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Summer Update
Jul. 30th, 2021 10:26 amCOVID:
Oh man, some of the latest data on COVID is ... not great -- that study from Israel of Long COVID that says 20% of the vaccinated people who got COVID ended up with Long COVID, egh. (Although the study did point out that it means 0.5% of those who were vaccinated got Long COVID, which sounds slightly less worrying.) Long COVID sounds absolutely dreadful. Also, just read about the Massachusetts outbreak, which confirms that vaccinated people can still spread the Delta variant. It does have the more reassuring info that "35,000 vaccinated people a week in the United States are having symptomatic breakthrough infections out of a vaccinated population of more than 162 million", which comes out to 0.02%. I think that we'll be fine as long as we don't do stupid things like get drunk in bars with the mask off. In my neck of the woods, 84% of those eligible for the vaccine are vaccinated, with Asians being a whopping 95% vaccinated (!!). Cases have ticked up in the past few weeks, but deaths remain low. Spouse and I still wear masks in crowded areas and indoors, but we've started eating at restaurants outside when it's not super crowded. It's beginning to feel like that might just be the norm.
Writing:
I recently completed an event wherein I wrote 8 fics of ~5k each, totaling 42k words! It was a lot of writing for me, but as a result I feel like I've made some progress in the "learning to write" struggle.
I break learning a skill into 4 stages:
1) being able to recognize that something is wrong
2) being able to diagnose exactly what is wrong
3) being able to figure what needs to be done to fix it
4) having the skills to execute the fix
(huh, that's basically the 4 noble truths, isn't it?)
Anyway, steps 1-3 is basically Valley of Suck, where you can *see* that you can do better, but aren't *quite* able to do that. I feel like, half a year ago, I was at step 1, which is mostly being discontent because I know my writing lacked *something*. Since then, I've started getting better at recognizing what the problem is (whether it's at the pacing/story level or line-level). This past month, I think I've gotten to the point where I can say, "Oh, it's a pacing problem, and the fix is to move *this* emotional beat from the beginning of the fic to the end, and I need to tighten up the action here and divide up the fluff." And when I'm doing those sort of massive restructurings, I doing so with more confidence and less flailing. I'm also, extremely slowly, starting to get a sense of *how* to zoom in or zoom out with words, which is how I think about the line-level stuff. It's definitely helped me to think of the line level stuff like comic panels. "I want to do a close up on this guy's face here to show emotion" translates pretty well to "Oh, I should dwell on the emotionality of this moment here by adding a few more sentences and slowing the pace of the narrative a bit."
I've also been beta-ing for an author in Witcher fandom, which has been instructive in its own right -- being able to workshop the pacing of the story and discuss themes and pacing is lots of fun! And it's interesting to see how they think of it as "scene" vs "summary". I think what I do is I sketch out the bones of the thing first and then go through and identify the places where I need to "zoom in". Of course, this results in me leaving the kissing scenes for last, which meant that there was a day last week where I wrote 3 kissing scenes for 3 different fics. Writing about kissing is soooo weird. I can't not think about it as licking each others' tongues.
Anyways, my writing is far from *good*, especially on the line level, but I'm beginning to see the way out of the Valley of Suck. :) (Of course, once I get out, I'll be back to stage 1 again lol)
1 week comics class:
I taught a 1 week comics class to middle schoolers last week! It was ... surprisingly okay. It's always funny after a few weeks of struggling with writing, to come back to things that I'm good at. "Oh hey! I'm actually skilled at this thing called 'teaching'!" I can meet students where they are and then push them a bit further! I finally figured out a good way to teach middle schoolers to be aware of the margin and how their panels line up. (Apparently the magic words are "draw a big box on the page first, then draw lines to divide it into panels", because "margin" is not a helpful concept). I also managed to get them to brainstorm a collaborative story!
