How Did Richelieu Enter Into This?

[mrissa]

The bop is tired but doing well after her fixing. She is a good bop.

Another set of five questions, and again, feel free to ask or be asked. jsgbits asks :

1) Have you ever used parts of your real life as launch pads for your stories?
Yes, definitely. Very rarely is it an event, although there's one notable event that sparked my first light-of-day story, "In the Gardens and the Graves." There was a classmate, a friend but not a close friend, who had just disappeared off the face of the earth after graduation. No one I'd talked to had heard from her or had any idea where she'd gotten to, and I was told she didn't show up at the university she'd said she was attending, when fall classes started. And then I saw someone who looked just like her and even had her favorite flannel shirt on, and I hurried up and greeted her, and...nothing. This was clearly not that girl, and yet it clearly was. And I went around pondering it (this was the summer I was in Oregon), and then I went to a coffeehouse that night to write and listen to open mic night, and there was this singer, and...yah. The story fell on my head.

Mostly it isn't like that at all. But images, lines, dynamics, all of them feed the storybrain. I checked with my dad to make sure that some of the family dynamics are okay in warped fictionalized form, and he said somebody might as well get some good out of them, so I will.

2) What do you think influences your writing (that is, if you have influences)?
Oh, gosh, everything. Seriously. Things I eat, things I cook, things I drive past, things I see when I walk the dog. Things I read, of course. Movies I watch, music I hear, jewelry I wear, paintings/sketches I see. Everything.

I have to be careful reading Dumas, or his voice will leak into wholly inappropriate places in my writing, but most writers -- even the writers I like best, even the ones who are the strongest influences -- don't have that effect. Mostly the written influences on my work are a good deal more indirect than that. My brain is a Rube Goldberg machine, where you feed the dog and the full dogdish tips a seesaw to ring a bell and so on, and then at the end you have a story.

Some things influence me to go, ack, ick, for heaven's sake, not that. Even in books I like. I'm enjoying Trickster's Queen a good deal more than I did Trickster's Choice, for example, but my brain started poking at the idea of subverting the Evil Regents Trope, and now it's turning things over and going, oooooh, shiny. Not that I'm going to rehabilitate Richelieu, but...but. But. One becomes a Richelieu-related motorboat, apparently.

A girl Richelieu. A retired girl Richelieu, with an herb garden and a Great Dane and, hey, A., remember the bat thing I was talking about in e-mail? I think I'm around to that.

Dammit, brain!

3) Would you prefer snow or sun for most of the year and why?
Hmmm. See, that's not a choice we make here. We get snow with sun a lot of the time, painfully sparkly. I'm not sure how I'd feel about snow with no sun. I had the chance to experience how I would feel about lack of snow, though, so I'm going to have to go with snow.

My brain now feels settled and comfortable again, because outside is where we keep the cold, and now it's behaving itself properly.

4) What's your favorite nut?
What's, not who's? Hazelnuts. Mmmmm. When I was little, I discovered Toffifays in a gas station on a family road trip, and I could not figure out why this wonderful flavor was not more widely available. (Toffifays are often the only way you can get hazelnut candies in an American gas station.) Then we went to Sweden, and the hazelnuts were everywhere. It was wonderful. And also confusing: why don't we have more of these here?

5) If you could not live in Minneapolis area, what would be your second choice homeplace?
The St. Paul area.

I suppose that doesn't really count, especially as some people reckon we live there already. Sigh. I really don't know. Rochester, Duluth? Maybe Eau Claire, WI? Chicago area? All of those are kind of angling towards being Minneapolish, is the thing: either a relatively short drive here or a major feature or two in common with a slightly longer drive. I liked Corvallis for a summer, and if the Upper Midwest fell off the map, maybe I would make do in Oregon. We've had good times in Portland. Or maybe I'd just head north and stop driving when someone complimented my Sundin jersey. (Hmm. That might end up meaning I'd live in Mendota Heights, which is not an answer to this question.)

I like lots of places. I have enjoyed lots of places, and will likely enjoy them again. But there's a big difference between enjoying somewhere and calling it home.

Comments

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I have to be careful reading Dumas, or his voice will leak into wholly inappropriate places in my writing

This is bad with fiction, worse with non-fiction, and worst, thus far IME, with perl code.

[ksumnersmith.livejournal.com]

Snow with no sun, not good. This I know from plenty of experience. I have a local friend who was used to prairie winters -- far colder than we get around here, with more snow -- and yet the yucky, overcast winter we had last year just about killed him.

And okay, I'm feeling daring: five questions, please.

[songwind.livejournal.com]

Hazelnuts have always been one of my favorites as well. Hazelnuts, almonds and pecans.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I do like other nuts. In fact, I'm not sure there's another kind of nut I don't like, although they do have varying places in my life.

[songwind.livejournal.com]

Walnuts sort of bore me, except in Black Walnut icecream, and brazils are too much work for the payoff :)

[songwind.livejournal.com]

Did we play this game last time?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

(Someday when I'm feeling particularly two, the questions are going to be, "Whatcha doin'? Why? Why? Why? Why?")

