Katzaniel

Two words with the same meaning can be confusing and for that reason alone I would switch, if switching weren't just going to confuse everyone anyway. I know several people who know what Sapphic (or by extension Sapphite) means, but in most conversations I would have to stop and explain myself. Easier to stop and say "and I mean the country" when talking to people of the lesser-used (by me and mine, anyway) meaning. Easier isn't always better, but I guess it comes back to the fact that nobody really thinks all or even most Lesbians are lesbians. It isn't an insult, it isn't even an insinuation of any sort. The real problem is that the country isn't very well known, and that it causes confusion for the people from there - but getting everybody everywhere to change their terminology now just isn't going to happen, and as such I'm not sure that there's any point in a few people doing it.

Just because you didn't think of it first doesn't mean it's not something you do well.

Let me know if anything in my description of the "dorm" goes against your vision of it. I might have made it too much - or too little - like a cell in a prison, but I can change that if need be.

Loretta watched Bruce go by, noting the change in his step. "A strange one," she muttered to herself, but then something moved in the corner of her eye. She turned to find it, but saw nothing. "Now what was I doing?" She looked through the bars in her cell and saw Bruce just turning a corner at the far end of the hall. "Who was that?" she wondered aloud, screwing up her eyebrows in apparent consternation. Then she whirled around, looking at the bare space behind her. A cot. A toilet and sink she could just see behind their curtain. A desk with a partially done puzzle was the most interesting thing in the small space. "Where... where am I?" she murmured, taking a step toward the desk. "I don't remember... being... oooh." Loretta grabbed one of the puzzle pieces and deftly fitted it with another piece. Then without turning or looking anywhere else, she slipped into the small wooden chair and immersed herself in the puzzle.

I don't usually understand your poems, but you are a master of making words flow. And English isn't an easy language to do that in.

Very nice. I'm impressed how the voice changes from other stories of yours I've read: the long sentences, more than the speech and wording changes, made the mood for me. I was a little confused by the third-last paragraph, but I'm not sure why. Once I figured it out it makes perfect sense and I can de-understand it. Anyway, I liked it.

I've been considering taking Barbara, but I've suddenly got a better idea. Since I only really come on here during lunch hours any more (evenings have gotten pretty full), and I don't feel fully confident that I'll have time to catch up *and* post when I do... I'll play Ms. Loretta Sorensen, of the famously short memory. (Heh... so I can post occasionally without reading back more than a few posts!) Most of you may know her, but she doesn't remember if she knows you. Or what she ate for breakfast. Or possibly the question you just asked her. Well, either that or she's a very good actor with some secret reason for pretending to be like this. So... I'll try to stay caught up, but hopefully if I play this right, you won't know whether I succeed or not. Loretta should act about the same either way.

I'd love to be in. I don't know if I'll keep up even the slow schedule that you're suggesting, but I'll try.

Well! I'm gonna have to start using Skype and MSN and stuff again. Sometime. I'm kind of afraid of all the people who will jump me as soon as I log in after however many years away.

Very nice. When I thought it was going to end after three verses, it seemed too short, but the repetition on the third verse works well. The words are nicely written and the music compliments it very well. I did think there were a couple of pauses that seemed odd, perhaps only because "popular music" is different? Different certainly does not mean bad, but I was kind of expecting to hear the word "flood" get more emphasis, or last longer or something. In the next line, the same thing with "the blood", you don't put much emphasis on "the" and it makes it seem kind of weird to me. Perhaps I am only echoing what Tanny said about "hesitant in the beginning" because there's not much else for a while. Perhaps "you" in the "you steal my secret wish" line. Perhaps. In the last verse, I don't know how to describe it, but the bit around "... nothing/Nothing ..." seemed a tad off to me as well. I don't know if I was expecting hear more of a pause, or less of one, or what. Anyway, I'm about the farthest you can get from an expert on this sort of stuff, so I figured I'd tell you what I'm hearing and let you decide if there's any worth in it. Overall, I am very impressed, and hope you continue with this.

Oh! Oh! I will do that then! (Not tonight I fear, but next time I have some time).

Hey, I'm hungry to provide some in-depth feedback for somebody but I'm not sure which stories people are currently desiring it for. Some random clicking in the Assembly Room showed me some short pieces that would be hard to give really meaty criticism for and some longer ones that I don't want to spend the time to read and criticize unless I know in advance that the feedback would be useful/desired. Please post here if you have either a story that you're either looking to improve, or something that you think you can learn from feedback on it whether you're planning on going back to that specific story or not. Make sure it's something that you're not too sensitive about as I plan to dish out the bad as well as the good. If it's very long, expect me to take longer to get back to you. Also if there's a big clamouring of people signing up here... Anyway, please give me a link to a specific story or portion of a story and I'll do my best. Also please keep in mind that I have nothing to qualify me as being a better writer than anybody else here, but I am a big believer that if you're writing for readers, there shouldn't really need to be any qualifications to know if you liked it or not and why. Thanks!

