Hello on Wednesday!  Sorry for missing yesterday -- anyway, how are things going in the world of fic?

Did you write?

   - Yes!
   - No!
   - Not yet!

If yes, what kind of writerly activity did you engage in?  How do you feel about it?
If no, what were the obstacles/situations that affected your writerly pursuits?  What will you do differently tomorrow to get more writing done?
If not yet, because the day hasn't gotten going yet, what kind of writing activity are you planning (or hoping) to accomplish?

And immediately upon finishing the longest work I have yet posted, I have now finished the shortest. Allez, a 1,361 word Jeremiah story which is the first actual thing I wrote after becoming a widow. The other stuff was just finishing near-completed drafts from before.

I had idly contemplated the idea of writing a batch of oneshots, or maybe a Five Times experiment, in which Erin taught other characters how to fence. Note: This is a tricky aspect to writing in a dormant fandom. I don't know how to fence. I really have no business writing anything on the subject. However, if I want to read it, I'm kind of stuck trying my best not to faceplant while I write it.

Anyway, my unease with the project meant I never really did much except take some notes for a few possibilities. Then, I was suddenly faced with having a long list of WIPs which were heavy on angst and action and romance and high effort, when I no longer felt up to writing at all. So I wrote the first fencing lesson, between Erin and Markus, to make some time go by and soothe my nerves. Because it had no heavy drama, and it was just a quiet discussion about philosophy, this was very manageable.

I then wrote a second one, featuring Elizabeth, but that one I wasn't as happy with and need to retool a bit.

I then enlisted havocthecat to lend her fencing expertise, so I didn't completely embarrass myself.

I don't actually remember why the hell I didn't post the first of the two last year.

Then I got caught up in trying to finish my two long WIPs, which took much longer than anticipated. Then I finally dug out Allez, made some alterations to the character stuff, and discovered I couldn't blockquote for love or money. dswdiane suggested I ask killabeez for assistance, and she very patiently walked my idiot self confused personage through the motions of advanced html and site skins.

So this is the shortest fic I have ever written, and somehow it ended up being the fic I got the most help on. And I guess the moral is, fandom has been teaching me it's okay to ask for help.

Hello on Monday! How's the day going so far for fic? (If you haven't gotten started on your day as yet, how did yesterday go for writing fic?)

    - Excellent!
    - Terrible
    - Somewhere in between
    - Nothing doing

How much time have you spent on writing fic today, roughly?

    - None
    - 30 minutes or less
    - 30-60 minutes
    - 60-90 minutes
    - More than 90 minutes

In five words or less, how do you feel about that?

Hello on Sunday!  What kind of a writing day has it been so far today -- or if today hasn't gotten going yet, how did you fare yesterday?

       - I thought about my fic once or twice
       - I wrote
       - I did some planning and/or outlining
       - I did research and/or canon review
       - I edited
       - I've sent my fic off to my beta
       - I posted today!
       - I'm taking a break
       - I did something else that I'll talk about in a comment

Sunday Discussion:  It's a new writing week, and that means a fresh start. Maybe you had a great writing week last week, or maybe last week wasn't the greatest for getting writing things done -- what kind of goals do you have for keeping up your momentum or starting off fresh this week? 

I keep forgetting to post about this: we've been troubleshooting the "missing notifications" problem for the past few days. (Well, I say "we", really I mean Mark and Robby; I'm just the amanuensis.) It's been one of those annoying loops of "find a logical explanation for what could be causing the problem, fix that thing, observe that the problem gets better for some people but doesn't go away completely, go back to step one and start again", sigh.

Mark is hauling out the heavy debugging ordinance to try to find the root cause. Once he's done building all the extra logging tools he needs, he'll comment to this entry. After he does, if you find a comment that should have gone to your inbox and sent an email notification but didn't, leave him a link to the comment that should have sent the notification, as long as the comment itself was made after Mark says he's collecting them. (I'd wait and post this after he gets the debug code in but I need to go to sleep and he's not sure how long it will take!)

