alexandraerin

Here's a note to myself: stop using terms like "afternoon" and "morning" until I've been on my nocturnal schedule for quite a bit longer. I say them and then I look back at the posts later and sometimes I go, "Why did I use that word?" The actual times of the day have been utterly disconnected from anything going on in my brain.

A reader on Formspring asked me if I was sure I wasn't going to overdo things with my increased productivity... well, actually, I think maybe it wasn't meant to be a question so much as a gentle warning, and under the circumstances (and my proven history of doing exactly that) I don't mind skirting the "questions that aren't questions" thing. It was a good, um, quearning. But I'm being extremely careful. I've pushed back my plans rather than pushing on when it's become apparent that I'm overreaching.

I've been making sure that I don't give up things like being sociable with real people, relaxing, reading, etc. in order to get things done. When that happens... when I stop taking bubble baths because I'm thinking "Oh, I've got so much to do", when I stop hanging out with people because I think I'll get more done, when I stop reading for pleasure because I know I've got my own readers waiting, two things happen. Right away my writing gets worse, and eventually, I crash and burn.

This is why I keep reminding myself to keep Monday and Tuesday relatively light, because that's when my housemate is around to hang out with. If I tried to keep those as full work days, I'd see or talk to her much more rarely and I'd also find myself distracted because the house is less quiet. Easier and better to go with the flow.

This is why I resurrected my D&D hobby at the exact same time I'm reviving more stories. That might seem counterintuitive, but it means I've got one night a week that's dedicated to something that makes my creative wheels spin in a purely pleasurable, low-stress fashion.

I'm trying to be smarter and slightly more organized about how I spend my time, and that includes having some set aside for myself and the people in my life and some clearly set aside for work. I think that's going to make a real difference.

Sooooooooooooooo... I've occasionally had some problems with readers and boundaries, as most e celebrity dot coms do. The fact that I'm kind of insular and hermitish prevents this from being a problem too often, but the fact that I'm not very good at setting and enforcing boundaries means that I sometimes find myself in some really kind of creepy situations if I don't shut things down as soon as they get into iffy territory.

My Formspring account has been one of the major sources of such lately. It's also seen a host of not-creepy but kind of... overly enthusiastic?... activity lately. It's gotten to the point where I can't begin to keep up with it, and many of the questions were things that don't seem to be productive to take the time to answer, or that I couldn't begin to figure out how to answer.

The other day, after a spate of spammy and creepy questions came in on top of each other, I realized I had unanswered questions going back six weeks and I just nuked the whole thing for orbit. Wipe it out, start again. So if you had an unanswered question waiting in the queue, know that it's not necessarily because I objected to your question. I just didn't have the wherewithal to go through the list and figure out what was worth responding to.

I've made this post to help people who are genuinely uncertain about what sort of questions I'd appreciate and probably answer and what sorts I won't. A little common sense and a little respect (and a little common sense about what is and isn't respectful) will go a long way.

These things are fine:

Questions about my opinions on things.

I have opinions. I don't mind sharing them, generally. If I don't find the topic interesting or I don't feel like sharing my opinion, I'll delete the question, but this is a "without prejudice" thing.

"What sort of tree would you be?" questions.

You know, the sorts of things that are used as ice breakers or end up in meme surveys. Again, if I don't want to answer, I just won't.

Questions about the MUniverse or other stories.

I'll generally ignore spoilerish questions, or ones where I feel the answer would be too involved and not interesting enough, but you don't have to try to guess whether or not that will be the case. Ask away.

Questions about what I enjoy.

Whether it's if I like a particular game or book or TV show, or a question about one such thing I'm known to enjoy... I confess to being baffled about how many Dungeons and Dragons questions I get, but I like answering them because I like talking about them.

Please try to avoid these things:

Asking a bunch of different questions at once.

No, I'm not going to put a number or minimum time interval on it, but seriously, learn to self control. Okay is when every once in a while you ask me two or three questions about unrelated things because they all just popped into your head. Really kind of aggravating is when you ask seven questions, the answer to each one depending on the answer to the first one, which usually concerns some pet theory about the MUniverse that isn't even true or some belief that I don't ascribe to. Or when you take the fact that I answered all of your two or three random interesting questions as a sign that you should ask two dozen more.

Asking a bunch of questions in a giant question mark-infested paragraph of doom.

"What's your favorite type of _______, and why?" is fine. I mean, that's basically one question. "What's Mackenzie's ________? Is it affected by ___________? What if she __________? Would it matter if ______? Or _______?" That really falls into the same category as the above.

Asking for spoilers.

Asking about something that happened in a character's past or something that hasn't happened yet is a spoilerish question. Asking a question about history or geography or politics is not.

Hair-splitting and pedantry.

If your question is about my usage of certain words, please read the following and see if it doesn't answer you:

"They" has been an acceptable singular pronoun in English for longer than "you" has. The myth of its unacceptability grew out of the 19th century, a time when it seemed safe to say that English didn't need a gender-neutral third person pronoun. I'm sorry you were browbeaten by your teachers until you cringe every time you see it, but they were wrong to do so and you have the power to break the cycle.

