Positive Turning Point (hopefully)

Hello, all, and happy Groundhog's Day!

Will Mr. Resetti see his shadow this morning?

Between all of the snow and the fact that the
light is in front of him, it's pretty unlikely!

With the big Nor'easter that just blew through the United States yesterday/last night, good luck even finding poor Punxsutawney Phil!

Oh! Oh wait... nope. Nope, Phil DID see his shadow. I DON'T WANT SIX MORE WEEKS OF WINTER!!!! 

Welp. Guess it means I'm still stuck inside, which is probably for the best because I've been SUUUUUUUUPER slacking on both writing AND reading!

I mean, actually, I haven't been slacking too much on the WRITING bit, but I haven't stuck to my schedule as tightly as I would have liked, and yet ANOTHER self-mandated deadline came and went.

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I had hunkered down and REALLY got to work on those last five chapters of Perfect Doesn't Need to be Perfect. Yeah, I got distracted playing more Going Under or Animal Crossing or Ori and the Blind Forest, or staying up-to-date with my Tumblr dash for the first time since last March, but I did put in some effort to get the story done before midnight on January 31st.

I got up to chapter 11 of 12, if that helps.

Worst part is, I had chapter 8 done, like, a week ago. However, the publishing format for each of the sites I use are almost completely different, so to tweak the word document for each one to make sure things like italics (of which I have a lot in this story in particular) are properly included takes a LOT of time. Posting each chapter and giving it one last quick review to make sure it's how I want it takes anywhere from 40 to 70 minutes total. I had figured I could use that time to try to crank out the next chapter, and when I was done with chapter 9 I thought I should keep going. I figured, at this rate, I could just do a mass-dump of the final five chapters before midnight on the 31st and call it good.

"Hey, folks, sorry I keep pushing back when I'd be posting/finishing this story. So here's the second half as one huge upload to make up for it. Have fun!"

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It also occurred to me that I wanted to include something in the chapter 6 author's notes that I forgot about at the time, so I'm debating going back and adding it in now so any future readers get the notation....

Anyway!

As of last night, I have chapters 8 through 11 written, edited, and ready to be published. At this point, though, I might as well wait for that final chapter to be done. It feels a bit pathetic to STILL be working on a Christmas story now that it's February (especially since the last time I was still working on a Christmas story post-December I was able to get it finished within January). However, as ChibiSunnie keeps reminding me: "Candlemas is February 2nd, so you're still technically in the Medieval Christmas time and still not late." So, I still have until midnight tonight! (Also, I had been getting notifications all of last year that people were reading Woven Heartstrings, so I guess not too many people restrict their reading of seasonal stories to that season...)

Koko Facebook sticker
by Hanasake Pictures Inc

Guess what I'll be doing after this blog post is published!

Especially since we're kinda-sorta snowed in. The roads are clear enough that we can leave if we needed to, but I think we're gonna stay safe and just postpone grocery shopping and laundry for another night....

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Looks like a pajama day to me....

Sooooo, yeah, I know how I'm spending MY day.

One more chapter! I got this! I can do this!

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Weeeeell... maybe TWO more chapters. Technically, Taurus Pixie's story has 12 chapters - one for each Day of Christmas - buuuut, I do have an Adrienette subplot I stumbled into, so I miiiiiight do an epilogue???? I mean, I have the subplot wrapped up the way I have it, but I also kinda-sorta want to put a bow on it still. Ya know? We'll see how I get along today.

Because, frankly, part of my "problem" with this story is that, while Pixie only gave herself less than 24 hours to write, edit, and publish each chapter - posting a new one every day - I'm giving myself ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD to get these chapters where I want them. Which, of course, means I get to spend some time with the environment Pixie set up, and dive a bit further into Ladybug's thoughts on everything. It also means that silly Adrienette subplot was able to creep into my story.

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Cropped by me

So, while Pixie's chapters would average about 2000 words... mine are all closer to 4500 words long.

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I mean, come on. Were you folks expecting anything else with me, though? Now, let's see, averaging about 4500 words per chapter.... at least 5 chapters must be up before midnight tonight... so... uh... yeah, expect a good old 22,000+ word-dump - er, I mean UPLOAD - when you wake up tomorrow (if not before going to bed tonight; I hope it's this one, honestly).

Huh. I mean, it's not the excellent start to 2021 I had hoped for: getting this story done within the actual 12 days of Christmas, as intended. Or even getting the story done before the end of January, as I had aimed. But still, when the story is already over 14,000 words long and I'm going to add probably another 22,000 words on top of that? Especially when the source material was 23,500 words long to begin with?

Not too shabby for someone who spent most of last year going "what are even words?" Right?

Heck, if I'm feeling super ambitious, maybe I'll even try to think of cover art (this story and my Love Square Fluff Week story are the only multi-chapter ML fics I have that don't have cover art). BUT FIRST, I want to FINISH WRITING THE DANG STORY. We'll build from there.

