Lilith Saintcrow's Blog, page 229

A Few Words On Narcissism

Ninety degrees even in the shade. The kind of weather that makes even breathing a chore for a pale mushroom PNW girl like me. If not for the air-conditioning unit I bought–was it last summer? Or so?–I would so be laying under a sprinkler right now and cursing the weather gods.

The blogging has been falling off my radar lately, mostly because of Personal Stuff. My method of coping is to work like hell. Unfortunately, when I get the decks clear and I've worked my way through the pile of OMG DEAL NO

Writers And Social Media: The Shoulds

Crossposted to Deadline Dames, where every week brings more cool stuff. Check 'em out!

Good afternoon, chickadees. Today we're going to talk about social networking.

Don't make that face. This kind of talk is good for you. Like broccoli. Or chaos.

This started out with me getting spammed by someone with a screenplay on Twitter this last week. It hit at exactly the wrong time–I was already scraped-raw and frustrated. Fortunately, the spam touched off a discussion of what writers should and should NO

When Going Eighty Feels Like Standing Still

A day or so of kinda-sorta-slowing-down (but not really, because there were a million things to do) is not enough time for the brain to recover. Which means I'm frantically running in circles, yapping, wasting even more energy flailing and feeling sorry for myself.

This just in: I give myself such very good advice…but sometimes I do not follow it. For example, if my writing partner started doing this I'd say "Slow down. The engine inside your head is running at full speed, it's going to take it t

Chocolate Chip Cookies Of DOOM

I shouldn't Twitter on a sugar high. Last night I gave some choco-chip cookie tips, and did promise to give my recipe. It's adapted both from my mother's and from Better Homes & Gardens.

BE WARNED: this makes a LOT of dough. I'll tell you why in a little bit.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

2c butter
1.5c brown sugar
1.25c granulated sugar
2.25 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. table salt
5 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla extract
5c cake flour
1.25c-1.5c regular flour
1 pkg. of the best choco chips you can afford (I use Ghira

Hidden Hinges, and the Messy Death of a Metaphor

Crossposted from the Deadline Dames, where this week we're answering reader questions. Come on over and play!

My brain is oatmeal today, because yesterday I finished the first draft of the third Strange Angels book. So if I occasionally sound like a babbling idiot, that's why. There's a snapback involved in finishing any huge project. This one is all the more intense because I don't get a break–I go right into last-minute Weasel Boy revisions and short-story reworking. Come August, when everythin

We're Almost There

I am one scene–count it, one–away from finishing the third Dru book into a reasonable first draft. If I put my head down and work today, I will have it done.

This is the point where momentum has taken on its own life, where I no longer have to worry about labor. Now the head's out of the canal and I'm still pushing, still expelling the rest of the thing. As soon as I send it off to the editor I will have a day or so of ARGH while my brain-muscles quiver uselessly (I think that's analogous to the

No More Today, Thanks

Usually my front door is open, and friends know they can drop by anytime. But today…I'm keeping that sucker closed. I am Not At Home, even though I am at home.

What's the problem, you might ask? No problem. Just that I need to take a rest. I need to work, to sink into the worlds inside my head and get them out onto the page without interruption. Until tomorrow morning, I'm not up for anything except a true crisis. You're in a Mexican jail at 3AM and you have only a cell phone and my number? Okay,

Oh, dear sweet fluffy Lord…

I have how many short stories and revisions due?

*cries*

July is going to be pretty labor-intensive for me, dear Readers. We have 10K more on this one book, several short stories to revise, interviews and guest blogs…and I somehow have to keep from dropping all these chainsaws I'm juggling onto my foot or God forbid, head.

So in the meantime, have a look at a couple artists I really like: Elise Schweitzer, who is now postgrad and so glad, and Andrzej Karwacki, who did the original artwork for Selen

This Is No Bloodless Art

Crossposted to Deadline Dames.

Today, dear Reader, I will get philosophical. My apologies in advance.

Last night I was working on the third Strange Angels book. I'd revised as far as one of the hidden hinges in the story–let me make an instructive little detour here.

In every story there are visible and hidden "hinges"–places where the particular bits of the story "hang," for structure. The visible hinges are crisis points and revelations, easy enough to spot. The hidden hinges, however, are harder

Thursday Link Salad

I have been working all morning, but it seems like I've gotten nowhere since that work is all of the invisible maintenance variety. Ugh.

* First, the serious: NPR won't use the word "torture" when Americans do it. But when anyone else does, it's fair game.

* Charles Kaiser pronounces the Washington Post dead, writes obituary.

* Now the geeky-cool scientific: the Sarychev volcano eruption seen from space, and the "volcano sunsets" it's causing.

* Last but not least, the utterly freaking hilarious: th