Having written 5k at the Write-in of Dooooom this afternoon, I was quite happy to work on my latest fanfic this evening. I am, however, temporarily distracted and will amuse myself with the desktop meme, most lately gakked from planetes.

I like to use fanart a lot of the time for my background (no, I don't care if they fit). Current one is a lovely piece by iesnoth on deviantart.

Meme:
Anyone who looks at this entry has to post this meme and their current wallpaper on their LiveJournal.
Explain in five sentences why you're using that wallpaper!
Don't change your wallpaper before doing this! The point is to see what you had on!


( I will give you cookies if you can guess who it is before clicking )

Edit: I fail at html at 1 a.m. Oh well. All fixed.

I'm starting out at 9008, having written all over 3k over the course of the past five days. Degree of suckage displayed in the following chart:



Okay so tomorrow I have to go out and run errands so let's see what I can do with today...

Edit: I love how the above widgets change every time I update my word count. The weekdays were all an angry shade of red when I started out. They look more mellow now. ;D (Or at least when the widget is working properly...)

Edit #2: Actually manged to spend some time on my latest fic, which will get included in my wordcout anyway. So I actually have 1298 words of good quality amidst the rest.

EDIT: Total for the weekend: 7506.

Let it be said that I have no idea why I'm doing Nano this year. Maybe peer pressure. I should have been finishing my edit, or working on my fic but instead I started my Nano and I went to a write in. Results are as follows:

At home: 947
At write in: 4552 (867 from a word war)
Total:



Yeah the old word meter I usually use no longer works and the Nano ones are temporarily unavailable so at least there's this one.

I've had a cold the past week. Not a bad one, but enough to render me rather fatigued by the end of the day after work. The result was that I didn't go to the Kick-off party for Nano and I'm behind on basically everything.

I can't believe Nano starts at 12:01 tonight. I don't even know if I'll still be awake then. Last night I felt awful by 11:00 and had to crash. And enthusiasm? I seem to be lacking the energy to muster any. I've been feeling run-down for two weeks.

On a happier note, I finally managed to procure a 16GB MP3 player. A Sony this time. I will miss some of the features on my Sandisk, though (I've had the same model for the past four years. But still 16 gigs will be useful at work.

Speaking of work, my geeky coworker badgered me into putting together a last minute Halloween costume to wear to the office on Friday:

( The Grammar Police: to serve and correct )

Hello there. I am alive. I've been feeling a bit under the weather this past week and I was totalled Friday night and most of Saturday so I slept in and I took it easy, tried to stay away from my PC as much as possible. One of my coworkers has the flu and I'd very much like to make sure my system is in top shape so as to stay healthy myself.

In other news:

1) I'm getting really close to the finishing the final edit of my story so yay progress.

2) It seems that once again I will be (for reasons that I can't realy explain) participating in Nano. Woo-hoo. One month of writing badly. But at least this year I should be able to avoid being bored as I'll be writing about dragons. Dragons are fun, right?

3) An old friend of mine, whom I haven't seen in... say... nine years, is again trying to set me up via facebook. She did this a year ago and I told her not to and it pisses me off. She says we have a lot in common... Yeah because it's not like my interests would have changed in the intervening decade or anything. Clearly the fact that there have been few outer changed in the landscape of my life means that my personality and interests have remained static as well, right? I'm sure the fellow is nice and I'd be fine with speaking with him but a) I don't find him attractive at all and b) her interference makes me want to run in the other direction.

He sent me a friend request and message I didn't respond because I've been feeling tired and no so good and figured I'd deal with it later but now all of a sudden I got a message from her too which leads me to believe he told her I hadn't responded and she decided to stick her nose it. Grrrr. I don't like being toyed with. I don't like interference in my life. And the presumption that I've not changed in all these years offends me greatly. I don't like how manipulative she's being with the whole thing either. She should fix her own life before she tried to fix mine.

4) I saw the Twilight movie. It wasn't as cheesy as I had expected. I don't think I shall ever be a fan of the series but I understand better why it appeals to teenagers so much. I wasn't impressed with the dialogue (and why does he sparkle?), but I can appreciate that the drama and the angst and the love story are probably things I'd have enjoyed when I was fourteen -- my general dislike of vampires notwithstanding. Bella probably wouldn't have done it for me, though, even then. I've always liked heroines who are powerful, who can do amazing things, not ones who have to be rescued by their preternatural beaus. Eowyn was always a favourite of mine. I was sixteen when I read LotR and Eowyn was my hero. I loved her to pieces. I still do.

I have a Master's degree in English literature and this language still confuses me sometimes.

In the course of working on my final draft I have come to realize that I'm inconsistent in my usage of the past tense of the verb "to leap."

I checked, and it turned out I had five instances of "leapt" and fourteen of "leaped." I suspect the latter to be more US than UK.

