Clare-Dragonfly

Some of these are quite old, I'm afraid! I believe they're all still applicable, though.

elialshadowpine wrote a post about Women in Urban Fantasy and the Mistreatment Thereof.

whatawaytoburn is taking prompts!

analect wrote about the screwed up British disability support system. There's a petition you can sign if you're a UK citizen.

Stories Are Genderless, so guess what? Boys can read stories about girls too! Wow!

Links to all the 2012 short story Hugo nominees. Some are online and some are PDFs.

aldersprig wrote No Parades, a cool science fiction short story. (Actually, I'm not sure whether it's science fiction or fantasy or what, but the use of redacted felt more SF to me.)

jessicasteiner is holding a cover art contest for The Sleeping Death. There are monetary prizes and promotion opportunities.

pathological_needlepoint wrote Beyond Price, an awesome stealth sonnet, and is now taking prompts.

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Holy crap, I have actually posted three times today, and my reading list is full of stuff today. I'd say there's something in the water, but I'm pretty sure that something is 3W4DW. Speaking of which, hi, new friends! ::waves:: I don't normally post this much, but the posts from the past couple of days are probably a good indication of what I usually post...

20. Yes, but what are your thoughts on yaoi?
I can take it or leave it.

21. What's your favorite thing about Dreamwidth?
Its inherent dreamwidth-y-ness. Seriously... I don't know. It's pretty. Actually, I might have to pick my journal layout. It is soooo pretty.

Do you make literary or cultural references in your work? If so, what sources do you usually draw on? How do you decide whether to make (or keep, when editing) a particular reference?
I frequently retell and/or refer to fairy tales and folklore in my work. If I'm going in deliberately to retell a particular tale, that will inform the structure of my story; if it's not my intention from the start, something else in the story might suggest a fairy-tale reference to me, and I'll slip it in explicitly or obliquely.

What repeated themes do you see running through your work?
Um. I don't know. I like faeries. I don't think they're themes. There are probably plenty of themes that I repeat, but I'm not consciously aware of repeating them.

16. What are you glad you did but haven't really had a chance to post about?
Uh... that doesn't really apply to me. I don't post that much about life things. It's not that I don't have time, it's just that I don't think about it and generally can't figure out how to phrase it. I do lots of things that I'm glad I did but haven't bothered to post about or aren't worth actually writing an entry about. Like, yesterday I went to Rita's to get water ice with my mom and a friend who was spending the night with us. I'm glad I went because it was tasty, but... it's just water ice!

What's your biggest source of writer's envy?
I try not to have writer's envy. I have writers I admire, certainly, but generally I don't wish I'm like them because I'm like myself. I guess I can be a little envious of people who have more discipline or just get more writing done than I do.

13. Do you have any unique interests on your user profile? What are they? How'd they get there?
I have a lot of unique interests, actually. I have no idea why Addergoole is unique. There ought to be at least one other person on DW with that interest! You should check it out if you like faeries and/or creepy things. Aliette de Bodard is a French fantasy author. I am really crazy about her short fiction, and I also enjoyed her first novel, Servant of the Underworld. I recommend it if you like mysteries, dark fantasy, and/or the Aztecs. An Intimate History of the Greater Kingdom and MeiLin Miranda are two of my other unique interests and they are connected, in that MeiLin writes the aforementioned series, which is hard to describe but you should check if out if you like fantasy and/or erotica. Chatoyant College is my own online serial fantasy novel. Self-promotion makes me too anxious to tell you whether you should check it out. And finally, online serial novels are what Addergoole, the History, and Chatoyant College are, free stories online updated a chapter (or other small amount) at a time. I suppose I don't really need that one to be there since I also have web fiction, webfiction, weblit, and webnovels, all of which are shared interests.

Do you use beta reader(s)? If so, what do you look for in a beta reader? What specialties would your ideal beta have?
I absolutely use beta readers. I tend to post short stuff on my DW, either publicly, access-locked or locked to a specific access group aptly named "beta group." Then I hope for comments. I want my beta readers to, um, notice things? Especially typos. I hate typos and must destroy them all. And ideally they would like my writing but not too much to tell me what's wrong with it in a way that will help me figure out how to fix it.

