I spiffed up my layout, finally retiring my Season 2 Destroyer layout, but keeping my little Connor moods, 'cause he is a versatile guy, emotionally (yes, he is, don't argue). It's a work in progress. I'd still like to add some kind of graphic at the top, but who knows what, non-fannish, I imagine. Something to do with writing.

I am really tired today, and have been for several days. And not in that happy-but-exhausted way, but in that not-up-to-doing-anything, except-resting-my-head-in-my-arms-and-dozing kind of way. And I don't know why this should be. I'm not overextending myself. I am busy at work, but not buried. I have projects at home, but am not killing myself to complete them. I go to sleep at a normal hour and wake up at a reasonable one. I get some exercise, although it's always true I could do more than I do.

I just feel drained. And like, if something truly stressful did come down the pipe, I'd react badly. Maybe I just need to be at a low ebb for a while. It bristles against my natural tendency to get out there and "get things done." And it's kind of boring, resting all the time.

But...zzzz.....

But I figure, I have an excuse. I love to be spoiled on my b-day and I found one or two folks to oblige me. I'll get back on the slim and narrow next week...after Thanksgiving...after Christmas.

This is just a bad time of year in general, isn't it?

Thanks to all for the birthday greetings!

November is turning out to be a "take-stock" sort of month for me. Which makes sense. I finished a five-year-long writing project on the last day of October, and am only days away now from my birthday. Today marks the two-year anniversary of starting my present job. Pinned between those those events as I am, I feel take-stocky--cleaning the disaster zone that is my house after pouring most of my energy into writing and home improvement; organizing and filing away the piles of paper work that have just accumulated because I throw everything papery that is not an unpaid bill or obvious junk mail in a big pile; making a *budget* (eep).

And continuing the process of pulling together and collating all the ideas on my new story I've come up with in the last year.

I think the next step will be to pick a few of the ideas I like best, and just start writing. No outline, minimal quality control, no word count or deadline goals. And as soon as I run out of ideas, return to my giganamous idea font. And of course report in here that I am indeed doing that.

Getting there. Which is great for many reasons. Not the least of which is I can stop paying WW the big bucks to keep me on the slim and narrow. I will still go to the meetings to support my maintenance and the MasqMom, but won't have to pay. Yay.

Well, I am back to writing original fiction again. This week started out with me cleaning up some chapters of my old "93 novel"--Dis/inhibition, which was a good transitional task from the manic editing of the final episode of The Destroyer to the nebulous idea mass that is my new story.

In fact, after a couple days immersing myself in my old novel, I wondered if I'd get to the new story at all this week. My "plan" for the week had been simply to come up with some sort of plan with regards to the new story. The time away from it to finish TD has been good, it gave me a chance to mull over what I'd done in the last year and reflect on it without being too invested in what I had been doing with the story when I left off.

And in fact, there were times in the last month when I really started to have second thoughts about some of the choices I had made in the new novel. Characters I wasn't sure interested me all that much, story elements I wasn't sure interested me all that much.

And my interest is so damned important, I can't over-exaggerate how much. How many stories have I invested time in only to have it fizzle out mid-way because a major element in the story just *didn't* interest me? This is my fear, this is why, after a year, I still haven't started actually writing the thing. Because every damned time I start a new story, I get bored of what I'm doing long before finishing.

This is a danger in novel-length projects. You'd better be in it for the long haul, otherwise, it's a waste of time. And since I seem constitutionally incapable of writing shorter pieces, this is my dilemma.

Anyway, what I ended up doing this week was going back to the idea-gathering-sifting-organizing project I was working on before the hiatus. Most decidedly *not* to turn it into any outline, but just to take stock of what I have. And that is my "plan" for now.

But the main goal has to be to find some way to start writing. To get past my fear of losing my muse for this story halfway through it.

