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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
janecarnall's InsaneJournal:
| Sunday, January 31st, 2010 | |
| 12:44 am | On being a lesbian writing m/m slash The discussion is probably all over by now, but here's my thruppenny bit: Last August, in one of the last panels I went to at the Worldcon in Montreal (on writing historical fiction) I was sitting near the back and listening to the four writers' voices talking with each other (one of them was Connie Willis: I cannot recall who the other three were) it occurred to me that all four voices were North American, and yet all four of them were, when they talked about writing historical fiction, talking about writing in the history of Europe. This struck me as an interesting question, and I hadn't thought of a better one to ask, so I raised my arm and asked it: Why do you think North American writers, and you in particular, write about the history of Europe instead of the history of your own country? (One panellist corrected me to say he was also writing a historical fantasy set in Japan, which, while interesting, did not change my main point.) Connie Willis's answer was the one that stuck in my mind, for entirely egotistical reasons: she said, quite abruptly, that the question demonstrated that I did not understand how a writer's mind worked. That response, all these months later, still mildly irritates and mostly amuses me: evidently Connie Willis presumed that a voice unknown to her from the back of the auditorium could not belong to another writer. (On a panel a couple of days earlier, where we were discussing the writing of despised literature, I (as the representative fanfic writer) said that one thing about fanfiction was that it empowered writers to make the most astonishing literary experiments: a fanfiction writer can try anything because none of us have any literary reputation at all to lose.) I understood Connie Willis when she said she had climbed to the dome of St Pauls and looked around her at the 1950s buildings surrounding it and understood that everything around St Pauls had been destroyed in WWII and she'd suddenly wanted to write that story. Of course I did: what writer wouldn't? What I was interested was why she felt that impulse had never struck her when considering the history of her own country: and since she dismissed my question as that of a non-writer, I was fairly sure her real answer to my question was "I don't know: I've never thought about it". I am a lesbian who writes, by preference, m/m slash. I have written f/f slash (I wrote some of the earliest f/f Blake's 7 slash) but I do mostly write about two guys. This has never been an unmarked decision, not even in slash fandom. And so I've thought considerably about why I do it: why I want to write, with such intensity, about two men and not two women. And come up with clusters and trails of reasons, sources of interest, justifications... but all that is just me as a writer exploring backwards through the roots of the stories. I can begin to see why: seeing why doesn't change the impulse to something else. But if someone had asked me at the very beginning, back twenty-five and more years ago, when I was only warily beginning to be able to say "I am a writer" on the basis that I did write... like Connie Willis on the platform at the Worldcon, all my answers really amounted to "I don't know: I've never thought about it." What makes me now able to answer the question is not the hundred and more stories I have written - it's the hundred and some times the question has been asked, by people who, justly or not, felt that if I were doing something so inexplicably weird, I ought to be able to explain myself somehow. Because fanfic writers are outsiders, because slash writers are outside the outsiders (were, certainly, for a large part of the 25 years I have been writing it), because lesbians are outsiders and lesbians who write m/m slash are regarded as weird by other lesbians (I have a friend who never told her girlfriend in five years that m/m slash was a turn-on for her - though she read it, not wrote it) - for all these reasons, people more inside the circle than I am felt empowered to ask me to justify writing what I did, and I felt I needed to try and explore my reasons. But there was a certain truth to Connie Willis's answer, as any writer would understand: though you may or may not explore the reasons and ways by which a story arrives, as I have and as Connie Willis evidently never thought of doing, a story does tend to feel as if it just arrived - as if Zeus really could birth Athena fullgrown from his thigh. We write the stories we want to write when we want to write them. That's true whether you're a lesbian writing about Avon and Vila (or Spock and McCoy!); or a gay man writing about Ivanova and Talia; or a genderqueer individual writing about Transformers; or whatever. You can spend a lot of interesting time looking at the whys: but that won't change the need to write. Current Mood:  exanimate |
