the deep moans round with many voices

wherein Liz considers WIPs

Fri, 08 Oct 2021 03:31:08 GMT

Fanfiction stories nominally in progress (for some degree of "in progress"):

( Read more... )

...

Some of these are deliberately not time-sensitive and I keep around to poke at on random occasions. Others are very far on the backburner because of how my life has gone over the past decade or so. And some others I would very much LIKE to be working on regularly, but, you know, *gestures at the general state of the world* Also I am very busy at work and all my efforts to establish a regular writing schedule keep falling apart for various reasons.

*sigh*

Maybe I could ease myself back in gently by editing an older story instead of writing entirely new words? I never did get my Magnus Archives/Doctor Who story edited to the point where I'm willing to post it to AO3, which is a crying shame...

*ponders options*

Ah well. Whatever I end up doing, right now I should go fall into bed. I have a 4-hour drive either tomorrow evening or Saturday morning.

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why does everything always happen at once?

Tue, 22 Dec 2020 03:05:31 GMT

Things I have done today:

1. Reeled in one prospective tenant and sent out a lease (waiting for payment and signed documents), and I should have another on the hook tomorrow providing their rental and employment background check goes well. \o/ I also have a line on some people for a 3-bedroom which is excellent; we have a whole bunch of those coming vacant in January as Ithaca College students intend to move back on campus.

2. Finished my NYS tax prep continuing education, which I was TRYING to do last night but the website was catastrophically down, boo hiss. And apparently it takes 24 hours for my completion record to make it from the education part of the website to the TPRIN renewal part of the website, because I was unable to make my payment and get my registration renewed this afternoon. GRRRR.

3. Shoveled ~1/3 of my back porch, all of my back stairs, and a pathway to the communal compost bin in the back yard. Proceeded to dump A LOT OF COMPOST which had been collecting for a while and which I hadn't had a chance to deal with since the snowstorm last week.

4. LAUNDRY. UGH.

5. Started a batch of pork, greens, and onions, because greens don't keep but cooked food freezes nicely. :)

6. Agreed to beta somebody else's Yuletide fic, which I am looking forward to! ...Tomorrow.

7. Currently steaming broccoli and baking some fish patties for dinner, because jesus fuck I am hungry.

...

Yesterday I baked banana bread, sliced it up nice, and stuck it in Ziploc baggies to bring in to the office for my coworkers. It is always helpful to build a reputation as a person who brings in snacks to share. :)

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la di da di da, don't mind me, just doing some edits and rewrites...

Thu, 03 Sep 2020 02:31:57 GMT

I was poking along tonight editing a story and suddenly realized there was a blatant Thematic Point in a stray bit of dialogue that I'd somehow managed to completely overlook while drafting the fic. Accidental thematic coherence for the win?

Anyway, I expanded and sharpened that part of the conversation so I can now use it as a callback mention later on, which will be helpful in tightening up the (currently tragically shapeless) ending.

And now, bed. Sleep is both important and delicious. :)

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daily update, Sunday June 7

Mon, 08 Jun 2020 03:56:37 GMT

I have another rental company take-home project, which I did ~1 hour of work on today before realizing that while I can pull some of the material from our website and some more from our Gmail account, a bunch of the relevant infographics and printouts and whatever exist only on the hard drive of my work computer. So I think Monday's project will be to email all of those to myself, so I will be able to start bashing together some "blog post" things on Tuesday and Wednesday.

What I did today was basically take Aunt Boss's giant list of suggested topics and organize them into coherent themed groups, plus add a couple topic ideas of my own and supplement some of hers with additional sections.

I have also just now thought of yet another topic, which I will mention here so I don't forget it overnight: an explanation of our rental payment schedules, because people are very bad at interpreting that section of their leases even though the language there is, IMHO, pretty darn clear for a legal document.

...

Other things that happened today:

1. I started the final edits for the Narnia/Naruto crossover. I have fixed the easy bits, but it will take me another few days to figure out what to do about the more structural issues.

