The Blog to Nowhere

- I didn't have to go into work today, earned day off, but if I had, I totally would have dressed up. A lot of my Doctor Who cosplays don't look like costumes, so I could not stand out but still be geeky. Not that I'm complaining that I had the day off. ;-) Instead, I got to visit my niece and saw her in the Yoda costume I made for her. So cute! I wish I had pictures to show you guys. Words cannot describe how adorable she is. Hopefully this is the first of many costumes she will wear in her lifetime. Might also give me an excuse to sew more. Baby sized costumes are much easier to make than adult sized costumes, at least for a novice sewer like me.

- I will be attending a Halloween party tomorrow. I decided to go with my Melinda May costume from the comic book expo this year. It's comfy and has very few accessories. I don't know if my friends watch Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., so I may have to explain my costume, but that's kind of the norm with my friends. I suppose I will settle for generic ass kicking super spy if no one gets it.

- I'm slowly assembling a Twelfth Doctor cosplay. I don't know why I need another Doctor Who costume, but I just couldn't help myself. I'm loving Twelve more and more as I watch more of his episodes. So I have a pair of screen accurate Ray-Ban Wayfarers on the way and I've purchased a knockoff of the t-shirt he wears in "The Magician's Apprentice" / "The Witch's Familiar" since the SA ones are all gone. I also bought a black sweater today that's a decent stand-in for the one Twelve wears in "Listen", "In the Forest of the Night" and other episodes. All I need to do now is cut a ton of holes in the front and hack away some of the collar and cuffs. My god, this is a weird sweater. Thing is, the sweater looks so nice on its own; I'd hate to ruin it. Maybe I need to buy another sweater and just use that one for cosplay purposes.

Of course, what I really need is the coat. I looked at the Elope one, but it's unisex sizing, so that won't work for me. I've also looked at the options available through the usual cosplay sites and while you can tailor the product to your body measurements, I'm not really feeling it. The one I'm currently eyeing is through a website that does James Bond suits. Yeah, it's a weird place to get a Doctor Who item, but the reviews are good for their products and the coat is actually cheaper than the cosplay sites, which is a huge plus. I have some time to decide. I'm secretly hoping the Canadian dollar will get better, but I don't see that happening any time soon.

- Supergirl premiered this week. I watched the pilot months ago, so next week will prove whether this show is another worthy entry into the DC television verse. It's produced by the same guys who do Arrow and The Flash, so I have faith that they won't screw it up. Even if the beginning is a bit rocky, that's okay. The Flash was the exact same. It started out okay and it was amazing by the end of the first season.

- Oh, and I finally joined who_contest. I haven't been able to write much lately, so hopefully writing some drabbles will help with the creativity.

Love'em? Hate'em? I started writing a fic with the setting in Scotland and suddenly all the Scottish characters are using "ye" and "dinnae" and so on. I'm the author and even I'm finding it annoying. Sure, you want to highlight that this character has an accent, but do you really need to? Is saying, "He spoke with a heavy Scottish accent" enough?

Or do you stop noticing after awhile? I'm trying to get through the Outlander series and one of the main characters is Scottish. There are "ye"s and "dinnae"s aplenty, but I'm not rolling my eyes every time the character speaks. Maybe it's different when you're the reader. You don't have to think long and hard about the character's dialogue; you just read it as part of the story and move on to the next plot point.

If you know the story is set in a certain place, then you don't need to bring attention to the fact that the people talk differently, right?

Guh, I miss writing while at work. It's not that I'm busy all the time now but there's just so many people popping in and out of my cubicle to drop stuff off that I'm paranoid someone might catch me. I know I'm not doing anything indecent, but I have this weird thing about people being around when I'm writing. I need to be completely isolated or the words don't come. Seems kind of counter-intuitive, me writing in a place where there are tons of people around and me needing complete isolation to write, but I got so used to writing at my work computer. It feels weird not be writing. I've barely written anything in two weeks.

