notuboc

YEAH WRITE!: Additional insight on bad writing advice

Sun, 05 May 2013 14:24:37 -0400

YEAH WRITE!: Additional insight on bad writing advice:

everylilthing asked you:

Thank you for your post on taking critique. I submitted something to be critiqued recently and it upset me when I didn’t get the feedback I was hoping for. Your post helped me open my mind to the advice that was given so for that, I…

"Almost anyone can be an author; the business is to collect money and fame from this state of being"

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 03:09:43 -0400

“Almost anyone can be an author; the business is to collect money and fame from this state of being”

- A. A. Milne

What a morose quote from the author of Winnie the Pooh, haha. Apropos quote, though.
(via yeahwriters)

dumbesttweets: @SteenFox submitted #NewClearWeapons. What about...

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 02:11:57 -0400

dumbesttweets:

@SteenFox submitted

#NewClearWeapons. What about the old opaque ones? *lays my burdens down*

this explains why our radar doesn’t see them…

humansofnewyork: “If you could give one piece of advice to a...

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 01:59:48 -0400

humansofnewyork:

“If you could give one piece of advice to a large group of people, what would it be?”

“Shut up.”

yeahwriters: Don’t you sometimes feel this crazy when you’re...

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 19:48:26 -0400

yeahwriters:

Don’t you sometimes feel this crazy when you’re writing haha?

this.

thematicconversion: 02 of 09 - ADVENTURE! - Outset I won’t be...

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 02:16:47 -0500

thematicconversion:

02 of 09 - ADVENTURE! - Outset

I won’t be explaining much, if anything, about these maps. The story is whatever you think is happening on it. :D

“you said ‘rhum?’”

“yes, yes i did. ‘room.’”

i was at university. all the buildings were roman temple style,...

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 11:47:47 -0400

i was at university. all the buildings were roman temple style, white stone. at first, i couldn’t find my ID badge & i “borrowed” someone else’s, but the campus police found out & were questioning me. in the middle of the questioning, the Apocalypse happened. there were earthquakes & fires, and we all had to evacuate. eventually the whole place sunk into the ground. FF a couple of years, there’s a highway bypass right around the crater zone. something is growing in that crater, like a black hole, sucking up the planet. i am selected as part of the crew to go in and investigate. we know there are protective laser guns @ the cave entrance, but we use an alien ship as bait, getting the lasers to fire at it, & then it’s automatic defense systems destroy the laser guns. we then landed inside the cave after sprinkling some powder on the ground - we were terraforming it we expected our mission to take several months, so we were going to grow our own food/etc. MJB had a claw for a hand & cut down a stalk w/ an eyeball inside a venus fly trap @ the top. it tasted gross, but didn’t seem dangerous. then there was a grass, white, but like a giant thin-walled straw. it must hjave been 6” wide. it gave us upset stomachs. we thought we’d try cooking it & then analyzing it. we left the party botanist to work on the plant life & the rest of us ventured into the cave…

coming home from a shopping trip @ CVS w/ the whole gang where i...

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 13:02:51 -0400

coming home from a shopping trip @ CVS w/ the whole gang where i checked out pretty much every tybe of toothpaste looking for the right one - i did eventually find it, but not before contemplating buying one called braise, which was gold-colored because it actually had gold leaf in it. on the way home, PBS was telling us about how much waffle house has done for science, donating profits & stuff like that.

dana-ちゃん & i were shopping for Mom’s christmas present...

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 10:12:07 -0400

dana-ちゃん & i were shopping for Mom’s christmas present at The Mall - the one i always dream about w/ like 5 stories & the fancy entrance - only dana couldn’t remember what Mom wanted. i was going to call Mom & get her list, but in the meantime, we were looking at the stars on an app on my phone. it showed a knight in ASCii art & a complicated 5-pointed star w/ a shell design, both at the north pole, & it had the zodiac, in a big ring, in sort of coppery color, but pixilated, like a mid-90s graphic adventure game. behind each zodiac symbol was a king, like a statue, w/ a shield. Minis Tirith なんだ… but really amazing & pretty.

[that would be “dana-chan” and “minis tirith or something” for those of you who can’t read sleepy japanese. also, dana-chan was very impressed with the knight at the north pole, and frankly, so was i. it was impressive for a little phone app, like holographic projections from my camera lens.]

reading a magazine about inventions kids have made. one was a...