| Friday, January 29th, 2010 | |
| 12:34 am | Housekink meme: I wasn't expecting THAT  Make your own banner at MyBannerMaker.com! The prompt was ( A threesome I really hadn't thought of ) ( So, er...NSFW! ) ( Authorial Noting ) . . . Update, 6th Feb: The other prompt I'd been looking at (what? It was on the first page!) was ( Read more... ) ( Also NSFW ) ( Authorial Noting ) Current Mood:  creative |
| Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 | |
| 1:00 pm | Saffic in House MD Years ago at Redemption I was on a panel about "How come there isn't more f/f slash in slash fandom"? (Or at least, that's what the panel turned into. I can't remember at this distance in time if that was anything close to the original topic.) Someone on the panel (might even have been me) talked about how even in series where there are two or more characters and they talk to each other and have their own relationship, etc, they never seem to be depicted with the same kind of emotional intensity we see on onscreen m/m relationships. Someone from the audience asked the panel "Okay, if that's why, what f/f relationships on TV/in fiction can you see as having that kind of emotional intensity?" And I said, when it was my turn to answer, having had time to think about it: "Cuddy and Stacy". They clearly know, like, and talk to each other, independently of the relationship each of them has with House. But, as I realised when thinking it over afterwards, one reason why I could not see myself writing the story is: none of the scenes marching into my mind were passing the Bechdel test. They kept talking to each other. But always, always House came up. What else might Stacy Warner and Lisa Cuddy talk to each other about besides Greg House? Current Mood:  weird |
| Sunday, January 24th, 2010 | |
| 4:38 pm | The Games: The Cripple I have two and a half more chapters of "In the mouth of the Wolf" almost ready to post. This one-off story, like "The Network", takes place before the first part of "The Games" - about 14 years before. ( You can't always get what you want - but sometimes you get what you need ) Current Mood: chipper |
| Friday, January 15th, 2010 | |
| 8:06 pm | FanLib, OTW, and learning to not care... I write stories. I enjoy writing stories. I like writing stories for other people. ( Read more... ) Current Mood:  tired |
| Friday, January 1st, 2010 | |
| 10:54 pm | Not Quite Yuletide: Hank's Walk I set up a blog, Hank's Walk, to publish my 2009 Yuletide assignment: a fanfic story about Stephen King’s novel The Long Walk. If you are unfamiliar with this novel, you are advised not to read this story as it will be as full of spoilers as an egg is full of, well, egg. If you do not want to read about violence, death, more violence, sexual feelings graphically expressed, more death, and death, and death again, you are advised not to read this story or to read The Long Walk. I first read The Long Walk in 1998, when jetlagged in Montreal: though I was trying desperately to get back on a normal sleep pattern, I had to stay awake till I got to the end. My respects to Stephen King, who still writes stories that keep me awake at night because I can’t stop reading them: he owns The Long Walk and all the characters and dialogue and situations therein. This is a respectful work of love intended as a Yuletide gift for ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} intoxicarcerate, who also loves King’s writing.So this is it: 15,665 words, in ten chapters. Like King's original novel, it's sort of a horror story, though there's nothing supernatural about it. Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten ( The usual authorial noting ) Current Mood: accomplished |
| Monday, November 16th, 2009 | |
| 6:13 pm | |
| 9:15 am | |
| Saturday, November 14th, 2009 | |