And I have a couple of fic ideas kicking around. I hate not being able to commit any of them to paper, so to speak. I need to get used to writing from my home computer again.

Oh, and a random thought about point of view. Maybe the other writers out there want to chime in on this. So, I pretty much write third person limited. I was reading this book the other day and I was totally caught off guard when the author suddenly jumped between points of views of two characters in one scene. I mean, there's nothing wrong with third person omniscient, but it felt kind of lazy to me. But is it lazy? Is third person omniscient, say, more revealing? You can have two opposing view points at once, get more info out, and there's no need to have a break in the narrative to switch characters. I'm tempted to write something with third person omniscient, but I'm finding it hard getting past the idea that I can have more than one view point in one paragraph. It feels, I don't know, wrong somehow.

Being uncreative sucks. But the new TV season is starting soon. Yay, new episodes to watch!

[Error: unknown template qotd]
I write it. Not sure if I "love" it. I certainly don't hate it. It's an outlet for me mostly. I love to write but I'm too damn lazy to come up with an original world to write in. So, fanfic is a nice middle ground. Fully formed characters running around in worlds I enjoy already. I guess it's sort of a necessity then. I always try to get away with writing at work. It helps the day to go by faster. :-)

As for reading it, hey, that's fun, too. People are always coming up with stories that can't be explored or don't get explored in the source material. That's the cool thing about fanfic. It's a forum. People can write whatever they want.

I really don't get the professional authors who say, "Hey, don't write fanfic set in my fandom!" If no one is profiting from it, then what's the harm? But that's just me.

I also considered "Or How I Shot Past 50,000 Words While Waiting to Watch Doctor Who".

Seriously, why am I not watching it yet?!

So yeah, I'm done. 53,415 words in total. My neck hurts and my fingers are cold.

But I have a novel! A very crappy novel that totally wanders in the middle because I had no idea what I was writing, but a novel nonetheless. My first year of NaNoWriMo and I made it! Well ahead of schedule, too. That I didn't do on purpose. I just really got into a groove and I just kept going. It was kind of fun, just writing. No thinking whether what you're writing is crap, no second guessing yourself, no going back to edit. I'll have to do that next, editing, but I might wait a few days. I need to regain my sanity first. ;-)

(I need more writing related icons)

Halfway, baby! *does dance of joy*

That's 25,000 words in eight days. I'm way ahead of the curve, but that's nothing to brag about. There is a guy in my region that did 25,000 words in just four days, according to the posting board. He either has a very good story or he has a lot of time on his hands.

But I think I've hit the point where I'm starting to run out of story. I only plotted, like, a third of the plot before I started writing and I'm well past that point. Now I'm in the middle section and I have no idea where the story is headed. I just keep writing, throwing in details that may or may not be useful later on. This so me writing by the seat of my pants. I have a vague idea for an ending, but how do you get there when you don't know what's in-between? I guess I'll just keep writing and maybe throw in some unnecessary flashbacks if I'm reaching the back stretch too soon.

Oh, and now I can take the 15th off to watch Doctor Who and Top Gear. Why, BBC, does both shows have to come back on the same night?

And kind of off topic, but a year ago today I bought my Xbox 360. It was the main reason I didn't do NaNoWriMo last year. I got sucked in to playing Mass Effect every free hour I had. Good thing its sequel isn't out until January or I would have been doomed writing-wise this year.

I need some chocolate now...

So I actually decided to do NaNoWriMo this year. I was all ready to start writing a second past midnight, but I got tired so I didn't start writing until I got up this morning. Thank goodness for Daylight Savings, is all I have to say. It felt like it was later in the day when it actually wasn't.

After a day of writing, with some time slacking off in the middle because, hey, it wouldn't be writing without some procrastination, I have enough words to cover my quota for today and tomorrow. I expect my lead will start to lag behind once I head into work. I know I said I plan to write at work, but it all depends on my work load is and how I'm feeling. If I'm not feeling motivated, I don't see much getting done. But we'll see. I don't want to abandon this.

