i hear the voices when I'm dreaming

The December talky meme still has plenty of dates open, if anyone wants to suggest stuff. (Date is optional, but I want topics pretty please)

NaNo: up to 45k. I don't quite know how. (It helps that some of what I'm doing is the autobiographical blog thing -- 20k words of that, and I'm not even through high school yet -- where the "plot" is fixed and the events have happened and it makes wording easier.) I am steadfastly *thhhhbbbbbppppttt*ing at the voices in my head telling me that some of what I'm doing (e.g. the days where the words I write are whines about my life, or the fact that I'm spreading the words out over multiple projects rather than a single novel) is Totally Cheating And Therefore Doesn't Count, because fuck that noise.

Not my words: Cognitive Trope Therapy. "the way it works is that when you have a [negative/depressive] thought ... then you figure out whether, if your life were a fantasy novel, these words would be spoken by figures wearing black robes, and speaking in a dry, whispering voice, and they are actually withered beings who touched the Stone of Evil ... and if so then you don’t listen" Only there's more. Go read. It's useful and awesome.

Yuletide stuff: My assignment has a finished draft ... and it is *long*, for me. Not like 50k long, but like "third longest fic I have on AO3" long. Also "longest fic I have written for Yuletide" long. I am a little boggled. Also, I have finished four (!) treats, and have started two others, as well as the pinch hit I snagged. Boggle.

I have officially done Awesome Shit writingwise in the past three days. I am doing NaNoWriMo using three separate projects; Project A is a blogged autobiography thing, Project B is stories for Yuletide (assigned and treats), and Project C is miscellaneous other writing. Between the three of them I have gotten 5000 words so far, writing three out of three days. And better yet, I have actually written *and finished* two Yuletide treats, one posted to the archive already (fourth story in the collection lol) and the other too short to post yet but it's ready to go once the Madness archives open. And I have noted on my assignment, and fragments written of three other treats, as well as a list of like 35 more possibilities based on letters.

Let me re-emphasize this: I have *written and finished* two stories in the last three days.

I don't want to jinx anything, but starting with the poem I wrote a week or so ago? Not only has my creativity come back, but I even like what I'm producing. (Which is big, because the last few years, writing anything has been like pulling teeth, squeaked out reluctantly as close to deadline as possible and I've hated the end result.).

I very strongly suspect that this resurgence of creativity is not coincidental to the drug that I'm going off of (with psychdoc approval, don't worry). And if I can get my writing back -- if I can write, and have fun with it, and get stories out in a way that flows and feels good -- it is hella worth the fact that going off said drug is also giving me rebound insomnia.

Which is why I'm posting at 1:30am. Because hi, I'm pretty awake.

I am also having seriously ping-pongy mood swings in the last few days. Bouncing from "yay everything is awesome" to "I am a horrible person and woe and gloom" is ... quite frankly, exhausting. But I guess it's progress over constant copelessness.

It does, though, feel astonishingly vulnerable. Like the miasma of constant depression was somehow an armor or shell or something, and opening up more exposes my squishy innards.

So I actually *wrote* today. Like, fic writing.

This is the first writing (well, of the story sort; obvs I've done DW/LJ stuff and ravelry posts) I've done at all since May 22, and *that* was a hundred-odd-word snippet that was the first thing I'd written since uh. Yuletide. (2012, which that and one other thing were the only stuff written since April. Yeah.)

I don't mean "things finished". I mean actually *written*.

The jerkbrain part of my brain is whispering that it doesn't really count because of what I have in the file, half was written in 2009, and the rest was bare-bones sketched out. (The rest of the fic, what I haven't written yet, was sketched out as basically "sex ensues", but I think it will end up as more than two words...) Also saying that it was only a measly few hundred words (1249 in file, of which 603 were 2009 words that got tweaked a bit) and and and ...

Still. Is writing! I am ridiculously gleeful.

I have decided that this summer is going to be a Summer Of Writing.

(Well. Also of crafts, so kind of a Doing Stuff Summer, but that's beside the point.)

To that end, I have signed up for the Clarion Write-A-Thon. I have committed not so much to word count (my experience with things like NaNo is that pushing a large volume of crappy writing stressed me out and doesn't actually generate anything usable) as to what I call Fingers On Keyboard time: time spent actually writing, as opposed to researching / reading DW and LJ / poking around on rav / playing GW or SWTOR or D3 or WoW / other forms of distraction. Secondarily I would like to come out of the Write-A-Thon with (at least one) draft of a story to send out for publication.

This is partly just a personal goal, but partly also a public goal. If you would like to help me do this, there are several ways:

* Sponsor me. Contributions -- which can be done by goal unit (pledging $X per, in my case, hours spent writing) or as a lump sum -- will help a cause I believe in and will also encourage my own progress. Plus, while I doubt I can raise enough to be one of the top fundraisers, I do get rewards on top of the Knowledge Of Being Helpful.

* Cheer me on. I may be making a separate blog, but I will also be posting updates here, and I would love support in either place.

