I was posting about geeky stuff here before Geek Eccentric recruited me.

It’s a time for evaluation, and letters of recommendation …and other things ending in “ation.”

, ,

It’s college finals time, a special time that only comes twice a year and, as the title of this post suggests, has certain traditions associated with it.

As does Hogswatch.*

Maybe that’s the reason I simply cannot concentrate on writing and revisions. The steady pace of the college semester is replaced by two weeks of constant motion for everyone in the college community – be they adjuncts, or students or professors. I’m just an adjunct, but there are still plenty of emails to send, and plans to be made and grades to be given. People who might be employing me over the summer break need to be called and emailed. Letters of all kinds must be sent.

So it could be that’s what’s breaking my stride this week as I try to buckle down and work. Writing has been unreasonably difficult this week. I  find myself staring out the window at weather that’s not so great. Or zoning out in front of my computer with a blank document open in front of me. Or clicking on Yahoo! News items. (“Star’s incredible transformation into Linda Lovelace!” “Kim dates Kanye!” “Mom takes toddler tanning!”) Or typing the same words three times and then deleting it all and cleaning the bathroom instead.

Really? What happened to all that April productivity?

It could be the changed pace of finals that’s throwing me off.

Or it could be my birthday, which falls this month. My mother used to say that as soon as my birthday rolled around every year, summer would begin for me and me alone. In my mind, my birthday heralded the start of a big ol’  Festival of Ann that started in May and stretched into the summer. I thought I’d abandoned that mindset in middle school, but hey, maybe my 34-year-old self is trying to regress.

Whatever it is, I’m going to beat it down with a word count of 500 words a day, even if they are 500 awful words a day. And I plan to do that while writing letters of recommendation. Even if I’m staring out the window between paragraphs.

* See below for the Terry Pratchett clip I’m paraphrasing. Recognize someone from Downton Abbey? You’re welcome.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdk7eAZ4X2o&w=560&h=315]

 

/3 Comments/by

Almost like being interviewed by the Paris Review.

, , ,

I want to share something extraordinary with you. Yes, it’s another interview, and no, I don’t think it’s extraordinary because it’s an interview with me. It’s extraordinary because of the sheer amount of effort the interviewer put into the piece.

This is an interview with writer Robert McGuire. Robert is a CT-based writer and a member of one of my writers’ groups. He is one of the most thoughtful and disciplined writers I have ever met. His blog Working on A Novel, is based on Journal of a Novel, the diary of John Steinbeck kept while he was working on East of Eden. According to Robert, that journal contained Steinbeck’s daily musings about technical problems in his draft, personal family dramas that were affecting his writing and his daily page count.” Robert, who is working on his own epic American novel, does the same on his blog.

His posts are a must-read for people who are writing novels, or who are interested to what the process of a very disciplined and thorough artist looks like.

This interview was no less thorough. It took a week a do over email, and the questions made me rethink my writing process. It is also the closest I may ever come to being the subject of a Paris Review interview. Interestingly enough, Steinbeck was scheduled for a Paris Review interview himself. He was too sick to do the interview, as it came late in his life, so his interview in the Paris Review interview archives is taken, partially, from his letters in Journal of a Novel.

/6 Comments/by

Bearded ladies are all winners.

,

I have two contests going on this blog right now. This post will announce the winners of the Bearded Lady contest. The Spy Week giveaway winners will be announced later in the day. Promise.

Remember when you were in summer camp and there was a contest of some kind? And you got all nervous and excited because you thought you might win, but you were afraid you might lose? Then all that angst turned out to be for naught because everyone’s a winner.

Right. I’m about to pull a summer camp on you all. The free-the-Dwarven-ladies-of Middle-earth protest beards have been submitted. And, I can’t pick one winner, so everyone wins.

Now, if you’re an eye-clawing, hair-pulling, extremely competitive person, this refusal to judge may seem lame, but when you see the contestants, I know you’ll understand.

