primsong: (books)
There's a certain charm in the printed word that will never be matched online, as all book-lovers know.  But yet - I just put my massive old Thesaurus into my 'going to the thrift store' bag.  I still love the process of leafing through it but in all honesty I haven't used it in multiple years, it's too simple to just look up something online as I go.  Sorry, thesaurus, it appears there are small victories for the proponents of the paperless world after all.
primsong: (bilbo not at home)
Hm, I glanced back over my recent posts and found there were only maybe two in a month and they tending to be about foodstuffs in one way or another.  How very banal, I thought, food?  All I need to add is pictures of cute kittens and exhortations to 'change the world' by clicking on some sort of pathetic looking place/person/animal and I'd really be a lost cause.

On the good side, I got a shiny laptop for my recent bday!  I hope this means I will be able to reconnect a bit as I won't have to fight for the family computer in the kitchen to do so.  A lady I swim with at the pool in the mornings talked about how she was doing a doodle-a-day challenge thing to make herself start using her dormant art skills again and it rather inspired me to try.... something.  Not sure what yet.  But reconnecting with the expression that can be carried out through things like DWth is a start.
primsong: (headless news)
So, my mom brought me a yellowed, folded piece of notebook paper she'd found inside one of her books - "A budding writer!" she said as I unfolded a childhood story written for some class project. "You must have been remembering when we went on that boat, and you always loved swimming."

Um, nooo. Actually I faintly remember this - I just really liked the sound of "bubble jumper" and wanted an excuse to use it. Really - that was about all the impetus of the entire story, but you know moms, they like to think their offspring are prodigies from an early age (hey, I know know MINE are!) ;-)

I read the painfully inane tale in which I gave an account of going on a submarine called the Bubble Jumper, very briefly went diving and discovered a large solid gold pitcher (...which I could not even lift. I signaled my friend over and together we swam back to the Bubble Jumper...it was the size of a (chair, crossed out) large dog..."

Wow. I had a pretty strong friend if the two of us were able to just swim back lugging a solid gold pitcher the size of a chair! Oh, excuse me, a large dog!

I can't decide if I'm amused or embarrassed by the existence of this tale.
primsong: (bald planet)
Back in the day, I was greatly entertained by two 70s tv shows that were unhappily doomed to one season runs by the Powers That Be - alas, where is the justice in the world:
* When Things Were Rotten (Mel Brooks made a tv show spoofing Robin Hood... cheesy, stupid and full of innuendo but I loved it. The one good thing from its cancellation is it made him go on to make it into a movie thus gifting the world with Robin Hood: Men in Tights)
and
* Quark (Buck Henry of 'Get Smart' fame made a space spoof at the same time as Star Wars coming out, in which a space garbage collector and his crew cheesily reference all sorts of sci-fi shows while inadvertently saving the universe)

I wouldn't bother purchasing When Things Were Rotten, but I had fond memories of Quark, which only had a sad 8-episode run. Went looking for it and found it on dvd but for a very high price, so I went to Fanfic.net to see what others had done with it.

INTERNETZ WRITERS you have let me down! What? Not even ONE fic for Quark? Not even ONE? 0_o
Even with characters like Ficus, who was essentially Spock if he were a plant? And the Bettys? And Andy the cowardly robot? (Bettys in unison: "We would follow you to the end of the universe." Andy: "I would follow you to the door.")



Dear me, a cheesy gem has been overlooked - not often I find such a thing.
primsong: (fivey silly)
So. I finally finished the church newsletter for February, spell checked, printed and spell checked again, tweaked borders, etc., converted to pdf, got it signed off and sent it out to the entire church and the mailing list ON TIME! Yay, go me!

I opened the pdf one last time to be sure all the pages were opening on the file I'd just sent out to all these people and what do I see?

Two ants carrying a banana.

They were a tiny picture, tucked right where they look like they're about to ram one of the headers with their fruity yellow burden. What the heck? Where did they come from? How in the world did I accidentally paste in two ants carrying a banana randomly marching across one of the pages?

I beat my head on my desk. My kids laughed and said to tell anyone who commented that it was an easter egg.

Sigh. *snert snert snert*. Sigh. *snert*
primsong: (headless news)
So, yesterday I was wandering around and something went by that referred to a "decapitated arm."  Ever since then the hamster of the wordly part of my mind has been chewing on it.

A decapitated arm?

Let's see. Body minus head = decapitated body.  Arm minus body = disembodied arm. 

Arm minus head?  Um, what would aliens who have heads coming off of their arms call that?  If Zaphod Beeblebrox, for instance, went a step further in his cosmetic improvements and added an extra mini-head to his arm and then some governmental authority pronounced upon him the sentence of decapitation and he used that one for the one to be whacked off and then had to describe the condition of his arm later when a passerby innocently inquired why he had it bandaged up in a sling...?

