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Link: Round 17 Sign Ups | Round 17 Themes

Description: celebrity20in20 is a 20in20 community dedicated to making icons of actors and actresses. You have 20 days to make 20 icons about a celebrity of your choice, based on a set of themes for the round.

Schedule: Round 17 sign ups are open NOW. Icons are due October 13, 2025.

We still need a host for October!

Quote of the Day:

"Oh, you got to make your own worlds, you got to write yourself in, whether you were a part of the greater society or not, you got to write yourself in."

— Octavia E. Butler, Charlie Rose Interview (6/1/2000)


Today's Writing:

407 words on an essay WIP. I have about six of these things I'm trying to write and THEY'RE ALL DEFYING ME.


Tally

( Days 1-23 )

Day 24: badly_knitted, brithistorian, carenejeans, china_shop, goddess47, sanguinity, sylvanwitch, trobadora, ysilme

Day 25: china_shop, sanguinity

Let me know if I missed you, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet. And remember, you can join in at any time!

Get your requests and offers ready, spread the word, and let's do this!



2025 Guidelines and helpful links here.

We need a host for October!


Quote of the Day:

“I wrote a book. I have the page numbers done, and now I just have to fill in the rest."

— Stephen Wright, from "67 of the Best Steven Wright Jokes on His 67th Birthday" at Cracked.com.


Today's Writing:

Free-writing to the tune of 326 words. Mostly junk, but a few sentences go with that thing I thought of that I didn't want to forget. 8-)


Tally

( Days 1-22 )

Day 23: badly_knitted, brithistorian, callmesandyk, carenejeans, cornerofmadness, goddess47, luzula, sanguinity, sylvanwitch, trobadora, ysilme

Day 24 (over the international date line!): sanguinity


Let me know if I missed you, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet. And remember, you can join in at any time!

Quote of the Day:

"Writing involves both the expression of an idea and the exploration of an idea — that is, when writing, you set out with an intention to say something, but as part of the attempt to capture an idea, the idea itself is altered through the thinking that happens as you consider your subject. Anyone who has written has experienced one of these mini-ephiphanies that is unique to the way humans write."

— John Warner, More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI (2025)

(He's talking about nonfiction, but this happens to me while writing fiction allll the time.)


Today's Writing:

Alibi sentence! Mondays, man.


Tally

( Days 1-21 )

Day 22: badly_knitted, brithistorian, callmesandyk, carenejeans, chanter1944, china_shop, cornerofmadness, goddess47, luzula, sanguinity, sylvanwitch, the_siobhan, trobadora, ysilme


Let me know if I missed you, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet. And remember, you can join in at any time!

Sorry this is so late again. Mondays are hopeless...

Also, it's getting near the end of the month. Who will volunteer to host October? Raise your hand!


Quote of the Day:

"The ways creative work gets done are always unpredictable, demanding room to roam, refusing schedules and systems. They cannot be reduced to replicable formulas."

— Rebecca Solnit, "Woolf's Darkness," in Men Explain Things to Me (2014)


Today's Writing:

More words on that thing I thought of that I didn't want to forget. \o/


Tally

( Days 1-20 )

Day 21: badly_knitted, brithistorian, callmesandyk, china_shop, carenejeans, cornerofmadness, goddess47, luzula, sanguinity, sylvanwitch, trobadora

Day 22: china_shop


Let me know if I missed you, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet. And remember, you can join in at any time!

Quote of the Day:

"Maybe this book will be banned in Florida right out of the gate. But I guess if you’re not banned in Florida, then what are you really doing with your life."

— Sean Sherman, in "Reflections on Creating Turtle Island: A Cookbook Against Erasure," in his newsletter The Sioux Chef (9/7/2025)


Today's Writing:

About 250 words, about something I thought of that I didn't want to forget. 8-)


Tally

( Days 1-19 )

Day 20: badly_knitted, brithistorian, callmesandyk, carenejeans, cornerofmadness, luzula, sanguinity, sylvanwitch, trobadora

Let me know if I missed you, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet. And remember, you can join in at any time!

