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elrhiarhodanGood afternoon, peoples! I'm overcaffeinated and overtired, and so apologizing in advance for what may be an over-the-top ramble. But then, aren't these rambles usually over-the-top?
1. White Collar Tonight!!!!!!!! This looks to be a non-mythology episode (other than the Codex thingie), one with lots of delicious Peter backstory (old girlfriend and some more details on how Peter and Elizabeth met cute). The clip "Luckiest Guy" keeps cutting out in the same place, so I'm not 100% sure if we're really learning anything new. There looks to be some delightful Neal-Elizabeth bonding moments, which I've sorely missed this season. Anyways, I'll be on with the peeps in chat and doin' the Dish at the same time. Multitasking for the win!
2. Writing. OMG, I am exhausted. If it feels like you've seen my fic on your flist way too much lately, you're probably right. But it's Fic-Can-Ukah! Eight brand new fics in eight days. Actually, the first two fics were done a few days before, but since Saturday, I've been writing the stories on the day they were due. I had such great plans for having the first eight (the guaranteed ones) done before the holiday started. And I made decent progress. Then I got bit by the plot bunneh of doom and needed a week to finish just one story that went epic. I blame![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
theatregirl7299, and you should, too.
So, I had to scramble and write and publish on the same day. Well, I slipped a little bit with yesterday's story, butmiri_thompson tells me that the eighth night of Hanukah doesn't end until sundown, so technically, this morning's entry wasn't late.
I've become a little too obsessed by word count lately - maybe it's the season? I don't do NaNo (I have *issues*) but I know a lot of people on my flist do, and congratulations to everyone who wrote, whether or not they made their word count goals. I've actually made mine for the year. I had hoped that I would match last year's total, maybe top it by a few thousand words if I was lucky. For the better part of 2013, that didn't look like it was going to happen. I had a very slow start to my writing year - between personal loss, sickness, work and other crap. I didn't pull ahead of last year's running total until I finished my White Collar Big Bang story, Red Velvet, and it wasn't by much. The last quarter of 2012 had been very productive, despite the move, with nearly 140k inthree four months. I had no expectations of beating that, but I did. With almost a month to go, I've published 177k since September 1.
I've blown past last year's word count, topping it byalmost 8k over 7k with today's story. This means that I may even beat the 2011 word count, which was my most prolific writing year. Not going to say how much more I have to go.
Okay, I am. And since a picture's worth a hell of a lot:
Yes, I'm way too focused on word counts. I've even got formulas in that spreadsheet
So, anyway. I really need to take off a day or two. Just to give my brain a chance to relax. Otherwise, I think it's going to dribble out of my ears, find something heavy and bash my face in when I'm sleeping. brainz...brainz
But I'll be back to all of the wonderful Fic-Can-Ukah prompts by this weekend, plus my Advent story (I am pretty positive I know what I'm going to write). Speaking of those Fic-Can-Ukah prompts, there are 12 or 13 left, so I'm pretty certain I'll be finishing all of them, but it's likely that the filling will be spilling over into early 2014. Just be patient with me, okay?
After that, it's back on the Big Bang Bandwagon...
3. Other creative endeavors. Does anyone else find that if they put aside the writing for a little while and focus on creating something else, the writing comes a little easier? With all of the ficcage commitments I signed up to, I'd been resisting my other hobbies - namely beading. But a couple of weeks ago, early on a Saturday morning, my brain just refused to cooperate and I couldn't get the words out. But I wanted to do something, so, this happened:
:: 
I discovered, to my joy, that a few hours working on this gave me back my writing mojo in a seriously big way.
Hmmm...
4. Interesting things found on my LJ. Okay, back to the writing thing. I subscribe to![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomcalendar, which delivers all sorts of interesting news. Most of which I ignore.
But this one,poetry_fiction caught my eye. My favorite types of prompts are lyrics and bits of literature and poetry, so it seemed worth investigating. According to the site:
This is the poem on the poet's homepage:
Screech Owl
All night each reedy whinny
from a bird no bigger than a heart
flies out of a tall black pine
and, in a breath, is taken away
by the stars. Yet, with small hope
from the center of darkness,
it calls out again and again.
Delights & Shadows.
How could I not sign up?
I don't know if I found this onfandomcalendar, but it's a hellalot of fun: Three Sentence Fic-a-Thon. You leave a prompt - fandom, characters and situation, and someone fills it with just three sentences. There are a bunch of White Collar prompts, some left by me, some left by others. I will play a lot more, now that The First Eight are done.
5.kanarek13 is the most wonderful friend. She is kind and enthusiastic and so damn talented. And generous beyond words. She made this for me:
It's cover art for my OT3 series, The Paladin 'Verse. I don't know what good deed I did in some past life, but it must have been pretty damn big to deserve this.