Body minus bowels = disemboweled. Bowels minus body = ...er, detached?  With bowels in place, I suppose a body could be described as being 'emboweled,' not that I've had occasion to note to a reader whether or not a character has that feature currently functioning in their body.

I can't say I can quite see using 'disembodied' for bowels.  (*cue creepy sound effect* Madame Fluffhat shrieked in terror upon beholding the ghostly glowing disembodied bowels floating above the table.)  Do bowels count as one (collective) body part the way an arm includes fingers or would it only work with specific portions (i.e. a disembodied liver)?

Tongue minus head = disembodied also?  Is there a word for a head minus a tongue aside from "mute"?  Would it be delinguated?  I think we have to fall back on the inelegant but succinct "tongueless" there, similar to the way we would note a piece usually there is missing (The alien slapped down a wide, toeless foot), but it lacks the connotation that the missing piece was forcibly removed.

Which takes me back to the arm. What would you use to describe a disembodied arm that also has the connotation that it was disembodied by force, rather than just floating about as a glowing blue ghostly arm?  Decapitated does have that sense, but what fits other parts when they are off on involuntary field trips of their own?



primsong: (prim's drabble write)
With thanks - or blame? - to both [personal profile] thisbluespirit and [personal profile] john_amend_all - I picked up that 5 fandoms meme today, except I don't seem able to think in 50-word bits just now, so after much pruning I've wrangled each one into a drabble-size instead. Brevity isn't always my strength.

1: Pick five fandoms. List them in alphabetical order. Okie-dokie...

1. All Creatures Great and Small
2. Doctor Who
3. Lord of the Rings
4. The Scarlet Pimpernel
5. Watership Down

2: Visit this site (http://plagiarist.com/poetry/random) to find your first RANDOM POEM OF POWER. Write down the 5th line (yes, even if it's an E.E. Cummings poem and you wind up with an apostrophe). Repeat five times and - you guessed it - list 'em in alphabetical order! (No cheating, mind! This is a challenge and it's always been about creativity.)

3: I think you can see where this is going. Write a very quick 50-word half-drabble
(Pfft! I need more words than that!) for each fandom (try to do it all in one sitting - make your brain explode!), using the line from the poem as a prompt. You don't have to include it in the half-drabble - it's just inspiration.

4: Bravo! Have a cookie.


Well, here's the results! )
.

Muse google

Feb. 8th, 2012 11:39 am
primsong: (plotbunny obfuscate)
I was attempting to work on a WIP chapter and hitting a snag, reflexively opened up a Google tab.

Only to realize I was apparently attempting to google my *own story* to see how it went or something, you know...um, in the future...so I could write it....

Gah! Really, brain?
primsong: (bessie)
About a year and a half ago I started in on a Threefic for my "Custom Vehicle" series, which itself grew out of a long-ago prompt in someone's list (I now forget who) that said "Three, Delgado!Master, Dragon."

Then life went kablooie for a while and my muse took a long uncharted cruise somewhere with only occasional postcards and floating coconuts from abroad to communicate with me. My poor little half-done tale sat in its binder so long I had to dust it. Repeatedly.

I cannot say how thankful I am to be able to say that writer's blockage has successfully been ploughed aside by a certain little yellow roadster and after a determined bout of typing:
"A Mysterious Customer" (being the 4th and final episode of the Custom Vehicle tales) is complete!

A bit o' beta still needed on the later chapters, but I'll start off a couple earlier ones at Teaspoon tonight because I'm just so darn happy that it's finally, finally done. Gosh it's nice to have an eternally WIP'ed WIP stop WIP-ing.
primsong: (seven plot)
I think those who are likely to be most interested have probably found it now, but thought it would behoove me to not leave a link to my first fic of the year, a somewhat bizarre blend of 12 random prompts thanks to dw_straybunnies and [personal profile] thisbluespirit with her holiday challenge.

All that said... The Giraffe Convolution of Doom is over here at Teaspoon.

6 short chapters of mayhem with Two, Six and Seven with a bit of Four and Eleven plus Frobisher, Evelyn, Ace, Jamie, Sarah Jane, Martha, Rani (SJA) and the Meddling Monk at the London Zoo and Ancient Egypt. Enjoy.
primsong: (explain)
Our church secretary has had to rather abruptly step down from the job due to her husband suddenly falling ill due to what turned out to be cancer. We naturally let her go! The end result, however, is a loose group of disorganized people with good intentions trying to cover all the various things she did. So far the only useful contribution I've been able to offer was to come in on Fridays to help fold and stuff bulletins, but it would be golden if we had anyone who could work with MS Publisher to keep the newsletter going.

SO... I haven't said anything yet, but I'm thinking I might try to tackle that one, newsletters/stuff to write and read being a trend in my life, IF Publisher isn't as boneheaded and irritatingly non-compliant with the wishes of the user as most Microsoft products are - in other words, if I can figure it out and make it do what I want without ripping out my hair.

