I learned something about Leap Day/Year today.
I always thought Leap Year was every four years. It's not. It's every four years...
Except for years ending in '00, which ordinarily are not leap years.
Except for years ending in '00 but beginning with a multiple of 4 (16, 20, 24, etc.), which are leap years.
This means that 2000 was a leap year, but 2100 will not be. Which is fine. Except that, unless there are remarkable advancements in the world of medicine in the coming years, 2000 was the only year ending in '00 in my lifetime. I will never witness an '00 year that is not a leap year.
I'm a little disappointed about this. I feel like I missed out.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Dude, Where's My Icon?
Last week I cleared my browser cookies , and in the process I apparently cleared something else: my blog's icon.
Since then I've been patient. This happened to me once before and, within a few days my icon had returned without any heavy lifting on my part. But it's been about a week now and nothing's changed.
I've tried changing deleting my icon and re-adding it to my blog, without success. I don't want to spend a lot of time trying to figure this out.
If anyone has an ideas, let me know. Because this is annoying.
Since then I've been patient. This happened to me once before and, within a few days my icon had returned without any heavy lifting on my part. But it's been about a week now and nothing's changed.
I've tried changing deleting my icon and re-adding it to my blog, without success. I don't want to spend a lot of time trying to figure this out.
If anyone has an ideas, let me know. Because this is annoying.
Monday, February 27, 2012
On Being a Fictional Misogynist
Creating female characters has always been one of my biggest weaknesses as a writer.
I don't fully understand why this is. My best guess is that it's because I'm not female and so this creates a mystification process, where I create some version of my female ideal and then I try to recreate this on paper and it comes out cardboardish. I've been told at one time or another that a female character I created was too male-fantasy, too grotesque, too shrill, too quiet, too agreeable, too bitchy. And at one time or another these have been legitimate gripes.
I try to combat this problem. I'm in several writers groups and, in doing the math in my head, a quick census reveals that 80% of the people in these collective groups are female, which is probably what I need. And I do feel like it's helped. I'm writing a novel that revolves around a fictitious football team, and so most of the characters are male, but there are a few key female characters. I want to get this right. There have been times in the past when my fellow writers have saved my female characters from veering into bad stereotypes.
However, I'm at a point where I'm struggling with my female characters again. So for my writers group Sunday, I submitted a novel excerpt that was pretty rough because, among other things, my major female character is poorly conceived in it. It got the response I expected, and some suggestions as to how to make her more realistic as a character.
The only problem was that A.J. O'Connell was the most vociferous about the issues with my female character.
That in itself isn't a problem. A.J. is
1) a talented writer (if you haven't read her novella Beware the Hawk yet you need to do so).
2) female
3) a friend
4) generous in her time and ability to help
But here was the problem: she, too, submitted an excerpt for our group too. And on Saturday night, at the same time that she was reading my excerpt and being less-than-enthused with my female character, I was reading her story and finding that I really disliked the male character in it, to the point where I found him a little offensive. For many of the same reasons she disliked my female character. I felt like this character devolved into many of the bad male stereotypes -- he was nameless, he sat around and watched shoot-'em-up movies or played with guns, he seemed to only be in the story when the protagonist needed to converse with someone in between scenes, and then he spoke in grunts and monosyllables or in a way that demonstrated he wasn't paying attention.
So I was pissed. Not because I felt like A.J. was wrong about my female character -- she was spot-on. I got pissed because A.J. was spot-on while, in my opinion, doing the same thing she accused me of doing.
It's like this: if you tell me you're gonna pick me up at 8 and when you arrive I still need to shower and shave and brush my teeth, you'd be pissed at me for holding you up, and rightfully so. I'd apologize and try not to do that again. But then, if it's my turn to pick you up and you tell me, "Hang tight, I'm jumping in the shower now," I'm gonna be Pissed + 1 at you for doing the exact same thing.
And because I was one of the first to be workshopped and she was one of the last, when it was A.J.'s turn I was loaded for bear.
