And finally I have re-found my coal town site, since while I quoted from it, I never bookmarked it. Which I will now remedy:

http://www.coalregion.com/


I kept looking for it off and on lately, and I thought of it again today when Barth mentioned town names (Shickshinny! Nanticoke! Wissahickon!), and also when Amanda announced that she too needs a mine fire story.

Tags: coal, company man
Current Music: Sufjan Stevens - Sister

The cat stole my hair band while I was taking a bath and went fishing with it. He's a fluffy little moron. He even tried to use me as an island to get the band when it was on the wrong side of the tub.

I was thinking about Company Man today, because I know I messed it up on some deep intrinsic level, and I'll be bitten by a kitten if I can figure out where. So far it's just the vague, mostly useless musing. "What if Diccon was her uncle, not her grand-uncle? What if he was adopted? What if he's her grand-uncle, but her mom's really her grandmother?" THat one has the most potential. It makes her 'mom' old enough to be a proper mayor, not some 32 yr-old single mom. And thus plays some havoc with her relationship to Dix. Oh, and I had been thinking of making her mother the leader of the Company, and if I do it this way, it would actually work--I'll have to put it in my hmmmm pile for now.

Oh, and I renamed Requiem because it fit well enough, but it's sort of a blah title, especially for a short story. So I'm calling it "Spirits in the Wood," which is more evocative and less vague, and also gives a story hint that I don't think is actually addressed in the story unless I fixed it in the last draft. Can't remember.

I also have a story brewing again, thanks in part to the *awful* romance I'm trying valiently to finish. I don't know why, it's not like I'm going to be surprised at the end (Oh my god! He loves her? And she loves him? And the babies are too cute? I would never have guessed!). I think maybe it's a principle kind of thing. wasting money and all that, never mind it was essentially free as I traded in a stack of paperbacks for credit and picked out a handful of bad books just to use it up. Anyways, it's a selkie romance (better than the druid ones is all I can say) and it made Greylady and the sequel I started writing and a few other chunks that never made it into Feeling Driftwood all start moving around asking for attention. So I should open them up and try and find my plot. Or at least a place to start a plot, and I'll make it up from there on out.

So I should remember to think about them tomorrow, and I need to start actually making Boston plans, and figuring out when I want to leave and how everything will work and what I will do when I get there. I'm hoping a temp agency to start out with, and honestly, if I could find a graphic design type temp agency up there like they had in DC, I could probably be happy as a temp for a while. That was pretty much what our division did. And if I got temp work, then I could look for a place to stay with the knowledge that even if it wasn't a real job, at least I'd have an income. wheee! money! Oh, and I need a haircut, as my ends are tangling much too much lately. I should call about an appointment tomorrow, though I'll need to get a ride for it, if they've even got anything for me, since it's going to be too cold to walk, I think.

But for now, bed.

Tags: company man

The Company Man is a story about Cory, a HS senior, who, after meeting a stranger, wants to save her classmates by freeing her town from supernatural control. We will know Cory has succeeded at the end of the story when Cory has kicked some faery tail.


Yeah. That sure sucks. But I'm plugging away. Interestingly enough, I've noticed that the presence of 2nd person is okay with songs (Pete's Jack the Ripper song) Simonize is the song that triggered it. I'm trying to figure out why. My best guess so far is that the second person in the songs are really first-apostrophe--the singer addressing someone absent, and so there is always a first person in the song, even when there isn't. Also, there are three characters in a song--the lyrics, the singer, and the listener--and there are really just the two in a story--the story and the reader. The same song--same exact words, even same music--can be almost identical or completely different when it is covered, but a story is only as different as a different reader can make it.

I thought I had an example of an actual second person song--oh, wait. I was remembering the wrong song. It's the first song on the Dashboard Confessionals CD. Here we go: The Brilliant Dance Now, I don't know if this song works for others, and while I'm quite sure there are others like this I just can't find, it intrigues me. Why does this work for a song when a story would distract the writer? is it the fact that the voice of the narrator is muted, that the narrator in a song can either be singing about you or to you? Do we identify better with a voice than with paper? My mother fussed about the part of Company Man that she'd read, because she doesn't like 2nd person. "It feels like someone's ordering me around," she says, whereas I feel more like I am the character than in the other POVs. But is that just me? Probably.

Ah well, I should aim for some actual word count, not just babbling that only Hannah will appreciate.

Tags: company man
Current Music: Booth And The Bad Angel - I Believe

The grass outside the courthouse has been dying as long as you have lived here, and it cuts at your feet when you short cut across the yard to the steps( Read more... )

Tags: coal, company man