We're sorry about the hassle! Irregular/sporadic issues like this are really hard to troubleshoot because it's impossible to know if they're fixed or if they're just not happening while you're looking. With luck, this will give us enough information to figure out the root cause for real this time.

and oh god it's so good, that unique polished authorial confidence of The Fortunate Fall is so back, and like The Fortunate Fall it's a book that's somehow slipped out of time, not exactly in sync with the present moment in sf/f but maybe both older and newer, and it's very quiet and calm except for that bit in a recent chapter which actually made me make an involuntary noise of shock and alarm out loud, and I have no idea where it's going and I hope she sticks the landing but right now the vibes are Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand and The Left Hand of Darkness, and what with those being two of my favourite novels ever, I'm having a very good time.

Feeling happy and curatorial this week, I restarted Wedding Wednesday and Footwear Friday on Bsky/Tumblr (and will get back to Miniature Monday as well): they've always been opportunities to practice clear but elegant label-writing, nd now I need that more than I have in several years.

I'm also psyched to eventually meet up with the Western NY Costuming Community after so many years of just not being near any groups. They're having a literary-themed picnic in early June and that will be mere weeks after I move out there, so I CANNOT try to make something, but at the same time I am so itching to do it. No!!! By now I don't think I have anything historical that fits ... Well, actually, I have a ca. 1908 blouse I made for everyday wear (except it looks way too frumpy as modern dress), and surely I could put together a walking skirt and be like "this is for The Secret Garden". And just be without a corset because the blouse is loose enough for it not to be too horrendously obvious.

Also having my usual "moving to a new place, is this when I finally get started with the SCA?" feelings. Thescorre has a lot going on.

1. What was the last book you read (or are currently reading)?

2. What was the last movie you watched?

3. What television series are you currently watching?

4. What are some of your favorite blogs or communities online?

5. What social media do you belong to and check often?

Copy and paste to your own journal, then reply to this post with a link to your answers. If your journal is private or friends-only, you can post your full answers in the comments below.

If you'd like to suggest questions for a future Friday Five, then do so on DreamWidth or LiveJournal. Old sets that were used have been deleted, so we encourage you to suggest some more!

How is the writing going today?



Discussion: what are you working on this weekend?

Can anyone take weeks 2 and 3? I'm not going to have much availability for the rest of the month.

How is the writing going?



Discussion: when you have momentum, do you stop for breaks?

I signed up for Write Every Day earlier this week, which I'm enjoying as a challenge and focus point. The purpose of it for me was to circumvent what normally happens right after I post something - which is instantly disappearing into the ether for two weeks before I summon the energy to try writing again.

It worked, today at least. I dug out a functionally finished short fic I unfortunately wrote around this time last year while I was still reeling and in deep shock. So I let it lapse without doing the final read-through, because I just wasn't up to it, at all. I feel bad about this, because the fic was beta read, and then I never posted it.

So this evening, I sat down with the fic, altered a few sentences to be more smooth or substantial, added a few others to make the story clearer, and think it's where I want it to be. So that's getting posted in the next day or two.

This challenge is getting good results. Thank you to dswdiane for pointing it out.

Sorry I missed yesterday, I had to go back to work to cover.

How is the writing going?



Discussion: Do you ever write when you're at work?

For Christmas Husband gave me a nice Critical Role notebook as 'something to go with', so I have been vaguely pondering what to use it for. I have now decided to have a go at making it a garden journal.

I have no idea how one does that. I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm basically just putting stuff in there and seeing where it goes. I don't even know how long I'll be able to keep it up,* but we're having a go anyway. So far I've put in a list of what's in the different beds off the top of my head, I've put a todo list of tasks I'd like to get done during the spring (lol!),** and I've put in a number of ideas for how I would like to do the terrace pots and a list of other plants I might like to try and plant.

It occurs to me that it might also come in handy when we go to the garden center because I can take it with me and look up what I was considering, which feels far more attractive than a note on my phone, and I could potentially also put in things that I saw at the garden center that might be interesting later on, especially if I remember to also bring a pencil.***

This decision coincides, or is probably partially born from, the effort Husband is currently making to get through a vast stack of garden magazines that have piled up. We tried putting them in a specific place, so that they weren't always lying around on the dining table. This worked splendidly for me because it was more tidy, and not at all for him because the magazines tended to just accumulate and he'd never actually get around to looking in them. So now the magazine storage situation is a bit unclear. Anyway, he's making his way through them, tearing out the pages he wants a closer look at, and I got trough after him and do the same.