Now, for you who have just tuned in and have no idea what a protest beard is or what I’m blathering about, let me condense this contest into a few heavily hyperlinked sentences:A couple weeks ago I posted about the horrible gender inequality among Middle-earth dwarves. In that post I wore a couple of protest beards that I had made myself and Photohsopped into a grassrootsy PSA for dwarvish women’s lib. That got a lot of hits, so 10 days ago, I asked readers to submit photos of themselves wearing their own protest beards.  There. That should bring you up to speed.

Oh, and one more thing. If you missed the contest deadline and you still want to send a beard in, please do. If I get any more beards I will post them on the blog, because I love dwarvish freedom, and also because I love silly photos of people wearing  paper beards with slogans of protest on them. Who doesn’t?

Now – on to the contestants, who are also the winners: Read more

/4 Comments/by

Beard contest update.

,

Let me take a break from writing about my book and return to a topic of some importance: equality for Middle-Earth drwarven women.

Free the bearded ladiesSome of you might remember that I’m hosting a beard contest. I’m asking people to send me beards of protest (or solidarity.) Click here for more information.

The contest ends on Jan. 20, and I need more beards. The prize? A copy of my e-book. If you already have one, I will totally think of something else, and you will get a prize. I promise. Also, all contestants will have their photos posted here. That’s right. Instant fame. A showcase for your wit and your lovely faces! Who can resist that?

So make a beard, write a slogan on it that reflects your feelings about the dwarven ladies in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, put it on, take a picture and send that puppy to me at annjoconnell<at>gmail<dot>com.

You won’t regret it!

/1 Comment/by

Send me your beards!

, , ,

Not your real beards. Keep those on your faces. Please.

I want you to send me your “protest beards.”

What am I talking about? Good question. This past weekend, I posted about the horrible injustices faced by dwarf women in Middle-Earth.

That post – which featured faux PSA photos of me in a faux beard – has gotten a lot of views, and by a lot, I mean more than the eight views a day I usually get (normally because someone’s been Google Searching for a photo of the chick from Alien Nation).

Since there’s been a lot of interest, I’d like to invite you all to send me your protest beards. Below are some examples.

Ads for the bearded lady campaign

Photoshopped-in text is optional.

You can send me your protest in three simple steps:

1) Cut a beard out of paper.

2) Scrawl a slogan on it, condemning the oppression of female dwarves in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth.

3) Using your cell phone or your computer’s camera, take a photo of yourself wearing the beard.

Then send it to me at annjoconnell<at>gmail<dot>com, which is technically the fourth step, I guess.

I will be accepting entries until Jan. 20, and then I will post the best ones. And because this is a contest there will be a (completely unrelated) prize. (Yaaaay, free stuff!) The person with the best protest beard will get a copy of my new e-book, Beware the Hawk. (Yaaaay, self-promotion!) I really hope I get some photos of beards, because I’d hate to host a contest and have no one show up. So get out your scissors and your Sharpies, and prepare to beard injustice in its lair.

/2 Comments/by

The Lonely Mountain is much lonelier when you’re a girl dwarf.

, ,

And by “dwarf” I mean the mythical variety, featured in The Hobbit, not the medical condition.

I’ve been pretty deep in the work of J.R.R. Tolkien lately.  My husband and I just finished reading The Hobbit aloud this evening, taking a chapter or two every day after dinner. Simultaneously, I’ve been reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy straight through, something I haven’t done in a long, long time. Add a LOTR movie marathon and the hype about the new Hobbit movies and what we have here is an immersion.

Whenever I read Lord of the Rings, my inner geek collides with my inner women’s history nut and I find myself obsessing about the plight of the dwarvish women. There’s not much written about them, because, in case you haven’t noticed, there aren’t a lot of  ladies in The Lord of the Rings. You could count all the prominent females on the toes of one hobbit foot, if you count Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, which I don’t. Tolkien could write a mean adventure, true, but for him, women appeared to be an afterthought. The Lord of the Rings is pretty much a sausage-fest. Galadriel was like the lone female Fortune 500 CEO on a Forbes list from ten years ago. What I’m saying here is that the glass ceiling in Middle-Earth was exceedingly low.

