When I was a kid, I was fairly good (for a kid) at a number of things: music, sports, art, math, writing, etc. But there are only so many hours in the day, and some activities are always going to strike any given person as more interesting and desirable than others. As I got older, I focused mostly on writing and music. Those were not necessarily the things I was best at -- if you look at my art and my stories from when I was ten or eleven, I am pretty sure the art was better. (My early writing was dire. Trust me on this.) But because I put work into them, I got better. And I did not get better at, say, sports and art.

I still draw like a twelve-year-old, in other words... though admittedly, a twelve-year-old who took a figure drawing course in high school, for what little good that did me.

Which is by way of leading up to: My NBB art is now up. I drew two pictures for pamymex3girl's story, A Tale of Two Sisters. They are done in pencil and colored pencil and then scanned into my computer via a photo editing program, because have I mentioned that I am not an artist? And therefore do have have art or art editing programs? (That is not a thing that ever stopped being true.)

You can also see them on deviantART: Into the Dark Woods and Susan and Lucy.

The reason the sisters have no faces in the first picture is a stylistic thing I fell into doing when I had to write and draw a comic book in 8th grade English, because I cannot draw faces in profile to save my life. I like the coloring job there, though, and the picture went pretty quickly -- I did most of the background directly in colored pencil without a regular pencil outline. Pine trees are dead easy to sketch.

The picture of Lucy brushing Susan's hair was extremely annoying to draw. Hands, how do they work? Also noses. And lips. Argh. (You will notice I completely finked out on any attempt at ears.) I spent a lot of time in front of a mirror using myself as a model, so if the fabric and fingers bear any relation to reality, that's why. The hair is pretty obviously stylized, though. And the frame with the leaf design is there because... well, the frame is both meant to be a mirror and also a device so I didn't have to worry about the background of the room they're in. And then I made a leaf design because I like geometric patterns. I may not be good at most aspects of art, but I can draw some pretty nifty geometric patterns.

1. The Hinata prompt!fic for hungrytiger11 is now 4,000 words, WTF. All I promised was a minimum of 100. This is forty times that length and it's still not finished!

Also, I think I am writing myself into a mild blue funk every time I work on it. Seriously, this is the most depressing story I have written in ages. Even including the silly bit where Ino talks about Sai and oral sex. But I have to finish it now. I have reached a point where I need the catharsis for myself, regardless of what effect the story will have on any eventual readers.

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2. I did a few preliminary edits on my remix and then sent it to beta -- thank you very much, significantowl and emmee_kay! I think I will post the beta draft on AO3 tonight, just in case. At least that way nobody will have to pinch hit if catastrophe strikes.

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3. Narnia Big Bang fics have started going up on narniaexchange! Do go read them -- the three that have been posted so far are all excellent, and all very different from each other.

Okay, that is the last time I sign up to do art for anything. Period. I can write under ridiculous time pressure. I can edit under ridiculous time pressure. But I am NOT a fast artist, and also? I do not have art programs on my computer, which means I just spent a couple hours fighting to A) scan things with reasonable visual fidelity, B) crop and tweak them in a photo editing program, which is what my scanner automatically dumps them into (it came with the computer, okay?), and C) go back and redo the line art and coloring manually and then repeat steps A and B until I got a usable result.

ARGH.

(I am also not a very good artist, but that's an entirely separate issue. And on that note, I preemptively apologize to my writer. I did the best I could, and while the results are not great, I think they are at least passable. :-/ If the NBB runs again next year, I hope you get a better artist!)

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I sent in my NBB fic last night (thank you for the beta, metonomia!) which means tomorrow I can get to work on my two remaining prompt!fics... after which it will be time to dive straight into my remix.

...

I think I should go to bed. I write a lot faster when I get enough sleep.

At 20,283 words in beta draft. *headdesk* And I always add more words when I go back to edit, because I am of the, "Whoops, I completely forgot to mention this very important bit of connective logic, and also that entire scene is happening in front of a blank white sheet of paper, better fix that," school of drafts, rather than the, "Throw everything and the kitchen sink in the first time and then yank out the irrelevant bits," school of drafts.

