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I haven't decided if I'm formally going to do Camp NaNo, but I'm definitely setting some perfectly reasonable goals:

-Slap down about 1k total on FTH stuff
-Write SOMETHING for Nordipalooza, around 1k
-Finish at least one scene on this ongoing Frozen fic
-...Maybe write the Promare fic that's been poking at me recently. (Nothing deep, just a Mad Burnish sandwich, but the idea won't leave me alone). Or at least get started on this.

I think if I make a point to sit down and Work On A Thing, I can do it!

I put together a Camp NaNo cabin. If any of you want in, drop your username here, and I'll add you. Remember that you need to create a project before I can add you.

Not sure how much actual posting I'll be doing, though, aside from maybe wordsprint challenges on the weekends or something like that.

(I know I speculated vaguely about joining other people's groups, but let's leave that for next year. ;p )

The project I'm going to be working on this time around is challenging, but in an exciting way. Hopefully I'll be able to get most of it done...! It's not due until November or so, but I still don't like having things so far outstanding, haa.

☆ Work is busy and will be for months. The usual. Expect grumping and/or distance.

☆ RSI stuff is a pain in the ass. Grumble, grumble. Need to take better care of myself.

☆ Camp NaNo is going well. Up to 38 lines so far. Have written at least one poem per day since the beginning of the month. Don't expect that it will continue so briskly, but it is an encouraging start. One of them was even nonfandom. Haven't written something like that in a while.

☆ NiF status: Complete to the end of #51. I'm braindead right now so I don't have any particularly intelligent commentary. But I will say that I like Lin Chen a lot and it makes me happy whenever he's onscreen. Even at the very beginning of the series, I was like "I have no idea who this guy is, but I like him a lot, and he has mad chemistry with that other guy, whoever he is". So when he showed up again, I was pretty delighted. And then moreso when I realized yep, still in love. And still shipping him with MCS like whoa. Though I like those two in a friendship context too. Their relationship is very... It really caters to my tastes.

☆ It was -31C this morning or something ridiculous like that. After windchill, mind, because there's no point in looking at the base temp. I'm back to drinking endless cups of tea just so I can keep my hands warm. I'm so fucking annoyed.

Weeeellll I haven't been doing any writing in the past two days, but that's okay. I'll make up for it on the weekend. (Or perhaps I'll try tonight?) It isn't as if I'm doing proper NaNoWriMo, anyway. Good luck to those of you who are trying, though!

I did get kind of hit smack in the face with an idea for a longer story, and I might try to start work on it this weekend - maybe - if I can decide exactly what to do with it. Something inspired by Marzanna-centric folklore probably.

( Details - this got kind of graphic, whoops )

So, that's a thing.

I was going to spend this evening productively, but you know what?

Nah.

(It's cold, and it's dark, and my guts feel uncomfortable, and I just don't wanna. Sloth time!)

Wow, has work ever been stressful lately. Pardon if I seem a bit distant. (Or snappish, at times - I know I shouldn't, sorry.)

Anyway, just going to jot down a few things, cut into bits for convenience.

( Stand Still Stay Silent )
( Year in Hereafter )
( Tistow )
( Camp NaNo )

☆ Aaaand now, a music rec, since I was listening to CKUA today, and when I do that it's inevitable I'll stumble across something I like: "The Update" by Martin Kerr. Well, actually, I wanted to recommend "Better than Brand-New", which is the song I heard, and also the title of the album this song is on, but unfortunately I can't find it on youtube. Anyway, this guy is from Alberta (Edmonton, specifically) and I really like the sound of his voice. <3 "Mr. Liao" is another one that the radio played today, and it's lovely, though quite a sad narrative in this one. I think I'll have to look into his music some more; it has a certain something that's very much to my tastes.

✿ Noms for the nightonficmountain close on April 1st, so if you're thinking about signing up for that one and haven't added anything to the tag set, there's still a bit of time. (NOFM is a multifandom exchange centred on rare/small fandoms, for the record. ...I'm going to request so much obscure stuff, hot damn.)

✿ Camp NaNo starts tomorrow. I'm VERY excited about it. As to whether I'll actually make my wordcount goal... that is questionable. Going to have to get into the habit of writing every day - again. This will be hard. ;V

✿ Random music rec: Í Tokuni by Eivør, a singer from the Faeroe Islands. I stumbled across her music recently, and ahhh she has a pretty cool voice. <3 Her sound is very... I'm not sure what to call it. Ethereal, I suppose one could say. There is also an English version of this song, Into the Mist, which will be released on the English version of her album Slør in late May (the Faroese version was released in 2015). I think I prefer her work in Faroese, and if I end up picking up one of her albums it'll probably be the original version of Slør, though she of course sounds great in English too.