2. Local wildlife once again dug up my carrot planters -- and this DESPITE the window screen I had over one of them. I have sprayed animal repellent around my back porch and seeded yet ANOTHER round of carrot seeds. *headdesk*

3. Changed my linens, because I have managed to maintain a pattern of weekend linen changes for 98% of my adult life and I don't plan to break that habit.

4. I decided not to do laundry today because reasons, but I have loaded my dirty clothes and linens into my cart and set out my bag of quarters, so when I get home tomorrow I can just drag everything two blocks over to the laundromat and get started. I find that this pattern of breaking big tasks into a "prep" day and a "task" day is helpful, because otherwise I will often drag my feet about the prep work until it's so late in the day that it's hard to get much of anywhere on the actual task. This way I can take a whole day and do the prep work in little pieces as I think of it, instead of trying to do it all at once on a tight deadline.

5. On a related note, I have set up all the relevant ingredients and cookware necessary to bake brownies tomorrow, because I ate the last of my previous batch this evening. I have decided that of the two brownie mix types my parents gave me, I prefer the dark chocolate to the fudge. This is mildly unfortunate, since they gave me twice as many fudge-type boxes as dark chocolate-type boxes, but eh. They're still brownies and they're still delicious.

6. Took a late afternoon nap because my sleep schedule has started to drift away from anything remotely regular or related to the day-night cycle. You wouldn't think that working three days a week versus four days a week would make such a big difference, but boy howdy does it ever. I will continue trying to wrench myself back into mornings actually being meaningful.

And on that note, I will now go to bed.

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beta request?

Fri, 29 May 2020 00:23:31 GMT

Also, to reiterate: I am looking for someone to beta my ~13,700-word Narnia/Naruto crossover. It features six original characters (all Narnians) plus Tsunade and Shizune. The setting is very early in the Long Winter on the Narnian side, and the first year or so of Tsunade and Shizune's travelling period on the Naruto side.

Please leave a comment or send me a message if you are willing to look over the story. :)

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wherein Liz requests a beta

Mon, 25 May 2020 22:04:36 GMT

I have finished the preliminary round of edits on the still tragically untitled Narnia/Naruto crossover! \o/

Now I need somebody else to look it over and point out the weak spots so I can fix them.

If you are willing to beta a crossover (ridiculous in concept, but dead serious in execution) featuring six original Narnian characters plus Tsunade and Shizune at the start of their wandering years, please let me know and give me a method to contact you. The story is currently just over 13,700 words long and contains 1) some violence and gore, 2) a family quarrel, and 3) a lot of ethical struggling over how best to react when a Witch conquers your country, turns many of your fellow citizens to her cause, and then locks the borders and drops an endless magical winter over the entire land.

This is mostly a Narnia story, but it would be helpful to have some familiarity with Naruto so you can tell me how one particular choice works in regard to that canon. I initially made that choice because it made me laugh out loud in the middle of my workday, but my sense of humor can be idiosyncratic so I want to know how it reads to someone who doesn't share the inside of my head.

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wherein Liz continues editing and ponders A/C installation

Mon, 25 May 2020 03:14:43 GMT

I got through eight more pages of the Narnia/Naruto crossover yesterday evening, for a net daily gain of 32 words. Yay progress!

Once again, a lot of what I did was cut extraneous words and rephrase things for better flow and more punch. The new words here are mostly a couple bits of "person does thing" text to surround bare dialogue, and a few sentences of family background for my POV character since I found a good place to slip some details in. (I should probably go back and add something similar to the opening scene, but that part of the story is already so exposition-heavy that I’m not quite sure how. *sigh*)

Today I edited another nine pages for a total gain of 194 words. \o/ I am continuing to chop extraneous words and rework awkward sentences. Today's additions include more "person does thing" text to flesh out bare dialogue (and stress that Character A has some aftereffects from the action scene), but also some bits of prop logistics -- when did Character Y ransack that closet? what is going on with Character A's coat? -- and textually laying out the motivation for a minor decision that I realized might look OOC without that clarification.

