Sense, Nonsense, and Not-Sense

Greetings! This is the Write Every Day Check-In Post for 30 November 02019.

Last call! No more days to NaNo for November, but whether you win or just have a really good start on a novel-length work, Write Every Day rolls on. bladespark has put up a welcome post for December's Write Every Day if you want to go say hello before the first official post goes up tomorrow.

It's been a fun time hosting for you in November, watching projects get worked on, completed, and new projects begun for right afterward. If you feel like it's been a fun time, stay a while, as December is usually December Days, where I will attempt to find something useful to talk about for all thirty-one days on a single big topic. And right after that, for the first fifteen days of January of the new year, I try to participate in snowflake_challenge, where you usually hear me talk a lot more about fandom than I do anywhere else in the year. Could fix that, I suppose, if I had definite things to say about fandom for a specific fandom, rather than fandom in a more general sense.

There will also be the usual magpie's nest of links and other shinies at irregular, but usually about monthly, intervals, and irregular posts about things as they catch my eye (or ire).

Outside of writing, today I learned more that I am either going to be terrible at management or awesome at it, because I had to go be the Person-In-Charge at someone who is a person that believes quite firmly that they are always right, they could have us all fired if they complained to our upper management, and that casually ablist language and misgendering is not language that needs to be called to the carper when it is used. They also couldn't believe that someone like me was the Person in Charge. Unsurprisingly enough, when they learned that I can, in fact, make good on my promise that I will toss them out if they continue that behavior and language, there were no further incidents. I checked in with the targets of this person's poor behavior throughout the day to make sure that he continued to behave himself. All of this because he was startled by something and chose to take it out on someone who exhibits signs of neuroatypicality, rather than making the reasonable ask of "could you not wander so close, it startled me and aggravated an injury of mine."

There's a documented history with the person who was ill-behaved today, so I am hoping actual consequences result from their continued terrible. Or will result the next time that person is terrible.

In writing, I started another post on the Giving of Grief, and put together the backburnered project and sent it off to a beta to make sure I didn't do anything terrible with it. And finished putting together the post for this month's magpie nest.


Here's the tally so far:

( Rally-ho! )

Greetings! This is the Write Every Day Check-In Post for 28 November 02019.

Happy Feast, everyone. The day turned out mostly as planned, with food and companionship, although there was a break in the middle where I had to help someone assemble furniture and a few other things. More of that will be tomorrow, I'm guessing. The food worked out fine, and I was surprisingly right about when Feast actually happened today, because of all the competing demands for oven time.

Writing, because of all of this, really only had one thing happen during the day, and it was an idea regarding how to use selected tracks in Songfic #2 that I notated. So all of my writing for today has been responding to comments and putting together this post and another weekly roundup post. So there were words today, even if none of them were actual fic words. But we don't put a specific requirement of what kinds of words are used here, so we're still having written every day.

Here's the tally so far:

( Rally-ho! )

Greetings! This is the Write Every Day Check-In Post for 26 November 02019.

Time is a funny thing, both running at high speed and slowly. After all, it seems like an eternity ago that we were on 1 January of this year, wondering what would happen this time. To some degree, the answer finally seems to be, in my personal life, "what we were expecting," even though what actually happened was far more chaotic than that. But it's the first year in a few where I feel like the year progressed in such a way that now that it's nearly finished, I am not dreading the appearance of December and the associated festivities. I still choose to not see decorations that are specific to the December holiday, because Feast has not yet happened, and one does not celebrate feasts out of order. But the inflatable snow-being went up today, and the wind was cold after work, and while there will never be enough snow for my tastes where I am, that is now something that can be looked forward to, as well.

I had despaired a few years ago that I had lost my holiday spirit, because I could not muster any sort of joy at the prospect of the December holiday. I still don't necessarily have holiday spirit, not in the same way that people throw themselves into the decorations and the feasts and the gifting, but at least this time, for this year, I can look upon those things and nod, and the feeling in the pit of my stomach wondering how I will get through the season is gone.

It's nice.

In writing, I put down a significant number of words on the backburnered plot, realizing the chapter I was writing was absolutely in the wrong place in the narrative, and juggling the words until it was slotted in the correct space and the story once again cohered. It looks like it's almost finished. Once this chapter gets taken care of, I can go back and write the final scene and see if I can stick the landing on the end.