The down side of being a homeowner is when stuff stops working, and it's up to you to either fix it, or pay for it to be fixed. For some reason, out of the blue, my guest bathroom toilet started leaking. It was seeping out from behind the handle, which could only mean one thing--the tank was getting too full.

Problem was, I never heard the toilet running when it wasn't supposed to. What was making it overfill, if it wasn't a faulty refill-mechanism? I considered the theory that perhaps it *was* running when it wasn't supposed to, and I had just never caught it in the act. So I turned off the water to the toilet completely this morning, then flushed it once to empty out the tank. Sure enough, I got the water turned off, the tank remained empty.

So then I went to work. I came home tonight to discover at least four inches of water in the tank. It's not coming from the refill. I opened the toilet lid and the water there looked a little low. I'm thinking it's coming from the bowl somehow. Maybe the seal on the bottom between the tank and the bowl? I suppose so, but I stared down into that thing for a good long time looking for bubbles or ripples indicating this, and saw nothing.

Still want to be able to do this myself with a minimal purchase from Home Depot, but I might have to call a plumber.

The TNG episode that convinced me to start watching TNG after being a hard-core original series purist. Still impressive.

The Sculptor has been reading my old novel, and is over half way through it at this point. Now she is pestering me for spoilers and 'shipping two characters I would never, ever, put together in canon. Ah, fandom. It's so predictable.

...And needless to say, no NaNo for me this month. I am a very burnt out writer at the moment. My Big Plan was to finish The Destroyer completely by November, and hey, mission accomplished, but I had to pound so hard to get it done in a short space of time (I noticed I haven't posted once in this LJ for the last week) that I am just beyond exhausted.

I shall poke a little bit at the original fiction story this month, but not push myself by any means.

My Halloween was mostly taken up by Mad!Writing!Behaviors! but I finished around 5:30 yesterday evening and went over to a friend's for dinner to celebrate the completion of my fan fiction project. She had maybe three knocks all evening, but I had never been in a home that was on the giving end of the Halloween gig, so I had fun looking at the kids' costumes and handing out copious treats.

Daylight savings has ended, and now the contrary state of Arizona is back in sync with the universe, and all the cable shows are on an hour later than advertised.

And I had the foresight to request a personal day tomorrow. So yay.

The series finale of the virtual Connor spin-off "The Destroyer" is up now at orlon_window


"Amor Fati"




To read this series from the beginning, go here: "Welcome to L.A."

Major spoilers for next Dresden novel in link:

http://community.livejournal.com/dresden_files/130016.html

This had better be true, because if it isn't, I'll have kittens. If it is, I'll have Butcher's kittens.

They're insidious.

They're pestilential.

They Swarm By Day....

They use paper or plastic.

And they pay by check.

It's the Attack of The Snowbirds!!!1!!!

Still working on TD 219, which kinda makes me scarce around here. I keep myself company with television shows on DVD I've seen before and therefore can ignore on mute. I finished all of Voyager, and it got me hankering for Next Gen. So now I'm working my way through that. It doesn't need to be said, but season one is just painful to watch. Bad writing, and actors you *know* can do better unable to act themselves out of a paper bag. Lucky I'm only half-watching.


PS: Something I did to my back yesterday has me in mortal pain now. Anyone got any heavy-duty pain killers? The real stuff, not that fake American stuff.

Ugh, I hate coming back from weekends more tired than when I started them, but that seems to be true more often than not lately. I have to cram a lot into weekends I don't have time for during the week. This weekend started out by working late Friday, and then trying to get as much TD 219 done over the weekend, but I'm not exactly in TD writing mode. Normally, after a new ep, I'd take a break, but since the first draft of 219 was already written and I want to finish it by the end of Oct, I plunged in.

And immediately found myself getting distracted by a hundred other projects.

TD has had a good run, but I'm ready for it to be over.

And now I need to go in and start a day of follow-up to my work Friday evening.

ETA: Oh, and as icing to my Monday morning cake, my coffee maker went into respiratory arrest. I am hoping it just needs to be given a good rinsing.