Behold! The Beauty of Arts and Crafts!

I apologize, but before anything else, I have to squee about something. Sorry if you follow my tumblr or already saw this on my personal facebook page, but I have to squee EVERYWHERE about this.

EdenDaphne finished my commission of Willow! I got the email yesterday, and I've been bouncing all over the walls about it since.

Maki Natsuo from Love Lab
created by Ruri Miyahara

Hacker Girl Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc

*Ahem* Anyway, without further ado, EdenDaphne's drawing of Willow:

Comparatively, let's check out what I was able to come up with over the years....

So much Willow! I love it! I love it! I love it!

I was also a bit impatient when I got the line-art for Willow about a week or so ago, so, while I was bored at work, I decided to try my own hand at coloring her. Considering I was on my phone and using one of those pens with the stylus on the back, I don't think it's all that bad....

The shoes got a bit derpy because I hit the
bottom edge of the screen while re-doing
the line art.

Clearly Eden's coloring was better - her shoes actually look like sneakers while mine look like they belong in a bowling alley - but again, I don't think I did too shabby considering it's the first time I ever attempted to color on a cell phone.... Also, I'm impressed with the way I was able to make Willow's belt sparkle, and how I streaked her hair.

Anyway, if you couldn't tell, I'm beyond excited for this! Now to save up another $70, and wait for Eden to open commissions again, so I can have another one of My Girls drawn.... who next time though? Trish, Lia, Amara, or Jolene? Maybe Lia. Poor girl hasn't really had any love in the past two years. Amara's on the same boat, but I need to solidify where all of her scars are first so Eden knows if she has to have any showing....

Eden wasn't the only one crafting though, and coloring my line-art preview of Willow wasn't the only crafting *I* did.

ChibiSunnie hasn't had a very good year, loves penguins, and is always so kind as to draw me a birthday and a Christmas card each year. I wanted to do something for her in return. So I spent about a week or so crocheting. The beak and eyes look kind of wonky on this poor thing, but otherwise I'm happy with it.

The scarf is detachable, just wrapped
around and knotted in place like
a real scarf.

I had used transitional blue yarn - it went from the light blue of the face to the dark blue of the eyes - but the craft didn't use enough of the yarn for it to ever really transition. The flippers/wings are a slightly darker shade, but that's it....

I don't know if Chibi gave her penguin a gender, but she named it Chibird, after the inspirational artist we both follow on tumblr. Mostly because Chibird compiled her artwork into a book called Loading Penguin Hugs, which I also gifted Chibi for Christmas, and the penguin on the cover is blue.

You can get your own copy of
Loading Penguin Hugs on Amazon.

It really is an adorable book, and comes with stickers! It's less than $10, so why not give it a look and see if it's a nice pick-me-up/stocking stuffer for yourself or someone you know? Spread the love.

Anyway, you guys don't come here every week to see arts and crafts per se. You're here mostly to find out more about my writing, correct?

Well, guess what? I did that too! Quite a bit, actually.... 4616 words worth. Which is more than any week during this year's NaNo... Figures.

I kept getting flashes of the last chapter for "One and the Same." Basically, it's this closing to the “Peeping Tomcat” mess/epic that made me want to write this sequel in the first place. I instantly thought how perfect it would be if that final scene paralleled "You've Got Mail": they'd be in the park outside Marinette's home, Adrien would walk up, Marinette would see Plagg and tear up as she realizes Adrien and Chat Noir were the same person that whole time, Adrien would dab her tears away and tell her "Don't cry, Ladybug," and they'd live happily ever after.

Well, fret not, readers who are probably mad that I dropped a spoiler like that without warning, because.... well... the ending took a... shall we say DIFFERENT turn.

What I'm about to say may be a bit obvious, but technically there's spoilers ahead centering around what should be the climactic tension of OatS. So feel free to breeze by if you don't want even slight hints....
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Anyway, the "You've Got Mail" ending, while sweet and the whole inspiration for OatS, just made Marinette forgive Adrien/Chat Noir too easily. What's the point of climatic tension if it's resolved simply because Chat Noir was Adrien the whole time? How could Marinette be instantly okay with Chat Noir's spying in PT upon realizing "Oh, it was Adrien!"? It was too shallow. Too quick. It sent the wrong message. There were all sorts of red flags.

I kept thinking "Maybe if Marinette found out about Chat Noir's spying as the mid-point, it would give me the second half of the book to rebuild their trust." I mean, the whole point of YGM is that Kathleen hated Joe, but he managed to regain her trust and friendship before she ended up falling in love with him. It would work, and maybe one day I'll write another take, another reason why Marinette would be mad at Chat Noir, so it fits YGM like I wanted. But this story doesn't seem to want to take that direction.

What could be a higher tension point then Marinette finding out everything that happened in PT? I had originally written a plot skeleton where Marinette does indeed ask for Chat Noir's ring back since she can't trust him as an ally, and then Master Fu talked her into giving it back. It got too messy though. First and foremost, how was she going to take back his ring without finding out who he was? If she had him give back the ring, and therefore reveal himself as Adrien to her, how would she react? How would she be around Adrien from that point on?

It just.... the story took a dark turn. A fun turn. One I might explore in a different fanfic, but it just wasn't the direction I wanted OatS to go.

So I was back with the dilemma that Marinette was too forgiving of Chat Noir too soon. Plus, the girl is intelligent, so the fact that she didn't figure out who Chat Noir was before Plagg revealed himself felt wrong for me.

That's when I got those sparks for the final chapter. Basically, Marinette wondered why, if Chat Noir knew Ladybug was Marinette the whole time, did he keep pushing Marinette to confess her love to Adrien? It didn't add up for her. Until it did.

That was supposed to be the ending. She figured it out, and then her and Adrien would have talks about the whole thing. It really helped me with the whole "If they fought because she didn't want to know who Chat Noir was, why did Adrien show up to their date with Plagg in full view for her to know who Chat Noir was?" problem. He didn't randomly decide to tell her anyway, she figured it out and confronted him! Boom!

The problem was, the moment she figured it out was too good of a stopping point. I couldn't continue the chapter. My readers need a week to freak out at me, and I'm evilly waiting for that week with building anticipation.

