cleolinda | Entries tagged with research

So. Writing update. That scene I had lost--I had tried to recreate it from memory. Turns out I ended up with an opposite take on how one character reacted, so after I found the original (like I said: Windows Explorer can't locate something you didn't type up), I realized that I had two opposing takes to reconcile. Which is fine; I just have to decide which works better. I have no problem writing out a scene in as many different ways as it takes to find one that works. I don't feel like the story exists, concretely, unchangeably, once you write it down, so I don't have a problem playing with different versions. I just have to sit down and figure it out now. It's a really interesting (to me) scene, so it's fun.

I'm skipping around at the moment because ~~that's just how I always roll~~ I'm trying to type up all my handwritten notes and drafts. I think the next bit I type up is going to be about the Chinese apothecary. ( Read more... )

MOAR BOOKS.

Not that you should trust any reviewer who uses the word "moar," but still.

( With pictures! )

ETA: Having a bit of a posting glitch problem, please bear with us.

I have a huge, partially-drafted backlog of books and/or texts I've read and meant to discuss, so let's have a couple now:

( Read more... )

I have a huge, partially-drafted backlog of books and/or texts I've read and meant to discuss, so let's have a couple now:

( Read more... )

Last weekend, I went and got a couple of Mead composition books--you know, the kind with the black marbled covers. I haven't used them in a while, but I like them because they're sturdy, and yet just cheap enough that I don't feel bad about writing in them and messing them up. So, properly armed with these, I have been going back through my stacks of research books and taking notes on the specific elements that jump out at me as being relevant to what I'm writing. My problem is that I've spent all these years being terrified that I haven't researched enough--never mind that tons of writers barely hit Google, if anything, judging by some of the stuff I've read. I think it's a way of giving myself an excuse not to finish the novel, but at the same time, I think back on all I've read and I just get a panicky clouded feeling. Namely, because I do not remember half as much of what I read as I think I will. Oh, I mean, I can pull it back up in conversation, but when I sit down to write about a particular location or situation I read up on, I get a bad case of the herp-derps and feel like I didn't learn anything at all. Obviously: we need notes. This way, when I get all "Durrrrr...?" again, I can just flip back to my notebook(s) and go, "Okay, Gilded Youth, reread page 67. POW."

The other great thing about this is that I just could not get European history circa 1890ish into my head. And I love history. But I just could not get the overall political situation down. I could not figure out when or how the German empire came together, and I could not figure out what the hell kind of government France had going on at any particular time--Second Empire, Third Republic, Fourth WTF, IDK. Like, I would keep reading about it, and I just could not grok it, like I had some weird arbitrary blind spot I could not get around. And if you want a touch of espionage in your novel... you're going to need to know how various nations related to each other. So I started looking for (more) historical figures to read biographies of. For some reason, that is how I best grasp history--through the lives of the people who experienced it. It's also a great way to get the texture of a society or a culture at the time--basically, if you want to write a novel about a period, read about the people who lived in it. So I would start looking for key figures, particularly women and/or royals, because women are really who I write about, and and royals because they tend to be involved in both politics and society, and have a wide acquaintance--which can then help you figure out who else to read about. (Also, royals are the most likely to have decent biographies.) I am also very fond of actresses and courtesans, who generally hit all of those criteria. And also, they are super, super fun.

So I'm rereading a lot of these books--even the ones I just got for Christmas and read, I'm skimming through a second time for notes, and these are the ones I ended up hitting first, if you are interested in picking any of them up: ( Books! )

Oh, wow--someone sent me a book, but I'm not sure who it's from? There wasn't any name or card or information with it. It's something I had really wanted to read for Black Ribbon research, though, so--thank you so much, whoever it's from!

By the way, if you were working the upstairs register at the Brookwood Mall Books-a-Million on Wednesday night, and you sold a copy of Dead Until Dark to two women, the older of which kept saying "SHE WRITES ABOUT THE SHOW" really loudly over and over again, and the younger of which looked like she kind of wanted to die... I need to apologize to you about that.

