Quote by Ping
Anyone watch 2022 NYE fireworks displays on YouTube? There was one live feed we watched. Spectacular!
Yeah, that's how Mrs. M and I spent the evening, watching various cities' celebrations. Glad to hear we aren't the only ones. Now on to our one New Year's tradition: the annual New Year's Day concert by the Vienna Philharmonic. My wife loves Strauss and this concert is generally 90-95% Strauss.
New competition! And an interesting theme to boot.
Here's coffee and tea to perk you up while you get over your hangover. Coffee is a nice Jamaican Blue Mountain. Tea is strong pots of Red Rose and English Breakfast. Hot water is in the kettle for other beverages.
And welcome to 2022!
Quote by Molly
I know the front page cover is blank for now. The competition banner will be arriving soon!
Yeah, that kind of weirded me out when I came on the site and there was huge blank spot with a broken image link. Decided it must be a comp banner and clicked it. Nice theme. Not sure what I will do with it, yet.
Quote by DenimAngel
No big plans here ..fighting a nasty cold and waiting for test results.
At least you can still get tested. Rule around here is that you just isolate for 5 days (if vaxxed, 10 days if not) and symptoms gone. Testing resources are so stretched, they are limiting it to certain cases.
Quote by DenimAngel
No family experience with Dementia and Alzheimer's..did alot of nursing/ in home caregiving for several people who had it and their families needed a little break.
Dad had dementia so been there, done that. Never as bad as Ping and Writergirl describe, but still hard to take.
Winding down my last working day of 2021. Picking up takeout Japanese for dinner and then probably watch something (not sure what) in the evening.
Quote by WriterGirl
Quote by Mendalla
Quote by WriterGirl
Unplug. Create.Hard to do both when your creative tools are in the cloud but yeah, being creative and getting outside are a great way to deal with life.
Ha! Yeah, then you're screwed.
I still start my scribbles with old-fashioned pen and paper.
I keep thinking I should try that but the arthritis in my hands isn't so sure.🙄
Finished CNN's Cold War the other day. Very good history of that period. The later episodes get into pretty familiar territory for me (I was born in the mid-60s) but it delves into stuff that was not always apparent from the news.
Last night, we watched a bio of Ben Franklin from The History Channel. Had never really know much beyond his involvement in founding the USA as a country and his research into electricity. He was actually quite a character. His first son (born to an unknown "woman of low birth" before he got married) was actually on the other side in the American Revolution as Royal Governor of New Jersey. Needless to say, that led to some serious family dysfunction.
Quote by Ping
Here’s a cool exercise I recently read about but have never explored. Maybe you’ve heard about it.
Select a television episode you enjoy and write it as a story, dialogue and all. Describe the setting, characters, plot, etc. as if you were writing THAT story. Use the visual as your mind’s eye; the dialogue and narration as your own. Once you’re done, read your story, have others read the story, and then watch the show. Then discuss. It could prove to be an invaluable self-teaching tool, or a very f’n big waste of time. I think the former, by a humongous margin.
Cool idea, I think. Might give it a whirl to see if it breaks me out of my drought. There's some Star Trek, both classic and Next Generation, episodes that I have thoughts about.
Quote by WriterGirl
Unplug. Create.
Hard to do both when your creative tools are in the cloud but yeah, being creative and getting outside are a great way to deal with life.
Quote by Ping
On that cheery note, time for some decaf tequila. Surprisingly, every liquor store and bar has some. Lucky me. I have some too.
Decaf tequila? Didn't know it was caffeinated to start with unless mixed in iced tea or something. Then again, I had a bad experience with tequila in my youth so it is not top of mind during the rare times that I drink (I usually have rum or vodka mixed drinks).
Putting on some good Ethiopian coffee from Fire-Roasted today. Tea is Scottish Breakfast and Earl Grey Supreme. The kettle is ready for other teas and hot chocolate.
Oh, and ...
Quote by verbal
Well, my first contribution is a piece of advice. I was complaining to my writing group about how difficult outlining and plotting a novel was. Someone in my group said this: Let the first draft be your outline. Their point, I think, was not to slow your forward motion too much. Tell yourself the story in the first draft. Learn how to tell it to the reader in the second draft. Anyway, it's freed me up quite a bit.
This works great for short stories, I think, but a novel-length work, especially one requiring a lot of world-building, seems to me to require some advanced preparation. If you want the world to be consistently developed and coherent, I don't think making it all up as you go makes sense. For instance, you can certainly make up magic spells and effects on the go, but you want the underlying magic system worked out or you end up with inconsistencies in power level or capability and sf/f readers are great at picking up on that sort of inconsistency (sf moreso than fantasy, I suppose).
Quote by redwriter
How could it be any different from what is possible on the existing Writers stuff page?
The idea would be that someone would be a "leader" and maybe post one of their drafts to critique or some other focused basis for discussion. Everyone would then commit to commenting within that week with CONSTRUCTIVE criticisms.
There could also be writing questions as the focus. Put forward an issue you're wrestling with in a story and get feedback and discussion it.
