I just finished reading Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott on Thursday evening, which I enjoyed the heck out of. It's a book about writing, but it's also a book about learning to be still and really look, really see the world and distill it in your writing, about learning to see the truth clearly and to write it as best you can. This was the message in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard, too, though I wasn't much interested in hearing it at the time (I was seventeen, and convinced that I knew better). My best friend and I joked that we were going to drive out to the creek of the book's title and take pictures of us peeing in it, and write our response to the experience of reading the book and making our own pilgrimage: Pisser at Tinker Creek. (This still makes me chuckle a little, which is how you know I have not even vaguely moved past the level of sense of humor of a nine-year-old.)

Anyway, Bird by Bird was great stuff, and I immediately ran to the post office to mail it to my mother when I was done with it, not just because she would dig the learning-to-be-still stuff, but also because Lamott's sense of humor is EXACTLY like my mother's -- dark and a little sick and deeply hilarious. That had a lot to do with why I loved it so much, I think.

Lamott also devotes a ton of time to talking about a lesson I only just learned this year, and that, once walkawayslowly got through to me about it, seemed so obvious that I could not believe I had never known it before, which is: get to know your characters, for the love of God. So much of the original fiction that I've written has felt like it was missing its center, somehow falling flat, and it was because I didn't know my own characters. I've been writing a lot less in terms of actual stories since that conversation with Merrin, but I can tell you why my character's great-grandmother died when and how she did, and while it's highly unlikely that I will ever once mention it in the story itself, I know it, and that's the whole point -- it gives my character history, grounds her, makes her more real.

Bird by Bird also has absolutely one of the best lines about plot that I've ever read, a line that immediately made me run to my notebook to write it down:

That's what plot is: what people will up and do in spite of everything that tells them they shouldn't, everything that tells them that they should sit quietly on the couch and practice their Lamaze, or call their therapist, or eat until the urge to do that thing passes.

It made my breathe catch in my throat a little, because that's just it, really, that's it exactly: that is what I want to be reading, about characters who know better and do it anyway, whatever that it may be -- I want to read about them giving in to their urges and coming through it all okay in the end, eventually. I want them to pull through, but I want them to do that thing in the meantime, and I want whatever that thing is to be the inevitable thing, the only option there could possibly be for how they will actually act, even though we and they both know that they should know better. And that's what knowing your characters is about: knowing what that thing is, and why they would up and do it. That is what I'm going for.

*

I'm meeting a friend for drinks tonight. This friend is a cute boy, and it's not a date, it's so not a date, but I can't quite shake the date-like feeling, anyway. We're both new to this city, we've known each other for three years and some change, we're both single, and he's really cute -- that's probably got a lot to do with why I've got it on my mind. Years ago, when we first knew each other, he and one of our mutual friends had this huge messy UST thing going on, which I wanted absolutely no part of, and also he was way awkward back then. I feared the awkward when I met up with him for coffee a couple weeks ago, but it never appeared, except for a little bit of stumbling over his words as we were parting ways ("Want to get lunch sometime?", since we work near each other). I'm having a really hard time remembering why, exactly, I should not go for this. We've got a bunch of mutual friends scattered around Europe, but he and I don't have this great friendship that we'd be ruining or anything. Food for thought, anyway.

*

I'm moving out of my apartment, also. It's not my roommate -- my roommate is really great. It's my roommate's cats, one of whom is currently attempting to be cute by sleeping on my lap. It's hard to remember how much I despise them when they are being cute, but it's very, very easy to remember how much I despise them when it's six in the morning and they are meowing and clawing at my door. Earplugs are my very best friends, but I decided it was time to pony up and get my own place. I've already got a new place, as of the 15th, and got the lease for it in the mail yesterday. I'm a little terrified of what signing a lease entails (I'm just a little scared of committing to anything in this country) but am working on getting over myself. I'm also beyond thrilled about getting to pick out my very own IKEA dishes. One of my good friends and I compared notes a little while back and discovered that we both used to eagerly await the Williams-Sonoma catalog when we were nine or so, and would make lists of everything we wanted in our future houses. That should give you an idea of how deep and enduring my love of kitchenware is. The new place is a tiny little studio, but I like the area, love the balcony, and the price, she is RIGHT. Good thing, too, because I have lots of travel plans, and seem to have committed myself to even more while at a friend's party last night. Hey, cool. That's what being in Europe as a twenty-something is for, right? Traveling lots and saving no money!

