Very Inspirational Award

So a little while ago Cindy Vaskova bestowed this Very Inspiring Blogger Award upon me. The real compliment  was Cindy finding my writing inspirational at all. It's one of the nicest things a writer can say to another. I mean, unless it turns out I inspired you to strangle your neighbors. Then I'd probably be closer to 'Neutral' than 'Flattered.'

The game requests you reveal seven things about yourself, and that you hand it over to fifteen other people. I've played a lot of games where you reveal personal details, and tried my best to come up with new stuff this time. Please tell me if I repeated something. I'll probably owe you a private revelation if you get me.

1. I root for the villains a lot. For instance, I’ve always thought the Ring Wraiths were really cool, and enjoyed the way they adapted into the movies. When the Nazgul attack in Peter Jackson’s Return of the King, I cackled so much that a friend turned to me, put her hand on my arm and said, “You’re enjoying this too much.” If only I could dive-bomb some good guys on my pet pterodactyl.

2. I’ve never had a drink of alcohol.

3. I’ve never smoked anything. For a year in my teens I needed a nebulizer for my lung medicine, which I guess counts as inhaling controlled substances.

4. I once dieted and exercised so hard that my gallbladder overreacted and I had to have it removed. I almost went bankrupt with medical bills. Healthy living, everybody.

5. One time while I was in the hospital, my brother and father gave me a bunch of rare football cards. I was so surprised that I flatlined.

6. I don’t have as much of a conscience as I have a modular sense of what some people might object to. When I love what I’m writing, even this modular sense goes on the fritz, and sometimes I’ll ask a friend to read it over to ensure it’s not horribly amoral. The most recent case was Exorcising Mother (thanks be to Max Cantor).

7. One reason that I’ve never bought Meme Theory is that human beings are not unconscious repetition machines. It’s not blind luck or survival traits that necessarily cause us to adopt an idea or behavior; we are quite often intelligent designers, altering a notion upon reception, or after a period of mulling it over. For instance, I’m changing how this award works. I’m going to pass it to three people, and I’m going to include the stipulation that you have to tell why you’re naming them.

So, I'll be passing this on to...

1. Stephen Hewitt of Café Shorts. While his blog is updated infrequently, every story he posts is lovingly crafted with provocative language, characterization and plotting. He is one of those fiction bloggers who not nearly enough people read. I deeply admire writers who experiment with different material, and Stephen does this with almost every piece. Sometimes the inspiration is simply that I should be as good at crafting the whole piece of fiction, with all its wiggling bits, as he is.

2. Elephant’s Child is obviously not her real name. However, it’s what she goes by on the internet, and I respect that. EC has one of the most positive blogs on the web. Even when she’s grappled with health problems and personal tragedies, she’s fostered compassion from her community of friends and followers. It’s something I’d like to be able to inspire as easily as she makes it look.

3. T.S. Bazelli is very transparent about her writing process. There are status updates, she's also happy to discuss what she got out of an article, a writing camp, or even her latest set of edits. She's been incredibly kind to me as both a beta reader and discussing her own process. I love transparency in how we get fiction to work.