Friday 5: Mind Your Peeves and Qs

Image courtesy Gunilla Granfalk on Unsplash.

What’s one of your language-related (that is, something people say or write) pet peeves?

Editors are supposed to have an endless list of these, right? So the stereotype goes. We are the gatekeepers of language and so on and so forth. And I guess we all do, probably. But if you look at the layperson's language pet peeves ("they're/there/their"! "your/you're"!) and the editor's pet peeves, the overlap would probably be quite small.

My personal ones these days are: The New Yorker's bizarre house style guide (coöperation? no thanks) and The New York Times's practice of referring to heads of state with honorific titles instead of, simply, their names.

Not what you were expecting, maybe!


What’s one of your dining-out-related pet peeves?

It's nobody's fault, but somehow the waiter always comes over to check on you just when your mouth is full of food. Or maybe they do this deliberately so as to avoid getting sucked into an actual conversation with someone who wants to nit pick the seasoning of the vegetables.


What’s one of your technology-related pet peeves?

Windows updates.


What’s one of your television-watching pet peeves?

Romance. Any time a show (or book or movie, for that matter) features a close friendship or even working relationship between a man and a woman, romance almost inevitably gets shoehorned in. If not outright romance, then something like Will They Won't They. It chafes for a lot of reasons (lazy way to add tension, heteronormativity, implying that the only possible relationship between men and women is romantic/sexual) but I think this one hits me personally because most of my inner circle are men. (Not for "women are just too much drama!" reasons; it just seems to have happened.) The close friendships I have with women are also way different than how they're portrayed in media (much more random weirdness, much less obsessing over shoes and sex) but at least they're not wholly misrepresented as some kind of waiting room for romance.

This is, incidentally, why I love Elementary so much. Sherlock and Joan are #FriendshipGoals to the extreme. Of course, now that I've said that, I've cursed the show to fall victim to exactly this trap. Sigh.


What’s something you do that you know peeves others?

Swedish has an expression: tidsoptimist. This is someone who lacks a solid grasp of how long it takes to get to places and (the implication is) is usually late.

I've been here for five years and I'm still a tidsoptimist. I still operate by American car-owning convenience and fail to take into account that I'm not leaving whenever I like, but according to public transportation's time table. I'm stricter about this with clients, or with traveling, but socially? All bets are off. I get there when I get there. (Maybe this is why I don't have many Swedish friends?)

Friday 5: Know When to Fold 'Em

What did you last place into a file folder?

Physically? Some hard copies of comments and revisions I got back from a critique group member. I have an accordion file folder for this project (I've been working on it since 2014) and each slot is feedback from a different reader. I should probably go through and clean it out. Some comments are about revisions I've since made, others are on sections that have since been discarded. It's not really worth it to keep that much of a record around.


What do you know how to fold a piece of paper into?

Not much. A paper airplane? And I could probably make a cootie catcher, still.


What’s your laundry-folding procedure like?

I don't fold laundry.


When do you next expect to invite someone into your fold?

Making friends in Sweden is hard. Maybe I haven't met the right Swedes, just, but all of the new friends I've made (if the word "friend" can even be applied) have been other immigrants and expats. I think this moment is coming soon, though; I have quite a few acquaintances on the periphery that I'm ready to befriend.


When have you slept on a foldaway bed?

Probably not since high school. One of my friends had a fold-out couch in her rec room and if I slept over, it was on that bed.

What I Read: Journal of a Solitude

This was a book that I bought at a library sale I don't know how many years ago. After falling in love with Walden in high school, the similar premise of this book (memoirs of living alone in the countryside) intrigued me. Yet somehow I never got around to reading it until I was going through my books to ship across the ocean. Out of all of the books I hadn't read yet but really wanted to, this was at the top of the list. So I tore through it during my last days in Pennsylvania and up the highways to Albany, then ended up re-homing it to my friend and hostess in Maine. Incidentally, this also hits two items on my 101 in 1001 list: it's nonfiction and it's a book I've owned for over three years!

Image courtesy W. W. Norton & Company

I could tell that I had started and stopped this book at least a few times: the first few entries were familiar to me, and I had dog-eared a page or two. Younger Me wanted to like this, or wanted to be the kind of person who liked this, but I guess she needed a few more years to be able to really get into it. Now Me couldn't put this book down.

There isn't much that happens, which is what you can expect from something titled Journal of a Solitude. That might not be everyone's cup of tea, but it was mine, at any rate. There's a directness and simplicity to her writing that pulls you along, and I think it's exactly the kind of cozy book that makes for perfect winter reading.

2016: The Women's Classic Literature Event: Check-In 2

So this check-in for the Classics Club's Women's Literature Event was supposed to be in April, but then April was messy so now I'm putting up in early May. That's okay! Here's my check-in post from January if you want to see what I'm talking about.

I habitually check the Stockholm library system for the remaining books off my list; I also check every time I go return a book because who can just go to a library and return a book without checking out a new one? Not me, that's for sure. In those cases, I just plug whatever random names or titles I remember off the top of my head and the first one that turns up in the branch I'm at wins.

That's how I came home with A. S. Byatt's Possession.

The Beguiling of Merlin, Edward Burne-Jones

Which, conveniently for me, is by a female author!

It's very weird; in 2014 I started work on a novel. This is really embarrassing to admit in an age of independent publishing and NaNoWriMo because it seems like "working on a novel" is a thing that pretentious navel-gazers do. But if I'm a pretentious navel-gazer, so be it.

Now, I was already inspired by a couple of books when I started—one I loved and one I hate-loved, if that makes sense—but a weird thing happened after I finished the first draft of this novel. The books I was reading were, completely unintentionally, a reflection of what I was trying to work on. As in, I wasn't seeking out books in this particular format or on this particular subject matter. A Tale for the Time Being was one. So is Possession, with its focus on letters from inaccessible people—in this case, inaccessible because they're long dead.