( You really don't need to go announcing that Twilight is terrible )

Also, I feel like I should say a bit more about The Gift of Fear, since several people raised this concern--( Read more... )

Linkspam!

helpvera was a complete success.

( Breaking news: Jacob recast leaked? )

ETA: Bettie Page passed away this evening.

Current Mood: amused

Bad tornadoes coming through the South at the moment--my internet connection has not been the most reliable today, so this is just me checking in to say that we're fine, but this might be the only time you hear from me today.

Oh, and since this is a good opportunity to post a couple of things without losing them in the clutter (or creating even more):

The Cassie Edwards reference-book plagiarism exposé hits Publishers Weekly; Signet claims what Edwards did isn't wrong; Cassie Edwards claims she didn't know copying was wrong, then puts husband on phone to say she doesn't "lift passages" at all. All of this is from yesterday, so if there are any updates, I haven't seen them today (again, the internet connectivity problem). By the way, Smart Bitch Candy explains at the second link: "In short: plagiarism is an ethical issue. It’s concerned with what’s right and what’s not. Copyright infringement is a legal action, and is a way for somebody whose works have been infringed to say 'Bitch where my money?' It’s concerned with what’s legal and what’s not." Yes, there will be a quiz tomorrow. ETA: RWA Reponds to Plagiarism Accusations; Smart Bitch Sarah says, "I agree with Jane [from Dear Author] and Nora Roberts that the best option for rage and ire is to write reasoned, precise letters to Penguin, Signet, et al, and explain your reaction to their statement, and why you're so upset. It's one thing to vent on a blog. It is a much bigger thing to contact the people who run the company and let them know how upset you are, and your reaction to their statement regarding Cassie Edwards' novels."

Re: Empress Sissi:

nc_bookworm did a catalogue search for me and came up with the following: ( Read more... )

And finally: Erin's dealing with seizures while waiting on her surgery, but she is asking people to continue with the MegaUpload clickage. Given the speed with which they capitulated on the $100 (I don't know if she's gotten it yet) after--I'm assuming--people raised hell (and probably threatened to reveal the owner's shady past) last time, it's probably worth keeping on.

I showered and laundered today, and then lay down for five hours to recover. Ah, Norovirus. Also, I managed to eat a bowl of tomato soup (garnished liberally with crushed saltines) for dinner last night; for lunch today, I had another bowl and a grilled cheese sandwich (!). Felt a little oogy, and spent most of the afternoon digesting it, but succeeded admirably. Sister Girl had a barbecue sandwich. Sister Girl is a maniac.

(Tonight: a baked potato. "You think you can handle it?" "Let's dare to dream.")

Visit scenic Cleoville! No, seriously, visit it, because visiting it (once a day) makes it"improve." Hey, you visit mine, I'll visit yours (link in comments!). ETA: And now to build industry! Wow, this is involved.

Attention: GreatestJournal is going down.

Via

notsohip: Co-founder of GiveWell, a new charity-evaluating organization, tries to astroturf MetaFilter. Link goes to the otf_w report I wrote up (today's update: co-founder booted).

biblio_filia and I both want to know, each for our own writing projects: does anyone know of a definitive, or even good, Empress Elisabeth of Austria biography?

From

particle_person (both links): Sony BMG drops music DRM. It is the last major label to do so. Unfortunately, they're still doing it wrong. And the EU didn't get the memo, either.

( No one can stop the linkspam )

Current Mood: cold

... because I like the updating streak I have going. Mom's still weak, but doing better. Shelby seems a little pitiful, but we can't tell if that's because she's worried about Mom (when Meko was really sick there at the end, before she rallied for a few weeks, Sam was really pitiful about that as well). So right now, Shelby's curled up on Mom's lap, which, given that Shelby weighs forty pounds, is a fairly impressive feat. But then she's always been a cuddler.