So what I thought was my final chapter turned out to be the penultimate chapter. How do I keep doing that? The same thing happened to PT. I keep going into what I think is the last chapter, only for the characters to be like "Eeeeeh.... we actually have a LIIIIITTLE bit more story to tell."

And therein lies my current problem. Up until this chapter I've been fairly good at ping-ponging the story. It's in Marinette's first-person POV, the next chapter is in Adrien's, then back to Marinette, then back to Adrien, etc. However, the final chapter - when Marinette deals with the emotions of discovering her partner and the boy she's been pining for are the same guy - SHOULD be in her POV, shouldn't it? But the previous chapter - when she all but proved that Adrien is Chat Noir - HAS to be in her POV. Do I give up my formatting at the very end of the story and have two Marinette chapters in a row? Do I switch over to Adrien, giving them equal number of chapters to tell the story, and keeping the formatting? What about Marinette's insight though? Do I go real avant-garde and ping-pong first person POV within the chapter? Using line breaks and names to signal to the reader that the POV just switched? Do I conclude with the same scene being played twice: one chapter with Adrien's POV, and then the same scene retold in the next chapter via Marinette's POV?

I JUST DON'T KNOW!!!!!!
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OKAY, EVERYONE, THAT SHOULD BE THE END OF THE SPOILERS!
YOU CAN STOP SCROLLING BY NOW!

If you skipped that whole chunk, the spoiler-free long-and-short is Things Got Messy In The First Draft Of The Final Chapter; Now I Have POV Issues.

I don't know whose story the final chapter is. Should I be in Adrien's head at the conclusion of the story, letting him tell the audience what happened? Should I be in Marinette's head and have her tell everyone how things went down? Do I go a bit experimental and ping-pong between them within the chapter itself?

What I THOUGHT was going to be the final chapter turned out to be a 2400-word penultimate chapter, which will be lengthened because it needs a proper opening. I sort of just jumped in mid-action without any context because *I* know the context, and I wanted to get the meat of the chapter out of my head first.

That chapter ended up adding one more loose end to tie up so I could conclude this thing.

Oh, and by the way, don't get too excited. I'm still jumping all over the place with this story. I have yet to write most of the middle.

Anyway, with this final chapter - or what should be the final chapter, unless the characters throw me off a second time - I don't know which direction to go. There's a lot there that I want to be in Adrien's head for, but I always pictured the final chapter needing to be told through Marinette's eyes. While there's a lot going on with Adrien, OatS was supposed to be Marinette's story for the most part. She's the one who has to be hit with a bunch of stuff: the repercussions from "Peeping Tomcat", feelings being torn between Adrien and Chat Noir, the struggle between wanting to know who CN is vs the need to keep identities secret, etc.

Not really sure where to go and not wanting to end my momentum, I decided to just break format and write the final chapter in third person. Hop into whomever's head I need. Then, once I'm done with the chapter, I'll go back and see who was the one really telling that chapter, and rewrite using that person's first person POV.

Problem is.... 2200 words in and I'm still torn. Adrien seems to be bogarting the chapter, but there are still crucial bits of info that only Marinette would know. Plus, I still want her reaction to everything....

I'm seriously leaning towards ping-ponging 1st person POV in the final chapter, and just make sure I transition well enough and have their voices distinct enough that it won't get confusing.

In the meantime, it's fun emotionally torturing these poor kids. I'm a horrible human being.

OH! Speaking of torturing these little beans, Jowy's Pixie has a new story up! She actually gifted it to me and three other friends of hers: TLOS21, ChibiRinni, and oh-calliope! How cool is that!? We have a STORY as a Christmas gift from her? Soooooo coooooool!

Maki Natsuo from Love Lab

created by Ruri Miyahara

What's really the most awesome thing about it is the fact that she's writing it based on the 12 Days of Christmas. So each day, for twelve days, she's posting a new chapter of her story. Let's say that again.

EACH DAY

A NEW CHAPTER

FOR TWELVE DAYS STRAIGHT

How amazing is that? Such a quick turn around! Bravo to her. If you're at all in the fandom, feel free to give this girl some love:

Twelve Days of Chatmas

Christmas is fast approaching, and Chat Noir is determined to get Ladybug the perfect gift. The problem is, they all keep going disastrously wrong. Will Chat Noir be able to find Ladybug the perfect gift in time?

I just adore this story. If you know anything about the Miraculous Ladybug chibi episodes on YouTube, know that Pixie writes TDoC the way the chibi episodes SHOULD be written. I'm just gobbling this story up and loving that daily email telling me the next chapter is live.

Oh, and speaking of Christmas, next Tuesday does fall on Christmas itself, so I'm not sure if I'll have my post up as per usual. It may be up Monday night, or written ahead of time and scheduled for my normal post time, or I may work on it Wednesday instead.

So, if you haven't yet, why not check out that right panel of my blog? There's a spot there for you to sign up for email alerts, or you can drop me in your RSS feed... assuming people still use those.

Alternatively, you can follow me on Twitter or on Tumblr. I'm @LycoRogue in both spots. I do tend to fall a bit behind with my promotions lately, unfortunately. Priority is to get the post up, and then get errands done. If I don't have time between those two my promotional posts tend to be late.

So those email alerts are probably your best bet. I have nothing to do with those, they're all computer generated, so you KNOW they'll be on-time.

Anyway, until... some time next week.

Progress, Presents, and Promotions

I've been slacking. I only opened my word document once this whole week. It's Christmas time, so focus shifted to getting cards and presents set. Plus, work has been... interesting.

But the gifts are just about all set, and the cards should be good to go within the week. Which means I should be able to get back to working on the story this week.

That being said, though, I did manage to work a bit on the story on Wednesday. I even finished off the first draft of chapter 1 for "One and the Same." It needs a bit of polishing. Of course it does, it's a first draft. However, it's done. I just need to transition into chapter 2. Then I have most of three figured out, and four is done.

I've also been thinking about the final chapter. Since I promised some of my readers, I'll hide spoilers regarding my thoughts on the final chapter.

The final chapter will be seriously tricky due to the rebuild of the trust lost between Ladybug and Chat Noir. I have to make especially sure that Marinette doesn't forgive Chat Noir too soon. I have the skeleton of the final scene figured out I think. I also want to focus more on how intelligent Marinette is, so I've been playing with a few things with that.