It's in its rightful place as the frontispiece to the entry on my newly updated Master List. I guess I should add all of the artwork that I've been so fortunate to receive.
6. Other Happy Making Things
I am wearing purple boots.
Went to DSW the weekend before last, armed with a coupon. I'd seen these a few months back, but I wasn't going to pay THAT MUCH for a pair of purple boots. I mean, like 99% of my shoes are either very sensible black or brown. I have one pair of red hiking boots for winter wear on the principle that if I go ass over teakettle and end up buried in the snow, it would be hard to ignore a pair of bright scarlet boots. I actually stood there, debating with myself - they fit comfortably - about how foolish it would be to buy purple boots. The fool won, I am happy to say. It helped that they were on sale and I had a 20% off coupon on top of the sale.
A new and large sized Moleskine notebook.
For the last few years (okay, my entire fic writing life), I've kept a mid-sized black Moleskine notebook at my desk at work. Handy for jotting down random plot bunnehs and keeping track of bingos. I had gone over to Barnes and Nobles to get my 2014 wall calendar early (I've learned that if I wait for the post Christmas price reduction, the likelihood is that I won't get the one I want, and I'm picky, picky) and was seduced by the Moleskine display.
It takes me about a year to go through one of them. The size, though, isn't as comfortable as I like. I do a lot of physical cutting and pasting (I've never grown out of the need for Arts and Crafts, apparently), including pasting in printouts of my bingo cards, lists of prompts, random bits of poetry, and these are just a bit to small.
So, anyway, I needed to commit to another three-pack of the mid-sized or scale up to the larger ones. Or go to a full-sized notebook. I took the plunge and splurged for the big, semi-hardbound several hundred page version. Now, I could have bought a different one for a fraction of what I spent for this notebook (and probably should have), but I have to say that there's a reason why people obsess over Moleskines. It's the quality of the paper, at least for me - it's really smooth and dense. I do a lot of note taking in pencil and it erases cleanly. The one I bought is actually stitch bound every four pages, so it lies perfectly flat when open.
I'm taking my time and transferring over the notes from the older books - a lot of good bunnehs still hopping around. Hopefully I will live long enough to write them all.
One more happy making thing.
Matt Bomer's ass, courtesy of Archivistsrock:
Thank you,buefo
1. White Collar Tonight!!!!!!!! This looks to be a non-mythology episode (other than the Codex thingie), one with lots of delicious Peter backstory (old girlfriend and some more details on how Peter and Elizabeth met cute). The clip "Luckiest Guy" keeps cutting out in the same place, so I'm not 100% sure if we're really learning anything new. There looks to be some delightful Neal-Elizabeth bonding moments, which I've sorely missed this season. Anyways, I'll be on with the peeps in chat and doin' the Dish at the same time. Multitasking for the win!
2. Writing. OMG, I am exhausted. If it feels like you've seen my fic on your flist way too much lately, you're probably right. But it's Fic-Can-Ukah! Eight brand new fics in eight days. Actually, the first two fics were done a few days before, but since Saturday, I've been writing the stories on the day they were due. I had such great plans for having the first eight (the guaranteed ones) done before the holiday started. And I made decent progress. Then I got bit by the plot bunneh of doom and needed a week to finish just one story that went epic. I blame
theatregirl7299, and you should, too.So, I had to scramble and write and publish on the same day. Well, I slipped a little bit with yesterday's story, but
miri_thompson tells me that the eighth night of Hanukah doesn't end until sundown, so technically, this morning's entry wasn't late.I've become a little too obsessed by word count lately - maybe it's the season? I don't do NaNo (I have *issues*) but I know a lot of people on my flist do, and congratulations to everyone who wrote, whether or not they made their word count goals. I've actually made mine for the year. I had hoped that I would match last year's total, maybe top it by a few thousand words if I was lucky. For the better part of 2013, that didn't look like it was going to happen. I had a very slow start to my writing year - between personal loss, sickness, work and other crap. I didn't pull ahead of last year's running total until I finished my White Collar Big Bang story, Red Velvet, and it wasn't by much. The last quarter of 2012 had been very productive, despite the move, with nearly 140k in
I've blown past last year's word count, topping it by
Okay, I am. And since a picture's worth a hell of a lot:
Yes, I'm way too focused on word counts. I've even got formulas in that spreadsheet
So, anyway. I really need to take off a day or two. Just to give my brain a chance to relax. Otherwise, I think it's going to dribble out of my ears, find something heavy and bash my face in when I'm sleeping. brainz...brainz
But I'll be back to all of the wonderful Fic-Can-Ukah prompts by this weekend, plus my Advent story (I am pretty positive I know what I'm going to write). Speaking of those Fic-Can-Ukah prompts, there are 12 or 13 left, so I'm pretty certain I'll be finishing all of them, but it's likely that the filling will be spilling over into early 2014. Just be patient with me, okay?