I finished the Virginia Rounding book--can't remember if I mentioned that--and have moved on to Jim Steinmeyer's A Glorious Deception. I knew I wanted to read this after I read a description of the subject's death, which might have actually been in the Houdini bio I read last Christmas, but I liked Steinmeyer's Hiding the Elephant, so a Chung Ling Soo bio by Steinmeyer recommended itself. Here's basically what happened (and how the book begins): Chung Ling Soo was one of the greatest magicians of the early twentieth century. He performed amazing feats of magic (with his wife as his assistant) and, not knowing English, never spoke, leaving his assistants to speak for him. One night, he was performing the bullet catch, which was rarely mentioned on the program; no audience ever knew in advance if he was going to include it or not. But this time, he did perform it, and this time, something went wrong. Instead of "catching" the bullet in a china plate, he was wounded in the chest. And as he fell, the first row of the audience distinctly heard Chung Ling Soo cry out, "Oh my God! Something's gone wrong!"

I pretty much had to read more about him after that.

So, a couple of things:

The reason LJ broke late Thursday night/early Friday morning: Britney Spears refused to give up children, was taken away in ambulance, is being held for evaluation;

ohnotheydidnt (which dubbed it "Hostage Brituation '08") started producing a new page of comments every thirty seconds ~~and then Perez Hilton stole their live feed screencaps~~.

What's worse than plagiarizing someone's fanfiction? Plagiarizing their journal. And their comments to other people. After they've passed away. And then claiming that the deceased told you to do so. The online reaction is a good example of what I like to call "social consequence": when there's nothing the authorities can do (LJ says they can't do anything unless Thamiris's family files a report, and it was her wish that her family not know about her fannish activities), there's nothing like a good old-fashioned shunnin'.

Current Mood: cold

Arghhh. It was 17 F this morning (we finally got up to a high of 40 by late this afternoon), and may I remind you, I live in Alabama. I couldn't let the dogs play outside very long, so they spent most of the day driving me crazy. Thanks for all the get-well wishes for Mom, by the way; she's weak and a little feverish, but she seems a lot better, and hasn't thrown up since about five this morning. She spent the day either in bed or sacked out in the recliner in the den watching The DaVinci Code, which would have been fine except that she kept asking who this was and what was he doing and did they know who she was. I wouldn't have found this annoying, except that I was trying to read one of my Black Ribbon books, and I wouldn't have found it odd, except that she's already seen the movie three times. But, you know--after all the years she took care of us when we were deathly snerfy, taking care of her was the least I could do. I think it would have been all right if the dogs could have played outside; as it was, they were constantly fighting or barking or chewing or bodyslamming the back door to get in or out, and there was a point where I just ate lunch standing up, plate in hand, because it was just easier to deal with them that way. So, because I was downstairs early to look after Mom, and because George seems to be coming home later than usual this week, it was a very long day, and I felt very tired afterwards. Do you ever feel tired from not getting to do things? I don't mean the the sluggishness from being lazy; I mean the frustrated weariness of trying to do something all day and being continually interrupted. It's the tiredness of sitting in a waiting room all day, or waiting in a line, I guess.

But I did finish Virginia Rounding's Grandes Horizontales, which is something. I need to write up some book reports, as it were, but I'm too tired just now.

Meanwhile, at Snopes: The Webkinz Murderer? ( Read more... )

Reading Virginia Rounding's Grandes Horizontales and feeling kinda oogy. May be just because I took my meds late today, but I also have a little congestion and can't taste much, so who knows. (And what's with this crick in my wrist?) Still ought to put up a little linkspam, though.

( A post-holiday excellence of linkspam )

Current Mood: wow, I just suddenly felt really dizzy

Since people asked--here's my obscenely long list of books I got for Christmas: ( Read more... )

P.S. CHECK YOUR GMAIL FILTERS AND FORWARDING NOW.

Current Mood: sleepy

I think I had a mild hypomanic episode today; I spent the afternoon seemingly hellbent on researching myself stupid. (Wait, can you do that? By definition, can you learn yourself stupid?) Things I found out:

( She also poisoned others in her spare time )

In less murderous news:

shoiryu: "Hey, Cleo, can I ask you to pimp this out?

helpweep is the coordination center for assisting WEEP of Canada, an environmental education program that uses non-releasable birds of prey to raise environmental awareness. The program is in serious danger of closing, and if that's the case, all their birds are going to be euthanized. It seems a good enough cause for some attention."