✿ Tumblr user drepedetihjel drew fanart inspired by one of my SSSS poems about Ensi and Veeti (Second Sight) and I can't get over how cool this is. <3 <3 <3 (Note to self, link it in the actual fic post later.)

Today kind of sucked.

It was raining for a good part of the day - so much that part of town flooded; nothing too bad, but STILL. This isn't what we need right now. D:

My parents were making various levels of obnoxious/offensive/racist comments on and off all day for no particular reason. Well, they might have had a reason, but I'm sure as hell not going to ask what it was, because I don't want to know the answer.

I was in a bad mood overall, which wasn't improved by being stuck at home.

Aaaand Iceland lost against France at football. Okay, okay, that one's pretty trivial. And they did their best, and it's amazing that they got this far in the Euro cup at all. Still a bummer, though, especially since I didn't get a chance to watch that Iceland-England match, that one where everyone was saying they were playing so well.

But.

It's... okay. It's not that bad. Today wasn't that bad. I didn't have to go anywhere today, so I got to stay nice and dry. I have some really delicious tea. And I finished a fic that I've had in my wip folder for a while, and was ignoring until now. So, that's all pretty good.

Also, I've been doing Camp NaNo, and I'm off to a great start. Probably going to have to raise my wordcount goal, but for now, I'm just having fun ploughing through it. :D Aaand hopefully will finish a lot of those wips. (I have like, 20 things unfinished right now, it's terrible.)

And going in to work tomorrow will be nice, though I don't know if I'll be thinking that when I get there and find a huge mess of paperwork on my desk....

It's all all right. <3

☆ Aaaaand November is over! That's a wrap! Wow, this month went by fast. I'm surprised and amazed. Where did the year go?!

☆ Speaking of which, that means NaNoWriMo is over. I managed to write more than I ever expected - I had been aiming for around 10k, but I doubled that and reached 20k! Wonderful! It helps that I had a lot of exchange fics to work on, and the write-ins definitely helped too. But the habit of writing every day, even if it was only 100 words, was... effective. I think I'm going to ease up on that a little now, and focus on editing more than output, because I really want to get some of these drafts finished. (Though I managed to finish several already!)

☆ Good news: the local NaNo group has decided that the write-ins will continue. Which means... I suddenly have a social life. I. What? How did this happen? I'm really happy about it, but it's surprising. Regardless, I now have something to do every Sunday afternoon. Sounds good! Plus, we're moving the time slot up a little earlier, which means I'll have plenty of time to catch the bus after it's over - so I won't have to leave early, like I did a couple of times. ... I don't expect that I'll form any long-lasting friendships from this. But it's nice to have something to do every weekend. Plus, think of all the writing I'll get done!

☆ I'm all finished up with the gift I was writing for the SSSSForum's secret santa, so now I can plunge headfirst into editing all those Yuletide drafts. I have one with pending revisions thanks to Qichi (seriously, pal, I really appreciate it, there are a lot of things there that I would not have seen on my own) and then... it's a matter of editing the others. One will be tricky, because it's longer than what I usually write, and it has a lot of action. Pfuh. AND I started writing a fourth one on Saturday, so hopefully I'll be able to get that done. It's challenging in an entirely different way - diary format, which I don't normally write, and from a completely nonhuman point of view. Fun! But also difficult! We'll see how this turns out.

☆ Like I've mentioned before, I'm not signing up for fandom_stocking this year, because I found last year a tad stressful for some reason. (I dunno'. Brains are weird.) But it looks like they're going ahead with it this year, so if any of you cool cats on my flist are going to participate, you should totally mention it in your journals so that I can keep an eye on it and see if I can fill some treats for you. <3

☆ Today has been very... up and down. In a lot of ways. I don't know why, but lately I'm finding it hard not to get irritable at people for the tiniest little things. Kind of frustrating; I don't like myself when I'm like this. Hopefully I'll figure out what's wrong with my mood and fix it, somehow. (A run might help....)

☆ Write-in #3 went very well. Still kind of iffy on whether I will make friends with these people, but I sure do find that we work well together. Continuing meetups post-NaNo seems unlikely, but I'm starting to suspect that I will be spending a lot of time at the library for writing in the near future. Sounds good to me.

☆ Anyway - worked on some Hetalia fic at the write-in; haven't done any of that recently, so it was interesting. Pairing was Netherlands/Japan, which is one of those ones that I like a lot but have a lot of trouble writing. Netherlands is easy enough, but Japan is a difficult guy to characterize. Also, started working on Yuletide treat #2. Going well so far. Should edit treat #1... it doesn't have as many problems as I initially thought, but it had a particular set of difficult scenes that need a lot of work done on them.