* Join me. There isn't quite the same community of crazy enthusiasm as there is around NaNo -- or if there is, I haven't found it! -- but we can still keep each other company.

\o/

Remix Redux is open for business signups.

And yes, I signed up :D :D :D Never mind that I haven't written a word since end-of-year-fic-exchanges.

(The awesome: XMFC is an allowed fandom. The random: I discovered, while trolling through some of my older fics, that I had enough LotR drabbles to probably bump it up into being eligible. The suck: I still don't qualify in Star Trek (AOS), because while I have almost doubled my number of published ST stories, the four new ones, as much as I love them, are all remixes, and I either need two more 100+ fics or one more 500+ one and I haven't written anything non-remixy in ST for a year and a half.)

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I am dithering on whether to put [redacted] as my safe story. It's got some very personal elements to it, but if handled well I wouldn't mind the chance to see another person's spin on it. If handled well. But the chances of that story being picked for remix anyway are fairly small. And I feel weird for designating it as a safe story because I don't broadcast just how personal it is.

Sigh.

* iTunes is driving me nucking futs. It is freezing up on syncing to my iPad, repeatedly, but also freezes for up to five minutes while it pokes around. I am very close to stabbing it. With a spork. A rusty one at that.

* am doing a mystery KAL hat thingie in November. Should be either lots of fun or a complete disaster. Will keep y'all informed.

* am, partly because of the previous item, not doing NaNo. I am tempted by novel_in_90 but I don't have any pressing ideas, and I know that going into something like that when I don't know what I want to write is just going to make me stressed and miserable.

* do want to get back into the habit of writing. I just am in one of those annoying dry patches where I know that the way to get out is to just write dammit, but there is still a persistent irrational part of me that insists I should hoard the few ideas I have until I can do a good job with them.

* Suri would like you all to know that she is Very Lonely and also Quite Neglected and wouldn't mind getting some Attention. Especially if it comes with Skin To Lick.

* I have a birthday coming up wtf when did that happen o.O (yes, I know it happens every year, but it can't possibly be November again, right?) ...that is, yay, excuse to eat cake!

Last night, I found out where all my spoons were vanishing to. ( female tmi )

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I want to take a language class, but there are very few places around that offer what I want. One of the local community college satellite sites offers Spanish, which is of mild interest but the semester's already started, and then Korean and Farsi, neither of which are high on my list. The other transportation-viable community colleges generally don't offer languages at all.

The local university offers a shitton, and even if I rule out the ones that only exist as 8am and 9am classes, I'd still have to make a decision on which to take (German and Russian are out of the picture because of time, and my weird-ass preferences have me deciding between French and Latin and Japanese), except that they don't allow non-students to register for classes. (I asked, and the registrar office basically said "nope, but there's always the continuing education program", which, of course, doesn't offer languages.)

I've tried learning languages on my own, I've /tried/ -- with German (which I still have subconscious groundwork for), with Bulgarian (which I still can't construct a sentence in except for song lyrics of things I used to sing), a long time ago with Japanese (I got hirigana and katakana down to the point of sounding out words with what's probably a horrible accent, but not much farther).

It doesn't work, and maybe it would if I tried harder, but I also keep remembering one year in junior high when I was self-studying German because the class conflicted with another class I needed, and I was horribly behind and couldn't conjugate to save my life.

I don't know. I want to learn, I really do, but I can't do it myself.

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Writing right now is mainly focused on the mer_ficathon story (which is turning into a random Little Mermaid fusion with bonus shark!Erik), which has a couple hundred words and then about 1k of story note scribbling and a lot of mental imagery that amuses the hell out of me) and the Fic of Doom.

Now, see, I'm sort of used to having kinkmeme fills be longer than I expect. But this one is 7k words with no end in sight.

To put this in perspective, my longest finished XMFC fic (Mosaic) is a bit over 6k words. Second longest is about 6k but was co-written so I can only claim half of the words. Third is a bit over 2k.

To put this in broader perspective, of the fic I have up on AO3, the longest (which felt like a mountain even though I wasn't having any writer's block issues whatsoever) is 15k, second longest is 10k, third is 7k, and Mosaic is fourth.

The Fic of Doom is already in third place and I have no clue how much more there is to write.

(and yes, that doesn't include fic not up on AO3, but I think that hardly matters. Did a brief spot check of my SPN fic, which is the bulk of what's not on AO3, and it's all under 5k apiece. They Who Knew The Storm is just under 3k. Dark Sacred Nights is 4.6k. Wednesday's Child is under 1k. Purgatory is 2.5k. Most of the rest are 1k at best.)

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I've noticed, lately, that my ability to type correctly has gotten rather ... bad. Some of that is due to the fact that I'm only touch-typing with one hand (my right hand is using a backscratcher to hit keys with; I /could/ get the keyboard in position to type but it's rather awkward and also leaves no room for the mouse where I can reach it), and it's fairly easy to hit the wrong keys, or hit extra keys, with no tactile feedback for half of what you're doing.