It's past time for another question thread!

The rules:

- You may ask any dev-related question you have in a comment. (It doesn't even need to be about Dreamwidth, although if it involves a language/library/framework/database Dreamwidth doesn't use, you will probably get answers pointing that out and suggesting a better place to ask.)
- You may also answer any question, using the guidelines given in To Answer, Or Not To Answer and in this comment thread.

Quote of the Day:

"We just sit down at the table with a bottle of wine and plot out sections together. Then we each go off and write our own sections. Then we meet, read them back and forth, and when we have something we're satisfied with, we plot out the next section. It's fun."

— Bill Pronzini, on collaborating with Marcia Muller, from "Partners in Crime," an interview with both of them in The Sonoma Independent (1996)


Today's Writing:

No word count as such, since I was turning bullet points into a shitty first draft. ;-)


Tally

( Days 1-18 )

Day 19: badly_knitted, brithistorian, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, luzula, sanguinity, sylvanwitch, trobadora, yasaman, ysilme


Let me know if I missed you, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet. And remember, you can join in at any time!

Please join us for the weekly TS chat on Saturday, September 20th, at 7 pm Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)/19:00 UTC. That could be as early as 12 pm if you’re on the west coast of North America, or 3 pm if you’re on the east coast, or 8 pm in the UK, or early Sunday morning in Australia or New Zealand.

 

We’re in the usual place: http://us25.chatzy.com/81935648447483. There’s nothing to download or install, just choose a name and a color and click on “join chat.”

 

Sign-ups for the Exchange portion of TS Secret Santa are open now! It’s the 20^th year, so let’s make it a fantastic one! Instructions on how to sign up are here: https://ts-secret-santa.livejournal.com/236446.html

 

Our topic this week: writing. Let’s talk about your favorite writing tips, corners you’ve painted yourself into (and how you got out), and whether you’re a pantser or plotter or in between. And we’ll do some writing sprints.

 

See you there!

 

Quote of the Day:

"One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you’re maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones."

— Stephen King

Quoted in The Truth About Writing (2018)


Today's Writing:

About 370 words, mostly random free-writing.


Tally

( Days 1-17 )

Day 18: badly_knitted, brithistorian, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, goddess47, luzula, sanguinity, sylvanwitch, trobadora, yasaman

Day 19: china_shop, yasaman


Let me know if I missed you, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet. And remember, you can join in at any time!

Quote of the Day:

(Another from Hemingway, doing it old-school.)

"Wearing down seven number-two pencils is a good day’s work."

-- Ernest Hemingway, in The Paris Review, (1954).


Today's Writing:

Er, too much reading & research & notes. Now, on to bullet points! ;-)


Tally

( Days 1-16 )

Day 17: badly_knitted, brithistorian, carenejeans, chanter1944, china_shop, cornerofmadness, goddess47, sanguinity, sylvanwitch, the_siobhan, trobadora, yasaman, ysilme

Day 18: china_shop


Let me know if I missed you, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet. And remember, you can join in at any time!

Quote of the Day:

"Writing is painful as a life. I feel that even after decades. Doesn't get any easier, which surprised me. The yearning and failing parts don't get easier. And then there are the miraculous times when fluency is effortless. Or even the times of just being absorbed deeply. Can't think of anything better. I regret being unable to occupy that state constantly but to be there at all seems a marvel beyond all others."

— Louise Gluck, to GennaRose Nethercott (11/2/2017), shared on (then)Twitter. Quote taken from Mason Currey's Subtle Maneuvers newsletter.


Today's Writing:

I wrote 352 more words on old SF fanzines. 8-)


Tally

( Days 1-15 )

Day 16: badly_knitted, brithistorian, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, goddess47, sanguinity, sylvanwitch, the_siobhan, trobadora, yasaman, ysilme

Day 16: china_shop

Let me know if I missed you, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet. And remember, you can join in at any time!

