aamcnamara: (Default)
Trying to work out a few things in my head.

Before the past week, I hadn't really gone through a critique process in a while. Like, possibly years. But I've been slushing for Ideomancer for over two years now. Coming back to critiquing felt odd and yet familiar.

Critiquing, my process was very similar to how I slush. Read it once, go away for a while and think about something else, come back to it and write my response (rejection/rewrite/pass up letter, critique). It gives me time to see if it lingers in my mind, what aspects of it linger in my mind, and then I come back to it and look into the nitty-gritty aspects before writing up the response.

What critiquing did was give me a reason to write down everything that I saw. When I'm writing rejection letters, I pick out the biggest reason that I am not passing up the story and the biggest thing I liked about it, and there's the personalized rejection. It's not a list of everything good and everything bad about the story. It can't be. I couldn't do that, I don't have the time.

But critiquing--there you give everything you saw and thought about, you list all the problems from big to small and also the tiny things you vicariously enjoyed. So this past week, I consciously thought about every single thing about the story and then I wrote those things down. (Instead of registering most of them unconsciously.) It helped me see my own process from the outside, and that helped me think about slushing and about my own writing differently. Still trying to figure out what that "differently" is, but it's now there for me to consider.
aamcnamara: (Default)
I have been to Viable Paradise, and I have returned.

excessive verbiage, also pictures )

And then I came back. )

And then I fell over.

In summation: this week I got to have my cake and eat my cake and I feel like I still have cake left over, possibly frozen and ready to be heated up and eaten. (Technically the pan cooling on the stove is apple crisp, but who's counting?)

Right now I'm hoping for time to work on revising "Lightening" soon; my goal is still to revise A Returning Power by the end of the year; and maybe I can write another short story or two. It's nice to have my writing-brain awake again. I will do my best to make sure that it doesn't fall back asleep on me.
aamcnamara: (Default)
Rumors fly about Mountain Day every year, but this year it seemed that there were more than usual. Having a week and a half of rain can do that. On Wednesday, the rain finally broke. It was sunny, and twenty-something (a high something) of my Facebook friends posted angrily about the lack of mountain in their day.

Mountain Day exploits! )

Friday afternoon, after finishing my physics midterm (and buying a new writing/everything notebook for VP onwards), I felt like I got to breathe. I lay outside in October sunshine and... well, and realized that, oh, Viable Paradise is in two days. Thought about writing, about my life. Having the space to do that is important, and I lack that sometimes these days. Going to the REU was a good thing, but I ended up without all that much time to just sit and be this summer. As my former Special Collections boss said in sympathy, there just isn't time to read.

Now I'm partway toward VP already. Tomorrow I go the rest of the way, and will submerge into that world for a week. I hope that the writer part of my brain wakes up. I hope that I learn, and write, and read, and make friends. I hope I get to explore the island. And I hope that all my plans for getting back to MHC on Friday night work out. Hold my breath and cross my fingers, and that's all that I can do.

bah.

Sep. 18th, 2011 04:03 pm
aamcnamara: (Default)
More asthma meds drama!

This time, cromolyn sodium is on back order til December. So now I actually am using a steroid inhaler--low dose, two puffs a day, but it's still the first time I've ever used steroids to control my asthma. It's a lot simpler to have an inhaler (v. nebulizer and all the associated paraphernalia) but... still. Gaah. Fingers crossed that it will actually turn out to be effective!

(Because nothing is ever simple, the procedure for figuring out the above information and actually getting the inhaler took approximately a week. During which I ran out of cromolyn sodium. Yay!)


...I am excited for Viable Paradise this October. It will be amazing. I've missed workshopping, missed being around SF/F writer people for more than a convention weekend.

Another thing I've been excited for is GYGO, the geek dance on campus. Everyone (or nearly everyone) goes in costume/cosplay, they play nerdy and geeky music (anime theme songs! Star Trek remixes! Doctor Who music!), they have a costume contest. It's the one dance that all my friends go to, because it's awesome.

Guess what I figured out yesterday?

GYGO is on October 14th, which is a Friday evening. Viable Paradise will end that afternoon.

I could get back on campus by midnight--if I left Martha's Vineyard at 3:45. (Ferry to the mainland, bus to Boston, hour's layover, bus to Amherst, Five-College bus to Mount Holyoke.)

I... yeah. My friends and I start planning costumes months in advance. (We have, in fact, already planned our costumes and started buying bits of them.) It is an Event.

So. Anyone know someone who wants to drive to South Hadley on Friday, October 14...? Yyyeah.
aamcnamara: (Default)
...I am going to Viable Paradise XV in October!

Awesome instructors! Awesome classmates! Place I have not been before, which will probably be awesome too! (Aaand they will be critiquing the first two chapters of A Returning Power. I swear, that thing has come so far from Draft Zero or whatever I am currently calling the first time I wrote it. It is neat to see projects progress like that.)

As far as I can tell, that'll be my fall break plus a few days after it, which, well, no one does anything those days anyway, right? And I can let my professors know ahead of time.

Very excited, but-and tired from my week (I thought for a moment this afternoon that a random guy on the street was wearing cleanroom booties, but no, those were just sneakers, get your head out of the materials science lab, Alena), so I will celebrate later. But! Yay!

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