Nothing is written down yet for that final chapter. So that might be my focus this week. That way I have a solid ending. I can then tweak later as I work back to the finale.

While you're waiting for me to get my butt in gear though, there is something else you can read.

Remember over the summer when I talked a bit about Ali Luke's latest novella? Well, it is finally live for mass consumption.

This cover is just so gorgeous. Bravo to Ali's artist Lorna Cowie.

You can check out Ali's book over on Amazon for just $0.99! Or, if you have Kindle Unlimited, you can read it for free. Just be sure to leave her a review once you're done!

Need a reminder of "Not So Imaginary"?

Your "imaginary friends" aren't imaginary at all.
And they're definitely not your friends.

When Ruth tracks her foster brother Jonathan to a flat in South London, she's hoping for a happy reunion.

But Jonathan tells her he can't talk to her and slams the door in her face.

They've been apart since they were children - but she's never stopped being his sister. And when she realizes he's in danger, she vows to protect him, no matter what.

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Jonathan's website design business is thriving.

It came at a price.

Flint and Corwin, the two "imaginary friends" that have been with him since childhood take it in turns to tell him what to do. Corwin is calm, organised ... and ridiculously uptight. Flint is wildly carefree ... and savagely dangerous.

Jonathan's in too deep to escape. There's no-one he can turn to: he's forbidden to contact Ruth.

He's not even supposed to think about her.

Then she moves into the flat next door.

Clear your evening and sink into this pacy story of a brother and sister, and two not-so-imaginary "friends".

Yeah, go and read her novella. It's dark and intense without being overly so. It's a nice intro to the supernatural universe that the Lycopolis trilogy is set in.

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There is but one more thing to report this week.

I GOT ANOTHER EMAIL FROM EDENDAPHNE!!!!

She has the line-art done for Willow, and asked me if I had any tweaks. I'm still internally screaming! She looks so awesome.

Maki Natsuo from Love Lab
by Ruri Miyahara

I can't wait to show everyone the completed product!!!!

Sooooo, yeah, that was my week. I hope to have something a bit better to share with you guys next week. Sorry for being so lame the past couple of posts.

Thus Endith Another NaNoWriMo

Well, this year's NaNo attempt did not go as well as planned at all. In fact, I was lucky to write for half the month. In the end, though, I learned to come to peace with my writing pace, and I managed at least a quarter NaNo. It's better than I thought I'd be able to do when I first started slacking off.

Calendar made by David Seah.

Now, even though my "official" total for NaNo was the 12,865, I did wonder what it would have been if I listened to Cyhyr and ChibiSunnie.

I had totaled some of this up two weeks ago, and I still didn't include the emails or messages I wrote in November, aside from the anecdote I wrote to Chibi. However, for the full count of everything else....

• Posts about "The Seven Deadly Sins": 695
• Observation about "DuckTales": 34
• Post about my WIP "When Love Matters": 563
• Posts about my WIP "Glitches": 5067
• Post promoting fanfics I'm reading: 344
• Post promoting my progress on "One and the Same": 373
• Facebook posts talking about what I'm thankful for: 717
• Anecdote Chibi counted for me: 1494
• Go Vote blog post: 2975
• In-story Calendars are the Key blog post: 2839
• All the Writing; None for OatS blog post: 3758
• No Time for Writing blog post: 2138

That brings my non-OatS writing in November up to 20,997 words. Add in the 12,865 words I DID write for OatS, and my NaNo count - according to Chibi and Cy - would be 33,862 words. Still not enough to "win" NaNo, but enough to surpass a half-NaNo, and set a new record high for a non-winning NaNo story.

Yeah.... nearly 21,000 additional words NOT put towards my current WIP. Meanwhile, there wasn't even 13,000 words put TOWARDS the WIP. Clearly I was real focused this year.... go me.


To be fair, I do have most of Act I completed...

• Chapter 1: I just need to figure out a transition between chapters 1 and 2, which needs a specific catalyst.
• Chapter 2: mostly done before I even started NaNo; I just need to find that transition from chapter 1.
• Chapter 3: majorly needs polishing, and I have a notation about a third of the way in to add more to transition from the start of the school day and the end of it. For the most part it's done though.
• Chapter 4: I think it is the most ready-to-publish bit I have thus far.
• Most of chapter.... we'll call it nine? I just need to work up to that part of the story.

Okay, so that was most of Act I, but what about everything else sitting in my WIP folder? Regardless of when I wrote it, how much of OatS DO I have done? Well, I was surprised to see that I have 27,637 words! I would have also hit half-NaNo status if I counted all the words in my WIP; not just the ones I wrote in November. Super neat, but still not winning.

What if I combine forces? Let's see... 20,997 words written outside my WIP, 12,865 words written for OatS within November, and an additional 14,772 words written before November started. That's right, folks, I wrote more for OatS BEFORE NaNo. Anyway, using all three stats, I could hit a grand total of 48,634words! STILL not a winning NaNo, but so much closer with all of my cheating.

Going back to how much I did write for OatS, regardless of when I wrote it, I was still curious as to the word distribution. I'm hoping to be a bit more consistent for this story than I was for PT. There's spoilers involved in my scene-by-scene breakdown of where the word-count is in OatS, but if you want to see that breakdown...

• Chapter 1 - Ladybug and Chat Noir defend Paris against an akuma attack: 3341 words
• Chapter 2 - Ladybug and Chat Noir defeat the supervillain, and Adrien recaps PT as he tries to figure out what to do next: 2596 words
• Chapter 3 - Adrien acts more like Chat Noir at school, confusing Marinette. Also, Marinette is informed that Gabe wants to meet with her to talk about her portfolio: 6548 words
• Chapter 4 - Finding Marinette at the Trocadero; the start of the MariChat friendship: 5260 words
• Alya calling out Adrien's flirting (practice writing that helped me get perspective, but won't appear in the final text): 429 words
• Chapter 6ish? - Chat Noir finds out about Marinette's crush on Adrien: 3726 words
• Getting Marinette's number (originally written for PT): 1126 words
• Chapter 9ish? - Chat Noir learns the significance of The Bracelet: 3241 words
• Chapter 13, maybe? - Chat Noir confesses that he knows who Ladybug is: 1370 words

After writing an angsty story focusing on one POV, moving to a new genre - basically a romcom - and bouncing between two POVs has proven quite difficult. There seems to be mostly fluff. My chapters basically read as incomplete one-shots: no lead-in to explain why they're in the situation going on. The chapters are cute little self-contained stories, but figuring out how they all thread together has proven difficult. There is also little drama pushing the story forward. It's like this story is my excuse to write an anthology of warm and fuzzy MariChat scenes. 

