So today I'm thinking about music. Actually TODAY I'm thinking about the fact that my Western Civilization class finally added me back after dropping me the first day because I had a driver's test and didn't show up (yay persistance)and the fact that I just got a novel chapter length e-mail from a friend in China who I haven't talked to in probably a year. (Actually I've never talked to her at all the for real, in person kind of way, but we've been internet friends since we were both in high school seven or eight years ago.) A member of my crit group also just moved to Japan and another friend I've know forever is going to move there in December. Why is everyone suddenly in Asia?

At any rate, YESTERDAY, when I decided what I was going to ramble about today, I was thinking about music and so now I am about to start thinking about that again.

Music. If I were the type to use, music would be my drug of choice. I used to be a music major and sometimes it just felt like a bad addiction. I HATED being on stage. I hadn't decided to learn any kind of instrument until I was sixteen and had no natural aptitude for any of the ones I tried. And yet somehow I couldn't stop. I wanted to know music. I wanted to be music. To control with a twist and weave of my fingers the way my classmates did. I wanted it to obsorb me completely, and take me to whatever majical place it trickled down from. Becuase how could anything so sweet, so perfect, so exciting, come from our world? How could it even be compared with ordinary life?

Maybe that's why it didn't work out for me. Chopin and Motzart and Joplin and the unknown composers of folk tunes were too unreal for me. Too Other. I couldn't think of them with the casual, every day aditude the other musicians had. They played music. That was what they did. There wasn't anything special about it. It was just a part of who they were.

Some people like to say there is no such thing as inner born talent. People who say that have never seen my little brother pick up an instrument he's never touched before and start playing. Talent needs to be nurtured. It sometimes manifests itself later in life or when you least expect it, but it exists.

So my allotment of musical talent is small. That doesn't mean I don't still fiddle around on the piano from time to time. That doesn't mean that my fingers don't twitch when I hear a strain of particularly etherial flute notes and long more than anything to be the one holding that flute. It just means I know where my stronger talent lies. The one that is just a part of who I am. What I do.

Writing.

I wonder sometimes if when those classmates played their finals all they heard were their mistakes. I wonder if they agonized about them afterwards and went over in their heads about what went wrong.

Actually I know they did. I listened to them do it sometimes. "I held those notes too long. Did you notice when I acidently hit a mnor chord instead of a major?" To which I laughed nervously. Manically. I didn't hear their mistakes. What I heard was magic, otherworldly.

So then I look at my drafts. The long ones, and short ones, and finished and unfinished ones. The run on sentances and typos and over use of the word "saids" and wonder if my readers will even see those. That doesn't mean I'll ever stop agonizing over them or trying to find the exact perfect turn of phrase but I wonder if--or maybe hope that --my readers might see past the mechanics. If maybe to them the story itself will seem otherworldly.

What I Haven't Been Doing

Writing. That's what I haven't been doing. Not really. Not in proportion to all the time I've had lately to devote to it. Instead I have been

Going to costume parties


Sitting around the backyard firepit


Exploring Beaches


Going to More costume parties


Exploring more beaches


Having Tea


And generally making a hoolagin of myself.

You may remember a post of summer goals a couple months back. Let's see how I have fared.

1) Query----I sent off six. Does that count?

2) Finish my current WIP --- I'm about thirty pages further along than I was

3) Write short stories with particular magazines in mind for them ---Uh . . . I started one new story but didn't finish it

4) Read --Well this one was a lot easier. I got quite a bit more than usual reading in.

The point is that despite the fact that I am only six days away from returning to a classroom to run my mind through obstacle courses. Despite the fact that my free time will soon be so sparce that every moment of it will be spent before I get to it. Despite the fact that my list of goals and list of accomplishments for this summer look nothing alike. . .

I don't regret the way I've spent my time.

Stillness is a difficult lesson to learn.

Sometimes we need a little quiet, a little inspiration, a little experience. All writing is ultimately about life. What's the point if we don't live as well?

Three is a Magic Number

Eek. Now I have school house rocks stuck in my head.


But on to important things, there are three of them that I should like to pass on to you.

First, I have been accepted into the society of The Secret Archives of the Alliterati! Starting tommorrow I will be blogging there on Thursdays along with L.T. Host on Monddays, Keriann Greaney Martin on Tuesdays, Matthew Delman on Wendsdays, and K. Marie Cridle on Fridays. I am so excited to be in such good company! it is going to be so much fun! Taliesin will still be here though to house my book reviews, character interviews, dabblings in poetry and any other contemplations more vaguely connected to writing.