So I reacted. Badly. I whacked my hand on the table and said her character was a meathead and that I was offended by him. We're all in these groups, not to be carried across the room and told how great we are, but to become better writers. Yet I feel like you can offer writing advice without being a dick. And for a couple of minutes, I crossed the line. I felt bad for the rest of the meeting.
After the meeting ended and we walked to our cars, I was worried that brawl would spill out into the street. But A.J. and I hugged it out and we were fine, which was a huge relief to me. I wouldn't want to lose a friend over this.
Everything worked out in the end. We both have a better understanding of what not to do. We both got a blog out of this: (hers is here). We challenged ourselves to work on gender-based writing exercises. This isn't really the way I envisioned it happening, but maybe a few minutes of accusations of misandry and misogyny will help make us better writers.
I don't fully understand why this is. My best guess is that it's because I'm not female and so this creates a mystification process, where I create some version of my female ideal and then I try to recreate this on paper and it comes out cardboardish. I've been told at one time or another that a female character I created was too male-fantasy, too grotesque, too shrill, too quiet, too agreeable, too bitchy. And at one time or another these have been legitimate gripes.
I try to combat this problem. I'm in several writers groups and, in doing the math in my head, a quick census reveals that 80% of the people in these collective groups are female, which is probably what I need. And I do feel like it's helped. I'm writing a novel that revolves around a fictitious football team, and so most of the characters are male, but there are a few key female characters. I want to get this right. There have been times in the past when my fellow writers have saved my female characters from veering into bad stereotypes.
However, I'm at a point where I'm struggling with my female characters again. So for my writers group Sunday, I submitted a novel excerpt that was pretty rough because, among other things, my major female character is poorly conceived in it. It got the response I expected, and some suggestions as to how to make her more realistic as a character.
The only problem was that A.J. O'Connell was the most vociferous about the issues with my female character.
That in itself isn't a problem. A.J. is
1) a talented writer (if you haven't read her novella Beware the Hawk yet you need to do so).
2) female
3) a friend
4) generous in her time and ability to help
But here was the problem: she, too, submitted an excerpt for our group too. And on Saturday night, at the same time that she was reading my excerpt and being less-than-enthused with my female character, I was reading her story and finding that I really disliked the male character in it, to the point where I found him a little offensive. For many of the same reasons she disliked my female character. I felt like this character devolved into many of the bad male stereotypes -- he was nameless, he sat around and watched shoot-'em-up movies or played with guns, he seemed to only be in the story when the protagonist needed to converse with someone in between scenes, and then he spoke in grunts and monosyllables or in a way that demonstrated he wasn't paying attention.
So I was pissed. Not because I felt like A.J. was wrong about my female character -- she was spot-on. I got pissed because A.J. was spot-on while, in my opinion, doing the same thing she accused me of doing.
It's like this: if you tell me you're gonna pick me up at 8 and when you arrive I still need to shower and shave and brush my teeth, you'd be pissed at me for holding you up, and rightfully so. I'd apologize and try not to do that again. But then, if it's my turn to pick you up and you tell me, "Hang tight, I'm jumping in the shower now," I'm gonna be Pissed + 1 at you for doing the exact same thing.
And because I was one of the first to be workshopped and she was one of the last, when it was A.J.'s turn I was loaded for bear.
So I reacted. Badly. I whacked my hand on the table and said her character was a meathead and that I was offended by him. We're all in these groups, not to be carried across the room and told how great we are, but to become better writers. Yet I feel like you can offer writing advice without being a dick. And for a couple of minutes, I crossed the line. I felt bad for the rest of the meeting.
After the meeting ended and we walked to our cars, I was worried that brawl would spill out into the street. But A.J. and I hugged it out and we were fine, which was a huge relief to me. I wouldn't want to lose a friend over this.
Everything worked out in the end. We both have a better understanding of what not to do. We both got a blog out of this: (hers is here). We challenged ourselves to work on gender-based writing exercises. This isn't really the way I envisioned it happening, but maybe a few minutes of accusations of misandry and misogyny will help make us better writers.