Mrs. Coulter appears. I dunno, she's a little blonder than I wanted, but it is Nicole Kidman, so...

Giant diamond sells for more than $12 million.

Quick gothlit recs from

reynardine, since my internet's being fritzing in and out every five minutes (quite literally): "I've been reading some scary short stories myself from A Treasury of American Horror Stories. One of the creepiest has been Pickman's Model by H.P. Lovecraft. The prose isn't quite as overwrought as some of his other works (and no Cthulu), but this is a very well-crafted horror story. Twilla by Tom Reamy was also very good, as was Desiree's Baby by Kate Chopin." I actually have Chopin's on to-read list, and one of the things I wanted to do was break down some of the less tentacly Lovecraft stories, because the man really does have an excellent grasp of atmosphere when he's not fhtagning it up.

October: Domestic Violence Awareness Month

I don't want to sound like Gawker's Crazy Us Weekly Guy (you know, the one who was trying to prove that he was destined to run the magazine and marry Jessica Alba, using Crazy Math), but I do kind of believe in signs. Like, just as little bits of encouragement saying, "You're on the right track." Which is probably the same way Crazy Guy looks at it, but... we won't dwell on that idea. I was researching ghost stories and general weirdness today, to get an idea of the kind of local legends I could put together for a fictional place, and I remembered that we had a copy of More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark around here somewhere. Now, I had never actually read this book; the one I read in middle school was the original Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, with the terrifying head on the cover. Seriously, the stories themselves aren't even that special; it's the frickin' illustrations that have terrified kids for like twenty-five years now. (Man, I want the boxed set so bad.) My point is, I had never actually read this book before; it was my sister's, and I remembered seeing it in a box when we moved. So I go fish it out now, and what's the first thing I see when I open it? For Lauren on the dedication page. Lauren is my real name. That's what a frickin' "sign" looks like, Crazy Guy. Not "the first letter of the name of the character she played is the third letter of my favorite vegetable."

(Friday's topic of research: herbal abortifacients. Yesterday's topic of research: gout.)

"Snakes" Down the Drain? You know, I never thought it was going to break records. Number one, it's about snakes, which automatically removes a lot of people from the Potential Viewer list. I mean, there's a reason I've had so much trouble finding people to go with.

Did I go? Well... I woke up on Saturday with a sore throat and have been wrestling with a summer cold ever since. My stepfather was off at a gig last night and my mother asked if I wanted to go see a movie, and I was like, "Yeah, not so much with the leaving of the house right now (ACHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!)." "You don't want to go see a movie?" she repeated. "That's it, I'm calling Dr. A. You need an antibiotic or something." So she went and got dinner and some DVDs, and we watched V for Vendetta, and I sneezed a lot. Good times. (I am very disappointed in the extras so far. It's like, Generic HBO Featurette; Designing the Blandly Vague Sets of the Future; More Stuff About Guy Fawkes Even Though You'd Have Already Hit Wikipedia If You Cared; They're Not Comics, They're "Graphic Novels"; and We're Calling It a "Cat Power Montage" Because MTV Wouldn't Run It as a Video. WHERE ARE MY COMMENTARIES AND OUTTAKES? WHERE ARE MY STUNTS??! Shit, there's more in-depth stuff than this on the website. It wouldn't be so disappointing if they hadn't done such a good job with the extras for the first Matrix. I know this ain't no Matrix, but come on, a commentary takes two hours of your life. Pony up.)

(Meanwhile, "Pirates" nears $1 billion at box office.)

From bubosquared: Get free stuff, stuff Focus on the Family!

Daniel Craig to play Lord Asriel. Dammit, I was really hoping they'd carry Timothy Dalton over from the stage production. You know, since I'll never get to see that.

blinkliz: "Would you mind linkspamming this, if it strikes you? Teacher fired for being FEMALE." Now, I read the link, and the thing is, she was fired from teaching Sunday school after a weird power shift in the community. Which is at least a train of logic I can see--I mean, it's Crazy Logic, but I can see how someone would be like, THE WEAKER SEX SHALL NOT TEACH THE SCRIPTURE! before I could see them being like, "Let's fire all the female schoolteachers! ...Wait."

