Insert Random Apropos Quotation Here

[rushthatspeaks]

1. Thanks to everyone who gave me film recs! I now have a huge giant happy list to go put on Netflix, and it is a very good thing.

2. I stopped cat-vacuuming* long enough to submit 'The Crying Queen' to Not One of Us. It's interesting-- I knew the story was done when I finished it, but I generally go over it again before I send it somewhere, just in case. Now I know it is not only merely done, but really, most sincerely done, for I hold, at the same time, two contradictory opinions about it, and they run as follows: a) this is brilliant and spectacular and the Best Thing Ever and all should worship at its feet and b) what a load of horrible, terrible, evil awfulness I should give up and go become a Tuvian throat-singer. Generally I alternate between these opinions about my writing anyhow, but I take as a Sign the emergence of the ability to hold both firmly and simultaneously about the same piece of work, and have decided that it is done and that is all there is to it. Mind you, these conflicting opinions are, absurdly enough, much more useful than the ones I have developed about 'Conte de Fee', which are a) gee, that really needs a new title and b) splunge.

* For those of you who may not have encountered the term (and there are several of you I'm pretty certain haven't), cat-vacuuming is the name for those little tasks that you spend all your time inventing to do instead of writing/studying/something productive. They may include cleaning, video games, politics, and Things People Do On The Internet, but do not include actual vacuuming of cats, no matter how tempting the little buggers make it.

Comments

[sovay]

I don't think I'd actually mind if you went and became a Tuvan throat-singer, because the sound is so truly cool, but maybe you could alternate betwen writing and throat-singing? I rather like your stories. (Including "Conte de Fee," cough, cough.) Good luck!

(I only encountered the term "cat-vacuuming" about two weeks ago. Am I out of touch?)

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

"Conte de Fee" so needs a new title, though-- it's amazing how many places explicitly say in the guidelines 'No fairy tales or retold fairy tales', and I think this may be part of what's causing it to bounce. I'm hoping it will sneak by as a retelling more unobtrusively if I don't, you know, label it. I also think it could use a title that actually describes it, instead of its genre.

And I can't bloody think of one, and so home it sits until I can. (Shall definitely try Not One of Us when I do, though, since it seems to fit said magazine's goals a lot better than it fits everyone else's.)

As far as cat-vacuuming-- not out of touch that I know of, but then, I'm never in touch myself, so I can't tell. I ran across it at Making Light a few months ago, I think.

[sovay]

it's amazing how many places explicitly say in the guidelines 'No fairy tales or retold fairy tales', and I think this may be part of what's causing it to bounce. . . . despite the fact that it's not actually a retold fairy tale . . .

Regardless of title, would you mind sending me a copy? Mine got lost when my old computer died last March. Perhaps "The Crying Queen," also? I definitely haven't seen it post-edit.

*looks beseeching*

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Will do. What file format do you prefer for document attachments? We have both Macs and PCs in the household, so I can give you anything from .rtf to Word to .cwk.

CdF *is* a retelling, though-- it's Bluebeard.

[sovay]

I have an iBook, so Word files and RTFs seem to work best for me. Thanks!

I recognized the Bluebeard elements when I read the story for the first time, but I don't tend to classify "Conte de Fee" as a Bluebeard retelling: I think because, although it has all the hallmarks of being a familiar tale, it turns out to be something so entirely different in the end that it's more like the mask of Bluebeard than the story itself.

. . . Does that make any sense?

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Yes, and it's good to hear that it did turn out that differently from the root story-- it's hard for me to tell, since I have the root so firmly in mind when I read it and also did when I wrote it.

I should have those sent to you later this evening.

[syonakeleste.livejournal.com]

I should reread "The Crying Queen" post your latest reedit, but...

::seeks way to put it nicely, yet accurately::

I've not found it representative of your actual talent previously.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I think this may have something to do with our different views of what fiction does, and how it does it-- as I recall, when I first showed the story to you, you said something along the lines of 'Nothing happened', and, in terms of plot, I can indeed summarize it within two or three sentences. It's meant to be a heavily introspective character piece, focusing as much on the language and imagery as on plot, and it leans over into the Gothic slightly, as much of my fiction tends to do. I enjoy that sort of baroque ornamentation; however, I know it's not a universal taste. I've noticed that you enjoy Niven and some of the other hard-sf writers whom I can't manage to get in sync with because I feel that I don't get a sense of the inside of the characters' heads, although I admire the plots. Not One of Us is specifically asking for character pieces in their guidelines, so I'm hoping it will do well there-- and yeah, I probably should send it to you again anyhow, since I can't remember if I showed it to you after the major, clarificatory, make-the-whole-thing-much-better edit or not. I wrote the thing in '01, and I showed it to you while we were at Glenmede, I think, but my records don't show whether the significant overhaul was '03 or '04, so you could have gotten either the original or a version that differs from the present one by only two or three words, and I really don't remember which.

[syonakeleste.livejournal.com]

I'm fairly certain that you noted making a major overhaul after I read it.

[tirerim.livejournal.com]

Oddly, I know people who have actually vacuumed their (very docile) cats, but I have never encountered the idiom before.

[marchharetay.livejournal.com]

well because tape brushes would only get all tangly

[khukuri.livejournal.com]

That's brilliant. I've heard the term used before, but in a completely different way.

"Isn't he going abseiling or bungee-jumping or something?"
"Some sort of cat-vacuuming thing, yeah."

Am adding to vocabulary posthaste.