But some of it is just /baffling/. It's not mistyping, it's miswording; it's spelling things wrong, and (far worse) it's not even noticing. And not just in context of chats or comments or whatever, where there's more leniency.

The most recent fic I put up on AO3 went up August 21st. It took me until today to notice that there was a very blatant misspelling in the fucking title.

(And fixing it was kind of an illustration of how it's gotten for me [as is the fact that I just typed "gotton"]. The word as I had misspelled it was "Tommorws". The intended outcome was "Tomorrows". The evolution -- and I don't mean the keystrokes, but the times when I paused and thought I was done and went 'wait no that doesn't look right' -- was Tommorws → Tommows → Tommorows → Tomorows → Tomorrows.

I used to be good at knowing how words were spelt.

I don't know what happened.

#

ETA: Got my XMFC dvd. This is a happy thing. What is not so much of a happy thing is that it's very bare-bones. The movie is there. There are two making-of-type extras, which have some cute moments (including James and Michael mock-sparring) but are probably going to end up on youtube anyway. And there's two non-XMFC things, a vague surreal anti-smoking PSA, and How To Download The Digital Copy, In Excruciatingly Dull Detail Including Multiple Close-Ups Of This Bizarre Thing Called A "USB" "plug".

That's it.

No commentary (from anyone), no deleted scenes, no gag reel, nothing.

Just the movie.

Now, don't get me wrong, I like having the movie. But I wanted more, dammit. And if they come out in six months with a "Collectors Edition" that has things like commentary and deleted scenes and other fun goodies, I think I will scream.

Daily and very boring updates can be found at http://writingforclarion.wordpress.com/, but I figured weekly-or-so updates here would be good.

We're one week in to the write-a-thon, and I have written almost 5500 words of original fiction. Not from the same story -- about half the days so far (by which, yes, I do mean 3.5) have been on the 'primary' project, which I am calling Totally Not Torchwood until it tells me what its title is. (A lot of this is, ironically enough, stuff that I know won't be in the finished product, because it's sort of the pebble that starts an avalanche but the story is really in the avalanche and not the pebble, but whatever.) The rest has been miscellaneous other things.

(My brain is kind of at war between "750 words a day is nothing, you are pathetically out of shape writingwise" and "750 words a day is kind of impressive given your recent origfic writing drought". and "the writer you would like to be? could churn out 2k words of AWESOME in the blink of an eye. you are not there.")

Anyway! Onwards. Five more weeks to go \o/

(Those who have donated, thank you so much <3. Those who wish to, go here. Those who are also doing the write-a-thon, or the sister one for Clarion West, /salute.)

a) Have completed a line bingo for kink_bingo. ( short version here )

a.5) I am a little amused that two of the five fandoms do not yet have k_b tags.

b) aaaahflailtheyallsuckwhathaveIdone I am currently flailing just a bit because ... well, because. *hides*

c) have requested new card, because I am INSANE

d) this also means I can start working on the first card's extras: silence / whipping / temp play / penance / animal play - ace werecat!Neal in relationship with Peter and Elizabeth; penance / gender play / sex toys (under clothing) / bites / pervertibles - trek xi kirk/sulu dealing with a strict matriarchy; silence / humiliation (sit) / in public / gags / body parts - white collar P/E/N; possibly others, like the in public / gags / mirrors / roleplay postage stamp

( d.5) technically I could have been working on them already but I wanted to Finish A Bingo first )

3) Unrelatedly, except for the bit where it's about writing, Clarion Write-a-Thon starts Sunday. <Illidan voice>YOU ARE NOT PREPARED</wow joke>. Except for how I'm going to do it anyway mwahahaha. ha. ha?

Suri update: She would like me to inform y'all that she is UTTERLY AND COMPLETELY neglected and does not get ANY attention. Or laps. Or skin to lick. Or laser pointer dots to chase. Mrow mrow MROW mrow. Mrrp.

Writing update: Apparently I can come up with a sestina a lot faster and easier than a fic. *baffled look* idek. On the bright side: two things done for k/b. On the less bright side: that is not enough for a bingo. On the more bright side: I got to upload a fic to AO3 as the first fic in that fandom \o/ (well, on AO3. I doubt it's the first fic ever. *googles* Nope. almost 100 fic on ff.net

Body update: Hip hurts. Shoulder hurts. Caved and took half a vicodin last night (and yes, logically I know that taking painkillers when you are in pain is not a sign of weakness, and I can fall over myself trying to reassure other people on that point, but when it comes down to me? feels like being weak. Double standards ahoy.) Elbow hurts if I do too much with the mouse. (Amusingly, it's an ergonomic mouse. I guess it isn't isa!ergonomics.)

Brain update: Still there. More or less. Have been having a weird vague sense of omgdoom with no actual cause behind it, which I kind of hate. It's like the "hey a tiger is about to eat you" alert system is on overdrive. When there are no tigers around. Except knowing there are no tigers doesn't actually help because what if there's one I haven't seen omg. (This is just a metaphor, so I doubt it's my brain interpreting Suri!stares as tiger!stares.)

Random dragon update: