Happy Halloween from Zoe and Wash

when nobody cares if you’re in or you’re out

I sit here watching Part 1 of the season finale of Project Runway, and I am musing on the thought that hit me during last week’s episode… am I over Project Runway?

I have been a pretty intense fan of this show for a very long time. It’s the only show I watch religiously when it is on-air. Thursday nights are Don’t Bother Grace nights. I own 3 seasons (Christian, Jeffrey, and Santino). I’ve loved this show and I’ve invested a lot of time and money into it.

But this season? Frankly? Snoozeville. Not enough of making clothes out of stuff; too much making clothes out of cloth. Nobody was particularly interesting. I enjoyed hating Gretchen for a while, but eh. Even that got boring. Nobody I really care about—I mean, I like Mondo best and he’d better fucking win because he’s the only one even slightly interesting as a person or designer, but it took me quite a number of episodes to come around. There was no Christian or Suede or Santino, nobody that immediately jumped out as someone I wanted to watch, whether to love or hate.

Last season was kind of dull but I adored Seth Aaron enough to carry me through. This season was worse. There’s too much pattern, too much repeating of past challenges. Here we have the, “make clothes out of old ugly clothes” challenge. And here is the “making clothes for real-size women/girls” challenge. And now I guess we’re going to have the “design-your-own-fabric” challenge each time. It’s not fun anymore. And the people are all hugely boring.

Okay, watching Tim hang out with the catfish is kind of entertaining.

Anyway, yeah, the people are all just boring. The producers are trying to make drama out of nothing. I just don’t care.

After last season, this was kind of my “one more chance” season. And Project Runway has pretty much blown it. Next season—they’re getting one episode out of me. I either need to be wowed, or… it might be over.

(But not for you, Tim Gunn. I will always have a place in my heart for you.)

not a theater review

Last night I went and saw the A.R.T.‘s production of Cabaret, starring everyone’s favorite punk-cabaret goddess Amanda Palmer as the Emcee.

It was a gorgeous show. Fucking gorgeous. So well styled and put together and beautiful and nghh. And you felt like you were actually in the Kit Kat club. The Kit Kat boys and girls were all over and in and around the audience, making asides, dancing, flirting, laughing. I got to wear one of their hats for a while. It was pretty much fantastic. They were pretty much fantastic.

Aside: I desire every pair of shoes in that picture.

I have some quibbles about some of the directorial choices and some of the performances, but eh. I’m not in the mood, and the show’s almost over/sold out so it doesn’t really matter what I say. Overall it was excellent and I highly recommend it if you can get your hands on a ticket. Palmer usually pipes up on twitter if something comes available.

The one thing I’ll say is the thing that was said to me by multiple people before I went to the show and turned out to be totally true. Basically, a lot of people are going to this show because of Amanda Palmer.* And the consensus is that Amanda Palmer is fantastic, but the rest of the show is even better. Which, yeah. So true. I wish she’d sung more in her own range and not gone deeper for most of the songs, but so true. AFP was fantastic but wasn’t actually the best part of the show. So. If that tells you anything. I’ll let that be my review.

One final picture. Here is AFP looking amazing.

*Frankly, much as I love Palmer, I’m mostly glad she was in this show because I don’t know that I would have heard of it otherwise and Cabaret is one of my favorite ever musicals. And, you know, she chose the show and stuff. So. Thanks AFP!

“Writing: Find the Time or Don’t,” or, shut up and do it, Grace

It’s like John Scalzi is writing just for me. This is from a blog post from month ago, but I’m still working on catching up on the internet.

Well, look. Either you want to write or you don’t, and thinking that you want to write really doesn’t mean anything. There are lots of things I think I’d like to do, and yet if I don’t actually make the time and effort to do them, they don’t get done.

[...]

But if you want to be a writer, than be a writer, for god’s sake. It’s not that hard, and it doesn’t require that much effort on a day to day basis. Find the time or make the time. Sit down, shut up and put your words together. Work at it and keep working at it.

Original post here.

link madness 10/14/10

Ooookay. Been awhile so lots of links to round up (some of these, you will notice, are from September…). I am obviously going to skip most of the stuff that has happened since last we met, otherwise we’d be here all week, but here are some of the highlights:

A Writer’s Life: Quick, cute cartoon. Someone strongly resembling Santa Claus tries to write a novel. Or a short story. Or something.

I Will Be Your Friend, But I Will Not Be Your Fan: A Rant About How Authors Use Social Media for Self-Promotion: A guest post over at Shrinking Violet Promotions regarding the use and abuse of social media by people who want you to buy their books. Interesting article, and some interesting comments, too.

The Shrinking Violet Online Persona Workshop: Week One: Again from Shrinking Violet. If you’re kind of a wallflower and don’t really know what to do with yourself out here in the great big internet, they’re doing a series just for you!

Some half-formed thoughts on ink: Martha Mihalik muses on tattoos in the digital age.

Offended by Rank Objectification of Writers: Nitsuh Abebe takes a list of Top 20 reasons to date a writer and responds to the dumb ones. Obviously “Writers are sexy” gets a pass.

The Hunt: Andrea Cremer’s Nightshade hits stores next week. You should pick it up, and enter this contest!

Friday Funnies Comic Style: Batman, he doesn’t like chocolate. He reeeally doesn’t like chocolate.

 

Edited because HELLO it’s October not September.

