a post with nothing about the novel at all

Today I feel productive.

So far I have gotten up far too early, read a hundred and fifty or so pages of the fifth Dark Tower book, written out the rest of my thank-you notes for graduation presents, and ordered photo prints online of my senior picture so I can send them to my far-away relatives.

Now I just need to call my college and inquire about a form, write some, go pick up the photo prints, and mail all the thank-you notes.

This post about the writing workshop at Anticipation makes me want to go to Worldcon. Unfortunately, it is a. too expensive, b. too far away, c. I don't know enough people, and the stories I have heard of Worldcon convince me that I would have much more fun if I had lots of friends who were going, and d. all of the above.

Of course, I don't really have anything to get critiqued if I did go--except for a little over three-quarters of a first-draft novel--but the want-to-go is not paying attention to that.

Good news: I have a title and a few snippets of the short story, one of which has made it down in words so far. Usually I just sit down and write the story out from beginning to end. Apparently this one is more nonlinear. It'll probably turn out to be nothing much, at any rate, just something to twiddle around with while I try not to write my novel too quickly.

calling all teens?

Since I know there are some teens out there somewhere--

Here's a link to a post by shadesong about "Fandom: The Next Generation".

Ironically, so far in this discussion, aliseadae and I are playing the role of the Token Teens. So I thought I'd get the link out so that any other teens who are in fandom could chime in, too. (mlt23, I am looking at you!) And, of course, anyone else, but especially teens, given the nature of the discussion.

my manifesto for the evening; clasp your hands and sing.

(No, I still haven't written on the novel. That's my next task. People keep asking me good questions!)
(This is related to my previous post.)

mrissa asked me here about my strong identification as a teenager, and whether I thought it was personal or something generational.

I got a little off-topic--short answer: I think it's mostly personal--and it turned into an interesting introspective thing for me, so I'm posting it here and linking in a comment.

This is my answer.

I have always wanted to be taken as an equal by the people I look up to.

Part of that has been wanting to grow up, already, so that I can be an adult. But part of that is also knowing that I can't hurry time, and that people know I am young, and that I want to be a part of the community now. And I don't want to be a part of the community on false pretenses, even if I could get in that way, because that feels like lying, and to be a member of the community you have to tell the truth.

And it's all mixed up with the times when people have thought I'm stupid or lying because I'm a kid, and my righteous anger to show them that kids (and teens) are in fact smarter than you realize, sharper than you think, and will not let you off so easy this time. And with having chosen to go from homeschooling to school with my age-peers, rather than skipping grade after grade to find somewhere the academics were challenging, because I wanted to have friends.

In other words, I think it's probably a personal difference [between me and mrissa on this subject], but in any case, thanks for the opportunity to think about just why I have that strong belief. It'll be interesting to see what happens when I am not, in fact, a teenager any more. (If every generation does this, maybe I understand more about how older generations of fans act than I thought I did.)

[Related to shadesong's post: In general, though, I think that today's generation of fans can find more geeky friends--it's more okay to be geeky in a lot more places today, and there's also the Internet--which allows them to own their geek pride, but at the same time, there's no getting around the fact that they're teens; and sometimes the adult programming just doesn't give teens what they want. Often, perhaps.]

a brief return to the novelling side of things

67545 / 80000

Somehow in all the excitement I got at least a little bit done on my novel tonight.

Now I am going to bed because there are too many things I need to think about and reply to, and if I get started I'll be here all night. In the meantime: you are all awesome.