I think I should be able to finish the final pages on Monday, after which I will need somebody else to look it over and tell me where the weak points are. :) It should be about 14,000 words, give or take a smidge.

-----

Other things done today: changed my linens, took an approximately 2-mile walk, and leaned out my front window to prune the interior of the lilac bush in preparation for installing my air conditioner.

I'm not entirely sure HOW I'm going to work the installation, since it requires a minimum of three hands (this is purely because my window is evil and heavy and won't stay up on its own so you need one person to hold the window and slowly lower it while the other person wrestles the A/C into place) and given social distancing, that's a little awkward. My mom has offered to drive up and help, but frankly that is a terrible idea. I'm hoping I can ask one of my neighbors to lend a hand. If I have everything wiped down and set up beforehand, and we both wear masks (and gloves! I have some spare gloves!) that should be relatively safe.

Ah well, that is a problem for future!Liz to solve.

Right now I am going to bed with an electric fan aimed directly at me. Fans are wonderful things.

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it's weird how doing nothing can be so tiring

Sat, 23 May 2020 23:06:25 GMT

Things done today:

1. Experimentally didn't set an alarm and slept until whenever. In the event, whenever turned out to be 10:15am.

2. Took a nice hour-long walk in the early-ish afternoon.

3. Unexpected phone call from my mom. We chatted and caught up, which was nice.

4. Edited another nine pages of the Narnia/Naruto crossover, for a net loss of 1 word. (I mean, I also added words! But like I've said before, the middle sections are in better shape than the beginning or the end, so mostly what I'm doing is pruning extraneous verbiage and rephrasing awkward sentences rather than writing new text.)

I might do another batch after dinner, but it's hard to say. I have been pretty spacey today and editing requires coherent thought, you know? I may just go to bed early instead.

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wherein Liz resumes the editing slog

Fri, 22 May 2020 01:55:41 GMT

Thing I Did Today: started attacking the printout of my still tragically untitled Narnia/Naruto crossover with red pen. I got through 9 of 46 pages (printed at 1.5 line spacing to leave room for my scribbles) before my brain was like, "Nope! Done now," but I then went and typed those edits into the actual document so hey, I'll take it.

This first section is the part that needed the most drastic changes -- basically I needed to switch two character motivations completely around, and lay some groundwork for later developments -- so it's good to have those out of the way. I think the middle section is mostly okay as-is, but while the end is structurally okay, it needs a lot of fleshing out in terms of sensory description. I also need to find a couple places to slip in some family backstory without derailing the narrative flow, because right now it kind of comes out of nowhere at the end of the story. *sigh*

Ah well. One pushes onward.

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[Fic] "Kiss and Run Away" -- Homestuck

Sun, 01 Dec 2019 01:45:27 GMT

Summary: Nepeta and Terezi in the dreambubbles, after the end of their respective timelines. (4,750 words)

Note: I started this fic back in May of 2012, in response to the following kinkmeme prompt: "So, the first time I kissed a girl, she ran away. It was the first time I had kissed a girl, and it was the first time she had kissed a girl also. I gave her a chaste kiss, pulled back, she kissed me back very enthusiastically (with tongue), looked at me, completely shocked, and literally ran in the opposite direction.

"We started dating and went out for two and a half years. We used to do stupid things like tell each other bedtime stories we would make up. They usually had bamf lesbian characters. Who would get together in the end of course, and kiss. And I would always tease her with, 'oh, and then she kissed her back, and ran away'. This plot point was in almost every story.

"I'd love it if someone put that in a kink-meme story. [...] I would like this to be slash or femslash, since I'm not sure this reaction really makes sense for a het couple?"

[ETA: the edited and expanded final version is now up on AO3!]

( Kiss and Run Away )

---------------------------------------------

This is a rough draft and the ending is still kind of 'disembodied voices talking in front of a blank white screen' (a perennial failing of mine in initial drafts) but I wanted to get something posted in November, so.