Second, L.G. Smith over at Bards and Prphets has granted me the honor of the Stylish Blogger Award. Thank you L.G!



Here are the rules:

1. Thank the giver and link back to the blogger who gave it to you.
2. Reveal your top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.
3. Copy and paste the award on your blog.
4. Have faith that your followers will spread the love to other bloggers.
5. And most of all - have bloggity-blog fun!

And in addition I am meant to reveal seven things about myself. I am going to cheat and call my first anouncement (about the Allitarti. You remember that one don't you?) number one and my last anouncement (still to come) as my seventh. That leaves five in between.

hmmm.

I wear hats. A lot. I'm sort of an addict.

I sometimes (now for example) come into Starbucks and use their wifi without ordering a drink but consider myself justified by remembering how many times I come in to use or not use their wifi and DO order a drink

I cut my hair for the first time in my life last month (apart from trimming or layering) and LOVE it.

I can't dra unless they are stick figures and even then the lines aren't very straight.

At one point I declared myself a music major and took a year of music theory . . . before realiziing I didn't actually play an instrument

And who to pass this deluctable award on to . . .

1) Anita Grace Howard at A Still and Quiet Madness because she is always so generous in passing on awards and I'm stillin love with her blog name

2)Yvonne Ozbourne at The Organic Wirter for her different persectives on writing and other pieces of life

3)Adam Heine at Author's Echo because he lives half way aorund the world and still blogs for us

4)Lydia Kang and The Word is My Oyster for her fantastig drawings at the beginning of her posts and her insightful plot related medical advise.

5)Stephanie Thornton because she makes me love ancient history as much as she does

You seserve it. I love reading your posts!


And now for my final piece of all important information. I have at last joined the collective and am on twitter. Sntill o idea what I'm doing at this point but follow me at taryn_tyler so I can find you!

How's that for a long and undirected post? have a good week friends and happy writing!

What You REALLY Didn't want to know.

I know. I said I would put this up last week after the other meme. There may have been a sojourn to Disneyland that put my inclination to blog on hold. I appologize.

However . . .

What has now been a couple weeks ago Anita Grace Howard tagged me in Greenwoman's Diabolical Panty Meme to end all memes (about underclothes)!

I won't be offended if you click on the back button right about now. I really won't.

Nonetheless:


What do you call your panties / underwear / undergarments? Do you have any commonly used nicknames for them?

Just 'underwear'. Every once in a while I have a boring answer for you. *Grins sheepishly while you all snort at the "once in a while"*

Have you ever had that supposedly common dream of being in a crowded place in only your underwear?

No. But I have had it before without the underwear.


What is the worst thing you can think of to make panties out of?

Iron. What if a feary wanted to wear a pair?

If you were a pair of panties, what color would you be, and WHY?

Black and white stripes. To represent duality. And because black and white is the best possible combination of colors --becuase it is both all of them and none of them and just looks really cool.

Have you ever thrown your panties/underwear at a rock star or other celebrity? If so, which one(s)? If not, which one(s) WOULD you throw your panties/underwear at, given the opportunity?

Not unless I sleepwalk and don't know it, which is, I suppos,e a possibility but you would think at least one memeber of my household would have mentioned that habbit to me. The sleepwalking that is, not the underwear throwing. I would hope they wouldn't find out about that one. If it existed.

You’re out of clean panties. What do you do?

Wash some?

Are you old enough to remember Underoos? If so, did you have any? Which ones?

I don't beleive so. The image that comes to mind is a kangaroo in long johns.

If you could have any message printed on your panties, what would it be?

"To be worn and not seen"

How many bloggers does it take to put panties on a goat?

Three. One to provide the goat, one to provide the panties and one to provide the jokes. I volunteer for the final possition *pauses to a chorus on groans*

Tag Four People and tell them why you are being so cruel to them.
1. L.T. Host because you are foolish enough to invite me to join you at The Secret Archives of the Alliterati and I want to remind you what you are getting into.

2. Erin Kane Spock because you have the word bloomers in your blog tittle and I want to know what you will have to say about sixteenth century underwear.

3. L.G. Smith because this is my sick way of thanking you for the Stylish Blogger Award I have yet to pass along.

4. Laila Knight because you were brave enough to become my newest follower and I figured it would be best to get the embarassing part of our introductions out of the way as soon as possible.

Happy writing and enjoy your underwear!

What You Never Wanted To Know

This week is going to be meme week. I have been sitting on a couple of rather hilarious memes for awhile and now information you never wanted to know about me shall be released into the wild. You have been forewarned.