Will Be Back Shortly
I had a crazybusy weekend. Sorry I haven't posted in awhile. A new blog (a real new blog, not just a "letting you know one's coming" blog) will be forthcoming later tonight. It has to do with some of the business of this past weekend.
Stay tuned.
Stay tuned.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Another Classmate Gets Published
I went online yesterday and ordered The Whipping Club, another book published by one of my Fairfield MFA classmates, Deb Henry. Congrats to Deb.
This comes off the heels of some of my other former classmates getting published. This, however, is the first time something I actually workshopped in the program has been published. I look forward to reading again and seeing how the novel has evolved over time.
In fact, I was in five (count 'em, five) workshops with Deb in my time on the island. We referred to each other as our fictitious spouses because of this. We went through a fictitious divorce one residency when we were not in any workshops together.
We try to stay on good terms for our fictitious kids, though.
This comes off the heels of some of my other former classmates getting published. This, however, is the first time something I actually workshopped in the program has been published. I look forward to reading again and seeing how the novel has evolved over time.
In fact, I was in five (count 'em, five) workshops with Deb in my time on the island. We referred to each other as our fictitious spouses because of this. We went through a fictitious divorce one residency when we were not in any workshops together.
We try to stay on good terms for our fictitious kids, though.
Deleting History
As someone who has a functional knowledge of computers but is hardly a techie, I always get nervous when things go wrong. And I've been trying to write a blog, but every time I log onto my site, I get a perpetual loading loop and I can't type anything into the text of my blog.
A few minutes ago I realized it's been doing this for 12 hours now and this was becoming a big problem. In my last blog, I complained about how mundane life has been lately. No good deed goes unpunished. So I decided to think about what could be wrong. Usually, for me, this involves shutting the laptop down, restarting it and hoping for the best.
However, today I thought to myself, "I haven't deleted my browser history in awhile, so maybe I should give that a try." I have no idea what the correlation would be, except for that things seem to load quicker when my history is cleared. So I tried it.
Here is the end result -- a blog. Once again, I've somehow managed to survive cyberspace hell.
A few minutes ago I realized it's been doing this for 12 hours now and this was becoming a big problem. In my last blog, I complained about how mundane life has been lately. No good deed goes unpunished. So I decided to think about what could be wrong. Usually, for me, this involves shutting the laptop down, restarting it and hoping for the best.
However, today I thought to myself, "I haven't deleted my browser history in awhile, so maybe I should give that a try." I have no idea what the correlation would be, except for that things seem to load quicker when my history is cleared. So I tried it.
Here is the end result -- a blog. Once again, I've somehow managed to survive cyberspace hell.
Sunday, February 19, 2012
On the Cure To Boredom
Last week I had a really boring week.
It's not that nothing happened. I accomplished some things. Just nothing of major significance.
The most interesting things that happened:
* I was in the car on my way to some errands, and my friend Rebecca called my cell.
"Look to your right," she said.
I did, and she was in the lane next to me, waving.
* I saw a bug on my living room wall, and I grabbed a shoe to kill it. And then I realized it was not a bug but a nail in the wall.
I'm not sure what to make of this, but it worries me. Usually I'm a magnet of weird-dom, whether it's people taking the wrong carriage at Market Basket or just being general dicks.
Hopefully the cycle will be reversed soon.
It's not that nothing happened. I accomplished some things. Just nothing of major significance.
The most interesting things that happened:
* I was in the car on my way to some errands, and my friend Rebecca called my cell.
"Look to your right," she said.
I did, and she was in the lane next to me, waving.
* I saw a bug on my living room wall, and I grabbed a shoe to kill it. And then I realized it was not a bug but a nail in the wall.
I'm not sure what to make of this, but it worries me. Usually I'm a magnet of weird-dom, whether it's people taking the wrong carriage at Market Basket or just being general dicks.
Hopefully the cycle will be reversed soon.
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