1. What drives you most nuts in a protagonist?
2. What drives you most nuts in a villain?
3. What piece of nonfiction has surprised you most by being interesting?
4. Have you stopped beating your wife?
5. What factors feature prominently in your ideal road trip?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I have never written perl code, and my C++ and FORTRAN seem to be safe so far.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I don't know, why?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Have you had walnut potica? It's not at all boring.

Brazils are too much work? How hard is it to dig around the dish of mixed nuts and fish out a brazil? Especially because people don't pick them out special like they do cashews. You're lazy, dude.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Oh, and by all means do me, so long as you don't mind likelihood of delay in answering.

[songwind.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of the apparently kevlar/titanium alloy shell, not finding it in the bowl. :)

My Brazil nut experience is all in-shell as far as I remember.

[songwind.livejournal.com]

Because I was pondering participating. If I can think of five interesting questions.

[songwind.livejournal.com]

And no, I don't believe I've had any potica, walnut or not.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Go for it. There's no rule that says you can't play in two different rounds.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I've had three kinds (apricot, poppyseed, and walnut), and they've all been pretty good. Byerly's has walnut and sometimes poppyseed. I don't like raisins in my walnut potica, even though I like them elsewhere, but other than that, if it's potica, I'll go with it.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

Sniff. I already asked to be asked. But that was back before I got you (temporarily) grumpy about the questions thing, so, perhaps my asking has expired...

[songwind.livejournal.com]

Sounds kind of like Liz's poppyseed bread. Rolled pastry, filling, thinly iced?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The thin icing is optional, but yes, the pastry is spread with the filling and rolled.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

No, it's just gotten lost.

1. What one interesting feature from your current house do you definitely want in your next house? (Note: I do not find roofs, walls, floors, or doors particularly interesting as categories. Ditto plumbing, electricity, phone service, etc.)
2. What one "interesting" feature from your current house do you definitely not want in your next house?
3. What would your superhero name be, if you had to have one this month?
4. What's your favorite Halloween candy?
5. What was (or were) your best Halloween costume (or costumes)?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

1. What is the most inconvenient/annoying social convention you have to deal with in your own current social circles?
2. What's the first movie you remember seeing? (Yes, after all the ones you've forgotten.)
3. Do you have seasonal food moods? If so, what's a good fall-ish meal?
4. If time and money and other people's thoroughly-enforced political idiocy were collectively no object, what cons would you want to attend in the next year?
5. What were you reading at 14? Do you still like it now?

[zalena.livejournal.com]

You can ask me questions, or I can answer the ones you've asked others.

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

I have to be careful reading Dumas, or his voice will leak into wholly inappropriate places in my writing, but most writers -- even the writers I like best, even the ones who are the strongest influences -- don't have that effect. Mostly the written influences on my work are a good deal more indirect than that. My brain is a Rube Goldberg machine, where you feed the dog and the full dogdish tips a seesaw to ring a bell and so on, and then at the end you have a story.

You may have changed my ideas about how the assimilative part of my brain works here.

[kythiaranos.livejournal.com]

Your answer to question #1--wow. Very interesting story. I'll be pondering that all day.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

1. Which Moomin is your favorite?
2. Your lj title is "Signs and Wonders." What's a wonder you've seen lately?
3. Do you have a favorite year of childhood, one that was best for you?
4. What do you miss most now that you've moved back to Colorado?
5. Which question or questions, of the ones I asked other people, would you like to answer?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

After the reality of that day, the fiction was pretty easy. Well, gut-wrenching. But in the other sense easy.

Five Questions

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

1. What is your least favorite total ordering (and why)?
2. If you had to put a bumper sticker on your car, but you could make it up yourself, what would it say (and why*)?
3. Who (other than you) would have the most success buying clothes for you? In what ways would they be right or wrong?
4. If you could spend an entire afternoon with one of the 3 Muskateers, which one would you choose (and why)?
5. What movie or series of movies should Peter Jackson (LotR) attempt next?

You can ask me questions if you wanna. No guarantees on when I'll reply, however.




*A car-colored bumper sticker with no text is cheating, and cheating is wrong. Don't cheat.

Re: Five Questions

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

Ack. Imagine that "musketeer" was spelled correctly above. Stupid uneditable comments.

Re: Five Questions

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

1. When are you coming to visit?
2. Have you made your spousal unit bombers yet? Does she like them?
3. What's the best concert you've ever attended?
4. If you could transplant one Omaha thing to your area of Chicago, what would it be? What about St. Louis things?
5. If you could come home and have one thing magically improved or fixed about your apartment with no effort or mess for you to deal with, what would it be? (This is within the scope of your current apartment; adding a pocket dimension to fit in a thirty-room house with robot cleaning staff does not count.)

[kythiaranos.livejournal.com]

I would really like to read the story that grew out of that incident. Is it available anywhere?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I believe the Asimov's site took it down a few years after the award. Sorry! I can mail you a copy, if you like. It's one of my earlier light-of-day efforts, remember.

[kythiaranos.livejournal.com]

If it's not inconvenient for you, that would be wonderful. There's no rush, but sometime when you're not too busy. I'll happily trade cookies for reading material. *g*