And the best part? I get to tag you and force you to release similar information into the brambles of the internet. Mwahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OK so you don't have to participate if you don't want to but I hope you do.

To begin with my crit partner Keriann Greaney Martin tagged me in a meme that may look familiar at first but on closer examination becomes deliciously twisted.

ehem

Are you a rutabaga?

Not to my knowledge. Though if I were I would want the dolls from Francess Hodgson Burnette's Rackedy Packed House to make a ten course meal out of just me so they can immitate the snooty dolls at Tidy Castle but have much more fun linking arms and dancing in a circle until they fall over.

When was the last time you ate lion meat?

When I was six and had just watched The Lion King. My mom would tell me she was feeding me hot dogs but I knew better.

Upload a heartwarming picture of something that makes you smile.


My feet and my sisters' feet hovering over a very familiar rug at a very familiar starbucks where I do most of my writing.

If you could go back in time and kick the crap out of someone, who would it be?

Nepolean. Really, one shouldn't go around turning revolutions into dictatorships. Not OK.

Name one habit that makes other people plot your demise.

Not planning their demise first.

What song would you like to be playing while you are kicking the crap out of someone?

"I'll Make a Man Out of You" from Disney's Mulan.

Where da muffin top at?

Drurry Lane? On top of the hill I think. Very cute little bakery but hard to find.

How many goats, stacked atop one another like Yertle's Turtles, would it take to reach the moon?

One with a good imagination and paper and ink. Some unusually evolved hooves that allow him to use afore mentioned instruments would also be useful.

Describe yourself using obscure Latin words.

Apoc hoc (take this)
Pax vobiscum (Peace be with you)
. . . I learned my Latin phrases from reading Walter Scott novels in high school so they aren't very extensive. The first was shouted while the speaker was stabbing someone, the second while the speaker was disguised as a priest. Consider the description as a contrast of extremes. Both sneaky and straight forward, violent and peace loving. Or maybe just really confused and doesn't know much Latin.

Why does evil exist?

Because good does.

What the chiz are you thinking right now?

That my previous answer was obnoxiously trite like something meaningful but unhelpful a wise mentor would say to a hero while he was in a tight spot.
-----------------------------------------------

So there you are. A lot of information you never wanted to know about me. And now for the fun part.

I get to tag as many people as I so choose.

Oh the power.

The diffictult part is in choosing people I don't already know have been tagged.

1. Roland
2. Tara Maya
3. Summer Ross
4. Karen Amanda Hooper

Pick a funny nickname for number 1.

Rollick. Yeah. I made a pun from your name. Consider this a sheepish grin, that is half apology half revel in the mischief.

Make up a rhyme about number 2.

Magic and intelligence with a touch of art
Risk taking bohemian, not afraid to start
on her own.
She won't moan
If her whimsical ink-sweat is not highly paid.

Where would number 3 hide in the event of the apocalypse?

I can't speak for certain but I think she would grow wings and fly away.

Where does number 4 purchase her pants?

. . . Somewhere in New York would be my guess. Other than that I don't know but its enough to make me just a touch jealous.

And later this week . . . an even stranger meme.

The Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II post. (Come now. I write fantasy. You knew it was coming.)

This last Thursday night, like ever so many other human beings in the English speaking world, I saw the grand finale of the Harry Potter films. Watching movies at midnight has been a long time past time of mine. Often in costume. In fact, just last month, I saw a special showing of The Two Towers extended edition armed with home made lembas bread. But this wasn't just another pirate movie or something I could choose to watch at home on VHS (yes, another testament of my geek-dom. I still watch those). This was the last of a cultural phenomenon, a series that has taken over ten years to translate into film. So despite the fact that I had work at eight AM the next morning ,and despite the fact that it came after a long day at the DMV, I visited three theaters in person and then spent over an hour on line to get a hold of a ticket.

Eventually I ended up at Horton Plaza downtown San Diego. Needless to say it was crowded. The mall was swarming with young wizards and excited fans but there was something . . . different about these fans compared to those I've waited in line with for other movies.

First there was the costumes. Most of them were store manufactured. They were very accurate of course, but showcased none of the ridiculous dedication and knowledge it takes for a geek to piece one together on his own. There was one home made costume but after puzzling for some time over the inaccuracy I discovered (because the wearer of said costume was asked) that it was meant to be a Gandalf costume.

This was the first sign that something was wrong. As the night progressed many other strange things took place.

My brother and I sat in our seats, drawing each other Harry Potter themed word puzzles to pass the time

The ingenious and excruciatingly difficult Harry Potter word search my brother drew for me to do. You can tell how ingenious it was because he broke down and gave me hints (note the arrows) and I still didn't finish it before the movie started.