Via such_heights and sheafrotherdon: ...and Harrison Ford as Dr. Chen (at Angry Asian Man)

Excerpt:

Extradorinary Measures, starring Harrison Ford and Brendan Fraser, opens in theaters today. It's a medical drama about a desperate father who finances a cure for the rare Pompe disease that is killing his children. It doesn't look very good, but it's noteworthy as yet another movie that should've starred Asians. Or at least one Asian actor.

Basically, it's a crappy Lifetime-esque movie about a father with very sick children who takes, wait for it, extraordinary measures to save his children, through starting a pharmaceutical company to produce the medicine they need. There's just one thing, though. The geneticist who develops the life-saving medicine, played by Harrison Ford, was not, in RL, a gruff old white dude in Nebraska, like the movie wants us to think. He was a graduate of Taiwan University named Dr. Yuan-Tsong Chen, who was at Duke University at the time and who has been mentioned as a Nobel candidate.

Roger Ebert makes a really excellent point in the article I just linked -- Ford's character isn't even good. There's absolutely no reason for the fictional Dr. Stonehill to have replaced the real-life Dr. Chen at ALL, and one can only imagine that the story would have been far better in innumerable ways had they, you know, stuck with the ACTUAL FACTS. (It's not just the Chen/Stonehill switch that the story got wrong, btw -- Ebert goes into other factual hand-waving, as well.)

I haven't seen the movie, but I HAVE read the script, back when it was The Untitled Crowley Project -- I interned for the production company behind this movie a couple of springs ago. At the time that I read the script, I was totally aware of how crappy a script it was, but had not thought to go through and fact-check. What the scriptwriters and the people behind this movie did to the actual story is not just sad and upsetting on a racefail and fact-fail front, it also reduced a complex and potentially very compelling story into something that nearly put me to sleep while reading it. I can't imagine the movie is any better.

Apparently I still read HP fic! But dude, it's helenish, who wrote Close Enough, which is not only my favorite Harry/Ron fic but also one of my very favorite pieces of fanfiction in ever. Helen writes emotion in a way that it gets up under your ribs and grabs you by the gut and twists, just a little, and she writes characters who aren't very in touch with their own emotions, or who are too stoic or stupid to act on them, or who do act on their emotions and manage fuck things up with the person they love for ages. In addition to Close Enough, see Semaphore for another example of what I'm talking about (Sports Night, Dan/Casey, longish).*

Helen hasn't been writing so much lately, but I pop over to her LJ every now and then just to see what she's up to, and found this:

Theft of Assets, Destruction of Property by helenish
HP, slightly AU | Draco/Neville | NC-17 | 23,061 words
Surely it is a mistake to allow a single youthful indiscretion to cloud an already promising career.

It is a modern Harlequin AU with a side of indulgent awesome, not to mention all the food description you (okay, I) could ever want. Have I mentioned that food blogs are my new crack? For example:

smitten kitchen (with which I am more than a little obsessed)
food in jars (which makes me want to get into canning)
Not Eating Out in New York (which makes me wish I still lived in NYC a LOT. :( no Union Square farmer's market visits for me.)

Anyway, go read Theft of Assets, Destruction of Property -- good times will be had by all!

*And if any of you guys have awesome Sports Night recs that you've been holding onto, I would love you FOREVER if you gave up the goods.

Happy 2010! I haven't quite gotten my New Year's resolutions worked out yet, though I've been asked about them repeatedly. I would, however, like to use my LJ more, since I accidentally renewed my paid account in November (meant to turn automatic payments off and did not)!

I was with old friends over New Year's, in the city where we all studied, which was lovely. We watched firecrackers go off in the streets and danced until five in the morning and staggered out of bed in search of Chinese food in the morning which was, alas, nowhere to be found. After that we lounged in bed and quasi-napped and I, in the process, finished reading The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.

