You Asked: Search Term Weirdness

You want to know about my what?

I’m sick today*, so let’s take a break from the usual round of advice and borderline abusive logic I throw your way. One thing I love about WordPress is the search term tracker. It shows me all the search terms that some of you entered that led you to this site. Some are obvious, some not so much. But they are all queries which led you to me, so I will do my best to answer them. Even if they’re not really questions.

“how to use nipple clamps”

This is one of the more common search terms. I am sorry to have disappointed you, searcher, but this Kinky World post might help you out. Godspeed.

“buzzfeed quiz gay”

Please don’t rely on Buzzed quizzes to determine your sexual orientation. Ever. It’ll probably just tell you you’re in love with Benedict Cumberbatch anyway.

“how does twist and shout end”

With neither twisting nor shouting, to the shock and wonder of all.

“Don’t disturb me or else I will fuck you”

…All right, then. Carry on.

“reaching 27000 first novel word count”

If you reached this, good for you! It’s an excellent start. If you’re trying to reach this, then write a little every day, keep your momentum going, and don’t lose hope.

“Toolbox kamikaze”

An underrated danger at Home Depot, the Kamikaze Toolbox can drop on the unwary from a great height, stunning its prey before the flock descends to feast. Thank you for bringing this predator to our attention.

“You never understood me”

Do you want to hug it out?

“You never ever understand me”

Shh, no more talking. Just hugs.

“boring parts of writing?”

Consider making those sections of your story more interesting, or not writing them at all. No reader anywhere ever got excited to get to ‘the boring part’.

“surprised and shocked cardboard box”

I don’t want to know what you did to that box.

“what sort of things should aspiring authors tweet”

Things which make you seem like a human interacting with other humans instead of a bipedal promotion machine are good. Not good are spam-style shilling, dick pics, and threats to murder reviewers. It’s amazing how many writers don’t understand the last one.

“how to gain height, if its by genital character”

…what?

“iamfuckingbusy”

Too busy for the space bar?

“how to offend your mum secretly”

Leave an anonymous poop in the mailbox. Results may vary depending on federal laws and mums.

“ants bdsm”

I’m not sure, but I’m going to say that’s illegal under animal cruelty laws.

“fucking it is about time i started writing”

Yes it is! And welcome. I can tell you’ll fit right in here.

*And will likely remain so for some time. Updates will likely come later than usual over the next little while.

BUSY BUSY: Announcement

Busy Adult With Many Important Things To Do

All right, you little confound-its. Bring it in and take a knee. It’s announcement time.

I have a bunch of writing projects that I’m trying to juggle and some aren’t getting the time they deserve. I did an audit on Uses Of My Time, Legitimate And Otherwise*, and have made a plan to finish them, which starts now.  The blog will be going to two posts a week. Check here on Mondays and Wednesdays for the finest second finest interestingly profane writing complaints, advice, harangues, rants, bitchfests, pep talks, and absurd pop culture references that you’ve come to rely on. Mondays will not always be writing prompts, though those will still appear.

I’m also looking for those interested in doing guest posts here for times when I’m away. Got a story coming out? Have a writing story to share? Whiskey recommendations? Get at me. If you’ve got a writing axe to grind, email me at bareknucklewriter@gmail.com and we’ll talk.

All right, that’s it. Get back in the game. And I’ll see you all back here on Monday.

*Watching my neighbours grow increasingly sketchy, yet still not as sketchy as their “DJ” landlord, is, sadly, not on the list of necessary things.

Monday Challenge: ALL HAIL SYMBOLITRON

*something something the human condition something*

I was cleaning out my guest room the other day and found my degrees. And a copy of my first thesis.* As I leafed the mess of paper, I remembered long—sometimes very long—afternoons spent in tiny windowless rooms, debating the various merits of post-colonialist discourse versus post-modernist aesthetics. Sometimes those arguments were fun, sometimes they were interesting, and sometimes they were absolutely infuriating, but not a day goes past when I’m glad I don’t have to do it anymore.