- I first created a template: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1TJtuRReI0HPUOHpcrvLpq_066SXgv4qfzX_8F5XbxC4/edit#slide=id.ge3124e4c45_0_190
- And then I let the kids pick one box and fill it out in a sort of chaotic burst of 12 kids typing on the same Google Slide. It was actually pretty cool because they could see what others were typing as they were typing, and so could adjust to fit: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1TJtuRReI0HPUOHpcrvLpq_066SXgv4qfzX_8F5XbxC4/edit#slide=id.ge3124e4c45_0_208
- From there I wrote it into a paragraph with the kids' feedback (there was a bit where we had to pause to vote on who the main character was -- the kitten, the sandwich, or the Astronaut).
- And then I listed out character and setting assets for the students to claim and design. While they were doing that, I roughed out what each page would be: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1TJtuRReI0HPUOHpcrvLpq_066SXgv4qfzX_8F5XbxC4/edit#slide=id.ge5eda0e308_19_14
- And then each kid dibsed a page and drew that page, using the character and asset designs as a guide. They posted wips on their own Google Slide so that they could see what the other kids were doing. It worked surprisingly well, despite the completely different art styles that each kid had.
Here's the final result for the 7th graders if you want to see:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hw0kdkshx8cn89k/NS21-Kittens%20Adventure-single.pdf?dl=0
(also available in booklet form for anyone who wants to print it out)
Not bad for a few hours' work!
Miss Rutabaga and the End of Summer:
I restart work in less than 2 weeks! And then 2 weeks after that, Miss Rutabaga will be starting Kindergarten at the school that I work at. I thought I'd be more blasé about it, but starting kindergarten actually feels like a significant change from dropping her off at daycare every day. There's going to be new friends! A new campus! A new commute! I've bought her a new lunch bag and a new backpack, and I'm like, worried about the shuttle between campuses. (I teach at one campus and she'll be at the other campus. There's a shuttle that goes between the two that she'll be taking herself.) Just... I can't believe Miss Rutabaga is 5 now and will soon be navigating the elementary school campus as her own individual person. (She just lost her first baby tooth!)
I still have a bevy of work to do in the remaining time -- lay out my Wong Kim Ark comic, do some more sorting around the house, do lesson planning, plus camping with the fam and a work retreat with mom, but it's been a fruitful summer. :)
Oh man, some of the latest data on COVID is ... not great -- that study from Israel of Long COVID that says 20% of the vaccinated people who got COVID ended up with Long COVID, egh. (Although the study did point out that it means 0.5% of those who were vaccinated got Long COVID, which sounds slightly less worrying.) Long COVID sounds absolutely dreadful. Also, just read about the Massachusetts outbreak, which confirms that vaccinated people can still spread the Delta variant. It does have the more reassuring info that "35,000 vaccinated people a week in the United States are having symptomatic breakthrough infections out of a vaccinated population of more than 162 million", which comes out to 0.02%. I think that we'll be fine as long as we don't do stupid things like get drunk in bars with the mask off. In my neck of the woods, 84% of those eligible for the vaccine are vaccinated, with Asians being a whopping 95% vaccinated (!!). Cases have ticked up in the past few weeks, but deaths remain low. Spouse and I still wear masks in crowded areas and indoors, but we've started eating at restaurants outside when it's not super crowded. It's beginning to feel like that might just be the norm.
Writing:
I recently completed an event wherein I wrote 8 fics of ~5k each, totaling 42k words! It was a lot of writing for me, but as a result I feel like I've made some progress in the "learning to write" struggle.
I break learning a skill into 4 stages:
1) being able to recognize that something is wrong
2) being able to diagnose exactly what is wrong
3) being able to figure what needs to be done to fix it
4) having the skills to execute the fix
(huh, that's basically the 4 noble truths, isn't it?)
Anyway, steps 1-3 is basically Valley of Suck, where you can *see* that you can do better, but aren't *quite* able to do that. I feel like, half a year ago, I was at step 1, which is mostly being discontent because I know my writing lacked *something*. Since then, I've started getting better at recognizing what the problem is (whether it's at the pacing/story level or line-level). This past month, I think I've gotten to the point where I can say, "Oh, it's a pacing problem, and the fix is to move *this* emotional beat from the beginning of the fic to the end, and I need to tighten up the action here and divide up the fluff." And when I'm doing those sort of massive restructurings, I doing so with more confidence and less flailing. I'm also, extremely slowly, starting to get a sense of *how* to zoom in or zoom out with words, which is how I think about the line-level stuff. It's definitely helped me to think of the line level stuff like comic panels. "I want to do a close up on this guy's face here to show emotion" translates pretty well to "Oh, I should dwell on the emotionality of this moment here by adding a few more sentences and slowing the pace of the narrative a bit."