11. What features do you think Dreamwidth should have that it doesn't currently?
Wow, I really have no idea. It does everything that I want a journaling platform to do. The only thing it needs is more of my friends.

Though actually, it would be cool if my Dreamwidth inbox could be only for PMs, with comments and tracking notifications going to my email and nowhere else--it would be convenient not to have to delete things I'd already read out of there. But that's probably not feasible.

What tools do you use to write? Audio recordings, pen and paper, computer software, other methods, some mixture thereof?
Hmm, I sort of answered this the other day, didn't I? Basically, I use pen and paper sometimes--either when I'm not near my computer or when I'm going to bed and don't want to turn it back on. (Though for "not near my computer" I'm probably going to start using my Kindle more often, now that I have a Notepad app for it.) Mostly, though, I type, and most of the time, I'm using Scrivener. I just love Scrivener. It does everything I need a word processor to do. It makes my writing life easier.

It is ridiculous to make two different posts for the different memes I'm answering this week and next. I shall just put them in one post.

21 days meme:
9. Are there two people on your reading list that you think should meet?
I don't really know. I guess inventrix and pippin might get along. Either that or they would cause the world to explode.

Writing meme:
How often do you write? Do you have any writing rituals? Say, certain locations, beverages, background music, times of day, target word counts, etc.?
I try to write every day. Operative word being "try." Out of the last week, according to my goal tracker, I've written five days out of seven. I think that's better than I've been doing lately.

I definitely don't have any writing rituals; sometimes I think that if I got some rituals, or at least routines, I'd be able to write more consistently, but then I worry that if I started to rely on rituals, I wouldn't be able to write at other times, which would be problematic when traveling (not that I write much when traveling anyway). I generally write either at my desk in my room or at the kitchen table, neither of which are particularly good environments for sitting for long periods of time, but it's what I have. I usually like to have music on, and sometimes I feel like I can't concentrate unless it's instrumental, whereas other times I write happily with the TV on. Sometimes in the shower (which I do at night) I get ideas, and then I scribble it down in my journal because I don't want to turn my computer back on right before bed.

I think I write better in the evening. It's hard to say. I usually don't feel totally awake in the morning and in the afternoon I'm distracted, but then in the evening I'm tired. I used to think I wrote better in the mornings, though. Maybe it's just progressing through the day.

I give myself a point on the aforementioned goal tracker every time I hit 500 words. I don't have a consistent wordcount goal, though 1000 words a day would be great; I work better with deadlines, like NaNoWriMo, when I have a specific wordcount I have to reach every day to stay on track. In that case I usually exceed it. (You may notice, if you've looked at my profile, that I've won NaNo six times. I have only participated six times. In 2007, I started over almost a week in and didn't count the words from my original attempt; in 2009, I didn't decide to start until almost a week in and still won; in 2010, I made my goal 80k and achieved it. Writing deadlines are my bitch.)

7. What is your favorite community on Dreamwidth?
Tough one. I think I'm going to have to go with junetide. Original fiction gift exchange!

5. How about when you're not on the computer?
What's that mean? ;) Okay, I read, pet my cats and rabbit, and try to exercise a little. I'm trying to take my dog for walks (as opposed to leaving it for my parents to do, not as opposed to letting her suffer walkless) more often. I also knit a lot, but usually I'm on the computer while I'm doing that, either listening to podcasts or reading blogs.

3. Do you crosspost? Why or why not?
No, because after strikethrough and all the ad stuff and all the little things they keep piling on, I really dislike LJ. I still use it because a lot of my friends are on it and most of them aren't on DW (or don't crosspost). I really ought to link once in a while, though, because they probably don't even know I'm posting here!

I actually have an InsaneJournal, which I got following strikethrough, but... nobody's over there who isn't also here, as far as I can tell. And DW's style is much more appealing.