inveniam viam

"Magic in fiction is the time-honored way of slipping a hand up the skirt of convention and giving her something to smile mysteriously about." -- Lilith Saintcrow

Thanks julia_reynolds for pointing the way to a very interesting essay about female heroines and Urban Fantasy:

What truly defines UF, and why the genre has exploded recently, is the moral and ethical ambiguity of its protagonists.

Urban fantasy is pretty much the only genre today exploring not only the ethics of power and consent, but also serious questions of violence and gender relations from a primarily female point of view.

I think that something else that urban fantasy is exploring is the nature of god and gods, and mankind's relationship with god. "What if God were one of us?" I'm reading eBear's Blood and Iron, and though there's no God of All in it's pages, there's Fae and Hell and everything in between (and power, lust, despair and honor; it's very yummy.)

One of the characters of the WIP is a strong female, violent when she needs to be, nurturing because she can. I like her, though someone that strong is intimidating. Though, come to think of it, I can imagine going out to pub crawl with her.

I've hit that spot in the WIP where I'm wondering if it's any good. I mean, *I* think that it's good... Actually, I've never written anything with such a complex plot. I've also never had so much damn fun writing. Both of these things bode well.

When I got towersofgrey's section this morning, I actually did a happy dance. Well, it was more like a skip, but still. I cannot express how good it feels to be stuck somewhere and have your collaborator just pull the story through. Damn.

A couple of days ago, I sent a message to towersofgrey: "Any chance that you'd want to work on a story with me? I've got this idea..."

His response was -- "Definitely interested."

That was five days ago. I love it. LoveLoveLove it. I only want to do collaborations for the rest of my life. Well, probably not. But this is good.

Our styles are opposite in a couple of ways. He thinks in symbolism and is all in the characters heads, and I write from the gut and what the characters can sense. He is verbose and I write in a kind of shorthand. I send him a bunch of words, he adds more words to my words, adds some of his words and sends it back, I take some words out and add more of my words ... It's like making a baby, 'cause it's some of me and some of him.

And, yeah, it's kinda like sex but better. It's not about body and hormones, it's about head and heart and that thing that drives us to write, that demands creation. It's funny, 'cause I don't know him that well, we didn't hang out at VP (I didn't hang out with anyone, really), and our lives and interests are disparate. It's the story that we have in common, and it's rather interesting how we can both see the characters exactly the same, as if we're looking at a picture, but from different angles.

And it's good. It will bring world peace, save the whales and shine like a beacon in the darkness to all who are lost.

I love this story. I love this process. I love myself and I love towersofgrey and I love, love, love writing.

Here, have a rainbow!

:)

Edit: towerofgrey's post is here.

The vid and the first five episodes are up, and to some very nice reviews! *sigh* I love this stuff.

It makes me happy and it makes me a better writer. FTW.

I was surfing around, just occupying time, and came along serenejournal's a.p. post about 42 Magazine.

I thought about what gives my life meaning; I've been thinking about that alot the last couple of days. And a line popped into my head: "She liked to walk along railroad tracks because, unlike graveyards, it felt like she was going somewhere."

So, well, here we go.

So, we'll see how today goes.

Yesterday, Mike and I went down to Wisconsin to pick up another Festiva; the frame of my last one rusted out. On the way down, he helped me rough out the plot of the next
Alkyone story and I came up with a setting for the one after that. When I have those two done, I'll have my first (level? ring? platform?) done, and I'll move up to the next level. Sometimes I think of them as North, South, East, West and sometimes I think of them as Sunrise, Midday, Sunset, Midnight.

It was five hours down and five hours back, plus an hour at the guys' house and a stop for dinner. We didn't get home until after 11pm, and then I had to run and get milk for the shop. We turned in around 12:30, and I couldn't go to sleep. Finanlly fell asleep around 2am.

And got woken at 3:30 am by the police, who said that the drive-through windows of the shop were both wide open. So I got up and dressed and went down there. Nothing looked out of place. I'm pretty darn sure that the windows were barred when I dropped off the milk. Either I'm wrong, or someone climbed very carefully through another window that I'm pretty sure *was* open. And didn't disturb anything. I actually can imagine one of the crew that hangs around my place "breaking in" and stealing an ice cream cone. I dunno.

So the police and I looked around, I closed up and went back home and fell slept from about 4:30am to 5:45am and now I'm here. Yay. Today's schedule is 6:30a-2:30p at the shop, and 3p-9:30p at the home aide job.

edit: Carl says he forgot to close the windows. *yeesh*