at the very least, $4,000 for a small, 20,000-word book. Writing a book is an understandably labor-intensive, detailed, and time-consuming project. A 6x9 inch (standard size) 100-page book contains roughly 20,000 words. You can ascertain a ghostwriter does not know their craft if they charge less than $0.25 per word. A natural English-speaking writer and college graduate, would not accept less than $0.25 a word—even for their first project. Do not expect your book to be finished if someone is charging too little. Cheap ghostwriters easily become exhausted and run off with your down payment.

A seasoned professional knows their value and understands the work involved, will charge between $0.40 to $0.50 per word. Well-known and experienced ghostwriters may charge up to $1 per word—which is not unusual. Flee from those who charge “by the page.” You will not know the actual price in these cases because a page could include 100 to 500 words depending on the size of the font and book. Therefore, “by the page” services are misleading and ambiguous—avoid these at all costs.

3. How May You Evlavaute a Ghostwriter's Experience?

Look for a ghostwriter with writing experience in the field of your book's subject. Do not hire someone who bites off more than they can chew. Although enthusiastic at first, those without solid writing backgrounds will easily give up. The reality is, writing a book is intense and comparable to having a baby. Seriously. During your first meeting with a ghostwriter, request links to books they have written. I recommend you read the first and last chapters of their works to understand their writing style and strength.

4. What do the Ghostwriter's References & Testimonials Say?

Inexpensive ghostwriters from foreign countries may quickly turn your book project into a nightmare. You must hire a natural-born English-speaking writer with at least three books under their portfolio. Ensure they do not take your deposit without producing by checking their references and testimonials from previous clients. With all of its twists and turns, the digital publishing industry attracts various scammers. Do not let unvetted ghostwriting services trample on your dream to publish a book.

For steps 5 to 10, read WHAT IS GHOSTWRITING?—PART 2

I also recommend reading SELF-PUBLISHING FOR DUMMIES—PART 1 and SELF-PUBLISHING FOR DUMMIES—PART 2 to further educate yourself about the digital publishing process.

Explore Wikipedia's definition of a ghostwriter. Then, read The Exhilaration of Being a Published Author.