After that, it's back on the Big Bang Bandwagon...
3. Other creative endeavors. Does anyone else find that if they put aside the writing for a little while and focus on creating something else, the writing comes a little easier? With all of the ficcage commitments I signed up to, I'd been resisting my other hobbies - namely beading. But a couple of weeks ago, early on a Saturday morning, my brain just refused to cooperate and I couldn't get the words out. But I wanted to do something, so, this happened:
:: I discovered, to my joy, that a few hours working on this gave me back my writing mojo in a seriously big way.
Hmmm...
4. Interesting things found on my LJ. Okay, back to the writing thing. I subscribe to
fandomcalendar, which delivers all sorts of interesting news. Most of which I ignore.But this one,
poetry_fiction caught my eye. My favorite types of prompts are lyrics and bits of literature and poetry, so it seemed worth investigating. According to the site:Poetry Fiction is an annual fiction challenge, and each year, there is a featured poet. This year's poet is Ted Kooser. On January 1, participants are given a stanza or poetry fragment from Ted Kooser's work as a prompt. Participants have 31 days to write at least 1,000 words inspired by the prompt.
This is the poem on the poet's homepage:
Screech Owl
All night each reedy whinny
from a bird no bigger than a heart
flies out of a tall black pine
and, in a breath, is taken away
by the stars. Yet, with small hope
from the center of darkness,
it calls out again and again.
Delights & Shadows.
How could I not sign up?
I don't know if I found this on
fandomcalendar, but it's a hellalot of fun: Three Sentence Fic-a-Thon. You leave a prompt - fandom, characters and situation, and someone fills it with just three sentences. There are a bunch of White Collar prompts, some left by me, some left by others. I will play a lot more, now that The First Eight are done.5.
kanarek13 is the most wonderful friend. She is kind and enthusiastic and so damn talented. And generous beyond words. She made this for me:It's cover art for my OT3 series, The Paladin 'Verse. I don't know what good deed I did in some past life, but it must have been pretty damn big to deserve this.
It's in its rightful place as the frontispiece to the entry on my newly updated Master List. I guess I should add all of the artwork that I've been so fortunate to receive.
6. Other Happy Making Things
I am wearing purple boots.
Went to DSW the weekend before last, armed with a coupon. I'd seen these a few months back, but I wasn't going to pay THAT MUCH for a pair of purple boots. I mean, like 99% of my shoes are either very sensible black or brown. I have one pair of red hiking boots for winter wear on the principle that if I go ass over teakettle and end up buried in the snow, it would be hard to ignore a pair of bright scarlet boots. I actually stood there, debating with myself - they fit comfortably - about how foolish it would be to buy purple boots. The fool won, I am happy to say. It helped that they were on sale and I had a 20% off coupon on top of the sale.
A new and large sized Moleskine notebook.
For the last few years (okay, my entire fic writing life), I've kept a mid-sized black Moleskine notebook at my desk at work. Handy for jotting down random plot bunnehs and keeping track of bingos. I had gone over to Barnes and Nobles to get my 2014 wall calendar early (I've learned that if I wait for the post Christmas price reduction, the likelihood is that I won't get the one I want, and I'm picky, picky) and was seduced by the Moleskine display.
It takes me about a year to go through one of them. The size, though, isn't as comfortable as I like. I do a lot of physical cutting and pasting (I've never grown out of the need for Arts and Crafts, apparently), including pasting in printouts of my bingo cards, lists of prompts, random bits of poetry, and these are just a bit to small.
So, anyway, I needed to commit to another three-pack of the mid-sized or scale up to the larger ones. Or go to a full-sized notebook. I took the plunge and splurged for the big, semi-hardbound several hundred page version. Now, I could have bought a different one for a fraction of what I spent for this notebook (and probably should have), but I have to say that there's a reason why people obsess over Moleskines. It's the quality of the paper, at least for me - it's really smooth and dense. I do a lot of note taking in pencil and it erases cleanly. The one I bought is actually stitch bound every four pages, so it lies perfectly flat when open.
I'm taking my time and transferring over the notes from the older books - a lot of good bunnehs still hopping around. Hopefully I will live long enough to write them all.
One more happy making thing.
Matt Bomer's ass, courtesy of Archivistsrock:
Thank you,
buefo 
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-12-05 10:39 pm (UTC)"Too much fic by
That (choker? bracelet?) is very, very pretty. The color is gorgeous, and the pattern is elegant.