And, yes, this could be done with threads here but a more formal writing group, preferably in a forum here as you suggest, might get more activity and commitment. Most of the time, writing threads on here just sit undiscussed. We probably have more writing discussion in Inspirations than in any of the writing forums. Which is fine other than it makes it hard if you want to try to find a specific topic or discussion that was had down the road.
But if someone wants to just try doing it in a regular thread and not have it be so structured, I'd certainly join in.
So I wonder which box Canada gets? We sometimes get UK stuff and sometimes US depending on distribution rights and such. Still, I haven't seen them here so who knows?
Coffee is brewed and there's Red Rose and Irish Breakfast in the teapots. Other hot beverages can be made on demand using our kettle or urn of hot water.
Started reading Even Greater Mistakes by American s-f writer Charlie Jane Anders last night and she has a marvellous intro about writing and how she got into it (Anders was originally a journalist). The stories (at least the first three, which is what I read last night) are terrific, too. Here's the page about the book on her website.
Even Greater Mistakes — Charlie Jane Anders
Incidentally, her partner Annalee Newitz, who co-hosts a podcast with Anders, is an accomplished writer as well.
Quote by redwriter
Could be, since my Granddaughter gave me a very special book for Christmas entitled 'The Book of Jim' in which I learned many forgotten things abourt my life. I discovered that in July 1933, I spent 30 minutes as a single cell. I have absolutely no memory of that!
LOL, sounds like your granddaughter likes to start biographies right from the very beginning. Cool gift. Good on her.
Anyone else notice the thread title? 🤣 I suspect our friend Rumple_de_Writer is back. He was a mod last I recall which would let him do that and I got a friend request from him on another site.
In other news, fresh coffee is brewing and there's peach black tea and English breakfast in the teapots. Hot chocolate and other teas also available.
I think New Year's is going to be a bust again this year. Omicron is spreading like wildfire around this neck of the woods.
That looks seriously yummy. Seriously dangerous to my health, but seriously yummy. Never heard of it before but there's lots of cool stuff in other countries that never seems to make it here.
Making another pot of coffee and teapot of green tea (less caffeine since evening is here or looming for some of us).
I am assuming that this woukd be virtual, probably either a thread here or a Zoom meeting, given how scattered we are. So a place to meet is moot. As for a leader, I was thinking more of a collective with each person taking a turn at presentation. We don't really have the numbers for anything too formal here.
Following on from a thought that AaronArcher posted in Writer's Groups | Stories Space:
This is just a thread to gauge if there is interest, collect thoughts on how it might work, and so on. If there seems to be enough interest to give it a whirl, then we can move to actually doing it (based on answers to the second question below).
Questions to consider:
Do we have enough active members to make it worthwhile? I have never been in such a group, but I am betting we need at least half a dozen to eight regulars to really make it work.
How would we handle it within the current structure? There's no dedicated forum for it, so a thread(s) in Writers Resources?
What would be the format? People posting works in progress for discussion? People posting questions or problems they are dealing with and then discussing how others would approach them? Maybe one person posts a WIP or question per week, then designates who will take the next week. Other formats?
Rules? Is it open to all but we insist that people stay on topic and report people who consistently off-topic? I cannot see any other way in the current software and setup since there are no Groups on this site and no provision that I can see for a "private" forum of any kind (which is how I would do it on my site).
Are bears and apes allowed to participate? On this site, that seems almost mandatory, doesn't it? 😀
And this is now veering into subject matter that would be suited to WonderCafe2 (great site, by the way. I hear the admin is quite a cool dud...er...ape 😎). <end spam>
I am putting on some fine locally roasted coffee for those what drink it. The teapots hold Scottish Breakfast and Earl Grey Supreme. And hot chocolate is waiting to be made for that crowd. Found a new, reliable supplier for the marshmallows, by the way. Just, um, watch where you're standing relative to his feet.
Quote by DenimAngel
Candlemass ??
If you're in a church that is heavily into traditional Liturgy, the calendar is divided into seasons. The current season runs from Christmas and Epiphany to "Candlemas", which commemorates the presentation of Jesus at the temple (Luke 2:22-40).
I grew up in a liberal, mainstream Protestant church that didn't seem to bother much with the liturgical calendar but I notice that many of the local churches in that denomination do use the traditional liturgical seasons now. Maybe the calendar made a comeback or something.
Quote by verbal
My fave present of Christmas is a hard-to-find DVD of Spaulding Gray's Monster in a Box. He was a performance artist best known for Swimming to Cambodia. and I'm a big fan (he died several year ago).
Gray was amazing. I watched Swimming... and Monster... back in the VHS days.
Sara, we have my Mom's old Singer. Mrs. M doesn't use it much, just the odd repair or small sewing job. Must be 50 years old now at least.
Good afternoon. It's Boxing Day, meaning the day we have to get rid of all the boxes from Christmas Day.😜
Coffee is ready and there's pots of Earl Grey and Wakoucha (Japanese Red Tea*) for the tea lovers. Hot chocolate, with or without marshmallows, is always an option, too.
*red tea is the Japanese/Chinese term for what we Westerners call black tea