I'm not far enough along that I know what Byatt is really planning to do with it, though the fact that it's called Possession: A Romance makes it kind of clear. The prose so far is the kind of complicated and heady stuff that I like, though that makes it slow going. (I like taking it slow, sometimes.) What's perhaps the most impressive about the book is the sheer amount of material Byatt created for her fictional 19th century poets. Whenever someone goes that extra mile, I always have to appreciate it.

As for my womanly reading so far this year: I've finished 11 books by now, and 5 of them have been by women. Not all of them are classics, though, so take that as you will. But I'm working on this, and I'm working on (still) a Swedish version of The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende, which will tilt things towards gender parity. The "classics" so far this year have been Mrs Dalloway in January (thank you book club!) and Giovanni's Room in April (thank you again book club!). So when it comes to canonical authors my focus on women is going pretty well. I think Byatt and Allende both firmly belong in the "classics" camp.

Do I rank The Price of Salt as a classic? That's a tough call. On the one hand, the book feels like pot boiler noir novel, while Giovanni's Room feels more ~~literary. But am I really being fair in that distinction? There are certainly beautiful, poetic moments in Highsmith's writing which feels above and beyond just a trashy dime store novel.

But back when I signed up for this project, I said I also wanted to read more graphic novels. I still haven't cracked open Nimona. That might be the perfect reading after I finish The House of the Spirits and Possession; it's nice to alternate between quick reads and slow ones.

Now, onto the actual question for this second check-in:

Share an interesting fact about the life of the author you’re currently reading for this event. This might take some research. You can share below or write up a pretty post for your blog, if you’re feeling creative.

So, I'm currently reading Allende and Byatt for this challenge, two women I know nothing about. But apparently The House of the Spirits began life as a letter Allende wrote to her dying grandfather in an attempt to "keep him alive, at least in spirit." Now I wonder which parts I've read so far were part of the original letter she wrote, and which ones she added later.

I'm also rolling my eyes at all of the people complaining that she's ruining the Latin magical realism tradition of Gabriel Garcia Marquez et al. The House of the Spirits >>>>>> 100 Years of Solitude. Deal with it.

Five Fandom Friday: 5 Things I Love About Halloween

Somehow I missed not one but two weeks of 5 Fandom Friday?! I guess so. Today, though, I have time to sit down and blog a bit. Instead of this week's prompt, I'm looking back at last week's: 5 favorite things about Halloween. I'm trying very hard to avoid making this list nothing but candy, but the struggle is real.

1. Candy corn

I need to ask my friends/family back in the US to mail me some because THERE IS NO CANDY CORN IN SWEDEN. I don't count the fancy (and expensive!) "American candy" store. I want my cheap-ass Brach's, preferably on post-Halloween discount.


2. Apple things

Image courtesy Tony Hudson/Wikimedia Commons

Bobbing for apples, caramel apples, apple pie, apple cider...all of the apples. (FUCK YO' PSL!!!)


3. Vincent Price

Halloween is the season for horror movies, and Vincent Price is the undisputed king of them. All respect due to slashers and grindhouse and zombies, but my favorite kind of horror movies are the mid-century pieces (no colorization, please). Sure, the effects are hit and miss today, but that campy and/or gothic horror atmosphere never gets old.


4. Costumes

Image courtesy Geoffrey Landis/Wikimedia Commons

I'm not really a convention person. If I were, I'm sure I'd be seriously into cosplay. Instead I take Halloween costumes pretty seriously. I've been Link, Silent Bob, Athena, coked-out Mia Wallace from Pulp Fiction, the Blue Screen of Death, and Athena (among others). I have a pretty good idea of what I'm going to be this year, but I'll sit on that reveal...for now.


5. NaNoWriMo

Sure, NaNoWriMo doesn't begin until November, but as Halloween butts right up against November, the two can certainly bleed into each other! Last year and this year I organized a late-night Halloween/NaNo kick-off event for the Stockholm area. It was a great way to celebrate Halloween and to get a head start on NaNo (by starting writing at the crack of midnight) at the same time!

What do you love about Halloween? Let me know!

Friday Five on Saturday: 5 Favorite (Fictional) Teachers

Image courtesy Katelyn Jade

As a teacher (of sorts) myself, I am basically morally obligated to answer this one. I'm also really, really, excited to answer it, because I think teachers are immensely underrated and undervalued in American culture. Sure, everyone loves Dead Poets Society but then we also joke about how teachers are glorified babysitters who only work 9 months out of the year. Um, excuse me?

My list includes real-life teachers alongside fictional ones, just because.

5. Senor Chang (Community) (season 1, mostly)

I mean, he's Chang. His character took some bizarre directions—I guess that's what happens when a bunch of people work together on a story—and sometimes it was okay and sometimes it wasn't. Season 1 despotic teacher Chang is where it's at, though I do like the storyline he gets in the Karate Kid theatrical adaptation episode.

I allowed myself one silly answer, because a little levity never hurt, but the rest of these answers really speak to what I admire in teachers (and hope to be myself, one day).


4. Ma Yeo-jin (Majin) (The Queen's Classroom)

Courtesy Wikimedia and iOK Media.

MAJIN IS THE BAMFEST TEACHER CHARACTER TO HAVE EVER BEEN WRITTEN. A lot of favorite teacher characters are theatrical, over-the-top ~*~performers~*~ and while that's great, you get the impression that maybe some of them should have been actors instead of teachers.

BUT MAJIN.

Majin devotes herself to the betterment of her students to an almost unprecedented level. Part of the appeal of teaching (for me, and apparently for a lot of the OTT teacher characters) is being able to forge a connection with students and be their friend and mentor and, once in a while, have fun with them.

MAJIN IS TOO GOOD FOR THAT. She started out as that teacher, apparently, but realized that what was the best for her students wasn't to be their friend, but to teach them to be friends for each other. This lesson, unfortunately for Majin, comes at the cost of her ever being able to be their friend. She fights for them and champions for them in exhausting, unimaginable ways outside of the classroom, but in the classroom she resists every urge or temptation to be funny, to be entertaining, to be likable. Instead she engages in a year-long Socratic dialogue with them, leading them to some heavy life truths by forcing them to question their environment, their values, and even her own authority.

I could never do that.