Looks like a WC plot bunny to me: where did Neal steal it?PURPLE BOOTS! ZOMG! Those are fabulous.
no subject
Date: 2013-12-05 10:52 pm (UTC)I'm sorry, my quirks are showing. Point is; I agree! Congrats on a new notebook. ^^
I'm staggered by your word count. I've written maaaaybe 10 000 words in total this year. I blame it on having to do a lot of writing during the week as it is, but I think i'm just more of a binge writer than a steady all-the-time writer. That's one hell of a job there, though! *applauds*
And good job on the bracelet! You make me want to go learn how to bead. ^^
no subject
Date: 2013-12-05 11:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-05 11:21 pm (UTC)There is no such thing as too much fic by you. Totally impossible.
Definitely agree that taking a break, or at least switching projects, can make you more productive.
Hmmm, word count, hmmm. Mine, zip except for some measly comments, especially lately as Safari and LJ don't seem to want to play nicely together. Hopefully, someone, not you, will take one of my story ideas and turn it into a decent Christmas fic. So word count, do not OCD on it. Especially trying to top yourself each year ( even if I "demand" more fix)
no subject
Date: 2013-12-05 11:30 pm (UTC)Okay, these boots are beyond awesome \o/ And the bracelet you made is so beautiful, you do such beautiful creations, I love it when you share pics :D
And yay for the new ep, I have to say that at this point any new episode of White Collar makes me both super excited and super terrified :D I'm ready for them to finally come clean to each other :P (double yay for new half-nekkid Neal caps :P)
I agree that there is no such thing as too many Elr fics, every new post always puts me in a squee mode :D (I've lost count how many times I actually stayed past my working hours to finish reading - heee, that's actually a great way to score some points with the higher ups :p) \o/
*hugs you tight* I'm delighted that you have adopted that artwork for the Paladin verse. Yay for OT3 :D
no subject
Date: 2013-12-05 11:52 pm (UTC)Even in my best year, I only wrote around 295k words, but that was spread out over a whole year. I tend to average around 150-200k. So you writing 177k in three months absolutely blows my mind! I do get the obsession, though. Wanting to top last year's count or else you don't feel like you've had a productive year. I've gotten into the habit of doing a year-end fic round-up, and it's helped me with some perspective. When I look at what I feel were my successes and failures, I tend not to stress so much about how many words I wrote, and more about the quality of those stories. I'm happiest now when I can turn out a few really good ones rather than a bunch of mediocre ones. But YMMV.
I thought I was the only one who was still obsessed with the written word--the actual hand-written as opposed to typed. Guess not. I tend to keep all my fic notes and ideas in Evernote, so it's available wherever I am on whatever device I happen to be using. But for my to-do lists and notes for work and home, I prefer a Levenger Circa notebook. Nice heavy paper stock that takes the ink well, and you can move the pages around when you need to. It's nice and compact so I can throw it in my purse at the end of the day. I can't function without it, which may be good or bad, depending on what's happening around me.
And may I just say... that man's ass should be classified as a Schedule A drug. Whoo-ee!
no subject
Date: 2013-12-05 11:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-06 01:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-06 02:17 am (UTC)As for purple boots, definitely a worthy purchase. I am sporting purple marbled Doc Martens which I bought in the 1990's and which my daughter has now outgrown, yet still look pristine. (The original ones made in England, not the newer made in China rubbish).
Enjoy your new moleskin, fine stationery is a fetish I share. I lived in Italy for a while and oh, that gorgeous Florentine stationery....
The beadwork is beautiful, perfect autumn color.! Do you produce any commercially? Are their no end to your talents?!
And a 'thank you' for Mr. B's derriere. As I have to while away the hours until the WC broadcast at 10PM Mountain Time, it will probably get more than a few views!
no subject
Date: 2013-12-06 09:08 am (UTC)I LOVE your purple boots. Wish I had a foot size (and feet in good enough shape) to be able to wear fashion footwear.
That art is gorgeous. And so is Matt's behind.
no subject
Date: 2013-12-06 01:58 pm (UTC)I'm beading, too! I'm doing Peyote stitch. Mostly rings. Have pics of them but don't know how to insert them here.
Such an awesome pic of the three oft them :). Kanarek really is amazing!
Hugs you dearly!!!
no subject
Date: 2013-12-08 10:35 pm (UTC)Okay, first of all? There is no such thing as too much fic from you. I also think that it was perfectly acceptable to ignore the "just a few hundred words" rule for the Fic-can-ukah for the epic. Theatregirl should receive a medal! Just sayin'. *g*
Also? Your word count blows my mind.
Love, love, LOVE the purple boots!!! *wants*
The jewelry is pretty! And yes, it should feature in your next WC fic, as it's a long lost bracelet from Katherine the Great that Neal just happened to, uh, borrow. Or something. *g*
I used to depend on notebooks for EVERYTHING! It's scary to think that I can barely write a single page by hand nowadays without cramping. How the hell I used to write six hours straight for my finals is beyond me. :( But your notebook looks really beautiful!
So does Matty's ass, but what else is new? *g*