broadcast me a joyful noise

Dear Yuletide Writer 2016

Tue, 04 Oct 2016 11:23:56 GMT

Hello, hello!

Yuletide is one of my favourite events on the fandom calendar, and I hope you have a great time writing this story. If you offered one of these fandoms/characters because you have a particular story burning a hole in your imagination: WRITE THAT ONE. Optional details being optional, I'd rather you enjoy yourself thoroughly.

All further details and prompts are below:

( The Hour, Saga, Love and Friendship, The Next Big One )

comments

yuletide 2015: recs!

Sat, 26 Dec 2015 23:02:31 GMT

I have realised I will have to be the Yuletide 2015 rec list I want to see in the world, in the hope that it will encourage MORE REC LISTS, because >2500 fics is a lot to browse through. I need guidance! I need gushing capslock!

( Here, I'll start. )

comments

Dear Yuletide Writer 2015

Fri, 16 Oct 2015 21:11:18 GMT

Hello, dear writer!

Recycling this bit from last year: Yuletide is one of my favourite things about fandom, and I hope you have a great time writing this story. If you offered one of these fandoms/characters because you have a particular story burning a hole in your imagination: WRITE THAT ONE. Optional details being optional, I'd rather you enjoy yourself thoroughly.

All further details and prompts are below:

( Spy, Saga, Hamilton )

comments

some content at last

Wed, 22 Jul 2015 07:33:11 GMT

Recently schiarire sent me a list of writing questions she'd curated by, as she put it, cannibalizing various interviews in the Paris Review, and I'm going to treat them as one long, slow, meandering interview. I expect the answers will get wordy, and I definitely want to have them in one centrally-archived and easy-to-find spot. So I'm dusting off this blog instead of sticking them solely on Tumblr, despite that being--ENDLESS GERIATRIC SIGHING--where everyone hangs out and where most of my content is these days.

If anyone else wants to steal & answer any of the questions as well, go for it. Meme the hell out of it! It'll be fun!

Here's the full list; answers to start tomorrow:

( Who would you name as fundamental to this conversation? )

comments

hello there 2015

Thu, 01 Jan 2015 06:48:49 GMT

I feel like any resolution to use this blog more regularly in 2015 is doomed at the outset (or at least, it will be until...May, after exams) but I still want to talk about my Yuletide stories because I'm a dork like that. And I had fun with them. AND I LOVE YULETIDE.

There were five, because why study when you can displace all your stress onto fanfiction.

1) Confidence Artists, the Road to El Dorado threesome fic that was probably inevitable, knowing me and threesomes. I had to throw together a con plot and a romance built on unresolved arguments and also a sex scene involving three people (ugh, TRICKY BLOCKING) and resist, resist, resist the urge to make it too easy for myself and use Tulio as the POV character. But I like how it fell out.

2) fighting vainly the old ennui, the Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries canon-AU about how Jack and Mac should be buddies and how PHRYNE IS CATWOMAN (as opposed to the other AU I was tossing up, which went more down the PHRYNE IS BATMAN path). This story was a collision of my love for identity porn, letters, poems, and thief/detective love stories; for a very long time the GDoc was simply called MISS FISHER WHITE COLLAR AU which tells you a lot about how the idea germinated.

(agonistes, I wanted SO MUCH to write a treat for you, but I had already exhausted all of my feelings about Jack and Mac and their beautiful potential friendship while writing this story, so I just wriggled around silently and hoped you would read and enjoy it anyway.)

3) Shades of Pale, a Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters story that I wrote VERY early in the Yuletide period and then threw at my favourite letter as a treat. What can I say, I am easy for witch narratives. And Gemma Arterton. And Gemma Arterton making out with Jeremy Renner while covered in blood, which while not TECHNICALLY a part of the film, I feel was heavily implied to the extent that I had to oblige in fic form.

4) And All Things Nice, the Rule 63 Peter Pan story that FLEW out of me at the last minute when the prompt got stuck in my head and wouldn't leave. So far in comments I have revealed that Captain Hook is played by Natalie Dormer (and might actually be Jamie Moriarty, given the James/Jamie thing, you can decide that for yourself) and that somewhere in me is a whole fucking novel about her cruelty and her history. This story did a lot better than I expected.

5) Playing Titania in Tim Hortons, the other story that flew out at the very very last minute (single sitting, Christmas Eve, booyah!) because the prompt was so good. It's a Scott Pilgrim/Slings & Arrows crossover about Knives Chau becoming the new muse of Darren Nichols, and it was absurdly fun to write.