So that's my latest roadblock: figuring out how to add drama to keep people "flipping the pages," as it were.

Granted, it's fanfiction. And it's one of the more popular corners of the love square. I'm sure people would read the next chapter for no other reason than to read more MariChat goodness, regardless of if there's any over-arcing plot or development.

That's not me though. I know this is fanfiction and I should be happy with just getting something on paper. Others would love to read what I get on paper. Still, this is supposed to be "practice" for me. This is my way of flexing my muscles and showcasing what I can do. Therefore, I try to write as professionally as I can. If I don't think a publisher would pick it up, then I'm hesitant to post it.

But then the devil on my shoulder whispers "It IS fanfiction.... just post the fluffiness; who cares if it's 'professional' quality? Fanfiction isn't supposed to be professional." And I'm tempted to listen.

Honestly, I probably would have listened already if OatS wasn't a follow-up story. If it was its own little thing, I'd say "Meh... it's fanfiction, let's have some fun!" Having it be in the same universe as “Peeping Tomcat” though? Having it be a direct sequel to it? I feel like there needs to be some sort of consistency between the two books. I already switched things up by adding Marinette's first-person view. I can't have another dramatic style change by dropping the aim for professional quality to "just having fun."

Do I sound snooty? I feel like I sound so elitist right there.

I hope I'm not making anyone feel bad. If you are a fanfic writer and you do write fluffy "for fun" stuff, that is totally fine! I'll probably be one of your first readers. I eat that stuff up. Me not wanting to write OatS that way - even though the story itself seems to have a different opinion - doesn't mean YOU writing that way is bad. Fanfiction IS for fun. Writing self-indulgent fluff for everyone's enjoyment is one of the main draws of fanfiction. I just tend to take this a bit more seriously than I probably should....

Anyway, to try to help me around my latest writing roadblock, I've been studying other people's MariChat scenes. Reading fanfic - mostly one-shots - and fancomics, and flipping through fanart and theories. Doing so sort of helped me out with what I'm currently calling "chapter 9." Some more "research" has also started the ball rolling with how I can handle a couple other scenes. I'm still rattling the possibilities around in my head, but I do have a starting point at least.

Speaking of researching via reading other people's work, I re-discovered a lovely one-shot. I had completely forgotten how much I enjoyed the story. It feels a touch out of character for me, but Adrien's inner workings are beautifully confused and I LOVE it. Apparently I am complete trash for Adrien Angst, especially if it's over his slow processing of his feelings for Marinette.

Anyway, the story is "Supercut" although I'm not entirely sure how the title relates?????
**UPDATE: LNC messaged me. Supercut refers to the Lorde song that set the tone for the story... neat**

It is a post-reveal, but pre-relationship transitional story as the two superheroes re-evaluate their civilian relationship. It's told through Adrien's POV, and it's glorious as he tries to figure out how he now feels about Marinette. Let alone trying to decipher how Marinette feels towards him. Because why would Marinette confess she's in love with Adrien now that she knows that he's been in love with Ladybug: aka her?

You can find Supercut by LNC over on AO3. If you prefer to use FFN, you can find the story under LNC2 here.

While you're off reading that adorable one-shot, I'll be over here trying to get some more work done on OatS, and possibly get a monthly one-shot done as well. We'll see.

Before I leave you, though, here's a quick shout out about my husband's birthday being this past Sunday.

Love you, Babe!

Fun factoid: both Aaron Rogers and Linda Sejic share my husband's EXACT birthday; as in all 3 were born on the same exact day in the same exact year. Neato.

No Time For Writing

This has been my worst week yet. I'm not just talking about NaNo either. I'm pretty sure this is my worst writing week all year.

I didn't write for FIVE DAYS.

Yes, I did that just two weeks ago, but this week I only managed 1299 words, which is the fewest this month at the very least. I'm pretty sure it's the least I've written weekly all year.

But you know what? I'm actually surprisingly okay with this....

First of all, Thursday was Thanksgiving, Friday was Black Friday - which I had to work - leading into a long drive to my mom's, Saturday was my extended family's Thanksgiving celebration, Sunday was last-minute socializing with the family before another long drive home, and then yesterday I was just lazy....

So, really, my only lazy day was yesterday, although I guess there were some hours I probably could have snuck SOME writing in the rest of the week.... Meh. And I was only really lazy for the last 3hrs of the day last night, since I had work and then Zumba. And I was actually pretty busy at work, so I couldn't write anything during downtime there.

I dunno. I think I came to terms with taking a step back this month after all. Give the story some more time to brew. It sucks that I haven't been as motivated as I was to write “Peeping Tomcat” last year. "One and the Same" just isn't calling to me with the same energy.

This story is all "potential scenes" but no real drama that I've found. Nothing as gripping as PT. This has made me kind of lackadaisical while the story figures itself off in the back of my brain. More and more pieces seemed to fall into place while I was doing my long drives, but they're not fully-formed yet. Perhaps when I do my last word-sprints session at writing group tonight I'll manage to get them on paper.

Right now, I think I'm just happy with the knowledge that I FINALLY hit 10,000 words on Wednesday. Less than 2500 words away from a quarter-NaNo at least. It's kind of a pathetic showing, but it IS still better than some of my other past attempts. Plus, I am still determined to finish writing this story, whereas other NaNo projects lived and died within those 30 days. There's something soothing in that resolution.

My other resolutions - the ones I was able to keep up with up until last month - are falling to the wayside, but I'll hold onto this one. I'll just have to try yet again next year to post something new EVERY month, and write at least 4 days out of EVERY week.

I'm training for both of those writing goals by first trying to get my butt out of bed in the morning!