3. Mrs. B

I took piano lessons for about ten years, from 7 to 17, and Mrs. B was my teacher for 8 or 9 of them. I had a student of hers before I started with her, and supposedly I was the catalyst for some kind of feud or fallout between them?

HUMBLEBRAG TIME:

(My first teacher was still in high school when she started giving lessons, and Mrs. B instructed her to refer any clear talents up the ladder to Mrs. B herself, as she was a professional with a proper music education background and years of experience and so on—if a sucky kid gets bad instruction, it's no loss, but she wanted any potential talent to have experienced training from the get-go. As it turned out, I was pretty good! I'll never know how good, for reasons I'll get into later, but good enough that Mrs. B could tell by my first recital and demanded to know what the hell, man? My then-teacher said something about Lawyer Mom being the church organist and helping me(???) or making me practice a whole lot or whatever, but my second recital rolled around 6 months later and Mrs. B had it all sussed and flipped her lid at my then-teacher and, if I'm recalling this story correctly, they fell apart permanently as a result.

I knew none of this until years later. I stopped lessons with my first teacher because she was leaving for college; my parents offered me the choice of another neighbor or my first neighbor's teacher (Mrs. B). I'm surprised they let an 8-year-old make that kind of decision? But I said that I thought it would at least be more consistent to have my teacher's teacher than a completely new track. In retrospect, that decision was a life-changer.)

Like my other favorite real-life teachers, Mrs. B had standards, and I'm ashamed to say that I was a lazy piece of crap who failed to meet almost all of them. I got by for years with the scantest amount of practice because I was a halfway decent sight-reader (meaning: I could play things up to a certain difficulty fairly well on the first try) and even though she tried to have quite a few Come to Jesus moments with me, the message never sank in. (If someone had told me that Malcolm Gladwell tidbit about 10,000 hours I might have been a less lazy piece of crap. Who knows.) We won't even discuss my disastrous senior recital. :(

To a small extent, I can also pinpoint some of the problems I had on my first teacher: she did not (that I recall) instruct or even recommend scales, which are a vital piece of learning to play an instrument well. I also had a tendency to keep my thumbs on middle C no matter what in early songs. I realize this is a popular way to introduce kids to the keyboard but it's not good pedagogy. Otherwise you end up like me, learning to contort your hand(s) to keep that thumb on C instead of fluid, natural fingering.

But that's passing the buck. I could have gotten over that small handicap if I had given more of a shit in middle and high school. I coulda been a contendah! But I didn't, and now I regret it.

Sorry, Mrs. B.


2. Ms. R-B

I have a lot of teachers from kindergarten up until senior year I could put on this list, but it would more or less be an exercise in injustice. My school district, which has its own set of problems (like the football coach/high school principal...imagine that combination if you will), was at least blessed with a lot of really fantastic and dedicated teachers while I was there (and that still seems to be the case today). I don't have enough room here to thank all of them, but if you were a teacher of mine at any point: thank you. At one point or another I was probably a sullen and defiant piece of shit to you, and I'm sorry for that. I was a kid/preteen/teenager, which isn't much of an excuse, but so it is.

However, there is one teacher I single out every time when it comes to teachers, and that is my 10th grade/AP Language and Composition/Creative Writing teacher, Ms. R-B. Out of a school full of amazing teachers, she was my favorite.

I think sometimes when you're a teacher, you get a little jaded and you lower your expectations out of students because it's easier than trying to keep pushing that rock uphill. But R-B, despite having been a teacher for many years before I had her, never gave up on that Sisyphean task, not until she retired. That meant that most everyone else groaned and thought of her as "the strict" teacher—she wouldn't have won any popularity contests among the student body—but it also meant that you learned a lot from her. At least, you did if you paid even the slightest bit of attention and gave the barest of shits.

I kick ass at writing essays. You know why? Because she taught AP Language and Composition and put us through essay bootcamp right from the first week. We churned out essays on a weekly/bi-weekly basis (my memory is a bit fuzzy). I wrote more in that class than I ever did in any other class I ever took; by the time I got to college, I was an essay-writing machine and could handle anything the 100- and 200-level courses threw at me; at the 300 level and above it became a challenge, but always a challenge I was confident I could meet. (I also got a 5 on the AP Language and Composition test and got to skip Freshman Composition. Natch.) None of that wouldn't have happened without essay boot camp.

Not only did you write a lot, but R-B expected everyone in her class to write well. If you phoned it in on a paper, she wouldn't be afraid to give you the grade you deserved. I think that's what soured most of the student body on her: you could definitely argue that grade inflation was something of a thing in my district, and I think it burned a lot of egos to get a C or worse.

I admire her ability to stick with her career for so long (she taught for well over the average 7-year career span of most teachers today, and at the same school to boot) in the face of apathetic and snotty students. I would not have the patience for that; in fact, my classes with her were the ones that dissuaded me from becoming an English Literature teacher—not because her classes were horrible (they were great), but because I realized they were exactly how I would teach a class, and if it led to the kind of withering apathy and disrespect I saw in my peers, then I wouldn't be able to hack it.

Incidentally, out of all of the people from high school I ever really connected with, and still talk to today, almost all of us took AP Language and Composition with R-B and loved the hell out of that class (and her). Even as shitty, self-absorbed teenagers, we could tell that she gave a shit.

I actually ran into her a week before I left the country forever and it was the most gratifying and wonderful thing that could have happened while I was out running errands. We even trade letters periodically, and Christmas cards.


1. Teacher Dad

I don't mention Teacher Dad as much as Lawyer Mom here, but he is of course my favorite teacher, ever, by virtue of being my dad.

I am who I am in large part because of the parents I had, of course. Both of them fostered my curiosity as a child and never patronized me or my brother in their explanations of things or answers to questions, and both of them worked hard and made sacrifices to give their children a comfortable life. Lawyer Mom is the one responsible for my love of reading and for whatever sense of compassion and empathy I can make claim to (some days it isn't much), while Teacher Dad is responsible for my persistence (some might say stubbornness), my sarcasm, and my...backbone? courage? cynicism?