& now, to work on my WIPs. I have THREE dangling and unfinished multi-chapter stories on AO3 at the moment, and this year is the year I will FIX THAT.

comments

DYW 2014

Mon, 20 Oct 2014 09:14:17 GMT

Hello, dear writer!

Yuletide is one of my favourite things about fandom, and I hope you have a great time writing this story. If you offered one of these fandoms/characters because you have a particular story burning a hole in your imagination: WRITE THAT ONE. Optional details being optional, I'd rather you enjoy yourself thoroughly.

All further (and seriously: optional) details are below cuts:

( Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries )

( Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers )

( The Hour )

( Tiffany Aching series - Terry Pratchett )

General notes

Recycling from last year, more or less:

I like humour and clever use of language, I like magic with a light touch to it, I like families (blood or found). I like slow-build romance and lightning attraction. I like mythology, and science, and Shakespeare.

I'm fine with any rating from complete gen to filthy porn, and with any combination of het/slash/none of the above (and despite the fact that my requests this year are skewing quite het-OTP, I am ALL ABOUT functional threesomes as a general rule). I'm not looking for anything strongly kinky, but I do enjoy stories that explore and play around with the control and power dynamics between characters, or obedience (although I don't like humiliation to be a feature). Happy endings preferred.

I don't like very graphic descriptions of violence, especially torture. (I'm fine with you writing about blood and injuries; it's the deliberate infliction that I'd prefer not to see.)

You can find most of my own fic archived on AO3.

Have fun!

comments

and walk on

Fri, 05 Sep 2014 11:11:40 GMT

Has it really been two months since I posted here? The year is FLYING by, which is terrifying, but I am also gathering up my building excitement about next year, for a variety of reasons:

1) I'll be back in Canberra, which...look, I LOVE the place I'm working at the moment, I'm going to cry horribly at the prospect of working in a place with a less incredible set of people, but at the same time I'm rapidly losing patience with the whole small-town life thing. I miss shops, I miss the theatre, I miss even the modest Canberran version of city crowds, I miss restaurants and cafes and art galleries. I miss my family and my friends.

2) My apartment will be built and ready for me to move into. I don't think you realise how excited I am about the prospect of MY OWN PLACE, my own teensy one-bedroom third-floor apartment with a shitty view and an easy walk to my favourite Chinese takeway place. I'm going to hang art on the walls, I'm going to buy three enormous bookshelves, I'm going to have a fucking kitchen colour scheme, I'm going to have people over for really tiny dinner parties. I'm going to whine about having a mortgage at every opportunity. I already know what my housewarming presents to myself will be.

3) I got the part-time job I was hoping for at the medical school, which will mean I am doing two days a week of research and teaching as well as two days a work of clinical patient contact. After years of running in the other direction so as not to be exposed to the faintest whiff of research, I'm coming around to it, mostly because I love teaching so much and no university will let you just bum around designing curriculums and running clinical tutorial groups, which is my ideal professional life.

Work. Okay, let's talk about work.

I haven't been posting about my work much because it's overwhelming and draining and annoying and incredible and humbling. Being a GP is very, very different to being a hospital doctor; being a registrar and working largely independently is very, very different to being the paperwork and blood-taking monkey at the bottom of the medical pyramid.

I make decisions all day that have potentially immense consequences. I am learning to tell people things they don't want to hear. I am learning to talk about everything and to listen to people say everything to me; I am frequently cried on or yelled at; I've told people they have cancer or that I'm taking their driver's license away from them; I've been manipulated and lied to and resented. I talk to people of all ages and backgrounds about their sex lives, their abusive relationships, their jobs, their fears, their embarrassing symptoms, their pain and their pregnancy, their genitals and their hallucinations. I'm a psychologist and a life coach and a teacher and a social worker.

Which is not to say I'm particularly expert or wonderful at being any of those things. I spent four years of medical school learning the coagulation cascade and the causes of cardiomyopathy, and then spent two years as an intern/RMO learning how to talk an urgent CT scan out of a grumpy radiologist and how to fit twelve hours worth of ward jobs into an eight hour shift. Nobody teaches you how to sit with a straight face and a sympathetic voice and recommend that your 60-year old patient buys a copy of The Joy of Sex to read with her husband because penetrative intercourse has been impossible since his prostate surgery and her response to a gentle suggestion about exploring non-penetrative intimacy was, "I don't think he knows about all of that."