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 12:10:52 -0400

reading a magazine about inventions kids have made. one was a paint. called unimeth blue…? something like that. the kid must have been about the size of thumbelina coz there was a video of him climbing on a chair to put the ingrediants in a pan, & he was literaly jumping over the stove to reach the pan. he started out making tempura, & then discovered this whole new way of making paint. his blue was taking the art world by storm. i tried to make some, & it turned out okay. very fun. (^_^)

[ultimeth was actually the name of the paint, i think. it was like ultramarine, but brighter. also, he started out making tempera paint, the kind from eggs, not tempura, the japanese fried food. i was hungry when i wrote this, okay.]

at a church service officiated bt father gentry. the nativity...

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 19:20:49 -0400

at a church service officiated bt father gentry. the nativity & stations of the cross were all new, metal modern things, kinda cute, & quite large, in white & grey w/ silver lines, w/ cresent moon shapes for mouths. we were using some ancient hymnal - it was purple - & a 1952 prayer book, which was red, & falling apart. for the recessional, harriet l took over the organ, & mom made a big deal out of the fact that she was playing the hymn pretty slow. mom thought she’d confused it w/ another hymn. we recessed, & father gentry was already gone, & just then, my alarm clock went off…

[for those of who don’t now, my alarm clock plays me a choral piece called Sicut Cervus, which my church choir has done a couple of times. for a minute, i was wondering why harriet was playing it as a postlude, and then i realized it was my alarm, and that it was time to get up.]

at the top of a school building, we could see out the windows a...

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 13:55:21 -0400

at the top of a school building, we could see out the windows a bunch of oddle dressed people trying to get in. some were maids w/ black hats & aprons, marked Dollie - in comic sans btw, how awful! - & others wore white aprons & hats w/ black dresses. they were labeled too, but i forget as what. the Dollies were just like automatons, just out to be useful, but w/ no soul. the others were the soul, but they couldn’t do much by themselves. we tried to fend them off, but they made it up the stairs, & we had to take baseball bats to them. there were so many of the Dollie ones, who were trying to strongarm their way into the classrooms. there were many more Dollies than souls. also, the kids turned out to be more much eager & able to dispatch them. one kid was told to take a bunch of them out like bowling pins. he wasn’t quite stong enough, but he sure was trying. terror will do that, i guess.

a young adult show, like a cross between Square One & Jay...

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 12:58:02 -0400

a young adult show, like a cross between Square One & Jay Leno, but starring teens & tweens & aimed at them. they had a running joke where none of them could add properly. so, if the musician they were interviewing had albums w/ numbers for titles, 36, & later 76, they would conclude the dude’s age as 112. one older dude didn’t get it & was getting a little mad, & to be fair the kids were pretty obnoxious. they thought they were being cute, but really it was just annoying.

[for the record, teens, and especially “tweens,” are the demographic i find most annoying. even when i was one i found the whole lot of us obnoxious. i can only surmise that this dream was my brain’s way of making me feel superior at having grown up into someone who was once a tween, but has recovered enough to enter society.]

sorting laundry & taking calls from home. i almost closed my...

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 12:51:28 -0400

sorting laundry & taking calls from home. i almost closed my finger in the closet door but i had both ladies’ #s from that particular office…

[i think what that means is, i was having trouble getting the phone numbers, but i eventually got them, at the expense of almost closing my finger in the door… talk about boring dreams…]

i stayed late at work one night & crystal took me home. MJB...

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 11:55:51 -0400

i stayed late at work one night & crystal took me home. MJB & CRB were in the car & she was driving an SUV, & she ran some errands before she was going to drop uus off, but then she suggested that we stay for dinner. she was making steak, so we agreed. we helped her make it. MJB & CRB stayed in the car at first, but MJB eventually came in. the whole dream was dinner prep, especially a looong session of me cutting up the green onions while Crystal washed off some potatos & got them ready for baking.

[Crystal is my boss lady, for those of you who don’t know, and is super nice, very chatty, friendly, energetic. she does not drive an SUV. also, this started out as one of the “somebody’s trying to kill us” series i was having this morning, and i was very distressed that someone had managed to get to Crystal and convince her to try to poison me, nevermind that they were dragging my siblings into it. but then we were invited to help prepare the dinner, since MJB is all about the cooking, so i figured it was nothing to do with the assassination plot. too bad i woke up before we got to eat, that dinner looked good!]

a looong multi session series of dreams. … something, i...

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 11:50:33 -0400

a looong multi session series of dreams.
… something, i won something, $ maybe, but then everybody was trying to kill me. each dream was someone else in our group being killed. one was two guy friends who were famous now going back to visit the airplane hanger where they used to work, & some fanboys wanted to take their photos, but the fanboys were fake, & the cameras were guns. the two friends were shot & went over the edge of a cliff that was right there.