I went into that book completely unspoiled save for the blurbs just inside the cover, and I really think that's important for this book, being as unspoiled as possible. N.B.: I would not really recommend reading the blurbs. The blurbs speak very highly of the book, obviously, but they also told me more than I would have really wanted to know, going in -- even though the prologue is a huge ol' chunk of foreshadowing itself, the reviews give it a little too much color.

Having said that, I know how I feel about spoilers, which is that I HATE them a whole lot for things I am really invested in (I was invested in this book from the moment I opened it, which is a very high rec right there), but I know not everyone is like that. I already spoiled walkawayslowly (who would have been pretty pissed had she not known the spoilers I gave her) and one of my RL friends massively for Edgar Sawtelle. I can say, without spoilers, that David Wroblewski's prose is beautiful, and that that level of richness is what I aspire to.

( Spoilers from here on out. )

I was eating pumpkin soup for dinner, and this song came up on iTunes: pumpkin soup // kate nash Too freaking random -- eating and listening to the same thing!

Do you guys have any favorite house-decorating blogs/websites? I am soon to gain a bigger room than I have had in . . . ever, actually, and am going to need some kind of inspiration regarding what to do with it. I'm inheriting a wardrobe and a couple of bookcases, but beyond that I have right around 21 m2 (approx. 210ish square feet) of space to decorate. That is kind of a lot of space.

LJ! Help me make my life decisions!

Poll #1486846 apartments
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 38

I have an offer to live in an apartment with a girl who's right around my age and who I got along with REALLY FREAKING WELL. The apartment has two cats, a living room, a balcony, a washing machine, and basically anything else I would want. Not the prettiest apartment ever but also not at all objectionable. The neighborhood is a little bit more residential than I'd figured on wanting, but is actually quite cute in the daytime. And I REALLY LIKED THE POSSIBLE FUTURE ROOMMATE. Do I:

I just really clicked with this girl! (You can stop planning our wedding any day now, Lauren.) My gut says go for it, but I am second-guessing myself, because seriously, who finds the apartment they are going to move into on the first try? By accidentally emailing the person about South Africa, no less.

Dear LSAT people,

I really don't appreciate you sending me my LSAT score early. It isn't that I didn't want to know it, you understand, but that I didn't want to know it at 11:45 on a Friday night when I was most of the way to drunk off wine at late dinner with a friend, and was happy and full of too much pasta and veal and really just wanted to go to bed and sleep off that Little Italy dinner. Instead I felt compelled to check my personal Gmail right before I went to bed -- which I know isn't your fault, LSAT people, but really, did my results have to go out on Friday evening at 5:00, on a day when I was too crazed to check my Gmail until I was about to collapse into bed?

So now, instead of having had a night of glorious, half-drunken sleep, I have been miserably restless all night (and we are not even all the way through the night!) and am now awake at a little before five in the morning because I was definitely not sleeping, and I kept thinking that maybe after all that wine I'd hallucinated the LSAT results email, and my LSAT score isn't actually as bad as all that, and really I should just get my laptop and check.

Sadly, I was not hallucinating, and my score really is that bad.

I mean. Not THAT bad . . . but bad enough that, if I decide I actually do want to go to law school, I should really retake the LSAT, and fuck me, that was the whole point of taking the LSAT now: having this part of the equation out of the way.

It's honestly most upsetting because I came out of the test feeling really good about how I'd done on it, and what I got was right around the level of my very worst practice test score. Ugh FOREVER.

And really, this isn't the biggest deal in the world. Even if I do decide to go to law school, I don't actually have to apply to the top ten schools; or if I did, I'd still stand a chance of getting in -- the rest of my application is (or will be) really strong. It's entirely possible that I won't end up going to law school at all! It's not as though law school is my only option.

Regardless, this is not what I was hoping for here, and I greatly dislike the feeling of getting shitty results on something I felt confident about. Like -- awesome, I LOVE finding out that my confidence in my abilities is wildly misplaced.

And LSAT people, you can say whatever you want about it being my fault I did poorly and not yours, but you still owe me this night's sleep.

