About Me
| Display Name | Elizabeth Noemie Bartmess |
| Twitter Handle | @theoriesofminds |
| Website |
What's New
| My Progress | Aug 5, 2019: Yesterday marked the end of the write-a-thon. Last week I revised seven scenes, meeting my target goal. Overall, I revised 32.5 scenes—nearly half the novel—plus minor revisions on 13 other scenes. I’m almost 2/3 of the way through! (Last week I said I was half-done, but I was happy to discover this week that I miscounted and am more done than I thought.) Why do seagulls fly over the sea? Because if they flew over the bay, they’d be bagels!! July 1, 2019: Revised six scenes, one more than my target goal. Set time to go to Office Max to buy another stapler for sponsor rewards. Researched jokes on the internet (also for sponsor rewards) for far too long. Experienced the entire range of human emotion in response to jokes. Did introspective soul-searching about the quality of my sense of humor after discovering I’d liked this joke so much I’d put it on the list of possible sponsor rewards twice: Why aren’t koalas actual bears?
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What I Write
| Writing Sample | The theme park’s Dungeon Crawl had been abandoned for a decade. Its empty ticket booth slumped disconsolately next to the entrance door. Above it, someone had graffitied “Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here” in cheerful pastels. Aimee pushed open the door. Behind it lay an empty tavern, smelling of mildew. Rustic wooden tables dotted the room, most overturned. A side wall held an iron-banded wooden door painted with the words “Flippy 4-Ever!”, the “i” dotted with a little heart. The door was locked, and there was no sign of her quarry. She would have to play through and hope he was on the other side. Nightshade had suggested she try ordering an ale to activate the character creation process. The beer barrels were empty, but when Aimee experimentally stacked a couple broken pint glasses on the bar, it glowed, and a ghostly consent form coalesced above the bar. She waved her way through without reading it and moved on to character customization. She was almost done when her phone pinged with a chat message from Nightshade. ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ Aimee: yes Nightshade: Well, as long as you’ve got your robe and wizard hat. Aimee: yeah Aimee stood, inspecting her full-body Zofar costume in the bar’s dusty mirror. His locks were artfully tousled and graced with a rakishly perched wizard hat the size of a fascinator. The wizard robe covered approximately the same amount of surface area and was strategically placed, for privacy. A wand was tucked into Zofar’s string belt. She took it out and checked its heft. It wasn’t as well-balanced as she would have liked, but what was important, she figured, was how skillfully you used it. A click sounded, and the door swung open. A tiny dolphin, ghostly and translucent as the consent form, floated in at head height. “Hi, Adventurer!” it said, in a high-pitched buzzy voice that stabbed at her eardrums. “I’m Flippy, your Magical Adventure Guide! Behind the door lies…the ice spider cave! Are you ready to hear about the dangers you will undergo?” |
| What I Write | Humor fantasy! My work in progress, tentatively titled Millennial Femme Berserker, is a novel about friendship, heroism, and bad decisions, set in a malfunctioning magical amusement park. Think Terry Pratchett’s Tiffany Aching series meets a modern, edgy Lisa Frank. |
| Publications | • Deciding whether to attend Clarion West, for disabled writers (blog post). |
My Write-a-thon Goals
| Writing Goals | Revise 5 scenes per week. |
| Fundraising Goals | For any donation, I will send you weekly updates on my progress. I will also trawl the Internet for a joke that is probably actually funny and include it in the weekly update, either under your name or (if you prefer privacy) under a name I will make up for you. I will also do an optional shout-out to you on Twitter. Tier-based rewards: • $5: The “any donation” rewards, plus I will send you a postcard printed with a photograph of something confusing. • $10: The “any donation” rewards, plus I will use my labelmaker to dedicate one of my bookshelves to you for a year (for example, “The Eleanor Shellstrop Bookshelf”), pose a stuffed animal on it, and send you a photo. • $15: The “any donation” rewards, plus I will do the same as for $10 but I will use the special metallic-gold-on-black labelmaker tape, bookend your name with symbols like a tiny shooting star or an umbrella, and the photo will have two stuffed animals on it. • $20: The “any donation” rewards, plus I will write you a 1-200 word fake bio with outrageous but impressive and flattering lies about your fictional exploits. You will be free to edit this bio in any way you want, and use it wherever you like. • $25: The “any donation” rewards, plus you pick a popular science fiction or fantasy movie (a non-scary one because I have to be able to watch it and I am a total wuss). I will stage some scenes from it using stuffed animals and other props I find around the house, and send you captioned photos. At your request, I will post them online and include a link in a weekly update and/or Twitter shout-out to you. • $50: The “any donation” rewards and the $25 reward, plus I will PERMANENTLY Once I know you’ve sponsored me (usually that weekend), I’ll contact you to confirm that you want the relevant reward. |