Those occasional nights when you just can't bring yourself to go to sleep

So, admittedly, I don't do this often. And I rarely pull proper all-nighters. Normally I have to sleep for a little bit, even just an hour or two, or I explode.

And I'm so frickin close to exploding right now! I mean ohmygodChimera. I mean, oh my god, Chimera was probably the best episode of Sanctuary I have ever seen.


I say "probably" because I'm holding out hope, especially with that last scene, for the two of them getting together in this season. I mean, what with whatever government agency it is with a stupid acronym messing up the relationship from Tesla's side, it's not like it'll be drama-free. I mean, it's Teslen, it's not like it would ever be drama-free.


I'm shaking right now from having watched that episode just now. And that was catching up on two really amazing episodes of Fringe. I was worried that Chimera wouldn't be able to compete with their messing with time and reality. So much for that!


Okay. Now, to channel this wonderful spastic energy into something productive. Or just reading Teslen fics. Which is productive..... in terms of my sanity!

Haha! Yay!

If you haven't figured it out by now, go watch Chimera this instant. And if you want to especially appreciate it, watch it in the middle of the night so you get extra jitters.

Sequels

Normally, I try to stay away from sequels. Mostly because real sequels are just cop-outs. They're generally just throwing new drama into a plot that's already been tied up with an elaborate bow. So the sequel becomes like confetti on top of the bow, which just makes it look excessive, or a second bow on top of the bow, which just makes the whole thing look stupid.

But if you're tired of metaphors, I'll stop talking about bows. The point I'm trying to make is that good sequels shouldn't really be called 'sequels' at all. They're the kind where the original story isn't entirely tied up, and you need more story to resolve the conflict. Those are the kinds of sequels I like, and there are often multiples of that kind of sequel. Those kinds of sequels make up trilogies and quartets.

Why am I talking about sequels all of a sudden? I'm working on a sequel to The End... as I use this to procrastinate from actually writing it. (Ironic, really. I started this blog to talk about writing, and it's ended up as somewhere I can procrastinate from writing by talking about it. I never think to post here when I'm not writing....) And some of the time, this sequel is being stupid and obnoxious. Actually, all of the time, so far, this sequel is being stupid and obnoxious. But if/when I finish it, it will resolve that ambiguous ending for you.

I mean, if you want the ending resolved for you at all. I wouldn't.

The wonders of 250 gigs...

That's how much memory I have on my hard drive. Since the most of what I do is word processing and internet browsing (not that this poorly tricked-out netbook can handle much more), I still have like 90 gigs of free space, even though I don't think I've deleted a single thing since I got this computer two years ago.


(Useless Update: I have 199 files in my recycle bin. I'm pretty sure 175 of them are music files which somehow imported into iTunes twice.)

Returning to the point, however, requires me to explain a few things. For the first four years of writing fanfiction, all my work lived on a 1 gig flash drive. This meant: 1) I actually took the time to properly back up my things 2) When I was done with a story, I would toss it away on the backup drive and promptly forget about it 3) I started freaking out whenever my flash drive got close to full, because that meant I would have to not carry around one of the stories that my life depended on, and 4) I thought 1 gig was a lot of memory. Granted, technology changes so quickly that this was back when external backup drives were 80 gigs and the size of a small novel.

However, my point here is that because of that kind of disturbing practice of getting rid of all my stories in some obscure place where it wasn't easy for me to find them again on a whim, I never really went back to old stories, at least not unless I was willing to devote a bunch of time into digging them out. Now, however, because I never delete anything, I spent a bunch of time re-reading my semi-recent stuff.


Another advantage -- almost entirely for you readers -- is that re-reading my semi-recent stuff inspires me to finish it, or to realise that I had a fanfic sitting on my computer finished but not entirely good enough for publishing, that on re-reading I decide, screw it, this is going on the internet. Because if I was brave enough to post the awfulness that was Letters to No-One back when I was twelve, I can bloody well publish some of my lesser works now.

