ARGHH.
I somehow just managed to waste something on the order of 6+ total hours today reading tvtropes.org.
This is embarassing. (Also I was warned, but that's irrelevant. I really thought that when my brother told me not ever to go on that website ever because I would never read anything else again that he was kidding. He wasn't kidding.)
My attempt at self-justification:
- it's an intelligent website: clever, funny, well-written and thoughtful
- it really is funny as hell (e.g., referring to a fantasy religion which bears a distinct resemblance to Christianity but which cannot use Jesus as its central figure due to being made up or whatnot as a Crystal Dragon Jesus)
- it covers all kinds of examples of particular tropes in action as it were
- it's one of the most hyperlink-happy sites I've ever seen, so that it's almost impossible to make it through an article without seeing 2-3 links worth clicking on (the Crystal Dragon Jesus article leads me to click on Dead Unicorn Trope, Power Crystal, and Messiah, among others). The upshot is that by clicking on Dead Unicorn Trope, I then get another fun page with a clear description of the trope, plenty of examples, myriad hyperlinks, and an admonishment only to add an example if one is sure that it really an example - i.e., recognize the size of one's reference pool (Small Reference Pool then comes up, which was the next thing I clicked on)
Anyway, I'm way more click happy here than I've ever been on wikipedia (or really any wiki at all). And I feel... not particularly thrilled with myself for it, even though it did make the Ritual Saturday Night SyFy Movie Fest with Brownie more entertaining ("look! It's the First Girl! She'll be the romantic interest...").
Tomorrow will have to include no tvtropes. SRSLY.
It will, however, include Brownie's hooding ceremony. So YAY for Brownie's hooding, and I should go to bed so that I'm functional enough to help railroad the 30-odd people that will be there for it tomorrow.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
A mini book review and some other thoughts
My main internet forum of choice has been mostly down for days now. It's making me half-nuts having it gone, even though I've lately been making a concerted attempt to keep myself off the internet as much as possible because I feel like it's sucking away my ability to concentrate -- and this coming from someone who's already ADHD.
However, even what with trying to spend less time on the internet, said forum is still very much the backbone of my non-Brownie social life - it's where I get the vast majority of intelligent conversation, lulz, and genuine friendship. I hate having it gone. I hate not knowing if there have been any new datewrecks, any job interviews, wild familyfail stories, or whatever else may be going on. So to those who might be reading: hello, mah h0rs, and my the forumfail be fixed as soon as possible.
Other than that, I've devoured the City of Bones/Ashes/Light over the past few days, which were generally quite awesome. I'd highly recommend them to anyone into YA Fantasy. Highly. Clare does a great job with urban fantasy, melding the fantastic aspects of the story seemlessly with the weird awesomeness of New York City, and she does a particularly good job of getting the teenage mentality down well: the characters are flawed, but not detestably so; they have a tendency to believe their own ideas a little too fervently; they don't always understand themselves or what they're doing, but they're not idiots either. They're teenagers who, despite special abilities, act more like real teenagers than the twenty-somethings that populate teen dramas on tv. I have my gripes with the series (namely that Clary's special ability, once discovered, seems to fix everything a little too easily), but I really enjoyed it.
Thinking about it, that's probably the closest approximation to a book review I've ever had on this blog.
Anyway. On the writing front: the book idea which I've been playing with that I mentioned in the last post is, if I didn't mention it then, YA fantasy. Partially because that's the age of the main characters, partially because the idea itself is firmly fantasy, and partially because YA fantasy has been the vast majority of my reading lately simply because I've had more fun reading it than I've had reading anything in YEARS. I love teenagers-as-chosen-ones: they're already busy trying to understand themselves in normal life, trying to understand where/how they fit into the world and what might begin to form their place therein, so putting them in the position of "chosen one" as it were both gives them a way to frame the identity-angst as well as a way to begin to work their way out of it and toward a better sense of self-understanding. Anyway, between loving the genre and having a hook that fits better there than anywhere else, I'm playing with it. If it ends up going somewhere beyond the roughly 2K words I have now, great. If it doesn't, then that's fine too. When it gets farther along, maybe I'll actually post a sample.
However, even what with trying to spend less time on the internet, said forum is still very much the backbone of my non-Brownie social life - it's where I get the vast majority of intelligent conversation, lulz, and genuine friendship. I hate having it gone. I hate not knowing if there have been any new datewrecks, any job interviews, wild familyfail stories, or whatever else may be going on. So to those who might be reading: hello, mah h0rs, and my the forumfail be fixed as soon as possible.
