SeeLight

NaNoFailMo

Argh! My NaNoFiMo has fallen apart already!

I'm currently working on a monster grant proposal that's due Monday. And I'm still working on proofing the galley for my chapbook. I don't know why it's taking me so long, but it is. Those take precedence over other stuff. So, once again, NaNoFailMo.

I'm hoping I can get going on da nobble again on Wednesday. Sigh.

NaNoFiMo Update

I just realized today that the sixth mailbag is where I start hitting my really hefty revisions (as opposed to edits.) What a way to start the month! I was busy running hither and thither today, so I wimped out and just did one letter. Sigh. Tomorrow. Nothing planned for tomorrow. Just a work day. Work Day!

I'm Reading On Nov 12!

Yep, another reading. Fall is a busy time. Since I'm counting down to my chapbook publication, I'll probably be reading something from the chapbook. Here 'tis:

Kimberly DaSilva & Guests*

Modern Times Bookstore, 888 Valencia Street, San Francisco
November 12th / 7:00 p.m.
 
 
Local author Kimberly DaSilva will read from her current manuscript:  The Same Tide For Us Both, a ghost story about a demon, a mother, and the end of the world.
 
Kimberly’s work has been described as “impressive” by Kirkus and “elegant” by The Advocate.  She has been nominated for a Lambda Literary Award, an American Library Association Stonewall Book Award, as received an ‘also noted’ in Ebony Magazine.
 
Guest readers include a myriad of local writers of color and queer writers.  Come hear:  Claire Light / Natalia Vigil / Jaime Cortez / Carole Simmons / LeConte Dill / Elissa Perry / Kenji Liu / Adam Smyer / Mel Hilario / Mahru Elahi / and Rona Fernandez   all in one place!
 
Discussion between the audience and the writers will follow the readings.
 
*This reading is a product of the San Francisco Arts Commission’s Cultural Equity Grant program.

NaNoFiMo and Reading Update

Sigh, was busy trying to catch up on stuff today so not a lot done on the NaNoFiMo front. My first task was to go through mailbag #5 and punch it up a bit. So I read through the mailbag and then ran out of time to do anything about it. I'm going to have to go back in and read it again tomorrow, because I was distracted by the story in this reading (if I haven't read something in da nobble for a while, it comes fresh to me and I settle in and enjoy it -- or not, as the case may be.) So not a lot of progress, but this is how things are with dis nobble. Hard to move forward quickly.

Also, read Neil Gaiman's graphic novel Marvel 1602, and Cory Doctorow's Little Brother.

Marvel 1602 was kind of a waste of space. Hey, let's take a bunch of Marvel comics characters and put them in the year 1602! Why? Why, I dunno ... cuz it'd be cool, I guess. ...

Yeah, boring and pointless and not even much fun. Plus, it's hard to tell who's who when they're not wearing brightly colored spandex suits.

Little Brother I enjoyed like the Dickens. Very entertaining, fun, emotionally engaging, very politically aware and engaged, etc. Doctorow even was aware that his protag Marcus is a white male from the creative class, and built that privilege into the character (spoiler: at one point his Latino best friend refuses to help him out any further because he points out, realistically, that he would get reamed much harder than Marcus.) There's a bit of white-geek-boy fetishizing of Asian chix, but it's not too bad. It's just a shame that the characters of color tended to wimp out a bit, but I could find fault with anything if I tried hard enough. Suffice it to say that if you're going to have a white male hero, it's a great idea to point out that his privilege is one of the things that gets him the last yard into heroism.

Also very very impressed with Doctorow's very clear and engaging descriptions of how technology works. I really admire anyone who can do this -- Ted Chiang is one who takes his technical writing skill and turns it into amazing fiction. I learned a lot about possibilities from this book, and had fun doing it. Maybe I'll read more Doctorow. I'll definitely read more YA if he writes any more.

