Category: about writing

The dangers of being a woman online

“You should have your tongue ripped out”: the reality of sexist abuse online
by Helen Lewis-Hasteley – 03 November 2011 12:51

Accounts from several women, some prominent figures and some more anonymous, describing the nature of abuse that gets directed at them online because they are women.

You always remember the first time someone calls you ugly on the internet. I imagine — although it hasn’t happened to me — you always remember the first time someone threatens to rape you, or kill you, or urinate on you.

The sheer volume of sexist abuse thrown at female bloggers is the internet’s festering sore: if you talk to any woman who writes online, the chances are she will instantly be able to reel off a greatest hits of insults. But it’s very rarely spoken about, for both sound and unsound reasons. No one likes to look like a whiner — particularly a woman writing in male-dominated fields such as politics, economics or computer games. Others are reluctant to give trolls the “satisfaction” of knowing they’re emotionally affected by the abuse or are afraid of incurring more by speaking out.

Both are understandable reasons but there’s another, less convincing one: doesn’t everyone get abuse on the internet? After all, the incivility of the medium has prompted a rash of op-eds and books about the degradation of discourse.

While I won’t deny that almost all bloggers attract some extremely inflammatory comments — and LGBT or non-white ones have their own special fan clubs, too — there is something distinct, identifiable and near-universal about the misogynist hate directed at women online. As the New Statesman blogger David Allen Green told me: “In three years of blogging and tweeting about highly controversial political topics, I have never once had any of the gender-based abuse that, say, Cath Elliott, Penny Red or Ellie Gellard routinely receive.”

Posted on by Hawthorn Fire

‘The Ancient of Days’, ‘Thumos’ via wikipedia

via wikipedia:

The Ancient of Days
The title “Ancient of Days” has been used as a source of inspiration in art and music, denoting the Creator’s aspects of eternity combined with perfection. William Blake’s watercolour and relief etching entitled “The Ancient of Days” is one such example.

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The Ancient of Days is the title of a design by William Blake, originally published as the frontispiece to a 1794 work, Europe a Prophecy. It shows a figure, the Ancient of Days, crouching in a circular design with a cloud-like background. His out-stretched hand holds a compass over the darker void below. As noted in Gilchrist’s Life of William Blake, the design was “a singular favourite with Blake and as one it was always a happiness to him to copy.” As such there are many versions of the work extant, including one completed for Frederick Tatham only weeks before Blake’s death.

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Thumos

Thumos (also commonly spelled “thymos”) (Greek: θυμός) is an Ancient Greek word expressing the concept of “spiritedness” (as in “spirited stallion” or “spirited debate”). The word indicates a physical association with breath or blood. The word is also used to express the human desire for recognition.

In Homer’s works, thumos was used to denote emotions, desire, or an internal urge. Thumos was a permanent possession of living man, to which his thinking and feeling belonged. When a Homeric hero is under emotional stress he may externalize his thumos, conversing with it or scolding it.

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Finding time – Anne Lamott on Writing

Anne Lamott on Writing – Time lost and found

"I sometimes teach classes on writing, during which I tell my students every single thing I know about the craft and habit. This takes approximately 45 minutes. I begin with my core belief—and the foundation of almost all wisdom traditions—that there is nothing you can buy, achieve, own, or rent that can fill up that hunger inside for a sense of fulfillment and wonder. But the good news is that creative expression, whether that means writing, dancing, bird-watching, or cooking, can give a person almost everything that he or she has been searching for: enlivenment, peace, meaning, and the incalculable wealth of time spent quietly in beauty.

"Then I bring up the bad news: You have to make time to do this.

"This is what I say: First of all, no one needs to watch the news every night, unless one is married to the anchor. Otherwise, you are mostly going to learn more than you need to know about where the local fires are, and how rainy it has been: so rainy! That is half an hour, a few days a week, I tell my students. You could commit to writing one page a night, which, over a year, is most of a book."

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My Early Fan Fiction

A short list of shows and books I have written femslash fan fiction about – often in my head, but sometimes written down. Early on I actually wrote it down and posted on usenet forums, and I discovered recently that some of it is still out there. I’m not linking to it, because it’s pretty terrible, and since it was anonymously published, I don’t have to claim it.

Star Trek: TNG – Deanna Troi and Dr. Beverly Crusher

Anne of Green Gables – Anne and Dianna

Kate & Allie – one or two Kate and Allie, but more Jennie and Emma
Kate450

The Facts of Life – Jo & Blair, obvs.