It's so challenging, and so tiring. But I tell you what, it's the best education in the breadth and depth of humanity that anyone could ask for.

comments

contrary to evidence, I do exist

Thu, 10 Jul 2014 10:35:28 GMT

...I am just increasingly scarce online, through both circumstance (TERRIBLE INTERNET CONNECTION) and necessity (EXAMS).

Please note that my exams are still a while away; the Diploma of Child Health ones are in December, my writtens for Fellowship of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners are in February, and the clinical exams for fellowship are in May.

HOWEVER. The sheer amount of stuff to be learned has grabbed me by the shoulders and shaken me into a frankly depressing schedule.

My days, currently, have this approximate shape:

6am-7am: study
7am-8:30am: shower, breakfast, frantically catch up on the internet
8:30am-5:30pm: work
6pm-7pm: gym
7pm-8pm: cook and eat dinner, plus or minus grocery shopping
8pm-9pm: study
9pm-10pm: GLORIOUS HOUR OF FREE TIME. write? read? single episode of TV? luxury!!

(I allow myself Wednesday evenings off for PUB TRIVIA and DRINKING because otherwise my sanity would probably snap like a twig.)

It probably doesn't matter that this house's hellish internet is too slow for tumblr, because it's not like I'd be able to spend much time on it anyway.

~

BUT I HAD A GREAT TIME IN TORONTO RECENTLY, hanging out with electrumqueen and exploring the city, and having adventures like World Pride and vegan brunch and IMRY'S WEDDING and drinking cocktails out of sports bottles in a hotel pool with many of the members of my beloved elite international girl gang (&PLASTICS;) and -- yeah, it was awesome :)

comments

I maintain that this is not my fault

Wed, 21 May 2014 08:47:57 GMT

Current mood is warring between proud and embarrassed, but fuck it, let's go: I wrote some hockey fic.

Anyone tempted to say YEAH I SAW THAT ONE COMING can join the queue behind, let's face it, me.

It's porn. In fact, it started as an exercise in porn and pacing (because now that I've commited to writing filth, I obviously have to get BETTER at it, right? exercises! drills! ...is anyone surprised yet that the POV character is JToews?) and by the time I'd finished it had developed enough of a structure that I figured I'd post it.

So yeah. 95% porn by volume, 3% being feelings and the final 2% being hockey metaphors because where's the fun in writing people who have totally alien interests and life experiences to yourself if you can't ransack those interests for imagery?

comments

multitasking

Sun, 04 May 2014 01:35:28 GMT

By which I mean I'm writing this post while I listen to a lecture on paediatric palliative care and prepare myself for the next lecture on child protection services and child abuse. Somehow all the really depressing topics got crammed into this week of the diploma.

I spent yesterday cooking non-stop and stocking up the freezer, because we've definitely hit the kind of dark, blustery autumn weather where when I get home from the gym, all I want is to be able to pull a container of sweet potato and spinach dahl out of the fridge and reheat it. I also made sausage rolls for the first time! It was 200% easier than I thought it would be, and the recipe I used (lamb and haloumi sausage rolls with both fresh mint and mint sauce in the mixture, mmm) was delicious. So now I have a shitload of those in the freezer, along with some virtuous breakfast muffins (bran. lots of bran.) and the dahl.

( Sausage roll recipe, for anyone who might like to try them )

READING: Halfway through Carol by Patricia Highsmith, and also reading Parasite by Mira Grant. I am doing very little reading, though, apart from occasional comfort rereads of the fanfic collection on my Kindle.

WATCHING: I have six whole episodes of Hannibal S2 lined up for once I've finished my lectures today. It's gonna be amazing. I have S1 of Homeland waiting to be started, and I've been on-and-off making my way through Lost Girl because it's ideal to watch while cooking. Next time I go home I'm going to nab my dad's DVDs of The Wire and rewatch S1 because like an idiot I'm writing a casefic and I need some inspiration re: surveillance systems and drug rings.

WRITING: The casefic is for Brooklyn Nine Nine. It's actually TROPEFIC but I need to at least make sure the balance of ridiculousness to police work is similar to that on the show. I'm also tapping vaguely away at other things, but I have no idea at all which of them will be finished in what timeframe.