NaNoFiMo

I almost missed the beginning of NaNoWriMo, as I do every year, but I caught it in time, thanks to Justine's blog.

I've never succeeded at a NaNoWriMo-type project, but a few years ago, when I tried to write a No in a Mo (not exactly the Mo of November) I did get more than half of it written.

So I'm going to try (again) to use NaNoWriMo as an inspiration to Get Stuff Done. As in, Get My Novel Done. So this year's November is my National Novel Finishing Month, or NaNoFiMo.

Actually, I'm not going to finish finish Da Nobble; that's not even in my plan. I just want to finish the third draft. Once that's done revision should get easier. Here's how it's going to work:

• Da Nobble is epistolary (written in letters) and is organized by mailbags. Each correspondant contributes one letter to each mailbag, of which there are 15. There are five correspondants, which gives us a grand total of 75 letters. I'm currently in the middle of the fifth mailbag.
• Of course, some of the letters are short and some are long; some of the letters require hefty rewriting and some do not.
• I intend to complete planned revisions on 3 letters per day--that is, three letters that require revisions--until I hit the difficult ones. The difficult ones are the ones that don't just need revision, but the actual incident described in the letters needs to be thrown out and rethought. For each one of these, I will simply work three hours per day on them until they're done.
• I'll check in daily here.

That is all. Wish me luck!

Reading Update and Delish Dessert Hack

Girl in the Arena Lise Haines

Liar Justine Larbalestier

Exclusively Chloe J.A. Yang

The Child Garden Geoff Ryman

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is what they were about, and what their lousy characters were like, and how their authors chose to write them and all, and all that book reviewer kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, the authors would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty critical about them. They're quite touchy about anything like that, especially [name redacted]. They're nice and all -- I'm not saying that -- they're just touchy as hell.

(Xtra points if you get the reference.)

And now to the delicious low-cal dessert hack (have I shared this one before?):

Whip together with an electric mixer two parts nonfat plain yogurt with one part Cool Whip or the organic version, Tru Whip. Cut up strawberries into it, or pretty much any fruit (except citrus.) Outstandingly like whipped cream, but a little tangy, and super low-cal/low-carb.

Lost in Battlestargate: Voyager

So, I've gotten addicted to the new Stargate: Universe series, and, just as quickly, started losing interest in it.

It steals storytelling and camera styles from the BSG playbook. Don't mind that. But there's no actual characterization involved. The much-touted lesbian Ming Na character didn't actually turn up a single characteristic until episode five. Her personality point? Craven manipulativeness. Ah so, Madame Ming Na!

Also, the black character is an out of control, violent brute who first shows up imprisoned, emphasis on "prison". But With A Heart Of Gold Of Course! And the high-status white girl? A slut. A slut who sleeps with one man while using another (the requisite Seth-Rogan-a-like Mary Sue geek.) The other two white women? A hot blonde whose hair never gets out of place, and tough cookie with huge bazoombas, who is first seen fucking the same guy the high-status slut later fucks. Oh and that guy? He's the honorable, young, white lieutenant we all love. Plus, this universe is full of wives who stay at home and reject their honorable, white husbands, or are too dependent on their honorable white husbands so that they fall apart when they die, or who die themselves, driving their formerly honorable, genius, white husbands mad (potentially.) But what else would a woman do? Unless she's a dyke, of course, or a slut?

Also: the good colonel is a white guy and teh bad colonel is Lou Diamond Phillips.

The good news: an early conversation between the hot blonde and Ming Na puts the Bechdel Save on this series. Unless it's just a setup for them to have hot lezbo secks. The bad news: see above.

