Good Morning!

[erastes]

Jessewave has a lively discussion over here about M/M and whether there is a decline in quality or is it just her?

I’m particularly chipper today, somehow the heat doesn’t bother me so much when I don’t have to work in an un-airconditioned glass box.  I have a nice little fan which actually creates cool air, (don’t know how that works) which keeps the temperature perfect, and the house is east-west facing so I get the sunshine in the morning and evening which is love-rly.  I think it’s too hot to take Aslan out and leave him in the car today, so I’ll try and talk Dad in to eating at home. The hay fever is also particularly bad this morning, but I’ve had my honey and will be wearing my dark glasses. I don’t take any drugs unless I have to (this isn’t from any mad religious reasons but simply I think that the body is better and can cope better without them) and local honey – really local, there’s a farm which sells it about quarter of a mile away – either works miracles or is enough of a placebo to dampen it down. Either way, it works.

Talking of bees, I have a philadelphus bush

in my Sleeping Beauty Hedge (so called as it’s out of control, about 20 feet high and needs serious help, also princes with big swords welcome) and it’s covered in bees. This is good news as bees have had a hard time in the last couple of years, due to a bee virus so hopefully this is a good sign.

Writing wise, Mere Mortals has moved forward – now it is I can’t really see what it was that was stalling me. Perhaps I was just being lazy, or perhaps it’s because I have an outline for the second half of the book and I hate (as you know) writing to an outline because in my head it’s actually happened and I wish someone else would write it down for me. So yeah. Lazy.

Oh dear. I think I just put my spare mobile phone in the washing machine.  Oops.

  - - - - - -

The greyish hatchling is a rare Geode, so happy to have bred one of these!

Off to Dad’s now – have a good Sunday, everyone!

Comments

[penelopefriday.livejournal.com]

You have a spare mobile phone?

You're a bit scary...

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't use either of them (it wasn't in the washing machine, actually) but it's my old phone and the battery is on the way out, it only holds the charge for 2 days - only cost me £5 second hand and my "new" phone is just as old and just as bad. I don't really have 2 phones - i keep the "spare" one next to the bed, just in case as i don't have an upstairs land line. The only people who ever ring me are the service providers. Billy No Mates thats me.

[kittymay.livejournal.com]

Honey and dark glasses for hayfever? I haven't heard of that...how does it work? I will try anything : o

[erastes.livejournal.com]

The science says (and i don't care if it is placebo) that a teaspoon of as local honey as you can find will counteract the pollen - it certainly seems to work for me, and believe me I've tried just about everything in my life of suffering.

Why dark glasses - i'm not sure - obviously the glasses themself help keep the pollen out of the eyes - perhaps the dark glasses help to stop the eyes watering in the light, i find the pollen gets in more when the eyes are watering.

I definitely rec the honey though. I can stand the sneezing, and even the itchy eyes, but I can't bear the swollen epiglottis and the itchy, itchy throat - since I've been taken the local honey I don't get that far.

[kittymay.livejournal.com]

Ahhh! Thanks...well, I live at the 'back of beyond' as my dad used to say, so local honey is easy. I will give it a try!

[lee-rowan.livejournal.com]

You might try quercetin for the allergy symptoms. It's a bioflavinoid, often sold in health-food stores in combination with Vitamin C, and it's a natural anti-inflammatory. I found out about it once when I had an allergic reaction to a prescription med, and it took down the hives better than Benadryl. I use it sometimes for stuffy sinuses, and give it to my dog, who apparently has some sort of pollen allergy. No side effects--the body just dumps what it doesn't need.

That shrub is gorgeous. I'll bet the bees are having a wonderful time!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Hives! God yes - I'm a bloody martyr to them - I'll see if i can find some!

[angelabenedetti.livejournal.com]

[Since my comment on Jessewave's blog is already about at its length limit....]

and at face value it seems like that, so many "books" are only about 20K or even less.

I don't see that as an issue. Or rather, it's just an artifact of the e-publishing model. It's not financially viable to sell a 20-page novelette as a stand-alone if it's published on paper, even as a paperback. It'd be only slightly cheaper than a 200-page novel, and no one would buy it. Electronically, though, there's no reason to restrict stand-alone offerings to novel size. It's not that writers have suddenly started writing shorter stories, but that those shorter stories have suddenly begun to be offered on their own, whereas traditionally you'd have to buy a magazine or an anthology to get stories at that length.

Calling a story with twenty pages or even less a "book" does sound a bit weird, but that's technically accurate too, if it's a stand-along e-book.

Whether the short story or novelette actually works as a story is a whole other issue. Shorts are hard to do well, and writers who try to take a novel-size idea and cram it into a much smaller package generally fail to produce a product worth reading. Writing shorts and novelettes takes a different skill, or at least a different mindset. If a writer fails to make a short work, it's not the fault in the length-category, but a fault in the writer.

Angie

[erastes.livejournal.com]

But I wasn't talking about 20 pages, Angie, I was talking about 20 thousand words, not 20 pages. And I agree - the point I was trying to make (not much good at staying on target... :D ) was that i find the shorter book are sex heavy and plot light, and it is possible to get the balance right.

That being said, I've read full size books which are the same, too.

[angelabenedetti.livejournal.com]

I'll admit I squinted in there somewhere [duck] but 20K words is still a novelette, or maybe a very short novella, depending on whose list you're looking at. Everything else still applies -- you can't do the same things in 20K words that you'd do in 80K or 100K, so you have to think differently about the structure of the story. Some writers can do that and some can't, but if you read someone who can't, it's not the fault of the length category.

I'll certainly grant that you have to focus on something in a shorter story, and especially with a true short, the focus will often be on either plot or sex. My own short stories (what Torquere calls Sips) tend to be romantic erotica rather than true romance; I've yet to come up with a story line which would let me write an actual romance plotline, plus a sex scene, in 8K words or less. And I find I'm much more tolerant of a story which is half sex if it's a short; if a novel is half sex, most of said sex is usually duct-taped on and that writer goes on my Don't Buy list.

I think the trick with a short, if you're going to include a sex scene, is to make sure that the sex is part of the plot. Getting that sex needs to be part of your protag's goal, or even the entire goal. That way, finally achieving the sex (whether it's sex with that person or a certain type of sex or practice, or just sex period) is an integral part of your plotline and the story will (or, well, is more likely to) hold together, rather than being The Plot Part versus The Sex Part. With a novel, you have room to use a sex scene -- a thousand words or two, or more if you work at it -- to show the reader something about one of the characters, or to show how their relationship is developing at a certain point, or whatever. Shorts don't give you that luxury, though.

Hopefully more writers will figure that out as they practice. :)

Angie