I babble, because I care

Today I got quite a bit of necessary stuff done, including feeding my car and myself, and foraging successfully for food in the wilds of the supermarket.

I finally started watching season two of Dollhouse, which I never did quite get round to before. At the moment I'm consumed with horror... at the different hairstyles...

And I almost finished the Honour's Knight review, though it's now over 1200 words and I should probably run it past someone else who's read the books to make sure it's not inadvertently spoilery. But I am having far too much fun doing odd sci-fi lit-crit writing analysis on it. I should probably tone that down a little too.

I can't help it; when I find an author doing something well, I want to pluck it out and show it to everyone and go, "Look! See! This is how you do exposition! Just like this!" And then I get so wrapped up in that I forget what my original point was.

This is why a lot of the time I don't mind that whole "reading as a writer" thing. Sure, half the time it means I go, "Oho, blatant foreshadowing, therefore this is about to happen", but sometimes it means I stop halfway through a book and just blink at the page, going, "Wait... you just... you set that up, and it fits in perfectly, and you haven't compromised anything else to get to it. That is a piece of art right there."

Basically, I get to see when writers are trying really hard and putting in the thought and the effort, and I really appreciate it. And I want everyone to. I want people to go flocking back to the author and go, "This bit! This bit must have taken ages to get right. We are grateful for your time and for the fact that you worked hard so that this particular little bit would be a joy to read. We know you did more than just phone it in. We see how much you cared. Thank you."

Maybe I won't cut too much from the review/art essay after all.

Surprisingly relaxed

Today I did such things as sort out recycling, some housework, the washing up, tidying, and various other bits and pieces. I wrote stuff (poor Hanith and Irin) and maintained the calorie counting thing and entertained the cats.

I also spent most of the day, really, reading Honour's Knight by Rachel Bach, taking my sweet, sweet time over it, and finished it.

Then I spent most of the rest of the day working out the key points I want to cover in the review post. So that should be tomorrow. Unless I get completely sidetracked by... oh, I don't know, making mini carrot cakes or something. Hm, sounds like a plan.

Aside from the small amount of plotting for Dryden's sequel (with a side order of mad cackling for the new horrors Sarah helped me come up with for those long-suffering characters) that's pretty much today. Read a book, relaxed, got little things done. Feels like achievements. No complaints here. (EDIT: Also, laughed like a drain at the first couple of episodes of Helix; the musical choices are superb.)

I did have an invite to go round to friends', but didn't go, for once. Part laziness, part book, part today was Mother's Day here in the UK and I sort of wanted to stay indoors and avoid all mention of that this year. Normally at this point I'd be starting to get anxious and worried that I'd offended people and would never ever ever get asked to hang out again and oh dear gods I should have gone what was I thinking... but today, actually, I seem to be not doing that. These are, after all, the same friends who forgave me so readily when I was an hour and a half late getting to theirs last week, and I have no reason not to believe them when they said it's fine. It's kind of relaxing to not be worrying about that for a change.

There, feels like another achievement. Not too shabby.

Incidentally, I drink like a camel.

I did a lot of tidying and cleaning today, which has helped since the cats are determined to shed everywhere at the moment. Particularly in my face, whilst purring. This is adorable, but did actually get past the antihistamines and start to cause breathing issues earlier, so the sweeping up and binning of large amounts of cat fur is not entirely altruistic or just for appearances...

Other than that I was split between writing more Hanith (hurrah, Hanith and his healthy, healthy relationship. It makes such a nice change from Dryden) and reading Honour's Knight by Rachel Bach.

Basically, I want to go to bed now so that it's tomorrow and I'll have the time and energy to write a proper squeeful review of it. In summary: FUN. (Also packs emotional punch. But still. FUN.)

Oh, and I've been trying to drink more, in an effort to eat less, stay better hydrated, be a little healthier etc etc etc. I really don't know how people manage to drink the supposed recommended 8-cups-a-day allowance, never mind folks who go for the weird calculations where it ends up saying 12 cups or more as a daily dose. I'm only just keeping up with my self-imposed lower limit of about 6 cups. And I feel sloshy. I'm used to getting by on two or three...

Anyway. Progress is maintained. Not bad.

