KJ

Normally I rather enjoy hot weather, but when 1. there's no possibility of escaping into a place with air conditioning like a mall or the movies and 2. the air quality outside is so bad that we can't open the windows in the evening when things cool down, it's really pretty terrible. Both of us are melting. I haven't seen the cat in hours. It's too hot to even heat up food in the microwave.

I'm glad today is a holiday, but if this continues into tomorrow I'm not sure how I will manage.

Welcome to the new reality I guess. It's not even fire season yet.

A concert week is not the best timing for an air quality emergency that I can think of.

Why, Tumblr, did you pick this night of all nights to be down? When I'm working late, and covering the desk, and finished all the work I had to do that could be done on the desk, and I'm supposed to be writing fic for a silly meme? And why did you decide to go down at the exact instant I had finished one prompt and was in the process of posting it?

Internet problems. :P

Looks like stupid Ed Lee won the stupid mayor's race. They're not officially calling it yet -- some absentee and provisional ballots left to count -- but he declared victory this afternoon. Dear San Francisco politicians: can we maybe get it together and run a smaller field next time? You do not all need to be mayor.

Work was stressful and annoying for reasons I'd rather not get into right now. Shoes keep dropping, but it never feels like the last one has fallen.

Mega Flare would be going well, but there's this one scene that I really hate, and I don't know how to fix it. I suppose I could cut it, but there's some important character interaction and canon crossing stuff. So I need to wrangle it into submission, somehow. I knew I should have put more effort into finding a beta.

Our water heater is leaking gas fumes, and last night I noticed that I was getting lightheaded when I sat at my desk for too long. T's upstairs trying to fix it right now, but he's not too hopeful.

At least there is new Top Chef tonight.

I am really, seriously craving a trip to Fandom Island. Anyone else want to come?

Dear November,

Good riddance. Don't let the door etc. Also, feel free to take all of 2009 with you.

No love,
Me

Okay, with that out of the way, let's see how we did.

Journaling goals:

1. Write and publish at least one unlocked post every day. - Missed this, but not by much; there was one day when I was sick and hating life and so didn't post publicly. (It was just whining, so you missed nothing.) I guess that's not so bad, but this is the first time that I've failed NaBloWriMo, so I'm kind of bummed.

2. A check-in post about writing progress counts as a post, but I can only use that as my sole post three days a week. I only resorted to this a couple of times, so I feel okay about that. Downside: I wrote so little that there wasn't much point in making writing progress posts.

3. At least four substantial posts per week. I'd have to go back and count, but I'm pretty sure I managed this one. So for posting goals, I think I can call this two for three.

Writing goals:

1. Write something every day. Hahahahahahaha. Ha. Ha. For the first half of the month, I blame being sick; for the second, I blame futzing with AO3.

2. Make progress on Aftermath. (Poor, poor Aftermath.) Some, almost all at the start of the month. Less than I wanted, though.

3. Finish at least two outstanding request fics, ideally more. This one, I did: I finished up two stories for the Alphabet meme. Both drabbles, true, but I completed them, and I think they both did prety well.

4. Post a completed story at least once per week. Nope. Once again, I blame the Cold of Doom - I missed in the second week of the month and pretty much gave up on this one.

So, overall I'm four for seven in terms of goals, which I suppose isn't too bad given that I basically lost two weeks. Lessons learned: sometimes I can write when I'm sick, but not always, and perhaps more importantly, I shouldn't let myself get discouraged when I set myself a goal and then miss a step almost right away. Maybe it was clear almost right away that I wasn't going to write a lot that first week and a half, but that's no excuse for having slacked off so much the rest of the month. Even with November as a semi-failure, I want to continue setting monthly goals and holding myself to them as best I can. It worked at the start of the year; it can work again.

So I was going back through my LJ archives, and I just noticed that it's been a year and a day since I posted Chapter Two of "Aftermath". Crikey! How did that happen?

I did complete a first draft awhile back, but it was in need of a lot of help -- it was more like a detailed outline than a real draft, and thank god for having a beta reader who was willing and able to tell me so -- and the prospect seemed daunting, so I kept setting it aside. Fortunately, a few weeks ago I got inspired to pick it up again, and I've been making good progress on it for the first time in ages. Including a little bit today, and a good discussion about my changes so far and my future intentions with said beta, which was nice and energizing. So maybe it won't take me another year to finish the story.

Sometimes I suspect what's blocking my writing in general is the feeling that I really ought to be finishing this fic rather than working on quicker and easier things. So I feel guilty for spending time on shorts, and don't give them the attention they deserve, and can't finish them, (or in some cases even get started), and so everything suffers. Also, this is the only multi-chapter story I've written alone since "Salvage"; every other larger effort since has been in collaboration with kunstarniki. And while I absolutely loved writing collaboratively, I wonder if I became too dependent on the feedback from my writing partner. I got used to the idea that someone would be taking a look at every scene I wrote and that I would have feedback within a day or two of sending it along. I'm not getting that with "Aftermath", and so I get tempted into working on shorts that I can finish more quickly (in theory anyway -- it took me *months* to get around to finishing "Simple", for example). Am I really admitting that I'm this much of a sucker for feedback? I guess I am.

I know this lack of time, inspiration, and motivation to write is a bug that's going around fandom, and this is probably just how it's manifested in me. Blah blah whine. If nothing else, making a public statement that I fully intend to keep this story going, and to finish sooner rather than later, might keep me on track to actually do it.

I have survived yet another concert weekend -- I love the Carmina Burana, it's one of the most fun pieces in the repertoire, but it's long and taxing. I have a love-hate relationship with it, really, largely because there's a good thirty-minute chunk in the middle during which the women don't sing a note, and that's a long time to just stand there.

(Stanford is getting a new music center, and the conductor told us on Friday that the choral area will have seating. That may be the best news I've heard all year.)

But anyway. I do love singing, and performing is a big part of that. But concert weekends are such a drain. I lose so much time to dress rehearsals the week before, and then of course the time spent at the concerts themselves, that it hardly feels like a weekend at all. And coming on the heels of the previous weekend, where I had to work on Saturday... let's just say I'm really glad for the upcoming holiday. Yay for three-day weekends, even though I could probably use more like four or five.

Also, because of the weird performance schedule this year, I have rehearsal tomorrow. Beethoven's Ninth! My classical music icon is finally appropriate!

One definite upside: Carmina is a crowd-pleaser. So we got a really big cheer at the end, especially on Friday. Very gratifying!

GO AWAY.

Really. It's time. We've had enough. You can stop now.

Speaking of "going away" and "about time"... Woo! Given a choice, I'd rather have seen him beaten for re-election, but this will do. I am so glad this odious little man is gone.