Author: Nancy E. Shaffer

NANCY E. SHAFFER has been an experimental psychologist (M.A., Cognitive Psychology, Rice University), a philosopher (Ph.D., History and Philosophy of Science, University of California, Davis), and software developer. She taught history and philosophy of science at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec and the University of Nebraska Omaha. Her philosophical work has appeared in the journal Philosophy of Science and her pop-culture philosophy website, All Things Philosophical on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel: the Series. Dis/inhbition is her first novel. She currently resides in Tempe, Arizona.

Ways in which I’m breaking the NaNo rules

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 8 Comments

(1) Fan fic instead of original fic. I wish it were otherwise, but I honestly got nothin’ at the moment. No plot? Big problem!

(2) I’m only working on three (possibly four) chapters of my “novel” instead of trying to belt out an entire rough draft.

(3) The “novel” in question? Already started. Two years ago.

(4) It’s in screenplay format.

(5) I already have bits and pieces of the new material written. In the official NaNo rules, it says you have to start on Nov 1. You can prepare before hand by, for example, making up an outline, but the actual text can’t be written until Nov 1. Um…hello? I don’t know how anyone else works, but my brain writes when it writes. Any time I am working on an outline, snippets of text enter my brain unbidden. Of course I’m going to write them down!

(6) I may or may not strive for 50,000 words. Do you *know* how many episodes of TD that is? 3.35293952. Approximately. I’m going to write three episode first drafts, and since I overwrite everything, those should come in together well over 50,000.

Can you tell I’d like to do NaNo by the rules and just can’t?

Dis/inhibition

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 25 Comments

Oh my God, I’m gonna cry. I’ve posted in here a bit about a novel I was writing for ages and ages up until about two years ago, one that I set aside because I basically outgrew it. It had gone through five drafts. The fourth draft took two years and was done with a writing coach. When we were through, she sent her hard copies of it to me, complete with her notes. I then did a fifth draft on my own for about a year before the setting-aside occured.

I backed the whole thing up on a zip disk and removed it from my hard drive. Last December, I went back to look something up in the manuscript only to discover the zip disk was corrupted, and I had lost not only the fifth draft but the fourth. Just gone.

I was devastated. All I had was the fourth draft in a hard copy.

Well, short story long, I just found a backup of the fifth draft that I had buried on my hard drive at work!

This doesn’t mean I’m going to start working on it again, but to have not lost it, to still have it, that means everything to me. It’s my baby. I was its mother, I was its lover, for ten years. It taught me how to write.

Tahoe in pictures

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 4 Comments

OMG, I don’t remember there being *half* as many pictures taken of previous gatherings as there were this year! All those people, all their digital cameras with 100’s of shots. It was really hard selecting and choosing for the atpobtvs.com collection, and I have a feeling I’m not near done. My priority was to show the range of activities we engaged in and get close-ups of everyone, rather than pick my favorites per se.

So here’s what I have so far:

http://atpobtvs.com/existentialscoobies/images/Tahoe/

Today’s ATPo email

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 41 Comments

Thoughts? Volunteers? ; )

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Dear Buffy Fan:

By way of introducing myself, my name is Jennifer and I’m the production coordinator on an upcoming Canadian television series called FANatical. FANatical is a new television series about the world’s most obsessive television fans.

As the host of the popular http://www.atpobtvs.com/ Buffy site, I was hoping that you may be able to point me in the direction of the ultimate Buffy Fan. We’re looking for 2-3 fans from Canada and the US. They should be obsessed: have collections, know all the words to any given episode, have their walls covered in posters and pictures, etc.

There exists all levels of fandom out there… but we only want the most passionate, the most serious, and above all the ones who have the most fun with it. We can’t wait to laugh with them and join in their extreme enthusiasm.

I’m also looking on information on festivals, conventions, and other Buffy get togethers- are there any out there you could point me too?

If you have any suggestions as to who might be the most extreme Buffy fan around or would like more information, please don’t hesitate to drop me a line.

Thanks in advance,
Jennifer Saull.