Val Prozorova's Blog, page 6

When Your Feet Lose The Ground

And you need to find it again... These sites help me out a lot. Thought I would share :)

1. Hatnote Listen To Wikipedia

If Wikipedia is a place you just can’t leave be, then this is a perfect link for you. Responding to every update, edit and new post on the endlessly collaborative site, Hatnote turns these into soft sounds akin to the strum of a guitar. This is perfect for people who enjoy a bit of white noise in their day to quiet a busy mind, as there is no predictable pattern for this site whatsoever.

2. The Most Relaxing Tune Ever

Sometimes just tones are enough to rewire our minds to a more settled and comfortable place. If plucking and strumming are a bit too hard to handle on a sensory overload day, I would recommend this link, for sure. For people like me, who sometimes find themselves feeling somewhat cynical in regards to guided meditation, something like this is absolutely perfect. Put those headphones on, find somewhere comfortable to sit, and let the sound ease you back to a good mood.

3. The Quiet Place

The Quiet Place is probably the least invasive (while still being entirely interactive) minimalist site I’ve ever been on. It guides you through three minutes of being entirely unplugged, and reminds you of things we tend to take for granted in our fast-paced world. There is calming music for those who prefer it, but it can be turned off for those that just need a genuine Quiet Place. This entire project is a gift, and I highly recommend checking it out when you’ve the mindset and time for it.

4. The Thoughts Room

Part of the same incredible project as The Quiet Room above, this is a place to go when you need to let out your thoughts and feelings, but don’t feel like you want anyone to actually respond. This site allows you to type out anything you like and watch your angry words, or your sad words, become glittering stars before they fade away and leave you alone.

5. Build A Galaxy

For the inner artist in all of us. A site that asks for nothing but a click of a mouse to create galaxies of your choosing, in any colour, pattern, design or complexity. It lets you save your creations to show others later, too.

Whatever mood we’re in, and whatever way we find to express ourselves, sometimes we just need a place - or several - to sit quietly and find ourselves again.

Seattle Erotic Art Festival

I am thrilled and beyond honored to have a story accepted into the Seattle Erotic Art Festival anthology, and to have an invitation to attend the festival itself, April 28th-30th this year!

Decision pending on whether or not I can make it stateside for that time - work and finances are always a bit clingy when it comes to me wanting to leave this tiny island - but that said, the opportunity is incredible. I am damn near entirely speechless.

I am so lucky.

I am so honored.

I MADE THIS HAPPEN!

I will keep you posted in regards to whether or not I can make the festival itself, but even if I don't, I will certainly do an Audio Erotic for those who can make the festival to listen to. If you can't make the festival, and are curious to hear my story - and to listen to my apparently interesting accent reading it - I will upload my own recording on this site after the festival.

As always, thank you EVERYONE for your endless support of my work and my efforts. It means so much to me, and validates the blood, sweat and tears that writing joyfully brings to my life.

I MADE IT TO AN EROTIC ARTS FESTIVAL, GUYS!!!

JUMPING TO THE RESCUE

In this case quite literally!

I have signed up to jump from a plane in a tandem skydive for the animals at the Auckland SPCA on April 1st! Not a joke, I promise, though very amusing considering how scared I am of heights!

I've updated my announcement bar to take you right to the donation page, and it would really mean a lot to me if you could spread the word and give a dollar or two towards helping the puppies and kittens over at the Auckland shelter!

HELP SUPPORT THE ANIMALS AT AKL SPCA!

Funding goes right up to the moment my feet leave the ground to go up in that terrifying plane, so please take a moment to spread the link around and let's see if we can make the $1000 goal!

Ciao~

V

40 days, 250 business cards...

Look what arrived this evening!

I finally have some incredible business cards, and awesome places to give them out at! Not only that, but everything on the back of them is true - I am so proud of where I have come from and where I am going, and I am absolutely positive that this year will be a wonderful year for personal growth, new connections, new experiences, and success.

40 days til I fly out to Eroticon!!

Sending good vibes to everyone!

Same Same But Different

I have been lucky enough to be invited to the Saturday Gala for Same Same But Different on February 18th. This is the second year I've been shortlisted for the Wallace short story prize, and I am really excited! It's always such an honor to have your work read and enjoyed by others, and even more so when they bring it to the attention of the LGBTQ community at large.

If you're around the Auckland area then, do come along, it would be amazing to see you!

Also, keep a look out on the Events page for some exciting new things popping up soon. I can't say more just yet, but I will certainly flail about it when I'm able.

V

Growing Pains...

AKA rejection no. 4 for January and 2017.