| 11:51 pm | Ten days too late, thanks to lack of info between LJ and IJ... Posted at Yuletide Admin: "So while we are doing signup on the old code, we will be moving to the shiny new Archive of Our Own (about to go into Open Beta) for posting and reveal." The fuck you are? Oh bugger. Woe to the centralization of fandom. You know, I accept cheerfully that Yuletide is not a democracy - that like most successful fannish institutions it is a benevolent autarchy - but I am COMPLETELY BUMMED, nonetheless, that I have now to choose between revoking my signup for Yuletide, when this would be the seventh year running, or revoking my decision not to get one whit involved in the OTW's Archive until it was clear that it was actually going to be useful/used/trustworthy. This is not the mood I want to be in when I'm waiting to hear what my signup will be. If I do revoke my signup, I'll let you know with plenty of notice. Even though you gave me none that by signing up to Yuletide this year I might could be signing up to the OTW's Archive. Not happy, Jane Carnall ( Astolat's response: my reply ) ( and having slept on it ) Current Mood:  not yayish |
| Friday, November 13th, 2009 | |
| 11:12 pm | Dear Yuletider Thank you for writing me a solstice gift! I know that at this moment you are probably staring at the story you are committed to write and wondering why on earth you agreed to put yourself through this hell. Courage, mon ami! We're all in this together. I too am staring at a blank screen thinking "What fresh hell is this?" and (as I write this, having just completed my sign-up form) I don't even know which of many possible hellish choices I have been assigned. But, secretly, I know it's going to be fun. For given values of fun. Right? I kept thinking in the first couple of novels of Foreigner series how interesting it would be if this was going to be a Bren/Banichi romance. With Fame - the news that they were doing a remake of the movie and were pushing the Montgomery MacNeill for the 21st Century back into the closet made me think about what happened to Montgomery. Or, to be honest, when I happened to see the movie again earlier this year. Montgomery came out: and yet he's still presented as painfully isolated and alone, and the romances the movie presents are strictly heterosexual. (Another reviewer who remembered the 1980 movie said the odd thing for him was that there were no lesbian or gay teachers: he remembered every performing arts school faculty absolutely hotching with queers.) Depending when exactly you decide the 1980 movie is set (if freshman or senior year is 1980) you may or may not need to deal with AIDS. Cagney and Lacey - oh hell, even if you don't want to write me it, sign the petition? (Petitions.) I want the rest of the series on DVD, please.... But a good buddy-cop story with Christine Cagney and Marybeth Lacey would be so cool... Viktor/Victoria - Toddy and Victoria. To say again: Obviously, they were never lovers. But they lived together as best friends and partners and Victoria punched out Toddy's previous boyfriend and Toddy died on stage for Victoria. They were great together. I want the story of how they lived together. Much love! *tea and hugs* See you on the 25th. Love, Jane Current Mood:  bouncy |
| Saturday, October 31st, 2009 | |
| 9:44 am | I really hate getting this annual message... Signup for Yuletide is currently closed, sorry! Please contact the Yuletide admins if there is a problem with your signup that needs to be fixed. If you are too late to join in for this year, you can still sign up to be a pinch hitter or write a New Years Resolutions challenge story. ...but I always do, every bloody year. Ohwell. There's no clue on Yuletide Admin community (which I just added as an RSS feed) when signups are closing (and no announcement about when they opened) but... I checked earlier in the week and they weren't open yet then so ... Attempted to sign up to ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} mini_nanowrimo, but may have left it too late: still a member of wrimowrimo. Current Mood: awake |
| Monday, October 26th, 2009 | |
| 8:18 pm | Nanowrimo, wrimo.... I am fairly sure I am just asking for woe and disappointment here, because we are running a bloody big event in November. How am I going to write even a hundred words a day? Eek, really. However. At the very least, Nanowrimo is good for writing more. So I'm going to sneak into the local Kick-Off Party (31st October at 12.30pm - lunchtime) in the Library Bar in the Teviot (Enter Teviot, turn right until you reach the staircase, then in front of you, to the right of the downward staircase, there is a room which is part of the Library Bar, but separate from the rest of it). I may even sneak along to the Sunday Write-In (Sunday 1st, 4pm, back part of Starbucks, entrance above the Chinese medicine shop, just