Wonderful rhyming and great rhythm - but I must say, as a fellow Canadian I'm a bit tired of the subject matter (not as a subject, mind you, but as matter ) Ah well, at least it's not very cold this year so far, mostly. And I *do* appreciate the snow a bit - the one year we had Christmas more or less without it was super strange and I wouldn't want that again. But it would be nicer if it waited until mid-November and was gone by March!

It's not clear from your reply whether you realize that I meant the Myst books based off of the computer game. The games were awesome too, but in a completely different way. So yeah, just to be sure that you know there are books, too...

Well, you seem to like a lot of the same stuff as me (Brooks, Pratchett, Salvatore, Eddings, Jordan), so I'll suggest a few of my favourites to you: The Myst series by Rand and Robyn Miller, starting with either the Book of Atrus or the Book of Ti'ana and moving on to the Book of D'Ni. (The second one I mentioned happens first chronologically and I think would have been more enjoyable to have read first, though I can't say for sure as I read it the other way). These deal with societies as well as people and how they interact, and become very... just very epic before they're through. The Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay, starting with The Summer Tree and moving onward. The characters in this one are extremely realistic despite the fantasy setting into which they are thrown. They catch at your heart as they all have their own problems to work out while they figure out the bigger problems of, say, beasts running at you with slavering jaws, or a rain of arrows to your direction. After reading these I became more or less hooked on Guy Gavriel Kay - he and Orson Scott Card are my favourite authors of all time. Speaking of Orson Scott Card. I'm sure you've heard of Ender's Game, even if you haven't read it. If not, read it - and then read the rest of the series (starting, I believe, with Speaker for the Dead). He delves into some incredibly interesting scientific and philosophical concepts, taking it very slowly, but the characters figure things out a bit at a time until by the last book they are doing fantastical things with science that you would never believe unless you followed along as it happened. It's more sci-fi than fantasy, but it's neat. There are multiple alien races throughout the (five?) books and the dynamics of humans with these races is fascinating. Of course he's got other stuff too, but this was what got me hooked. Lastly, The Riddle-Master series by Patricia A. McKillip, starting with The Riddle-Master of Hed. This one gets pretty epic before it's through, as well. Through three books it weaves two characters through their fates. (I will warn you right now that the first book ends at a pretty big cliffhanger and the second one moves for the first time to the second character, in a different place, which is very frustrating when it happens, but maybe not so much if you've been warned - and the books are incredible despite this.) I hope I've given you enough to decide for yourself whether these books are for you, without giving anything away. Nevertheless... I hope you try them all because they are all so awesome!

1. An empty calendar : Working half-time definitely helped me. 2. Mental preparation : Yeah, you've gotta be determined or you're screwed 3. Preparation on paper : I had plans for about 15 chapters which I liberally changed when necessary, but was still glad to have. After that, I sat down and made new plans for another 15 chapters or so. 4. Plot idea : Necessary, I'd say! 5. The junk-free desk: Pfft! I bought a desk halfway through november - had been working off of a filing cabinet next to the couch until then - and even though it started out junk-free, it's still piled in stuff now. 6. The outline : I needed it, personally. Turns out one of the harder parts of this (aside from the dedication and long hours) is knowing what to write! 50,000 is a lot in terms of time, but also in terms of brainpower. 7. I had to take the last day and a half off from work (above and beyond my usual half-days) but that's also because I didn't have the night of Nov 30th to work with - office Christmas party. Bad day for it!! I didn't finish 50,000 words, but that was never my goal, not this year. After planning for 50k last year and managing 30k, my intention this year was 42k, or 50k with the help of the 8k that I had already written toward this story - and having an already-started story is *already* cheating according to NaNoWriMo rules, never mind using the words I'd already written toward the goal. But it was a more realistic goal for me. The other problem was when I realized that my wordcount, for the editor I was using, was inflated from the wordcount that is officially used - in mine, apparently, "Van-ya" (one of my main character's names) and K'Retan (another main character's name) both counted as 2, but they should have only counted as one. So according to NaNoWriMo official count, I wrote 40,500 words this month - not bad considering last year. According to my own wordcount, I managed my 42,000 and 50k total. So I lost.... but I also won. Yay! Major congrats to Vene for *actually* winning - I know how hard that must have been! PS. When I say "last year" I mean 2005, as in 2006 I was taking my last or second-last semester of university, and I had just enough sanity left not to even attempt NaNoWriMo.