However, I do remember once, at the Grad House**, we got to talking about what would happen if you came up with the symbolism first, and then wrote the story. Short answer: it would probably suck. Or be critically acclaimed. Or possibly both, because the two are not mutually exclusive.

So, in honour of that drunken conversation many autumns ago, here’s this week’s Monday Challenge:

Go to the Symbolitron. It will randomly generate a story and the symbolic meaning behind it. Pick one from the list it gives you, and then write the opening for that story. 

And if you want to do it in a bar in memory of me and my colleagues, more power to you.

*The second one I haven’t seen since I passed it in for final marking. Either I really don’t want to look at it anymore, or it flapped its covers and flew away to start a colony of post-colonial research proposals of its own.

**A bar, because the first rule of grad school is why meet in your office when you can meet in a pub?

Monday Challenge: Obey Gravity! It’s The Law!

Standing on the ground was overrated, anyway.

Been reading more science fiction lately, mostly in the form of short stories, because 1) my attention span in shorter in the summer and 2) the best way to keep what attention remains is through spectacle. I’m pretty sure that’s the reasoning behind every summer blockbuster ever made, but since I love meaningful explosions, I’m okay with it.

In science fiction, however, especially space exploration, it’s amazing how many planets are just like ours.

Sometimes it’s explained: terraforming, the space equivalent of gentrification, goes on a lot. Other times it’s not. And I get why: you want characters that relate to the (hopefully) human audience, so your aliens need some kind of bridge to make them easier to understand or feel sympathy for. This is the premise on which the entire original series of Star Trek is built.* Go to a strangely earth-like planet, bang one of the locals, leave. Probably with space herpes.

Of course, this is a vast generalization. There’s lots of science fiction out there in which the environments—and therefore those who live in those environments—look so different as to be nearly incomprehensible. That comes with its own set of difficulties: how do you explain the body language of a species with shared bodies? What expression indicates sarcasm in a hyper-intelligent shade of the colour blue? Nevertheless, at least these attempts show that someone’s trying to explore their own imagination. They’re thought of what it would be like if something in the physical world as we know it was different.

So, now you get to as well.

Monday Challenge: Write a scene in which one of the fundamental laws of nature (gravity, the speed of light, conservation of energy, the makeup of a breathable atmosphere, whatever) is different. Maybe it was always different, maybe it just changed in the last five seconds**. Either way, find a thread of change and follow it to see where it leads.

*Well, that and the limitations of budgets and special effects in those days.

**Though if it’s breathable atmosphere that’s changed, that’s going to be a short scene.

Monday Challenge: Wrong Tool For The Job

WHIRRRRRRRR

Some mornings, the inspiration is thin on the ground. Sometimes it’s just one of those things. Other times, you might have missed all three of the cups of coffee you normally would have had by now and you’re pretty sure that some indispensable part of you brain is now misfiring.

….Guess which one today is.

But writing cannot depend on external stimuli, not even that which comes from the sweet, sweet black death I call coffee. So, despite the dangerously low caffeine levels, I must still get ‘er done today.

Doesn’t mean I can’t cheat outsource it get creative, though.

Remember my post last week about getting with other creative people? Aside from helping you solve those knotty plot problems, they can also be a target of whiny morning texts when you can’t think of anything to write about.

Remember, my little word-goblins: when things just aren’t coming, there’s no harm in calling in a little outside help.

Today’s Monday Challenge is brought to you courtesy of Krys C Wanders, who had the misfortune to still be awake when I started texting her for ideas this morning.

Somewhere between the meme pictures, slashfic suggestions, and gay sex allusions, she came up with this:

Monday Challenge: write a character using something in a way it’s not meant to be used.*

This can be successful or not. For everyone MacGyver-ing themselves an armoured car out of a riding lawnmower and a bucket, there’s someone hammering in a nail with a live mortar shell. For the chick using a guitar as a blunt instrument**, there’s some dude using a cat as a toupee.

Give me your screw ups and your amazing feats of ingenuity. Possibly performed by the same person.

I’m going to try to use this green tea like coffee.

*Come to think of it, this could be slashfic as well.