Sad to say, but since I don't have to be at work until 9:30, and Hubby tends to not need to be at work until 8am or so, I usually set the alarm for 7am, but not get out of bed until closer to 7:45. That's a lot of morning to sleep through - and cuddle through - which always leaves me with virtually no time outside of work to accomplish anything.

Let's take a trip down my normal daily break-down, based on the time-audits I've been doing since July.

I take Hubby into work at 8am, roughly, every morning. I then spend the next 90min or so getting myself ready for work. Sad thing is, I generally need about 95min to get ready, so I'm either bringing breakfast with me, grabbing something simple like ramen for lunch, and/or show up to work about 3min late. No time there to do much of anything.

After work I have Zumba two days a week, which has been bumped back to start at 6:30. Which means, between getting changed into workout gear and walking to the dance studio, I have about ten or fifteen minutes of awkward time. I have a hard time writing anything out on my phone - I'm not the greatest texter - and my netbook still takes a stupid-long amount of time to start up, let alone pack up. It doesn't seem worth it to try to start up a document to get some quick writing in during that short lull between activities.

Zumba ends at 7:30ish, usually a little later, and so by the time I get home it's nearing 7:45. My hair is insanely thick, and I keep it medium-long, so washing my hair alone takes me about 10min; not to mention scrubbing the rest of my body. So I'm usually hopping out of the shower a little past 8:10ish. It then takes me roughly 20min to at least DRY my hair, let alone style it... This tends to take me straight into the Monday night football games and dinner. If Hubby and I decide we're not really feeling football on Monday - or if it's Zumba on Wednesdays - the two of us tend to use this time to bond by watching one of our other shows while also catching up on the day.

It's now about 10pm, and I can either be a responsible adult and go to bed, or - the more likely answer - this is now when I scroll through Facebook, my email, DeviantArt, and Tumblr in order to catch up on all of my notifications. Congratulations, it's now somewhere between 11pm and 1am, and my eyes are so strained that I can barely keep them open. Time for bed.

Tuesdays consist of me starting my day writing this blog, and that's been averaging around 4hrs worth of work between writing, editing, and tracking down any graphics I want to include. Add in another half-hour or so for promoting on all of my social media sites. With my usual "up around 8am" schedule, this usually leaves me with nearly no time to get dressed for the day, and I usually shove a bagel or something quick down my throat while I'm editing. Then I go to pick Hubby up from work, and we do our weekly grocery shopping.

It's a WEEKLY trip. It's just the two of us. We really shouldn't need all that much, and yet we always seem to take at LEAST an hour to do our shopping. I'm not sure how.... Add in another half-hour or so to put the groceries away once home.

Next up is laundry. Between prepping the laundry, driving to the laundromat, starting the load, separating the hang-dry clothes from the rest of the wash, starting the dryer, packing up the now-clean clothes, driving home, and hanging up the remaining wet laundry.... that's another 2hrs or so gone, and I haven't even folded the rest of the laundry yet.

With lunch thrown in somewhere in there, it's probably about 4pm now. If I'm lucky, I can get an hour or so writing in before writing group starts at 6pm. Otherwise, we are now off to do other errands: cleaning the house, running to Walmart or something to pick up things we've been needing for at least a week, getting hair cut or working around doctor appointments, etc.

After writing group ends at 8pm, Hubby and I have TV shows we watch until 11pm. Then, once again, I can decide between being a responsible adult, or staying up later to go through all of my "online maintenance": Facebook and DeviantArt notifications, emails, and scrolling through any new content on my Tumblr dashboard.

Tuesdays are easier on the writing group "off" weeks because that's an extra 2hrs of free time, but since Hubby and I don't really have evenings available, Tuesday tends to be "socializing" night most weeks.... so there goes those available hours again. My only other hope is to write during laundry while I'm waiting for the washer and dryer to finish. If we're tight for time though, Hubby and I will do our grocery shopping and have a lunch break while the laundry is doing its thing.

Thursday is another football night, but it's also one of my only catch-up day options since I have roughly an "extra" 2hrs after work since I'm not exercising. The productivity of the evening is largely dependent on if I'm interested in the football game.

Fridays are weird. Used to be that most Fridays Hubby was out of the house playing Magic: The Gathering at the local gaming store at the end of the street. On those nights I would generally do one of two things: play catch-up, or socialize. At one point, Fridays were the weekly get-together for me and Rozsavaria, but that didn't last long before one of us would be busy or "not feeling it" that week. Fridays then transitioned into Shadow's weekly visit, but that's been kind of sporadic as well lately. When Hubby wasn't interested in playing Magic, Fridays also turned into Gaslands Night - Gaslands being a tabletop game similar to Warhammer, but using Matchbox/Hot Wheels cars.

If Hubby was at Friday Night Magic, and no one was around to socialize - or I wasn't feeling up to peopling - I'd "catch up." Which could be a variety of things: cleaning, shows only I want to watch, reading fanfiction, emptying out my Tumblr drafts, and, of course, writing.

Lately, Friday has been used to drive down to my mom's house, and going to the movies for "date night"....

Saturday is probably one of my better bets when it comes to writing time. There's no football or primetime shows I like to watch. At most, while I'm having dinner after work, Hubby and I will catch up on two of our Disney shows: Andi Mack, and DuckTales. That's an hour; about hour-an-a-half if Hubby and I chat about our day right out of work.

Sunday tends to be Cleaning Day. I get out of work at 4pm, and watch football all day while folding laundry, dusting, vacuuming, picking up the living room, etc. Generally there's little to no writing done on Sundays.

So, yeah.... most of my writing has to be done at work, which has fewer and fewer downtime hours lately, or I have to learn how to give myself more free time outside of work.

Preferably free time where Hubby isn't active in the house. We tend to socialize then, which is fantastic for a marriage, but trash for writing. Getting up an hour or so before him seems to be my safest bet. It's just so hard to get out of bed when he's snuggling next to me; keeping me warm and cozy. Especially with winter kicking in so early this year!

Speaking of, one of the comic book creators I follow has a potential explanation as to why winters seem longer and longer lately.

Long and short? To help her become motivated in her main comic book series "Blood Stain," Linda Sejic has started this goofy side-project called "Punderworld." It's a re-imagining of Greek myths; mostly focusing on the ROMANTIC relationship between Hades and Persephone. In other words, in this version he didn't kidnap her and force her to become his wife, she legitimately loves him.

