foxinthestars

Yeah, it's not going very well at this point, and I'm feeling lethargic enough that I don't expect more great strides tonight... I'm trying to keep it in perspective, though: I would be pretty okay with not getting to 50k (especially if the badge is as ugly as last year's); I would be much less okay with dropping out completely.

It was odd at the Unitarians today; I led the adult forum (like secular Sunday school), and I thought I had this great topic, we'd all tell the group about novels we liked and talk about novels and prose fiction and their role in our lives and society. Four other people showed up besides me --- and none of them read novels hardly at all, and they got confused as to whether classics and historical fiction counted or not. Maybe I'm just too wrapped up in my own POV; these are mostly very smart people but I was like "huh?" It's like the time another of the Unitarians asked me (as best I can even understand it) if anime and manga entailed a belief system, and I had to get over the wtf before I could even answer that. I don't know where people get some of this stuff...

I've been neglectful. Yesterday I actually didn't write at all, and I only got in about a thousand words today, so I'm falling behind. I'm finding myself with a fairly unconcerned attitude --- or you could say, a temptation to blow the whole thing off --- which doesn't bode well for success, but bodes better for long-term function than freaking out about "I'm gonna fail!"

In flyfall I got Merielle on camera for only the second time ever in my fanfic and it actually turned out kind of cute (I have actually been wanting a cute Merielle and Treize scene and still intend to make a Yuletide request for one, but here it just kind of happened). It still touches the worry about boring digressions, but again, this is not the time to worry about that, and in other ways I like it a lot. (It helps this evening that I gave myself permission to let Treize fall out of full-on broken heart mode, realizing it might be good preparation when the whole thing comes back to bite him hard later on...)

If I can find the time, tho, I am really tempted to just binge the rest of Natsume Yuujinchou so I'll at least have sufficient data as it attempts to invade my brain...

And the time change isn't throwing me too badly, but yeah, it feels like 1 am now... (Although maybe just writing a character drifting off to sleep doesn't help either. ^o~ )

I thought I was going to fall further behind today, but I got going and actually made up some of my shortfall, so I'm happy. ^_^

Worked more on flyfall today and am moving forward slowly but surely. At this point I'm writing down what I "see" happening, for lack of a better plan, but I am a bit unsure of it because it's... Well, it's like that moment in Rurouni Kenshin when Kaoru and Yahiko are looking for Kenshin and start chasing Aoshi, and Misao is looking for Aoshi is chasing Kenshin, and they pass each other in the street and don't notice (which I'm not criticizing, BTW, especially with the music cue I've always thought that was a legitimately powerful moment), but it's that kind of thing only it goes on for thousands of words and I hope it won't just be agonizing for a reader. But even so, this isn't time to worry about that stuff.

I also started the Natsume Yuujinchou thing over from the beginning, and it's taking on a new shape I didn't quite expect, but it remains interesting and sometimes comes together in ways that just feel right, and now I've got my canon-compliance issues, well, as taken care of as they're going to be (since I haven't watched the whole series yet, have actually only got through season 1, it's kind of a leap of faith or a jumping of the gun, whichever way you want to look at it).

But yeah, earlier today I was thinking "oh, maybe this isn't my year to do it," but the way today ended up, it still could be.

I am keeping my guard up if it's not, tho, against the perverse disincentive of "oh, I'm not going to win Nano now, so what's the point of writing today?" The point of writing is the writing, and as sparkly as Nano is, such things can get in the way of the real point if you're not careful.

I'm on schedule again today, although I had a bit of a rough time. I did a little re-watching re: my Natsume Yuujincho 'fic and discovered how much of the relevant material I had managed to forget; on the canon-compliance/"fact"-checking front, what I wrote yesterday and this morning is a mess. Now, my natural/emotional tendency at this point is unfortunately to become so embarrassed I don't even want to look at the thing anymore, but my logical brain is the good guy this time and says that the run I took at it produced some interesting material and the process of reconciling it could get me something better than I would have gotten if I'd had my ducks in a row from the start and that I might even have picked the perfect point to go correct myself. However, a revision process like that does not add word-count as quickly as what I needed, so I ended up adding a big pad of line breaks and making quota working on flyfall (my nickname for "flyingpast*fallingtoward"), but then, that might be a good thing, too... If I can make quota and get some free time, I can retool the other bit until I'm ready to move forward on it.

I am a little worried about my chances of winning this year, because there's like no honeymoon this time; it's feeling like a slog with shaky faith right from the start. But I'm not ready to give up yet, and I've got this far at least.


ETA: Forgot to mention, this morning I got my first review on one of my Allison & Lillia 'fics (Setting Fractures); as usual, I was pathetically intimidated by it, but when I actually clicked on it, it turned out to be a nice positive one. I was particularly struck that the person noted my departure from the canon tone and liked it.

Little after-midnight headstart...



(I'm using the same progress bar generator as last year, BTW.)