As an example of that: I finally, FINALLY posted the Hannibal AU which I had been working on for...a year? I am the slowest. Apparently not everyone in fandom shares my unconditional love of circuses; a lot of the comments have been on the 'I almost didn't click on this' variety, which probably indicates a large chunk of people who scrolled on by because of the circus thing (WEIRDOS) but I'm more or less satisfied with how it turned out :)

no hope of falling down (22940 words) by Fahye
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Hannibal (TV)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Characters: Will Graham, Hannibal Lecter, Abigail Hobbs, Jack Crawford, Freddie Lounds, Alana Bloom, Beverly Katz
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Circus
Summary: A circus should be a series of miracles, barely scraped into existence. Will Graham is the celebrated aerialist of Cirque Dalmau; Hannibal Lecter is a new arrival with dangerous hands and more than a few secrets.

comments

I come bearing fic!

Mon, 21 Apr 2014 05:57:53 GMT

today begins and it's all that we have (6858 words) by Fahye
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov
Additional Tags: Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Summary: Clint has to blink blearily at the ticket before he accepts that it does say Boston and not Bogota or Berlin; in the past he's walked off one twenty-hour flight and straight onto another on Natasha's instructions, and he was half expecting to do the same now.

~

Feelings, and also pantsfeelings*!

&ASSASSINS;

*I know, I know. Porn? Who am I??

comments

Thu, 13 Feb 2014 10:42:32 GMT

It's a bit sad that the thing spurring me to post in my actual blog for the first time in MONTHS is...being in a house where the internet connection is so bad that Tumblr is nigh-on unusable.

How to catch you all up. A list? Let's go with a list.

1) First & foremost: I am no longer a hospital doctor! This is slightly saddening but on the other hand, it means I am a first year GP registrar. I am working in two locations on the south coast of NSW for a year (a family practice, and an Aboriginal Medical Service). It's lovely down here, my supervisor is a fantastic teacher, and I think it's going to be a good year.

1a) Correction: it's going to be a good year once I buy myself some eye-gougingly expensive proper pre-paid internet instead of relying upon this shithouse wifi.

2) Next year I plan to go back to Canberra (where my precious baby brand-new apartment should then EXIST and be ready for me to FURNISH; the number of interior decorating magazines my eye has already been drawn to is not healthy) and split my time between working part time as a GP and -- fingers crossed -- part time as an academic attached to the Divison of General Practice at the ANU Medical School. This is contingent on me coming up with a research project and getting some funding for it, but it means I get to TEACH which is my main goal as far as that position is concerned.

3) I have to sit College exams in a year's time. And also sit some paediatrics exams in December, because like the foolish child I am, I decided to do a distance Diploma of Child Health through my old medical school, USyd. There will be a lot of studying this year. A LOT.

4) I'm going to the gym again. It's painful. I am very unfit. By buying a whole year's membership at once, I qualified for the honour of turning up at the ludicrous hour of 8am on Saturday (whhyyyy) so that someone wearing lycra can tell me just how unfit I am in exquisite detail and probably try to talk me out of eating carbs. Hahahah. Funny joke. NO.

4a) In fact, right at this moment I am more than halfway down a packet of Sour Patch Kids, because apparently Coles sells those now?? I saw them in the confectionery aisle and emitted an actual, audible sound somewhere between a squeak and a gasp. Part of me thinks I should have bought the entire shelf just in case they are a delicious hallucination, never to appear again.

5) I am so into the Winter Olympics it's not even funny. OF COURSE, this corresponds with aforementioned terrible internet precluding me from watching all of the on-demand stuff on the Ten website. Instead I have been trying to watch as much figure skating and hockey on the live TV channel as possible, which is limited by the fact that all the good stuff seems to happen when I am asleep. Last night I passed out trying to watch the US-Canada game and therefore missed the exciting final period; tonight I am going to go to bed early and then maybe get up at 4am like a MORON to watch the Canadian men's team crush Norway like a bug.

6) Since writing and submitting an original short story for an anthology (I have less than zero idea if it'll be accepted; it was written in a massive rush and it's a bit SILLY, but man, have I missed writing silly) I have written...pretty much nothing. Adjusting to everything else that's new and difficult in my lfie has swamped me, for the moment. When my head's above water again I'm sure I'll be writing again.

6a) In that vein, one of my resolutions this year has been to be kinder on myself about failing to do EVERYTHING AT ONCE like I am always, always convinced I should be able to. Full-time job? Studying for two separate sets of exams? Exercising every day? Cooking dinner every day? Maintaining a social life? WELL OF COURSE YOU CAN FIT IN WRITING THOUSANDS OF WORDS PER WEEK AS WELL AS ALL THAT, YOU PATHETIC LAZY CREATURE.