I'll be fixing up the final section some on my own over the next day or two, but if you have any useful editing advice, I am all ears. :)

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wherein Liz defeats one writing objective

Wed, 13 Feb 2019 18:41:11 GMT

Ch. 17 of "Guardian" is DONE in rough draft!

Obviously I need to do a bunch of editing before I post the blasted thing, but still. Victory is mine! \o/

The draft is 4,075 words and I am pretty sure it will expand by another couple hundred as I fix up scenes 3 and 4. (Scene 4 needs less fixing than scene 3, but it wants a bit more descriptive setting detail and also I need to check canon to make sure I am writing Person X correctly.)

I am also considering whether to get this beta'ed. I haven't used betas for "Apartment Manager" or "Guardian" in the past -- or rather, I used LJ/Dreamwidth as a sort of collective beta -- but I don't know if that's as effective as it used to be, particularly considering the temporal gap between this chapter and the previous ones.

Eh. We'll see how I feel once I get through the initial round of edits and expansions. :)

---------------

ETA: I also did a scene breakdown for ch. 18, and of course my little one-paragraph sketch outline changed a bunch as I worked to reconcile it with what actually happened in ch. 17, spread POVs evenly, and try not to disjoint the timeline. (In other words, scene 4 should happen after scene 3, which happens after scene 2, which happens after scene 1, whether they're in the same plot thread or not. I'm not perfect about this, but I do try.)

I am very glad I outlined this story back in the day, but I'm also glad that I didn't try to make the outline very detailed. This makes a nice balance between having a general sense of where I'm going (and how the various plot threads match up) and getting to surprise myself as I write. :)

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a slow day, until it wasn't

Sun, 16 Sep 2018 00:59:51 GMT

Today was a slow day at work, until about 3pm when suddenly it was Very Busy (TM). We had two tours of 12+ people (which is a lot to cram into an apartment, and definitely too many to fit into an elevator), each going to multiple apartments in multiple buildings. Between and after the tours, we rented six apartments -- I mean, they were all studios except for one 2-bedroom unit, but still -- and answered extensive questions from a good dozen people as they tried to pick the exact right apartment. It was A Lot.

But I got my weekly Government reading, quiz, and original discussion board post done during the slow period (as well as making a spreadsheet that separates parking tenants who are graduating this spring from those who are not, so we can efficiently contact them about renewal options), and I got today's Spanish exercises done tonight, so I think that was a fairly productive day even aside from the Overwhelm in the late afternoon. Hmm. Oh, and I also did some edits on my remix which had been bugging me for a bit (typos, a badly-phrased line, killing some pointless filler adjectives/adverbs, etc.) so that was nice.

Once I got home, I boiled eight eggs while I was eating dinner, since I'd run out and will need one for breakfast in the morning, and hard-boiling eggs is the least spoon-intensive cooking task I know that still technically counts as cooking. :)

Now I think I will go to bed, because I haven't slept terribly well the past few days and I am Exhausted. *flops*

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8 things make a post

Wed, 08 Aug 2018 03:41:46 GMT

Things and stuff:

1. I bought a bus ticket to NJ today, which I will use on Tuesday the 14th. The plan is to go out for dinner and whatever with my friend Susan (as a slightly belated birthday thing -- her birthday, not mine), then breakfast or lunch with my parents on Wednesday, and then I return to Ithaca with the family's spare Camry in my care until 2019. I have also acquired a new set of Great Courses CDs in preparation for the drive. :)

2. I dropped off the rest of my church recycling sale donations, which is a nice thing to check off my to-do list.

3. I finished the beta-read I'd promised the_rck, which is another nice thing to check off my to-do list. :) (The story is another creepy-fascinating Sky High AU installment. If you like that sort of thing, you will like it a lot!)

4. I bought two five-pair-packs of sterling silver fish-hook earring hooks online last week, which arrived on Saturday. You see, I am hypersensitive to trace metals in earrings, to the point where I often have allergic reactions to surgical steel or titanium earring hooks even though they're supposedly hypoallergenic. Apparently my ears can still sense traces of nickel or whatever, and I get sore, red ears for several days after wearing some of my favorite earrings. This is annoying, and it finally occurred to me that it's also completely fixable. So I am fixing it, one pair of earrings at a time -- with the help of some fingernail scissors, a smallish set of needle-nose pliers, and a bunch of determination.

