sundries

[rm]

Signups have begun for therealljidol. I will not be competing. To be frank, I feel a little pissy that it's such a no-go situation for me. But, eh. I hope the people who play have fun.

The New York Times asserts that in the workplace women are doing better, because men are doing worse. The assertion is unsettling, especially if you read the article, which is more about the fact that women are more likely to be maintaining a financial status-quo in the downturn because they are less expensive hires (still earning $.77 on the dollar) and perceived as being non-assertive and "willing to settle." Those are the disturbing conclusions of the piece, so why they front-and-center this sinister idea of women capitalizing on the failures of men instead, I am not sure.

Donor's Choose has always been one of my favorite charities, and in mentioning it to Patty, she mentioned to me a fundraising initiative related to it sponsored by one of her favorite blogs.

So I'm going to do NaNo this year, just to try to bang out a draft of the chick-lit novel. It needs a title and a summary which I should sit down and come up with at some point. I'm terrible at titles, but the thing I call it in my head (since it's a chick-lit novel set in the world of SF/media conventions) is ConSweet. I know, awful! Apologies in advance to anyone I have ever spent time with at a con, the city of Chicago (where I am setting this thing), and the entire public relations profession (you can't write chick-lit without a character who works in PR. You just can't!). Anyway, I'm full of shame, but this should be a funny lark and a good exorcism, since it's been kicking around my head for over a year.

France is considering requiring warning labels on photoshopped images.

Comments

[schpahky.livejournal.com]

ConSweet!

*snort*

Also, hey, happy birthday!

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I've now linked to the scary, scary plot synopsis of this thing.

[schpahky.livejournal.com]

Oh god. I love it.

[rm.livejournal.com]

You realize you're my barometer of this whole thing, right?

[schpahky.livejournal.com]

Bring it!

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Uh, agreed with you, that is... disturbing.
Yeah, avoiding LJ Idol is probably better for the blood-pressure.
Coo, awesome notions!
ConSweet *sporfle*. Still, for those who have been to conventions, the joke will make sense. (And it's no worse a working title than some of the ones I've labored under, I'm sure.)

[rm.livejournal.com]

You'll laugh harder if you go look at the summary of the project I just put up on Nano.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Hee, you're right! And I totally want to read it when it's finished.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

Actually, ConSweet is NOT a bad title, at least compared to what I've been seeing lately. It's clever and punny.

As opposed to Manwich or Going Down? or Climbing the Corporate Ladder Without Panties or Hard on Miss Hardin or Piercing the Veil.

[sethg]

Re "women are doing better because men are doing worse" — I recall a similar theme showing up in Susan Faludi's work, namely, that the sectors of the US economy that have the most male-dominated work force are also the ones that have suffered the most decline over the past few decades, and this has contributed to anti-feminist backlash.

[nicoli-dominn.livejournal.com]

To me, the NY Times article didn't seem to give a message that women were capitalizing on the failures of men, just that a lot of companies are taking advantage of a more pliant workforce. I think that pliancy may also apply to the men in the workforce who are concerned about losing their jobs--I haven't seen any studies, but trying to put myself in their shoes and recognizing how scared people are of being laid off or fired, I can imagine that anyone, male or female, would make more compromises either regarding the orders they take from managers or regarding their employee benefits, anything to keep their employed status.

But speaking as a woman who is unemployed and pretty desperate, I would take a huge drop in pay if it meant having AN INCOME right now. I don't care if I wait tables for $2 an hour and barely any tips, if I ring up stock at the register for $7.50 an hour, or if I answer phones for $8 an hour...even though my highest paying position paid me $12.11 an hour. It's better than the zero balance in my account. I know that's a little different from a professional who may be accustomed to earning $30-40k a year, but I can still understand how anyone unemployed and looking for work, male or female, would take a smaller salary just to be able to pay for groceries and bills.

The author may be right, though, in assuming that just because the numbers look good for women right now, the working/hiring conditions are not. I would not be surprised if hiring managers felt they could pay women less because of a conscious or subconscious assumption or bias. There are all sorts of biases in the workplace that aren't supposed to be there, yet still are.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Warning labels are not enough-- words don't have the same emotional effect as pictures. If I were Queen of the World, I'd require magazines to put the pre-photoshop versions on their websites.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Point.

I mean, long-term what I'd like to see is a society that can point and laugh and say "THIS LOOKS SHOPPED - what numpty is trying to pull the wool over our eyes now?" but I fear I may be being over-optimistic.

[norda.livejournal.com]

1] I can see why you feel pissy about Idol being a no-go. I still shake my head at what went down in March.

2] Re: NYT... yes, very disturbing, and fully borne out by my temping experience. [Another reason Donna Noble is one of my favourite companions... relatability! If I can't be a kinky-booted polymath like Liz Shaw...]

3] Honestly, in my professional opinion as a bookseller for more than two decades, I think ConSweet is actually a very GOOD title. I can almost picture a cover for it, too... Adrian Salmon's house style would work very well.

[rm.livejournal.com]

3. -- thanks. If you want a good giggle, I've just put up the summary of the thing on my Nano page.

[shay-writes.livejournal.com]

I signed up for Idol. I hope I can keep up.

I also re-uped for NaNoWriMo. I'm a region ML. It's a bit of work but tons of fun. My story is woman's fiction. I suck at titles too. My title is Nasty Girls. It is about a group of women who commit a terrible crime and how they each deal with it. There is more to it than that, but I haven't quite got the summary sentence down yet.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Hopefully, this year I'll get it done -- last year I signed up and did nothing. But I just wrote a cracky summary for my project, and if nothing else, it should be good for a laugh amongst folk who know me.