Also also, while Love Square Fluff Week was over darn-near a YEAR ago now, I still have two more chapters/prompts to write to finish that story off. So, guess what my next big task will be. Maybe I can get that done by Valentine's day????

PLUS, I was supposed to help my mom out with something important last year, but then... well... 2020 happened. I've already delayed her enough as it is, so I really need to focus and get started on that project.

It's a new month. Our work schedule is FINALLY  back to a regular rhythm for the first time since March! *knocks on wood* Pending anyone taking vacation time, I'm back to two days off a week, with my longest working streak being my normal once-a-month Wednesday through Monday stretch. And that's because I'll have a Sunday off, then my normal Tuesday as my second day. Which means I'd have to then wait for my normal Tuesday again the following week for my next day off, and my second day off that week will usually be Friday. 

Added bonus, though, due to how the manager is now scheduling my coworker's work weeks (upon request), I tend to get Saturdays off the weeks that it's my coworker's turn to get Sunday off. We've also somehow fallen into a rotation where I get my Sundays off the week after my coworker has her turn, so now I randomly get weekends off once a month???? Neat.

I'm hoping all of this is a positive turning point, and I can truly start making my climb back to normalcy in my life. Get back to having enough mental stamina to Adult properly. Get back into writing regularly. Get back to reading regularly. Get on top of this project for my mom. Really get back into a proper schedule to keep myself even keel. 

We've got this, peeps! We can make it over this mountain. And we'll be stronger for it.

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I guess I'll catch you folks on the other side. In the meantime, stay safe and stay well. Sending you guys supportive hugs.

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Oh, speaking of! Sending some extra love out to Wolfhearted to wish him a happy belated birthday.

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And, with regards to my "need to get back to reading," Cyhyr posted the latest chapter of her story Displaced by Time the other day. If you're into FFXV, or want an emotional, action-packed, time-shenanigans story (trust me, you don't actually need to know anything about FFXV to enjoy this story), then go check it out.

Finally, happy Black History Month. May we put in the effort to learn about Black excellence all year round, not just in February!

Love you guys! Catch you next week!

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New Month; New Drive

It's June! So, for all of my LGBTQ+ readers, Happy Pride Month!

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I'm hoping that June will bring more sunshine; banishing my "meh" feelings I've had most of this year thus far. We've had fairly nice weather these first four days of June, so that's a start. I even sat on my front porch writing a couple of times already.

Now, if only the temperature could remember it's June... I started off working on this blog post on the front porch this morning. It was bright out, barely any clouds, and there was a nice, light breeze. The problem was that it was still only about 50-degrees Fahrenheit, I was in the shade of my covered porch, and the light breeze was not a warm one. I lasted about 30min before I lost feeling in my fingers and toes, and I had to come inside. But the blinds are still up so I can enjoy the sunshine...

Eh, it's a start...

Hacker Girl Facebook sticker
by Birdman, Inc.

The sunshine alone does seem to be working it's magic, at least a little. As I mentioned above, I've been on the porch WRITING a few times already this week. Sadly, it only resulted in one bit of fiction writing, but still, I'm pouring words onto paper... er... screen... close enough.

I was too focused on figuring out my car situation last Tuesday to work on anything other than my blog, but I NEEDED to have some fiction written before the end of the month. I couldn't let myself slack off again. I needed to shake myself out of my rut, for fear that I'd never leave it otherwise.

Taurus Pixie had suggested to me last week that I should try writing some Laidren fanfiction, since there isn't really all that much of it out there, and I have yet to really touch that corner of the Love Square. ChibiSunnie also suggested that I could write more Lukanette fanfiction, since that seems to be my jam right now, and it was noted that there isn't very much "good" Lukanette fiction.

While I was too busy on Tuesday to actually start working on my fiction for May, I did take those suggestions into consideration, and tried to mentally come up with a story. Of course, an idea came to me as I was falling asleep.

I had finished off Pixie's birthday gift "I Was Thinking Of You" with the happy couple being discovered by Marinette's friends. I didn't really show any repercussions of the two of them getting together. Specifically, I didn't show what Adrien's reaction would be.

You know how much I love torturing this poor little bean, so of COURSE I had to continue IWTOY to showcase his reaction to discovering Lukanette was a thing. While I may, at some point in the (distant?) future, officially continue IWTOY by adding more chapters to the story, for right now I'm just making a series of short stories within this over-arcing plot.

So, my completed work of fiction for May is a short sequel to IWTOY, exploring Adrien's feelings after discovering Marinette is dating Luka.

Summary: Everyone has been acting weird all week, and when Adrien finds out why, he starts acting weird too. It can't all be about Marinette's new beau, could it?

You can check out my story at my normal three spots.

