"I'm not dead yet....I'm feeling much better!..."

Dear Blog, I’ve missed you. I know it may not -seem- like it as I haven’t been here in…*checks her calendar* about a year, but I truly have. I didn’t do a post NaNo wrap up last year because….oh hells, bells. I don’t even remember why, but I’m sorry for it. This year tho’, went much better. More on that in a bit. And since then, well a lot of my online life slid by the wayside. I wish I had a better reason; I.e. I was out having a real life, but alas…no such luck. What I’ve had instead was a months long (and currently ongoing) cyber exile. No ‘net at my house anymore, as it turns out after a bit of digging around, not a particularly good replacement option unless I a) magically fall into a pile of money or b) move, which would pretty much require the assistance if point A, come to think of it. The last few months I’ve done varying degrees (and had varying degrees of success with) ‘netting via my cell phone, but I don’t know if you’ve ever had the delightfully placid & fun filled occasion to deal with the world three slippery -in & back out again whether you want it to be or not-never hitting the right button on the frakkin’ touchscreen- inches before but it’s not the easiest way to handle things. And further to this, if you have another option short of running to the actual, physical home of the site you’re looking for, snapping Polaroids of their screens, running home, compiling your response & running back again: Don’t. It’s fine for the odd check of a movie time or looking something up in a pinch, but as a steady way to deal with your virtual life…..*shudders & groans*

Still, my game & my friends & had to have some semblance of online presence for NaNo so here I am, slowly but steadily working one sphere back into the fold of my day after another. Yes, I‘ll likely do a lot of blogging via typing it up on the laptop, transferring it over to the phone & posting from there, but…You’re probably worth it ;)

So this year’s NaNo went great! It was, dare I say (tho’ never out loud until I was finished lest I completely jinx myself) the smoothest I’ve ever had. I did win (topping out at 52,998, tyvm) & pulled out what I think could be a completely workable story. I had one character completely launch himself into the middle of a scene he was supposed to be just above ‘scenery’ for, so that set me back a bit while I worked around it a while to find a way to redo the exchange that had been planned. But, to his mobile scenery turned promising secondary char credit, he also dug me back out of that hole. He quite conveniently behaved like a complete jerk two scenes later & gracefully stepped out of the rest of the story till the epilogue (woohoo!) at which time, since he was so helpful, eventually, I squared things with him & my Main char & all is right in their world.

I think the bit I was most jazzed about was this; I wrote every single day. No biiig leads like I’d occasionally gotten in the past, but also, no giant stalls either (suck it, Week Two!). It was reasonably awesome, I’d start -for whatever reason- about 10pm every night (only skipping off for Thanksgiving itself & even then just because for me it had been a ridiculously long day at that point & my brain had melted) & wrote just about the 1667 goal every night before midnight. As pe3r my NaNo usual, I made a new friend & learned something new about writing. This year’s lesson; The Fine Art of Writing Around the Edges. When I got stuck, instead of just stalling out, I’d hop to a different char or just work on some random, incidental corner of the scene I was stuck in, writing away from the main action & just moving around till I became unstuck. The lengthy list of things a bartender’d found on the floor after closing, the collected bits & bobs of a workroom table, a bit o mental venting over the inherent jerkiness of a certain bit of mobile scenery…whatever just to keep the words going. Wildly simple concept, I realize, but I hadn’t been able to do it before. I’d get stuck & just…spin my wheels in that spot. Writing around the edges is much better & if you’ve never tried it, do so next time you’re stuck on something. It’ll keep the story moving & sometimes you can toss out some pretty great stuff.

I’ve been thinking, tech imposed hiatus aside, I’ve had this blog a while now & it might just be time for a li’l updating. No set plans, yet, but I might (given enough actual computer time in the near future) change around the look and/or the layout some. I’m in the mood for new things. Beyond that, I’d like to start getting back in to regular posting, maybe make up some more recurring features. I’d ask you, dear blogosphere, what you’d like to see; current reading list/reviews, excerpts, tips, prompts, links, just my brain dribbling out here on the page…er, screen a bit more often, but you have (quite sensibly) wandered off, my beloved what? 3 readers, lol. That’s ok, tho’. Between rewrites on my NaNo; I’ve already spellchecked, did chapter breaks & begun outlining what’s currently where & what got cut for time or could do with some filling out, etc., & posting more often I hope I can keep writing daily. Why is it good habits are so hard to keep & bad habits are so hard to lose?? I’d like to get this notion started before the new year, hence my not so brief pop in today, because I know from past experience that my NaNo high (& ambition) fade all too quickly. A well intentioned ‘oh, it’s cool. I’m just gonna let it sit till after Christmas, then see what I can do with it’ never seems to pan out once the tinsel & cookies disappear. That, I suppose is my resolution this year, to keep a daily writing regime up of some sort. Either here or working on my current (or past, or -dare I say- maybe even NEW stories)…just something beyond game writing. Game stuff is a fairly regular gig & I do love my chars (I’ve been writing Lolly for more than FIVE years now!), but at the end of the day, they’re not mine. And I’ll never be able to use them as mine. And I think, should I manage to keep to my big ideas possibly scrape up a li’l more courage, I might like to actually use my own writing for something out there in the world someday.

And finally, for today at least, I’m finding myself with a bit of a quandary. I think I might have to pack away all my Neil for a bit, wrap my beloved Hitchhikers' Guide in my towel, banish my Blackadder, hide all the Harry under the nearest available invisibility cloak. I’d leave all the Alan Moore tho’ because he’s both remarkably brilliant, and just a little bit scary ;). Pack all my Whoniverse…my Who…my Queen…my Stones…my…. Up in the TARDIS & send it all off on its own adventure. Maybe. Just for a little while.

My internal monologue, that little voice that tells you ‘hey, that’s a cool line, I should use that somewhere’ or ‘don’t forget to get X at the store’, ‘ugh…do I really -have- to get up’ and the like has started to develop a British accent.
In case you don’t know, I live in A Hole In The Cornfields, America. We are, for the most part, not a very British bunch really. And yet…lol, there it is. Not saying it’s a bad thing, just odd, rather like a pink towel instead of a blue one. And no, I will not sample it here as I’ never said it was a -good- accent.

So there’s me. How’re things with you? Read anything good lately? Write anything good lately? Heck, write anything horrid lately?

Currently reading: And Another Thing...
Just (re)read: Good Omens