Plus, did I mention? No characterization. We have a volatile genius scientist guy who may be manipulating everyone and everything and may have put them all out in space in the first place (Dr. Longhair, I know Gaius Baltar, and you, sir, are no Gaius Baltar.) We have an honorable, white captain leader type. (Sir, I know Captain Picard and you are no Captain Picard.) We have the honorable lieutenant (see above), we have the supposed hottie all the guys are starting to want (the not-so-hot and very annoying Senator's daughter, but high-status!), we have the dykey, cowardly, Asian bureaucrat, we have the scary, violent black soldier, we have the potentially dykey hot blonde medic (Ma'am, I know Izzy Stevens and you are no Izzy Stevens), we have a bunch of ineffectual, white, male geeks (Sirs, I know Joss Whedon, and you are no Joss Whedon. Whedons), and ... uh ... yeah.

Characters? We don't need no stinkin' characters!

Is it sad that this is my best SF of the season?

Octavia Butler Panel Podcast

Okay, so I did a piss-poor job of advertising my LitQuake Octavia Butler panel appearance here, so I'm trying to make up for it now.

The Agony Column podcast came to the panel, which was part of the SF in SF series hosted by Terry Bisson, and recorded both the panel discussion, and separate interviews with each of the panelists: awesome black-lesbian-vampire-novelist Jewelle Gomez, awesome Latina-chicklit-vampire-novelist Marta Acosta, and non-vampire-novelisting me (but wouldn't it be cool if I had written Asian vampires and was able to complete a trifecta?)

The reading and panel was a tribute to Octavia Butler and a fundraiser for the Butler Scholarship, which is administered by the Carl Brandon Society (which I'm on the Steering Committee of.)

The podcasts have been posted now and here they is:

• Here's the panel discussion (minus the readings from each panelist, which is why we're all referring to things we said earlier that you didn't get to hear.)
• Here's Jewelle Gomez' interview.
• Here's Marta Acosta's interview.
• Here's the interview with me.

Yee haw!

My Views On The New NEA

Hey all,

I was asked to participate on a six-week blog panel discussing current issues surrounding the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the federal government's national arts agency, now that it has installed a new director and will be facing new challenges (in this economy), and new opportunities (under the new president.)

The panel is hosted on Barry Hessenius' Barry's Arts Blog at the WESTAF site. Each week of the project brought in a new panel, composed of different sectors of the art world: 

1. Former NEA
2.  National arts leaders
3. Funders - public & private 
4. Arts Education leaders, Academia, Emerging Leaders, and Consultant
5. Private Sector / Stakeholder
6. Working Artists

We're now at week six and I'm on the panel of working artists responding to questions about how the government can best support and promote the arts in the coming years.

Please do check it out and comment at will!

Governator Severely Rebuffed @ Dems' Party

Wow. Schwarzenegger showed up uninvited (or perhaps, invited by some, but not by others) at a Democratic fundraiser in San Francisco and got his ass booed and insulted. Apparently, Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (why can't I pronounce that name?) told him to "kiss my gay ass." Sounds like Ammiano.

What's really interesting is the competing commentary from different Dem politicians in this article. Ammiano shits all over Arnie with no eye toward what's politic. Cali Senator Mark Leno keeps his mouth shut while Arnie's in the room, then lets him have it in a -- polite -- speech afterwards. And good ol' Willie Brown tears into his fellow Dems for childishly attacking Arnie when they have a bill going up to be signed.

It's like a spectrum, along the axis of slimeball expediency vs. unleashed outrage. So which of these folks do you suppose is more powerful? Who will end his career highest on the ladder?

Moment of Zen

Here's today's moment of Zen.

Awesome

TV Bad

Modern Family
Mercy
The Forgotten
Eastwick

Yeah, okay, I tried to watch some new show pilots last night. Couldn't get through the first two. Modern Family (new half-hour sitcom about three families) got some good reviews, but I don't find it funny when writers/producers simply humiliate characters in a scene. That makes me squirm. There has to be something more than just humiliation in there. Too many people are hung up on The Office and think that making an audience really uncomfortable is all you need to do to be good. Ugh.

Mercy (trauma nurse hospital drama) was just bad. Bad acting, bad writing, bad conceptualization, bad stereotypes. Dumb. And extra bad points for gratuitous, exploitive use of Iraq. Didn't stay for the whole thing.