We spent a lot of my teenage years being angry and dysfunctional and yelling at each other, but now we're grown-ups I'm a grown-up so it doesn't happen as often. As it turns out, fighting with your teenager, even a lot, actually teaches them to resist peer pressure. But I wouldn't be surprised if it also encourages just better critical thinking and a healthy skepticism regarding authority. Teacher Dad also always held me and my brother to high standards when it came to academic performance (white people do Tiger Parenting too, guys) and just whatever we did in general. It was okay to suck and fail sometimes, just as long as you did the best you could. (High standards also seems to be a theme throughout this Friday 5. Well then.)

Honorable mention:

Ueda Jiro (Trick)

He is technically a physics professor, although we never see him do any teaching in the show (which is why he gets an honorable mention instead of a place in the list proper). Even if he's often a jerk, you can tell that he really cares about Yamada. Hiroshi Abe is also just a lot of fun to watch. He has a great deadpan comic presence.

Who are some of your favorite teachers, real or otherwise?

Why I'm Not Reading Your Blog

I've debated posting this for a while, but I finally figured, "Why not?" Even if it seems incredibly presumptuous and the height of hubris for me, the author of a crappy little blog with not a lot of followers, to tell you what you're doing wrong, well, it's my blog and I do what I want.

All of these are legitimate reasons I have either never started following a blog, or why I've eventually removed a blog from my reading list. They can be broken down into two categories.


Category 1: Web Design Issues

In other words: it's the presentation, not the actual content. You might think to yourself: hey, strong writing will shine through no matter what! The truth of the matter, from my lazy and pressed-for-time experience, is that ain't nobody got time for text that is difficult or uncomfortable to read.

1. You're center-aligning your text.

Please don't do this.


2. You're doing fancy font and color stuff with your text.

Please don't do this, either.


3. You're hiding everything behind a cut/jump/etc.

If I read your blog, it's through my RSS reader (which is Inoreader, by the way, if you also lamented the loss of Google Reader). I realize that other readers visiting you via RSS may prefer those truncated introductions, and maybe you do, too, and that's why you do it.

But let me defend verbosity: I don't want to have to click through to another tab. I follow a lot of blogs; I would be opening a lot of new tabs, and my Chromium window is already a mess. It's far easier for me to scroll past your blog post, which unless it's proper novel length won't take long to pass, than it is to open a new tab, find it in my mess of tabs, and remember to close it when I'm done. You wrote those words; own them. Why would you think they're an inconvenience to anyone who has made the conscious decision to add you to their feed?

At the least, if you feel the need to truncate a post, do so after more than just a sentence and a half of text. Give me enough information to decide if I want to click through or not; otherwise, I just won't.

"Oh no, there's more?!" Yes, buddy. Yes there is.

Now on to Category 2: Content Issues. Truth be told, I see far more of these issues than any of the issues in the first group. Some of these are obvious and easily fixed, but others are more insidious.


4. Your work is riddled with errors.

I've seen a blog or two out there that would theoretically be of interest to me, but the writing (from native speakers, mind you) is rife with spelling and homonym errors, incorrect punctuation usage, and other assorted errors. I don't mean a pearl-clutching "one or two per post"; I have very forgiving margins because I fuck up a lot myself (especially if it's a long post that I work on for days and start and stop in weird places, like any of the posts in my geo-shopping or birthstones series). I mean rife.

If you're blogging for yourself, fine. If you want other people to read your work and take you seriously, step up your game. If this is something you know you struggle with, write your entries in Word first, to avail yourself of the spelling and grammar check. It's not perfect, but it's a start. Find a nearby language ninja and ask them to read through your stuff. If you don't know a language ninja, you do now: me. I will gladly do that for you. (If it becomes an ongoing thing, we can discuss my editing rates in private.)


5. Your writing sounds like everyone else's.

I guess it's a good thing that the number of blogs I've seen with technically and grammatically disastrous writing is actually quite low. It's not nearly as great as the number of blogs I've seen with technically correct but incredibly dull writing, without any individual personality at all. I think this is the most important thing on my list. If I were to keep track of the reasons I unfollowed blogs, this one would definitely be the most common.

Bloggers who have decided that a certain niche is for them all start sounding like one person with a bunch of sock puppet accounts. I don't think any of them naturally write in that voice (certainly not all of them), but somehow a certain standard or expectation with respect to "authorial voice" develops within a niche and most writers (especially newbies) bend themselves to it.

I hate that. It makes for boring, repetitive reading. Maybe it's simply the result of a particular niche being, itself, homogeneous and repetitive, but I hope not.

Take some time offline to write about your day and your life for no one but yourself. Ideally you should do this for a while, like a week or a month, to really get practice and time to yourself. (You might need this time to unprogram yourself from "blog writing" style to "personal writing" style, to boot.) If you compare that personal writing to your blog writing there will probably be a difference. Try to bring more of that personal style into your blog. Those are my favorite blogs to read. Those are the ones where I feel like I actually know the blogger.


6. Your writing doesn't give a shit about your readers.

This is kind of the opposite problem as the above, though I guess they can both happen simultaneously. If your blog becomes nothing but "Dear Diary" type entries, focused entirely on people we don't know and relationships we don't understand, that is an express ticket to Nopeville.

That doesn't mean writing about the road trip you took with your BFF Casey is off-limits. But tell us who Casey is, remind us of what happened in the previous post, and explain (or just avoid) the inside jokes.


7. You're (not) a special snowflake.

You are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world. Whenever you insist on reminding the readers that "I'm the hugest nerd, lol!" or "I'm the biggest tomboy I know" or any other applicable superlatives, I roll my eyes. The truth is, you are a special snowflake, but not because your collection of labels is somehow unique. Labels are the antithesis of interesting. If you think that slapping reductive, oversimplified herd name on yourself is enough to make you stand out from the crowd, you're mistaken.

This can be a bit more insidious than just overuse of "nerd," "geek," or "trekkie," though. I've read a couple blogs where the bloggers constantly reiterate some belief they hold about themselves and their role in a group ("I'm always the life of the party!") but then their writing never reflects that assertion.