So yeah, sure, this is only a 10,000 word mini-bang, not a full big bang, obviously I'm not doing the proper challenge, just the reduced version, don't worry, it can't possibly take that long to write.

My. Left. Foot.

Why did I think this would be the short, easy story? Why? It's not a short, easy story! It's about war and ethics and politics and religion and growing up and deciding who you are and what you want to do with your life at far too young an age. It's also about horses, and random descriptions of cities, and far too much grass and general topography and stuff, but mostly it's about Ilgamuth Tarkaan thrust into situations beyond his control that he would not necessarily have chosen to be in had he known what they would entail, and making the best of the resulting choices.

But anyway, it's done. I got through the politics, and then I did a second sweep through the closing scenes to hook them even more tightly into the new preceding material. I think you can still tell where the seams are if you're looking, but at least they're now hidden from a casual glance.

...

And now I am going to bed, because I agreed to cover my coworker PB's shift on Friday and that means I can't sleep in. Sometimes I am too helpful for my own good. :-\

I called in sick to work on Monday. PM was pissed off, but I figure that if all I was able to manage was about four hours of being awake, then a four hour nap, then two and a half hours being awake, then falling asleep for the night -- and most of those waking hours were spent sitting down -- it's probably good I wasn't at work. (Aside from the whole snot machine effect, plus the low grade fever, plus the sore throat, plus the killer headache, plus the joint aches and lack of balance, of course.)

Tuesday was not a lot of fun, since I was still recovering and shaky, and BW was not much better, but we survived. We also both forgot to punch out at the end of our shifts, but whatever. And today I am more or less okay again -- still a bit stuffy and a little watery around the knees, but functional. And I am back on caffeine, which, after three days forcibly unhooked from my wonderful, wonderful chemical best friend, made me ever so slightly WIRED!!! while at work. Which I am sure was fun for everyone around me. *bright smile*

On my way home from work, I bought an ice cream cone, because it was just that hot. I mean, the magnolias outside the court house are blooming. In March. IN ITHACA. WHICH IS NOT GEORGIA, SO WHY ARE WE GETTING GEORGIA'S WEATHER?!?!?

Anyway. Moving on!

Tonight I have been successfully fighting my NBB! Wordcount is now 15,000-ish. I am assymptotically approaching the battle -- first there are pursuit scenes I need to get through. I also took half an hour and cleaned up the closing scenes a bit, to bring them more in line with character development that has occurred in the front sections of the story. So a couple of Ilgamuth's exchanges with Rabadash make more sense now, his horse has a name, and his reactions to Tashbaan are shaded by his previous reactions to Azim Balda and Had Ordjah rather than being all "country boy sees a city for the first time, wow!!!" which doesn't quite work when he's been in two large cities already. (This is why I don't like writing stories out of order. I always end up creating glitches like that.) My goal is to finish the battle tonight, write the aftermath and politics tomorrow, and dump the whole mess on an unsuspecting beta on Friday.

...I think that would be metonomia? But if anyone else is willing to tell me where I'm being stupid, please feel free! I promise I do not bite! (Actually, if anyone wants to read what I have now, complete with the gaping hole in the middle that is basically two paragaphs of italics to the effect of "stuff goes here eventually," I am more than willing to send it to you! The sooner I know what scenes I am missing, the more time I have to write them, after all!)

...And suddenly I realize there are a scary number of exclamation points in this post, so I think I had better stop typing before they breed. *wry*

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ETA 11:15pm: 15,500, yay! Some of that is digressions on local topography, but that is totally relevant to the mechanics of the chase scene, so whatever.

ETA 12:30am: 16,000! I ended up eliding the battle for perfectly reasonable reasons, but hopefully the chase scene makes up for that. Also horse stuff. Lots of random horse stuff. (Why are there so many horses in this story???) Anyway, tomorrow I will write the aftermath and politics and stuff, which will include at least one more female character in a speaking role of any note, bringing my grand total to... three. *headdesk* Such a male-centric story.