5. I wanted to get a haircut on Saturday but my hair place was tragically closed. I need to check tomorrow to see if they're just on vacation or if I need to find a new hair place. (I do not want to find a new hair place. I like my hair guy. ...Fortunately, having short hair means I can go to barber shops rather than salons, and they are so much cheaper.)

6. My fall Spanish professor STILL has not posted her textbook list online. She is also unreachable via email; every time I've tried, I get a "this email address doesn't exist" error message. *headdesk* I am going to call the TC3 advising department tomorrow to ask them what's going on and whether I need to switch into a different class, because this is getting worrisome.

7. New Hire called out on Tuesday and Wednesday last week, but she did show up on Saturday and the absence was due to her child being sick, so I am still moderately confident that she's going to work out. I'm not entirely sure why she wants the job -- she lives over half an hour away in non-rush-hour traffic, the hours are weird, and it's part-time so there aren't any benefits -- but hey, her choice. (I want her to work out so badly, you have no idea.)

8. I have my Remix Revival assignment and my Narnia Fic Exchange assignment. I know what I'm doing for the first; I just need to hash out a few details and then sit down to write. It shouldn't take too long since it's not terribly lengthy or involved.

I am less certain of the NFE assignment. I like the request! I even have three workable options off the top of my head. But all three would be relatively long and complicated, and require a bunch of background outlining and worldbuilding, and while August is my good writing month (no classes for two and a half weeks, yay!), I don't know that I have enough time. But I do want to write all three of those stories -- they are all things I have at least tangentially mentioned before, and in two cases written some exploratory snippets that I then set aside for later -- and the only shorter things I can think of that fit the prompt are things I have already written. (And now that I say this, I have thought of a fourth story option... which again is long and complicated and requires intensive background work. *sigh*) So... dilemma!

I guess I will poke at the options some more tomorrow, and try to get the Remix assignment out of the way so I will have more mental time and space to devote to whatever NFE fic I end up deciding upon.

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stuff done

Sun, 31 Dec 2017 05:40:25 GMT

Today (by which I mean Saturday) I:

-emailed my medical practice asking why I hadn't received my online portal activation code, received the code, and created my account so I can renew my Celexa prescription next week

-did some actual work stuff and did not die of boredom at my job \o/

-beta-read a cool fic :)

-wrote two three-sentence ficlets

-took a nap

-baked brownies for church coffee-hour snacks tomorrow morning

-made a packing list for my lightning trip to NJ

-began packing

-repackaged some leftovers

-read some Yuletide fics

And now I am going to bed because despite the nap I am still stupidly tired and I would like to not fall asleep on the highway tomorrow -- or in church, or at the G. family New Year's Eve party. The former would be deadly, of course, and the latter two would be highly embarrassing *wry*

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stuff done: Monday-Thursday

Fri, 24 Mar 2017 14:41:46 GMT

1. Took photographs of my various vegetables and posted them online.

2. Changed my wax melt.

3. Finally finished beta'ing the Small Fandom Big Bang fic I'd agreed to edit. It is a good fic! It's also creepy, claustrophobic, and potentially highly upsetting, but since that's more or less the point I am inclined to count those aspects in its favor. I am a little sad that it's not in a bigger fandom so more people will eventually read it, but I suppose that would rather defeat the purpose of the 'small fandom' aspect of the challenge. *wry*

4. Sewed a new button onto a pair of pants, since the old button twisted loose and fell off during the day. :/

5. Stitched up a tear in my laundry bag since I already had my sewing basket open.

6. Bought groceries. I am planning to try the cheesy spinach roll experiment again on Sunday and needed appropriate supplies, and also some honey to bring to the rental office for my endless cups of tea.

7. Stayed an extra few hours at Not the IRS Thursday evening, since we didn't have a Stewardship committee meeting this week and Hill Boss stuck me on the schedule in case of walk-in clients. (We did not get any walk-in clients.)