Other than that, I've devoured the City of Bones/Ashes/Light over the past few days, which were generally quite awesome. I'd highly recommend them to anyone into YA Fantasy. Highly. Clare does a great job with urban fantasy, melding the fantastic aspects of the story seemlessly with the weird awesomeness of New York City, and she does a particularly good job of getting the teenage mentality down well: the characters are flawed, but not detestably so; they have a tendency to believe their own ideas a little too fervently; they don't always understand themselves or what they're doing, but they're not idiots either. They're teenagers who, despite special abilities, act more like real teenagers than the twenty-somethings that populate teen dramas on tv. I have my gripes with the series (namely that Clary's special ability, once discovered, seems to fix everything a little too easily), but I really enjoyed it.
Thinking about it, that's probably the closest approximation to a book review I've ever had on this blog.
Anyway. On the writing front: the book idea which I've been playing with that I mentioned in the last post is, if I didn't mention it then, YA fantasy. Partially because that's the age of the main characters, partially because the idea itself is firmly fantasy, and partially because YA fantasy has been the vast majority of my reading lately simply because I've had more fun reading it than I've had reading anything in YEARS. I love teenagers-as-chosen-ones: they're already busy trying to understand themselves in normal life, trying to understand where/how they fit into the world and what might begin to form their place therein, so putting them in the position of "chosen one" as it were both gives them a way to frame the identity-angst as well as a way to begin to work their way out of it and toward a better sense of self-understanding. Anyway, between loving the genre and having a hook that fits better there than anywhere else, I'm playing with it. If it ends up going somewhere beyond the roughly 2K words I have now, great. If it doesn't, then that's fine too. When it gets farther along, maybe I'll actually post a sample.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Time to move on?
Sign I'm not the dominant one in the relationship: It just took me five solid minutes to get the cat (Pigger rather than Nunkin) to move off of her spot on the couch in the study so that I could sit there. It's the only spot in the office where the internet cord reaches my laptop. I *hate* that we don't have wireless.
Meanwhile, I randomly got an idea for a story of some sort of fantasy type which I'm now playing around with. Somehow I ended up deciding it would be a good (or at least entertaining) idea to make my facebook status a request for ideas on multidimensional MacGuffins. One friend suggested an omnispatial nexus key which, if used, would disrupt the fabric of the space-time continuum. I love the idea but it won't work with the outlines of the story as they're working their way through my mind. Meanwhile, I wrote roughly 1000 words of starting conversational stuff and showed it to Brownie on Friday (who has never actually seen any of my fictional writing before, but then neither has anyone else for that matter, something I badly need to change). He actually liked it (I think - I don't think he was being kind), and we spent most of the afternoon talking through ideas before finding out that a friend was having something of a life crisis and spending the evening with her helping her talk stuff out.
So back to the writing. I don't want to get into the premise yet, and I need to flesh out the plot/world more before I can write too much. But I keep thinking that I could do something with this in a way I couldn't with the story I've been working on - that story is too character/not enough plot to be particularly marketable. I think maybe I could get somewhere worthwhile with the idea I have now. But (again), at the same time I'm swirling with thoughts that I should finish the project I'm already working on (just to prove to myself that I can, maybe?) and more thoughts that I should be finishing the dissertation (but still don't have any motivation). So I feel like I'm half-nuts, like I shouldn't be grabbing onto any idea that comes by and start scribbling. However, I kind of feel at the same time like I very much should grab onto an idea when it presents itself and seems worth working on, because one of these ideas might actually pan out, and I don't think my last project really will. I'm not convinced it's marketable.
So maybe I shouldn't feel bad about abandoning one project in favor of another. I can't really say that anything I've written has been a waste of time, even if I don't think I'll be able to publish it. I've learned from it, and I know I'll learn more from whatever I end up writing that holds my interest. And then maybe someday I'll manage to publish something.
However, I still need a day job.
Meanwhile, I randomly got an idea for a story of some sort of fantasy type which I'm now playing around with. Somehow I ended up deciding it would be a good (or at least entertaining) idea to make my facebook status a request for ideas on multidimensional MacGuffins. One friend suggested an omnispatial nexus key which, if used, would disrupt the fabric of the space-time continuum. I love the idea but it won't work with the outlines of the story as they're working their way through my mind. Meanwhile, I wrote roughly 1000 words of starting conversational stuff and showed it to Brownie on Friday (who has never actually seen any of my fictional writing before, but then neither has anyone else for that matter, something I badly need to change). He actually liked it (I think - I don't think he was being kind), and we spent most of the afternoon talking through ideas before finding out that a friend was having something of a life crisis and spending the evening with her helping her talk stuff out.
