The following is your one-stop shop for understand when and where to use an apostrophe:

http://apostrophe.me/

I'm taking a writing class at Pandemonium, my local SciFi bookstore. Our homework assignment for last week was to write a scene in an elevator that stops. I really like how this came out, as did my class, so I thought I'd share it.



( Going Up )

I am joining National Novel Writing Month as AnaSteuart. I've been really bad about writing every day, and hopefully this will keep me on track.

katatomic made a wonderful journal entry about Acquiring an Agent.

Until about a year ago, I avoided writing like the plague because there are a lot of writers in my family, and I didn't want to just follow in their footsteps. (Then the writing bug bit me. Drat!) In the past few weeks, I've been pointing folks at my great-grandmother's book, Green Immigrants.

It's a documentation of all the plants that came to Europe from the Americas, and vice versa. Potatoes and corn are two of the plants that went to Europe, and the Native Americans had to help the Europeans understand that tomatoes were not actually poisonous. Tomatoes are in the Nightshade family, so the mistake was understandable.

This morning I was chatting with one of my World of Warcraft friends, and he mentioned that his wife works with kids as a speech pathologist. Thanks to my cleft lip and pallet, I'd gone through speech therapy as a child, and asked him to thank her for me, because it's partially thanks to people like her that I can talk. His response floored me.

"You're one of the success stories? That's so good to hear."

It seems his wife is upset because she's trying to help these kids, but they don't seem to be trying very hard because the system is giving them too much support. They're basically being babied, so they have no motivation to work and try to become "normal."

This made me sad, and angry. No, my life wasn't easy. Yes, I was teased and bullied until I learned to fight back. But I didn't need "help" in school, I just needed the little brats to leave me alone. I needed a little extra help pronouncing words, and to this day I have a slight speech impediment, but otherwise I'm fine.

I really wish I knew how to properly explain to all the psychologists and idiots in health care and child care that they're doing more harm than good. I wish they'd listen to me. We're raising a generation of selfish children who can't think for themselves, and that's going to hurt us all in the long run.

I love my state. It is suing the Federal Government for the Defense of Marriage Act!

Here is a link to the article.

( Full text behind cut. )

Lt. Dan Choi will be going on trail today at 8:00 AM PT. His crime? That he has admitted to being gay in the military, and is fighting to keep his place. I pointed folks at the support page a few days ago when I signed the petition, and it had 151,852 signatures as of 12:29 AM PT.

Best of luck, Dan. Let's get rid of Don't Ask, Don't Tell once and for all.

President Obama has said that he wants to end Don't Ask, Don't Tell and allow gays and lesbians to openly serve in the military.

On Tuesday the 30th, there will be a trial for Lt. Dan Choi, an Iraq combat veteran and a West Point graduate with a degree in Arabic, because he is gay.

Here is the petition to keep the Army from firing him: http://www.couragecampaign.org/SupportDan

Let’s make “with Equality and Justice for All” a promise, not just empty words.

Back in 2006, I attended my very first GenCon, and went to as many panels of authors talking about their processes as I could. Only one panel sticks out: Michael Stackpole's, who game us the X-Wing series, I, Jedi and a few others.

Stackpole commented that every plot has been written before, every world overlaps with every other world, but what makes your story different from the rest is its characters.

Looking back, I realize that the first story I tried to write, Dragons over the Mississippi went nowhere because the characters didn't interest me. Caya and Loren, the lesbian swordswoman and her best friend the cursed ranger, interest me, which is why I'm willing to buy secondhand books on the Huns and spend hours digging through the internet to find what you could buy with a denarius in Julius Caesar's Rome...and then attempt to decide how four hundred years of reconstruction and inflation might have altered those prices.

A few days ago, was1 put out a call for short stories for an anthology. Since I'm currently unpublished, I want to submit something for it. I've been debating what to write about, and decided to write some of the history for a character that Caya and Loren will meet in the third book. Yes, I have a rough outline for my third book, and I haven't finished the manuscript for the first. (I have a degree in Architecture; I believe in planning and paying attention to details.)

My first thoughts for the story revolved around a Viking boy, but I realized I couldn't put a story outline together because I couldn't imagine his personality. The Main Character for Book 3, while he doesn't have a name, has a defined personality and a very simple backstory, enough that I can find a name to suit him later. Names are sometimes the last things I give my characters; until I can "see" them firmly in my mid, I don't feel they deserve a name.

For the first time in my life, I can truely and honestly say that I am both proud to be an American, and that I love my President. I may not agree with everything he does, but he's working towards equality for all Americans. His public acknoledgement of the Gay, Lesbias, Bisexual and Transendered peoples in our country is a huge step, despite the setbacks we've suffered with Proposition 8.