...

I am really looking forward to the end of April, when I will revert from working ~50-55 hour weeks to working only ~27 hour weeks. My bank accounts will be sad, but man, I did not realize how much I depended on having those 10-15 hours until I lost them, to say nothing of getting two days off per week. *sigh*

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stuff done: Monday-Thursday

Fri, 17 Mar 2017 03:23:26 GMT

1. Took garden progress photos and posted them online.

2. Plunged both bays of my kitchen sink, which didn't seem to do anything. Poured drain-declogging fluid down the left bay of the sink, and also down my shower drain. Washed it out fifteen minutes later with boiling water from a teakettle followed by generically hot tap water. The pipes seem to be running better now.

3. Put away my remaining laundry.

( more items under the cut )

17. Gave blood! \o/ It took me three and a half months to get my health and my schedule aligned, but by gum, I finally managed it. :DDDDD

18. Did a preliminary read-through of the Small Fandom Big Bang fic I am editing. I will try to go through and leave actual comments tomorrow night.

And now, I think, to bed.

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wherein Liz grumps about editing

Thu, 16 Mar 2017 02:19:35 GMT

I have slowly been doing edits on Second Chances, since I wrote that story down to the absolute wire and had approximately negative three hours to edit it before the archive went live (my issues with deadlines, let me show you them *sigh*), and most of what I've done so far, aside from tidying up weird and awkward phrases, is fill in transitiony stuff that I only had time to vaguely gesture at in the initial draft. Or in other words, tweaking the foreshadowing and plot/emotional arcs so they hang together better.

Later I will also need to smooth out the denouement, but right now I'm still stuck on shaping the build-up correctly.

And I think... I think there is too rapid a jump from Ray getting his new job to Matt coming to confront Foggy with Daredevil's investigation results. I think I may need another scene in there. The thing is, I'm not quite sure what it should be. I'm leaning toward maybe Ray dropping in to visit Foggy at HCB? Because I should probably do a bit more with Foggy's professional life, and also lawyer stuff gives him a good reason to A) think conflicted thoughts about Matt and B) be involved in some case that tangentially touches on the Rainmaker thing, so that doesn't come completely out of nowhere when Matt brings it up in the next scene.

But I don't want to plot and wriiiiiiiiiite it... *flops angstily to the ground and sulks*

...You know, instead of whining to the internet, I should go edit [redacted]'s Small Fandom Big Bang fic instead, which I agreed to do and should ALSO stop procrastinating about.

Or maybe just go to bed. It's cold, I am tired and sore from shoveling far too much snow, and presumably things will look more manageable in the morning.

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stuff done: Friday-Sunday

Mon, 13 Mar 2017 01:52:41 GMT

1. Made my weekly Facebook update and spent about half an hour checking up on what my non-fannish friends and acquaintances have been up to. I think this was a good resolution -- I do feel more connected to them, and limiting Facebook use to those once-weekly posts (and maybe two random log-ins during the week to respond to any responses) keeps me from screaming in frustrated rage over Facebook's mind-bogglingly infuriating and anti-helpful user interface, to say nothing of the incessant ads.

2. Paid my monthly internet bill.

3. Planned something I hope to cook on Thursday night (or maybe next Saturday, depending on timing) and added the relevant supplies to my grocery list.

( more items under the cut )

20. Trimmed some dead stem sections from my jade plant, and put the still living parts (which had been attempting to grow new roots, except they were not anywhere near dirt so that wasn't doing them a lot of good) into the soil, where hopefully their rooting attempts will be more successful.