I've also been beta-ing for an author in Witcher fandom, which has been instructive in its own right -- being able to workshop the pacing of the story and discuss themes and pacing is lots of fun! And it's interesting to see how they think of it as "scene" vs "summary". I think what I do is I sketch out the bones of the thing first and then go through and identify the places where I need to "zoom in". Of course, this results in me leaving the kissing scenes for last, which meant that there was a day last week where I wrote 3 kissing scenes for 3 different fics. Writing about kissing is soooo weird. I can't not think about it as licking each others' tongues.
Anyways, my writing is far from *good*, especially on the line level, but I'm beginning to see the way out of the Valley of Suck. :) (Of course, once I get out, I'll be back to stage 1 again lol)
1 week comics class:
I taught a 1 week comics class to middle schoolers last week! It was ... surprisingly okay. It's always funny after a few weeks of struggling with writing, to come back to things that I'm good at. "Oh hey! I'm actually skilled at this thing called 'teaching'!" I can meet students where they are and then push them a bit further! I finally figured out a good way to teach middle schoolers to be aware of the margin and how their panels line up. (Apparently the magic words are "draw a big box on the page first, then draw lines to divide it into panels", because "margin" is not a helpful concept). I also managed to get them to brainstorm a collaborative story!
- I first created a template: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1TJtuRReI0HPUOHpcrvLpq_066SXgv4qfzX_8F5XbxC4/edit#slide=id.ge3124e4c45_0_190
- And then I let the kids pick one box and fill it out in a sort of chaotic burst of 12 kids typing on the same Google Slide. It was actually pretty cool because they could see what others were typing as they were typing, and so could adjust to fit: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1TJtuRReI0HPUOHpcrvLpq_066SXgv4qfzX_8F5XbxC4/edit#slide=id.ge3124e4c45_0_208
- From there I wrote it into a paragraph with the kids' feedback (there was a bit where we had to pause to vote on who the main character was -- the kitten, the sandwich, or the Astronaut).
- And then I listed out character and setting assets for the students to claim and design. While they were doing that, I roughed out what each page would be: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1TJtuRReI0HPUOHpcrvLpq_066SXgv4qfzX_8F5XbxC4/edit#slide=id.ge5eda0e308_19_14
- And then each kid dibsed a page and drew that page, using the character and asset designs as a guide. They posted wips on their own Google Slide so that they could see what the other kids were doing. It worked surprisingly well, despite the completely different art styles that each kid had.
Here's the final result for the 7th graders if you want to see:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hw0kdkshx8cn89k/NS21-Kittens%20Adventure-single.pdf?dl=0
(also available in booklet form for anyone who wants to print it out)
Not bad for a few hours' work!
Miss Rutabaga and the End of Summer:
I restart work in less than 2 weeks! And then 2 weeks after that, Miss Rutabaga will be starting Kindergarten at the school that I work at. I thought I'd be more blasé about it, but starting kindergarten actually feels like a significant change from dropping her off at daycare every day. There's going to be new friends! A new campus! A new commute! I've bought her a new lunch bag and a new backpack, and I'm like, worried about the shuttle between campuses. (I teach at one campus and she'll be at the other campus. There's a shuttle that goes between the two that she'll be taking herself.) Just... I can't believe Miss Rutabaga is 5 now and will soon be navigating the elementary school campus as her own individual person. (She just lost her first baby tooth!)
I still have a bevy of work to do in the remaining time -- lay out my Wong Kim Ark comic, do some more sorting around the house, do lesson planning, plus camping with the fam and a work retreat with mom, but it's been a fruitful summer. :)
