hannah

It's been well below freezing all day, and the only time I've spent outdoors was the pair of bike rides to and from the gig location, which itself is barely a 20 block ride. It was more than enough for my fingers and ears to get uncomfortably chilled, though I take it as a point of pride that continuing to mask up means my nose and mouth are just fine. I'm still thinking often on how safe I am for this cold snap - a safe place to sleep, hot water, layers to bundle up. Mostly, the tiredness comes from having rearranged a fairly sizable home library's substantial fiction section, up and down a stepladder, picking up armfuls of books over and over, and it's not digging a ditch, but between hours of that and the cold, I'm feeling pretty wiped.

I think next time I go, I'll bring a canned coffee with me. See about heading this off ahead of time.

Save for an incredibly brief break this afternoon, it's been snowing all day. Not hard, but steadily and gently. It's collecting on the trees and in the parks, and while there's not much total accumulation, the rate has me hopeful it'll stay around for a few days. I went out to the movies this evening, and standing and waiting for the bus, I watched the streetlight hit it as it came down - the speed of it, and how even with all the force behind it, none of it hit hard enough to make any noise.

It snowed through a lot of yesterday, too. I took a brief walk for a small errand and stood out in it for a while, enjoying the smell and the chill. I liked the idea my footprints would be gone soon, and with what came down today, I know the steps I took aren't there anymore. There's something compelling about that to me. Not that there's a resilience so much as anything done will be covered over and erased, no matter how heavy or light your footsteps.

Challenge #8

Talk about your creative process.

I can sum it up: "Fuck the muse." I don't write when inspiration strikes, I don't wait to get seized with a passion and fury to create and communicate, I don't try to alter my mental state by getting drunk, high, wasted, plastered, or otherwise out of it. I sit down, and I get the words out.

Assuming I'm at home and not traveling, assuming I've gotten my head clear enough, assuming I haven't devoted the evening to something that's going to get me some income, assuming I'm not out of it because of something like a cold or food poisoning - trust me, it was memorably bad tofu - then I'll get my ass in the chair and work. The AIC Method isn't elegant, and it's less about elegance and more about results. The results are 1,000 words when I'm composing. I may write a few more than that one night, meaning that the next night might see me writing a few less to get to the next thousand according to the raw wordcount. The raw wordcount is key at this stage. I don't write out of order as a matter of course; I can't tell myself the story that way. I write it from beginning to end as best I'm able so I can figure out what the story is, so when I go back and edit everything, I can work at getting it to what it needs to be.

I write quietly, without music or background noise. I write at varying speeds, sometimes getting 1,000 words an hour and sometimes averaging out closer to 250. I'll let inspiration arrive at its own pace, and I usually seek out inspiration and passion and ideas when I'm not writing, so I can save up the energy for the work. I write at night, sometimes in the dark and sometimes before sundown depending on the season. I find a lot of pleasure to turning off the overhead light, turning on the desk lap, and sitting in a little bubble of words - I stumbled over it some decades ago, and the only time I've shifted from that was because of one telecommuting job with a set of on-call hours that had me working in the afternoons, which I still look back on as a fairly bizarre time. But it worked for that time frame. Because it was when I got my ass in the chair and wrote the words.

Walks help. Bike rides help. Going to the movies helps. Going to art museums works, too. Reading nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and going to live performances all help feed the creative spirit. But not the muse. I don't want to think about it in those terms. Nights when I don't write always feel a little bereft. I could be at the movies, I could be out with friends, I could be visiting Paris, and as good a time as I'll be having - and trust me, while I haven't done all three at the same time, I've done each of them alone and in varying combinations, so I can say that even doing that, I'll be thinking about what scenes I want to work out and the story I want to tell. I'll sometimes take longhand notes to help get words together so I can figure out if they're the right way to approach an idea, and that helps a bit, but it's not the same as sitting down and writing 1,000 new words, or cleaning up a chapter, or filling in something I set aside to research later to avoid breaking the creative flow, or line-editing according to someone else's patient notes.

I've joked there's only one proper writing method, and that's whatever works for the individual author to get their words out. I've also joked there's only one kind of writer, and that's someone who gets the writing done. I can advocate for what works for me. I can't say it'll work for everyone, but I'm willing to go on record about its success rate at finishing what I start.

Ass In Chair. Learn it. Love it. Live it. Because it always happens one word at a time.

Challenge #7

LIST THREE (or more) THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF. They don’t have to be your favorite things, just things that you think are good. Feel free to expand as much or as little as you want.

1. My hair, which has occasionally gotten the attention of complete strangers, and anything that gets someone's attention in New York City is something to be proud of.

2. My blood, which I donated again yesterday, and being O-, is too useful for me to keep all to myself.

3. My eyebrows, which I have no intention of thinning or threading, and think are charming and cute the way they are.

Some months ago, in an attempt to clear some congestion, I started adding ghost pepper flakes to my morning eggs. A few weeks ago, in an attempt to punch up the spice, I started adding a crushed up chile de árbol or two. Now I'm finding the issue with a meal's heat isn't the spiciness, but the temperature when it's served right from the stove.

I've now realized I don't have much of a context for what constitutes spiciness anymore. I can tell when there's some heat, I can tell when there's a fair amount of heat, and I'm going to have to keep looking for ways to get the kinds of lovely warm, playful sensations from good restaurants into my own kitchen. But not until I work through more of this bottle of ghost pepper flakes, because I've only got so much room in my apartment - which I suppose is all the more reason to try the Calabrian chili oil I bought on impulse a little while ago.