Anyway, my point being, Hubby's warm and snuggly and smells good, and the bed is so soft. I don't want to have to climb out from under the covers; especially in the winter.

But climb out I must. Most adults - excluding those who work second-shift and/or overnights - tend to be up by about 6am so they have time to do things before work. Mostly these morning hours are used for cleaning, ironing the day's clothes, prepping lunches, and/or exercising. Me? I can sit quietly in the dim sunlight of the living room and write for an hour or so before Hubby needs to go to work and/or I need to get ready for work myself.

I can do this. Once upon a time I was a morning person. I was actually that annoyingly awake and energized morning person.... getting old sucks.

I had to be up, and take Hubby into work by 7am today, which did give me a head start on my crazy-busy Tuesdays, as well as a taste of this new regimen. It will take me probably until the end of the year for it to become habit, but that gives me time to adjust.

If 2018 can be an amazing writing year for at least half of it, and a decent writing year for another quarter, then perhaps I can keep "training" myself in this less-than-stellar final quarter. That way 2019 can be amazing year-long!

And part of that "training" is to attempt to get some more words written this morning since my blog is done super early today.

Hacker Boy Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc

All the Writing; None for OatS

Guys! I nearly doubled my word count this week!

I mean, granted, that's only a little over 4,000 words, and I STILL haven't hit the 10,000 word mark. Nevertheless, my pathetic show this week is still progress in the right direction. It's still me improving. So... I'll take it.

Vash the Stampede
from Trigun

I'm finally having some fun figuring out how to implode Marinette's brain. I have most of chapter three done for "One and the Same" as well. Granted, I still have to go back and write the second half of chapter one, and the first half of chapter two... but that's all an akuma attack.

And I don't wanna!!!!

I'm still missing the majority of the story, but hopping to the "fun bits" and then threading them together later seems to be the trail I'm following this go. What kills me the most about all of this was that I spent MONTHS trying to build an outline so I could just blast through this year's NaNo. What happened!?

Thankfully, I do have the weekly writing sprints to help me out. Having those two hours dedicated to just writing without any sort of other distraction is what I need. I really should have done these at home throughout the rest of the week too. Even if it's just one or two more days a week. However, with Zumba and football and date night... I don't really have other evenings to dedicate to writing.

Which, among the other reasons I noted thus far this month, is yet another reason why this year's NaNo is rough for me. I just can't re-organize my new life schedule to include writing. And that kills me.

I have always been amazed by authors who balance writing with parenting. However, with just the slightest add-on to my moderately few out-of-work hours, and how much that's kicking my butt, I have a new level of appreciation for the time management parents have to possess.

Part of the problem - as it almost always is - happens to be that Hubby and I really enjoy the same shows, and it kills him that he has to wait for me for most of the programming he wants to watch. For instance, the third season of "The Seven Deadly Sins" was released on Netflix a few weeks back. We got into the anime when it came out in 2014. When "season 2" came out later that year - although it felt like a year later - we were super excited, only to be bummed that it was just a 4-episode transition between season 1 and the actual season 2. We apparently had to then wait four years for the ACTUAL next season to come out. Although, I have to say I thought we watched this show in 2016, not 2014... but I know we watched it the year it came out.... I'm becoming so old that years blend together now...

My point being that it was either a two year, or a friggen FOUR YEAR, wait for us to get the next season of "The Seven Deadly Sins." We already delayed watching it because season 3 of "Daredevil" came out on the same day, and Hubby watched the dark re-imagining of Sabrina in "The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina" so I could at least pretend to write while he's watching that.

In truth, I kind of want to watch that series too, but I was on the fence enough to let Hubby watch it on his own while I was off doing other things.

But Hubby was getting antsy. He knew I'd be bummed if he watched SDS without me, but he didn't really want to wait much longer. Especially when he knew my sister watched it already and would probably want to talk about it during our Thanksgiving visit. So we watched the season. It kept a few days to do so, which is quite a few days to not be writing.

Panda also asked us to watch "Bohemian Rhapsody" with her on Friday. We were planning a date night to watch it anyway, so we happily accepted the offer. Another night knocked out.

Seriously, this week was probably one of the busiest after-work schedules I've had in a little while. Yet it was one of the slowest work weeks, so thankfully that's where I was able to make up ground. It does also explain why I wasn't able to break 2000 words any of the days I did write. Not having much writing time does that....

As I promised last week, I did manage to write at least enough to not be as embarrassed to share my NaNo calendar again. I just wish I could blot out Week 2...

Calendar designed by David Seah
Get yours at DavidSeah.com/Productivity-Tools

I had a couple of days where I didn't even hit the 250 word minimum to fill in at least one block. It was kind of pathetic to fill that day in on the calendar, but it was still SOMETHING. So I was happy to not put another zero on that calendar. Although, I did forget to put a zero in yesterday's slot... whoops...

Can I take some comfort knowing that I did a lot of writing outside of my NaNo work? Or should I be more irritated because it meant I COULD HAVE written my story?

To be fair, the writing I did outside of OatS this week was easy enough to do while watching the TV show or football games, because none of it was fiction narrative. I was mostly just chatting into the void that is Tumblr via posts. They didn't take a lot of extra thought or brainpower, so having a divided attention was fine. Writing narratives though? You need full concentration really.

Still... it WAS quite a bit of writing.

Most of said writing was because of a Tumblr game I was tagged in by Hari-Writes. It's a simple game. You just list the titles of all of your Works-In-Progress - WIPs - without any sort of context. You then tag other writers you know on Tumblr so they can play the game as well. And then you wait. While part of the fun is to see which of your friends will join in and share their list of WIPs, the main fun of the game is that you also request your followers to ask you about the title(s) that intrigue them.

I got an ask from both Cyhyr and ChibiSunnie; always my faithful cheerleaders. I'll get to those asks in a moment, but first, if you also want to know about my current WIPs, you can check out my updated Tumblr post here: WIP tag game. I had to update since I forgot some WIPs my original go...

I knew I had quite the stack, but since I only ever really focus on one at a time - and the rest are plot bunnies I haven't gotten to yet, or side projects I drift from - I forgot how many I truly had. I'm sure I've forgotten some more, but my list of WIPs for the Tumblr post was 22 long! Granted, about five of those are probably now dead projects, but you never know...