On one page, I was mainly interested in a small bit in the bottom third, so in a fit of inspiration I cut it out and glued it into my journal. I had a bit of leftover hobby glue that was still good, so I used that. I discovered that the paper is really too thin for this to be an ideal solution, but on the other hand, I'm kind of enjoying the tactile way the paper has gone a bit crinkly now where it has dried. Might acquire more unsuitable glue and do it again.

---

*But it is giving me some opportunity to use highlighters. I have far too many highlighters. But they come in so many colours, and you obviously have to have one in each colour. I mean, obviously!
**If I do a third of them, I'll call it a success.
***Not a pen. A pencil. And definitely not a mechanical one. An old fashioned one that you have to sharpen. I've been favouring them for years now. I think it has something to do how it feels to write with it.

omg I swear this is what did it. My life has changed over the past week, I feel like a new person, and I feel crazy about it because I swear it's because I splurged on a new soft throw blanket. Something about touching that blanket healed me, y'all. It's a UGG Euphoria blanket, and I spent like 60 bucks on it. I didn't really have the money but I splurged anyway, and it is SO SOFT, and it does something to my brain. Like it tickles my brain when I rub my hands on it. This needs to be studied.

I doubt new improved me will last forever, but I'm doing what I can while I'm feeling this way.

Believe me, I know how crazy it sounds that a blanket has 'cured' my depression.

Sidelined has clocked in at 52,981 words. It is the longest individual story I have written, and the most ambitious completed work I have to my name, and I am super proud of how it turned out. So this gets a long "making of" post, and a new Erin icon. I have earned it.

The basic concept came from a challenge I set myself to write launchpad scenes for five different Jeremiah canon divergences. I knew the concept at once: Erin and Theo getting stranded in the wilderness and learning to rely on each other without Markus gumming the works. I had previously toyed with a road trip idea, but didn't find it appealing post-series, because there wasn't an identifiable conflict point. Theo would want to get home to her kid, and Erin would completely support her in doing so - which meant nothing to argue over, and therefore nothing to drive the plot. Counterintuitively, I also ship Theo/Erin much harder in season one, before they ever share a scene together, than I do post 'Rites of Passage,' and both of them being outside in the chaos of 'Things Left Unsaid' gave me the perfect opportunity to throw them together.

The framework took shape around three key events. They would witness Vincent gatecrash St. Louis, forcing them to leave behind shelter and risk the road. They would spring one of Daniel's labor camps. One of them (didn't matter which) would get captured by an enforcer, leading to Feelings and Rescuing, and they would steal a car, the story ending at the gates of Thunder Mountain. Short and simple!

Here's how that went completely awry. ( Long, long making of. )

How is the writing going today?

Hi, all!

My mood has improved, and I've had energy for the past 3 days. Out of nowhere. I actually got some much-needed cleaning done, and it's been very beneficial to my mental health. I've been eating healthier leading up to my first Ozempic shot, so that might have something to do with it, but it hasn't been a HUGE change yet, just little stuff. But I guess it could have still made a difference. idk, I just feel great. It's so weird!

How is the writing going today?



Discussion: what are you working on this week?

Is anyone able to take at least one week this month? week 2 and week 3 are currently without a host here. Thanks :)

Hello on Friday!  Looking back at the day today -- or yesterday, if today hasn't gotten going yet -- how did it go?

   - I thought about my fic once or twice
   - I wrote
   - I did some planning and/or research
   - I edited
   - I've sent my fic off to my beta
   - I posted today!
   - I'm taking a break
   - I did something else that I'll talk about in a comment

Looking forward, how are you planning to spend your weekend?

   - I'm going to make up for not writing all week by having a writing marathon
   - I'm going to keep writing at my current rate and see how it goes
   - I have other plans, but I might have time to get some writing in
   - I'm going to take a break from writing