No one had a lower glass ceiling than female dwarves. Their glass ceiling was subterranean, and not just literally. Dwarvish women appear in one short paragraph in the Lord of the Rings appendix, which Gimli more or less recites in the Two Towers film. According to Tolkien Gateway, femae dwarves are mentioned in Tolkien’s book War of Jewels as well (which I have not read.)  Here’s the breakdown, for people who are not as obsessed as I:

•Only one third of dwarves are female.

•They are kept in the mountains by the male dwarves and only travel “during times of great need,” and then they are disguised as men.

•They look and sound like dwarf males anyhow, (allegedly) right down to the beards.

•The dwarf population dwindles when they have no secure dwelling – this tells me that the dwarf women are kept in mountains to be baby machines.

•The ladies are not mentioned or recognized in dwarvish genealogy (except for Thorin’s sister Dís, who is only mentioned because of her two sons.)

•No one who is not a dwarf has ever seen one, so some men have come to believe that dwarves are born from stone.

That last one bothers me most. Tolkien’s dwarves keep a lot of secrets – secret technologies, secret doors, secret languages – but to keep one gender a secret? That’s a cultural fail. It’s pretty degrading, it’s totally unhealthy and it’s probably abusive.

Perhaps you think I’m being unfair to the male dwarves and to dwarven culture in general. Think again. Anyone who has ever taken a high school health class knows that isolation is one of the first signs of abuse. An abuser wants to control you, so he (or she) cuts you off from your friends, sunlight, opportunities in the outer world, etc.

Now let’s pretend you’re a dwarf maiden. The men in your family keep you locked in a mountain, far away from light, fresh air and  visitors. Your brothers are free to go out into the world to work and have dragon-related adventures, but you have to stay home and brush out your beard. That is, when you’re not bearing sons.

You are kept far away from the outside world, which is a problem since you won’t be anywhere near the door when when the Orcs/Dragon/Balrog attacks. Oh, and the Orcs/Dragon/Balrog will attack, because the dwarves in Tolkien’s books never learn from their mistakes. They always mine too deeply and  they consistently fail to develop effective anti-dragon security systems.  So who won’t be able to get out while all the dwarf-men are running for the door? Right. You.

This is an appalling state of affairs, and something ought to be done about it. I’m not talking about some crazy campaign featuring a wizard and a Fellowship. I’m talking about a grassroots campaign. Let woman, elf-maiden and hobbit-lass stand together and campaign for justice on behalf of our silent, bearded sisters!

That said, I’d like to introduce the Bearded Ladies Initiative, complete with grassrootsy, home-made public service announcements that I slapped together in an hour using a piece of paper, scissors and the camera in my computer.

Free the bearded ladies

Sad, true, and seldom acknowledged.

Bearded Lady Campaign

She isn’t your dragon-hoard, male oppressor!

I encourage those who stand with me to make their own beards and write their own slogans. If you’re really committed, buy a tee shirt. All proceeds will go to me, unless you can find me some real Tolkien-style dwarf ladies languishing under the mountains. Which you won’t, because as Gimli tells us, they are well-hidden.

/23 Comments/by

Valentine’s Day at the movies.

It’s Valentine’s Day and I’m willing to bet a ton of cheap chocolate that a lot of people will be watching romantic films this evening. Rom-coms, tearjerkers, An Affair to Remember. The Notebook. Anything with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks in it. All of that will be hot property on Netflix streaming video tonight.

But not in this house. We’ll probably be watching a film that features spaceships, dinosaurs, or a cunning combination of both. Still, in honor of Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d post a list of lessons I’ve learned about relationships from some of my favorite movies. After all, love is everywhere. Read more

/15 Comments/by

There was more to this post, but I’ve cut it.

,

I’ve been writing and revising for the past few days, and I’ve noticed: the more words I cut, the better my stories. Good sections become stronger. Bad sections disappear.

I’m beginning to think the only perfect story is an empty page.

With that somewhat dadaist thought, I leave you.