☆ Took a look at some fanpoetry I wrote earlier this month and... I did not hate it! Initially I hated it, but looking at it with fresh eyes, it's actually not bad. I'm pretty happy with it. Did some adjustments, needs a bit more tweaking, but that's all. The fandom is Ex Machina, so it'll probably go up only on roesslyng, unless I get brave enough to throw it on Ao3. I doubt that will happen. (Now, if it were SSSS or aRTD, I would not feel conflicted at all, seeing as those fandoms are so open to poetry....)

☆ Yesterday, worked on some Norwegian for the first time in about two months. It was... uh. Well. It sure was something. Mostly just futzing around on Duolingo. Remembered some vocab, forgot some others... verbs are always difficult, I always forget them, I don't know why. But I remembered more than I thought I did, which is something, I guess. Should probably do more norsk blogging on here, but most of the time my brain is like "ugh, no, why", so we'll see. Like, I want to do it, but I don't want to put in any effort. Um. Also, I decided to turn off the audio, after seeing discussions from native Norwegian speakers about how the audio is really, really inadequate and likely to teach mistakes... The audio questions were kind of making my computer throw a fit, anyway.

☆ Currently disgruntled because I lost a brand new pendant and I have reason to think that it is truly gone rather than scattered somewhere around the house. It had been in my bag, and wasn't properly secured, and since I've been out and about, well... Yes. The funny thing is, it's a charm meant to prevent the wearer from getting lost. Apparently that doesn't come with any guarantee that you won't lose it. ;p

☆ Have I mentioned that I really hate Christmas shopping? Well, not for friends, because my friends are wonderful and easy to buy for, but family is just. [/VAGUE GESTURES] Difficult. Argh. Well, hopefully I will get all my shopping done soon. Then I can just wrap everything and Not Think About It until the relevant day. :T ... I need to buy cards, too. (Must put that on the to-do list.)

☆ If you haven't listened to Walk Off the Earth's cover of Somebody That I Used To Know, you should, it's awesome.

☆ I went to the NaNo write-in. I did NOT chicken out! I did not get too nervous to go! ... Actually, I considered not going. But then I went. I probably won't make any friends out of this, but at this point, it's hard to be sure. (Though, some people there write/read fanfiction!! That's a good sign!) We're meeting again on Remembrance Day, so I'm looking forward to that. ... I'm really glad that I went. Though, ahahaha, apparently I still look much younger than I thought. One of them thought I was 18... [/drags hand down face] Well, I guess when I'm in my 40s, I'll be grateful for not looking my age.

☆ And aside from all that, it was good and productive and I wrote a ton. Like, three pages, maybe (by hand). For me, that's a lot. It isn't necessarily good writing - I'll have to revise it a lot - but it's at least there. It's easier to fix things if you have something to start with. And it's plot, so... y'know. Plot is hard. Very hard. So it's understandable that the first draft is bad. I'll fix it later. Upside, this Yuletide treat is like, 3/4 of the way to being drafted, woohoo!

☆ Speaking of which: Yuletide assignment = drafted. Now to start the editing process. :) Treat #1 is on its way to being drafted. And I have two more aside from that on my to-do list, but we'll see. I also want to write some non-Yuletide giftfics but it really depends on how things shake out, I guess. And I haven't even received my assignment for SSSS Exchange... that'll happen on Saturday, I think. (Christ, I hope it will be an easy assignment... or at least one where the recipient is clear about their likes. 6_9 Or at least, um, mentions who their favourite character is. That at least gives me something to work with. AaaaAAAHH JITTERS.)

☆ I now have a hannunvaakuna pendant styled exactly like the one Hannu wears in A Redtail's Dream and I feel like an enormous nerd. But this stealth nerdiness gives a little thrill, not gonna lie. Confession: What I really want is all of Hannu's dreamworld clothes. All of them. Especially his chapter 3 outfit*; I dunno, I just really like that long coat + turtleneck sweater combination (and those gloves!). Though I still think his Ch7 costume* is the best one. But I wouldn't be able to rock any of those looks the way he does. ... Man, that dude goes through as many costume changes as a magical girl. I LOVE IT. If I weren't so easily frustrated by drawing, he would be my go-to dress-up doll.

☆ While I was killing time before the meetup, I went poking around for gift ideas... Mélusine and I decided to do a gift swap just for the fun of it. I found a few nice little things, but I wasn't so sure, and I didn't have a lot of time. But I did find some possibilities. Next weekend, I'll print out the relevant PMs and do some real sleuthing. I want to make sure that this gift is super awesome.

☆ I have tea that smells exactly like marzipan. As far as I'm concerned, this is the best thing ever (I absolutely love marzipan). The taste is kind of eh, though - but excellent with honey! :D