Maledicte

I keep opening the "post an entry" window and then not posting.

• Thanksgiving happened. Also, it was stressful and I got no sleep. Not exactly the vacation I was looking for, but it was nice all the same. Got to see family, hung out with lskull86 a little, and got some beautiful lace yarn which I will eventually find a pattern that I like enough to use. For those who were confused by my Twitter posts, I flew into NYC on Thursday, drove out to Massachusetts on Friday, had Thanksgiving on Saturday (because that's how my family does it), drove back to NYC on Sunday with Aaron, and then flew home at an obscenely early hour of the morning on Monday. Quick vacation.

• School is progressing. I have papers that I need to write for four classes, and a portfolio to turn in for the fifth. I'm pretty sure it's all doable.

• I convinced my Fiction teacher to do an Independent Study with me. One where I will write a short story (as defined by 5k-20k words, I guess) every two weeks. This seems manageable. I am going through all my works-in-progress and my various idea and picking out the ones that are viable and trying to formulate the ones that were tenuous at best. Hopefully I will have 8 concrete story ideas before the start of next semester.

• I really out to be reading a chapter in my religious ethics textbook, but it's only 10 pages long, so I am putting it off in favor of finally updating this thing with real content and drinking pomegranate limeade from Trader Joe's.

• NaNoWriMo happened pretty much as it ever does for me. I wrote about 6500 words on my novel and 3500 words of a short story, and then gave up on returning to the novel because I have no idea what needs to happen. However, this is the first NaNoWriMo novel that I think actually has potential beyond just churning out a wordcount. (The one that I got the farthest into is 13k words, about 10k of which is smut. Granted, it's mostly all plot related, but still.) I actually feel like this is a novel I want to continue thinking about and working on. Of course, I have plenty of novel ideas that have the same sort of potential, but I'm not sure that I've actually started writing any of the others. (No idea why, except that I didn't really write anything between graduating high school and recently. God, that's five years. I hate that.) This novel is interesting enough that I will likely have to do more research and more meta-research and then more figuring out how the plot is supposed to go. I'm actually looking forward to that!

• I need to finish reading this fic for xmenbigbang and make my damn mix and cover. I suspect that they wanted to get all the posting done before Christmas, but it actually would have been easier to do this afterwards.

• Oh oh oh. Remember how I mentioned that I wanted a Kindle and how I told my godfather that that was what I wanted for Christmas? I got an email from my mom on the day when the Kindle Fire started shipping asking me, "Is this the Kindle you wanted?" with the Kindle Fire ad in it. When I answered no, my mom responded, "Oh, well, you can tell me which one, or just go into my Amazon account and put it in my basket so I can get it." YAY KINDLE. I am not even bringing any books with me on my Christmas trip. Since I am flying on Christmas Eve, I will actually be getting the Kindle the first morning of my vacation. I am excited.

• I am also excited to be spending Christmas in Michigan, no matter how cold it supposedly gets out there. I will wear lots of warm clothes, or just not leave the house much. There will be snow, and wood fires, and a dog, and a Christmas tree, and everything. Oh, and also a menorah, lest I forget that I am actually Jewish.

• Speaking of vacation though, I will be in NYC from Dec. 28 through Jan. 12. I have no plans as of yet, so anyone who wants to try to make plans with me should feel free to do so. (exrpan, you still have to tell me if I'm going to overlap with whatever you have planned for your holiday. Fingers crossed!) I would like to do something for New Year's, though I doubt that I will go to the ball-dropping thingy (because no) or a big huge party or anything. No plans yet, but hopefully it will be something festive and inauspicious.

Ok, this entry is likely long enough now.

Don't forget to request a holiday card!

• NaNoWriMo has started (obviously) and I am writing. Slowly, but surely. I am several thousand words behind (at 3026 currently, when today's goal is 6666) so I don't know if I can catch up. I think if there were a couple nights when I wrote 2k words I would be able to, but I haven't yet managed that. We'll see.

• Unfortunately, I don't have an antagonist for my novel yet and, as girasola pointed out, having one might come in handy. I have a small conflict that I am going to use, and I shoehorned a character in to do so, but it's not going to be enough for the thing as a whole. It really is only going to affect the two of the main characters. So I am pondering this.

• I am also pondering how my main main character meets two of the other four main characters. Two I have down (or have planned in my head) but the other two are a little more nebulous. To be fair, so are those characters, so maybe if I had a firmer grasp of who they were, I would be able to figure out how to have everyone get to know each other properly.

• Wow, trying to talk about this without revealing anything about the story is hard.

• I am worried about other writing during NaNoWriMo. As a student getting a degree in Creative Writing, I have to actually do some writing for my classes. I have 2 papers to write during the month of November, not to mention the Peter Pan story I am working on which I still want to use for my workshop day in one of my classes. And I have to write a creative non-fiction piece (which will likely have some of my thoughts on Fantasy in it, so it won't be entirely disconnected from the things I love). That's a lot of words that don't go towards my novel. And it would obviously be cheating to count them as such. So. I feel like there's only so much writing I can do, and that writing things not for NaNoWriMo will distract me and make my wordcount drop. :/ Maybe I will just have to buck up and do them both. Like a reasonable and normal person would.

• I don't really read when I am writing. It's weird. Not out of any design, but because I am putting all my energy into either writing or thinking about my writing and thus don't even consider picking up a book (or reading fic). I really ought to see about changing that somewhat for this NaNoWriMo as there are no movies that I own (except maybe A Midsummer Night's Dream or the Lord of the Rings movies) that are inspiring for the particular thing I'm writing. I ought to read bit and pieces of things that are related to my topic. girasola once pointed out that my research methods were kind of meta, and yeah, that might be true. But they're also entertaining.

• Unrelated to NaNoWriMo: I'm going to see In Time with a friend tonight. It has lots of awesome people in it, so hopefully it will be at least entertaining.

That's all.