Thanks, brain. You're the best.

7) This may be a help or a hindrance, but: I'm drinking a LOT less than I was in Canberra, which is good, because I was drinking far too much.

8) READING: umm lots of Georgette Heyer as ever. Frances Hardinge. A fun anthology of short stories about mad scientists in which I am loving and detesting stories in approximately equal measure, which is always a good way to experience an anthology. And I'm about to start Patricia Highsmith's Carol.

9) WATCHING: well if I had internet (are we sensing a theme?) I'd be up to date with Brooklyn Nine Nine, and I am increasingly excited for the second season of Hannibal and the wondrous insanity of the Hannibal fandom.

10) I think that's more than enough for now. HOW ARE YOU ALL?

comments

books read 2013

Wed, 08 Jan 2014 02:56:19 GMT

Not enough, NEVER ENOUGH, but there were some good ones on the list! I am not going to chatter about favourites and disappointments, but if you would like my opinion on/are curious about any of the books listed here, PLEASE ASK.

This was the year I discovered historical and romantic fiction. I AM SO HAPPY WITH THIS DECISION. I also read a bewildering amount of nonfiction about the American economy, go figure.

( 101 in all )

comments

Yuletide reveals

Wed, 01 Jan 2014 23:05:41 GMT

I had one assignment story and three treats in the collection this year, although one of the treats got HILARIOUSLY LONG.

The Evolution of Reptiles - Elementary - Jamie Moriarty & Joan Watson

This is the one that is most recognisably me, I think, being full of lady psychopaths and thoughts about art and MAGICAL REALISM and loving descriptions of everything that Watson wears ever. I had a lot of trouble with it until I decided to stop striving for some sort of impeccable consistency in the format and just add in bits however they felt right, and I think that improved the finished product. My original intent was for it to be femslashy but it would have felt forced, in the end, so you can just imagine your own coda with untrusting makeouts.

Lines on Palms - S.U. Pacat's Captive Prince - Damen/Laurent

I am super proud of this treat, which was born out of my love for this particular AU scenario and also the prospect of writing from Laurent's POV. I realised that I'd bitten off more than an easy mouthful when I had to sit down and rebuild Laurent's character from the ground up - the AU assumes that Auguste is alive, leaving Laurent both protected from the Regent and not the heir presumptive to the throne - while keeping the essential parts of him intact. In this regard I owe huge thanks to both electrumqueen and nextian, who squinted hard at the characterisation of both Damen and Laurent and nudged me back onto the right path when I started to veer off it.

It was going to be simpler than it was, but...Laurent. Nothing is ever simple with him. There had to be a dash of intrigue and a great many games and a lot of silent sarcastic judgement of everything going on around him, even though he had fewer flinty personal walls and was a little more open to the prospect of fun for fun's sake. Once I settled into the narration and had a handle on the AU, it was heaps of fun; Laurent is much more my sort of character to write than Damen is, after all. Twisty and sharp and observant.

This was also, as I have been telling people, my PORN DEBUT. I set my teeth, I gathered my skirts, I gazed despairingly at all the male pronouns...and then I churned out Baby's First Smut. Apparently all you need is to really, really, really want the characters to bone.

except in my affections - The Importance of Being Earnest - Cecily, Gwendolen, Algy & Jack

I wrote this, start to finish, in the very early days of Yuletide. Before I'd written a word of my actual assignment. I just liked the idea of smushing together tropes and seeing if I could document the result in Wildean dialogue, and it was so much fun to do. (This may be the only time I ever attempt babyfic. Usually I can't stand it. But the baby in this isn't so much a CHARACTER as an amusing prop.) Thanks to skygiants for her excellent beta!

a distinct lack of tutus - Brooklyn Nine Nine - Amy Santiago/Rosa Diaz

HAHAHAHA. Oh man. I wrote this on Australian-Christmas-Day, over a time period of three hours during which I was also shovelling turkey and ice cream down my throat, and uploaded it at the last minute. And then it proceeded to win at Yuletide.

