five things make a post, right?

[kaigou]

Like I ever follow that rule.

1) Applying for various things online. You want a lesson in how NOT to design a form? Apply online. You'll see every damn example possible of The Worst Way To Design A Form, aka, Utter Unusability. Ohmygawd, it seriously burnssssss ussss, it doess.

2) Anyway, applying online, and it's common now to include a link to social profile. FB, Linkedin, whatever. Fine. Not so keen on the forms that not only want you to attach resume and cover letter... but also a head shot? I'm not applying to be a goddamn runway model here. But the phrasing sure makes it sound like if I don't include it, I'm gonna get penalized. (And even if they don't mean to penalize, I bet there's an unconscious penalty all the same.)

3) Job description that says, "we have a great sense of humor, but don't work here if you're easily offended". I'm not easily offended, I just find racism, sexism, and homophobia offensive. If you're lampshading the potential for a new hire to be offended, you've got bigger problems than whether I know all the languages you want. Next!

4) Watching the 2011 Journey to the West, despite the mediocre subtitles that are timed to PAL and require almost constant tweaking with VLC's subtitle synchronizer. Whew, no wonder CP was a little taken aback the first time we watched Saiyuki.

5) There is a certain irony that I'm watching JttW on my right-hand screen, and for the entirety of episode 9, the left-hand screen had a shot of Sanzo. I'd just started ep10, and the wallpaper changed... to Son Goku.

6) If Hakkai in Saiyuki made people froth at the mouth for being so different in the English dub, because he's just not like that, whew. The difference between Engdub-Hakkai and Japdub-Hakkai is nothing compared to the difference between Sanzo and Sanzang. The more I watch, the more I'm like a) I think I liked Sanzo better, and b) so that's why CP went from taken aback to jaw-dropping when the gun came out.

7) Not that I mind Sanzang. He is kind of growing on me, but I did enjoy the first six or seven episodes the most, when it was All About Monkey.

8) I can't help but feel -- no idea why, just do -- that it's almost like Monkey's a completely different story that somehow got shoehorned into the historical story of Tripitaka. And then the storytellers had to figure out how to make it work. Just a strange kind of tension. Dunno.

9) Still a little in shock that I finished two books in three months. Maybe in future the secret is to spend six months ahead of time daydreaming the entire story from start to finish. I didn't have the "and then something happens" lurch at the high point this time, but knew exactly where the story was going and just had to write it. Every story before this, I've left that third-quarter "and then something happens" and then I get there and have no idea how to proceed (or have a glaring plothole that can't be duct-taped shut for love or money).

10) I wrote a small plugin for forms. Yay me! And then Github crashed, which has given me plenty of time to rethink the value of posting my small plugin. Ah, here comes the second-guessing.

11) I can't decide whether I should edit book 1 & book 2 and then start book 3, or do book 3 and then go back and edit all three in a streak. Not to mention I haven't even a clue what kind of logline to do for each, and haven't even tried to write teasers.

12) I have realized that I don't care whether or not there's a market for these three stories. Maybe no one wants to read a fantasy about a young transgender character making hir way through the world, finding love, conquering evil, and overcoming hardship to become happy. It's possible there's just not a market for that, but I tried to pay attention to the market on everything I'd written before now, and that got me nowhere. Screw it. I'll just write what I want, and when I'm done, I'll move on. I'm not quitting my day job for this, after all.

[ps: I look folks off the story-filter if they hadn't replied in a while, rather than keep spamming, especially those of you who I know are really swamped right now. I've exported to one master doc that I can output as pdf. PM me if you want it.]

Comments

[sharibet]

> I can't decide whether I should edit book 1 & book 2 and then start book 3, or do book 3 and then go back and edit all three in a streak. Not to mention I haven't even a clue what kind of logline to do for each, and haven't even tried to write teasers.

Your writing mileage will vary, of course, but if you're not working under a publishing deadline, I'd recommend finishing the first drafts of all three books in your trilogy, and then going back to do edits and rewrites.

From personal experience, it's too easy to get bogged down in trying to perfect Book 1, meanwhile allowing the writing momentum for Book 3 to dissipate.

Plus, once you get to the end of book 3, you'll have the complete fabric of your story, and that will make the big rewrites easier.