So back to the writing. I don't want to get into the premise yet, and I need to flesh out the plot/world more before I can write too much. But I keep thinking that I could do something with this in a way I couldn't with the story I've been working on - that story is too character/not enough plot to be particularly marketable. I think maybe I could get somewhere worthwhile with the idea I have now. But (again), at the same time I'm swirling with thoughts that I should finish the project I'm already working on (just to prove to myself that I can, maybe?) and more thoughts that I should be finishing the dissertation (but still don't have any motivation). So I feel like I'm half-nuts, like I shouldn't be grabbing onto any idea that comes by and start scribbling. However, I kind of feel at the same time like I very much should grab onto an idea when it presents itself and seems worth working on, because one of these ideas might actually pan out, and I don't think my last project really will. I'm not convinced it's marketable.
So maybe I shouldn't feel bad about abandoning one project in favor of another. I can't really say that anything I've written has been a waste of time, even if I don't think I'll be able to publish it. I've learned from it, and I know I'll learn more from whatever I end up writing that holds my interest. And then maybe someday I'll manage to publish something.
However, I still need a day job.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
A Love Note to Ugly Nail Polish
My nails are currently polished in OPI's Fiercely Fiona, a sort of color that can best be described as somewhere between the color of pollen coating a car and highlighter yellow a few ticks down on the grayscale. It's, well, pretty hideous. It's also noticeable. Not blinding, just noticeable. As in I keep seeing people look at my nails and then fail to mention them. I find this deeply amusing. It was an unholy streaky mess to apply, taking four coats to even out all the way and get rid of the nail line. I should hate this polish.
I've had this hideous, awful, slightly ill-looking color on my nails now since Sunday (still chip-free!), and it has filled me with glee every time I see it. I adore it in its silliness, its inability to fit in, the fact that it clashes with everything in my wardrobe except for the unseen stripes on a particularly bright pair of underwear. It's like the nail equivalent of my purple-hair days in college (also known as "the days after I'd discovered fun hair dye but before I'd discovered the wonders and glories of teal, which all told looks much better with ginger hair than does purple").
But why like it? Am I just being perverse? Am I trying to find some way to express my "I don't think you'd fit in here" side just as I'm trying to figure out how to squeeze my insanity into a possibly corporate mold? Am I trying to take something generally coded as feminine - nicely manicured nails - and change it into a statement of something other than beauty, thereby saying that polished nails don't have to be standard feminine beauty, can be androgynous, can, in fact, be ugly? Am I trying to find something beautiful in the ugliness? Is it some empty postmodern statement on consumerism?
No. Honestly, it's probably for the lulz. I just like the polish.
I do, however, have to wonder why on earth OPI thought "dirty-pollen-yellow-two-shades-away-from-sinus-infection-snot creme" would make a good polish color. But then, I'm the weirdo who bought it.
As a side note: http://stupidnailpolishnames.blogspot.com/ is pretty awesome.
I've had this hideous, awful, slightly ill-looking color on my nails now since Sunday (still chip-free!), and it has filled me with glee every time I see it. I adore it in its silliness, its inability to fit in, the fact that it clashes with everything in my wardrobe except for the unseen stripes on a particularly bright pair of underwear. It's like the nail equivalent of my purple-hair days in college (also known as "the days after I'd discovered fun hair dye but before I'd discovered the wonders and glories of teal, which all told looks much better with ginger hair than does purple").
But why like it? Am I just being perverse? Am I trying to find some way to express my "I don't think you'd fit in here" side just as I'm trying to figure out how to squeeze my insanity into a possibly corporate mold? Am I trying to take something generally coded as feminine - nicely manicured nails - and change it into a statement of something other than beauty, thereby saying that polished nails don't have to be standard feminine beauty, can be androgynous, can, in fact, be ugly? Am I trying to find something beautiful in the ugliness? Is it some empty postmodern statement on consumerism?
No. Honestly, it's probably for the lulz. I just like the polish.
I do, however, have to wonder why on earth OPI thought "dirty-pollen-yellow-two-shades-away-from-sinus-infection-snot creme" would make a good polish color. But then, I'm the weirdo who bought it.
