recent things, in no particular order

[edenfalling]

1. Thursday night I went to my induction ceremony for Phi Theta Kappa, which is the two-year college equivalent of Phi Beta Kappa (more or less), because why not. There were indifferent sandwiches, pretty good cupcakes, two good introductory speakers, and indifferent main speaker, and an unexpectedly dramatic moment after we'd all gone up front and signed the chapter membership book and been arranged on risers, when a mother was overcome with pride for her daughter's achievements. I felt a bit of a fraud for having taken the whole thing so lightly, but what the hell. Go proud student and proud mom!

2. Today we had sleet all afternoon, ugh. It eased off into cold rain as evening fell, and nothing stuck to the ground anyway, but it was still thoroughly unpleasant.

3. I showed and rented a three-bedroom apartment this afternoon, go me!

4. I wrote ~350 words toward a prompt fill, which are not terrible by any means but have made me realize that I am approaching the prompt from the wrong direction, so now I get to start all over again. *sigh* At least this time I know where I'm going instead of just kind of flailing around to see what clicks.

5. I am on the final lecture of my Italian Renaissance Great Courses series, and should definitely be able to return it to the library by Sunday.... only three weeks late. *headdesk*

6. I'm continuing to reread potential Yuletide canon material, and discovered I was sadly misled by the list of which books Character X appears in -- one of them seems to have made it onto the list solely because Character X is namechecked in one sentence placing them at Event Y that takes place at the end of the story. Gnrgh. Well, it's not like I didn't enjoy rereading that book despite the mixup. It's just a little annoying from a time-management perspective, you know?

7. I did a bit more background world-building and outlining for an f/f urban fantasy tetralogy with vaguely Lovecraftian flavor that I occasionally toy with writing. It still needs a lot of work before it becomes writable -- for example, at the moment one of my two antagonist groups is basically "evil conspiracy trying to drain/store magic for unnamed nefarious purposes," which is too flimsy for even a 1000-word ficlet. *wry*

The other antagonist group also needs a bit more solidity, but that plot thread is on much more stable footing -- probably because it has hooks into a lot of other emotional and character stuff instead of just sort of being there to make Required Plot Events happen. (These things happen when the central figure of the other antagonist group is your protagonist's estranged mother.) I'm sure I'll figure out a way to hook the Evil Conspiracy of Evil in on that level too, eventually -- probably via the protagonist's love interest, for balance and mirroring and stuff. But anyway, the upshot of today's work is that my protagonist (Sephy) now has a defined day job, I know how she and her love interest (Thorn) meet, I know how and why Thorn gets on the radar of the Evil Conspiracy of Evil, and I figured out the setup for why Sephy and Thorn start book 2 on shaky relationship ground. \o/

Comments

[wistfulmemory]

Congrats on joining Phi Theta Kappa. That's really cool.

I first read "sleet" as "sleep" and was very confused. We're currently having snow flurries, which are enough to be inconvenient.

Go you in renting a 3-room apartment!

:( for not being able to use what you wrote, but I'm glad that you were able to use it to figure out what you want to write.

Totally understand about the late library materials. Sometimes life makes it where they can't be returned on time.

:( about rereading canon that really has nothing to do with what you're needing during this busy time. Hopefully the rest of the book list is more productive.

Your world building looks very interesting, and you're doing good in figuring out the various aspects you need before officially writing it.

[edenfalling]

Thanks! :)