Stuff I found while browsing the "Weird NJ" section on Wikipedia (and yes, eventually the Weird NJ site itself:) Worst. Amusement park. Ever. Just to give you an idea: "The park at first disputed that the electric current caused his death, saying there were no burns on his body, but the coroner responded that burns generally do not occur in a water-based electrocution." A completely different death-inducing, water-based attraction there: the ~~Wave~~ Grave Pool. I kind of love it.

(Speaking of Weird NJ and its sister site Weird US, if you have any freaky-ass stories to tell, I highly suggest that you submit them. Because I want more stuff to read. Also, it seems that half the states of the Union have their own Midgetville, murderous clan of Melon Heads, Gravity Road, abandoned asylum taken over by satanists, Road Where Terrifying Things Happen, and colorfully named psycho-beastie. The latter genre is one of my favorites--the stories range from the mostly-animal Big Foot/Jersey Devil end of things to the mostly-human Bunnyman of Northern Virginia end. Favorite story in that vein so far: The bloody box of La Llorona. Most of these things, you stop and realize that if they were true--particularly that last one, where the police got involved--you'd have something about them in the news. They're still great stories, though. I'm more in the market for older stories, but you know how the internet is. You start out reading about haunted roads and you end up on a page about a French washerwoman with a horn growing out of her forehead.)

(You think I'm making that up, don't you? Don't click this link. I'm telling you.)

Sebastian, the blinged-out cat.

From particle_person: For those of you buying stars, did you realize that you're neither buying nor naming a star in any actual sense of the words? It's pretty much like buying a deed to real estate on the moon. Which, by the way, if you're interested I can sell to you at the low, low price of ten dollars an acre. Hurry, supplies are going fast!

Current Mood: random

I seem to wake up at two or three in the morning pretty consistently these days. Ick.

>> You know, I wanted to do my own research rather than fire up Semagic and bother y'all every time I wanted to know some little thing, but I mention hay (thinking, "Hey, you know, if anyone else ever needs to look this stuff up, this might come in handy for them"), and not only have multiple commenters cut hay before, one of them was doing so that day. Screw this Wikipedia noise, I'm asking y'all from now on.

So... *checks notes* ...relatively slow-acting botanical poisons, what've you got? I need time for suffering and flailing about for antidotes. Belladonna? If you intend to poison someone today, I definitely need to hear from you.

>> Okay, I'm in a bit of a quandary. Someone is using the title for "Movies in Fifteen Minutes" for the first and the fourth Harry Potters--I have the link to them, but I'm not reading the texts, as I haven't actually finished "Goblet of Fire" yet, and I don't want an IM IN UR FANFIC, STEALIN UR JOKES situation on my hands. (Note: I actually did the first Potter in the book.) But I'm reading reviews left for her, and while there are a couple of comments that mention me, there's also a lot saying, "What are you going to do for your next Movies in Fifteen Minutes?" and "U should do [whatever] for your next Movies in Fifteen Minutes." I am extremely uncomfortable with what she's doing, but you, and by "you" I mean "I," can't copyright titles. And it's not like I chose the most unique title of all time in the first place. At the same time, I hear that she does seem to acknowledge obliquely that she "didn't come up with the title," so I think she has, in fact, seen my work. She may or may not be using some of my jokes; I can't look, but the reviews indicate that she may be funny on her own, which means that we are not dealing with actual plagiarism here. But here's another complicating factor: the site doesn't allow script format fics anyway. I'm not linking to any of this because I legitimately don't know what to do, and I don't want to call the flying monkeys down on her. Probably the most I could ask for is for her to put a disclaimer that says "This is not related to Cleolinda Jones' Movies in Fifteen Minutes," and I don't know that I even have the right to ask for that. She seems to be only fifteen anyway, and... I totally don't know what to do. Other than pour myself a tall glass of Let It the Hell Go, I guess.