As a side note: http://stupidnailpolishnames.blogspot.com/ is pretty awesome.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
In Limbo
So grades are done with the exception of two potatoes who haven't gotten around to turning in their final papers. So I await their final papers, sending them nagging emails reminding them that they'll flunk if the papers don't get turned in. Not my fault - department policy. I'd rather they just get them in so I don't have to deal with them anymore. I just want this done and off my back.
Having everything else done and calculated and ready to enter means that I can shower and go buy myself some nail polish, which was the treat I promised myself for getting through the remains of the grading.
Once the grades are in, it's done. Like really, truly done done. And I can find a job doing something else and hope that one day over the next couple of years my motivation to finish the dissertation returns in full enough force that I finish the stupid thing.
I'm still not sad it's over, so I'm assuming at this point that I'm really not going to be. Honestly, though, it's hard to feel much of anything. I have NO idea at this point what's going to happen in my life over the next few months, no idea of what to expect, no real way to make plans. Brownie had an interview with a college in BFE of this state and they called his references, who reported that and sounded as though college in BFE is really interested in him. We haven't been to the town at all, so we're trying to keep an open mind, but the truth is that neither one of us is even slightly excited by this prospect. The idea of packing up and moving back to KC instead sounds so much better, so much more likely to bring employment for both of us, but it doesn't sound definite enough for me to want to hope for it. Not knowing what to think or what to hope for or what not to hope for so that I don't end up disappointed again has become an exercise in teeth-grinding.
I guess what I do for the moment is go shower (finally, at 2:30), drag myself out to the bookstore to look at books on writing resume cover letters for a while, pick up my nail polish, grab stuff to make salmon/asparagus pasta for dinner, and then flop with a book or with my laptop and novel for a while. Something to distract me from me.
Having everything else done and calculated and ready to enter means that I can shower and go buy myself some nail polish, which was the treat I promised myself for getting through the remains of the grading.
Once the grades are in, it's done. Like really, truly done done. And I can find a job doing something else and hope that one day over the next couple of years my motivation to finish the dissertation returns in full enough force that I finish the stupid thing.
I'm still not sad it's over, so I'm assuming at this point that I'm really not going to be. Honestly, though, it's hard to feel much of anything. I have NO idea at this point what's going to happen in my life over the next few months, no idea of what to expect, no real way to make plans. Brownie had an interview with a college in BFE of this state and they called his references, who reported that and sounded as though college in BFE is really interested in him. We haven't been to the town at all, so we're trying to keep an open mind, but the truth is that neither one of us is even slightly excited by this prospect. The idea of packing up and moving back to KC instead sounds so much better, so much more likely to bring employment for both of us, but it doesn't sound definite enough for me to want to hope for it. Not knowing what to think or what to hope for or what not to hope for so that I don't end up disappointed again has become an exercise in teeth-grinding.
I guess what I do for the moment is go shower (finally, at 2:30), drag myself out to the bookstore to look at books on writing resume cover letters for a while, pick up my nail polish, grab stuff to make salmon/asparagus pasta for dinner, and then flop with a book or with my laptop and novel for a while. Something to distract me from me.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
An email I can't believe I had to send
Quick backstory:
One of Brownie's uncles is a born again Christian of the Conservative Glenn Beck-loving mold. Over the past few months, he's taken to sending out a bunch of tasteless jokes about how liberals are all unpatriotic idiots, reminders that Jesus loves good mommies, and various bits of tea party bullshit. He's been mass emailing these to everyone in the family and some friends (from his work email, which I find tasteless as well, but whatever). I've been ignoring/deleting them, hoping at some point that he'd figure out that spamming friends and family is not a good way to get his point across yet is, well, rude.
This afternoon he sent out a forward of some Shepherd Smith (a FoxNews anchor) insanity about how Obama never takes his wife to Muslim countries because he's Muslim and doesn't force his wife to follow Sharia Law or some such bullshit. I'd post a link here but I honestly don't feel like helping anyone to read the steaming pile of idiotic faux-rationality FoxNews came up with - I don't like spreading lies.
Anyway, I'm fed up, so after stewing about it for hours, I finally sent the following email:
Dear Uncle _____,
I've been enduring these Conservative emails from you with no comment because I felt, as family, that I should. However, you've now crossed a line in my eyes. In sending this email, you've stated a belief that Obama is a Muslim. Per the link that Aunt _____ sent out [a reply-all with a link to the Snopes article on whether or not Obama is Muslim] and, well, reality, Obama is not a Muslim. He is a Christian, of the UCC denomination. Here is a link to an article from Newsweek that eloquently describes Obama's Christian faith and his journey to it: http://www.newsweek.com/id/145971 The article is from Newsweek, a publication I frankly find to be Conservative; as I assume you will most likely see Newsweek as being somehow Liberal, I'm hoping that maybe we can ultimately agree on it as a fairly neutral, factual source.