That said, any of you use Publisher? Is it Stoopid and Recalcitrant? Or is it understandable and usable? I'm going to hunt for something like a tutorial online.
primsong: (plotbunneh too much)

 

Once more - the 15 revealed )

--

 

Response for lolmac once more )

 

 --

 --
 

John_amend_all:

 

and finally, responses for kerravonsen )


--
 

 Whew! That took a bit of doing, some of those.  Thank you so much to everyone, that was grand fun. :-D
 

 



primsong: (brig snerk)
..
--

 My tags are being odd - apologies for the confusion!  Travels_in_time and Merfilly are also under the cuts.

Response for brewsternorth )

 



primsong: (fivey silly)
I may have had to miss Fic Rush (again) but at least I was not entirely without a bit of writing going by.  I had a lot of responses and it took a while to crack some of those literary nuts, but now it's done.  I'll post the results in chunks.

First of all, here's my fifteen:

Fifteen characters tossed in a salad bowl )

And now....


 

...

 


primsong: (plotbunny weird)
I've so enjoyed the results that I've seen with others, and I really could use something to help me get back in the groove of short-term writing blurblets - hence, here we go.... with fair warning that my characters are all over the map, but I don't think they should be too obscure for most of my flist.   And, as lost_spook said, "it's never not fun"!

1) Make a list of fifteen characters first, and keep it to yourself for the moment.

2) Ask your flist to post questions in the comments. For example: 'One, nine and fifteen are chosen by a prophecy to save the world from four. Do they succeed?', 'Under what circumstances might five and fourteen fall in love?', 'Which character on the list would you most want on your side in a zombie invasion?'

3) After your flist has asked enough questions, round them up and answer them using the fifteen characters you selected beforehand, then post them.


I have my 15 - ask, ask away!


primsong: (books)
Spent some time copying a few of my stories from ff.net onto AO3 (still under "primsong" - keeps it simple) - Nothing like making me aware of how many stories I've put out there like moving them and having to re-tag and re-summarize and re-decide what to say in notes for each one - I made it through about two thirds of my 1-shot/vignette/single chapter bits, but I've a ways to go still and haven't tackled anything with chapters yet.

I like the layout and the various features so far, still finding my way around a bit - any of you keeping your works over there? What name are you under? What's your favorite feature there that I should know about?
primsong: (plotbunny baby)
I did it. I just signed up for "A Ficathon Walks Into a Bar" - [community profile] intoabar - in which fictitious characters are assigned to run into each other in a bar. Second Doctor. 500 words... hm... okay, I think I can do that... no one point and laugh later on when I'm going 'why did I sign up for that?', hah. I appreciate a ficathon in which Gen is perfectly okay, so many of them seem to expect a certain amount of what to me is 'squick' that I only rarely find one to sign onto.

Also looking forward to fic_rush next week at the Other Place, in which writers get together to write as much as they can on whatever it is they are currently working on for 48 hours with hourly opportunities to give updates or carry on about it. I'd like to see something like it over here at DW eventually.

Now to NOT sign up for any more fic challenges until these are done!
primsong: (books)
Poked around AO3 a little bit last night to see what all the hoopla is about - it appears to be a fairly decent archiving site, but can anyone tell me if they've found it worth the time to copy their works over to it? Is it just re-inventing the wheel and having a reunion of the same folks we already know and love from Teaspoon and/or ff.net or have you found new readers coming out of the woodwork?

Whyfor? Can anyone tell me what makes it different/better/worth the time? Thank you!
primsong: (books)
Snagged from [livejournal.com profile] curuchamion, who had the good sense to yoink it from [livejournal.com profile] eponymous_rose, the more the merrier - and besides, I needed something like this today.
The instructions )
Whew! Considering I had to do them while popping back and forth on errands and other tasks, and the mood being all over the map I think I'm fairly pleased with how they came out. Tiny snippets like this are strangely difficult to do, because of the constraint of the story arc to a mere 50 words. But hey, it had poems for the prompts! I couldn't resist giving it a try.

All Creatures Great and Small )
Doctor Who )
Gilligan's Island )
Horatio Hornblower )
Lord of the Rings )
primsong: (books)
I've been seriously contemplating whether to submit something to GreenPrints ("the Weeders Digest")... I just love them, it's the only paid magazine-like subscription I have and worth every penny, published as a small family business. It's a collection of NOT "how to garden" or "gardening tips" (the world and the web are both awash in those) it is instead a collection of gardening from the heart. The WHY of gardening, the love and the dedication and sheer passion that makes people slave just to watch a tiny bud unfold and mourn deeply when aphids eat it before it can bloom. It's a magazine for people who have a love of green things and, like Sam, would rather have a bit of earth than almost any other gift. Shall I be published? I have no idea, but I have so enjoyed reading of other people's stories and adventures and reminisces in the care of their plants, I think I should at least give it a try.

The question now is where do I start? I haven't any notion of how to winnow something tangible out of the great jumbled experience of watching and tending all the teeming green life that has passed before my hands, but I just want to share it.

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