As for the loglines and teaser--those are always the most difficult of writing the book. How the hell are you supposed to be able to distill the essence of your story in a catchy, pithy sentence or two, when you've just spent months immersed in the details?

I have a formula that I use to hammer out the first drafts of my blurbs, and which may prove useful to you, as well: Who is the main character? What does s|he want? And why can't s|he have it?

Once you jot down the Character, the Goal/Motivation, and the Conflict, the blurbs become easier to write.

It also helps to ask your beta readers what they think the book[s] are about. Either you'll discover that you didn't communicate what you intended to communicate, or you'll get a blurb. (And sometimes, you'll get both. *g*)

[kaigou]

Heh, distilling anything that's 120K words into 10 words is hard. (I have trouble doing it even with documentation I've done for work, which has sometimes topped the 700-pages range.) Worse still, I had a basic teaser idea working off the original premise... and then ended up deciding to break what would've been the first story into two. Now I have a story with a clear conflict -- that doesn't actually get resolved (and kinds of ends on a mild cliff-hanger, at that) -- and a second story where the conflict's the same if more elaborate, but it does get resolved.

Gotta think on that, but thanks for the tip about asking the beta readers. Hadn't thought of that -- and I think you're right. Better to take the momentum and move ahead, and edit later from start to finish, as well. Plus, easier to double-check for various incontinuity then, too. Ugh, so many.

Back from grocery store, and you shall be my temporary place-saver since this popped into my head:

Kini has never even seen a mountain-god until Tsiu takes shelter at her village's mountain shrine; befriending Tsiu sets her on an adventure beyond every dream. Nakayari is tasked to discover Tsiu's true nature, but for Nakayari and his lord, Tsiu becomes the doorway to discovering lands far beyond their own shores, ones long thought mythical. Tsiu might be human, or more than human, but he's also lost, alone, injured, and with a number of mysterious forces tracking him. Kini and Nakayari ...something something... if they survive.

Damn it, I had the perfect phrase in my head too, except I was driving. Now I'm stuck with 'something something'. Gyuuuuuh.

[law_nerd]

1) Of course we don't make our application forms *useable* that might encourage more people to apply – if we went too far, we might even end up with applicants who have disabilities! </cynicism>

2) When I first started looking for work all the employment adviser types went out of their way to make it clear that it was no longer expected for applicants to attach a photograph (attach with a paperclip, it was a long time ago) and that it was considered contrary to the Human Rights Code for employers to ask for one. I wonder what the Ontario Human Rights Commission is saying these days... kinda hope they've not abandoned their stance just because attaching photos happens with data files rather than requiring a visit to a photobooth.

8) I'd always assumed it was a matter of grabbing popular folklore and using it as a hook for the sermon part. Then again, when I first ran in to the story (in the Arthur Whaley translation) I was young enough that I read it much like I read the Once and Future King: "What? You mean some people actually continue reading after the fun bit is over! Why?" Sun Wukong's story, like Wart's story, was the bit I read –and re-read– all the rest was adult-boring-stuff. (And, fwiw, the nice people at wikipedia seem to agree that the Monkey story pre-dated the Tripitaka one...)

11) Seconding the suggestion that you finish book 3 before starting editing... and not merely 'cause I'm looking forward to it. It is much easier to figure out continuity and logic once you're sure that narrative necessity isn't going to interfere and demand that distances change, or people morph character to fit what they'll need to do.

12) I'm awfully glad you're not considering marketability ... if you were the whole thing would be set in California, Tsui would be a vampire from somewhere exotic like Albany, or Anchorage, and I'd not be reading it.

[kaigou]

I'm pretty sure that technically no one can ask for your picture. I'm pretty sure that back even when it was common, it wasn't like an employer could turn you down solely because you hadn't included a picture (or stated your marital status, or whether you had kids or lived in a trailer park). But I'm sure it was a reason for being turned down all the same, y'know, the same way women just "happen" to get turned down for certain positions that (male) employers think should be "a man's" work. Which meant when I saw the note about including a picture "so they could get a sense of who I am" (what? like you wouldn't at the interview?), I pretty much wrote off that job right there, because no way in hell will I play that game.

