Antennapedia

As you know, Bob, I have a lot of tiny writing rules invented for myself. They're all breakable, of course-- every rule should be broken from time to time, when the payoff is worth it. Take the rule about avoiding adverbs, for instance. Break that one with glee-- gleefully, even-- but only after thinking about whether there's a verb out there in the vasty English vocabulary sea that might do the job all by itself.

I have a rule about not using italics for emphasis in prose. In dialog, sometimes, when I don't trust the rest of the writing to convey exactly where the character put the whammy, but even then I wonder if I could get away without them. In prose? Probably always a sign that I'm not trusting my writing.

Your mileage may vary. Your prose style is not mine. Adjectives may settle in shipping. But that's a rule I have for me. I was pondering it today while revising a sentence to make the emphasis fall naturally where I wanted it.

Promotion: girlsavesboyfic for the Girl saves Boy Ficathon. Since we're in the Buffy fandom (or many of y'all reading this are, at least), the trope works this way fairly often for us. But we could always do with some more girls saving the boys they love! Or like in a friendly sort of way.

Bonus pr0n: Taste the Sea. NSFW in a big way. Not always to my taste; probably won't be to yours either. But it's definitely the female gaze on lovely male and female bodies. For example.

Tumblr is a strange place, you know that? Lots of images flying around, being reblogged. It's far more of a scrapbooking place than a journaling place. Culturally quite different from here. I find it amusing how very old-fashioned and stodgy LJ looks as web technology in comparison with Tumblr, which uses AJAX in various lovely ways. LJ & its clones are so very very ugly and slow in comparison. Not sure what it means.

harmony033 tagged me for one of those answer-these-questions memes. I obediently answer them. ( Collapse )

Yo! Natural disasters pretty much suck. People die both immediately and in the aftermath, when public health systems get overwhelmed or are simply nonfunctional. That's when relief organizations do their jobs. Which they need money to do. Enter help_pakistan: fanworks up to the highest bidder, all winning bids donated to charitable organizations to help with Pakistan flood relief.

My bid thread is here. Bidding is open now and continues until sometime Friday, August 28. The organization of my choice is, as usual, Doctors Without Borders.

You can either give me a Giles-y prompt (you know the drill) or demand I finish a story in progress. (I can list some possibilities if you like.) Though I'm the world's slowest writer these days, I nonetheless plod along. And perhaps with a deadline looming over me, I'll manage to finish something.

Er, that was a bit defeatist. Let's try that again. Now! For a limited time only! Your chance to get me to write something with a built-in incentive to finish! Act now!