before the scaffolding in front of the obnoxiously loud souvenir shop). The Nanowrimo Regional Person identifies herself with a "highlighter-yellow shirt". And! I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to try and kickstart my Exhausted Brain which has been stumbling and braking towards the end of "The Games" and "Through The Mirror", by inviting you to play. Please login and post a request for a drabble or a flashfic (it will be at minimum 100 words: if I decide I can't be arsed writing it as a drabble, it'll be longer...) in either one of those universes. I'll do crossovers if you like. (It, er, makes an alarming amount of sense that MirrorM*A*S*H and The Games are in the same universe, just fifty years apart.) Rules: 1. You have to login. Get an IJ account. Thank you. (Give Squeaky some money! He's buying moar servers! Yay!) 2. Specify if this is MirrorM*A*S*H or The Games. 3. If you want a crossover, specify the fandom (essential) or the pairing (optional). 4. Give me a word. 5. (Optional) Give me a theme. 6. Do not ask for stories which are spoilers. I'm still trying to finish the damn stories... Ask for a missing scene, an AU, a crossover with a background character, a something. 7. There is no rule 7. Inspire me. Current Mood: tired |
| Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 | |
| 11:43 pm | My Yuletide nominations (today) The Fugitive (1993 movie) Jane Austen - Mansfield Park MASH (tv) Orson Scott Card - Lost Boys Roger Zelazny - The Graveyard Heart Stephen King - Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption Who knows what I may not think of over the next few days? Current Mood: creative |
| Sunday, September 6th, 2009 | |
| 8:37 pm | An odd side-effect of SurveyFail A while ago, Dusk Petersen noted to me that a problem with my website was that none of my stories had blurbs: I acknowledged that I write lousy blurbs and prefer "none" to "lousy". One of the questions in SurveyFail (Q54) was "If you write m/m slash, how do you study male anatomy and physiology in order to write more convincing stories?" and as both the question and all of the multiple-choice answers contained too many false assumptions to be answerable, in comments to a post discussing that and other poorly-worded questions, I listed the topics I researched for Sins & Virtues. Six people in the next six days asked me for a link to the story. To give perspective, I think the total number of people who ever read Sins & Virtues prior to 1st September this year is something like 15. (I sent out a dozen hard copies: not all of those got read...) Okay. I really do need to write blurbs. Even crappy blurbs which consist entirely of a list of research topics. Current Mood: amused |
| Monday, August 3rd, 2009 | |
| 8:35 pm | In The Mouth Of The Wolf: Part 6 It's 1.35 in the morning, my time, though in Montreal (where I am right now) it's 8:35 in the evening. I am beyond exhausted, but I'm posting, because I am too tired to think of a good reason for breaking my word. (Written in Edinburgh, revised transAtlantic, revisions reviewed in Shoshanna's living room, posted via her Internet.) The previous stories in this series (my Keptverse) began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part), The Players (seven parts), The Gambler (seven parts), The Pieces (seven parts), and End-Game (5 parts). There are parts one two, three, four, and five of "In the Mouth of the Wolf", the sixth and final section of this story. The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. There is a species of cast list here.( Part 6: Neither the slave, nor the free ) Tbc: final chapter to follow Current Mood: exhausted |
| Sunday, August 2nd, 2009 | |
| 11:32 am | In The Mouth Of The Wolf: Part 5 I leave for Montreal very first thing tomorrow, but I promise I will post Part 6 either tomorrow or soon after: (or possibly, very late tomorrow evening). Part 7 is *still being written*, but I do know what happens and I won't keep you waiting any longer than I have to. I am taking my laptop with me to Montreal. The previous stories in this series (my Keptverse) began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part), The Players (seven parts), The Gambler (seven parts), The Pieces (seven parts), and End-Game (5 parts). There are parts one two, three and four of "In the Mouth of the Wolf", the sixth and final section of this story. The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. There is a species of cast list here.You may want to go back and re-read parts 3 and 4 (at least) before you begin on Part 5. Or not. As you please. ( Part 5: I wasn't worried about appearances. ) part 6 Current Mood: accomplished |