21. Planted my squash seeds. I will take photos of them tomorrow, for whatever photos of bare soil in small plastic applesauce cups are worth. *wry*

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stuff done: Sunday-Thursday

Fri, 10 Mar 2017 04:01:09 GMT

1. I did not go to church on Sunday, since it was either a Sci-fi Sunday (alternate joint program for high school and middle school kids, runs the first Sunday of each month) or an improv/drama session, and in either case I wasn't needed to facilitate anything. Also I was very tired, so I slept in. Then in the afternoon, I took a nap. Sleep is delicious. :)

2. Changed linens.

3. Thawed and cooked some more tilapia fillets.

( more items under the cut )

8. Changed the wax in my wax melter. The new wax was another of the kinds my parents bought me as an ancillary Christmas present, and as before, I do not recommend it. The Glade scent was obtrusively artificial -- it just smelled off in a way that's hard to put my finger on. This brand -- ScentSationals Scented Wax Cubes -- smells less off-putting... but the smell is impossibly strong. I could literally see volatile fumes rising from the surface of the melted wax, and it permeated the air to the point where I felt like my breaths were slowly coating the inner surfaces of my lungs with a layer of wax. I could not sleep because the scent and the wax-in-lungs sensation were so overpowering and inescapable. And this persists for hours even if the heat source is removed from the wax after only thirty minutes!

Despite this, the scent wears out very quickly. I had to dispose of the new wax on Wednesday because it had lost its advertised scent and now was just filling the air with the scent of generic candle wax, while still feeling like it was coating my lungs with aerosolized wax particles.

Additionally, the wax itself is not packaged usefully. It is notionally divided into six cubes, but in practice they're all fused together into a massive lump that requires a heated knife to separate, and even then sheds annoyingly sticky wax flakes all over one's work area.

In short, I actively disrecommend ScentSationals brand wax melts. I have thrown out the unused portions of the scent I tested, and have tossed the unopened other scent into my box of assorted random donations for my church's annual recycling sale.

(For the record, wax melts I have had good experiences with are Yankee Candle, Woodwick, and (tentative initial assessment) Chesapeake Bay Candle Home Scents.)

( more items under the cut )

And now, I think, to bed.

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wherein Liz complains about editing and ponders a schedule shift

Mon, 06 Mar 2017 04:15:39 GMT

I need to finish editing "Second Chances" but I am really not in an editing mood tonight (it is a very specific mood, even more so than writing), so blargh.

I am starting to think I may have to try getting up an hour earlier in the mornings and going to bed at, like, 10pm, because I am generally awake enough to focus in the morning but I have no time, whereas when I get home from work I have a few hours to spend on whatever, but am too worn out/spoonless to do much besides vegetate for most of that time.

(I write at work sometimes, but it's hard to properly sink into a creative mindset when I might get interrupted by the telephone or clients/tenants at any moment, not to mention I have an intense squick about people reading over my shoulders when I'm doing creative stuff on a computer. Also I don't have access to the majority of my files, which is a problem. (And no, don't say Google docs. At the rental office I can't access my own Google account because I have to stay logged into the office's own supplemental Gmail account, and at Not the IRS I can't access Gdocs because it's on their blocked site list. (Which includes LJ and Tumblr, but not DW or AO3, and I hope they never cut off those particular escape valves.)))

...Actually, on that note, I should go to bed. *wry*

(How on earth am I slowly ending up with a morning person's life schedule? I mean, I can do that if I need to -- and it really looks like I might need to -- because I am fortunate enough to have relatively malleable circadian rhythms, but left to my own devices I am a night owl and I resent the way the world seems to be conspiring against my preferences.)

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wherein Liz makes a writing project to-to list

Sat, 11 Feb 2017 17:38:13 GMT

Okay. In order of priority, my current writing project lineup goes like this:

1. Finish Cotton Candy Bingo prompt for wistfulmemory. I know roughly where it's going (as in, I know why the unexpected ambassadors are in the Mountains of Morning, and I know Kazul's going to generally agree to their request/offer), and I have finally managed to find the right arrangement of story elements to lead up to that conversation, but I still need to fit some other stuff around the edges in a hopefully logical way and come up with a good closing paragraph or two, so... a few more days' work, probably. (It's currently at ~1,850 words, FYI. It needs at least 500 more to wrap up, quite possibly more like 1,000. We'll see how that plays out in practice.)