Alright, so back to Cy. She must have only just started reading my blog recently, because her ask was "What's 'Glitches'? How did I miss this?"

How indeed? As of this writing, I have 17 posts with the Glitches tag, prior to coming up with the name "Glitches" I had posts talking about this project tagged with X-Future Reboot, and there's 21 of those, although 2 of them overlap when I first started referring to the reboot as "Glitches."

I really don't know how she did miss that.... Unless it was all a rouse, and she wanted me to promote my most well-developed original story???

Either way.... I went down the rabbit hole, and brought my followers with.

I answered that ask by stating the broad strokes of the project: it's a re-working of the X-Men universe into an original setting so I could utilize the OCs from X-Future. I then went into the world history I had figured out thus far. If you want to read my full 2156-word response to Cyhyr, you can check it out here: ASK: What is Glitches?

The real trouble of Cy asking about my original story is that I wasn't satisfied just talking about the history of the world I was developing. I didn't even touch upon the characters I'd be playing with. So I briefly did so in the next two posts. And by briefly, I mean "I talked about their powers."

You may remember that in the past I've talked here about the categorizing I did of the Glitches' powers. I figured it would be natural for the governments within that world to want to pigeonhole the Glitches, and it had the added bonus of me - as the author - also having a way to categorize them, and try to keep a bit of a world consistency. I called the location of this international listing of powers the GRID - Glitches Identification and Registration Database.

Well, after introducing the GRID briefly in my response to Cy's ask, I felt I'd demonstrate it a bit. I did two different posts on the subject: one for the adult Glitches that I had adapted from X-Men canon characters, and then one for my teenage Glitches; the OCs from X-Future.

If you want a refresher on everyone's powers and how they'd be placed on The GRID, you can check out the posts here:
The GRID (part 1) - Adult Characters
The GRID (part 2) - Teen Characters

I pretty much spent FIVE HOURS on Thursday finding my research and writing all of that up! Almost my entire day off - with Hubby out of the house working an 8hr shift, so I had no distractions from cleaning or writing - was spent answering an Ask that Cy couldn't possibly know would send me over the edge.



Whoops....

Poor Chibi was nervous that she'd do the same - send me on a tangent that kept me from working on OatS - but she wanted to also ask me about one of the titles she saw on my list. To be fair, this one I haven't really talked about anywhere. It was sort of just brewing under the surface for about a month now.

The story is going to be titled "When Love Matters," and it's going to be a bit more of an experimental fanfiction project. Since I haven't started this project yet, and there really isn't much involved in it, I haven't bothered to talk about it on here... yet. I'm sure that will change once I have the first chapter of it written.

In the meantime, you can find out about "When Love Matters" the same way Chibi did: via my answer to her ask.
ASK: What is When Love Matters?

The answer to Chibi was significantly shorter, but it's still words I spent talking about a project instead of actually working on one.

I've also done a lot of observation and promotion this week. Again, because doing so is a lot easier to do with a split focus than writing narratives.

Watching "The Seven Deadly Sins" again for the first time since I introduced myself to "Miraculous Ladybug," I had a few amusing observations about the fact that there are a lot of shared voice actors. In fact, three of the main cast from ML are main cast members of SDS as well: Bryce Papenbrook, Cristina Vee, and Max Mittelman. In the season Netflix just added - Revival of The Commandments - two more main cast members joined the SDS team: Keith Silverstein and Mela Lee.

• Papenbrook plays Adrien/Cat Noir in ML, and the main character Meliodas in SDS.
• Mittelman plays Plagg in ML, and King in SDS - one of Meliodas' squad known as the Seven Deadly Sins; hence the show name.
• Vee plays Marinette/Ladybug in ML, and Hawk the pig in SDS; one of Meliodas' companions who is always by his side. Doesn't hurt that Hawk's mom is a giant pig who wears Meliodas' inn - The Boar's Hat - on her head/back.
• Silverstein plays Gabriel/Hawk Moth in ML, and is Monspeet, one of the villainous Ten Commandments in the latest season of SDS
• Lee plays Tikki in ML, and in the latest season of SDS she is another Ten Commandment: Melascula

So, that makes the core cast of ML - Marinette, Tikki, Adrien, Plagg, and Hawk Moth - also key characters in Seven Deadly Sins. I had fun posting musings about these facts on Tumblr. One such musing was how similar Cat Noir and Meliodas are to each other both in character design and rough character build/personality.

I mean....

Meliodas from The Seven Deadly Sins (top)
Cat Noir from Miraculous Ladybug (bottom)

With a similar character design and attitude, coupled with the same voice actor, I was afraid that I was going to watch Meliodas thinking "this is just older Adrien LARPing." Essentially "ruining" the show for me.

Instead, while Cristina Vee used a COMPLETELY different voice for Hawk, I had to chuckle whenever the pig tried to prove himself the bravest and strongest out of all the knights. Because all I thought of was Hawk strutting around as Ladybug.

Don't focus too much on this.
I spent like 10min on it...

The mental image must have amused a few people because it has 61 notes on Tumblr....

Another amusing observation that seems to have gotten a little bit of love on Tumblr was for the DuckTales reboot. The latest episode has Louie try to get his company off the ground. The problem being that he has no clue what his company should actually DO to make money, and he has no employees to run it. So he recruits Huey and Webby, and they brainstorm what they could do as a service. Webby starts blurting out random items they could sell. Meanwhile, Huey, already 100% done with Louie's nonsense, suggests Louie just sells lemonade like a normal kid.

Huey: “Why don’t you just sell lemonade?”
Louie: “Eh, lemonade is small potatoes.”
Webby: “Oh! POTATO-ADE!”

Me to Hubby: “Isn’t potato-ade just… vodka?”

I have 22 notes on that post from Saturday... so I guess I have my shining moments of humor every once in a while...

