Cat Valente

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• Posted God Willing and the Robots Don't Rise: Final Thoughts to Charlie's Diary
  Thus does my time as a regular presence at the mic here come to a close. It's been an amazing month, and I've learned a lot from you guys--I hope you've all gotten something out of my posts here. It...
• Posted Work Is Never Over: On Publishing and Its Many Faces to Charlie's Diary
  A couple of commenters indicated interest in hearing my thoughts on the blistering array of publishing options currently fighting it out Pon Farr style in the contemporary world of letters. Before my time here comes to a close, I'll try...
• Commented on Life With and Without Animated Ducks: The Future Is Gender Distributed
  Why would it be similar? Why would it not advance? How we had children in the 50s (twilight state) and now are not the same. C-sections are becoming more common for economic and weird social reasons, not because more women...
• Commented on Life With and Without Animated Ducks: The Future Is Gender Distributed
  Yeah, I think it also depends on the time of day and where in both cities you're headed. Most of my Tokyo trips were an hour and a half, counting transfer time, waits, and walking. Also, in Yokosuka at least,...
• Commented on Life With and Without Animated Ducks: The Future Is Gender Distributed
  In a cosmic, holistic, importance of continuing the species and centrality of most people's lives sense, including in "most" those who have them, are related to them, and whose livelihoods depend on more humans being made....
• Commented on Between the Perfect and the Real: On Writing Part 2
  Yeah, I know. I'm a Classics major too. I paused with my fingers over the keys. But an argument can be made that in English, they do. Most English translations begin with speak and sing. It is our more natural...
• Commented on Life With and Without Animated Ducks: The Future Is Gender Distributed
  Having a baby is both a bit more complicated, a bit less common, and a bit more important than taking a shit....
• Commented on Life With and Without Animated Ducks: The Future Is Gender Distributed
  Yep. And I just didn't have the self-respect to say no, do it yourself. Not saying I was awesome in college, I had been raised a feminist by my mother and to do housework all the time forever by my...
• Commented on Life With and Without Animated Ducks: The Future Is Gender Distributed
  I think those are some big generalizations, there. And a little proving my point, given that you're shrugging and saying men just don't get cleaning, it's a girl thing....
• Commented on Life With and Without Animated Ducks: The Future Is Gender Distributed
  Also, the whole point was that the public sector has super high tech in Japan. So garbage disposals and dryers, not actually very high tech, should be common if there's any kind of equality in the distribution in invention or...
• Commented on Life With and Without Animated Ducks: The Future Is Gender Distributed
  See my note in another comment about the climate of Japan. I've hung clothes out too and I'm aware there is not only a cultural difference in whether or not that's common but a philosophical one, too. However, neither where...
• Commented on Life With and Without Animated Ducks: The Future Is Gender Distributed
  You'll note that you live alone. And are probably a reasonably neat person given that 30 minutes. Most people do not live alone. They live with elderly parents, a partner, children, roommates, siblings, whathaveyou. The work balloons, believe me, and...
• Commented on Not Enough Credit, Not Enough Time: Thoughts on Writing Pt 4 (and Final)
  Yes, you're sight. The sub is controlling things--what they read, when, how much, how long. They negotiated when they read the back of the book, hemmed and hawed, and then bought it. And if they don't want anymore, in the...
• Commented on Not Enough Credit, Not Enough Time: Thoughts on Writing Pt 4 (and Final)
  Thank you, though in most circles, I am not considered a "sir."...
• Commented on Life With and Without Animated Ducks: The Future Is Gender Distributed
  Yeah, in Spain I can see it. In Japan, where even (especially) in summer the prospect of a typhoon and torrential downpour is not just likely but guaranteed, and the humidity is so high that mold springs up nearly instantly,...
• Commented on Not Enough Credit, Not Enough Time: Thoughts on Writing Pt 4 (and Final)
  Having done both, I suppose I could hit that topic before my formal time here ends....
• Commented on Not Enough Credit, Not Enough Time: Thoughts on Writing Pt 4 (and Final)
  Of course not. Henry Miller didn't write his first book til he was 40. In fact, you've lived more, you have more experience to bring, so maybe you have more to write about. Maybe not--I don't know you. But maybe....
• Commented on Not Enough Credit, Not Enough Time: Thoughts on Writing Pt 4 (and Final)
  Meaning: where no one thinks they're wrong....
• Posted Life With and Without Animated Ducks: The Future Is Gender Distributed to Charlie's Diary
  You know that wonderfully, wryly apt Gibson line: "The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed"? I came across this article a few days ago, detailing several self-cleaning fabric technologies, some chemical, some using nanotech. Some safer than others....
• Posted Not Enough Credit, Not Enough Time: Thoughts on Writing Pt 4 (and Final) to Charlie's Diary
  This will conclude my series of writing advice here--but I'll still be posting for another ten days or so, have no fear. (Or have fear, if you haven't dug this.) I'll be at Boskone this weekend if anyone wants to...
• Commented on Operating Narrative Machinery: Thoughts on Writing Pt 3
  Keith-- I think that nobody is instinctively perfect. Being a good writer doesn't mean you never fall into cultural traps or throw up a cliche every once in awhile. You have to think and talk about this stuff in order...
• Commented on Operating Narrative Machinery: Thoughts on Writing Pt 3
  I find the adoration of the age and the piling on of racist and sexist tropes in fiction set there is mostly perpetrated by male authors. I grew up in Ren Faires and few of the women I knew would...
• Commented on Operating Narrative Machinery: Thoughts on Writing Pt 3
  I don't think there's as much pressure to twist the ending as all that. I think people get very proud of themselves for doing so, but it's not a requirement and really much more common to SF film, I...
• Commented on Operating Narrative Machinery: Thoughts on Writing Pt 3
  Keith-- If you don't think that your scenario isn't the upshot of rather a lot of books, well, I envy you. You live in a nicer world than I do. People do that stuff all the time, and what's more,...
• Commented on Operating Narrative Machinery: Thoughts on Writing Pt 3
  Charlie and (and John)-- Yeah, I think that's on the mark. You can ignore them, but ignoring is not the same as not knowing in the first place. Ignoring can be done with style and flair. Ignorance can't....
• Commented on Operating Narrative Machinery: Thoughts on Writing Pt 3
  Er, it jives with subverting cliche. If I had known this series was going to get so involved when I started it, I would have put point 8. after the cliche one, to make the connection that though you should...
• Commented on Operating Narrative Machinery: Thoughts on Writing Pt 3
  Hm. I guess because I think the party bus is awesome, it didn't seem that way to me when I wrote it? Like, I'd always rather be the one partying than the DD. I don't think anything in writing, really,...
• Posted Operating Narrative Machinery: Thoughts on Writing Pt 3 to Charlie's Diary
  I feel like the last two days should be one of the points about writing I've been making--you can't do everything all at once all the time. Being still sick while trying to turn around a copyedit on a dime...
• Commented on You Are What You Love: A Numerical List of Loosely-Connected Thoughts on Writing (Part 1)
  Keith, you're right! Those domes ARE shaped like a 1920's ladies' hat!...
• Posted Between the Perfect and the Real: On Writing Part 2 to Charlie's Diary
  Continuing my series of thoughts on writing and the peculiar soup of skills and perspectives that go into it, I present to you points 3-5. These are not in any particular order, one is not more important than the other....