Caitlín R. Kiernan (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
greygirlbeast) wrote2011-09-21 01:25 pm
greygirlbeast) wrote2011-09-21 01:25 pm
Entry tags:
TDG CEM Day 7
In Rhode Island, the meteorologists employ a twenty-sided die. They roll it each morning, once for each of the ten days to come. On each side is printed something like, "Rain" or "Snow" or "Partly Cloudy." Or "Godzilla." And then they tell us what the die said. Ergo, they are almost always wrong. Today is a good example. Mostly sunny out there, and it was supposed to be rainy. And you people call yourself scientists!
Yesterday, we actually managed to make it through Chapter 8, then "Werewolf Smile," and then chapters 9 and 10 (pp. 181-251*). To THE END. Which isn't really THE END of The Drowning Girl. Because after THE END, you get "Back Pages," which we didn't read through yesterday.
So, that's today. The very last bit, and then adding some new material to the "Back Pages," and then adding a few more lines here and there, and little bits of this and that, before it goes back to NYC, probably tomorrow.
Oh, and the signature pages for the Arthur Machen collection just arrived. Oh, you know what? I'll explain about that tomorrow.
Have you ordered your copy of Two Worlds and In Between? No? Then get to it, slacker. It'll be showing up any day now, for them what pre-ordered.
And speaking of Bad English, this morning, I dropped by Facebook. What fresh hell, right? Something big stepped on it last night. But that's not my point. Even though I'd previously switched off the "chat" option, someone IMed me (I suppose that's what we call it), and began to chatter in this or that version of text or l33t or whatever, something that might once have born some vague resemblance to actual English. I mocked him. He got very, very angry. And so I mocked him some more. And, oh, how his anger grew. Anger and righteous indignation. So, I poked some more. Finally, he crawled away to sulk. Hey, at least it was amusing. For me, I mean.
Seriously, people. I am an author. I am an author who spends her days worrying over the placement of nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, and what have you. I fret over subject and predicate. I do my painstaking best with punctuation and spelling (which would be easier if TPTB wouldn't keep changing the rules, seemingly at random). And, then, "you" begin speaking to me in some incoherent mess that (say it again) might once have been distantly related to the English language, and you think I'm not going to be annoyed? Seriously? If your answer is "Yes, I wouldn't expect you to get angry," then all I can say is "Fuck off." I agreed to write books. I never agreed to play nice. Me and "patience with bullshit" have, recently, forever parted ways. "Irreconcilable differences," that's what the judge said.
And I suppose that's all for now. I suppose there will be more tomorrow.
Irreconcilable,
Aunt Beast
*Note that these are pages as they will appear, more or less, in the actual book. This is the first time ever a CEM has been sent to me after being "typeset" (i.e., font changed, thereby playing merry havoc with all thoughts of formatting).
Yesterday, we actually managed to make it through Chapter 8, then "Werewolf Smile," and then chapters 9 and 10 (pp. 181-251*). To THE END. Which isn't really THE END of The Drowning Girl. Because after THE END, you get "Back Pages," which we didn't read through yesterday.
So, that's today. The very last bit, and then adding some new material to the "Back Pages," and then adding a few more lines here and there, and little bits of this and that, before it goes back to NYC, probably tomorrow.
Oh, and the signature pages for the Arthur Machen collection just arrived. Oh, you know what? I'll explain about that tomorrow.
Have you ordered your copy of Two Worlds and In Between? No? Then get to it, slacker. It'll be showing up any day now, for them what pre-ordered.
And speaking of Bad English, this morning, I dropped by Facebook. What fresh hell, right? Something big stepped on it last night. But that's not my point. Even though I'd previously switched off the "chat" option, someone IMed me (I suppose that's what we call it), and began to chatter in this or that version of text or l33t or whatever, something that might once have born some vague resemblance to actual English. I mocked him. He got very, very angry. And so I mocked him some more. And, oh, how his anger grew. Anger and righteous indignation. So, I poked some more. Finally, he crawled away to sulk. Hey, at least it was amusing. For me, I mean.
