sundries

We are currently in Spring Lake, NJ. We've just walked around to get the lay of things (the main town, the beach) and bought a bottle of wine. Now we're hiding out in the room a bit because we're tired and trying to decide on where to go to dinner. Everything is awesome. After dinner it's jacuzzi time followed by meteor watching.

I finished my WIAD story! On the train. That was a little scary. On the other hand, it occurs to me that I tend to do the Torchwood work I'm the most happy with when I'm traveling. I think it's the intersection of newness, memory and longing. Have I mentioned how excited I am to be heading to Chicago next week? I think that's where I first really, really got a handle on Jack, and to be frank it feels like home to that him/me, when I take my shoes off in Millenium Park at night and pace around in the grass. The terrible thing about writing of any sort is the way talking about writing makes everything uncomfortable in relation to everything else.

Every night, once we're in bed and the lights are out, Patty and I wind up having long conversations about our day. Often, we go over the same things we went over while cooking or watching TV or tidying up, but in the dark, the conversations are different. The day is surrendered and it's easier to talk about why it was annoying, than merely that it was. Last night, I tried to explain what Chernobyl seemed like in the media here when I was a teen. Lately, I've also been nattering to her about various fanfiction processes related to Jack.

In the dark, particularly (since I can do this whenever at at will since I am always, always telling you a story about something passing out of the world), my speech gets romantic, wistful, and I'll realize suddenly, I've just mused on Jack's loneliness to her for five or ten minutes. And it's all lovely and beautiful, but she's not even in the fandom. But she says she likes all my stories or all my talking to her about stories, and it feels so nice, not just because she is gentle with me and my obsessions, but with fiction writing is all we have. There is no other mode of affection or consolation that can be engaged in with characters. And so when she doesn't mind these meanders I get on to, I think I am doing it right, and it feels like a kindness all the way around.

I don't normally talk about these things because somewhere someone is wanking, but I write stuff, and I'm odd, and Patty's out on the deck studying for her comps, and hey, why not. My life is lovely, and the weird stuff I carry around with me is part of why.

Oh hey, she's done. Off to dinner. Have some links and stuff:

The Common Application, a group that facilitates college apps for hundreds of institutions (all new to me, none of this existed when I applied to uni), may add gender options on its application forms (in addition to biological sex choices required by the federal government, a move that could have a significant impact on genderqueer and trans students.

In Accra, Ghana, is a graveyard where computers go to die. People, often children, scavenge the dump for the valuable metals within the machines, often setting them on fire to aide in extraction. The soil is consequently filled with poisons.

I may be about to take a whole 'nother "rip it up and start over" stab at the Jack/Auggie fic, not because what I have can't be made to work (it can, which is new) but because I've got a new idea for the angle of approach on this thing and I want to see what will happen. Fucking A.

wiad voting open

Voting for writerinadrawer Round 4.09 is now open.

This will decide the final 3.

Have at.