The more I reread Homestuck, the more I realize how much foreshadowing and how many callbacks there are. For instance, when Terezi is introduced the plot stops for a bit while she roleplays a corruption trial using her scalemates (dragon plushies, basically) as the other characters. This is a useful way to show off aspects of her character, but it seems overly drawn-out... until you realize that the coin flip thing comes back very significantly later on. Twice. Once with Dave and once with Vriska, and both times you will be a LOT less surprised by Terezi's actions if you remember that ( minor spoiler )

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In NBB news, I got maybe 100 words per day over the weekend (boo hiss), but tonight I made some genuine progress. I am now at 13,350 words and almost out of Had Ordjah. Finally!!! ...Now it's just a battle and then a bunch of politics. I confess I am looking forward to the politics, if only because I have plans to squeeze one to three female characters in there, who have lives and goals of their own and do things that actually affect the plot. As I think I said before, this story is so relentlessly male-centric that I am extra pleased anytime I can get a girl or a woman on-page with a speaking role, however minor.

Other things about this story: I knew I would have to make up a bunch of poetry to quote, but I was not aware I would be spending quite this much time talking about horses or describing scenery. Not that I spend all that many words on either activity -- my narrative tends to live very tightly in my characters' thoughts and emotional reactions rather than any sensory description -- but the presence of horses and scenery is enough to be noticeable, which is probably the equivalent of some other writers banging on about them for pages at a time. *wry*

Agh, oh god, the latest Homestuck update! (Aka, [S] Jane: Enter) Whatthefuckjusthappenedthere???

( cut for spoilers, obviously! )

...

I wish I had the self-control to only read Homestuck in, say, once-a-week binges. I think it would make the cliffhangers much easier to bear, if only because I'd run into fewer of them. But no. And so this is me, swearing my way through the vagaries of serial reading.

[[ETA: For answers and discussion, please read comments on the LJ version of this post!]]

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In other news, this weekend I hope to get a good start on the illustrations I owe another writer for her Narnia Big Bang story. (Yeah, I signed up to draw as well as write. At the time we seemed to be short on artists. It will be an interesting challenge!) I also hope to knock off my own NBB story for good.

And in other other news, last night I wrote about 1,400 words of a weird kinda-sorta Homestuck fantasy AU centered on Dave and Aradia as childhood best friends, and I am not going to say anything else because it would take too long to explain the concept and also I have no idea if I'll ever finish the damn thing. Mostly I started writing it because there is one particular scene I desperately need to get out of my head, but it makes no sense without a lot of context, and then its inherent nature will demand some continuation.

So yeah. That's what I've been up to.

The only good thing about the print news industry and the print magazine industry slowly shrinking is that it takes significantly less time to put up new magazines each Monday. We used to get in, oh, at least $7,000 worth of magazines each Monday, which would be in ten to fifteen totes. These days we average $3,500 to $5,000 of magazines a week, in eight or nine totes. It goes much faster, even though we also do call-in on Mondays now. (We used to only swap old issues for new ones on Mondays and do call-in proper on Saturdays because otherwise there just were not enough hours in the day, but it makes more logistical sense to combine both operations if you have the time and staff to do so.)

We are nearly always done putting up new magazines by noon these days, and we can almost always get the call-in done by the time we swap register drawers around and do cashup at 2pm-ish. It used to be that sometimes we wouldn't even get all the new magazines up before closing and would have to leave a tote or two for Tuesday... though I think that was as much an issue of people being lazy and bad at time management as it was an issue of magazine quantity. We stopped having the left-for-Tuesday problem well before the magazine shrinkage became noticeable, but after some significant staff turnover, so.

Anyway, the upshot of all this is that not only do we get the magazines dealt with in a timely fashion, we also generally get everything else done too, which means I do not have to play catch-up all through the evening and can, instead, check in and put up book shipments on the weeks when we get them. (Magazines arrive Mondays and Fridays, period. Book shipments, in contrast, are highly irregular.) So that is what I spent my evening doing, complete with shortage reports and returns.

...

The thing I really hate about Mondays is how filthy my hands get. You would not believe how dirty the totes and magazines and books are. Or maybe you would. It's only logical for them to be dirty, since they mostly sit around in dirty warehouses gathering dust! But I have to keep washing my hands and washing my hands and washing my hands, and I have chronically dry skin during the winter, complete with patches of persistent contact dermatitis on my right hand this year, so I then have to keep applying hand lotion and applying hand lotion and applying hand lotion, and it is just an endless cycle of Do Not Want. :-(

But enough talk about my job. Now I am going to talk about writing!