Princess Diana (RPF, OMG!)
I shouldn’t even bring this up now, but in the interest of being complete, yes, I wrote romantic fiction pairing princess Diana with other famous women. I feel bad about it now, given that celebrities tend to feel icky about RPF written about them.

Reva Shayne & Maureen Garrett from The Guiding Light
Who knows what I was thinking of here; Reva and Maureen barely interacted with each other. I wished they did, though.

The character of Buddy, from Family
I barely remember any of the episodes, but boy did Buddy have some girlfriends in my writing. I believe she had a crush on some girl Willie was dating? God, I can’t remember that far back.

Little House on the Prairie
(I know; blasphemy! In my head, Nellie Olson got a lot nicer and Laura liked blondes.)

Colette’s Claudine series
I thought Claudine should have ended up with Annie and not the asshole husband.

Star Trek: DS9
Jadzia Dax and Kira Nerys, please. I wasn’t placated by Lenara Kahn.

Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman
No clue who I was shipping Dr. Quinn with. Probably some guest star.

Ready or Not – Amanda and Busy
Most of this was pretty tame and just involved them realizing they loved each other.

Touched by an Angel (definitely going to hell for that).
I only wrote a couple of stories, so I don’t remember what this one was about.

Xena: Warrior Princess
Obviously, Xena and Gabrielle, but I had a long story I need to dig out where I shipped Artemis and Aphrodite, too.

The X-Files
I didn’t hate Mulder, but he was too much of a kook for Scully, so I gave her girlfriends.

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John Cleese on creativity

John Cleese discussing writing, creativity, and getting in the zone for creative work. One of his main points is the importance of not being interrupted while writing – once you are distracted from your task, it’s very difficult to get back on the moving train of thought. So closing yourself off to disruptions is a key to creative work.

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A Kite That Couldn’t Be Tied Down

This is beautiful:

I swooned at the thought of her reading something undoubtedly wonderful in the adjoining compartment but forced myself to nod. We looked out the window: a herd of camels, for a flash of a second. We were in the Gobi Desert.

Nights were hard. She was inevitably inches away, sleeping peacefully as my desire for her boiled. In Ulan Bator, under a sky thick and white with stars, we decided to sleep in a yurt on the steppe. As her brother slept, she whispered to me: “Have you heard about that hand-built, nine-grotto Virgin Mary shrine some priest spent 42 years piecing together in Iowa?”

I told her I’d build her a bigger one if she wanted.

She laughed and played with my hair, knowing it was true but not wanting to show it. The shrine I had already built for her was painfully exposed; in two years my mainstream existence had been razed to the ground to make room for a garden in which her every eccentricity was welcomed to bloom. What was I doing in Mongolia? It seemed I would follow her anywhere.

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The Lost Finale

Kottke does a nice round-up of sites’s comments on the Lost finale. Many of them express what I’ve heard as a common theme among fans – it’s okay that all of the questions weren’t answered, because most of them were. The major storylines were wrapped up.

io9, on the other hand, came up a with a list of 50 questions that they felt Lost really did need to answer with their series ending show, and a tally of what was actually covered and what was left open (more questions than not, unfortunately).

I’m with io9 on this one. Sure, red herrings are a mystery tradition. But they’re always exposed as red herrings in the end. That’s just good storytelling to wrap up the loose ends. Lost left way too many of them. Writing them off as unimportant is just yanking people’s chains. People who don’t think much may be okay without all the mind-benders solved. But thoughtful people want real closure in their storytelling. I wonder how many of the “it’s okay, they don’t have to explain everything” folks read novels regularly.

And I’m really dissatisfied with the ending as well. If you’re going to sell me a series of religious programming, label it as such so I can watch the sci-fi channel instead. Don’t disguise your religious blah blah blah as science fiction for 5 and a half seasons and then zing me with mysticism at the end. It’s pretty clear that the writers very much wrote themselves into a corner. They didn’t have an end in mind when they started, and they got a giant kick out people’s excitement at the layer-upon-layer of mysterious events, so they kept laying it on thick even after they had laid out so much they couldn’t explain it all. I cry deus ex machina foul. My fierce belief in free will over fate leaves me feeling this series was ultimately a giant turd.