/12 Comments/by

Quitting Taurus.

This week has provided me with my opportunity to jump ship and I am taking it. I quit Taurus.

As you may have heard, earlier this week an astronomer announced that the signs of the Zodiac have changed over thousands of years, thanks to a wobble in the earth’s axis. As soon as it was posted, the Internet exploded.

On Facebook, the statuses run the gamut of human emotion.

Despondence:

“Nooooo, I don’t wanna be a Taurus! Anything but that!”

Defiance:

“They can’t make me switch to Capricorn!”

Elation:

“Yay! I’m still a unique Aquarius, and now I’m even more unique because there are less of us!”

Epiphany:

“Leo, huh? That explains some things.”

Regret:

“Shouldn’t have gotten that Scorpio tattoo.”

Confusion:

“OMG! I’m an Ophiuchus now? WTF?”

There were helpful people who attempted to use the Zodiac news as a teachable moment:

“Guys, this just proves that astrology is crap. God. You’re all so dumb.”

And other helpful people who’d taken a minute to do a Google search in order to allay our fears:

“This only applies to people born after 2009. So calm down, you don’t have to be a Taurus.”

I don’t get that last one. It probably took a long time for the Earth to change its orientation, so the Zodiac has probably been off-kilter for a while. But whatever. As someone who spent a lot of time in my 20s figuring out horoscopes and deciphering signs, I actually find the “change” freeing. I like the idea that we can pick and choose our signs. I can choose to be a Taurus, or I can decide to be something I like much better: Aries.

Unlike most of the above Facebook users, I’ve never really been attached to my sign. As a little kid I remember being appalled that my sign was the sign of the bull. Taurus.  Known for being the plodding, patient type who gets ahead through perseverance. Likes material things. Is stolid. Ugh. Stolid. What a word. I’ve read write-up after write-up on Taurus and, though I hoped to discover some of Taurus’s better traits in my own personality, I’ve failed to see myself in the sign. Not even the modifying factors of my rising and moon signs could make Taurus fit me. Taurus is good with money. I am not. Taurus is patient. I am not. Taurus can be dull. I should hope that I am not. I’ve exactly got two things in common with Taurus: I get a lot of sore throats and I have expensive taste. That’s it.

So I’m all too happy to leap on over to Aries, which corresponds much better with my personality. The ram. Needs to be number one. Likes to talk. Has a temper. Easily bored. Likes red. Wants to be the leader. That’s me!

So regardless of what the astrologers say and despite the fact that I spent a long time trying to champion the sign, I’m quitting Taurus. (Let the “tired of the same old bull” jokes commence.) From now on, I’m telling people that I’m an Aries. I’m reading the Aries horoscope. I’m going to (somehow) calculate my astrological chart as an Aries.

I’ll probably hold off on any ram tattoos, though.

/7 Comments/by

Great minds, average minds, small minds and robots.

,

http://twitter.com/#!/AhmadBakhiet/statuses/7504393779810304

The quote in the above tweet* (which, according to Wikiquote, may not have been uttered by Eleanor Roosevelt) has been bothering me since I heard it 15 years ago. Because as much as I love a good discussion about ideas, I’ve also done my fair share of gossip and I spent my career as a journalist talking and writing about events and people.

Now that I’m actively studying fiction, I find that people and and events are, in many cases, far more important than ideas. Or at least, interesting characters and dynamic events provide a way of introducing an idea to a reader. Reading pages and pages of an author proselytizing about lofty ideas or ideals is the way to turn me off as a reader. But when an idea is lived out by a compelling character I’m much more willing to consider that idea.

Recently my husband and I had a conversation about this quote. Because I’m too lazy to recount the conversation in words, and because I just discovered Xtranormal, I will post it in video form.**

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JXHLHZTspo]

*I don’t actually know the Twitterer at the top of the page. His tweet came up when I Googled the quote, so I decided to include it.

** I realize some of the dialogue doesn’t make sense. Sorry about that. Most of our conversations are like this.

/2 Comments/by