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I managed 150 words on my NBB tonight, for a new total of 11,550. They are still in Had Ordjah, since apparently it was time for me to attempt a vague descriptive passage about the city instead of jumping to any actual action. *sigh* Well, any progress is better than no progress.

I am holding off on the next part of my Homestuck sedoretu AU until I've reread Acts... oh, 4 and 5, I think are most relevant. I need to remind myself how the kids' conversations with the trolls actually go so I can figure out how they would change in this AU.

I have also started picking at another prompt response, which is about John and Jade realizing there are a bunch of ( cut for slightly morbid Act 5 spoilers ) That's sitting at 800 words while I noodle around for a plot.

Furthermore, it struck me this evening that in May it will be exactly ten years since I started writing Secrets, which suggests that I really ought to get off my ass and finish the blasted story already. It's not as if I don't know where it's going; I just need to buckle down and write it. So that is definitely back on my to-do list.

And that is enough talk about writing. Now I am going to actually write. :-)

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ETA: And then, of course, I went off and wrote 550 words of "Lemonade" ch. 19, because my brain makes no sense whatsoever. *headdesk*

Am in NJ. Shamelessly took advantage of parents' washer and dryer; laundry now clean and folded and ready to take home. Dinner party starts at 6pm, with conversation and snacks/appetizers and conversation in the living room. Dining room table is set, some food already prepared, the rest in progress. \o/

In writing news, NBB at 6,400 words, meaning only 300 words of progress this afternoon. I hate writing poetry on command. It is not my strong point AT ALL. But I need stuff for Ilgamuth to quote now and then, so. *sigh*

Will attempt to write more before guests arrive.

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ETA 5pm: 6,900 words now. I think I will skip the rest of the journey from Azim Balda to the war. Nothing of import happens that cannot be summarized in a paragraph or two, and I want to get to the actual strategy and failed negotiations and fighting and stuff. Plus I need to show Rabadash being impetuous, being cruel, being friendly, and also being a brave and skilled soldier. They are all relevant aspects of his character and Ilgamuth needs to see him as someone he might be willing to serve for the rest of his life.

ETA midnight: 7,100 words. Bah. Have emailed the file to myself again and will write like a woman possessed tomorrow afternoon and evening once I am back in Ithaca. If all else fails, I can probably half-ass the connective scenes by just describing one negotiation and one battle and fill in the character arc stuff on the second draft pass-through, since those two scenes should be enough to show a potential artist what I am getting at, and also get me over the 10,000 word limit.

And now to bed. I am meeting Susan for breakfast at nine tomorrow at a local diner.

Minor Narnia Big Bang progress: my wordcount is now 5,250. I am halfway to a mini-Bang, which is all that is strictly necessary.

The problem with "To Every Thing There Is a Season" (rough summary: Ilgamuth goes to war for the first time and pledges his life loyalty to Rabadash, despite some reservations) is that the closing scenes are fairly detailed and take place over one evening in Tashbaan, while the rest of the story takes place over at least a month and was basically glossed in about five paragraphs in my initial failed attempt at writing a comment!fic. So I am trying to expand all that stuff out from its ultra-compression, which requires a lot of character development, a lot of "oh crud, I need things to happen here," and a lot of scrambling to shore up fuzzy areas in my world-building. I mostly have the world-building gaps dealt with, but with the rest, I am still... mmm... writing by the seat of my pants, as it were. I know where I am, I know where I'm going, but I'm not quite sure how to get from here to there.

But anyway, Rabadash has ordered Ilgamuth to buy a third horse, and I think I will take the opportunity to send Ilgamuth to the horse market in Azim Balda with another one or three of the would-be companions, so as to introduce them and make Ilgamuth actually talk to people instead of doing nothing but interminable inner monologues.

Dialogue is generally more interesting, and also helps counteract my tendency toward a fusty, pedantic narrative voice. *grin*