To continue, however, were Obama in fact a Muslim, the fact would be irrelevant; this country has no official state religion, ergo being Muslim would not disqualify him from the job he was elected to do. Furthermore, to imply that being Muslim means that Obama (or anyone else of that faith) might be working against the best wishes of this country is deeply prejudicial. That sentiment insults not only the President, but the citizens of this country who used their best judgment to elect him in a free and open election and all the members of the Muslim faith worldwide. Khalid Sheik Mohammed is no more the poster child for Islam than Timothy McVeigh is for Christianity.
It saddens me to see an email like this in my inbox, filled with prejudice and hatred, from someone of whom I had thought better. In consequence, I am requesting my removal from this email list. The insult to the President, who, as President of the country I love and Commander-in-Chief to the Armed forces, demands my respect, is beyond what I find tolerable. I can roll my eyes at stupid jokes, but I can't roll my eyes at this. My sense of patriotism demands more of me than an eyeroll. Please stop sending me these forwards.
Yours in Christ,
Your niece-in-law, nunkin, the embodiment of the secular-progressive-liberal-socialist-communist that Rush Limbaugh and FoxNews warned you about, and yet still a Christian and a patriotic American. +
One of Brownie's uncles is a born again Christian of the Conservative Glenn Beck-loving mold. Over the past few months, he's taken to sending out a bunch of tasteless jokes about how liberals are all unpatriotic idiots, reminders that Jesus loves good mommies, and various bits of tea party bullshit. He's been mass emailing these to everyone in the family and some friends (from his work email, which I find tasteless as well, but whatever). I've been ignoring/deleting them, hoping at some point that he'd figure out that spamming friends and family is not a good way to get his point across yet is, well, rude.
This afternoon he sent out a forward of some Shepherd Smith (a FoxNews anchor) insanity about how Obama never takes his wife to Muslim countries because he's Muslim and doesn't force his wife to follow Sharia Law or some such bullshit. I'd post a link here but I honestly don't feel like helping anyone to read the steaming pile of idiotic faux-rationality FoxNews came up with - I don't like spreading lies.
Anyway, I'm fed up, so after stewing about it for hours, I finally sent the following email:
Dear Uncle _____,
I've been enduring these Conservative emails from you with no comment because I felt, as family, that I should. However, you've now crossed a line in my eyes. In sending this email, you've stated a belief that Obama is a Muslim. Per the link that Aunt _____ sent out [a reply-all with a link to the Snopes article on whether or not Obama is Muslim] and, well, reality, Obama is not a Muslim. He is a Christian, of the UCC denomination. Here is a link to an article from Newsweek that eloquently describes Obama's Christian faith and his journey to it: http://www.newsweek.com/id/145971 The article is from Newsweek, a publication I frankly find to be Conservative; as I assume you will most likely see Newsweek as being somehow Liberal, I'm hoping that maybe we can ultimately agree on it as a fairly neutral, factual source.
To continue, however, were Obama in fact a Muslim, the fact would be irrelevant; this country has no official state religion, ergo being Muslim would not disqualify him from the job he was elected to do. Furthermore, to imply that being Muslim means that Obama (or anyone else of that faith) might be working against the best wishes of this country is deeply prejudicial. That sentiment insults not only the President, but the citizens of this country who used their best judgment to elect him in a free and open election and all the members of the Muslim faith worldwide. Khalid Sheik Mohammed is no more the poster child for Islam than Timothy McVeigh is for Christianity.
It saddens me to see an email like this in my inbox, filled with prejudice and hatred, from someone of whom I had thought better. In consequence, I am requesting my removal from this email list. The insult to the President, who, as President of the country I love and Commander-in-Chief to the Armed forces, demands my respect, is beyond what I find tolerable. I can roll my eyes at stupid jokes, but I can't roll my eyes at this. My sense of patriotism demands more of me than an eyeroll. Please stop sending me these forwards.