Something I am proud of and rather enjoy, that I would like to share with anyone feeling a bit stuck, or like they're doing a bit too well on their rejection goals for the year...

FROM ONE WRITER

TO ANOTHER -

To the gender-transient and non-conforming. To the slighted and the small, those with dark skin and an accent, with two legs or less, with a mind that screams and a mouth that doesn't - this letter is for you.

The night before the world ended, you had hope for a better future and a curiously poetic past. That night you didn't care who saw you wear your favourite shirt with the hole in it that moths had eaten. That night you had your friends and your answers and your plans. That night you watched the world burn and your life along with it and found that sleeping or fucking or reading or crying did nothing at all to forestall the sunrise on a new future of absolute uncertainty.

You. Check your narcissism. Check your nihilism and your pessimism and take a deep breath of reality. Coffee smells the same and still burns your tongue when you drink it too fast and that's clue enough that some things haven't changed. You didn't know the future the night before the world ended just as you didn't know it when it did. What's changed is not as much as you think, so this letter is for you.

Breathe out - holding your breath will only stretch your lungs to a point where you will never do anything but sigh, trying to fill them. Breathe out and in again and do what you did the night before - because that story you started is still unfinished with your characters halfway through a scene you just left them in and they deserve better than that and you know it.

Think of them. Think of them because they are you. In a world that's more frightening today than it was the day before they are the epitome of you. They haven't changed. You haven't changed. What flowed through your very soul will still support you and keep you, raise you and push you on and on and on for more and more and more because that is the biggest fxxk you we can give to a world that pretends not to hear us.

Because it does hear us. If it can't hear it will read, if it can't read it will feel it in the pounding of our feet on the earth that's let us share it's pulse. You will not be silent now, kid, I’ll not stand for it. You will not end now because the worst has only happened and the best can only happen and the pages won't fill themselves so you will fill them. Because the night before the world ended it never once occurred to you to stop and the day after it did you have no excuse to.

POSTSCRIPT

Look, you knew that this was crawling over your skin before you understood what it even was; tugging at the tiny hairs on your arms and at the back of your neck, getting tangled at the corners of your lips, like growing pains. Every kid got them and you weren’t any different.

Because everyone had nights when they damn near wanted to rip their skin off; because change was never a pleasant thing, change was a thing with claws and sinew, it was a thing which roared and confused you, it was a thing that didn’t give itself over to domestication yet refused to leave you alone, and you weren’t immune to that either. Not really.

But listen, there’s growing pains and then there’s you. There’s dirty teeth and dreams of scraped knees that never heal, there’s rough hair against your legs and between them and your feet are suddenly the length of your arm from elbow to wrist and very little makes sense. You’re Alice in Urbanland and everything smells like piss and gasoline and that’s not fair but that’s your lot. I get that, I hate it too.

But there’s growing pains and then there’s you; there’s the feeling of words becoming bullets becoming bones, there’s the feeling of steel taking over where the marrow was once because you don’t need it anymore, there’s the way your heart starts ticking that you know you have to reset it biannually to run with the rest of them. There’s that. That’s you. That’s the you that matters.

Because believe me, kid, that ticking will drive you fxxking mad until you learn to type to its metronome, and that smell will make you dizzy until you learn to process it properly and take the elements apart bit by bit by bit to fuel your pulsing lungs. And that won’t make any bloody sense until you stop washing the ink from your fingers and the oil out of your hair and let your body write itself to the shape it needs to be.

You’re a writer now. You’re not immune to growing pains but that doesn’t mean that you have to give a lick about what they think or write how they read and it doesn’t mean you have to grow as they do and become what they become and it doesn’t mean that you can’t build your own language letter by letter and note by note ‘til it makes sense to someone else who’s been looking for it all their life. It means the opposite, and it matters that much more.

That’s what keeps that jug of blood filled, in the end. So go earn it.

(For the record, I am actually very proud of myself thus far, it's only the first third of the month and I am feeling energized, not held back. I hope you are too!)

V

Get Writ* - A monthly writing advice column for the things that may not matter

I had a great idea last year that I am finally able to put into practice: writing advice for people who support my Patreon.

I've written the first entry for the public to enjoy, and I will post it on here, but the others will be under the umbrella of the paying patrons category. That said, for just $2 you could fall under that umbrella and enjoy my terrible puns monthly!

For the moment, though, here's what Get Writ* will offer as it goes ahead:

GET WRIT*

That was, is, and will remain, a terrible pun that I refuse to apologize for.

WELCOME TO GET WRIT, A MONTHLY PATREON POST FILLED WITH AWKWARDLY PHRASED WRITING ADVICE FROM YOURS TRULY.