Good luck with Idol. It's a great exercise I think, definitely, and I might do home game.

[shay-writes.livejournal.com]

I will be cheering for you!

I need to get back to writing. I haven't been doing much all year. My writing group is giving me looks. (not really, it just feels like they are.

Thanks! I am a bit nervous about the Frenchman. I hope he has forgotten about me.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, that's right! Well, with any luck, he'll find new people to bother, if he surfaces at all.

[shay-writes.livejournal.com]

He contacted Gary today after reading the FAQ.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Wow. I hope he is one of the people banned from the game, considering the level of harassment. I know Gary has this whole "well, you're all adults" mindset, but no, actually that's not true -- harassment, bullying and stalking don't count as adult behavior, so hopefully Gary will tell him to take a hike.

[shay-writes.livejournal.com]

I think he is banned. It is just nuts that he is still hanging around. I was thinking about unlocking my posts again, but after that I think I'll just stay friends only.

[51stcenturyfox.livejournal.com]

Happy birthday! :D :D :D

ConSweet is actually pretty clever, but I think a lot of people might think it's about a con artist.

Convention Sweet isn't as kicky, though.

[annablume.livejournal.com]

That novel sound truly awful. I can't wait!

[rm.livejournal.com]

Hee! I figure, if I'm going to do it, I need to go 120% in the land of "crap I really don't write." I mean, why not?

[dabhug.livejournal.com]

I was wondering if you'd participate in LJ Idol. I was hoping this year would be your year.

Good luck with NaNo.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I may do some hone game stuff, and while I was tempted to participate without ambition, I can't imagine it would be less fucked up than last year, so I just decided it was better for everyone (me, Patty, folks in the contest who want to worry about their entries, not random bullshit going on adjacent) if I didn't participate.

[dabhug.livejournal.com]

I am also contemplating doing some very limited, no-linking home game stuff. The good that I got out of it was the writing and the writing is for me, right?

For what it's worth, I don't think ambitious people can truly do anything without ambition.

Do what's best for you and yours.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Okay, it took me pronouncing "ConSweet" out loud to get it. Lolz, I'm slow.

Your summary is hilarious and so intriguing! I'd definitly read that and I kinda, sorta like Chick-Lit if there's something "quirky" about it, like "Citizen Girl" or "The Devil Wears Prada".
Are you gonna make it explicitly queer, or just in attitude? Curious minds want to know.

Warnings on Photo-shopped/Airbrushed pictures would be good if there was a plan to actually end the trend of such radical photo altering, instead of just brightening or shading like they used to do.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I really, really want it to be sex-positive, despite the way my summary frames Hope (who is not an idiot at all, but is a bit fail-y in terms of personal strategic planning). At least one of the four characters mentioned in the summary is bisexual (possibly two, I'm torn and will have to see how it develops), although this will largely not be a major plot point (in one case, it's a minor plot point; if I decide on doing it for the other character as well, it's a really, really minor plot point to the degree that it barely even counts as a plot point). The main romances though (and there are two) are both M/F couples, although one of those relationships is going to have a lot of thematic queerness to it, for lack of a better way to put it.

As trashy as I made the description sound, this is me writing about something I love, and it's either salable for _really_ being about that world, or it's not, so the murkiness is part of the package.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

As trashy as I made the description sound, this is me writing about something I love, and it's either salable for _really_ being about that world, or it's not, so the murkiness is part of the package.

I love self-aware trash :-) Surely that's part of what got us into Torchwood?!
Well, me, at the very least.

I'm all for thematic queerness, that is also how we convey ourselves I guess. Our themes.
I like that a lot!

[rm.livejournal.com]

There's going to be a lot about character/costume/performance in it, for obvious reasons (based on my summary, and things mentioned in emails you and I have exchanged). Costumes make shit murky, and if there's anything deep about this, it's about why they're necessary or not for who when.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I figured as much.

And yeah, the murkiness of costumes is definitely something worth writing about, thinking about etc. I should find myself a LARP or a community theatre group. *ponders*

Can't wait to read more about it! I'd totally buy that book (as would my mom! Chick-lit is basically the literature we bond over... and chick-flicks too... maintaining the gender normativity *sighs*)

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

I look at LJ Idol, but last year, there was something in the way people told their stories that got to me. Not everyone, but a number of popular writers had what I think of as a Reader's Digest, pseudo-inspirational style of writing that got up my nose in abundance. (One or two such articles don't bother me; when it seems to be 80% of the pieces I'm reading, that's too much.) And the politicking was just... dumb.

I might try NaNoWriMo this year. I'll decide in another week or two.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I look at LJ Idol, but last year, there was something in the way people told their stories that got to me. Not everyone, but a number of popular writers had what I think of as a Reader's Digest, pseudo-inspirational style of writing that got up my nose in abundance. (One or two such articles don't bother me; when it seems to be 80% of the pieces I'm reading, that's too much.) And the politicking was just... dumb.


All I can say is yes. Although last year was better than the year before I thought. The fact that I was willing to mention the Reader's Digest factor (Although you are more succint, that's so EXACTLY it, I nattered for a while) did not endear me to people either.

We'll see if I actually manage Nano, but if nothing else, it made me write a damn chick-lit novel summary.

[supremegoddess1.livejournal.com]

I'm not doing it this year either - grad school aps are probably the only writing I'll have time for.

Definitely going to miss you in the competition though - you're one of the people I vote for most consistently. Your writing style is so much more sophisticated than most of the rest of the competition.