Cleaning up business

[kippurbird]

So the conference went rather nicely. It was out in the country and I saw lots of cows and horses and grape vines. We were in wine country. I managed to get some writing done, not as much as I would have liked, but still some done. I even managed to do a jigsaw puzzle in less than a day, for which I'm rather proud of. My mother was the speaker on a panel of autistic adults, where they talked about their life and jobs. It was for teachers and professionals to get an idea of the problems that adults face in the workplace. I was not invited to sit on the panel, I was just there to keep my mother company.

I won a plant though and named it Gerald. Gerald made it all the way back to Los Angeles intact up until we were getting in the car to go home and I placed it on the trunk of the car and the wind blew it over, were it was promptly smashed. Hopefully it'll be able to recover from the incident.

Eldest has to be returned to the library tomorrow, so I'll have to request it again, which I'm doing today. We only have about fourteen more chapters to go, so it's at a rather awkward place to have to return it. Especially since were so very near the climatic battle. Which, once again, has come out of nowhere. After all we spent the entire book without any threat of attack and then in the last fourth they're all "Oh Hay army!" Bah. In the mean time I may start on Q-Squared, or look at the something or another of Alagesia which has that essay by Paolini on how to write a novel. Not sure yet.

I'm also working up a proposal for the Eragon Sporkings book. I talked to the academic publisher who is looking at my Mary Sue book and they said that they may be interested in it, they'll have to see the proposal to be sure. I need a better title than "Eragon Sporkings" because that's rather "Internet Insider" and this is supposed to be an academic book. I think this is the hardest part of writing up the proposal. Trying to get across what I was trying to do, academically as opposed to just tearing the book apart chapter by chapter. It's trying to find the right words to say, "Hey this is a really interesting idea and it would make a good book". I think I'm going to try and focus on the analytical angle while talking about how the book has gotten such interesting reviews from both sides of the spectrum -really bad and really good. I may even go into the idea that this book is like a piece of fan fiction cleverly disguised, and how to avoid the mistakes that Paolini did in his writing. I'm not sure. I really hate writing proposals. It's hard to try and distill the idea into a page of text.

I'm going to have to go through the entries and rewrite some of them to get rid of the Internetness of them, make them more professional. Like Alec's comments or the references to icons and things like that. I'm not sure about the zombie horses though and the fact that Galby is Brom. It'll be an interesting process, I think, especially since I've never done anything like this before.

Comments

[andy-longwood.livejournal.com]

If your Eragon Sporkings got published, I would fork over the cash to get a copy for my school's English department.

Or maybe the Role Playing and Gaming society. Both would make good use of it.

Seriously, that would be cool and a half.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Hee! I'm sure English departments could use it for good purpose. Perhaps Children's literature departments in particular, or modern literature classes. Not sure which.

Your school has a Role Playing and Gaming society? I'm am totally jealous of this fact.

[andy-longwood.livejournal.com]

I'm its scribe. =D

Unfortunately, a bunch of the wonderful people who really made the club what it is are graduating this year, and a great deal of the new officers are drama llamas. I think it will end up being important that I do my job well enough to negate any potential he-said-she-said arguments.

But really, as long as we're still having fun and playing silly games, then the purpose of the club is met.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Ugh, I hate drama llamas. They always seem to cause more problems than they don't and you never seem to know what's going to set them off.

What sort of silly games do you play? Munchkin is a fun one.

[andy-longwood.livejournal.com]

Munchkin is AMAZING.

Right now, we're running a totally awesome game of Exalted, and a friend is trying to get a Shadowrun campaign going.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

I adore Munchkin, unfortunately I don't have anyone to play it with. Which is sad. The few times I have gotten people to play with I had the best time.

I liked Shadowrun for the few sessions that I actually played it (before getting kicked out of the gaming group by Drama Llamas). It was a very different sort of game play than the traditional D&D way of doing things, which took some getting used to, but once I got into it, I was having fun. I also had a good time playing Star Wars, which was also different, though that game crashed and burned rather quickly (again because of the Drama Llamas).

[andy-longwood.livejournal.com]

There's a Star Wars game going, but I haven't been able to play.

We're all really fortunate in our Exalted game, because the GM is about as un-drama-llama as you can get, and we all play for laughs. There are serious moments, but really, we're happiest when absurd things are happening and making us all laugh hysterically, or go "WOO! PWNZORED!" over the fairfolk. It's the non-drama-llama game.

In fact, I'm probably the biggest drama llama in that game, but my character, Ashoka, is the only one that has anything really tying him back to the non-gaming world, and so he's kind of a wet blanket when it comes to the group killing things.

. . . though I think it was pretty funny when he stopped another player's army from attacking his village by using his magical talking superpowers to make every single fighter feel REALLY GUILTY about what they'd done. =D

[sonic-sues.livejournal.com]

Oh no! Poor Gerald!

It must be so exciting that a publisher is interested in your book.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Yes, Gerald doesn't seem to be doing so well. We're probably going to plant it outside in the front yard and hope that it does better.

It's very exciting, but also nerve wrecking because they haven't gotten back to me!

[ghostgecko.livejournal.com]

Keep the zombie horses!
You could always just call it "Meat: An Academic Look at Eragon"

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

*laughs* I don't think that would work at all. For a title. Still it's funny.

[zoe-i-am.livejournal.com]

Kips, that is so awesome! Good luck with the proposal, I'm sure you'll pull it off with your usual flair! And please keep the zombie horses. They were way cool.

Hope Gerald makes it.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Hah, I hope so. It's hard putting the words correctly together.

And Gerald seems to be all right so far.

[dryaunda.livejournal.com]

I look forward to buying your book.

Incidentally, you've been friended. *hint*

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

If it gets published. Don't count the books before they're published.

[authoressarktos.livejournal.com]

Poor Gerald! I've been there and done that, I can tell you :)

If you publish your Eragon Sporkings, and it comes out in Canada, I will buy it. Which is a Big Thing, since I'm the archetype of my cheat-minded Scottish ancestors XD

[indongcho.livejournal.com]

The battle...I think the basic problem is that Paolini, like many beginning authors (including a younger me) thinks that fantasy has to be all epic and have battles in it.

Honestly, while a lot of people don't like the lace idea, I do. It's not perfect, but it was nice to see a character focusing on something like that, something so domestic. Domestic + fantasy = my OTP.