No love,
me

Public service announcement: you should be watching How I Met Your Mother. I love that show. I'm still a little ways into season two but I have been absolutely adoring it. It is so funny and gut-wrenching and just all-around great. It is probably surprising to no one that Barney Stinson is my favorite. <3 Neil Patrick Harris <3

I also, at my friend's urging, finally watched Dr. Horrible the other day, which was good times all around. Something about NPH's face (as Billy) really reminds me of Nathan Fillion as Mal Reynolds, and which made Nathan Fillion's Captain Hammer brutishness even more of a delightful contrast.

But back to HIMYM -- if you are current on the show's canon, or if you don't mind spoiling yourself a little (I am in the latter camp), then you should absolutely read this story: metal heart by the_spin, which I found via theoret's rec. It's 24K of the kind of het I want to write when I grow up -- totally believable and excellent and did I mention funny as hell? Just read it.

I usually hate taking my computer to the Apple store to get repaired, because inevitably they will be running behind and everyone will be all kinds of cranky and I'll sit there for about nine gazillion years until finally it's my turn and they tell me my computer is dead dead miserably dead.

Today, though, I was just going because of a really superficial thing -- there's a design flaw in the MacBook that causes the casing where your wrists rest to get indented and often eventually crack, which had happened to me. And then an actual piece of my casing fell off a couple weeks ago. Granted, a very small piece, but it's still kind of disturbing to watch your computer literally fall apart.

Anyway, I took it in to the Apple store today and came out, an hour and a half later, with brand new casing and, awesomely, a whole new keyboard! I've spent a lot of time whining to anyone who will listen (Merrin, my roommates, my mother) about how much I hated my keyboard, and for whatever reason? The new one is waaaay better. Maybe this will make me write more!

Haha. Don't hold me to that.

There's a lot of stuff going on right now! In addition to my very busy schedule of computer repairs, I am taking the LSAT on Saturday! I will be so glad to be done with that, because I also now have an actual date for my transfer to Frankfurt! Like, ish. Early November! There's some debate as to when I will actually be physically flying to Germany, but somewhere between the 2nd and the 4th of November pretty much for sure. (My current boss, my future boss and I are in the middle of a stalemate on that one. Will update about the actual date once my flight is booked.)

Regardless, we're talking like . . . just over a month away. Ah! So I've made myself a Life List, which is the list of all the things I need to do before I move along with the things I've been meaning to do for the past thirteen months and haven't quite gotten around to, including but not limited to:

- find someone to sublet my apartment
- go to the doctor ("the doctor" here being taken to mean . . . eeeevery doctor)
- pack and ship my crap
- actually get clothing dry cleaned (. . . for the first time)

Et cetera! We do have one lead on the subletting front -- one of my coworkers who's currently living with her parents way the fuck out in Queens -- so I just spent a couple of hours cleaning up my room and the kitchen and vacuuming a little in preparation for her stopping by after work tomorrow to see the apartment and meet my roommates. Because that's the thing that's a little bit tricky about finding a subletter: I'm friends with my roommates, who are also all friends with each other. I can't just like . . . find a random person to do it and head for the hills.

The good thing is that my roommates are pretty excellent people (usually) and our apartment is awesome (always). Our building has a pool and a gym and a roof with a fucking amazing view of Manhattan and beyond. I am just hoping my coworker and my roommates like each other, because I'm sure we'll find someone to sublet regardless but this would just be sooo easy, and it would be excellent to be able to check that off the Life List.

It's kind of terrifying to think of how soon I am going to be living in Germany again! And having to figure out all of those delightful things that my study abroad program didn't make me have to deal with, because we were coddled (bank account, cell phone, finding my own apartment . . . joy!). But I'm getting a little ahead of myself, I think. Figuring out the New York end of things first would be the logical way to go. Regardless, if anyone has any awesome tips re: German cell phones or apartment finding and wants to share them, I would very much appreciate it!

