It's the day after my birthday

[lobelia321]

Thank you to all the kind souls who sent me birthday congratulations! They made me happy! I had, all in all, in fact a very happy day. I got a cake and I got presents and instead of answering emails at work I sat and read Chaos is Come Again by theatresm which is the most mind-blowing fic I have read since resonant8's Transfigurations. It is keeping me utterly transfixed -- to my print-out, that is, with trips up for additional pages every few hours. I'm very, very breathless about it, it is simply that good. I won't divulge anything about it, except that it's HP. Let the writing draw you in.

And seeing as I am now a year older (but aren't we every day?), it seemed a good day to be posting the age-o-meter meme.

My age

42 How old are other lj users are compared to me:

Younger My age Older 98% 0% 2%

There are 2634 lj users the same age as me.

Enter age:

LJ Age was bought to you by
_imran_ and MemeLand.org





I knew it! I am part of a select elite!

Well, I've only known it since yesterday when I was actually a bit shocked to discover that blythely with her tender years is nevertheless older than over 90 per cent of LJ-users. Still, though, note the way this age-o-meter cannot 'do the math', as they say in the US of A.

Number of LJ-users of same age as me: 2634
Percentage of LJ-users of same age as me:
0 per cent

Yeah, right. So the rest of the data is to be trusted absolutely, is it? *snorfles*



Books:
Phil Hensher, The Fit (because he's a friend of ours and I liked the first paragraph)

Junichiro Tanizaki, The Makioka Sisters (one of David Mitchell's favourite books)

Achmat Dangor, Bitter Fruit (Booker shortlist and I liked the first paragraph)

Gerard Woodward, I'll Go to Bed at Noon (Booker shortlist and I liked the first paragraph)

Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo (t'h thought this one up of his own account because it fits in with my research on 19th C. narrative)

Alexander McCall Smith, The No 1 Detective Agency (because everyone and her dog has been reccing this and he's an academic turned novelist so that's interesting)

I'm sure I got more books but I can't be bothered to go downstairs to check.

DVDs:
Mohabbat
Hum Tumhare Hain Sanam

CD:
Snow Patrol (chosen by t'son)

Other:
Card made by t'son junior
Plasticine candle holder made by t'son senior

Virtuality:
A Shahrukh card
A Bollywood magazine cover
(Do I detect a theme here?)
Oh, and some cockolada...11111

And such a lot of lovely, kind, thoughtful, nice birthday wishes! They made me feel warm and happy!



So what to do with my day off work? Or rather, what to do first? Elevenses? Mark essays? Read more of Chaos is Come Again? Write more of Introduction to My Book? Write more of the final version of my HP opus? (I actually now have 1036 words of the beginning of that fic that I am actually happy with. Amazing.)

And on the subject of t'opus (because I can't help rambling about it now that I've got onto it):
It was a breakthrough. It started with me stumbling onto the ending (or the possible two endings), and I can't even remember now how that happened. (In the car?) And then I had some interesting discussions with Friends who got me onto thinking about experimentation in fic. And then I remembered how I used to be very experimental in fic and wondered why I'd stopped. And then I realised that I had been intimidated by HP fandom. It's my first new fandom (I know others are much more blasée about this but I've been a lotrips-monogamatrix for much of my slashy life) and I was a bit overwhelmed by the HP fanon: the fics I like are plotty (while the fics I liked in lotrips were experimental or mood-fics) and they are very canon-centred, in the sense that they find canon important and that one of the things that fans seem to like and be proud of in HP is the way writers twist and turn within the canon (while in lotrips the whole fanon/canon thing worked differently).

So I wrote this magnum opus (and it's very magnum, I've got a whole ringbinder of it printed out) as a straightforward prose plot. It was a challenge to myself: could I just write a plot? I've tended to see myself as bad at plot. And I plodded through the plot. But I think what I lost was the sheer joy in writing through words (something I learned ages ago from thejennabides). I was writing plot, using the words as transparent tools, and it wasn't working. And the breakthrough came the other night when I re-discovered the importance (for me) of writing with the words, of wading through the thicket of words, of loving the resistance that words put up, of spending minutes over one word and mulling alternatives and looking up my thesaurus and browsing websites on rocks and minerals. I've missed that!

I wrote the Dementor fic and then I realised how much I missed the beauty of words and also how much I missed just being able to throw out fics and not angsting over them for months, and especially, how much I crave and live off feedback.