In any case, I really want to get this done before the end of the month but I still have over a hundred pages left to wrestle with. Ugh.

I also need to decide whether to put myself through the yearly torment that is NaNoWiMo. Do I really want to write 50k of exceedingly bad fiction for 30 days?

I wanted to share this photo because I find it at once amusing and distressing. It's the sign above the parking lot of an apartment building a couple of blocks down from my office:

( Can you say FAIL? )

Is it sad that the only times I feel really inspired to post is when I have something snarky to say? Like about grammar or reviews that make no sense?

I will, however, attempt to write a real post...

Like goes on as usual by and large. Highlights are as follow:

1) The completion of my latest fanfic, the Artemis fowl one I had posted a snipped of in a meme in July when it was only 7,000 words long. It's turned out to be my second longest at 38k words, second only to Legacies which was 42k. It needs to be beta'ed but once I start posting it'll keep readers busy for fourteen weeks. Not too bad, eh?

2) In an attempt to appease us for the wage-freeze, our company is giving us the Friday before Thanksgiving off. Woot! Four-day weekend coming up soon!

3) I have opted to not take Japanese class this year. I just... don't feel like it. So after much agonizing, three dreams in which I dreamed I was in class but then remembered I hadn't registered and worried about not having my checkbook with me to pay the school, and a random email from the school which was misaddressed to me, I am not going.

4) The weekend before last I did the Parkenson's walk. It was very sunny but I brought water and thanks to mingbutterfly I even remembered to put on sunblock. I happily retain my computer tan. ;) The walk took place in Andrew Hayden park which was a long the Rideau River. It was quite lovely, though we spent more time waiting for the walk to begin than actually walking. Also, our company gave us its patented volunteer shirts. As luck would have it, they were the same colour as the walkathon shirts of that year so we fight right in.

I swear you could have see us on satellite in those shirts. I have pics. For those who don't know, I'm the one one with the hat. I cannot stand being in the sun without a hat on.

( seen from space )

P.S. My dragon is having an awesome, awesome week. *hugs her*

So who unilaterally decided that Canadians don't need MP3 players with a hard drive of more than 8GB? Were they thinking "Them Canadians are too busy hunting seal and polar bears and keeping warm in them there igloos to need more than 8GB." ?

I cannot find a player available in-store or on a website that has anything other than 2GB, 4GB, or 8GB. Yet the US versions of the same websites have 32GB models. I am finding it difficult to express how much this pisses me off.

And no, I don't want an iPod. I actually want something that a) doesn't require a wall charger when I travel, and b) includes a built-in FM radio and recorder. My old one was a Sandisk. I would order from the US but Sandisks absolutely require an extended warranty as they can be very unreliable.

The worst part is... I know I saw a 16GB one on the website a few weeks ago when I check before, but it's gone now. Grrr.

So for reasons that defy explanation (actually because my cubicle mate asked me to) I will be participating in the SuperWalk to raise money for Parkinson's research.

You see, last week, Professor Hugh Lawford, the founder of the company I work for (the smaller company that was bought out by the bigger one actually) passed away from Parkinson's disease at age 75. In order to honour him, a team of people from my office will be doing the walk -- 2km or 7km; it's not been decided yet.

Alas, it's on a Saturday morning. We have to be there at 8:30 a.m. *groan* So yes, September 12th I will be getting up very early to spend half the day with coworker doing a good deeed.

If anyone would like to sponsor me, there's a link here.

If everyone else could just pray that it will be cool that day so I don't die of heat stroke that would also be greatly appreciated. ;P

Okay so a year after my two readers finished reading the second draft of my original story I've not only finished a third draft but have also had my mom read the thing for errors and I've been reading up on manuscript formatting. I'm going to finish this. This year. Send it out somewhere and go on with my life.

Meanwhile, I've been doing a final once-over and I've started correcting all the typos. I'm so bored I feel like I could pass out.

I wonder if published authors get this bored when they try to polish their manuspcripts.

I was watching some of season six of The West Wing. The show was never the same after Sorkin stopped writing it but I wanted to see the bits with Josh and Donna again. However, they had CJ randomly making a Canada joke and it really sort of bugged me:

CJ: Does Canada even have troops? What do they do? Throw those little bottles of maple syrup?

This makes me sad. Season six was aired in 2004, by which point Canadian troops had been in Afghanistan for nearly three years. Our troops are still there, by the way. We get regular reports when they get blown by by car bombs, which happens on a regular basis.

I can't believe John Wells (or whoever the writing staff was then) thought it was a great idea to add humour to a scene by having the White House press secretary be ignorant about us. It's a cheap joke meant to amuse the show's U.S. audience (who I guess didn't know we were getting blown up in Afghanistan). The irony is that throughout the show's history it had better ratings in Canada than in the U.S.