Seriously, people. I am an author. I am an author who spends her days worrying over the placement of nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, and what have you. I fret over subject and predicate. I do my painstaking best with punctuation and spelling (which would be easier if TPTB wouldn't keep changing the rules, seemingly at random). And, then, "you" begin speaking to me in some incoherent mess that (say it again) might once have been distantly related to the English language, and you think I'm not going to be annoyed? Seriously? If your answer is "Yes, I wouldn't expect you to get angry," then all I can say is "Fuck off." I agreed to write books. I never agreed to play nice. Me and "patience with bullshit" have, recently, forever parted ways. "Irreconcilable differences," that's what the judge said.
And I suppose that's all for now. I suppose there will be more tomorrow.
Irreconcilable,
Aunt Beast
*Note that these are pages as they will appear, more or less, in the actual book. This is the first time ever a CEM has been sent to me after being "typeset" (i.e., font changed, thereby playing merry havoc with all thoughts of formatting).
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Besides, LJ just feels like home.
Good energies again to get through the last of it.
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And yet, we have Amazon and Facebook, our bipartite godhead, ruling over the 21st century.
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It's made, like, a billion dollars.
"Do you pwn yr noob at ME, sir?"
"No, I do not pwn my noob at you, sir. But I DO pwn my noob, sir!"
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"Do you pwn yr noob at ME, sir?"
Fuck me twice on Sundays.
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Alas, there is not log. It was an IM thingy of some sort, and when I hit X, bless'dly, it went bye-bye.
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Wait! I Just found it!
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I'd never IM you - it's piss-poor bad taste. Plus, I love the language too much (my affair with alliteration and semi-colons aside) to cripple it with motherfucking textspeak. (Forgive my bile,I know you don't give a shit about swearing. Just been told how to write by two vanity-press fuckwits.)
A shame about REM. Didn't hear enough to class them as a favourite band, but the world's poorer for their splitting.
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A shame about REM.
Well, it was their decision to make, and when an artist/s decides it's time to stop, usually he, she, or they are right.
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by going into the Account setting, clicking on Language, and choosing English (UK). Not sure who figured this out, but I am grateful to them.Well, no, now it's all over all languages, like fast-growing mold. Nevermind...no subject
Never minding.
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weather guessers, out here in Oregon, we go with Rain or No Rain, so they only have a 50/50 chance of being right.
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And as to IM/1337/chat speak... I'm the type that spells out everything correctly, 100% of the time. And when people I associate with do not, I tend to not associate with them for long. Proper grammar and spelling belong everywhere, not just in novels.
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And as to IM/1337/chat speak... I'm the type that spells out everything correctly, 100% of the time. And when people I associate with do not, I tend to not associate with them for long. Proper grammar and spelling belong everywhere, not just in novels.
We are fighting a losing battle.
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It may be that it offends me more than it should because I have witnessed a steep decline in educational standards over the last decade and a half, to the point where the children misspell basic words like "fuck" on the toilet walls at the universities, and try to justify using this 'net speak to write their assignments.
I mean, honestly. I don't care how clever your thesis is, if it reads like the scratchings of a five-year-old mental patient smearing poo on the walls, then take it away.
It might bother me less if I went to uni straight out of high-school, when school-leavers could still actually read. Or perhaps it doesn't bother me enough.
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it's another entirely to wilfully mangle the mother tongue for the sake of image. The lowest-common-denominator, anti-intellectualism of it offends me.
They glare at us with the blank eyes of bovines and tell us we just don't get it, n00bz.
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Thirty plus years ago when I was her age, I read all the time, Burroughs, Bradbury, Howard, you're familiar with the list. If it seems I've wandered, I apologize. My point is if you read books you may actually acquire a concern for the image others have of you when you communicate via the written word. Merely my opinion.
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Merely my opinion.
Never do this. State your opinion, which is obviously such. Do not qualify, literally, what you've said as your opinion. Put force behind your words.
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My Bullshit Tolerance Level has been non-existent for years. Welcome to the Club.
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On a brighter note - I preordered the book! I've had to go back to Australia for a funeral, and it's nice to know there will be a present waiting for me back in England upon my return.
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Oh my. That is horrible! My heart breaks.
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"Wow! Your doing really well!".
"Wow! That's really not well!"
Also, technically, she used "really" incorrectly.