This fic contains all my love for Amy Santiago (neurotic perfectionist that she is) and the greater wacky B99 family, whose dialogue was enormous fun to capture. It also contains my deep aesthetic appreciation for Diaz's hair and boots.

comments

true yuletide magic

Wed, 25 Dec 2013 23:45:27 GMT

As dusty as this blog is at the moment, I HAVE to use it to gush publically about my Yuletide gift, because it's perfect.

The Soldier's Not for Leaving (2303 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Lady's Not For Burning
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Jennet Jourdemayne/Thomas Mendip

This is everything I wanted when I asked for Thomas/Jennet fic: it has kissing, it has Actual Witch Jennet (in a really subtle and beautiful and slightly sad way) and it is, as I remarked to Becca last night, as though Christopher Fry himself had wandered onto the internet for just long enough to write an extra scene of the play. The writing is gorgeous, slyly funny and philosophical and romantic, and I've read it twice already and will probably read it a few more times today.

This year I wrote four stories for the archive and I'm proud of all of them, and much to my DELIGHTED HILARITY it seems that 2013 is not only the year I became a published writer, it is also the year that my published work inspired Yuletide fanfic. So. I think I've lucked out on pretty much all fronts, yeah?

comments

Dear Yuletide Writer 2013

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 06:34:52 GMT

Hello hello! I hope you enjoy the mad Yuletide process as much as I do, dear writer, and that you have a great time writing this story.

( details under here )

comments

Wed, 09 Oct 2013 08:33:34 GMT

5. 10 songs you love right now

1) Vienna Teng -- Level Up

2) Bastille -- Things We Lost in the Fire

3) Passenger feat. Josh Pyke -- What You're Thinking

4) Tegan & Sara -- Love They Say

5) Delta Goodrem -- The Speed of Life

6) OneRepublic -- Counting Stars

7) Nicki Minaj -- Va Va Voom

8) Vienna Teng -- Never Look Away

9) Dessa -- Sound the Bells

10) Pentatonix & Lindsey Stirling -- Radioactive

( the list )

comments

Sun, 06 Oct 2013 10:23:34 GMT

4. What are you afraid of?

Bushfire. A smallness of life. The drift apart. The suffering of loved ones. Leaving things unfinished, unwritten, unread. Choking. Heading in the wrong direction. Knowing. Not knowing.

( the list )

comments

this is why I keep a commonplace book

Tue, 01 Oct 2013 08:05:03 GMT

3. Your favourite quote

oh god I can't choose HERE HAVE THREE

Mate would have been Njiru's word for this: the state of which death is the appropriate and therefore the desirable outcome. He would have seen Hallet as being, in every meaningful way, dead already, and his sole purpose would have been to hasten the moment of actual death: mate ndapu, die finish. Rivers fingered his lapel badge, his unimpaired nerves transmitting the shape of the cadaceus to his undamaged brain, his allegiance to a different set of beliefs confirmed without the conflict ever breaking the surface of consciousness.

- from The Ghost Road by Pat Barker

The history of each story, then, should read almost like a weather report: Hot today, cool tomorrow. This afternoon, burn down the house. Tomorrow, pour cold critical water upon the simmering coals. Time enough to think and cut and rewrite tomorrow. But today - explode - fly apart - disintegrate! The other six or seven drafts are going to be pure torture. So why not enjoy the first draft, in the hope that your joy will seek and find others in the world who, reading your story, will catch fire, too?

- from Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury

The way of art, after all, is neither to cut adrift from the emotions, the senses, the body, etc., and sail off into the void of pure meaning, nor to blind the mind's eye and wallow in irrational, amoral meaninglessness -- but to keep open the tenuous, difficult, essential connections between the two extremes. To connect. To connect idea with value, sensation with intuition, cortex with cerebellum.

- from 'Myth and Archetype in Science Fiction' in The Language of the Night by Ursula Le Guin

( the full list )