The Forgotten (ex-cop leads a volunteer group seeking the identities of John and Jane Does once their cases have gone cold) was watchable. That one I got through. It's Jerry Bruckheimer, and it shows. High concept cop procedural, basically. Even if the writing and acting are bad (and they are), there's still the mystery to pull you through. I might watch again if there's nothing else on, but I won't seek it out.

I totally avoided Cougar Town, which has gotten some bad reviews anyway, because I just don't like being marketed to in that egregious way. I'm not on The Schedule as it is, and being told who I'm supposed to be at my age (apparently a divorced mother of 2 who wears skirts and heels and fucks young men) makes me itch. So instead I went to the other women-of-a-certain-age wish-fulfillment vehicle: Eastwick. Fun! There's a cougar in this one, too, only they just call her a "slut." Plus a Miss Moneypenny and a doormat housewife. The Slut turns out to be clairvoyant, the Miss Moneypenny to be a hypnotic vamp, and the housewife is, OF COURSE, an earth goddess.

But how can you say no to witches? I love witches! I love the (literal) female empowerment that's inherent and inevitable in a witch-centered story. I hate to admit it, but Practical Magic is still one of my favorite movies (and yes, I know it's the Sarah McLachlan of movies.) No matter how cheesily you approach it, if you're making witches your protagonists, they will be women, and they will be active agents of their own destiny. You can't have a passive witch. (oo! plot of novel #10: the passive witch! Watch her sit in her La-Z-Boy! See her make cookies and daydream! It'll be a best seller!)

Anyway, Eastwick is supremely cheesy, but I'm loving it already and have subscribed to it on Hulu. One outta five ain't bad.

Idea That Will Save Journalism: Required Reading

Every once in a while I get an Idea That Will Save The World. No, really. If people would only listen to me and do exactly as I say!

Anyway, like everyone else I've been wondering how to save journalists in an age when people are more likely to read/view ignorant fame whores who will do something funny or undignified for free online. The latter are everywhere and two will rise up to take the place of the one whose fifteen minutes is up.

Yet we all know that internet money is controlled by page views. So the real question is: how do we get page views for reading oatmeal when everyone just naturally clicks on reading/viewing froot loops?

My solution: "Required Reading," a membership website that sets standards for fields of expertise and publishes user-selected "required reading" lists of online content.

There will be required reading/viewing lists in all fields of knowledge, broken down by academic discipline and by professional field. These will be designed to be used specifically by schools, universities, and employers. Members will not be individuals, but rather institutions: schools, universities, and companies. Individuals within those institutions will get accounts under their institution's membership, but will not themselves be members.

To gain membership, an institution must be accredited or have some sort of formal recognition in their field. (Pilot members will determine what these are for each field.) Members can, of course, have more than one field. Members then will caucus annually online to select a single, but tiered or branched, "required reading list" for their field. It will not be done by voting alone; the process will include discussion and require a level of consensus. The list will be limited by number of sites (perhaps three maximum for each list branch), and will include a general list, lists for different levels of readers (middle-grade, high school, undergrad, graduate studies, and professional, for example), and sub-lists for sub disciplines.

The purpose of keeping the lists very short is that all members pledge to require their students/employees to read the list throughout the year, for as long as they are members. And yes, this will be enforced.

The process of selection will be short, and designed to enable the content producers who end up on the list, to use their list-status to leverage advertising money. They will stay on the list for a year, and the selection process will be set up so that, even if they fall off the list in the following year, they will appear on the following year's list as "previous year's list" so they'll still get a high hit count, and so that their income won't disappear completely if they happen to fall off a list for one year and return to it the next. Again, this is all designed so that the content producers can leverage the lists in a way that makes sense for their presumably freelance practices.

