post festivities check in

In one of those cycles the universe holds for us, I (who am not at my most comfortable on the phone, but I do have some people I can't resist,) have spent what seems like the entire last 72 hours on the phone. Robin and Terry, if you see this - you are the only phone people I missed!

Included in the marathon was a very long comic-con report, called in by Lee, who was in the midst of it on the floor when he called. Alas, no LOTR news to share - Lee's news, while exciting to us, was about the various artists he was shmoozing with. I am both very jealous that I wasn't there, and very relieved not to have been in the mob. Story of my life.

Annaliese shuttergal has threatened to post a recipe called "Coffee Granita with Boromir Syrup."

Julia edrys and I talked story, review, music and more.

Chris elladans_witch and I, for some reason, needed to call each other about 600 times, except when she was here making pork roast for Jim's birthday dinner present. So, I feel like I will never catch up.

Jim's birthday was fun, and he got a pile of loot you can see in his own journal - notarysojac I found him arranging and photographing the girls from the LoTR Coronation set this morning, and having generally too much fun. We are trying to decide on a spot for hadhafang.

Our plans to watch much anime did not materialize until about an hour ago, and we are curled up with Last Exile, which we both love. (I want to be Lavie if I grow up.)

I just peeked in to try and scan my flist, and was caught by the current question for theatrical muse (Tuor has been heavily lobbying to get out more lately). So, there is a new short piece in his voice at ulmos_own if you are interested. It took very little time; he was more than ready to talk tonight. I've been wondering if I want to keep this up or shut it down. Thought I was done, and now... Ah well, I suspect Tuor will talk whatever I do now.

I also had a story declined at HASA - (it was Flick's undonne birthday story. And One White Tree. )I mention this only because it came with my all time favorite declining review. It said, in part:

... I'd have had to have read Fileg's stories to realize that. You might want to put in a little note explaining Blade is Boromir...

I have never been so thrilled to get a decline in my life. I seldom think about anyone outside my own little group reading my stories, (or at least my LJ Icons.) Somebody spotted this. Someone was looking out for me! A thousand hugs, reviewer. You brightened my day. (And you are absolutely right, I should explain Blade when the story is standing alone. So, I learned something today. Woohoo!)

feather fall

I lead something of a charmed fictional life, (especially when you consider that the story I love most, the work of my heart, is an unshowable au that, while not a secret, can count its occasional readers on one hand)

The greatest thrill I have writing is the sacred space, the electronic anduin, that runs through my life. There is nothing like finding bits of story and poems, ideas and song from a group you trust and cannot believe you have the fortune to be writing near, let alone with - suddenly weaving into each other, gaining the strength of shared support.

There is something in my own psyche that suddenly sees my work as more real when it spins back to me on the current of that electronic river. And I have been given that gift more often than I can convince myself is reasonable, in words and art.

I have been given another. flick undonne wrote me a story for Raven and Blade when my wingprints swept over her this week. She calls it an AU to my AU arda, but Boromir and Faramir will not seem a bit AU to you.

And though she placed this bit of creation mythology in a slighty different place than I have, she startled me by describing a place I have been with the raven many times. I don't know how you lot do that, but it amazes and sometimes frightens me. Jim's theory is that when we play about in the collective unconscious we never put our toys away.

Flick, I hope you didn't mind receiving pages of old *north* notes in return for you polished gem, but I just *had* to show you that we had taken the same snapshots when we were in Minas Tirith! **hugs**

You can find Raven's Wing here.

the shadow of a raven’s wing
the brightness of a blade
dark and light are brothers
woven in a braid…

In case the Shatner clip didn't get you....

go here, and see:

Skeletor and the Village People, A Tribute to Ray Harryhausen

prepare to clutch your head like a stunned monkey once again.

fiction and forms

I've been monitoring a few fiction sites, hoping to be inspired, but it's not happening from the challenges, and I miss that, especially at

1) HASA, where I think my problem is that, though there are challenges, there is no sense of immediacy to do them, which always got me going. And

2)at the LOTR100, which I badly badly miss. This was my writing lifeline recently, and through all the ups and downs of having a moderator missing in action, I think we were challenging each other with some pretty interesting ideas that could be bent in different ways.

SInce our mod returned out of the blue, I have see nothing that speaks to me. Partly that's because she started us off with challenges we had just recently done, and partly because the new challenges just don't speak to me at all. There are people doing great work over there, so I realize it's me - but I have found the new challenges limiting instead of broadening, and overly specific. The new challenge about switching bodies, for instance, strikes me as completely alien to Arda. (though apparently I amused Chris by threatening to switch Elladan and Elrohir in an old Patty Duke show kind of way, with no-one noticing)

I feel like Cinnabar - (a cat, now gone) who would watch his sister eat something he didn't like and look at us as if to clearly complain -Why don't *I* like it - as if we could fix it.

that brings me to the *why* part. I have come to realize I am a cranky drabbler. It's directed at myself, so I don't feel as bad about it as I would if it were directed outward.

But I can't convince myself 100 words is a drabble unless it gets me somewhere. I can't get a drabble by counting off words any more than I get a haiku by counting syllables. So, though I can almost always give you 100 words on demand, they would not necessarily be a drabble to me.

the other side of this coin is - I keep seeing drabbles being posted with disclaimers like
"I went slightly over 100 words, but I didn't want to lose any of the ideas." I look at these sentences like they are in a foreign language. Isn't that the idea?

Yeah, I've been known to go over, but in formal steps. 150s, 250s and series - but working to the form without losing the ideas *is* the idea for me.

I wonder if that comes from writing obsessive poetry to form. not too many of them let you add a stanza (the terza rima is the only one that comes to my mind) or change the pattern -- still less add a ramdom line, and still call it by name.

It seems to me these random length drabblers have missed the point. But I suppose the likely answer is that they have a different point than I do, and that perhaps form has made me linguistically anal.