If you're the life of the party, it will come across in your writing. (This is related to point number 5.) The only place that kind of language belongs is in your "About Me" section, or maybe in the occasional confessional post. Otherwise, you're either not really the life of the party (but you'd like to be), or that part of your personality isn't relevant to your blogging.

The truth is, you are a special snowflake, but nothing about your inherent snowflake nature is going to come out by trying to sound like what your collective niche has decided is the norm. Nor is it going to come out in regurgitating the voice, jargon, and in-jokes. Just let your writing be you.

Am I a perfect blogger? Um, hell no. I'm prone to all of these errors myself (some more than others). I try to keep them in mind while I write ("What kind of blog would I like to read?") but I know that I don't always hit my mark. But has my blogging gotten better since I started thinking about these while I write? I think so, at any rate!

What about you? What makes you stop reading a blog? I'm dying to know!

Science Saturday: The Power of Writing

Of course, this is a very particular kind of writing, but it goes to show how being able to express yourself with words, even at a basic level, can help focus your thinking and build focus towards personal goals.

NPR: The Writing Assignment That Changes Lives

A summary, for the link phobic:

Jordan Peterson teaches in the department of psychology at the University of Toronto. For decades, he has been fascinated by the effects of writing on organizing thoughts and emotions.

...

"The act of writing is more powerful than people think," Peterson says.

Most people grapple at some time or another with free-floating anxiety that saps energy and increases stress. Through written reflection, you may realize that a certain unpleasant feeling ties back to, say, a difficult interaction with your mother. That type of insight, research has shown, can help locate, ground and ultimately resolve the emotion and the associated stress.

At the same time, "goal-setting theory" holds that writing down concrete, specific goals and strategies can help people overcome obstacles and achieve.

Peterson's class based around this subject has had significant benefits. These same concepts have been applied in universities in the Netherlands, leading to a near-complete closing of the performance gap between foreign students at risk for "stereotype threat" and native and/or Western students.

I'm not at all surprised by these findings, though I do think there probably needs to be more research done? But speaking from personal experience, I've found that journaling about fears, goals, and anxieties helps me see them for what they are and develop strategies for accomplishing/conquering them. Not to mention I am an incorrigible list-maker, especially when I feel stressed and overwhelmed. There must be all kinds of stuff that lights up in your brain while you write—arguably even more when you write by hand, though of course not everyone enjoys writing by hand as much as I do—that help you calm down and think of creative solutions.

Dr. Peterson has done a lot of interesting work, but these above ideas of "self-authoring" are explored in material he has for sale (I guess you gotta make a buck where you can).

Do you do much self-reflective writing? Do you think it's helped you succeed?

Five Fandom Friday: Guilty Pleasures

It's my birthday this weekend! So the whole concept of guilty pleasures is pretty apropos since it's my birthday weekend so I can do what I want!!

5. Trashy YA fantasy/SF novels

I mean trashy in the best possible, affectionate way. (And that's why I'm deliberately avoiding specific names, because one person's "trashy" fun speed read is another person's serious business life-changer, and that's okay.) They're like the jelly beans of books: not particularly challenging to your palette/brain, but just what you need when you're stressed, on public transport, or killing time on a long flight. Besides, there is a lot about writing to be learned from them: whether it's about plotting, characters, or what not to do.


4. Trashy 80s action movies

Especially if they star Sly Stallone.

I don't know what it is about them, but they're great.


3. Batman (1965 movie)

This movie is a league (and entry) of its own. With the Christopher Nolan "Dark Knight" trilogy rebooting Batman into something quite dark and gritty, it seems gauche or tacky to bring up Batman's campy past. But I love Batman's campy past. This movie never fails to cheer me up. Never.

"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."


2. Writing "fix fic"...for my own life.

Courtesy finerain

I think this is why a lot of writers write, to be honest. Maybe not often—maybe only a few times in their life, maybe after a traumatic break-up or when it concerns a particularly toxic friend—but my entire 2014 NaNo was essentially a fix fic. Or maybe more like a revenge fic. But you know what? It felt good. And when I was done, I felt even better. And now I have a more or less normal relationship with the toxic, dysfunctional friend who inspired in it!

I just hope that, if it's published, she won't recognize herself in it.


1. K-Pop

I know I shouldn't love it—it's commercial, it's crass, it's the product of years of child abuse and exploitation, a group's music and image are coldly calculated to pander to the tastes of Korean tweens, the music doesn't necessarily reflect the talent or tastes of the members, etc.—but I do. I do not go down the fandom rabbit hole; I don't follow the idols' personal lives, I don't have favorite "baes" and so on. I just put the tunes on my mp3 player and rock out. I guess I can pretend that it's helping my Korean...?

What are your guilty pleasures?

NaNoWriMo RePo

(NaNoWriMo reflection post, that is.)

NaNoWriMo has been over for a grand total of two days now. I meant to post something about it yesterday, but well, I got caught up in reading a paper about diabetic rat testicles and before you knew it was time to go to bed because JV had an early day today.

I won NaNoWriMo this year, as I mentioned in passing a few days ago. Out of all the years I've attempted it (I think it's six, now?) this was by far my most successful. I managed to blaze past the 50k finish line very early on, like by November 9th, though I kept that under my hat because I'm not one for bragging (...much!). As I mentioned earlier, my total NaNo word count ended up at around 74,000 words. The entire manuscript (including the bits I wrote before December) is around 86,000. A good length for a novel.

I was, among other things, a minion this year, too. Theoretically it was my job to help the MLs at events, which I thought might be stressful but in reality turned out to be no less stressful than attending the event as a regular WriMo. I guess because NaNo is something so self-directed ("Okay guys, show up and....write!") it's pretty easy to manage an event once it gets started.

The one event I did basically coorganize (with the help of another minion) was the Halloween Head Start Night/Head Start Day double header. The plan was to have a meeting/unofficial write-in at a cafe on Halloween night and, at midnight, start a mad dash of words until closing time (2 AM), then have another write-in on the afternoon of November 1st. (It's really convenient when NaNo starts on a weekend!) That was the most stress I had during NaNo, mostly because we hadn't done anything like it before and the cafe where we meet that's usually empty at 1 pm on a weekday was packed to the gills on a Friday night. Apparently people in Stockholm would rather fika on a weekend than go out and get hammered, who knew?