>> Re: Last night's JonBenet entry: You know how the first thing out of my mouth, metaphorically speaking, was how this guy might be trying to get out of Thailand? Yeah. A lot of things aren't adding up, including the whole "No, my husband was with me in Alabama, the Center of the Universe, that Christmas" part. At the same time, the man is way creepy and at least now that he's been nationally exposed as a pedophile (what were the previous charges, again? Child porn in California and sex charges in Thailand?), maybe someone can put him away somewhere. God knows what he's been up to elsewhere.

(On the other hand: the details Karr allegedly knows that no one but the killer should know.)

>> ATTENTION, PEOPLE I ACTUALLY KNOW IN REAL LIFE: Holy crow, people are actually coming out of Snakes on a Plane saying they liked it. I was expecting the biggest hype letdown ever. (Sample comments start here. Also here.) "It's everything you could have hoped for" is a pretty damn good endorsement. Art on the Rocks is Friday, but what about Saturday?

>> Linkspam:

Jail for Haley Joel? It's a Shyamalan curse, I'm telling you--first Mel and now this.

The Stephen Colbert Threat Down Generator.

megmatthews20: "On a much happier subject, have you seen the following POTC 3 spoilerific pictures?" I think we've seen some of them before, but I think there's at least a couple of new ones, and they're laid out better here. Also, Chinese Pirate Jack lives!

Hilary Duff's new video, "Play with Fire." I am not proud that I have now downloaded the song, but Sister Girl actually came and said, "You need to listen to this, I think you would like this. No, I have no shame." She actually earbombed me, knowingly, with stupidcrackmusic. You understand, don't you? Don't you?!

carebearssparky: "I was wondering if you could pimp this - I know habibekindheart can use all the support she can get. She does not deserve any of the things that have happened to her, and neither does her family."

Current Mood: bleary

You know, I take issue with the old adage that you should write what you know. Number one, as bibliotech pointed out, the entire science fiction genre would cease to exist. Number two--most of us lead extremely boring lives. If we wrote only what we knew, we would probably replace science fiction with navel gazing, and the You Are Way Too Young to Be Writing This Memoir genre is overstuffed as it is. Therefore, I believe that you should write what you know, and if you don't know it, you should go find it out--also known as "research."

The Joys of Being a Writer, or, Problems You Don't Run Into Much: "Man, I wish they had more pictures of old-fashioned haystacks."

Problems You Don't Run Into Much, Part Two: "But when do you cut the hay? When??"

Part Three: "There is a serious dearth of good haymaking FAQs on the internet."

Part Four: "FINALLY."

Part Five: "Hey, man, I don't judge. If you just need to have a field full of phallic symbols, you know, that's your scene, then, whatever."

Part Six: "This ice cream is not sufficient for my malnutritional needs."

Which perhaps bears some explaining. Since Bluebell is holding out on us regarding the Chocolate Almond Marshmallow ice cream (it's supposed to go back into rotation this month, but I haven't seen any yet), my mother decided to be enterprising and buy from a different brand--Mayfield's Chocolate Marshmallow ice cream and their Chocolate Almond ice cream. "You can just combine them!" she says. I am so touched by the gesture that I restrain myself from pointing out that we could have bought one flavor of ice cream and a bag of almonds. Which might have been a better idea, because it turns out that Mayfield's ice cream doesn't really have that much in the way of almonds--it's more like it's just daydreaming about them, thinking about how it might be a good idea, someday, to include almonds in the product. Also, Bluebell's almonds are chocolate-covered. You understand now, don't you?

Slight update on the YouTube situation: eponine_b says that the people who actually made the video posted it with credit on their website; someone apparently then took it and posted it to YouTube without, I would imagine, permission. That said, it's really not a big deal, you guys. I mean, maybe it is for the vidders if their work was stolen, but I think there's enough commentage on the YT page to thoroughly indicate where the text came from.

P.S. can't stop listening to nelly furtado (stop) send help please (stop)