The post that probably has the highest and fastest reblog count however must be from Friday. As I've mentioned periodically throughout this blog, over the course of this year I've followed multiple different on-going fanfics. Well, this month two of them posted their final chapter:

• "Mr. Lucky and the Cat" by HariWrites
• "Under Lock and Key" by Maerynn and EdenDaphne

I had been following "Mr. Lucky and the Cat" since the day it first went up, back in March. As for "Under Lock and Key," I discovered that via EdenDaphne promoting her artwork for the story. ULAK itself started May of 2017, and I jumped on board mid-December. Either way, I had been reading both of these stories on and off for a large portion of 2018. So much so that I figured they should just go on my reading challenge list.

Yes, both are both less than 50,000 words each, but I think they can also represent the words I've read, but not putting on this list. All the still-in-progress fanfics, as well as all the one-shots, should more than make up the "small" word count each of these completed works have.

Thus completes my challenge; a month early I might add

Now, Hubby let me know my Christmas gift from him is a book, so I might slide one more story in before 2018 ends... or I'll hold it until January to kick off my 2019 reading.

My point is that I loved "Mr. Lucky and the Cat" as well as "Under Lock and Key," so after I was done finishing both stories - on the same day no less - I needed to promote these now completed works. I felt like I owed it to the authors to gush about these stories. I also felt like it helped me a little to express the bittersweet feeling I had having read the last chapters of two stories I enjoyed.

Naturally, I tagged both HariWrites and EdenDaphne as I promoted their stories. Well, Eden apparently couldn't resist gushing back. She reblogged my shout out for her story, with an added "Thank you so much 😭😭😭😭😭❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️"

One can only guess how large her fanbase is, but, thanks to Eden's reblog, my shout out post - as of this writing - has 323 notes. Luckily, I saw that one reblog did note "As for the other story mentioned, that’s one I haven’t read yet but now I have a new story to look forward to reading! Thank you for the recommendation." So, yay! Getting readers for HariWrites! I was kind of hoping something like that would happen: Eden's fans would discover Hari, and if there were any of Hari's fans who didn't know who Eden was; now they do.

I've even picked up 3 new followers this week, bringing me up to 61 people. Not massive, but not too shabby either. I think I'm slowly weaseling my way into the fandom's notice. Which might mean more readers once "One and the Same" is posted.

But first, I should probably WRITE THE DARN STORY, and worry about readership later....

Which brings me full circle to NaNo again.

Naturally I'm a bit bummed with my performance this year for NaNo, and I frequently state so both here on my blog and on my Facebook page. Seeing how down I am about my slacking, both Chibi and Cy have pointed out the amount of non-fictional writing I've been doing this month. You can see above how much I've done in just this week alone. Noting specifically my blog posts and the three-part info-dump for "Glitches" on Tumblr, both women said I should count those words as well. Chibi went so far as to include my analyzing Tumblr posts, and an anecdote I sent her the other night.

I explained to both of them that I want to stick with the original spirit of NaNo, and only count the words I add to my fictional writing. Mainly because that's the hard part. Just chatting with you guys here in my blog? Info-dumping about a world I've been building for years? That's easy. I could do that in my sleep. That's just me being my long-winded self; a bit of an inheritance from my maternal grandfather.

Still, the more the two of them pointed out "every word counts" the more I wondered. Especially when Chibi told me the anecdote I sent her was 1494 words long. Knowing I'm not going to change my official NaNo word count to include anything not written for "One and the Same," I was still curious about how much I really HAVE written...

• Posts about "The Seven Deadly Sins": 695 words
• Observation about "DuckTales": 34 words
• Post about my WIP "When Love Matters": 563 words
• Posts about my WIP "Glitches": 5067 words!!!
• Post promoting fanfics I'm reading: 344 words
• Post promoting my progress on "One and the Same": 373 words
• Facebook posts talking about what I'm thankful for
  (I'm way behind; stopping on day 7): 717 words, but this will be lengthened soon
• And like I said, the anecdote Chibi counted for me: 1494 words!!!

That's already 9,287 words I wrote in November, but not for OatS. Now for my blog...

Another 5573 words!

So, not including the lengthy conversations I've had with Chibi, Jowy's Pixie, and TLOS21, and also not including this week's blog, I have 14,860 words that the ladies think I should add to my overall total. Like I said above, I'm not going to, but it's fun to know that they'd have my NaNo total be 23,640 words. A touch more than the 8700 I'm actually counting...

Now I'm curious how much I'd add if I included what I wrote for OatS prior to November, but I've lost track of what I have and have not written this month. I do know that, just counting the scenes I haven't touched yet this month, I'd be adding another 11,103 words!!!

Adrien finds out about The Bracelet: 2404 words
Adrien's recap of PT: 2380 words
Chat Noir confesses to knowing who Ladybug is: 1370 words
Getting Marinette's number: 525 words with a drastic need to be edited
Marinette at the Trocadero: 4424 words

If I posted to NaNo all the words I have for OatS thus far, whether or not I wrote them in November, I'd be up to 19,883 words! There's a lot of completed fanfics that aren't that wordy, and I'm not even half-way done with my first draft! OatS will probably be another 80,000 word beast.

So, I HAVE been writing. Just not the "right" things at the "right" time. I guess I can feel a bit better knowing that. I mean, I've already come to terms with the fact that I'm not "winning" this year's NaNo. Although, I am a bit more determined to get my butt in gear now that I have some swag....

As a thank you for donating to NaNoWriMo, the Office of Letters and Light - the name of the non-profit that runs the NaNo organization - sends out some gifts. You can opt out of receiving the gifts so more money is spent on the program. I was tempted to go this route, but I really liked what they were offering.

The bracelet says: "The sword with
which I slay the beast called doubt."

Cute little pin

This book shaped sticker says:
"Optimist. Explorer. NaNoWriMo Writer"

One side of the bookmark from OL&L says
"Thank You" across a background of books on a shelf

The flipside of the bookmark with
an encouraging "Thank You" message.

And yes, I am wearing the bracelet right now. How did you know?

With all of this encouragement around me, how could I fail? I may not be able to finish writing "One and the Same" before November 30th. I may not hit 50,000 words, or even 25,000 words. Although, quick shout out to Cyhyr who surpassed 20,000 words last night...

No. I will most definitely "fail" NaNo this year, but I won't let it defeat me like it did in the past. My newest goal is to just have the first draft of OatS done before the close of 2018. That way I can still start the editing in January, and have it polished enough to start posting in March.

That, and to enjoy my time with my loved ones.

So, to all of my American readers...