Holy shit, I am a little in love with Generation Kill. That show is right up my alley in, oh, EVERY POSSIBLE WAY, and Colbert is hot and Fick is hot and Ray is hot and also hilarious and Trombley is a ridiculous freak who makes me laugh in PAIN and everything about it is just so, soooo good. I think it has a better grasp of irony than any show I've seen in . . . pretty much ever, and I LOVE that about it. It doesn't let you forget that war is hell, particularly this war (for the soldiers and Iraqis both), but at the same time it makes you care about these men in a way that I don't think Band of Brothers did even a third as well, which was my one major complaint about BoB -- much as I love that show like burning, I never felt (with a few exceptions) that I knew those characters very well. GK does not have a bit of that problem.

I think I would love the show just as much if I hadn't already read a good bit of Brad/Nate fic, but let me also throw out there that GK fandom is REALLY FABULOUSLY TALENTED and it surely didn't hurt to be watching with that in mind.

I've started reading Generation Kill the book as well, which I'm enjoying a heck of a lot. I'd read the Rolling Stone articles before, and thus far (about thirty pages in) the book seems to be just like them only longer and better. Which, hey. No bad there!

Let it be noted that this is about the . . . fifth? seventh? fandom that dark_reaction has nudged me toward. Lauren has good taste in fandoms. GK fandom: KEEP BEING AWESOME.

On a totally unrelated note, last night I watched the pilot and second ep of Glee, which I also enjoyed a great deal. I'm not entirely convinced yet that I think it can sustain itself for an entire season or more as a TV show and that it wouldn't have been better suited as a movie, but I will keep watching for now for sure. ( a spoilery question ) That is all.

One week from today, my youngest brother is going to be in his freshman dorm, in a suite with five other freshman boys. (Bet you can imagine how awesome that place is going to smell.) He's going to a college much like mine, in terms of size and politics and academic standards, and wow, do I ever hope it's a good experience for him. He's had a pretty shitty past year and a half or so, and much as he acts like an entitled snot a good bit of the time, I hope that college is a good experience for him, that it's easy for him to make friends and keep them, that they'll be the kind of people who can push him to learn and grow and understand himself better without pushing him away. I hope that college, both academically and socially, stretches him and doesn't break him.

I hope, too, that he comes out of college feeling the way all of my roommates feel about their college -- that it was a wonderful and difficult and entirely rewarding time, that it's a place to miss and be happy to return to for reunions. I'm particularly bitter about my own college experience right now after having spent a weekend listening to one of my roommates wax rhapsodic about how much she looooved her college, but it's a jealous kind of bitterness -- I wish my college experience had the same kind of happy nostalgic sheen to it that hers does, and I hope for that for my brother: that it's good for him while he's there; that he misses it when he's done.

Ugh! My roommates and I were going to go to the Jersey Shore this weekend, had rented a car and everything, and now we are not going, not because of drama (drama happened and was resolved!) but because my mom and my youngest brother are miserably sick. UGHHHH. Such a badly timed sickness! Who the heck knows if our schedules are all going to coincide well again before the end of the summer. :\

In happier news, this morning I got up early and worked on original fic. Maybe someday I will even FINISH SOME OF IT.

Also, I spent a while at work listening to Jay Brannan sing on YouTube, after winterweathered recommended his music, and then Googled him a little, and his bio amuses me greatly.

FINALLY. THANK GOD.

Title: Mildred: A College AU
Authors: causeways and walkawayslowly
Artist: sillyshy, her art post is here. Tell her she is awesome!
Word Count: 62,131
Pairing: Jared/Jensen
Rating: NC-17
Official Summary: It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Jared in possession of his heterosexuality will immediately switch teams upon enrollment in college and first contact with Jensen Ackles.
Original Summary: Jared goes to college and is gay for Jensen Ackles. It's a real shocker, sports fans.
Real Summary: No really, that’s all that happens. For 60,000 words.
Disclaimer: Jared, Jensen, and all of the other real live people we mention belong to themselves. Sadly. The OCs are ours, all ours.
Authors' Notes:

Kelly thanks: walkawayslowly, for suggesting that we cowrite in the first place, and for waiting patiently for me to move past the laughing-in-her-face stage and into the "omg fine" stage; for not murdering me during the many, many periods of story-related emo; and for still being my very favorite person on the entire internet (and beyond!) at the end of it all. I can't think of anyone with whom I would rather have a child that is also a piece of fanfiction. You say that's slightly creepy? I say that's how we roll.
girlmostlikely, for a very fantastic beta, and for being one of my very first fandom friends, back when I was new and writing about Wincestuous adventures in prison. Those were good times.
nemoinis, for being so excellent as to offer to beta even when she did not know half of the authors, and for doing a fantastic job while she was at it.