The sites will be aggregators, of course, so students/employees will be required to log into the sites to access their required reading. This is so that both the site and the schools/employers can check on frequency and length of reading to help enforce the requirement. It's up to each member, of course, to decide on what the requirement actually consists of (reading every day vs. reading once a week or once a month.) The site will, of course, keep stats on usage and offer field/industry/sector ratings to help content producers predict how much traffic a required site will actually get.

And Req Read will throw out users who don't get any or enough usage from their students/employees. Members have made a pledge after all. It's up to them to decide the level of their commitment, and how to enforce it. But if they fall significantly below their commitment, or are obviously not using the site the way it was intended, then the site don't need 'em.

Of course, the site will also offer a general aggregator that each user can use if they wish, to both entice them to use Req Read's aggregator everyday (the required lists will be big and bold at the top of the aggregator page), and to give Req Read access to stats on users' general reading habits. (A user leaving a member institution can export all their subscriptions to a free general aggregator ... but all subscriptions only, not pick and choose.)

And the site will also offer each member their own page and the option to create institution-specific sub-pages. Universities, for example, can offer each professor a Req Read page for a class, i.e for half a year only. Corporations can create a Req Read page for a department during a period of professional development. Institutions can also zero in on individuals; a manager being groomed for promotion can be given her own page of required reading.

Content producers will have free (or low fee) user accounts and can log in and see what lists they are on at any time. They can access extensive stats on the traffic and usage the lists they are on get.

Let's be clear, though, there will be a temptation to use this site as a bookmarks page for static information. The site must be set up to discourage this. The purpose of the site is to enable web journalists, not print writers whose work ends up on the web; and to enable access to and promote use of specialized online journalism in expert fields among people who should be, but aren't, using it.

If this site exists already somewhere, please tell me! If it doesn't and somebody with the know-how and money to get this off the ground is inspired by this idea -- take it! (Just mention me on the "about" page and throw me a free junket every now and then. ;) )

Hear, hear! Save Big Insurance!

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

Readin' Update

Finished a friend's novel MS (not the final draft), both of which shall remain nameless.

Finished (re)Cycler by Lauren McLaughlin, the sequel to Cycler, in which a teenaged girl has to come to terms with turning into a boy once a month, instead of having a period. (Which raises the question: will she ever be able to have kids? And if not she, then will he?)

Review verboten since Lauren's a friend, but go read it!

Domestic Violence Is A Preexisting Condition

I often act outraged when I'm really just angry. But this is outrageous. Call your representative today and tell them to do something about it. Public Option Now!

Reading Update

Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen by Marilyn Chin

Read it for a review I wrote for Hyphen. You'll have to buy Issue 19 to read my review. Short version: not a good book.

Can't Afford To Wait For The Public Option

I took part in this Moveon.org action about a week ago, in which they had folks take pictures of themselves with these signs saying who in their lives "can't afford to wait" for the public option. Then they made a video of it. If you watch all the way through, near the end you can see the truly unflattering picture of me I took. I'm bummed because I went with the unflattering picture because it was the only one out of about 25 I took that included the whole sign I wrote. Then they went and cut off the bottom of my sign anyway. But I guess it made its point.

Please call Congress today. Really, none of us can afford to wait.

Embarrassingly Effective Viral Video

Oh my god, this is so awesome it actually made me cry. And I hate weddings. I hate the whole pageantry of it, the symbolism of the white dress and the procession of the wedding party and the minister officiating. The whole thing. If I ever get married (and that's always been a big if) it will be in jeans, by Elvis, in Las Vegas, in front of total strangers. And it will be ritual only, not legalized until everyone can get married.

But this ... this is totally awesome. Why aren't more weddings joyful affairs? When people say "I'll dance at your wedding," why don't they ever mean literally, during the wedding? Why shouldn't the bride and groom dance down the aisle to their song?

I also love that they've made this video a portal to making donations against domestic violence (since it was a Chris Brown song they danced to.) Yes, I am a sentimental soul.