I've occasionally glanced at my writing statistics for this year, because apparently this is the year where I got moderately involved with a big fandom, increasing both wordcount and kudo count by a large margin, thanks to that fandom stopping by in significant numbers. This year looks on track toward almost triple what I would normally have written for AO3, and just about all of it can be attributed to deciding to go forward with enough confidence that the writing will find an audience, and then watching as the numbers come back and say there's enough interest to continue going along with the ideas as they come into my head. Or as they come along by prompts for exchanges.

It's also been interesting to look and see that the ones that I'm particularly proud of or really enjoyed writing aren't necessarily the ones that got a huge amount of numbers associated with them. That doesn't make them any less good, but it really illustrates the truth that finding something the audience likes is often significantly a matter of luck on top of the skill that someone brings to the table. Because that one-shot I dashed off as a lark is still nearly 10% of my total kudo count and still collects a few bits here and there. So, yeah.

Here's the tally so far:

( Rally-ho! )

Greetings! This is the Write Every Day Check-In Post for 24 November 02019.

I'm tired from today, which is to say that there was erranding, which was good, but also I was The Muscle for a few things that needed carting around and assembling. All went well, but I hit the wall while I was riding in the car and wandering around a few stores while others shopped. Some caffeine and sugar revived me enough to make it back home, where more substantive food awaited. As the logistics of everything goes right now, I won't be available to be The Muscle for the next batch that I would be helpful for, but I suspect I'll still be involved in one way or another in helping out when I am available. Whee. Did I mention that this week is also Feast Week?

In writing, before embarking on the long and exercise-filled journey, I finally finished that Grief post that I have been working on for a while. There's still more of them to go, of course, and it's a little interesting that it's taking two books to cover the events of one book, just from a different perspective that was apparently more involved in some interesting affairs while the character from book one was doing a lot of studying.

Here's the tally so far:

( Rally-ho! )

Greetings! This is the Write Every Day Check-In Post for 22 November 02019.

I have heard so far that bladespark and carenejeans have potentially volunteered for December's Write Every Day post. If one of you particularly wants it, we'll be more than happy to give it to you, or if one of you would be really happy to give it to the other, that can be done, too.

Outside of writing today, there wasn't a whole lot of anything exciting, which was good, because all the things that had the potential to get exciting would have done so in a terrible, horrible, not good, very bad, way. So now it's the weekend, and that's usually the time where I end up catching up on podcasts, because that's when I have the time for uninterrupted audio streams.

In writing, today I put more material toward another Grief post, and fleshed out some more of a sequel project, and worked a little on the backburnered project, so it was productive all around. Somewhere in there, things are going to be done, right?

Here's the tally so far:

( Rally-ho! )

Greetings! This is the Write Every Day Check-In Post for 20 November 02019.

Holy fork, we're two-thirds of the way through the month already! For the NaNovelists, this seems like the point in time where the panic might start to set in. Especially if you're in the States, where the November holiday is coming up in eight days and there may not be quite as much time to do anything regarding writing with the preparation and the feasting.

Writing-wise, for today, I finished the first chapter of the songfic. As promised, someone gets kicked in a sensitive area. And in chapter two, we learn that the assumptions made up to this point are not actually true. That's good in some ways, although our protagonist won't be getting back what they've lost. That's also bad, however, because it means someone thought defeated is definitely not, and will soon reintroduce themselves to restore a reign of terror.

I also put up a new post in Grief-giving, because there's nothing like having a society that's supposed to work one way not actually work that way at all. Joy for everybody!

Here's the tally so far:

( Rally-ho! )

Greetings! This is the Write Every Day Check-In Post for 18 November 02019.

Outside of writing, today was pretty boring, honestly. And that's a good thing, because not having a large amount of weird happening the day after convention is a good thing to happen.

In writing, on the other hand, I crafted and posted a fix-it work after getting caught up on Miraculous Ladybug canon this morning, because I had an adverse reaction to certain parts of how that canon went down. And then a wee troll-ling came along in their anonymous garb and proceeded to attempt to wow me with their insistence that canon completely foreshadowed the thing, it's the logical solution, and I was very clearly wrong to attempt to fix it.

Unsurprisingly, it didn't stick. So they got an explanation that they were in the wrong space for what they were saying and some suggestions about what they could do. They flounced, not particularly enjoying being condescended to and seen as a cute novelty. So yay, another thing on the Fic Writer's Achievement List, got trolled by a nonny.

