i hear the voices when I'm dreaming

aka a) Yuletide reveal went live, and b) I went on a drabble spree (for definitions of 'spree' that include two). So!

First, the Yuletide fics!

My assignment fic was The Naming of Cats (Echo Bazaar). I am not as happy as I wanted to be because there is less of a narrative and more of a stringing-bits-together, but hey, with Jack as my protagonist I was lucky to get not killed ;)

My pinch hit fic was Honor and Glory (Oglaf). If you are not familiar with Oglaf, it is a very NSFW comic of awesomeness. The only things you need to make sense of this fic are the following three strips: http://www.oglaf.com/honor/ and http://www.oglaf.com/son-of-kronar/ / http://www.oglaf.com/son-of-kronar/2/

And then the random treat was Oart Of Your World (Little Mermaid), aka I seem to like twisting Disney movies into Not Happy Endings. (I am kind of amused that the person I wrote this for wrote one of the awesome dark!Valdemar fics.)

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...and then I did drabbles for whitecollar100 and numb3rs100 because drabbles are awesome \o/

...roommates cannot participate as they read the stories themselves *grin*

Anyone who correctly guesses the yuletide fics that I wrote will get ... um, something that I will think of later! There are three of them. Threeeeee!

Comments are screened, and I will not confirm or deny until the reveal :D

[16:10] <isabeau> hark! the herald hippo ... huffs?
[16:10] <AD> Glory to the coco puffs!
[16:10] <isabeau> fics on earth, and betas mild...
[16:10] <AD> All the pinch hits reconciled!
[16:11] <isabeau> Joyful all ye hippos prance
[16:11] <AD> Come and watch their awesome dance!
[16:11] <isabeau> hark! the herald hippos beg
[16:12] <AD> Truth! Justice! Freedom! Hard boiled egg!


Translation: we make TOTAL AND COMPETE SENSE and are never silly.

The contents of today's NaNo file, verbatim:

I have two days in which to write 3800 words. Yay? I mean, if I'd been sensible and harnessed the power of coffee earlier today, I possibly could have churned out that much today. (Maybe. If my body cooperated. Shoulder is cranky, probably from typing too much.) But no, I had to be a good daughter and give my mom some time (er, and get pumpkin pancakes -- I'm not THAT altruistic ;D ) and put off the nanoings until the coffee wore off.

The iPad is sitting next to me taunting me with its shiny newness. Also its Plants vs Zombies ness (it's research? between that and robot umnicorn attack) and the books oh dear the books. So many yummy things to read! I should not read anything during NaNo because it will make me sadface at my own stuff, but it is hard to resist. I have promised myself a night of yummy reading in bed once I hit twenty thousand words. You'd think that would be an incentive to write ... but it's not. Because I am INSANE.

(also because apparently my brain thinks that if it sulks long enough and refuses to cooperate, I will turn to the iPad out of sheer desperation for something to do. Just one more level / just one more chapter ... and then it will be time for bed and I will have accomplished pretty much nothing.)

This is really more of a blog post. Why am I counting it as NaNo words? Mrrr.

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...yeah. No comment.

ETA: The 3800 in two days thing is to get me hitting 20k by the middle of the month. it is unlikely, but 8800 for 25k is even farther.

And for those who are bored of nano talk, WoW update: have Kalimdor loremaster, got Nagrand finished up, and am 11 quests away from BEM (fucking ogres and their fucking *shards* omgwtf), and then I shall have only Netherstorm to deal with.

And for those who are bored of nano and wow talk? I am officially signed up for Yuletide \o/

And for those who are bored of nano, wow, and yuletide? ...er, I got nothing, sorry. *is pathetic*

Today I:

a) conquered a Pattern of Evil for someone on ravelry (and it really was hideously written; my eyes were crossing trying to figure it out)

b) managed to get 700-odd words in one half-hour sprint, and 600 in a later 20-minute sprint

c) got not only the desired 2k words today, but 3k -- 3122, to be precise

d) which also put me over 10k total words! (11258 total, which is also only 750 words shy of the 2k/day goal I was setting)

My favorite bit was ... I won't c/p the words here because the execution sucks. But I love the concept.

Basically, I had already decided that (since I was poking loving fun at Valdemar anyway) the unicorns should come from this sacred Grove. Which is where our band of heroes is headed to try to see if there happen to be any unicorns hanging about.

My brain decided that there were trees still there, even though there is a crater a mile deep and some distance around from the Grove (think a semi-physical magic bomb, except that the trees were left standing).

Then I decided that the magic bomb of doom had turned the trees to something like glass (cribbing shamelessly from the Jade Sea in Guild Wars).

...and then I found myself writing about how the whole thing was basically one gigantic windchime.

I never would have come up with that in a million years of planning. Lizard hindbrains are awesome sometimes.

Yes, it's another Yuletide-related post; sorry to those who are sick of it. <3 But only sort of.

So Yuletide has several awesome things: a story written specifically for me; stories in fandoms that I love that don't get a lot of attention; stories that are complete crack; and, sometimes, feedback on the stories that I write.

What it has done for me this year is help me re-understand that I can write. I've been in a dry spell for so long, and some of it is perfectionism pre-paralysis ("it won't be good enough, so I can't even try") and some of it is overthinking things and some of it is just plain not forcing myself to write.

And. With Yuletide, I got a story written, and then I got another story written in two days (pinch hit), and another story written in about four hours (a treat where a story I've been wanting to write lined up with one of the available prompts) and I am, bizarrely enough for me, actually fairly pleased with the stories.

So. Now I just need to, you know, actually do more writing.

... the Catholic Church is doing tv ads now. *boggles*

(dear CC: technically speaking? Jesus did not start Christianity. )

In other news, I got my yuletide pinch hit done well before deadline; and I am thinking I should take notes so that next year I can request what I'm wanting *now*.

Also, I have also been devouring White Collar P/N/E threesome fic like an insane thing. And want more. mooooooore. *zombie noises*

The advantage of this year's transition to AO3 is that there aren't a bazillion yuletide fics already uploaded and making me feel guilty about not being finished.

The disadvantage is that the deadline is still there.

I have a story written, except it doesn't end properly, so much as fall off a cliff. And I have no clue what to do with it or where to go and there's also the standard "omg my recipient is going to hate it" dread.

*flails*