| Monday, July 27th, 2009 | |
| 12:04 pm | Anticipation in Montreal: 3rd August - 13th August I'm going to Anticipation in Montreal - weekend after next, whee! I'm arriving in Montreal the evening of Monday 3rd August, and departing the evening of 13th August: between Wednesday 5th August and Monday 10th August, I anticipate (pun) being enjoyably occupied with the Worldcon at the Palais des Congrès, just on the edge of Vieux-Montréal. (I am staying at a delicious bed-and-breakfast gay guest house about 20 minutes walk from the Worldcon.) Below the cut is my Worldcon panel schedule. Please note that I have no idea where any of the locations are, or if they're likely to change from day to day. (I was on another panel about writing sexual orientations in SF, "Rainbow Futures", but got taken off because it clashed with the "Gender Issues" panel - obviously, no one interested in sexual orientation in SF could be expected to be interested in gender in SF, and vice versa: and you may see my name on a panel item about role-playing games, but that was a mistake, and besides, it clashed with a panel about Doctor Who.) Anyway, that's what I'm doing. And yes... *still working on 'The Games' to post the last three parts before I go*. Promise. But, if any of you are coming to the Worldcon: let's meet up! ( my worldcon schedule: The Most Slash-Worthy Shows on TV, Snobs R Us - YA books and tie-ins, First Contact: Create and Design Aliens, The Doctor and the Dalek, Writing Gender Issues ) |
| Sunday, July 12th, 2009 | |
| 4:14 pm | Hello! New confusion and new chapters... Look at this way: you're having an adventure! See, I had a problem with "End-Game", and it's mutated. A bit. What I thought was going to be the last section of the Games story turned into the penultimate section. "End-Game" now has five parts and was posted in April. "In the mouth of the wolf", the new last section of the Games story, started in May and now has five parts written, four posted, and two more planned. You have already read three out of the first four chapters posted. Sorry. There are now posted: part one, part two, part three (this is the only brand-new part) and part four of "In the Mouth of the Wolf", the sixth and final section of this story. Part five is written and will be posted after review: parts six and seven are still under development, but I do not *touch wood* perceive any MORE course-changes. And the goal is to have it all posted by end-of-day 2nd August at the very latest, sanity permitting. Ideally, earlier. However. "The Players", posted back in November, now has a new alternate version of Part One: Willow. At the moment, such is the way my mind works, both versions are hanging in a Schroedinger's Box, with identical reality. But you get to read them both because I didn't mean to keep you hanging this long for the rest of the Games story. And as I say: I am resolved, to have it all finished for you by the time I leave for the Worldcon on 3rd August. Links to all chapters here in The stories so far. |
| 1:12 pm | Rodney's Adventures in Wonderland - Chapter 2 ( 'Curiouser and curiouser!' cried Rodney (he was so much surprised, that for the moment he quite forgot how to speak good English); 'now I'm opening out like the largest telescope that ever was! Good-bye, feet!' ) Current Mood: amused |
| Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 | |
| 10:07 pm | Without doubt I am going to go to hell I read this. And it made me think two things: 1. I do get the point of having "If you want to read it, there's a warning associated with this story". Except I also agree much more strongly with this (from livejournal, three years ago) and this from fanfic symposium: warnings are not obligatory. 2. But given that, as she outlined very clearly, a trigger may be something as unexpected as calculus - ought we all then to warn for every event in the story, since any event may be triggering? I don't want to cause anyone unwanted distress. But if you read my stories, you should know that I want to harrow up your emotions like a fork in butter frosting: to make you cry, make you laugh, turn you on, startle you like a thin knife that pierces your heart before you know your skin is broken, suck you in as if I were a black hole and you were my light, make you shake, make you shiver, melt your brain, make you keep coming back - ...if you want me to do that to you. If you don't, you shouldn't read my stories. Current Mood:  indescribable |