The slightly less ingenious crossword puzzle I drew for my brother. You can tell it is less ingenious because he finished it in a matter of minutes. Or maybe he's just a genius.


While we did this a light saber fight broke out somewhere in the theater, met with enthusiastic cheers from the crowd. A beach ball was released and thrown back into the air with shouted quotes from Spartacus. My little brothers' friend admitted to me that not only had he read none of the books but hadn't seen the last two movies.

I slowly began to realize that I was not surrounded by fellow die-hard fans of the boy who lived out to watch the final battle with he who must not be named and compare the adaptation to J.K. Rowling's original. I was in an excitable crowd of people harboring varying degrees of fondness for Harry Potter who were out to have a good time. If I was certain you had read Terry Pratchett's Going Postal I would tell you that they were not true pin-heads. They were merely *gasp* hobbyists.

When I first began to read the Harry Potter books I was reluctant because they were so popular (a bit of my inner emo manifesting itself there). But my sister insisted that however much the books were overestimated in the eyes of the public they were equally underestimated. They are praised and hyped at every corner of the universe because they've made so much money and, well everyone else is talking about them, but few people really take the time to recognize their true literary value. The believable aging of the characters, the progression of the themes as Harry gets older, the way Rowling sets up plot twists so far in advance and then hides them with school yard drama.

With that in mind I don't suppose it was much of a surprise to see that Harry's last moment was over shadowed by his own popularity. The world is full of people who want to be excited about something and one hit movie will do as well as another, but what really struck me, and made me feel just a teensy bit lonely, was that they were playing the game of the geeks. Except that it wasn't uncool anymore and it wasn't as meaningful. I can't help but wonder, does this always happen when something good is discovered by everyone else? Is it maybe better to let some things remain unknown?

On Giving Critiques

I don't think I even need to comment on the invaluable effects of a good critique. I myself have some very amazing critique partners, (L. T. Host, Keriann Gearney Martin, K. Marie Criddle, Refugio Jones and Whitney Coleman) who help me to improve my writing constantly. I am sure many of you who have crit partners know exactly what I am talking about. When critiquing a piece however, it is sometimes difficult to know how much help I am actually being, if maybe I am ripping apart the writer's love child for my own pleasure. Here are some general guidelines I try to follow when I am asked for my opinion on a piece of writing, though ultimately it comes down to a lot of old fashioned intuition (drat writing and its inability to conform to absolute rules –except that that's my favorite part about it).

1) What is my relationship to the writer? Critique partners, of course, want nothing but my full, honest opinion but occasionally a close friend will ask me to review something they've written and I try to be a little more gentle. Similarly, if I am visiting a new critique group or critiquing something by a guest I tend to explain my comments in greater detail since they are aren't likely to be familiar with my verbal shorthand for particular writing issues.

2) How experienced is the writer? Some writers leave almost nothing but nit-picky grammar mistakes for me to discuss with them while others leave a vast legion of plot and formatting hiccups that I take issue with. When that happens I try not to point out every single item in their piece that causes me to pause. If they are bombarded with everything at once they will likely get discouraged and not know where to begin. Instead I will point out a few of the issues in the same order I would edit my own work, beginning with plot and character hiccups and then the structural and stylistic if there aren't too many of the others for the writer to deal with at once. Not because I don't think the writer can “handle” the feedback so much as it is easier to fix things when the focus is narrowed.

3) What are the good qualities of the piece? Sometimes good writing is harder to see than bad. When something is amiss it jumps out and screams at me but when everything is flowing smoothly I become involved in the story and forget all about the writing. It is just as important, however, for a writer to know what she is doing right as it is for her to know what she is doing wrong. I wouldn't want her to sacrifice her beautiful, clever use of language in order to quicken the pace. At least not on every page.

4) Is the comment I am about to make stylistic or a personal preference? Stylistic comments are usually pretty easy to find. If you prefer to dialogue tags or italicized thoughts, omniscient narrative, or present tense. These comments are worth bringing up but a disclaimer recognizing it to be stylistic or an explanation as to why that particular technique does not work in that particular spot is needed. Personal preferences, however, can be harder to spot. For example, if I were not attracted to particularly manly men I might be tempted to tell a writer that her character's love interest is unattractive when the majority of her readers would disagree with me. Similarly I might sympathize with a character I am not meant to if she is given a hobby I enjoy or a vice a struggle with myself.

So what are your guidelines for critiquing other writers' work? Do you tend to ere on the side of being too nice or too harsh? What writing issues can you simply not stand?