I also did work on the backburnerned project and some of the new songfic, where someone is definitely getting kicked somewhere sensitive before the chapter is out.

Here's the tally so far:

( Rally-ho! )

Greetings! This is the Write Every Day Check-In Post for 16 November 02019.

I took the bus up a county today to go to convention today. This is the convention I look forward to for getting those good fannish itches scratched in conversation with other people, in listening to panelists, and in participating in the hallway track (which is always the best part of any convention, especially when you get the right people together). Tomorrow looks to be much of the same, which is excellent.

In writing, because the space in which the convention is held is not one that I get reliable signal in, I ended up doing a significant amount of writing (in addition to the panels I was listening to or in between while I was writing.) I found the ending to the last assignment that wasn't in draft, yay, and then added significant material to the backburnered project, and finished out a post for the queue of the Giving of Grief, since I didn't need the source material to finish that post and put it in the queue.

And then an exchange archive opened, and there were things to read, and there will probably be some amount of queueing those up for when I'm in a bandwidth-deficient zone so that I can work through that archive in a timely manner. I also had a fast response to the work from the intended recipient, who enjoyed it. So much yay all around. (And the person who wrote for me, whomever they are, said that I gave them a good prompt. In return, they gave me a good work.)

Here's the tally so far:

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Greetings! This is the Write Every Day Check-In Post for 14 November 02019.

Today I got to check off another couple items on the List of Infamy with regard to my profession, which I believe advances me further toward the goal of being a Real Librarian (as opposed to one who has not yet seen enough of the underside of the public to be thought of as Real, which is a terrible metric to measure anyone's customer service bona fides with.) There are some poor life decisions that people make, and sometimes those decisions get made in public around us and we deal with the consequences of those decisions. Which is to say, if you leave behind proof that you are doing illegal things in the library, you probably should just count it as lost rather than trying to retrieve it from the desk staff, hoping they won't recognize it for what it is.

Writing today wasn't stalled so much as it was me having to spend a lot of time doing other things, but, having not learned my lesson about it the last time, I wrote the first six sentences of what will be songfic number two so I had something to show off at St. Hap's. In theory, this should be an easier thing, because I'm working off song prompts instead of fic prompts, right? (HAAAAA. Tell that to the 18k of not-lyric that came from the first songfic and how long it took to get done.) Thre's an ending to the fic I found the plot for yesterday lurking out there somewhere, but I don't have it now, so I'm going to go work on other things and wait for it to arrive. After I get done with the other weekly project. And possibly stuff some food in my face, because tonight was a late night for me, and I have yet to give myself a substantive dinner before bed.

Here's the tally so far:

( Rally-ho! )

Greetings! This is the Write Every Day Check-In Post for 12 November 02019.

Sometimes I think of the adage "Write what you know," which is sometimes a thing that I say when people talk about putting into stories things that they are either interested in or have experienced in their lives. Like many adages, if you only followed it, we'd end up having a lot fewer stories. At the same time, we could stand to have fewer stories of people appropriating or caricaturing the lived experiences of others. So, maybe "Write what you know and stay in your lane" is more the thing being offered. Except that sometimes, with research and care and sensitivity reading and a lot of things designed to make things not appropriative, exploitative or otherwise terrible, it's okay to have a story written that's outside of your lane. But there's still a lot more that can be done to bring and otherwise promote people writing their own voices before we think about stories that have done their research and gotten things put together and can do well.

The reason his comes to mind is that in today's writing material, I am about to include a family story. It's not something that I've experienced personally, thankfully, as it's not a completely pleasant story. But that also complicates the question of writing what you know. It's something in the family, told as a funny story or two, and it's going to be really useful in not only adding words but helping metaphorically explain something to someone who's having a bad day and not feeling all that great about themselves.

I also sketched out the possibility of another songfic, based on the potential implications of new canon, but assignments come first-ish, so maybe when there's enough of a cushion of words to feel like I can divert my attention for a bit, I'll think about that one. Maybe after the other fic that's been patiently waiting for me to get on with it, as that one is going to be much more comedic.

Plot bunnies breed if you're not looking at them and trying to get them closer to completion.

How are things going for all of you?

Here's the tally so far:

( Rally-ho! )