current songs meme

I suppose you could say luvmoose tagged me with this.

7 Favorite songs of the moment:

"Trapeze Swinger" by Iron & Wine -- this came to me via a mix CDs from Kate P., and I'm finding myself listening to it over and over.
"Sacrifice" by Christophe Beck -- from the Buffy episode "The Gift", it's on the Buffy musical soundtrack and just a lovely haunting piece.
"Speed of Sound" by Coldplay -- I have to stop the radio whenever it falls on a station playing this song. I've yet to buy an album by this band, but I think this one may be in my future.
"This Love" by Maroon 5 -- Fabulous radio sing-along. I know it's not new, but I've been hearing it a lot lately.
"Look What You've Done" by Jet -- I like what Steve said about this song the other day: "...can there be a guiltier pleasure than [this]? It's so obvious! It sounds so much like the Beatles that it sounds like Oasis!" Yet I agree, I love it anyway.
"Auron's Theme" from the Final Fantasy X soundtrack -- this is really a stand-in for all the FF music I've been listening to lately. iTunes made a ton of it available about a month ago, and I fear that my credit card may catch fire if I'm not careful...

For whatever reason, mellowish background music has been the order of the day at home in recent weeks. Maybe because I'm finding work, life, etc. all so busy. Then I seek out raucus stuff on the radio. It all balances out in the end, I suppose.

hello world

Writing about writing, how meta is that? But I do feel like I want to have a place where I can puzzle things out, write notes about stories to myself and others, and have a way to communicate with other authors.

"A Guardian's Legacy" is taking up so many of my cycles right now. Whenever my brain has some downtime, and even at times when it should be thinking about other things, I find myself going back to it, writing new sections in my head or fixing up parts that are already finished. I'm an unrepentant editor, constantly tweaking and futzing with my words. I never really feel like anything I write is ever really done, but at some point I just have to let it go. That's why I finally started posting these fanfics. I've been writing such stories in my head for years, but something about Spira and its inhabitants, especially Auron, Paine, and Nooj, captured my imagination and wouldn't let it go. So I wrote "Chasing My Past" down (well, typed it up, but you know what I mean), the first time I'd ever actually written a fanfic, and the first actual complete work of fiction I'd written in a decade and a half. Then I moved on to AGL, and it has consumed my life ever since.

Actually getting up the nerve to start posting the stories was something else altogether. I wrote these tales for myself -- it was the only way to get them out of my head, and to a certain extent I'm writing stories that I would like to read if other people had written them. But what if other people read them and didn't like them? Or, perhaps even worse, what if a few people read them and shrugged, and no one else even bothered? It took me literally months to post my Paine story. Partly, I just told myself it wasn't ready. But really, I wasn't ready. Eventually I just took a deep breath and did it. And I'm glad I did.

I don't know if I'll ever write any other fanfic after I've finished AGL. I have thoughts about a story that would take place between "Chasing My Past" and the Lissira half of AGL, but it's not fully formed and I'm unsure whether I can get it beyond the idea stage. I'm great at coming up with story outlines, but filling in the blanks has always been difficult for me. Plus, it really does take up a lot of time and mental energy. So much of my spare time is going into writing lately: television goes unwatched, books go unread, other games go unplayed (I've been stalled on Xenosaga for ages), my husband goes un-talked with. There's plenty of time to think about that, though, because AGL is nowhere near done -- I have plenty of Auron's story left to tell, and of Liss's as well, though I'm not quite as certain where her tale is going.

As with everything I write, I'm not quite sure where to end this. (Except for AGL; the end of that is essentially written, and has been for months. Although we'll see whether that's where the story actually takes me -- I've already made several unexpected turns while writing it. Auron's a pretty strong-willed guy, after all; I can't always tell him where to go.) So let's just stop it here for this time.