"Less" works perfectly fine with countable quantities; it's true "fewer" doesn't work with uncountable volumes, but as the words are etymologically unrelated and not total elemental opposites from the Plane of Comparative Values how "fewer" is used doesn't affect "less", does it? See this: <? That thing there? That's a "less than" sign, as in "1 (is less than) 3." Even dictionaries that have a usage note deprecating "less" for numbers will list its prepositional use meaning "minus", i.e,. "A month, less two days." or "Your pay is five hundred dollars, less my fee."

"Alright" works for the same reasons as "altogether" and "already", and it does have a distinct and separate usage from "all right", alright? "Nauseous" meaning "the state of having nausea" dates back as far as the usage meaning "nausea-inducing", and makes more Goddamn sense which is the first, last, and only thing we demand of our words.

As for the sundry and miscellaneous subject/verb agreement errors and non-standard contractions, that's just how words are apt to fall out of people's mouths when they're speaking off the cuff rather than reciting a well-prepared essay. I write my characters (and their interior monologues) as if they're speaking, not as if they're reciting lines written for a grade in a high school composition class.

Also, the way the word "science" is used within the context of the MUniverse has been made perfectly clear within the body of the story, and then explicated quite clearly by Mackenzie when someone used the character Q&A to try to "correct" me/her on its meaning.

Using a question form to apologize.

If it seems I haven't answered your question, if you ask a question and then realize that you should've read this first, if I answer your question but in a sort of brusque way or brush off a part of it that I'm not planning on answering, or if you otherwise feel like you might have irritated me and want to make sure you stay in my good graces or whatever... don't put an apology in my inbox. Not even a super-respectful one. No, starting it with "I know you said not to apologize here, but I wanted to say..." doesn't make it better. It makes it worse.

That's not what Formspring is for. How should you apologize to me, then? You shouldn't. Chances are your question didn't irritate me, it just didn't get answered. If it did irritate me, I want to move on.

Not finding some way to apologize to me doesn't mean I'll hate you forever. It means I'll forget about it completely in a month or two.

Restating your question to try to gain more information than I gave the first time.

If it seems like I completely misunderstood the question, that's one thing, but if my answer seemed incomplete, or I answered it with a rhetorical question, chances are I did so for a reason (perhaps a full answer would be spoilery, perhaps you were brushing up against one of the gray areas on this page) and I've said everything I'm going to say in response to it.

These things will result in your question being deleted:

You are asking for the sort of personal information that most people wouldn't broadcast over a social networking site or you're inviting me to a chat or IM session.

This seems like it should be a no-brainer, but I've had a rash of it lately. Since I'm not clicking on the chat invite links, it's possible that a lot of those are spambots (something else I've had a rash of lately... no, I don't want an iPad. If you really did give one to me for free, I'd sell it. And use the money to buy a computer.), but on the other hand, a lot of the ones seeking or offering IM usernames or asking for my phone number.

Your question is not a question.

If your question starts with "How could you..." or, worse yet, "How dare you...", you may not actually be asking a question. Please don't use my Formspring box to editorialize. This seems to have increased sharply in response to my quashing ranty/flamey comments on this blog.

This includes editorializing about characters ("Why is Amaranth such a...?", "Why is Mackenzie so...?") Maybe the people posing these don't think of them as editorializing, but for you to assume you'll get an answer, you're also assuming that I objectively endorse or otherwise agree with your interpretation of a character.

On that note, though it's not so much about boundaries as practicalities...

You're asking me a question about how something in a fictional world works, but you've based it around assumptions you made that are not presented by the story.

A lot of the MUniverse questions I delete are things that go, "Given that ____________ is true in the MUniverse, what would happen if...?", when ____________ is not true in the MUniverse and has never been shown to be true. If you've been bringing an assumption or preconceived notion to your reading of the story, I don't expect the act of formulating a question based on it to make you suddenly realize that this is the case, but please please please if you're asking a highly involved, technical, or philosophical question about the MUniverse, stop and think about where your assumptions have come from and if they're really supported by the text before asking me.

I realize that I only show a small sliver of a big world and an indirect glimpse of its mechanics. You can have whatever pet theories you want about the gaps. But I can't answer questions based on them.

You're asking about my personal life.

At first my philosophy was "Sure, I'll answer some questions about my relationship with Jack.", because after all I am "out" about being trans, bi, kinky, and polyamorous. But even general, not-too-personal, small-talkish questions just triggered flurries of ever more intrusive and insensitive questions from people who read them and went "Wait, what? No, really, WHAT?" I'll blog about these things when I feel like talking about them, but talking about them on Formspring seems to be inviting trouble.

Besides, I think the answers already present contain more than enough information.

You ask me something intrusive or personal about my body.

This one seems obvious, but then, some people have a very weird idea of where the threshold of intrusive/personal is. When you're talking about somebody's body... particularly somebody you only know well enough that you're asking them questions through Formspring... the threshold is very, very low. If you have any doubt if your question is appropriate, please keep it to yourself. People often treat the bodies of trans folk and people with disabilities like public exhibits. The fact that you're curious about something doesn't mean you're entitled to an answer. Nor does curiosity by itself equal respect. Expecting virtual strangers to recite their medical history for your edification is not an act of respect.

You're re-asking a question that I didn't answer the first time, or asking me why I didn't answer it.

See this list.

You're asking me to justify something.

Whether it's a story direction or my personal tastes or favored edition of Dungeons and Dragons, I am not going to take time to account for myself to J. Random Internetperson. Double if you're asking me to justify not answering your question.