"Acting Weird"

On FanFiction            On ArchiveOfOurOwn            On DeviantArt

I even posted the full story on Tumblr, since it's only 2600 words: Acting Weird

Now, just because I had figured out the basic premise of this story Tuesday evening, it doesn't mean I actually had the darn thing finished with time to spare! Hardly, actually.

I started working on it on Wednesday, but I only had some sporadic moments at work to shift focus to my writing. Post-work, I got back into Zumba for the first time since my accident, and let me tell you how sore my legs were for the next three days!

My friend Rozsavaria wanted to try out the Zumba class with me, so I dragged her along. My sister-in-law and I also do an hour-long cool-down walk after our Zumba classes. It helps us with preventing cramping from just collapsing after the workout. It also gives us time to just chat and vent to each other. Not to mention, the extra steps doesn't hurt with over-all calorie burning. Anyway, Roz came with us, and the three of us chatted for a bit. By the time I got home it was time for a much-needed shower, some dinner, and just an overall collapse for the close of the evening.

Thursday I had off, but I focused on home-stuff and more car-stuff. For those of you who are wondering, I think the insurance debacle is sorted out, the other driver was deemed mostly at fault, and I have the funds to go fix my car now... in theory... assuming the insurance company didn't majorly low-ball me. I'm dropping the car off at the collision center tonight at least...

Anyway, Thursday evening Omnibladestrike came over for his weekly hang-out and anime watching. Naturally, I wasn't going to run away to write while Omni was over. While I'm sure I could have found time before Omni's visit to write, I just didn't take the opportunity.

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Which meant Friday was crunch time! I NEEDED to have the story done, edited, and posted before midnight in order to hit my goal.

It was a bit of a squeeze, with me formatting and posting between 11:30pm and 11:50pm, but I managed to get the story up on my main three sites before midnight.

NuaNia Facebook sticker
by PRANEAT

It kept me a touch longer to get things properly formatted on Tumblr, so I wasn't able to publish to that site until 12:15ish, but the story itself was done before June, so it counts.


In the four days that I've had "Acting Weird" up, I've had a nice influx of readers already! Short and sweet, with some Adrien angst, and mention of Lukanette, is my sweet-spot I guess.

Here are my stats as of this writing:

FFN: 692 views, 11 faves, 7 followers, and 6 reviews
AO3: 221 views, 29 kudos, 1 bookmark, but no comments
DA: 20 views, 2 faves, and 1 comment

Total Results: 933 views, 42 faves, 9 followers, and 7 reviews

Tumblr Notes: 8 likes and 2 reblogs

DA review:    <3

FFN reviews:
  1. I super love this.
  2. I like it! But it kind of feels unfinished?
  3. This was awesome! Thank you for sharing it!
  4. Yes he does... blind cinnamon roll! Thanks for writing and stay Amazing!
  5. This is an interesting approach. You should continue it.
  6. Taurus Pixie's review; see below

Yeah, you knew that if Pixie had reviewed this story that it had to be its own blockquote. I love how much she puts into her reviews! Makes my heart swell a touch.

Taurus Pixie:
*slams head against table*

UGH! ADRIEN! WHY MUST YOU BE SO DENSE AND INFURIATING?!

Ahem...sorry about that. That boy is seriously gonna break me one day, I just know it. You managed to capture his infuriating obliviousness and naivety perfectly in this fic. It was also great seeing everyone interacting at school and just have a normal day with no threats or akumas. It makes for a nice, peaceful and casual read. And of course it was amazing seeing the references to Lukanette. Everyone was very in-character which just made it even more awesome.

You never fail to blow me away with your ideas and talent. I'm sorry about your writing slump though. I know how annoying those can be. Great work as always! Thank you so much for sharing this with us!

Haha, I think I may have broken Pixie slightly.... Sorry, girl!

Anyway, it's been so nice to see the comments, and watch my faves/kudos/bookmarks and hit counts climb. Not insane numbers in the thousands like a lot of fanfic writers, but still... over 900 hits in 4 days is nice.

Well, since I was able to hit my self-imposed deadline of at least one completed piece of fiction before the end of the month, I needed to hit my next deadline. Specifically, to continue my Meet My OCs series on Sunday, as I had promised myself.

In case you don't recall, two weeks ago I started up a Tumblr series of posts all dedicated to explaining who my main OCs were, and how I came up with the worlds they inhabit. I had originally intended to just crank them out over the weekend, but then the car accident happened, and I only managed to release the first of the series.

It had introduced what I wanted to do with the series, as well as explain the real-world inspiration for my worlds Gyateara and "Glitches". I then came back last Monday - having sucked at life and neglected to get the post done by Sunday's end - and posted the second part of my multiple-post series. That one broke down the real-world inspiration that produced my four Gyateara characters: Amara Yori, Jolene Crisslebalm, Natalie, and Connor.