Merrin thanks: causeways. I understand the key smash when I first asked her to cowrite now, and all the laughter. See, she'd done this before, and I really hadn't. If you are not familiar with the process, it is one arduous task. Similar to giving birth, I would imagine, or climbing a mountain, even though I have only done the latter and not the former. I have a new measure for a friend now, and it’s someone who will cowrite 60k of coming-of-age (and out-of-the-closet) rps with you and still be your friend at the end of it.
girlmostlikely, for agreeing to beta even though she knew how long it was going to be, and how much time we weren’t going to be able to give her. thanks also for pointing out our ACTUAL posting date as opposed to the posting date we THOUGHT we had. Love you, babe, you are the BEST.
nemoinis, for ALWAYS betaing everything, even my crappy popslash. and for being one of MY first fandom friends, back when I thought "slash" fic meant "stabbing people with pointy knives."

Kelly and Merrin both thank: sillyshy, for picking our lame summary out of a whole list of summaries, and being an INCREDIBLY awesome artist; and the spn_j2_bigbang mods, for running this wild rumpus again.

MILDRED: A COLLEGE AU

I do not know quite how this happened, or how neither walkawayslowly nor I had thought to check the actual posting schedule before right now, but we have had our Big Bang posting date wrong for THE ENTIRE SUMMER.

HAHAHA SERIOUSLY. We thought it was the 4th! But nope. It's the 6th. Fuck usssss.

In honor of having sent our really hilariously long Big Bang off to the betas (SORRY BETAS) last night, I bring you fic that's been chillin' on my hard drive for a very long time. It's SPN, even! WILD.

Title: The Cape May Haunted Trolley Tour
Author: causeways
Fandom: SPN
Rating: PG
Pairings: gen (you have no idea how much it pains me to say that!)
Word Count: 4,300
Disclaimer: SPN belongs to Eric Kripke, not me. I would have done some reeeeally different things with it if it were mine!
Summary: After a family disappears on the southern Jersey Shore, Sam and Dean investigate.
Author's Notes: This was originally going to be the beginning of something much, much longer, but that wasn't happening. This is set in some vague nebulous period of canon between the end of S2 and the start of anything particularly plotty in S3.

( The Cape May Haunted Trolley Tour )

It is the birthday of a number of people on my flist: jamesinboots, deirdre_c, and walkawayslowly! Happy birthday to all of you lovely people, and I apologize, James and Dei, for the bias here!

So, as I think we all know, Merrin is my very favorite person in the entirety of the internet, and it is HER BIRTHDAY! I wish you the very best possible birthday, and I hope the people at HPB are still enjoying your flowers (or that your cats had a good time devouring them, if you brought them home!), and most of all I really hope that Amy and Jack's car situation gets fixed so that you can have an actual good birthday celebration, because you deserve it.

<33333

Also! Merry Christmas in July!

I'm working on rewriting the first scene of Merrin's and my Big Bang (posting two weeks from today, yo!) and am thinking about how it's pretty important that a first scene be AWESOME, because otherwise, hey, readers get bored and they drop your fic immediately.

And then I went back and looked at old J2 of mine, and was thinking about how my openings were, huh, functional but not stellar, with one exception.

Jared's about to do a line of coke off a stripper's ass when his cell phone buzzes in his pocket. (from this fic)

There are some things I would definitely change about that fic if I were writing it again, but THAT, in my opinion, is a freaking awesome opening line. Largely because I think it's hilarious, and I think hilarity is an excellent way to hook a reader.

What do you guys think -- are opening lines that important to you, or is it more about the opening scene(s)? Or none of the above?