comments

Mon, 30 Sep 2013 07:30:14 GMT

2. 20 facts about you

1. I have had this tab open for ages trying to think of good facts, and now I am going to randomly steal ideas from electrumqueen's list.
2. My fuck-off shade of red lipstick is Armani Silk in 10; my favourite everyday summer shade is NARS Niagara; my favourite everyday winter shade is Revlon Lip Butter in Sugar Plum.
3. For a while when I was younger I wanted to be an optometrist, and now I have no idea why.
4. I also wanted for a long time to be an English teacher who specialised in Shakespeare, and now I wonder why I ever dropped that idea.
5. I still haven't seen Ghostbusters. Or, come to think of it, Independence Day.
6. I wish I'd started reading historical and romance novels earlier in my life instead of buying into whatever internalised misogyny decided they were not worth my time, because DANG, the amount of enjoyment I've gotten out of those genres this year is awesome.
7. My footy team is the Sydney Swans. I don't have a team for any other sport, other than being vaguely interested in how the Australian cricket team is faring.
8. I made white chocolate and cranberry cookies yesterday and so far I've eaten, like, twelve. Maybe fourteen.
9. I played netball for a season in primary school, and then I ragequit because our team wasn't very good. I had, uh, ego problems.
10. Milk in tea weirds me out.
11. Today I made the decision to FINALLY start watching the Utena anime.
12. I have a large left lateral thoracotomy scar from heart surgery when I was a baby
13. I probably drink too much. Okay: I definitely drink too much.
14. I am very easily manipulated by things that are trying to be scary. Music. Haunted houses. The most transparently terrible sort of horror movie. And I have never seen the appeal in the adrenalin high to be gained from being scared; I just end up very cranky instead.
15. Thanks to my mother, I'm quite good at identifying birds.
16. Things that I will usually order if they are on a menu: homestyle baked beans, calamari, scallops, creme brulee.
17. Part of me would like to be a film actor simply so that I could wear amazing period dresses and have my hair done in awesome ways. I am a terrible actor. This would be a dreadful idea. BUT DRESSES. I could probably pull off playing some sort of royal lady with almost no lines; I could sweep around looking disdainful, I am good at that.
18. I'm in a terrible mood because I haven't finished any stories for months. All I seem to do is start things.
19. My car is a burnt-orange Ford Fiesta called Fernando. I like to imagine him as smug and flamboyant.
20. Asymmetry makes me feel itchy.

( the full list )

comments

let's do this

Sat, 28 Sep 2013 07:43:30 GMT

I am intrigued by this 30 posts in 30 days meme, if only because it is surpassingly more suited to a blog platform like DW than FUCKING TUMBLR.

1. Introduction and recent photo

Hello! As most of you on here know, I am Fahye, though I've started going by my real name (Freya) as well because I am the privacy-slack person my sixteen-year-old self was determined never to be.

Partly this is because I have published and, with any luck, will continue to publish, under the name Freya Marske.

I'm 26 and have been kicking around fandom for more than a decade. Of my two passports I identify more with the Australian one but have the highest hopes for the English one.

I'm a doctor; next year I'll take the first steps down the specialisation road and start training under the College of General Practice. I spend a lot of time wishing that fanfic writers would send me anonymous asks on tumblr so that I could answer their medical questions and stop their fic from being wrong about everything from stab wounds to sexually transmitted diseases, but I'm not sure of the best way to publicise my willingness to provide such a service.

I like nail polish, dresses, secondhand book shops, baking things, musicals, people assuming that I'm a natural redhead, and the cities of Sydney and London.

( the full list )

comments

hear ye, hear ye

Fri, 13 Sep 2013 05:44:50 GMT

Hello, internet! It's officially September 12.5 (the 12th for her, the 13th for me) which means it's time for me to gush about my best friend in public, because this is our anniversary.

Our TEN YEAR anniversary, no less.

Ten years ago I was a baby sixteen-year-old, brand new to fandom, inhabiting an obscure corner of LJ where I wrote vaguely bad X/1999 fanfic and belonged to a Discworld RP and was soon to be a founding player at Milliways. I was still getting the hang of Making Friends On The Internet.

And then, via someone following a mutual friend's link and commenting on someone else's story, I met Ji.

At the age of nineteen I flew across the world on my own for the first time, all nervousness, to meet her; we watched House and Queer as Folk and went to Millicon and it was just as easy in person as it was online. Three years after that we met up in London and laughed over our inability to find a place to eat curry. And three years after that, we sat in the sun in Central Park.

We've written stories at one another, and RPed with one another, and written so many letters that I have shoeboxes bursting with them. We've made each other read countless books, and cheerfully explored our disparate tastes in music. We've watched movies and TV shows in tandem, from opposite ends of the world. We've known each other's lives in a silly amount of detail.

I love anniversaries. In six more years I will have known Ji for more than half my life, which is strange because it seems like she's always been in it. She's the one-person audience I'm always writing for. She's one of the greatest and kindest and most talented people I know, and she's made me better: at writing, at life, at being a full and decent human being. I love her and admire her and if we lived on the same continent I'd probably have tricked her into marrying me by now.