The first post is free to all and one, and one and all, but the ones following will be for Patreon supporters only. HOWEVER, all it takes is just $2 a month to have access to those, so if you're feeling up for helping an exhausted and occasionally hungry writer, I will greatly appreciate it!

This month, I wanted to cover possibly my favourite thing about writing, something I personally choose to concentrate on constantly in my work, and something that most people probably don't think about particularly frequently... MUNDANITIES.

We're talking simple things, things most of us take for granted because we experience them every day in our lives. But why? If writing is something we use - as writers and readers - to escape reality and the mundane within it, why drag the mundane with us?

Because there is nothing worse than a book you can't get immersed in. A book that feels that it falls just a bit short of the escape you desperately need. Like a portaloo where the door doesn't quite lock.

The beauty of mundane things - the stuff we take for granted - is what makes everything so real. It's what allows us to connect with a story, and the characters within it, without realizing we do. Something so ingrained in our psyche, so normal that it's become routine, is something that we will inevitably and immediately miss when it's not there anymore. That is why I am such a fan of the little things that don't matter. Let's see if I can convince you to love them as much as I do.

Here we have two sentences:

"She walked to the bathroom and turned on the light"

"She walked to the bathroom, her feet clicking against the cool tile, and turned on the light."

I'm not sure if this is just something that happens to me, but when I walk on tile, or laminate flooring, or wood, my feet stick to it and make a bit of a clicking sound. Something that little makes me feel a lot more immersed in the story, because that's something I experience. And even if you don't, the idea that someone's body is responding to their surroundings should elicit a response from yours. That connection, slight as it is, is why I find the small things matter.

The four seasons, the five senses, those are the things that occur every day, every moment, that we process, store away, and never consciously notice. But we notice when it's not there.

Sometimes, all you need is a subtle mundane detail to get a message across, that would otherwise take several sentences.

"Outside, the wind was blowing still. The static made the hair on her arms stand on end as surely as the cold did."

suggests a storm is coming just as surely as explaining that one is on its way.

Another amazing thing about the little things, is that including them in your writing forces you to stop, once in a while, and actually take the world in. So often we are stuck on our phones or behind a screen and we don't notice. We don't notice how coffee smells in a coffee shop and how the smell goes away when you walk outside; we don't notice what sound our feet make on the pavement and how the sound changes when we walk on the grass; we don't notice how loud the world is around us until we concentrate actively on every noise we hear.

But... you did just then, didn't you?

Keep noticing.

Aiming for the Hundred

I've hit a slump early this year - it's only January 3rd. 

It's not unusual for impostor syndrome to hit hard this early on; the start of the year always feels like an entirely insurmountable challenge to overcome. You know nothing of what lies ahead, you have no idea if anything good or bad will come of your work, if your work will matter... I could go on and on. In truth, it's far from a pleasant experience.

In such situations I try to distract myself; find something that I can focus on outside of not-yet-occurred failures.

This year, inspired by this wonderful post, I am aiming to get 100 rejections on my work.

That's right, rejections.

I wrote a post, a good while back, now, when I launched this site, about the beauty of a rejection journal and why keeping one is so significant to me. This is a similar approach, the idea that if you are getting rejected so many times, you are clearly sending in enough work to be seen. 100 rejections? That's at least 100 stories sent in to BE rejected, and that doesn't count the ones that didn't get rejected, the ones that got accepted or are still on a list to be seen.

100 stories in a year... that's 9 a month, that's an incredible goal to aim at.

And, if you aim to be rejected and get rejected, your psyche doesn't immediately assume it's a failing. Why would it? You set out to achieve something, and you achieved it. Is your story published? No, but was your goal this year to get published? No...

It's an interesting reverse psychology game that I am rather excited to partake in.

So, as of this moment, I have a single tick against my hundred, one story rejected so far this year. Let's see how I average per month and what I can say about myself as I go.

Onwards to greater things!

A Rant to Farewell the Year

A pebble of ignorance has drawn ripples through my circles today. My writers, far and wide, have been making their opinions known in response to this article, on Huffington Post, written by an "award winning author" who claims that anyone other than an "award winning author" is nothing but a wannabe in the writing world.

Ironically, the aforementioned article was written on a site where anyone can post, can "self publish", if I may. Funny.

A good friend of mine has made her feelings known, on her blog, and this entry made me laugh out loud and believe in the power of self published cleverness once more. I just wanted to take a moment to voice my opinions - unfortunately not as cleverly as Cat, and not as snarkily as the other article published - in this regard and let the ranting pass on with the old year.

So... here are the points in particular I want to bring to light.