Lately, I've been forgetting to log into Livejournal, which is really sort of sad. I just get caught up in other stuff and then suddenly it's ten p.m. and I have to get ready for bed... :/

Anyway, I don't really have news to speak of. I've been working and writing fanfic of late. But I thought I would do a meme since it looked amusing and I'm in the midst of some major procrastination. So here goes:

Post snippets of your Works in Progress on your journal. Gakked from sacae.

( Seth/Eirika multi-chapter – Distance )
***
( Seth/Eirika drabbles - Falling )

***

( Seth/Eirika multi-chaptered – Untitled )

***

( Seth/Eirika – Utitled one-shot )

***

( Seth/Eirika oneshot – Invincible )

***

( Current project - Artemis/Holly – Untitled )


I finish most of what I start but now and then projects just don't take off. I was surprised how many snippets I had lying around in my FE folder actually.

So I did it. Apparently. I finished all the changes I planned to make to my third draft. I went over all the comments by both my readers and did my best to make the story better. I feel oddly at loose ends, though. Shouldn't I be ecstatic or something? Maybe it's the perfectionist in me. Maybe I'm just twitchy because I'm not in the middle of anything anymore, neither a game nor a story nor a project.

*frets*

I'll need to print out the thing and then have it read for typos and read it myself once more. I need to figure out how to format it and where to send it. And then I need to let it go.

Well... at least I finally finally got this done, though. That's something at least.

I've been working on my edit all day. I mean literally, since this morning. With occasional breaks of course, but basically all day. I'm stopping now.

I'm proud to say, though, that there are only four things left to do. Two are just places where I have to tweak earlier chapters to make everything fit just right. The other two are bigger: I need to see about paring down one chapter and writing a new one. That'll be something to do next weekend.

This is what's left, listed by chapter so I can strike it out when it's done:

Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three


The other twenty-one chapters are revised and done with.

Chapters five and ten are done! I'm clear up to chapter twelve now. And suddenly I feel like I need a nap.

Something shocking happened today. I actually had the nerve to work on my rewrite. No one could be more shocked than I. I finished the scene I'd left hanging in chapter one. I'm now clear to move on to the bit in chapter five that needs to be cleaned up.

I have no idea how this happened. As recently as last Saturday I was still feeling overwhelmed at the thought of working on it. I'm not sure what tipped the scales. Last weekend I finished my second Artemis Fowl fic. I was tired much of this week as I went back to work. I had a couple of really interesting dreams. I listened to a random book that mentioned laziness, which may have spurred me to action somehow. I also told the folks on the site that I couldn't do news anymore. My chest clenches at the very site of a press release. Newswise I'm toast for a good long while.

Anyone interested in doing news for an RPG site? All you need is knowledge of and interest in RPGs. ;)

I'm still going to do stuff on the site, but after a steady year of news I need a break from it, even if the timing is awful. But it's truly a load off.

Anyway, I'm going to post edit updates like I did for the second draft since that seems to be encouraging and I need all the motivation I can get to finish this thing once and for all.

So: Chapter one done!
(Chapters 2-4 previously finished)

So I've been on vacation this week. Finally. Mostly I've been taking it easy and staying up late a lot, though today I went to the museum of nature to finally get a look at the revamped exhibits and tomorrow I'm going to brunch with a friend. It was strange to see the dinosaur exhibit; it's so different from the old one. I recognized most of the old pieces, though, and it was like seeing old friends. I practically lived in that exhibit as a child.

I've gotten lots of writing done. Upon finishing my first Artemis Fowl fic (which I began posting last week) I started writing a second one, mostly devoid of plot but somehow 9,200 at the end of the penultimate chapter. I so wish I knew someone who'd read the series so I could run it by them.

Oh and Pet Dragons seems to be eating my existence, but that's nothing new. ;)

It's 1:38 a.m. and I am totally incoherent right now, but very greatly amused.

There's an application I play on Facebook called "Pet Dragons." I play it with a bunch of other people and it's become like a fandom for me basically. We're playing the original game. Tonight the new game "Pet Dragons 2" was due to launch. A bunch of us North American players were staying up late to play it (name our new dragon, choose a cave location, ect.) and the European players got up early for it.

According to the status message from the devs, the server lasted five seconds before it crashed.

Epic.

Pet Dragons fans are so dedicated we killed the server. And now everyone is messaging about i frantically. It's awesome. I can hardly think straight for being up nearly three hours past bedtime, but it's so very funny I'm glad I didn't miss it.

Note to self:

In future, avoid writing stories centred around intelligence and counterintelligence operations as they tend to lead to brain implosion due to having to answer questions like: Does Opal know that Artemis knows that she knows that she's been monitoring his communications? O_o

I may have rearrange scene order so that the story actually... you know... makes sense.