But even if it has to be once every three years, even if we never meet in person again: Cosmas, you've been one of the best things about this decade, my darling. Here's to many, many more.

comments

insert wit here

Wed, 14 Aug 2013 04:11:05 GMT

I had grand plans to make a nice, thorough life update post today, as it's a day off. But I've just tumbled straight into one of the busiest terms, obstetrics & gynaecology; it's awesome work, I love it, but it's draining as hell on all fronts. Long hours, lots of dashing from one end of the hospital to the other, speculums and babies and constantly scrubbing for theatre. So today I'm in the immediate post-on-call daze of mumbling and slouching and wanting nothing more complex than tea and naps.

Plus, it's the job-hunting time of year for the medical community, and after dragging myself through the application process for general practice training, I've been offered a training spot in the ACT network (hurrah!). So I've spent all of today's available brainpower CV-polishing and calling and emailing and trying to persuade people that they want to show me their practices and interview me for jobs.

What else. I don't know. Brainblah. TV? Not watching anything at the moment.

Reading? Writing? Not much happening on either front.

Napping.

Yes.

comments

this is me putting my money where my mouth is

Sat, 20 Jul 2013 00:12:02 GMT

(as it were)

& resolving yet again to post more on DW/LJ, because as much as I am resigned to tumblr being Where Fandom Is at the moment, I still sigh into my pillow at night and yearn for the good old days.

I'm also going to use it for writing-accountability, because that worked quite well when I was racing towards my Fight Like A Girl deadline. Speaking of! Did you know that the ebook version of our little anthology is now generally available in the Amazon store? And that our wonderful editor April did an author interview with me on her book blog? (LOOK AT ME, ALL FANCY)

In just over a week (!!!) I will be hosting the fabulous littledust in her first ever international adventure. We plan to eat a lot, write a lot, plan ridiculous erotic romance novels a lot, and romp around Canberra and Sydney and probably some beaches as well, despite the fact that it is still winter here.

To that end, I have chosen her arrival as my self-imposed deadline for the Never Ending Hannibal Circus AU Why Did I Do This To Myself Oh God, which is sitting at 11,000 words. If I can get that done, I can then start to panic anew about two more upcoming deadlines, one of which is the Hannibal Big Bang (what was I THINKING) and the other of which is something original. If you think I have written a word of either of those latter two, your faith in me is touching but misplaced.

Plus I am determined to squeeze another chapter of the Merlin heist AU out of my soul within the next few months. I expect the bloody thing will be completed when I am, oh, thirty-five.

comments

state of mind

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 10:32:45 GMT

1) I've totally lost track of who knows about this (the people I email? probably twitter??) but: I'm buying an apartment! It's a tiny one-bedroom place, buying off the plan, won't be ready to move into for at least another year. But it will be MINE, and it will be brand new, and the location is one that I didn't expect I'd be able to afford. Adulthood, Jesus Christ. I'm going to have a mortgage.

2) I listened to the 'Internet friendship' episode of slashreport and I'm having a horrible fit of longing and self-pity about how much I miss hanging out with fangirls. I love my RL friends, but none of the ones I am in close proximity to are fannish at all. It was wonderful to hang out with people in the US last year -- even though by the time I ran into most of the Boston people I was in the midst of a severe introvert reaction and barely holding it together sociability-wise, SORRY -- and I am really sick of not having fannish friends on my CONTINENT, let alone in my city. I keep wondering if I should move to somewhere like Melbourne where I know a handful of fannish people and would be able to stumble across plenty more, but, well, a) incipient mortgage and b) work.

2a) How the fuck do people make friends on Tumblr? I DON'T GET IT. Which is a pity, because the Hannibal fandom seems 99% Tumblr-based (with the exception of the kink meme) and also full of cool people. How...do...connect??

2b) Dreamwidth, let's be friends. GROUP HUG. LEAVE A COMMENT.

3) I'm really liking my GP placement at the moment. I'm interviewing for the training program next weekend and am feeling very positive about it as a career path, especially considering the fact that it's easy to subspecialise as a GP in the two areas I like best (mental health and women's sexual/reproductive health).

3a) So many fucking adorable babies in clinic this week. "Yes, I must hold your child on my lap. It is important for...medical reasons. AREN'T YOU AN ADORABLE BALL OF GERMS, YES YOU ARE."

3b) How I have not yet come down with every virus under the sun, I have no idea.

comments