sorry to get so emphatic, but I wanted to make sure that you knew that this is the fun, light, 'getting aquainted' thread as opposed the the more serious, 'take a side and fight for your right to express a moral opinion' thread entitled A bit of me.

Anyhooo!

Hi, I'm Richard Chiu, and I have a picture of myself at my webpage. I'll put that in my profile sometime, and you can look at me and tremble in fear that such as I exist.

I want to become a writer, not that I've never written anything, in fact, I've written quite a bit more than you probably want to read, but I want to become the sort of writer that can't write enough to satisfy my many fans. I've written a lot of stuff in the Hatrack River Forums, but I've decided to devote myself to this place, because I don't want to comment on society or OSC's writing, I want to learn to write myself.

What about you?

One time I heard this advice to writers: to think of the thing you'd like to read more than anything else in the whole world, and then to just sit down and write it.

Well, I would be willing to die for a lot of things. It's more what I'm willing to live for. I'm willing to live for the sake of honor. If it is not to be had, then I must depart.

As for what I want to write, that is a sort of tricky question. I suppose that the real question is what do I intend to write. And the answer, as unsatisfying as it may be, is that I want to write speculative fiction. Not science fiction, or fantasy, but a sort of literature of myself.

As for my questions, I am interested in everything, I think of myself as a survivor, I hate wickedness and stupidity, and I would kill a human for any good cause. But I also meant personal stuff, like liking strawberries and chocolate, or the writing of Tolstoy, or being immune to poison ivy.

Then I think of Joshu's mu, and want to scream MU! MU! That oak tree in the garden!

But then I think, well, why not answer the mundane part of the question. I'd like to go into space. Specifically, I think the human species should send a mission in 2027 to obliterate or deflect asteroid 1999AN10 which was discovered this January and has a small possibility of impacting the earth (in 2044 or later), causing the whole K-T nuclear winter scenario, and incidentally rendering most species extinct. (Including, of course, us.)

Never mind that the probability is small. I can accept large risks for myself, smaller risks for my family, but the whole world I want to try to eliminate even tiny risks for. I don't mind dying at all, but I hate the thought that there won't be any more novels again ever. Or symphonies. Or WWF, or saturday morning cartoons, whatever. Just bound to the wheel, I guess!

What I'm doing in the meantime is designing and building machines of all kinds. I think it's good experience for lots of possible future scenarios, plus it's a lot of fun and I seem to be pretty good at it.

But the truth about what I'm really doing is hard to say ... ... ... ... I'm seeking something ... ... and just worshipping in awe... ...and keeping my eyes open, trying to learn, enjoying the show ... ... oh this is so lame! ... ... ... yesterday a great blue heron flew down by my creek right at sunset ... ... ... this place hatrack is pretty nice ... ... ... ... I like to talk and think about all these things that interest me... ... .... ... just mu ...

Okay, number one, you would have to remain stationary relative to the point of transmission, since otherwise you'll cause some kind of weird doppler effect, which would cause some interesting effects on an AM transmission but would totally freak out an FM transmission. Not to mention what would happen to a digital signal. You would need so much computer analysis that it would be easier to synthesize the broadcast from scratch.

Then there is the matter of wasting an incredible amount of energy chasing an old, weak, degraded signal instead of just having a copy in storage. Nuff said.

The point? If you're chasing a radio signal, and you're going as fast as it is, wouldn't that leave you recieving the same tone (say, note of the song) indefinitely? Hmmm.... Something to think about.....

As for the subject of what one is willing to die for....Not too much, if you must know. I'm unmistakeably my father's daughter, I inherited quite an 'ornery' streak. I may not be willing to just lay down and die, but I'd be very willing to fight like hell itself for whatever cause inspired me to that level. I guess my basic philosophy on that point would have to be 'if I go, I'm taking a few with me on the way out!'.

If you were going the speed of light and wanted to turn on your headlights, then it would forever for you to finish that thought, cause the electrons in your brain cannot exceed lightspeed, and then forever to get that message to your hand, and an even longer forever for your hand to reach the switch and turn it on, and then another forever for the electrons in the battery to begin running around, and forever for the filament in the light bulbs to heat up, and forever for the light to get outside of the bulb...