Quote of the Day:

I was thirteen when I really realized I wanted to write. One of the magical things that happened to me was I discovered my mother’s old typewriter in the garage, and I hauled it out and got all the dirt and dust out of it and found out it still worked. It seemed like such magic to me, that you could type stuff; it looked so neat and clean.

— Luis Alberto Urrea

Interview in Spilling the Beans in Chicanolandia (Anthology, 2010)


Today's Writing:

801 words on something very silly I'm writing about reading SF Fanzines of the 1930s-40s. It will probably be shorter when I'm done…


Tally

( Days 1-14 )

Day 15: badly_knitted, brithistorian, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, goddess47, sanguinity, sylvanwitch, the_siobhan, trobadora, yasaman, ysilme

Day 16: china_shop


Let me know if I missed you, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet. And remember, you can join in at any time!

Sorry this is so late! Got caught up in chores & stuff. I'm behind on replies to comments, too. 8-(


Quote of the Day:

"I once left a publisher for the sole reason that he tried to change my semicolons to periods."

--Milan Kundera, The Art of the Novel (1988)


Today's Writing:

I wrote about 650 words, working through something…


Tally

( Days 1-13 )

Day 14: badly_knitted, brithistorian, carenejeans, cornerofmadness, goddess47, luzula, sanguinity, sylvanwitch, ysilme

Let me know if I missed you, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet. And remember, you can join in at any time!

 Belated but heartfelt thanks to lferion for contributing paid account time to the community. Thank you, kind fairy godperson!

Quote of the Day:

(Another quote by William Trevor — I don't know where this one came from…)

"I get melancholy if I don’t write. I need the company of people who don’t exist."

— William Trevor


Today's Writing:

I managed a little over 430 words, written before I fell asleep! \o/


Tally

( Days 1-12 )

Day 13: badly_knitted, brithistorian, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, sanguinity, sylvanwitch, the_siobhan, ysilme


Let me know if I missed you, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet. And remember, you can join in at any time!

Quote of the Day:

"Are my stacks of books clutter? To some people, yes. Do they block the antique radio? Yes, they do indeed. Do they sometimes fall over, and are they hard to dust? Yes. But I find it a supreme pleasure to be surrounded by books that I may read today or tomorrow or soon or not for the rest of my life. Because they hold ideas in their crisp or crumpled pages, and because they are beautiful objects, and because they are mine and I know when I bought them and why. I like to look over my stacks and think about what to read. I see ideas to be contemplated, stories to take in with a bourbon in my hand and my dog by my side. I see torn covers, and spines faded by the sun, and underlined lines, and phrases jotted in the margins that years later I no longer understand. And when I see these things, I see myself, and the world I inhabit, more clearly."

— Susan Harlan, "In Praise of the Book Tower" on Lit Hub (2015)


Today's Writing:

A little over 600 words, the first third COMPLAINING, after that some that are actually usable. 8-)


Tally

( Days 1-11 )

Day 12: badly_knitted, brithistorian, carenejeans, china_shop, cornerofmadness, goddess47, luzula, sanguinity, sylvanwitch, the_siobhan, trobadora, ysilme

Day 13: china_shop


Let me know if I missed you, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet. And remember, you can join in at any time!

Please join us for the weekly TS chat on Saturday, September 13th, at 7 pm Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)/19:00 UTC. That could be as early as 12 pm if you’re on the west coast of North America, or 3 pm if you’re on the east coast, or 8 pm in the UK, or early Sunday morning in Australia or New Zealand.

 

We’re in the usual place: http://us25.chatzy.com/81935648447483. There’s nothing to download or install, just choose a name and a color and click on “join chat.”

 

Sign-ups for the Exchange portion of TS Secret Santa are open now! It’s the 20^th year, so let’s make it a fantastic one! Instructions on how to sign up are here: https://ts-secret-santa.livejournal.com/236446.html

 

Our topic this week: aside from Christmas, what holiday would you like to see Jim and Blair celebrate?

 

See you there!