(Also, my friend Sarah is absolutely amazing at reading my stuff and pointing out the very simple, very twisted, very perfect thing that I should clearly have written in and somehow managed to miss. It's amazing. Every single time, she reads through, and comes back with, "Ooh, and then this?" and I am left sitting here going, "How did I not think of that? Yes ma'am, writing it this instant!" She just did it again to Tick Tock, and now clearly I have lots of revisions and a possible sequel or epilogue to do when it gets rejected and I want to submit it somewhere new.)

40 days: halfway. Score!

Another writing day, though interrupted by pestering cats who decided that I had much better things to be doing, like stroking them for an hour or so. They are incredibly cute, though, and it's still such a nice change to be able to touch them and not stop breathing in response (all hail antihistamines) that I can't resist.

Did a couple of little bits around the house again, including clearing as much space for Dance Central as I'm able to without getting into stuff that I really don't want to be putting in the wrong place. And Daisy has talked me into calorie counting as well to try and get back into our good clothes (and cosplay, over here). So far so good, helped by the portions of homemade meals I still had left. I am rather competitive, which is keeping me from devouring (at least all in one go) the wonderful stash of chocolate I've still got from the Christmas sales...

I swear I wasn't this food obsessed before I started a) cooking, or b) writing these blog posts. But it's actually a very good thing, honestly. One of my clearest warning signs of dipping back into the self-hatred and the dark spirals is when I have no interest in food and stop eating. Which in turn, due to lack of energy and the side effects of hunger, spirals me down further. So focusing on happy and focusing on food actually overlap much more on the Venn diagram than you might expect.

Anyway. Other stuff.

Claire tidied up her next Lavendar short story, we discussed one of the finer points on Twitter for a bit, I fired it at a couple of lovely, obliging friends who were able to give it a quick read and answer a single question for her. (They both enjoyed it, too. I do have awesome friends.)

So yes, you should probably go read the story: here.

(And the first one is here if you didn't get to that before. Tut tut!)

Prose in motion

Quiet day after all the Marvel excitement, today. Read all the comics I borrowed, so I can give them back next time. Managed a couple of little bits and pieces around the house, including starting on clearing some space for Dance Central to happen. Soon...
A couple of things are in motion, and indeed in the post, winging their ways to me to remind me that people are amazing sometimes, and exceptionally kind and generous. More on those when they arrive.

Otherwise I generally fell into writing and got stuck all day. The current Hanith short story has more than doubled in length today, and thoroughly distracted me from everyone else. Poor Dryden isn't getting a look in at all at the moment.

What happened there is that I drew up a week plan and assigned one short story idea to each day. When I immediately went, "Damn, I'm looking forward to Friday," that clarified which short story I should obviously be writing next, so out went the plan and in came Hanith. I've even managed to hit the point where I can actually write, where I stop hunting for precisely the right word and put in info-dump filler for now. It's a point where I know what information my characters need to convey but phrasing it in a pretty way is going to take far too long, so they just get on with it and say it.

Ie, first draft. Though it's surprising how much of that kind of blunt, straight-to-the-point dialogue ends up staying, actually. Often it just works, and you don't need the prettification you think you do. People are blunt sometimes, especially when they're tired or stressed or angry or in pain, which characters in the middle of a medieval fantasy adventure usually are...

Enthusiasm is infectious

I actually got in after midnight so am sneakily backdating this one because otherwise the list of my posts will skip a day and wind me up for eternity (perfectionist? Me? Never...) but let's stick with "today" terminology anyway:

I helped a few friends out today, with some driving, a ridiculous amount of overdone feedback for poor Claire's latest short story (from whom I fully expect absolute reams and essays of red text on whatever I send her next which will be really helpful and is definitely not at all an ulterior motive at play), and some more driving - in which I transported Enthusiastic Geeky Friend to the cinema and in return she provided tickets.

To see Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Be still my little Marvel fangirl heart.

There was much geeking, and lending of Hawkguy comics, and trailers for Amazing Spiderman 2, and Guardians of the Galaxy (oh, so very pretty on the big screen), and an X-Men Days of Future Past trailer I had not already seen (I adore X-Men. It rivals Loki for getting my instant attention. So this made me flap about in joy while she flapped about for Guardians of the Galaxy, and everyone was happy).

