(no subject)

kitzen_kat gave me another five ideas to play with.

speculative fiction

To me, all fiction is speculative. This makes it hard to answer someone who demands to know what speculative fiction is. Bad novels are ones without solid worldbuilding, whether the novel is mimetic, romance, fantasy, mystery... and if you're worldbuilding, you're creating realities and if you're creating realities then the fiction is speculative.

Having carefully spelled that out, I also feel that there is 'genre' speculative fiction writing where tales are told using specific tropes and patterns and plot arcs. This genre is one of my major forms of fun and my world is richer from it.

Now for the bottom line. When I say that I write spec fic, I may be referring to one definition or to the other. It all depends on what I'm writing.


cooking

I'm no clearer with cooking. I can cook. I could cook (as I love to tell people) 3 course meals for 8 by the time I was twelve. I use historical recipes, international cuisines, unusual ingredients. I'm not a gourmet cook. I suspect I'm not even a food snob. What I am is someone who loves understanding how people see the world and interpret it and one of the best places to understand this is in peoples' relations with food.


empathy

A real gift. A lot of people think they have it and are wrong. Every single person I've met who really has a sense of others is someone I value very much. Very special and rare, these folks.


laughter

I couldn't live without laughter. I'm not someone who laughs aloud easily or often, but I often have a quiet chuckle underneath a sober surface.


intelligence

Intelligence is a complicated beastie. Too much of one variety or another can lead to great loneliness. Every ounce of understanding one can bring to the world, however, is wonderful. Thank goodness some forms of understanding don't require genius. I wish that all forms of genius carried understanding, empathy and compassion.

(no subject)

I'm getting a big kick out of readers enjoying the guests visting my food history blog. It appears that many food history buffs are just as interested in the food lives of writers as I am.

I also got a big kick out of actually sleeping last night. My skin is still a mess and life is still painful, but last night my bed actually behaved like a bed rather than as an irritant and I got a full night's proper sleep. A few more nights like that and the annoyingly irritated soul you're getting used to will fade into the nowhere she came from.