And then bing, the beginning of the opus re-wrote itself and I trashed the palimpsest I've got.

I've also realised, or rather remembered -- because I should have known better, I learned this when writing the beginning of the Desert Prince WIP -- that I, as a writer, need the scaffolding of words and a particular prose style. If I've got no scaffolding, I flounder in neutral, unexciting sentences that simply convey information but that are not anything in their own right. I just can't do the straightforward plot prose, so I'm going to stop trying and leave that to others who are much better at it than I (e.g. azewewish, resonant8 who manages to combine beauty of prose with transparency of plot, theatresm). And I'm going to stop caring about canon or fanon, or care about it only in the way I like caring about it, and just learn to go out on limbs again.

Because there's the macrocosm of planning and devising the arc of the whole story and of fantasising the myriad of scenarios. And then there's the microcosm of adding word to word to word, the metonymy of sentence construction, the poetry of paragraph breaks (thanks also to thamiris for reminding me of that one), the paradigmatic axis of word-choosing.

Well, that turned into a longer-than-planned self-indulgent ramble and a half! But I'll allow myself a little self-indulgence on this day after my birthday... I rarely do otherwise. :-)

Comments

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

Happy new-age-year! And someone sensibly pointed out that those of us over 25 generally don't post a year on the "birthday" bit of the info page, which is where that stats info comes from, so it's probably pretty skewed.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

And oh yeah, I remember suppressing my age on my LJ userinfo page. But at some point I got annoyed with myself for being coy online and wondering what I was trying to achieve with this suppression (suppress to oppress?) and whom I was trying to kid -- and it 's so obvious, anyway, that anybody who hasn't put their age must be over 30, and heck, once I'm 55 I'll look back on my 42nd birthday as birthday of the spring chicken. So I put my age in.

But yes, skewed! Alas, so not so very elite, after all...

[mandrill.livejournal.com]

Happy Birthday!

And Theatresm's "Chaos is Come Again" really is the best-written HP fanfic I've come across. I've been reccing it for the past few months and I'm really surprised that so few people know about it.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

You have? Been reccing it? I am agog and abog at it, and life-cripplingly addicted. It has its flaws, yes, but it's a page turner and then every now and again it takes my breath away with some *really* good idea. Although I'd love more sex. The first sex was so bloody good I want more! But the dynamics...! They *sizzle*!!

[mandrill.livejournal.com]

I've been reccing the story privately. I'm not sure of the protocol for reccing stories in communities on LJ.

I rather wish there was more sex, too, and yes, what little bit of sex in the story is very well-written. Perhaps when she finishes the story, the author might provide some "outtakes." I seem to recall that she did that in her "Brave New World" story, which is very different from "Chaos is Come Again."

I really like the Chaos!Snape and Chaos!Herminone as characters and Theatersm has made their relationship very believable. There's so many little details worked into the fic that makes the Chaos AU really work. And it's fun to see Pinky used in a creative fashion. :=)

[fivil.livejournal.com]

Happy Birthday!

And oh, I love Snow Patrol. The new album is so great.

I seem to be on the completely different end of the age scale. 63% are older than me.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Not very elite then, *g*.

Thanks for the congrats!!

[msilverstar]

You sound happy, and that makes me happy too.

I know just enough math to understand the problems with the age thing.

a) There are 803 lj users who admit to being born in 2000.

b) Many older people won't put in the year.

c) There are less than 1% of LJ users who have the exact age as you. The quiz people didn't use decimal places. So instead of going into detail, and saying "There are 0.2% of LJ Users...." they just rounded down like good little nerds.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I used not to put in the year until one day I thought, oh bugger that. Also, if no year is listed it's fairly obvious that you're going to be at least older than 30.

And 803 LJ users are aged 4 or under? *snorfles*

yeah, right

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

thanks for the rec...i just started reading it and know i'll need to tear myself away :-) i loved res's take on the post-war domesticity and this has similar resonances..very interesting (and, of course, i love the diagrams :-)

re writing...very interesting. i often wonder whether the more experimental fics i read have a baseline narrative plot written out somewhere...i ought to ask :-)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

See, to me it was interesting that here we also have a dystopian sort-of-sci-fi AU WIP but I find it *so much better* than the origWIP we were talking about (I forget the name). Chaos has flaws but I am hooked, life-cripplingly hooked. She focuses on the central couple (which that origWIP didn't), bringing in secondary characters only when they're necessary to the main dynamic (she only ever strays for a paragraph or so from this focus). She's got a fantastic eye for setting: the details of living rooms and forests and clubs. And het: I never read het and the whole thing is just so unusual (to me) and refreshing, and every now and again she pops in a surprise, and she hides stuff from you, and there is just such chemistry between those two.