**Instrument. Get it? Eh?

Monday Challenge: Eye/Nose/Sensing Tentacle of the Beholder

The object of the game was to make the Beholder realize it was beautiful just the way it was.

Ever get weirdly thoughtful about how your cat sees you?

No, I’m not high.

I’ll back up a little.

I was doing some reading the other day on sensory perception. How it differs across species. And across time; we don’t see things the way our ancestors do, and I’m talking about more than having to put up with Bieber’s smug, punchable face sprayed across every magazine I pass. The Ancient Greeks saw colours differently than we do because of a difference in the eye’s ability to perceive; hence Homer’s description of the “wine-dark sea”.

Some scientists believe that it also differs across gender–women see more shades of colours than men, probably due to genetic selection for finding food–and, possibly, across individuals. There’s no guarantee that what I perceive is the same as what you do, even though we might put the same name on it.

It’s about this point that things start to devolve into the kind of thoughts one normally gets from the cataclysmically stoned.

However, for the sober writer*, the questions bear some interesting fruit. Especially for the speculative fiction writer, which usually has some kind of non-human being to deal with. How does that race of aliens see us? Do unicorns see into the magical spectrum? What does the sentient magical sword perceive? What does it think of this scabbard? Is it so last season?

Monday Challenge: write about beauty from the point of view of a non-human being. How would their perception differ from ours? What would they find attractive? A sentient crow, for example, would think more about air currents and thermal lift than we do, and less about traffic. To it, beauty might be movement. A plant-based being would perceive light more completely, so their idea of beauty would take into account spectrums for which we have no words. Metallic creatures might adjust to resonating frequencies, and read their environment in vibrations, leading to the development of the phrase, “Will you listen to the ass on that one?”

Try not to be lazy. If you use another humanoid character, try to make something very different. Infrared vision, extra senses, alien physiology. Stretch yourself. Expand your mind.

And remember that beauty is often in the tentacle of the beholder.

*Contradiction in terms, right? Right? (silence) …I’ll show myself out.

Monday Challenge: Unassailable Truths

“I’m beautiful, so I can do whatever I want. LOL.”

Aaaaand I’m back. Good things: Australia was awesome! I have a new tattoo! Peacocks are assholes! Bad things: Krys* wouldn’t fit in my luggage! I’m still so jet lagged I got confused by a fork!

You know one of the best things about vacation? Aside from the new places and new people and familiar people and food? It shakes you out of your routine. Me, I love my routine. I helps me get shit done. But that doesn’t mean a break from it isn’t a good idea now and then.

After coming back from a three week break from virtually everything that defines my days–home, writing**, blogging, art, exercise, gaming, continent–I find myself rejuvenated and refreshed. And a hell of a lot more creative. On vacation, it was actually getting weird at a certain point: I hadn’t written or painted for weeks, and I was starting to feel…full. Like if I could have juiced my brain, pure artistic endeavour would have come out. And maybe some lol cats.

I learned many things on vacation. Among them:

• -Peacocks are assholes
• -Lamb ribs are a big fucking deal
• -Scrotums can appear unexpectedly***.

Anyway, if I’m back, you know what else is back: the Monday Challenge. Now updated in real time instead of scheduled weeks in advance!

Today’s Challenge: write me someone learning a fundamental truth about the world. Fire is hot. Things fall. Australian rules football makes no sense but is awesome. Someone somewhere has learned an inalienable truth about their world and must now incorporate it into their life.

Out. I got stuff to do.

(Housekeeping: I didn’t have much access to the blog whilst meandering around Melbourne, so some comments went unapproved until recently. If you submitted one but still haven’t seen it, let me know and I’ll check the spam filters. Sorry for the delay and thanks, as always, for the comments!)

*You might remember her from her blog, On The Road To Ithaca, or guest posts like this and this.

**Okay, I did some of this while I was away. But it was different stuff, all right?

***Related: if you have a wardrobe malfunction, you should just own it.

 

Monday Challenge: Springy

The worst power up ever.