The next day was no less stressful as I had no idea that one of our attendees (and newcomer to the group/event) uses a wheelchair, and the cafe we chose is not wheelchair-accessible. I felt like an ass on many levels for that one. You want everyone to feel welcome and thought of when you run an event like this, and I don't know that the group has ever faced that particular challenge before. (Let me assure you: much of Stockholm is very much not designed for wheelchairs.)

Otherwise the events went really well. They were both well-attended and while we were waiting for midnight (in costume!), everyone managed to fill the panic jar with lots and lots of great ideas, one-liners, plot twists, etc. that saw a lot of use in the Stockholm regional forum's panic jar thread.

(The panic jar being a jar full of quotes and scraps and plot twists and etc. that you can turn to in your hour of need/writer's block. It is a popular tool for NaNo and I highly recommend making one for yourself/your region/your writer's circle/etc. For the Stockholm region, it resides with resident overacheiving minion, Jo.)

Now I know, however, and we can better prepare for next year! I would like to make the Halloween Head Start Night a proper overnight/all-day event. There are loads of Scout cabins you can rent in and around Stockholm (including one in the park behind my apartment building), which is what we already do for the Night That Shall Not Be Named. I'd like to find cafes and meeting spaces that are designed with wheelchairs in mind, or are at least relatively accessible. And, if possible, I'd like to win next year just as handily as I won this year. ;)

NaNo last year for me was more of a social stretch than a writing exercise. I didn't really have much of an idea, aside from a one-off D&D character I thought might have fun adventures. The writing was a slog and I barely made it over the finish line. I went to The Night That Shall Not Be Named and most of the write-ins tentatively, trying to feel out long-standing friendships and fellow newbies and where I could cozy myself in. Now I feel like I'm going out to meet friends.

That's quite the leap from first-timer to minion, I think!

I'm pretty sure on what I'm going to work on next year, and I fully intend on being a minion again.

Music Monday: I'm On a Boat (because I was on a boat)

First of all, Blogger's "embed video straight from YouTube" option has been really broken for me lately, and I've noticed it's been broken for other blogs too. Frustrating!

Anyway, today's tune:

Because I was on a boat. There are a number of short cruises that depart from Stockholm to the archipelago and other Baltic states, and they're stupid cheap. 

These cruises, by the way, are Swedes' and Finns' favorite way to party. 

But I wasn't on a boat to party. I was on a boat to write. If you've been reading at all within the last few weeks, you'll know that I've been doing NaNoWriMo. This year, the Stockholm NaNoWriMo MLs ("municipal liaisons," for those who aren't hep to the jargon; they are volunteer event organizers within a particular region) announced that for the first time, we would have be having an all-day "skrivkryssning" ("writing cruise"). 

So Sunday morning I woke up at 5 am (!!) to get to Ropsten and get on the boat to Åland, a collection of islands between Finland and Sweden, at which point we'd be shuttled through the deck there to get on a boat back to Stockholm.  

It was a good time, though I didn't write an outstanding amount despite the eleven hours we put aside to write. It was a triple threat of exhaustion, being already past the 50k mark and thus lacking any sense of urgency, and being too distracted by the goings-on on the boat. One of our members won some James Bond trivia they had going on in one of the bars on ship. There was also Finnish karaoke. At 11 am. 

Never too early for Finnish karaoke.

Still, I wrote over 3000 words, or about twice the daily quota needed to hit 50,000 words in thirty days. Nice, though about on par with the word count I've been averaging for all of November. More importantly, I was able to wrap up my story (my only goal for the day). NaNo total: 72,600 words. Manuscript total: 84,100 words. That's about on par with, among other things, Cry, the Beloved Country.

My sense of relief upon having finished a damn first draft during NaNo (something I haven't done since 2011) was something like Frodo's at the end of Lord of the Rings:

Despite my writing degree, I've don't always take what I write during NaNo too seriously. Sometimes (like this year) I use the month to hash out a lot of work and words on an idea I had earlier. Other times I don't have an idea until just a few weeks before NaNo begins and I write it basically to have something to write during NaNo. This is the first "serious project" whose first draft has seen completion in November, and so that means it gets to be the first to get revised and edited!

I'm not sure what I'll do next year. I have a YA fantasy novel (YES ANOTHER YA FANTASY NOVEL, AS IF THE WORLD NEEDED ANY MORE) I worked on two years ago that I keep outlining and plotting despite myself; NaNo 2015 might be the push it gets to see completion. 

NaNo and Carmina Burana

God, there are a thousand things I should probably be blogging about, like the Philae landing or that dude's shirt with the half-naked ladies, but I'm going to have to miss those awesome blogging opportunities (or write about them later) because all of my spare energy has been thrown into my NaNo project this year, Your New Fan.

The title is subject to change but I think it's a good one.

This is an idea I've been sitting on for a couple years, at least in a vague way. You see, I listen to a lot of NPR in the states, and my particular affiliate (WDIY out of Allentown, PA) has a really great mix of indie music, local events, and syndicated NPR material. ("I'm Terry Gross and you're listening to Fresh Air.") But my favorite show, by far, is the three-hour weekday afternoon indie binge that is The Blend. If it was a good day at work, we'd have the dial tuned to NPR and those three hours during the slow winter months would just fly by. Then an hour of the news and then it was closing time.

It occurred to me on a drive once, on a day off, that it would be really easy for a mentally unwell person to fall in love with the DJ of just such a show, with only the music selection, the DJ's voice and a bit of banter or explanation in between songs to go on.

This year I finally decided to make that story happen. I also decided to go a little postmodern/House of Leaves with it and present the whole thing as a "found footage" story-within-a-story: someone discovers the letters addressed to a local DJ in their new apartment and presents their own commentary and thoughts on the letters; the more we learn about the author of the letters the more we also learn about the person who found the letters.