Well, I wanted to get back on track, and have Part 3 of my series posted this Sunday. What I didn't take into consideration, however, is that I have a LOT more characters for Glitches, and they are much more developed with a lot more real-world influence.

I had written the post in Word since it was easier to see everything that way, and I had save features. The complete post ended up being 9 pages long! It kept me nearly the full 8hrs that Hubby was at work for me to write! A touch more epic than I had intended, plus, I think Tumblr has a word cap for their posts, and I didn't know if that would surpass it.

What really killed me, though, was that I had forgotten to manually hit save for an hour of writing. My laptop didn't give me the normal "your battery is dying, bro" pop-up warning, and with my sunglasses on outside I apparently didn't notice the screen dimming to save power. I just so happened to glance at the clock and noticed the battery icon nearly empty. I raced inside to plug my laptop in when it had something like 10min of battery life left. In my frantic scrambling to gather everything up and bring it into the apartment I didn't notice that Word ended up crashing on me. Which meant I only had my last save to use.... I had lost an hour of work. Joy.

So good at life, you guys.

Anyway, I was still able to finish writing up my post, and split it in two. Then came the struggle of formatting everything for Tumblr. I guess Tumblr got rid of its line-breaks, which sucks because they looked so much nicer than a series of dashes.

I had tried shifting everything I had written into HTML in order to format with header-sized fonts and line breaks and indents and bullet points within numbered points and... none of it worked properly. I must have spent an hour working on the coding, but when I previewed what I had done it never looked the way I wanted it to.

Knives from the Scott Pilgrim comic books
by Bryan Lee O'Malley

I tweaked a few things here and there while in the normal Rich Text formatting, and left it at that. I think I had it looking well enough. Once that headache was done, I worked on formatting and posting the second part... er... of my third part... of a series.

ANYWAY! I got them done and up before midnight. Cutting it close again, but technically hitting my deadline.

Whoo! Technicalities!

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If you want to see how I spent my Sunday, you can check out the posts on my Tumblr:

Meet My OCs (Part 3a - Glitches Originals)

Meet My OCs (Part 3b - Glitches Reworks)

Yesterday I took a break from writing, and instead tried to focus on reading again. Last week I saw a Tumblr post showcasing a bookstore that had a bookcase display set up to suggest books based on the potential reader's gaming tastes. Things like "If you like to play Call of Duty: Black Ops (Zombies), then try World War Z by Max Brooks" or "If you like playing Sid Meier’s Civilization, then try A Game Of Thrones by George R. R. Martin" or, my favorite because of how tongue-in-cheek it is, "If you like playing Mario Party, then try Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins."

Now, I don't know how closely the theme of these books and video games truly relate, but I figured I'd give some of the suggestions a try. Out of the list of 31 books, there were 3 games/franchises that I really enjoyed. So I figured I'd give these books a try.

If you liked "The Legend of Zelda,"
then try "Graceling" by Kristin Cashore 

If you liked "Fable,"
then try "The Young Elites" by Marie Lu

If you liked "Portal,"
then try "House Of Stairs" by William Sleator

Out of those three suggestions, my local library had "Graceling" and "The Young Elites." So, being such a huge "Legend of Zelda" fan, I figured I'd give "Graceling" the first try. See how close the aesthetics truly are.

Honestly, I'm not expecting much, especially based on the back cover blurbs. They seem like interesting stories, but trying to equate them to the games they're paired with feel like stretches.

The big thing with the Portal/House of Stairs pairing is that both involve a person - persons, in the book's case - trapped inside a strange building with no knowledge of how they got there, and I'm assuming puzzles need to be solved to leave?

"The Young Elites" has a main character who, after childhood tragedy, may have fantastic power and the potential to become a villain as much as she could become the hero. I can see how that might relate to "Fable."

"Graceling" though? The premise is that the main character Katsa has a "Grace" - which is kind of a mutation of preternatural skill - and her Grace is for killing; a power she can't stand. She then pairs up with another Graceling; an unlikely match.

I'm about 70pgs in, and I am enjoying the story, but I am NOT feeling "Legend of Zelda" at all while reading it. In fact, the other Graceling Po has a sort of "Aged Up Fanfic Chat Noir" feel to him. Also, based on the story blurbs, "Graceling" might tie in well with "The Young Elites" and "Fable" again, but so far no "Legend of Zelda."

The story IS still interesting to me though, because the Graces truly do feel like mutations. So... maybe some inspiration fodder for Glitches? We'll see.

Anyway, if you're interested in the full list of book suggestions, you can find the post here: Console-free Camping

If you join in on this list, feel free to let me know which game/book pairing you chose, and if you feel like the suggestion was accurate.

Until then, I'll keep up with my own reading, try to get some more writing in, and I'll catch you guys next week.

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