Maybe it’s because my lawn is finally starting to look like something other than the Devil’s frozen asshole, but I feel…springy*.

I’ve been doing a lot of digital cleaning. Mostly because, when my hard drive took a long walk off a short pier, I had to restore everything from a backup. Which took forever. But, being the sunny natured optimist that I am, I found something good in it: I could now reorganize my hard drive. After all, I had to erase the whole damn thing. Since I have a clean slate, it seems like a good time to think about an organizational structure.

I likened it to renovating after a house fire: yeah, I probably could have lived with things as they were, but now that it’s been burned to the ground, I might as well fix the weirdly shaped kitchen, patch that crack that was always in the floor, and clean out the nest of sentient crab spiders that roosts in the attic and throws parties on Tuesday mornings. It’ll improve things in the long run, and it’s not that much extra work compared to the Herculean effort that was already going on.

The result is a digital workspace that is better, cleaner, and more efficient. So the whole ‘my computer shit itself’ week had at least one good outcome: the laptop feels brand new again. And with a fraction of the cost–though a thousand times the work–of actually buying a new computer.**

Monday Challenge: write about something old made new. Spring springing, phoenixes rising, old ladies stealing the bodies of children to continue their quest for immortality, galactic armadas siphoning the power of a young star system to breathe new life into their war machines.

I’ll be over here, digging through the remains of my hard drive like a renegade archeologist looking for the Holy Grail. Or at least some interesting porn.

*To paraphrase Scrubs, ‘springy’ like the season, not like the inside of a mattress.

**Though I wonder how much longer I’ll get out of this machine. Like a double agent that claims it’s really on my side, I no longer trust it.

 

Monday Challenge: Chocolate Death Rain

Sadly, the candy coating did not help them survive the explosion of the Death Star.

Just a quick post up today, since I’m in the process of of both cooking a giant ham and cleaning my house so that we can have an easter egg hunt for seven people in their thirties today. Because when you’re too old to look for plastic eggs hidden among your friend’s erotica collection, you’re too old for life.

But I haven’t forgotten you, my sugar-addled little word badgers of doom. Despite it being an extra long weekend for a lot of people, there’s still writing to get done. So here’s my prompt for today.

This is a holiday closely associated with death, resurrection, chocolate, and pastel colours. There’s some cognitive dissonance there; think on it too long and you end up with a chocolate coated Angel of Death in a lilac robe. I don’t know if that would make the end better or worse, but it sure as hell would be a surprise to see it.

Monday Challenge: write something that involves both death and candy. If you have a diabetic character, you can probably get both of those together pretty easily, but work a little harder. Give me your Fondue Pits of Doom, your Pixie Stick of Life and Death,your Big Rock Candy Mountaineering Accident. Make it interesting, make it weird, and above all, make it sweet.

*Ever been whipped with one of the big ones? They hurt.

Monday Challenge: Draw A Card

You’ll never look at Pac-Man the same way again.

I played Cards Against Humanity with some friends this weekend*. Actually, in point of fact, we played Crabs Adjust Humidity, which is a third-party expansion, because we’ve played the regular game and all the expansions so much we needed to look to outside sources in order to fulfill our Being Horrible People quota. In our defence, we all have a high threshold for that sort of thing, so it takes some doing to fill our needs.**

If you’ve never played the game, I highly recommend it. It’s kind of horrible, but, if you’re reading this blog, I assume that you are also, in some small way, kind of horrible. It’s okay, though. So am I. This is a safe space.

Anyway, the game consists of drawing question cards from a deck and attempting to answer them in the most creative way possible from the answer cards in your hand. It wasn’t much of a stretch from there to writing prompts. The only difference is that you will have to come up with your own answers. They can be strange or obscene, they can be unusual, but they should be yours.

So, drawn directly from the deck of Cards Against Humanity on my dining room table, I present today’s Monday Challenge: What’s that smell?

Dazzle me.

*The regular group, that my husband insists on calling the Wolf Pack, mostly because it annoys me.

**While setting up the links for this post, I discovered a fourth expansion pack for Cards Against Humanity that I don’t have. ORDERED.