Gossip, boys, and the thought of the real world

There is absolutely no good gossip about us here. It's so pathetic. Maybe good stuff will come up once we've all gone back to the real world. But I don't think so. Nearly everyone's in a relationship, most married. I should figure out the details. Several to most of the spouses have visited or been visited. I could have gone to see my roommate last weekend, but that really wouldn't have been the same. For example, I only miss her cause I can't tell her about my day. But I can go down the hall and sit in one of the boys' rooms, and tell him about my day, and it's just about as good, and he appreciates how much I wrote or read or critted more than she would have. Plus, he's a boy, which is automatically cooler than my roommate.

Don't worry, she doesn't read this, and even if she did, she'd agree. I keep swearing (usually every time the two of us end up going out for dinner) that one of these days I'm going out for dinner, just me and a boy. It's been ten years since my last boyfriend. My only boyfriend. And _so_ not the right person for me. And I don't even know if he counts--we were only dating two weeks, which is like nothing, and I knew he was wrong for me from pretty much the first date. But I remember how amazed the girls at the pizza place were to see me out on a date. I didn't date anyone from our HS, cause they all weren't interested. My date was a friend of my best friend's boyfriend (and later my best friend's boyfriend), from another school district, so they didn't recognize him. SOmeone came out of the back of the restaurant every 5 minutes or so, just to ask us if we needed anything. Since the last time they'd all come out and asked us. They just didn't believe that I was out on a date.

Okay, I've depressed myself horribly there. This is not going to help me read 15K words before bedtime. Oh, wait, I'm on page 13 of one of them. So that's just 12K or so. Let's see what else is in my brain, now that I'm really depressed. If I'm ever acting too perky, ask me how long it's been since I've been on a date.

I'm going to miss the support group nature of this the most I think. I've always been able to find time to write--not this much, and not even as much as some people here. But I have no face to face group, which most people do, even if it's not ideal. I do have my online groups, which are excellent, and I do hope to stay in touch with people even after we all go home. 2 weeks from today, I'll be at work. Yuck.

Critting and not critting

OKay, finished the 6800 piece, and the 3400. Just the 8400 piece. It has _diagrams_. Someone thinks he's cool enough for Analog.

I could have been done by now if I hadn't decided to look at cory doctorow's site again. Someone take my laptop away from me. And then a wander off to People for the American Way, just to see. And from there, hmm, some mail in my yahoo account. Damn, I hope my alarm works this morning.

Luminosity, Poetry vs Prose 2, and Lunch with the teachers

Just back from lunch with Tim, Serena, and Karen, as well as a lot of us. It was unplanned, at least the getting them to come with us part--we ran into them as we were leaving, and coaxed them to come with us to the coffee shop, being as the food here is so appaling. And it was a blast. Tim (Hi Tim!) had read my live journal, and we were talking about Declare and some other of his books for a bit on the walk out, and about places around here--they've taught here a number of times, and about ducks, and why worms don't drown.

And we had a nice noisy lunch with lots of author type talk. One of the boys had his story critted today, and I was reminded by some of the comments of the discussion we'd had with Geoff about the idea that the job of prose is to disappear, the job of poetry is to stick around. When we discussed this in class, no one seemed to get the fact that it's nearly impossible to remember exact words from a novel. I've read Last Call way too much--Tim was talking about driving from LA to Las Vegas, and I not only knew that was Last Call, but also that the car he drove was the car in the story. :)--but I don't remember paragraphs from it. I probably can't quote anything from it. But I can remember large chunks of poetry from all over the place. off the top of my head. And I want that to be the way people remember my stories. I don't remember character names, I don't expect others to, but I love just sort of running over and over scenes in my head. The fat man's fear of the desert, for example, was playing over and over in my head.

There can be poetry in prose, but in the end, it's got to still be prose, or we lose the story, or the idea that there is a story, and we end up with words on a handful of paper. But I think I've already dwelt on that before. So I'm going to go try and put some more freaking detail in my current story, so people will stop yelling at me for that and have to give in and tell me it's absolutely perfect. The word for my critique will be 'luminosity." Okay? everyone use it when they critique, and I'll be so happy.

Legacy

Oh, god, I'm going crazy. This is a revised piece. So I fixed up the obvious stuff (at least, that's what I was trying to do) and now I'm working on the fine tuning. All the little blocking details, the setting, the characters. Ahhhhhh!!! It's really hard. I don't instinctively put the details in a piece. I'm used to letting the readers project. But today's advice was "Readers are sheep going down a road. If there's only one open gate, they'll all go through it." I'll sheep them. I'm trying, but it feels like so much extra stuff. The luminosity of my story better end up being worth it, that's all I'm saying.

I just wrote to my boss cause I remembered that I'm not allowed to stay here forever, even if I wanted to (maybe not forever, but longer would be okay with me), and I realised she'd never gotten back to me about why I wasn't moved up to Associate level while I've been here.

Real world

Eh. Out of office reply from my boss. She's out till I come back. I want my promotion!