It is almost aggressively complex and ~literary~ but why not? I think this NaNo, more than my other attempts, is becoming a useful psychological exercise for me, but that's a topic best left to another day.

So, anyway, that's why I haven't been posting so much. And it isn't even NaNo that's prompting me to post today, but the fact that THIS IS HAPPENING AND I HAVE TICKETS FOR IT AND I'M GOING TO SEE IT IN A FEW HOURS:

I know Carmina Burana is like the super sexy popular kid of Modern orchestral music and is probably way overplayed but I don't care, I think it's a fantastic concert cantata.

If I lost you at "Carmina Burana" let me embed a selection from it that you absolutely positively know because at this point it's become something like a musical trope (especially in movie soundtracks).

Trek Thursday: Spectre of the Gun

#49: Spectre of the Gun

In case you forgot: On orders to make contact with the reclusive Melkotian race,The Power Trio, plus Scotty and Chekov, are stuck on a planet that's a half-finished Tombstone. Seems like Kirk pushed the Melkotians a little too far and now they're facing justice in a moment "constructed from Kirk's memory." Spock convinces everyone not to believe in the bullets and so the landing party is safe for another day.

It's been a while since we've had a good case of backassing in this countdown. This time it seems less for plot contrivance ("how do we get Bones to jump into the time portal?") and more for filming practicality ("how we do we get the story happening on a set we've already built because we are way behind schedule?"). At least, I hope it's backassing, because otherwise that means someone thought the Wild West shootout at the O.K. Corral was a great idea.

Don't get me wrong, I'm always a fan of Matrix-style "it's all in your mind!" premises, but the setting really limits the coolness factor.

Well, the setting and the internal inconsistencies within the logic established by the story. Spock figures out that everything is just in their heads because a sleeping gas that should have knocked him out doesn't. Somehow he makes the leap that because the laws of science are not working as they should, they must be in a weird Matrix-style construct. That's a far leap there, but okay.

But if just believing is enough to unravel the whole thing, why wouldn't the Melkotians have, I don't know, made sure that sleeping gas actually worked? It's such a massive oversight, especially for a race of super intelligent, super powerful god-like beings. And even if the Power Trio convinces themselves that the bullets are fake, can't the Melkotians still kill them in a thousand other ways?

Also, why does Spock know about the Tombstone shootout? How much Earth history has he studied? If they're still on the bridge, what is going on around them? It would have been nice to have a couple shots of the Power Trio et al. ignoring the rest of the bridge and babbling nonsense about the O.K. Corral.


On another, non-Trek–related note, I'm sorry to have disappeared from the blogging world. I am (1) fighting back a not particularly nasty but incredibly persistent and lingering cold and (2) NANO. On top of my usual Swedish studies and editing work.

I am already at 30,000 words, though!! I am really into this particular story—maybe a little too into it, considering how mentally unhinged most of the characters are—so I am extremely confident in my ability to clear the 50,000 goal before the deadline. I thought my idea this year was going to be a hard, difficult one but it's turning out to be the easiest I've done yet. Maybe this means I need to see a therapist or something?

I promise that once I hit 50,000 words, I'll slow my relentless pace and spend some of those words here instead of in my NaNo. I do have some exciting news that I CAN'T WAIT to share with you guys but it is a little premature so I'm sitting on it....for now. But don't wander away!

November is Coming

NaNoWriMo—"National Novel-Writing Month," the mad dash where thousands of people around the world try to write 50,000 words of the first draft of a novel in November—is almost upon us. This year, in addition to all the writing, I'm helping (in a small way) to organize local NaNo events in the Stockholm area. This will be interesting, as I'll also have work and class to keep up with as well.

If you've always wanted to write a novel, NaNo is the perfect crash course in getting started. It's also a great way to meet lots of great, geeky people. (NaNo attracts a lot of geeks and nerdy types. I'm not sure why.) And, finally, it's lots of fun. It's a great way to to perk up the cold, dreary month of November.

Some things I have found useful in NaNos past:

100 Questions to Answer Before You Start Writing Your Story

Assorted Generators

World-Building Questions (Fantasy)

Many people like to use Scrivener or Ywriter or some other fancy software, but I don't. The bells and whistles are too distracting for me.

Will you be participating in NaNo? What will you be writing?

The Vox Day Hugo Drama

Science fiction nerd that I am, I am never one to pay attention to book awards, past or current. There's such a backlog of great works I have yet to finish and new ones coming out that I can't find the time in my life to to get caught up in awards ceremonies—not just of books, but of anything.

Yet it seems I can't escape the drama over this year's Hugo nominees (or rather, one Hugo nominee in particular). Vox Day's Opera Vitae Aeternita in the novelette category has outraged many in the SF community because it seems Day, née Theodore Beale, has some unpopular views. Like that homosexuality is a birth defect, or that it's ~scientific~ to oppress women.

Oh, did I say "unpopular"? I meant "bigoted."

The aforementioned John Scalzi has weighed in on it, and so has PZ Myers, to different ends. Should awards like the Hugo or the Nebula be "apolitical" and be awarded to works by authors who are, well, less than exemplary? After all, odious figures like Orson Scott Card and L Ron Hubbard have won past Hugos. There is some speculation that a voting bloc wanting to protest the supposed Leftist regime of the SFWA (or the WSFS? can't keep all those alphabet soup groups straight) by rallying around one of Day's works and stuffing the ballot box. Which isn't against the rules, but it does taint (hah, "taint") Day's nomination with the speculation that he was nominated not on the merit of his story, but just for his politics to ~make a statement~ or prove a point or whatever.

Scalzi's point is that the book was fairly nominated by the rules of the award, and that there's no rule that an asshole can't be nominated, so there's no point making a fuss. Moreover, there is (for those who vote in these things) a "No Award" option if you really feel a work's presence was unwarranted, for whatever personal reasons the voter may choose. Myers' point is that remaining apolitical is a political statement and by doing nothing, the Hugos and the SFWA/SFWS are condoning Day's absolutely bugfuck assertions, like that it's okay if some girls get acid thrown in their faces, the rest of the child brides in Pakistan have such happy marriages! Or that being gay is totally like being born without legs and thus should be cured!