In conclusion, I have posted a new fanfic. No, it's not my best. Yes, I am stupid for leaving it on my computer for so long without publishing it. I'm sorry. It's okay; I'll make it up to you by returning to fanfiction for a while. Fanfiction is far more comforting than original stuff, because at least fandoms come with pre-made characters.

The Worst Month in the Best Possible Way: November

Goddess, I hate November. Especially since I've jumped on the crazy NaNoWriMo bandwagon, it's probably the busiest month of all twelve. Also, probably because it's already the busiest time of my year, I come up with tons of inspiration for stories and interest in keeping up with my TV shows and the desire to catch up on tons of great shippy fanfiction that I follow inconsistently at other times of the year. Actually, all of that is probably just my procrastination talking. Still, why couldn't November, like, be a bunch of months? Why couldn't the play happen in November, and NaNoWriMo in December? And all this inspiration for stories that aren't my NaNoNovel come to me in that awkward time after the play, but before the musical? WHY MUST EVERYTHING HAPPEN ALL AT ONCE?

Anyway, enough of this rant. I have to get back to procrastinating, after all. Heaven knows I wouldn't want to procrastinate my procrastinating by talking about it. So, instead, I'll avoid getting to a reasonable wordcount for NaNoWriMo for tonight and instead go read some of my Teslen fiction. Because everyone loves Teslen.

November is fast approaching

Wow. I can't believe it, but November is almost here. That is more than a little bit terrifying. For me, November is going to be a particularly huge month this year. First of all, I have to get all of my application to Carleton by November 15th. Secondly, it's November, which means NaNoWriMo, of course! This year, I'm going to shoot for 75k, even though, yes, that is in fact fairly ridiculous. Last year, I got to 60k without too much overt effort. I scraped most of it, but I knew where I was going -- so it made it worth it, of course!

In preparation for November, I am going to read over Strange book 1, mostly (though of course I would never admit this :P) so that I can remember what my characters are like, and what plots I've already figured out. Anyway, I'll probably be posting here sporadically again while I'm procrastinating from writing in November!

NaNoWriMo

Yeah, so I've officially decided as of about thirty seconds ago that I'm going to do it again this year. I can totally get in the habit of writing 2k words per day, right? That's not a big deal, right? I mean at the rate it's getting worse (which it really isn't, I have to say), then school work isn't going to be anything of a problem. And even if the play is something like a problem (which I honestly doubt it will be because I managed around it last year and I didn't have any faith in myself from previous experience to count on), then I still have half a month to finish the 50k.

But really, apart from saying this is absolutely something I'm doing again, I wanted to talk a little bit about what I'm going to be doing. I'm pretty confident that I'll be writing the second part to Strange. (I have another post explaining what on earth that is.) I say that this counts because it'll eventually be its own book, even if I have already written over 100k words for the whole story. So, for those of you who know -- almost another quarter of the whole entire story will be out soon! :D

I found my college!

So, here's to hoping that in five years, I can look back at this post and say I knew where I was going all along. Of course, I'd actually need to get in for that to happen, but I can certainly assure you I know where I want to go as of right now.

The school I'm looking at is Carleton College. It's out in Minnesota, and I just visited it. It was the most beautiful campus I have ever seen, and it had such a wonderful vibe. As I described to my interviewer, I felt like I already fit in because the mannerisms of the people coming up and teasing our tour guide while she was leading us around were just like the ones my friends used. It has a trimester system rather than a semester system, which is good for me because it would allow me to focus on my classes so much more. Right now, for example, I'm taking so many, different classes that I get confused sometimes as to different things which are all going on in my brain at once. It's confusing to try to do so much at once. Trimesters would let me focus on a few things, and also possibly take more because on average students take 9 courses a year.

Plus, the weather was absolutely perfect when we visited. What better sign could there be? (And they certainly get snow!)