Happy Birthday Gracetopia!

Well, happy birthday gracetopia version 2.0, at least. But anyway, you’re two years old, baby! How does that feel??

On October 14, 2008, I started Gracetopia 2.0 with this post. A stunner, let me tell you. At least it was only uphill from there. (OK, the following post was about Paris Hilton. There were growing pains.)

So I thought it’d be fun to go through some 2-year anniversary stats. First, here are the top 5 most popular posts I’ve ever done here at Gracetopia:

5. Book Review: The Mysterious Benedict Society. This is the first book review I ever did here and it remains my favorite because I feel like I actually thought critically about the book and said something *gasp* interesting.

4. Stargirl Update. Remember her? The girl who had 56 stars tattooed on her face? This is Part II of my Stargirl series, and since Part I is up at #2, I think we can safely say that Stargirl has done more for my blog than anyone else.

3. Gay Smackdown. Oh, if only this had happened. Neil Patrick Harris and John Barrowman were duking it out for “Gay Man of the Decade” and I had an original and profitable idea for making the decision. If only someone had listened.

2. Stargirl. The original Stargirl post. I’m pretty snarky in this one. (As opposed to all the rest of the time, when I’m not snarky at all…)

1. Tracy Chapman. This one surprises me, especially because not only am I horrible at music reviews, I spent most of this review bitching about my fellow concert-goers. Hmmm.

The top 5 search terms that have brought people to Gracetopia:

5. “I sell the dead“

4. “shane macgowan” (yesssss)

3. “jack harkness”

2. “the red queen”

1. “tracy chapman” (again on top! I feel like I should improve my tracy chapman-related news)

I am pleased with all of those.

Aaaaand of course some of the more entertaining search terms that have brought people to Gracetopia. I feel like my stat counter has lost some, I swear I remember seeing something about caterpillars once. Anyway:

“gay men without clothes”

“big blue penis movie movie” (yep, movie movie)

“blue glowing shocks”

“sideways nose”

“venn diagram shoe color”

“why is there a penis in the movie”

…always a good question, my friend.

So there are some birthday stats brought to you by the friendly elves at Gracetopia. Thanks for hanging out with me these past two years! I really appreciate it and I love each and everyone of you. Except for that one guy.

question: how do YOU plot novels?

Hello there Gracelings. Gracettes? Minions. I require your assistance.

I have decided that for my Finish BY or Die Trying During NaNo project, I am going to hardcore plot. In most everything else I do in life I make plans and lists and put things on calendars and so on and am generally quite organized. With writing I tend to be more loosey-goosey about structure and organization. But I’m thinking for this I will try to be strict and write out the plot very distinctly. I mean, I’ve been working on this for so long, I basically know what happens. There aren’t going to be a lot of twists left for ME. And having it mapped out might help me finish.

BUT. I’ve always been a “pantser.” I’m bad at plotting. I know what some techniques are, but I don’t really know what works for me.

SO. Minions. How do you plot things? I tried the index-card method once so I still have a bunch of those around. And I have about 5000 notebooks of various sizes that I could use (it’s a bad idea to let me in office supply stores). I’d prefer something tactile and by-hand, but if you have something you do with a computer I am also interested. Basically, what works for YOU? How do you structure things? How detailed do you go? Etc.

Throw things at me. I’m looking for ideas.

Mwah.

NaNoWriMo 2010

So. It’s that time of year. The Boston air has turned crisp, the sky has turned a pleasant shade of gray, and writing is in the air. It’s a mere 20 days til National Novel Writing Month begins, and the plot bunnies are starting to stir.

For those of you not in the know, NaNoWriMo is a month-long, very intense novel-writing experience shared by thousands of people around the world. The goal: to write a 50k word novel in 30 days. Yeah yeah yeah, 50k isn’t a “real” novel, anything you write that quickly probably isn’t going to be really “good,” but that’s not the point. The point is to get that shit written.

Last year was my first NaNo year, and it worked out really well for me. I mean, I was faking it (trying to write 75k in a month and a half), and I didn’t finish (big shock) but I met some absolutely amazing people, which was actually my main goal. So I count it as a win.

However. I’ve been wavering about doing NaNo this year. I really, really, really, really want to finish BY. And I’ve gotten to the point where—I believe the phrase is it’s time for me to shit or get off the pot. I either need to finish BY or pack it away. And I’m not ready to give up quite yet.

So. I’m giving myself one more month. My goal for November has nothing to do with wordcount and everything to do with finishing. I am going to attach myself to the momentum of NaNo and finish. this. novel.

Or I’m putting it away.

Deadline.

So. This will be my second year of “sort of but not really” doing NaNo. Feel free to cheer me on. I get the feeling I’m going to need it.

have you missed me?

I’ve missed YOU.

Let me recap what I’ve been doing this past month.

Boston–> Dallas–> Boston–> Chicago–> Tampa–> Boston–> New York City–> Boston–> Seattle–> Phoenix–> Boston.

ohmygod

Don’t get me wrong. I love traveling. Most of that was work travel, but I loved it anyway. (Except Tampa. Fuck Tampa.)

But anyway. I’ve spent a lot of time this month on airplanes and buses, in hotel rooms, working, and generally being too tired and cranky to deal much with the internet. BUT I’M BACK you can all breathe a big sigh of relief. More meaty posts coming soon.

SO. What have you guys been up to while I’ve been gone?