[the airplane hanger was in the middle of a deset with lots of high cliffs, a lot like where i met the japanese fighters in my dream the other day.]

they were constructing on the roof, so they were constructing in...

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 00:38:00 -0400

they were constructing on the roof, so they were constructing in my dream. i went outside to see what it was, & they were putting up draperies on the outside of the windows - they were single panel things, lined, made of glittering mauve cotton. the construction dude was putting them up wrong - the lining side was to the outside. i told him it was wrong, he said he’d suspected as much, but his boss insisted they go this way. i made my way to the front office to complain, but was distracted by the new people moving in next door, who sawed a hole in their closet door - why, i really don’t know - & almost cut into my closet. a piece of the plaster on my side came loose. this had obviously happened before - & so i removed it & came face to face w/ my neighbors. they were very surprised, but very nice about it. i went outside to look at the progress on the shades & complain that i would never get any sunlight now, since they had no way of being raised or lowered, & when i cam back inside, my neighbors had cut a big gash in the door & put a mirror there, but not before attempting to shore up the gap on my side w/ another mirror & a stack of books. there were some i’d never read in there from like Terry Brooks & Raymond Feist, so i decided not to complain about them.

[that’s right folks, you can cut holes in your closet doors and nearly chop my clothes in half with your chainsaw, but as long as you present me with books, i will not contact the authorities even on my own behalf. … actually, yeah, that’s true. (^^;) also, they were indeed Constructing on the roof this morning, circa 8:30 a.m. they were also chopping down trees and boring out/whatever the tree stumps. a) i’m happy my new place cares so much about their landscape, but maybe they could hold off on the chainsaws until, say 10 a.m.? b) it’s remarkable what i will sleep through once i have identified what it is and assured myself that it is a temporary state of affairs. chainsaws 12 feet from my bedroom window? no problem. people spelunking off the roof, hammering shingles in with all they’ve got? can’t talking, still sleeping. some obnoxious 35 year old man child with his bass up at noon every saturday for a year? I WILL KILL YOU ALL! DIE!]

all the fam & i were driving down the street after a long...

Sat, 22 Sep 2012 13:16:57 -0400

all the fam & i were driving down the street after a long vacation & we had the windows down. we drove past a church just as the priest was reading a verse: “& he shall have experience of a puppy.” the little boy in the car next to us thought this meant that he would soon receive a puppy, & excitedly told his mother of the verse as they passed us. i said, “God said experience of a puppy, not long or pleasant experience.” but of course they were gone by then.

[which is probably just as well, since who wants to hear such a depressing message anyway! jeez, dream self, what a downer you are…]

hamid kharzai came to my house early in the morning to deliver a...

Sat, 22 Sep 2012 13:16:00 -0400

hamid kharzai came to my house early in the morning to deliver a speech. apparently, in a proper modern & just society, survey graphs of opinion polls on things that are new look like lobster claws at either end…

[ “…” indeed.]

there was a war on. me, CRB, & MJB had escaped into some...

Sat, 22 Sep 2012 02:28:29 -0400

there was a war on. me, CRB, & MJB had escaped into some Roman-style ruins, where we met a group of Japanese fighters pinned down by small arms fire from across a cliff. the Japanese commander told us to stay back, but then i asked what we could do to help, & he gave me a serving spoon. they were digging a tunnel across the valley to get the enemy. they’d only just started & couldn’t spare any soldiers, so they were glad to have us. i had only just started digging when the arms fire from across the valley picked up substantially, & we had to fall back. we hid in one of the temple’s underground chambers - which looked surprisingly like St James’ basement (/sarcasm) - & there was a toilet there, but the door was held shut w/ a black plastic spatula, because the latch was broken, & the stall was TINY. next to the stall was a sink where Pres Obama was washing dishes. he & i got to talking, & he confessed that he had ordered the torture that had driven one of the other chicks there nearly out of her mind & so desperately paranoid. he was acting on the best info they had at the time, & she did turn out to be the spy they were looking for, but being confronted w/ his own handiwork, so to speak, made him wonder if it had been worth it.

[this is what happens when i watch the news right before bed, i get the presidential race in my dreams, too. GET OUT OF MY HEAD, PRESIDENTIAL RACE! also, the Japanese commander was not happy to see civilians in his war zone, but we were all young in this dream, so he was going to sort of tolerate us, until i started speaking japanese at him and offering to help. then he liked us, and set about putting us to work. any port in a storm~]