Writer. Editor. Tired Person @lagilman - Tumblr Blog

Reminder: I've moved the main action to The Meerkat's Window...

This blog will self-destruct in 4...3...2...

Have you traveled with me to suricattus?

twenty-four hours (more or less, the clock here is prone to sticking and leaping) until this account fades into the ether. Have you switched allegiances to suricattus yet?

#change of address

Deadlines are nearly dead (for a few months, anyway), and am dealing with some of the admin work I've been shoving to the side of the desk for MONTHS now.

Part of that is shifting this account and suricattus into one, for better time management. Same book stuff, same personal stuff, with an added dollop of fannish behavior, too. I'm told it's Mostly Harmless, and occasionally amusing (and easy enough to filter out, if you really don't want to hear me yowling about tv/movies).

So if you haven't already followed suricattus, you might want to do so now...

#admin #change of address

thebooksmugglers

Too often, using dialects or foreign languages in fiction is demeaned as a trick. Often, the implication is that those words are optional and that the writer can simply remove them or water them down without doing harm to the story. That view gives short shrift to the experience of anyone who understands the dialect or foreign language in question. What’s actually happening when a story spans multiple dialects is much more interesting. To explain, at least by way of a parallel, I’m going to talk about the history behind the orchestration of The Carousel Waltz from the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical Carousel: In American musical theater, the composers rarely orchestrate their own scores. Even those composers who have the skill rarely have the time while they are writing a show. More often than not, they hire orchestrators to turn their score into something that instrumentalists in a pit can play. The great Robert Russell Bennett was originally supposed to orchestrate the whole of Carousel. He orchestrated parts of the score, including the 8-minute long Carousel Waltz that opens the show, before dropping out due to prior commitments. Don Walker took over. He did the much of the remaining work himself as well as farming out pieces of the score to other orchestrators. Carousel has a lot of music. Months after the show opened on Broadway, Richard Rodgers asked Don Walker to reorchestrate the parts of the score that Robert Russell Bennett had originally orchestrated, including the Carousel Waltz. Walker would eventually replace most, but not all, of Bennett’s work with his own. Some of Bennett’s work still remains in Carousel but not his orchestrations for the Carousel Waltz (which is now lost). The new theatrical orchestration of the Carousel Waltz obviously had to match Carousel‘s existing pit instrumentation, but Rodgers also needed an orchestration suitable for an upcoming concert performance. Rodgers did not want Walker to write two different orchestrations. Rodgers wanted one orchestration which incorporated a set of additional instruments. Without those instruments, the instrumentation matched that of the Carousel pit. With those instruments, the instrumentation matched that of a concert orchestra. The result had to be an orchestration that sounded complete and satisfying either way. Those additional instruments had to sound integral to the waltz when they were used. The waltz couldn’t sound like it’s missing something when they weren’t used. Don Walker is quoted as saying, “This was the hardest thing I ever had to do.” Now, this is just a parallel, not an analogy. Whereas listeners might reasonably experience that orchestration both ways, readers either understand a foreign language or they don’t. However, like how the orchestration of the Carousel Waltz must be compelling in either instrumentation, a story that makes use of dialect or foreign language must be compelling either way. Non-fluent readers must never feel as though something is missing but fluent readers must never feel as though anything is extraneous. The text tells two different, albeit related, stories. They both have to work for their respective audiences.

From John Chu’s post for SFF in Conversation: “Stand Back! I’m Going To Quote Junot Díaz (Thinking about language)”

(via thebooksmugglers)

#this is relevant to my current work-headache #language

Midway through the fourth pass, and something that's been in there since first draft caught me by surprise with "oh, that's how this will be relevant later." Book, c'mon, you're KILLING me.

I also yanked an entire scene out, and figure I can maybe use the character introduced there somewhere else, in a later book, maybe with a different backstory...or maybe not. Either way, it became really apparent that it, and she, didn't belong where they were.

I also yanked a line one of my beta readers really loved. Sorry, Dori.

(yes, my third pass beta readers were Dori and Kari. I have been making dwarf jokes every since, because I get just that punchy in the last few weeks before deadline...)

Anyway. Deadline or Death! Or something like that. D-11 days.

The next ten days, in two jpgs.

jimhines

So apparently Miss Nevada said something about the importance of awareness and self-defense for women, some people responded with varying degrees of anger on Twitter, and Larry Correia chose to respond with a blog post called “The Naive Idiocy of Teaching Rapists Not To Rape.”

Trigger warning for rape and ignorance.

lagilman

Every time I think maybe Larry isn't...whatever I'm thinking he is, he goes and proves that yes, he actually IS. *sigh*

#rape #rape culture #rape for ts #trigger warnings on so many levels

First of all, I'd like to thank everyone who has commented, and is still commenting, on my piece yesterday about sfnal futures and women. I'm reading. I'm nodding and thinking. I'm finding it hard to reply, but I am listening. A number of people have asked what has been going on with me, that I…

karisperring, on being a female writer over 40 (particularly in SF/F).

As a female writer over 40, I can't say she's wrong. If you haven't "hit" before you're 35, odds are high that you'll become invisible, marginalized, and forgotten by stores, reviewers, and (eventually) readers. And while this happens to male writers, too, it's a significantly and telllingly smaller percentage.

And, unlike so much of the internet, the comments on this one are worth reading, I think.

#genre #women writers

shiralipkin

Raising the funds we need to continue and expand Interfictions, the online journal of interstitial art.

And my perk just came up! For $150, I will write you a poem or flash fiction piece and tie it into a scarf like this one.

Oooh. Ahh.

If that’s too rich for your blood, remember that $15 gets you both reward chapbooks, each of which contains work by me.

ellenkushner

Yesssss!!! Gorgeous work, Shira!

derschneefiel-deactivated201501

The Pallas´s Cat, also called Manul, is a small wildcat living in the grasslands and steppe of central asia. It is named after the german naturalist Peter Simon Pallas, who first described the species in 1776.

tairupanda-deactivated20190719

That is the most expressive and gelatinous cat I have ever seen.

jamesgf

OMG that face. HAD to reblog because I’m sure northstarfan will love this guy.

bjornwilde

New icons!

fireun

Love these guys

lagilman

the proper name for these beasties is the Floofcat.

#pallas cats

the intersection of fandom and publishing prodom: when you see "OP" and you don't know if that means "original poster" or "out of print."

(and OTP to me still means "over to production.")

#language #terms #i'm easily confused

I have 13 more days to get ALL THE BOOKS DONE. Then I can focus on writing the novellas. And revision letters. And a new book release. Halp? (oh, stress, THERE you are. I was worried when I wasn't finding you, last week...)