Firstly, saying everyone who is a writer published through "legitimate" means is a "real writer" is just like suggesting anyone who went to community college doesn't actually have a real degree. Writing, like art, and music, and anything creative, is something you can teach only to a point. It has to start with a spark, a sense, a twinge of talent. Without those, no matter how much money you have on your student loan, or how many years you have at college, you will not be a writer, but a typist. You will be putting down words on a page, sending them to your legitimate editor and legitimate publishing company and hoping for the best.

You'd be surprised how many "legitimate real writers" pass their lives this way.

You'd be surprised how many people who have never gone near the publishing world - due to lack of confidence, or opportunity, or any number of reasons - write some of the most touching, provocative, and truly marvelous work.

Ms Gough seems to think that no such people exist.

I'll save the rest of my rant about this in particular for when I hold my talk in March at Eroticon - I have a lot to say. And there, it will be structured, classy, and a great one finger salute to someone who seems to do nothing more than look down her nose at anyone who doesn't have a paid-for headshot.

Times are changing. A while ago, writers would put their work in journals, make novels last years as a series, published weekly or monthly for their fans to enjoy. A little while after, everything had to go through publishers, and that was the only way to get something out there. Now, the internet has grown to give a lot of people the opportunity to show themselves and their skills. That's the time we live in.

Does every single self-published writer write exceptional work? No.

Does every single publisher-endorsed writer write exceptional work? No.

Putting aside the fact that writing itself is entirely subjective, everything depends on what trends are catching people's attentions, what is on television currently, which actors are interested in what current events, what could happen in the future, what we miss about the past... writing is interpretation, fiction is translation of our world into something better, or faster, or more interesting.

Writing should not ever be caged to set rules. And no writer should be told by someone who happened to be from the generation that required a publishing contract that without one they will get nowhere. I was told that by an abusive ex partner. I've made it a habit to never look them up, but outside of their cruelties and misconceptions, I am not only published, but my work is liked. I have grown a fan base from self publishing, and have met the most incredible people through that.

That, to me, is so much more important than a radio interview on a station no one cares about. Just saying.

What people need to understand is that I am very much of the mind that even though people can do something doesn't mean they should. Some people are not writers. While the internet can have them putting out work to be read, if they don't keep at it, or if they don't have the drive, the power of ideas, the conviction to be a writer, they will stop altogether.

Gough claims that "every single self-published book I’ve tried to read has shown me exactly why the person had to resort to self-publishing. These people haven’t taken the decade, or in many cases even six months, to learn the very basics of writing, such as ‘show, don’t tell,’ or how to create a scene, or that clichés not only kill writing but bludgeon it with a sledgehammer. Sometimes they don’t even know grammar.", she seems to forget that people like Cormac McCarthy, who doesn't believe in using more than three commas per page, if that, and James Fray, who writes out of order and out of time, and Luke Sutherland... are published authors. They are published authors who went through her "gatekeeper" process and yet fit into none of her preconceptions of what "good writing" is.

50 Shades of Grey, on the other hand, passed through all her gatekeepers, and is still one of the worst works of the written word to ever exist.

Maybe do some research, Laurie, and put that award winning mind to good use for a change.

In the end, what I can say is this: if you are a writer, you will be a writer. Whether it takes you 10 years to get published, or you publish online and never see a contract in your life, if you are a writer, and you will keep at it, and work hard, and put your soul and heart and bones into it, you will succeed.

Never let someone tell you you can't do something just because they have a title you don't.

We currently have an American President with no qualifications whatsoever. What else can I tell you.

Keep writing, keep fighting, tell people on the high and mighty to go shove their long noses up their ass if they need to put them somewhere. Enter the new year with new confidence that you have the power to make your work your own, no one else's, and that if it's the work that touches the world, it can come from a laptop upload, as well as a contractual marketing agreement.

Think on it.

The Countdown To Christmas

Man, it has been quite a year! A lot has happened, to all of us; some good, some not so good, some unthinkable in the best or worst way possible. And yet, after all that, here we are.

We made it!

I just wanted to thank everyone who has supported me this year and last, as I've stepped into my own as a writer, both of fiction and non-fiction as a freelancer. It's meant the world to me, and I am proud to say I've grown with your help.

Next year I'm starting a new job in a place that makes a world of difference to a world of people. I know that that will inspire me more than ever to keep writing, and I hope to have more work for you to enjoy in 2017 than I have put out this year.

Lastly, I have another article up on FactualFacts! This one is on an interesting topic known as Quirkyalone, and I had some amazing and invaluable help from some friends in making sure that everyone was represented properly. You know who you are, thank you SO much!

All the best, stay well, stay sane, stay awesome, and I will write again in the new year!

Ciao,

V