Yours in Christ,
Your niece-in-law, nunkin, the embodiment of the secular-progressive-liberal-socialist-communist that Rush Limbaugh and FoxNews warned you about, and yet still a Christian and a patriotic American. +
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Happy Gurglings about Reading
I flipped the name of the blog again because the most recent name didn't quite sum up anything I felt toward anything anymore. So that's that.
I've been largely offline for the last two weeks or so. I feel like I keep missing things going on in my online life - I have only a vague idea of what's going on in the lives of most of my online friends, I've barely been on facebook, I even managed to forget about farmville long enough to have some crops wilt. I feel bad (mostly about missing stuff in my friends' lives), but.
Instead of being online, I've managed to read more in the last two weeks than I have since my exams. It continues to be awesomesauce. I nabbed the brandspankingnew Philip Pullman novel on Friday and am all kinds of excited to read it. At the moment I'm finishing Alison Croggon's Pellinor series - I think Pullman will go right after that. Maybe I'll throw a review up when I'm finished since it's still so new.
I know I've already posted once about how happy I've been devouring books, but it's exhilarating. I have stories flying through my head all the time now, these incandescent pieces of loveliness that remind me that there really are ways to escape the inside of my own head, or which, conversely, remind me that the inside of my own head has stories of its own that want out too. I need to stop reading long enough to write some more but haven't wanted to.
As I read, I'm ripping apart everything as I go along, examining how authors have gone about dealing with plot, character development, description, all that - all the stuff I never looked at while ripping apart lit for grad school. It continually boggles my mind that after ten years of English (from the three years I worked through the major in college to the two years of my MA and five (so far) years of my Ph.D.), I've never gotten to talk about anything of those things, never really had time to examine the craft of writing for the sake of writing. I can read and interpret ANYTHING at this point, but when it comes to thinking about the writing, this is all still fairly new to me. It occurs to me from time to time that I should look up some books on writing and read those, see what others find important, but I haven't quite wanted to do that yet. I think at the moment that I'm happy with what I'm picking up, and I'll move on to what others have picked up on soonish. This isn't a "my thoughts will be more better and smarter than theirs" type feeling - it's an attempt to get some sort of idea as to what I think about things before I start to get into the prevailing wisdom of the world, much the same way I'd research a text by reading it, developing the beginnings of my own thought patterns about it, and then going off to read articles about it in order to challenge and develop my thinking even further.
AKA, I'm approaching writing now roughly like I'd approach dissertation research. *headdesk* The more things change, as it were.
I've been largely offline for the last two weeks or so. I feel like I keep missing things going on in my online life - I have only a vague idea of what's going on in the lives of most of my online friends, I've barely been on facebook, I even managed to forget about farmville long enough to have some crops wilt. I feel bad (mostly about missing stuff in my friends' lives), but.
Instead of being online, I've managed to read more in the last two weeks than I have since my exams. It continues to be awesomesauce. I nabbed the brandspankingnew Philip Pullman novel on Friday and am all kinds of excited to read it. At the moment I'm finishing Alison Croggon's Pellinor series - I think Pullman will go right after that. Maybe I'll throw a review up when I'm finished since it's still so new.
I know I've already posted once about how happy I've been devouring books, but it's exhilarating. I have stories flying through my head all the time now, these incandescent pieces of loveliness that remind me that there really are ways to escape the inside of my own head, or which, conversely, remind me that the inside of my own head has stories of its own that want out too. I need to stop reading long enough to write some more but haven't wanted to.
As I read, I'm ripping apart everything as I go along, examining how authors have gone about dealing with plot, character development, description, all that - all the stuff I never looked at while ripping apart lit for grad school. It continually boggles my mind that after ten years of English (from the three years I worked through the major in college to the two years of my MA and five (so far) years of my Ph.D.), I've never gotten to talk about anything of those things, never really had time to examine the craft of writing for the sake of writing. I can read and interpret ANYTHING at this point, but when it comes to thinking about the writing, this is all still fairly new to me. It occurs to me from time to time that I should look up some books on writing and read those, see what others find important, but I haven't quite wanted to do that yet. I think at the moment that I'm happy with what I'm picking up, and I'll move on to what others have picked up on soonish. This isn't a "my thoughts will be more better and smarter than theirs" type feeling - it's an attempt to get some sort of idea as to what I think about things before I start to get into the prevailing wisdom of the world, much the same way I'd research a text by reading it, developing the beginnings of my own thought patterns about it, and then going off to read articles about it in order to challenge and develop my thinking even further.
AKA, I'm approaching writing now roughly like I'd approach dissertation research. *headdesk* The more things change, as it were.
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