Not what you think was said. What was said.

[greygirlbeast]

I'm looking at the news, seeing that the South has been walloped with snow and ice. People are saying it's the worst snow in Alabama and Georgia since the winter storm of '93. I was living alone in Birmingham then, on the side of Red Mountain, and I was pretty much snowed in for a week, most of it without power. Long time ago. I was twenty-nine. It was the year before I moved to Athens, Georgia, and it was also the year I made my first short-story sale. Anyway, it appears the same storm front that hit the southeast will reach us sometime on Tuesday.

Yesterday, I wrote 1,753 words on Chapter 4 of The Drowning Girl: A Memoir. And, as I mentioned yesterday, I'll be including the first chapter in Sirenia Digest #63 (February 2011).

I didn't leave the house.

Not much else to yesterday. I've started reading Shackelton's Forgotten Men: The Untold Tragedy of the Endurance Epic by Lennard Bickel (2001). We read more of Kit Whitfield's In Great Waters (2009). We watched, of all things, Guillermo del Toro's Blade II (2002), which I think made my third time (one in the theatre, now twice at home). I really wasn't in the mood for a big, stupid vampire movie, but I was too tired for anything else. On the one hand, the visual and make-up FX have aged much better than I expected. And Ron Perlman is still cool (and always will be). On the other hand, this film can stand as proof that you really do need a screenplay and actors to make a film. Explosions and martial arts and mutant vampires, that's all well and good, but dialogue helps, too.

There was some rp in Insilico, mostly a long conversation between Molly and Grendel wherein they tried valiantly to talk about "good things," but kept going back around to all the bad things. But it was good rp. It was, I daresay, sweet. I'm going to step away from IS for two or three days. There's just too much work, and it's just too taxing. Also, I leveled my blood-elf death knight to 64. She's named Shahharazad, which, of course, looks an awful lot like Shaharrazad, my Level 82 blood-elf warlock. I call one Double H and the other I call Double R.

And now, the doughnuts.

Comments

[kurtmulgrew.livejournal.com]

I got about 7 or 8 inches of snow at my house near Greenville, SC. I haven't seen so much snow since I lived in Ohio.

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

I got about 7 or 8 inches of snow at my house near Greenville, SC. I haven't seen so much snow since I lived in Ohio.

I think we got about a foot in 1993.

[magdalen77.livejournal.com]

I think this was the same storm where we had about 30 inches in north central PA. We're obviously more accustomed to snow, but we also spent around a week digging out. I was out the next day being that I was young and overly enthusiastic. Nowadays I'd enjoy being snowbound.

[cdennismoore.livejournal.com]

Dialogue never was a high point in those movies. They pretty, though.

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

I got about 7 or 8 inches of snow at my house near Greenville, SC. I haven't seen so much snow since I lived in Ohio.

The first and second one are. The third has no redeeming qualities.

[ashlyme.livejournal.com]

You're obviously a diligent researcher, and I'd like to ask: do you think a writer owes it to their story to do rigorous research, or can they get by with some good basic knowledge and "impressionistic" detail. It's a selfish question: I've read in other posts that you don't often dispense writing advice; I'm wary of treating you as Agony Aunt Beast (feel free to shoot me for that) and worse, it's a loaded question, as this relates to the Carboniferous period, and well, you know your shit...

[greygirlbeast.livejournal.com]

do you think a writer owes it to their story to do rigorous research, or can they get by with some good basic knowledge and "impressionistic" detail.

I do think a writer should write what he or she knows. Old advice. But, to what degree one knows what one writes, well, that's where things get dicey. Do I always exhaustively research my stories? Obviously not. I can't afford to (we're talking time and money). Few writers have that luxury. But I do my best. And I won't enter into a story in utter ignorance.

Agony Aunt Beast

That's kind of cute.

[ashlyme.livejournal.com]

Thank you, on both counts. I may have just blushed...