I just had to ring lazlet with the sole purpose of needing to squee over this WIP. I'm that far gone.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

you mean it's a WIP... *backs away slowly*

i like it so far but i'm definitely not head over heels...it's a little too flowery at times or maybe i'm just more critical of het, b/c i don't read it that much.

and i actually *like* the straying :-) if the text is long enough and the world interesting enough, i wanna see as much as possible...esp. in het i read it more as gen...not that interested in the pairing.

but the graphics almost make all of that up :-)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Apparently, yes, it's an unfinished WIP, up to chapter 21. I never read het so I know nothing about it. *tries to remember last non-published het she read...* I find the language very un-flowery; to me, it's that straighforward storytelling prose that I associate with much of the HP long!fics I like. It's much less flowery than my own style, for example, and about a hundred times less flowery than some lotrips writers (e.g. thejennabides. But perhaps I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'flowery'...

And by graphics, do you mean those tables in purple? those were all lost when I cut'n'pasted to word and printed it out... :-(

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

yeah, i meant the tables...it was a couple of introspective sections early on but now i'm getting into the flow of things and am quite enjoying it :-)

i started in het, of course, but hadn't really read much till hermione/snape. i've read a few of the longer and more involved ones, b/c i think the dynamic appeals to me in similar ways than a lot of slash couples :-)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I had no idea Hermione/Snape was so fanon...! I'm now seeing the flaws in that Chaos fic a bit more but am still quite hooked. It is, however, a bit 'and then... and then', although there are flashes of more interesting syuzhet-construction, and there isn't enough sex!!!

How's that for an elegant combination of narratological critique and animal lust? ;-)

[noblerot.livejournal.com]

Happy birthday (belated but sincere)!

It seems we're close to the same vintage. Rah.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

1962. A noble year.

Thank you! :-)

[ia-ne.livejournal.com]

happy birthday!

i remember when you turned 40, doesn't seem so long ago!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Wow, you remember that! You've been around a long time, then! :-) Danke schön!

[travelingcarrot.livejournal.com]

Belated Happy Birthday!

And I rather like your long self-indulgent rambles. Feel free to carry on.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Really? You do? That's so kind of you to say so.

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

The reason you have stayed on my F-list even though we are now worlds apart, fandom-wise, is that you make me think about writing. Thank you for this! (Am having fit of LJ-love, don't mind me). I'm discovering, as I NaNoWriMo, that if I write very fast in the first person (and so far this thing has about ten different narrators) plot and style somehow merge, and each narrator ends up with a different voice, a different style -- sometimes quite hard to recreate next time they need to say something! But I made sure to have one character who was almost pure style: very dense 'poetic' (for want of a better word) prose -- and she's the one who I look forward to writing. All of which is to say that I can relate to your point about not wanting to write straight plot. I wonder if that has been my problem before, on previous (slash and orig) projects -- that I have been concentrating too much on the plot, the progression, the content, and not enough on the telling of it. Which I think is what it is more about, for me.

I have big long article to write in early December, on why I don't write SF. By that stage (having completed NaNoWriMo!) I should have a better idea of what I do (read: can, and publicly at that) write.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I think this ploy of using multiple, first-person narrators is a really interesting one. I have, with some exceptions, tended to shy away from the first person -- but it is true that the first-person enables you to say and do things that the third simply won't. Or perhaps the third would but it's having to put everything into the first that frees the writer's head. And the excuse of crawling into another character is a wonderful crutch for experimentation with style, I can entirely see that. I've done this in mini-format with my Blowjobs fic -- which was virtually all style and no substance (see other comment) but still, it was fun to do, for precisely the reason that I could let fly.

Otoh, the dense, 'poetic' prose can get a bit too self-indulgent. It ends up pleasing only the author and leaves readers cold. It can get very self-referential. I do envy people who can write straight plot but I just don't think I'm one of them. Anyway, 'straight' plot (as I see it) actually requires very assured manipulation of prose: to become so invisible, style must be subtle and very, very good.