Because I'm not entirely familiar with the nomination or voting process of the Hugos, or the history of the award, I'll refrain from commenting too much. I only want to observe that a liberal determination to be tolerant and hear everyone out no matter what seems to be borne out of a fear of a slippery slope; namely, that one day, the person being silenced by the powers-that-be may be on the right side of history and that absolutely no precedent must ever be set that would allow their voices to be successfully muted.

The question then is, which should you value more in a situation like this: hypothetical people in the future, or the people in the here and now having to deal with this odious bullshit? I don't know. It's hard to know. But I do know this: as life goes on, society inevitably (and to the despair of turds like Vox Day) moves towards equality, tolerance, and freedom. I think the slippery slope fears are unfounded for that very reason; I think that if organizations like SFWA and the SFWS are committed to being a progressive, welcoming atmosphere for EVERYONE (not just straight white males), they have an obligation to their members to revisit the rules for their awards to allow something like organizational veto power, or injunctions against being a public bigot, or something similar, to keep hateful turds off their radar. If this is a Leftist campaign to thought-police writers, then people who disagree can always leave the groups and form their own association with its own awards.

"We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice."

However, because of that moral arc of the universe, I don't think the brain droppings of assholes like Vox Day or Orson Scott Card really matter—history is not on their side. Justice is not on their side. Not that this means we should be complacent and sit on our laurels; rather, my point is that there are bigger fish to fry. The universe only bends towards justice because we temper it to do so.

101 in 1001

A new year means, entirely coincidentally and yet so appropriately, a revision and review of my 101 in 1001 in one list.

I think one of the most important goals on any successful 101 in 1001 list are the "list maintenance" goals: whether it's the commitment to weekly updates, periodic revisions, or sharing goals with others, goals that are about the list itself keep you focused on the rest of the goals you want to achieve. I've noticed a definite difference between this list and my last list in terms of staying on task, and I credit that entirely to my list-oriented goals.


Completed:

I finished Star Trek: TOS. (5 - 12) I'm watching some of the movies now, and also looking forward to starting on TNG. But considering how much Dr. Who and MST3K I still have left, I'm going to save making TNG a proper goal for my next list (which is due in 2015).

In progress:

Went over my list to make sure all my goals are still relevant/good, and added some more: (1 - 1) (1 - 2)

1. I changed "Read one chapter of 'Doktor Glas' in Swedish" to three chapters. (1 - 6) I forgot how short some of the chapters (diary entries) are! 

2. Now that I am bereft of a treadmill and too private a person to go to the gym or run outside, I suppose it's time to retire my ambitions to complete the Couch to 5K program. (6 - 1) Running blows, anyway. I made a valiant effort, really, and I've decided that it's just not for me. However, to replace this goal, I've decided to walk to Rivendell. Or in this case, ride: I may be down one treadmill but I am up one exercise bike, so I have that going for me, which is nice. I'm retroactively including the ~75 km I've done on the bike already (which is a conservative estimate). 

3. Emailing Rodolfo (7 - 1) is kind of a moot point, since we're still in contact on Google+. Counting it as "complete" seems like cheating, but I didn't really fail it either. Instead, I'm just removing it to make room for other goals. 

4. I added "Get my Swedish ID card," though it feels like cheating to add something to the list I HAVE to do. (1 - 7) I've been so lazy about it, though, that making it part of the list will maybe motivate me to finish this paper trail circus. 

5. I also added two historical podcasts as goals: The History of Rome (9 - 7) and The Ancient World (9 - 8). For each one I've made roughly one third of the episodes my goal (so 60 episodes of Rome and 12 episodes of Ancient World), though I have no idea if that goal is too easy or too ambitious or anywhere in between. 

6. Considering the ease with which I cranked out 5 articles for WhatCulture, I thought it would be good to add 5 more to keep me on my game. (10 - 16) I already have rough ideas for a couple more! 

7. I'm unsure what to do about feedback for Kat and Familiar, since I left my hard copy at home and don't have a printer. :( (7 - 4) I don't want to count it as failed, yet, since we might get a proper printer yet.

Another update and comment, of course. (1 - 3) (7 - 4)

I also realized that some of my number counts on the weekly goals were way off. There were a few missed ones I had accounted for, but so many weeks of forgetting to update the number in the list left me 24 (!!) behind in both counts.

I also started working on my ENG CRW story again, clocking in at over 23,000 words. (5 - 10) This goal will be crossed off soon—though considering it was my NaNo project of 2012, I really should have finished this goal much sooner.


Failed:

None!

NaNoWriMo Kickoff in Stockholm and 101 in 1001

One of the WriMos in Stockholm is a photographer. (I might or might not be Facebook-stalking people as a way to procrastinate.) He took a few pictures at the kickoff (kick-off?) party at the Tolkien Society's building in Rådhuset, which you can see in this Facebook album.

Look at all those writers! (Image courtesy Jonathan Rieder Lundkvist)

In all my years of doing NaNo, I had never seen so many people turn out for an event! How cool to know there are so many creative, writer-ly types in my new home city. Of course there haven't been quite so many at the write-ins so far, but the showing there has still been strong and consistent.

I also realize that I am a day late in posting my 101 in 1001 progress. At least I have some scant progress to report!

30 Days of Madness

With the arrival of November comes National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo. I've attempted (though not always succeeded) every year since 2008. At this point, it's basically the only fiction writing I do anymore.

If you're also doing NaNo, you can find me at the website (handle: Kokoba) to keep track of my word count, read more about my novel, and maybe even read some excerpts (if I put any up). If you haven't done it before, give it a shot! It's fun and you can meet some fantastic people. It's especially useful for anyone who dreams of being a writer, because no matter how sensitive and gifted you are (or think you are), what writing really comes down to is sitting down to do it every day, no matter what. Doing it for a month is a good practice.

Participating in NaNo is one of my 101 in 1001 events; there's one more over the course of my list and that will be another item I've accomplished. For more updates on that list, click past the jump.