Speaking of #11, did you want me to send you the pdfs? Might be easier than trying to track the chapters. Hrm, I don't know if I have your email address. Ugh. Memory leak. Email me at kaigou at dreamwidth, and I'll send you back the pdfs.

as for #12, as if all the other parts (the non-modern, actually quite traditional 'arranged marriage' kind of romance, with multiple people no less and not even a hint of a threesome! plus the non-European setting) weren't enough, I'm pretty sure I knocked myself out of the fantasy market inside the third scene, when I had Tsiu fuss about not having brought a gun with him. There does seem to be a perception that epic fantasy must stop with the beginning of the Renaissance, and guns are just so not "fantasy". Which ignores that China had gunpowder and portable cannon (a kind of shouldered small gun, if you tilt your head and squint) while Europe was still licking its hind legs during the dark ages. Then again, China was also busy building water clocks and the longest canal in the world, while Europe was playing in the dirt. So that whole "fantasy covers about 500BCE to 1400CE" annoys me, since it's not like Europe's version of those millennia are the only version that existed. Sheesh.

[ratoncito]

I might like that PDF, but just how massive is it?

[kaigou]

both books zipped together comes to 3.4MB... and no idea if that's big or small. uhhhhhhh. long day!

[miffy_sees]

lol, are you applying to places like kixeye? :P

[kaigou]

ahahahah.... NO. They're not local to me but one of their ilk is, and don't even get me started on my burning lack of interest in the business models of social gaming. Nope, it was just one of the usual run-of-the-mill agile development studios that insists it's all bleeding-edge, latest-and-greatest, so-hip-it-hurts crap.

[(Anonymous)]

Just found this today. Hello!

I can assure you there *is* a market for the book you described. I'd buy the fuck out of that. I think a lot of trans folk would, as well.

Can't get OpenID to function at work, so here's what passes for my ID: @TroubleEntendre

[kaigou]

Right now I've not edited the first two stories/books, so there's a lot of discontinuity (things like names, or cultural details, or sub-plots) where I started with one way of presenting/naming and then came up with something better... It'd probably come across like, hey, that's not what you called it in the first part! I decided to leave off editing the entire series until after I'd finished the third story, just so I can go back and do continuity across the board (and drop in a bit more foreshadowing where it's needed). When that's all done, though, the next step is definitely to find willing readers -- not necessarily for the technical stuff (grammar, spelling, etc), but to help me suss out whether the emotions/responses fit my intentions. After all, my intentions mean jack if what's on the page upsets someone or doesn't get something right.

Incidentally, two things inspired the story. One was trying to find transgender stories where the character isn't faux-trans (like the old-as-time story of the girl who dresses as a boy because she can't get an education otherwise, but then is very happy to go back to being a girl at the end). I call that faux-trans because there's rarely any dysphoria; only once or twice have I ever seen the character express uncertainty, envy, or any reaction at all to the conflict between the role-played and the internal reality. Which means those stories read like she's always a girl, just in different clothes, and that's missing so much of what my trans* friends tell me they grapple with.

The stories I found that didn't fit the faux-trains mold (of which there are also very few, sadly) seemed to all end up with either the main character unhappy and/or anything that passed for a love-interest ending up dead. It was like the worst renditions of that horrible trope of "you can have a gay character, but he'd better be miserable and/or suffer a miserable ending". All I could think was, if I were trans*, I'd be hating that so hard. Hell, I'm not trans* and I still hate that with the passion of a thousand burning baby suns. (There are more trans* characters showing up as side-characters in fantasy these days; like lgb or PoC side-characters, they're sometimes allowed to break this rule -- but they can't break those rules AND be the main character. That annoys me to a supreme degree.)

Basically, I thought of if I had a kid who was trans*, what I'd want that kid to be able to read, to see someone like hir on the page. Not an exceptional character or even unique (in the sense of being the only one in the story) but one who gets to make mistakes, get hurt, get stronger, be part of a larger community (including other trans* and everyone else), fall in love (and be fallen in love with!), beat the bad guys, kick some ass, out-think the opponents, win the day and save the world.

I'm pretty sure that I've gotten things wrong, but for that hypothetical kid's sake, I'll be seeking readers to call me out and help me fix those mistakes. But first I gotta finish the 3rd story and do something about all those discontinuities. Y'know, the fun part -- editing!