I’m hoping that with on-demand technologies, television writing will start moving in the direction of series treated as long mini-series – with a completely plotted story line from beginning to end and more tightly written detail, rather that completely open-ended affairs that peter off after awhile. Television programs do have a predictable end point, no matter how popular they are. Using that to create a real story that holds together throughout would be much more satisfying.

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In search of the next Lost

Entertainment Weekly has an interesting article in their current issue about all of the shows written to be the next big Lost and how none of them seem to be taking off in the way the networks are hoping. I am watching FlashFoward, and it’s interesting, but most of the shows are missing a key ingredient to the formula…

The reason I got hooked on Lost was because I had no idea at first that it was a mystery. The first episodes seemed like a scripted version of Survivor (an interesting idea by itself) – and when strange stuff started happening, there were tons of “Wow, what the heck just happened?” moments. A mystery is a mystery because you don’t realize at first that’s what it is – you think you’re going along with life, an you start noticing little stuff that just doesn’t make any sense. You pull the string, and it all unravels into one big pile.

All of these Lost imitator shows – FlashFoward especially – are coming out of the gate with “hey look at this big mystery! We’re gonna solve it, yay!” scripts that just seem too self-conscious. When you have to tell people you’re really cool – probably not so much. Start by telling an interesting story first.
I don’t know that there’s any way to really “fix” this about FlashFoward – they started off on the wrong foot to begin with. It’s interesting enough, but the constant references to how mysterious all of it is – over the top.

Posted on by Hawthorn Fire

December? Oh my.

Wow – time to wrap up the year, and I’m utterly at loose ends with various projects. I’ve been working steadily on knitting projects, and organizing the house, two areas where we’ve made some pretty big gains. We’re steadily getting through the mounds of papers that need to be filed or thrown out, with the help of our organization lady. The room is becoming what we want it to be – a guest room where people can visit from out of town, and a crafting room where we can sit and work on craft projects. Don’t get me wrong – it still needs LOTS of work – there are still tons of boxes to go through and purge, and we’re in danger of acquiring new crap to replace all the old, but it’s starting to look more like what it should look like.

The knitting is fun and very relaxing. I’m concerned though, about what I really want to do with it. It’s enjoyable to make things for people, but it’s not exactly a lever that will move the world.

We’ve spend all the weekends of November bagging leaves for the most part (we really grabbed a lot of time back by paying someone to pick them up last year!) which is really satisfying, until the next round of them fall off the trees. We currently need to redo the backyard. I’m completely frustrated by how much time and energy this takes, and we don’t even have that many trees; they’re mostly from the neighbors.

I’ve lost complete track of what I’ve read and am woefully behind on photo editing.

I attempted a brief stint at NaNoWriMo but gave up after a few days. That seems to happen at the utterly wrong time of year for me. Why don’t they do it in March? Except that’s about the time I’m driving hard to get a painting project done somewhere in the house though; last year in March I was painting the staircase room I’m in now. But the writing – it’s so hard to do, and my life is too chaotic to achieve it, I think.

And web projects. Boy oh boy. I’ve been neglecting this blog, and my photoblog, and several other domains to remain nameless.

I think I need to make different use of my time at times. I’m frustrated with how little time I have to accomplish things I think are important, and how much time we spend doing stuff that doesn’t move us forward. I’m frustrated by the sheer number of projects we have that remain unfinished, as well.

Posted on by Hawthorn Fire

Interesting writing programs

  • Home — Second Story
    Second Story is a non-profit writing project serving kids, schools and community organizations in Indianapolis, Ind. Programs include in-class writing instruction at local schools, as well as after-school tutoring, creative-writing workshops and other events.
  • The Secret Headquarters
    Dr. Fredric Rinehart has been credited with developing the first Secret Headquarters in 1932, in the city of Los Angeles. His breakthrough in concealment technology met with suspicion from the local authorities, because of which the project, then known as "SHQ", was shelved. It was suspected that SHQ technology could be used to generateunrest in the city. The original purpose of these hidden facilities is unclear to this day. Some believe, as the government-backed authorities did, that the Secret Headquarters were used as housing facilities for the growing espionage network in Southern California.
  • 826 National
    826 National is a family of seven nonprofit organizations dedicated to helping students, ages 6-18, with expository and creative writing.
  • Writers' Center of Indiana
    Founded in 1979, The Writers' Center is Indiana's only comprehensive community-based literary service organization. The Center's outstanding roster of classes offers writers at any level new approaches and ideas to further their journey in writing.