( Full text of the Proclimation. )

I am continuing to work on my manuscript. Last night I finished Chapter 2 and have brought my word count to 8,900. My Working Title is now Not Another Fairy Tale.

As I ease back in to the habit of writing every day, I've had to review the rest of my story and make a number of tweaks to what I have already written. My characters remain the same, but their wold has evolved from a Generic Fantasy Land to an Alternate History. (Yes, I used the dreaded "E" word). I'm sure the religious nuts will jump all over me for this, but I'm writing a pro-gay novel involving magic. They're going to be annoyed with me no matter what I write.

I have completed the Crafting Project I agreed to do last October. Actually, it was finished two weeks ago, but then I needed to take time to clean my house. Now I can Return to Writing! ...after I go to AnimeBoston this Saturday.

Oh, and as a rather silly side note, I've filled out and application to be jimhines' Nemesis. Given the similarities between two of our main characters, I thought it was only proper.

abillings has preserved an article from Daily Kos in her journal, Goodbye to a Photograph.

( Full text of the article. )

A man was denied the right to bid farewell to his partner of 26 years. All because that man's family disapproved of his choice. If they had been married, the hospital would have been forced to let him in. To say goodbye. THIS is why we need marriage equality. Because Civil Unions are not enough. Marriage gives legal rights to both people, rights that are understood by everyone. This is why I fight for a day when every state in the Union--hell, every country in the world--will acknowledge those rights.

I made a Dreamwidth account: http://anasteuart.dreamwidth.org/

It will likely be a clone of what I post here, so please feel free to add me to your Circle.

Here is an interesting article on creating religons for a written world: MIND MELD: Gods by the Bushel.

( Text of the article. )

Today in Boston, a group called Exodus is training Christian ministers to practice "Ex Gay" policies--that belief in Jesus will cause people to lead lives according to "traditional" gender roles, and "turn away from" homosexual tendencies.

I am very glad that my workplace is both close enough and allows me to have a flexible lunch schedule, so that I could participate in protesting Exodus. I went because I will protest any organization that is against allowing homosexual, bisexual and transgender people to live in ways which make them happy. I was not aware that Exodus believes women should have "traditional" roles, that they should be passive in all aspects of life.

Fuck being passive.

I may have internal reproductive organs, but I refuse to allow my biological heritage to determine how I interact with the world. I barely tolerate being cisgendered and will fight to be treated as an equal to any woman or man in my country. ("Cisgender" is the opposite of transgender. It refers to people who are comfortable with the gender they were assigned at birth.)

I am really looking forward to getting back to writing my Gay Fairy Tale. Attending protests and chanting slogans is good, but I really want to make a positive impact on both the country and the world. I am a feminist. I am pro-gay. I am pro-transgender.

My voice will be heard.

Today is International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, i.e. the day when artists of assorted types share thier work for free on the Internet.

My book is nowhere near complete, so I will give you my first ever short story, The Story of Soap:

( Cut to save your friends list. )

I just had a very odd discussion with one of my co-workers. He's very sweet and very gay--and was puzzled because I live a heterosexual lifestyle, but am very pro-gay. I had to jokingly remind him that "straight" people can be pro-gay too.

I have always been a tomboy. I keep my hair short, I wear pants unless there is some hideously formal Thing I have to attend, and I enjoy being outdoors and active. I also detest things that are pink and/or frilly. When I was in High School, I thought I must be a dyke, so I tried dating girls. I came to the conclusion that girls are fun and girls are pretty, but I prefer boys. I sat down thought about it, and realized that if I lived in a world where I was forced or even expected to date women, I'd be miserable. This made me realize be how the gay men in the world might feel, so I decided to fight so that gays and lesbians not be forced into a lifestyle choice that doesn't fit them.

That's why I'm pro-gay, despite being effectively straight.

Brian Sanderson (mistborn) is the author of Elantris and is currently writing the final Wheel of Time book due to Mr. Jordan's demise.

Today he made a Q & A Post which includes information about how to get your book published.

In looking back at this journal, I realize that I'm sort of using it as a place to store interesting links about the publishing process more than I am using it to talk about my writing. This is because I'm in the early stages of writing my manuscript (and mostly on Writing Hold this month) and right now I'm hammering out the details of my world. In the past few weeks, Terra has stopped being Generic Fantasy World #862 and has become an alternate version of our own world, where magic and magical creatures exist. This means I have a LOT of history to adjust and re-write, and a ton of research to do.

One of my Goals with this book is to talk about how gay, bi, lesbian and transgender people are discriminated against, and to show how this makes them feel, and how they overcome it. Sadly, in our world, many of the anti-gay folks are religious, and I in no way want my books to be anti-religious. This means my world needs to have a reason behind an anti-gay prejudice. Making this work is harder than it sounds.