Until you get assigned your very on secret group, you can hang out with us here in the open discussions forum. We just hang around and knaw over things that puzzle us, issues that we face as writers, like; How to delineate a workable fantasy environment, How to integrate characters with different belief systems into our narrative, How to present elements of risk or danger without alienating the reader, and so on and so forth. We also have fun topics like; Favorite quotes for the day, Where do ideas come from?, Getting to know you , and such.

I don't give computers away because they always have some use, even if it's spare parts or nostalgic games once in a blue moon. For example, I have a computer that nobody wants to use (too slow) that I use as a renderfarm. It takes a lot longer than my preferred workstation, but what does that matter when nobody's using it anyway?

I do mostly landscapes, because I am obsessed with them, and having seen a rich variety (I live on the front range of the Colorado Rockies, with mountains on one hand and rolling plains on the other), they are easy for me to visualize. I'm starting to branch out, but in honesty I haven't done much in the way of 3D art in a long time, because I don't have enough memory anymore to do what I'd really like. (I have a lot of unfinished scenes sitting around, because they got too big and bogged down in interminal paging intervals.)

But, about me, I think I want to be a writer, at least some of the time. I have many ideas, and I am here mostly to get more ideas on how to write and assist anyone if I know something they dont. I also wish to express my opinions, and I find that alot easier online than in person, because online people take you at face value, and not because you are too tall or something like that.

Oh, by the way, just thought that I would cry about my writer's group slowly dwindling in unbelief (or at least failure to post, I think that we only have just the three of us left, and no one has a story ready to go). !!! And I sort of hoped that we would be an unstoppable intellectual quorum that would change the face of literature (okay, not a realistic hope, but if you demand that hopes and dreams be realistic, what's the point?)

If I knew how to spot the people who want to talk about writing and being writers more than they want to actually write, I'd put them in their own group (or tell them to post in these open discussions and let those who really write and are willing to exchange feedback get to work in the groups).

Of course, Life does happen to people--and if it didn't what would some of us have to write about, after all?

hah.

I write words and put music to words, though never do I write the words that I put music to.

I play the fiddle, both Old Time and Irish... my fiddle is lovely and it's from the 1890's, France.

I have a dog, named Gweneviere... who's a vicious, slobbering, lovable, huge dog. With big ears. And a really powerful tail...

I write anything that my characters want to do today, and my friends often ask me who I am.

So, tell us Survivor, why you choose your Nick and... be honest.

Or to be more precise, I have an affinity for meaningful callsigns that start with S. There are other names that I might have picked, all of them were words, common or not, in English. Several of them started with S. Maybe I was thinking of that picture in the National Gallery The Survivor. It's a word that conjures an ideal of beauty that has little to do with image and much to do with substance.

Shawn here. I have been gone awhile! Life got in the way. I was just reading the posts about fizzling writers groups. I am on my second one and this one just sorta trickles along. Problem we are having now is one person didn't feel the need to do my critique but sent their next round. NO explination.

Oh well.

Which can be good or bad... on the other hand, maybe they forgot or maybe they really had something come up and haven't gotten around to it yet.

Or...maybe they really had nothing to say.

There's a person in our group who sent a chapter and I really had nothing to say about it. Critiques are really served best for a finished piece, not something in the planning stages. So, rather than offer useless advice I said nothing.

Okay, maybe that's not the best approach; but I read the rules coming in... nag nag nag... I know I know. <sigh>

The point is, there is probably a reason why the person didn't critique your work. Ask them. They'll let you know the reason(s).

I feel very lucky to have landed here so soon after the muse wacked me on the head with her magic wand (or was that a just dead mackerel?...)

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"Pero yo no la conozco."

Oh, and I am currently waiting to be assigned a Writer's Group of my very own. I'm crossing my fingers that it will be an active group, with some great writing and critiques, but if not I'll just keep bugging y'all.

**Clarification: I don't get sucked into theoretical or lofty arguments that deal with *non-writing* topics. I'll gladly wrangle in the mud when it comes to POV or editing or charaterization or...

I've already sold both nonfiction and fiction -- I find the former much easier -- but, while I'm serious about writing well, I'm not pursuing professional publication because I dislike marketing the stuff.

1) The work is extremely lengthy compared to most modern poetry;

2) My versifying is technically competent, so
it isn't a subject I need to discuss, particularly;

3) Formal meter is out of poetic fashion, and I don't usually appreciate free verse, which means I'm not much help to anybody writing typically modern poetry;

4) The stuff I tear my hair out over is plot holes, characterization, narrative flow -- the same issues that concern prose fiction writers.