I know the trick to hailing a cab is less it being all in the wrist and more it being a white woman in a dress, but I like to think the wrist helps.

Challenge #5

In your own space, create a list of at least three things you'd love to receive, a wishlist of sorts. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it and include a link to your wishlist if you feel comfortable doing so.

1. Every time this comes around, I say I'd love to read a post-canon Buffy the Vampire Slayer fic set at least a couple decades after the show, long after the world's learned the truth about Slayers, vampires, demons, magic, and the endless battle between good and evil, where Buffy's famous enough that her arrival is heralded much as Miranda was in the "gird your loins" scene from The Devil Wears Prada, with Buffy having learned to command that level of respect and control. Few people write Buffy as an older woman, and even fewer try to reckon with a vastly changed world years or decades after the end of the show. It's possible this is already written and I just haven't seen it; if that's the case, I'm wishing someone would send it to me.

2. For ages, I've thought a vid of Peggy Olson from Mad Men to "All The Nasties" by Elton John would be an excellent character study. Beyond the on-the-nose of Don Draper to "sacred cows just fake it" and the turn of a show about advertising to a song about cultivating images and the struggle to be seen honestly, I can't ever get the image of the outro and the last "oh my soul" being Roger playing the piano while Peggy roller-skates across the empty SCDP offices, effortlessly leaving the frame as the song fades away.

3. If there's any Tom Cruise or Top Gun icons out there, please let me know. As was the custom, as I still enjoy doing, I'd love an appropriate fandom icon.

4. Related, fanart of the two live-action Interview with the Vampire Lestats where they're kissing while hovering and the actors' real-world height difference is both mitigated and made clear would curl my toes in the best way. If this is out there, please let me know; if not, please let me know about anyone's taking IWTV commissions and I'll see what funds I can budget.

5. As ever, as always, as usual, transformative works based on my fics. Fanart, banners, covers, podfics, moodboards - it's always a joy and it never gets old.

Challenge #4: Rec The Contents Of Your Last Page

Any website that you like, be it fanfiction, art, social media, or something a bit more eccentric!

Of all the glimmers of Old Internet I come across these days, few made my jaw drop like TomCruiseFan.com did a couple years ago, because it'd been ages since I'd seen an honest-to-God tribute site - and my jaw dropped again when I saw how extensive and detailed it was. As much of a figure of fascination as Cruise is for me, the way people look at him - and I include myself in that - is its own subject worth examining, and beyond that, it's simply nice to see an old-fashioned fan's tribute site still kicking around. It pleases me to know there's still a few of those out there. The part of me that'd stay up late in college to browse screencap and icon galleries, especially.

Challenge #2: Pets of Fandom

Loosely defined! Post about your pets, pets from your canon, anything you want!

I've never kept pigeons, but I can say I've cultivated them.

I live in New York City, and it's pigeons wherever you go. You can't avoid them, and it's disappointing most people don't take the time to look at them, pay attention to them, get to know them. They're remarkably congenial, to the point of being accurately called friend-shaped. Which in no small part comes from them mostly being feral domesticated animals, originally kept by people for a variety of reasons from food to companionship who then got let out into the urban wild when people decided they didn't want to take care of them anymore. But it's easy for pigeons to remember what people are there for, when people stop to take the time. If you've ever had your pupils dilated at the optometrist's, I highly recommend finding a pigeon in some sunlight and taking in the genuinely dazzling iridescence of their feathers.

During the worst of 2020, when there were a lot fewer people around the neighborhood, pigeons would often come to my window, mostly to hang out on the AC unit. A nice place to stop for a while. Not thinking much of it, I started leaving seeds out for them, and they learned soon enough it was more than just a place to stop. I liked seeing them, and they liked the seeds, so I'd keep replenishing the tray outside. There were a few months in there - not many, but a few - that I'd get a seven AM wake-up call from the local birds who wanted to be fed, and those birds were the best alarm clock I've ever had. Certainly the sweetest. With few reasons to get out of bed in the morning, it was a nice feeling that one of those reasons was for small animals who were happy to see me.

I'd also take bike rides to get out of my apartment in the afternoons to get some fresh air, and there's a nearby park corner where it didn't take too many days of bringing seeds for a flock of pigeons to recognize me and fly on over whenever I'd come by. But even before they recognized me on sight, they were quick to trust to eat out of my open hands. Very soft feathers, and very warm bodies under the feathers. Some people gave me grief about it. Some people gave me shit about it. A few people, mostly under the age of ten, were delighted and thrilled to get some birdseed of their own and give feeding the pigeons a try themselves. Even if those kids hadn't ever come by, I'd have kept up with it as long as I was doing the rides. I'd seen worse behavior from them, and I didn't need to explain myself. The pigeons didn't rely or depend on me. They weren't my responsibility. They were simply my genuine pleasure.

The world reopened, people moved back into the neighborhood, the tray stopped getting stocked with seeds, I started going to a nearby gym, and my phone serves as my alarm clock. But I still sometimes carry birdseed around, in case there's a chance for another moment with the birds.

Attending a New Year's Eve party with my parents and their friends that doubled as one of the friend's birthdays had me the youngest in the room. By multiple decades, in most cases. It was fun, for all that - I talked to some very old-school socialists about addiction, definitions of fascism, public transportation, architecture, technical versus technological, and made a few people laugh.

I should reach back out to the host and thank him for the invitation again.