And, you know, Winter Soldier.

We asked, but they wouldn't let her have the giant Black Widow wall hanging. And they wouldn't let me have the huge reversible cardboard stand of Professor X and Magneto. Boo. But oh well, saves us trying to find space to display them properly.

So generally a rather Marvelous evening, aha. (I'm sorry, that was terrible and entirely predictable and I feel very little shame for it.) And I got home gone midnight, since we, as usual, spent at least half an hour geeking out wildly and discussing at top speed everything Marvel related while I was parked in front of her house.

Basically, at this point in Marvel phase 3, I am left wondering why there's such a focus on origin stories (though I do love a good origin story) in other franchises, and say, constant rebooting of some superheroes so as to go over and over the origins until they become boring, when they could be moving on to the really fun stuff like Avengers, Thor: The Dark World, Iron Man 3, Winter Soldier...

Yes, it's fun. I was pleased. I will say no more.

Geekery is the song of my people

I really do have awesome friends. I've been a little bit too sedentary and apt to eat for the sake of it recently, and it's starting to have an impact. So I figured I'd try to get back to something that actually helped and was fun; dancing. Sadly the specific sci-fi conventions I used to go to and dance till I dropped three nights in row have now stopped running, so I need a more local alternative.

By the power of friendship (which is magic, don't you know) I've now acquired a spare... well, everything, required to get Dance Central on the XBox 360 running in the living room. Circumstances have led to my lovely friends having even a spare console sitting quietly gathering dust, so I don't feel like I'm inconveniencing anyone or imposing too much (aside from the enforced trip to a storage unit today, wherein I pretty much appeared, grabbed one of them, and kidnapped him for the afternoon. Next time, remind me, I will simply arrive on the doorstep and intone, "Come with me if you want to live").

Hopefully, therefore, there'll be a bit more activity shortly, as soon as we've (me and Daisy, who's both kind enough to let me stay at hers, and also keen to get the dancing going) cleared space for the Kinect to work. I did enjoy the Kinect games a lot when I lived with said briefly-kidnapped-friend and we had space. I used to be quite good at them... We'll soon see if I've lost my touch completely.

Before I dashed round to their place to steal all their tech and run away laughing, I also made it back in to the charity bookshop where I worked up until last September. One of my friends who's still there had essentially summoned me via the arcane email ritual of "We've had a ton of Dragonlance donated, help", so I appeared to perform the solemn rites of "Here, they go in this order and you should put these ones out on the shelf first; they're the rarest, and oh, I'm just going to borrow this one for the moment and let you have it back later..."

So I've acquired another book to read. But it's all about Raistlin, and he's cut from the same cloth as Loki, Dryden, all the wicked, dangerous characters I like so much. So that pleases me a great deal.

Not that I have a type in fiction, or anything like that, oh no.

Also there was much flailing and geeking out, which always happens every time I see that friend. Her enthusiasm for everything is wonderful, if occasionally a little like being flattened under a landslide of excitement. It doesn't leave you room to be annoyed or upset by anything, because the only way to survive such wild delight is to go with it. It pushes you into the frame of mind where you want to give back the same level of glee, so suddenly you're focusing on all the. best. possible. things, and the happy spiral twists into the most excitable snake eating its own tail you've ever seen, and everything is a reminder of something else wonderful that must be shared right now until your face starts to hurt from grinning and you remember the parking's about to run out on the car and have to leave... on the third attempt, because each time there's just one more thing either of you absolutely must mention before you go.

It is exhausting, when I'm so out of practice at sustained excitement, but very, very entertaining. And has a tendency to gear me up to go and achieve something, hence the unexpected and most useful trip round to the others', with the bonus of lots of hugs and chat with my lovely people.

Anyway, when I got back in I settled down and beta-read a friend's 8000 word fic and returned it, as I promised I would. I seem to recall, actually, promising I'd do it yesterday, but yesterday ended up being weird and almost-migraine and I got practically nothing done, so we're all counting today as a success and not too late.

I've even got another short story from the writing group to read and critique tomorrow, so that'll be fun.

When I type it all out like that, it seems like a very productive day. Which is, after all, the point of these blog posts.

Now I'm going to go and write more Hanith, because Hanith is fun.