I foresee myself becoming even more of a hermit as the month goes on. I like getting things done and not meeting my daily quote of 1667 words will probably drive me insane. But can I really say to my friends, "Don't bug me! I'm writing a novel!"? I can't spend every minute of my free time writing. That would probably drive me nuts, too. And Doctor Who is back on the 15th! That's distracting, too.

I'll get down a routine or something. Who needs to interact with the real world anyway? It's getting cold out.

Work politics make me weary. I'd rather just keep my head down and not say anything. I'm happy with having someone give me a pile of work and saying, "This needs to be done." That's my role anyway. Administrative assistant. I assist. When people start to argue about their roles and nothing gets done, I so do not want to be around to hear it. It just brings down the rest of the team, you know? Sigh. Anyway, I won't ramble at length about the work situation. I'm just happy I can go home at the end of the day and beat up fake virtual people on the Xbox.

So, random writing thought to spice up this entry. I just started reading Death's Daughter by Amber Benson and it's okay so far. I read the Ghosts of Albion stuff she co-wrote with Christopher Golden, but since she did co-write it, it's hard to tell who wrote what. Anyway, Death's Daughter is her first solo novel and I was kind of disappointed to see that it's written in the first person. I don't know why, but I equate first person POV with lazy writing. That doesn't mean I can't enjoy a book written in the first person. I'm in the middle of The Dresden Files series and I have no problems with Harry narrating everything to me. I just feel like first person is the easy way out. Since you're in the character's head, everything is laid out for you; every thought the character has, you see it and feel it. It's hard to be subtle when it's all right there, flashing in your face like a neon sign. But that's just me.

I'm not sure if I'll make it to the end of Death's Daughter. It's not very engaging at the moment. Though, it's better than reality at the moment...

I just finished my first epic fic. Over 43,000 words. *falls over, amazed* I have never written anything that long before, so this is a milestone for me. 76 pages!

It looks like I started this thing back in December, so maybe three months total to finish this first draft. I'm surprised I managed to finish at all. I rarely complete fics. I can get started easily enough, but I always run out of steam before the end. Or I abandon a fic, leave it alone for a long time, and then I come back and finish it very crappily. This one though...

I started a "write a little something every day" project around the time of NaNoWriMo last year. I had already started a fic so I figured it would be easier just to keep working on it than start a new project for NaNo. I tried to work on it every day but not surprisingly I ended up abandoning it. But I liked the idea of writing something every day, even if it was just a sentence or two. Maybe that's how I actually finished this epic. I worked on it every day or almost every day, time permitting. But I found it became so consuming. I got obsessed with trying to write something every day. Pretty soon I found it didn't want to do anything else but write on the weekends. Going out sounded like a chore, playing video games fell by the wayside, and I started reading less. In a way, I'm glad the majority of the work is done. This fic was turning me into a social hermit.

But clearly, it helps to have a goal and maybe that is what has been lacking for me. I just write by the seat of my pants most of the times. Reminds me of the BSG writers but that's neither here nor there... I still need to read it over, do some edits, and then hand it off to a willing beta, but right now it's a nice feeling to be done.

So how did everyone's NaNoWriMo or variations thereof go? Any goals met? Exceed? Missed horribly?

I do believe I fall into the last category. I did manage to write a little every day, but the operative word there is "little". I was doing perfectly well until I bought the Xbox 360. When it came to deciding which I would rather do on a weekend - write or blow away aliens in Mass Effect - Mass Effect always won out, probably because it's so damn addictive. It suffers from just-one-more-mission-and-then-I'll-totally-do-something-else-itis. But hey, my brother-in-law works for BioWare, maker of the game, so it was like I was supporting him in a way. ;-)

Even with setting a tiny goal like mine, there's horrible pressure to actually meet it. I always felt bad when all I managed was a sentence or two, but I really, I only had myself to blame. I think if I do a proper NaNoWriMo next year, I'll be prepared, set strict goals, and lock up the Xbox for the month.