2. Finish editing "Second Chances." Again, I know roughly what I need to insert, and where; the trick will be making it all read smoothly without disrupting what's already there. Another few days.

3. Quick-sketch outline for Susan's very belated gift story. Just set up the scenario, the main characters, and the problem/resolution so I can run them past her and make sure I'm hitting the requested trope correctly without veering into tropes she doesn't like as well. Actual writing will hopefully happen sometime this summer.

4. Quick-sketch outline for Vicky's very belated gift story, because evidently trying to write without one does not work in this particular case. Whimsy needs a framework, or else 'this could go anywhere!' rapidly turns into 'and therefore I have no reason to care.' Again, actual writing will be put off until summer.

5. Start work on Fandom Trumps Hate fic for mme_hardy. We've already emailed a few times to pin down a general prompt and some ancillary details, but I need to work that into an actual outline that can sustain at least 6,000 words of story. And then of course I have to write the story, since I'm not postponing this one until summer! That won't be a hardship; I like the prompt a lot and it involves a bunch of affectionately teasing conversations, which are always fun to write. :)

6. Anything else if inspiration strikes and refuses to go away, but I'm tired enough (argh, work) that I don't think that's terribly likely. *sigh*

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stuff done: Monday-Thursday

Fri, 03 Feb 2017 05:38:25 GMT

1. Watered houseplants.

2. Photographed my pepper and narcissus. That is going to be my last 2016 pepper project photo for the foreseeable future, since I doubt the Lazarus pepper's one remaining bud will ever actually amount to anything.

3. Put away laundry that was air-drying since Sunday afternoon.

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17. Backed up my files onto my external hard drive.

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wherein Liz (conditionally) defeats Yuletide

Sun, 18 Dec 2016 03:54:07 GMT

Victory! Yuletide fic is done and posted.

There was an analogy that occurred to me around 6pm as being wonderfully apropos, but trying to fit it in wound up derailing the emotional through-line horribly, so I cut that attempt back out again. I kinda-sorta finagled it into a different location in a different form, but this version is not nearly as direct (or imagery-rich) as before, which is a little sad, but hey, that situation is exactly what the phrase 'kill your darlings' is meant for. *wry*

...

I should probably get the story beta read. The problem is, what I really need is a canon and characterization check, and this canon is... not obscure obscure -- I would be willing to bet that several people in my circle have consumed it at some point -- but not something I think a lot of people have detailed knowledge of right at their fingertips, and obviously asking would be a dead giveaway.

Presumably this is when I learn to use the Yuletide chat thingywhatsit and try to find a hippo? Ugh. That kind of technology never wants to work for me.

Tomorrow, I suppose.

(I mean, if anyone is willing to offer sight unseen, I will tell you the canon in private and you can decide from there whether it's something you are familiar enough with to offer informed commentary, but that's not a very reliable method of finding editors.)

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stuff done: Friday-Monday

Tue, 13 Dec 2016 04:23:25 GMT

1. Went to New Jersey for the weekend. This involved catching a bus to the Ridgewood park-and-ride, whereupon Dad picked me up and we drove to my parents' house. While in New Jersey, I:

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16. Set up my drying rack as a humidifier, by which I mean I soaked two towels (oddly-sized misfits, kept for this specific purpose) until they were sopping wet, and then hung them over the rack and let evaporation make my apartment slightly less bone-dry. This process is not completely effective and needs to be repeated every three to eight hours for the duration of winter, but it's effective enough, and a lot cheaper than buying and running an electric humidifier to boot.

And on that note, I will go soak the towels again and then go to bed, because I have work in the morning.

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stuff done: Wednesday-Friday

Sat, 03 Sep 2016 16:57:32 GMT

1. ACCEPTED A JOB OFFER!!!

2. Put away the food I cooked on Tuesday and dumped the resulting scraps into the compost bin.

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I made a start on unfucking my sleep schedule last night, and hopefully I will be able to get it fully back on track by Monday. With a bit of luck, this will give me the spoons to get some necessary stuff done over the weekend. *crosses fingers*

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