GAH After all that, guys, it turns out that the part of the Admin thingy where you can change what shows up in "author details" (apparently that's what it's called) only applies to *custom* profile fields. I've been poring over the Admin options since I posted the above comment, however long that is, and I can't find anything about the rest of them. (I did find Warn level - we can disable the thing altogether if we want to, and I think we should, since we never use it). But everything else seems to be there for good. Which is weird, because I'm sure they weren't all always there.

OK, I'll remove join date, member number and possibly temporarily, geld. All three will still exist, of course, but be no longer part of the under-the-name info. I will rethink the critical levels and post again re: that - any more suggestions in the meantime (NaNoWriMo is almost over! Gahh!) would be great, because we could easily come up with 5 or 6 suggestions for each level and put them to vote.

Good point, Zadown. I think most of my friends, for example, know that they can trust me in terms of lending money, doing things I've promised to do (although occasionally needing reminders), keeping secrets, and so on - but that I'm the worst person in the world to trust in terms of remembering to keep appointments.

I was wondering when someone would finally say that they give neither full trust nor distrust. It's not a black and white question. Like Regel, I tend to watch people just in case they turn out to be unworthy of trust, but myself, I rarely *act* on distrust unless it's been earned. Like, if someone wanted to borrow money, I'd let them, but I would be careful not to forget that I had given it to them, because if they pretend that I hadn't given them anything, I would want to know for sure that I wasn't mistaken. But I wouldn't ever start off assuming that someone was untrustworthy. I tend to be very, very trusting - but also aware. I take precautions. In fact, I'm maybe a little paranoid at times... it's kind of difficult to explain, actually, without sounding contradictory. But I don't ever take *serious* risks like telling someone online my name and address (potentially a life and death matter), no matter how well I know them, while on the other hand I'll freely play with money, my emotions, et cetera when it comes to people I don't yet know.

Well, then I'll probably be there! Rev: You miss webcomics? *confused* Are all your favourites no longer running? Because there's still lots of them out there. Penny Arcade, Order of the Stick, XKCD, Goblins, and infinitely more.....

OK, given the votes and discussion, I really only feel comfortable removing Member Number. I have to get to work post haste, but that's on my to-do list (will only take a second once I get to it... ). I'm wondering, though, are there really no comments about the actual drop-down choices I made? Are they really satifactory for everyone? (Ha!) No, I don't expect to accomodate every single last person, but I thought there might be some more discussion on that...

Wait, you're planning this on Christmas Day/Eve? I voted "Shiny" (for cool) and "Before 12" but I highly doubt I'd be able to make it to any events occurring on the actual days of Christmas... (I just assumed like an office Christmas party, it would happen some time around then). Oh well. If it happens, I'll try to put in an appearance. If not, shame on you! You should definitely still have one! *grin*

Everyone loved the Carnivals, or so it seems. But they're very tiring to run. The guilds started them and the guilds had always run them, but they petered off and then died because it was hard running the guilds and doing the carnivals at the same time, and it seemed like we never had time free from planning carnivals. I haven't posted anything or spoke to my fellow guildleaders so I hope I'm not out of order here, but it seems to me like if we could make the carnivals into a generally-planned thing, they might happen again. Most of the guildleaders would probably participate but at least there wouldn't be as much on our shoulders. What usually happens is that we have a few standard events that need to be run: a kissing booth, something along the lines of tag or a snow-fight, the item auction and a bachelor or bachelorette auction. We also need someone to tally all the geld earnings and update the actual amounts; that would probably have to be the guildleaders or at least other mods. And there would have to be enough interest so that people are running their own booths too. Aside from the starting and ending posts, I think that's about it, but both auctions take a lot of work (the item auction has three polls, tie breakers, and actual auction, and the bachelor/ette has the matching, which is never easy) and the geld is hard to keep up with, too. I guess I'm just wondering how much interest/help could we expect? Would anyone be willing to take on all or part of a booth/event?

I'd be up for some sort of Fantastic Pen Meet. Can you imagine? We'd have to book a block of rooms in a hotel or something. It would be sweet. If anyone's getting at all serious about that though, we might want to start a new thread for it. As for the carnivals, they stopped when the guildleaders stopped having enough time to handle them. And that happened as we slowly lost members and eventually the most active of us were no longer very active. You can't really step down when there's no one to take your place. But I'm not trying to speak doom and gloom here. I'm seeing cycles, too. There are actually a number of new posts to read every time I come in here, and we still have *lots* of members (more than ever) just that many only pop in occasionally. I think we're on an upswing. Personally, I just try to keep plodding away at my writing and posting it. What else is a solo writer to do? That, and harbouring plans to get the SWG in swing again, just as soon as I have time... I might start a thread about carnivals. If there is enough interest, if we don't try to pile on too much responsibility to the guildleaders, perhaps we can do another one soon.