Life Viewed Through an Amber Focus

I have been so ridiculously exhausted lately it is not even funny.  As in, you know when you're tired and you just get sort of loopy and say goofy things and your kids look at you funny and all that?  No, it was beyond that to the point where I never thought I was going to sleep again and I was pretty sure the world was going to suck forever.  Last night I was actually in bed by 9:30 and asleep by 10:00 (thank you Excedrin PM and Zolpidem and I slept through the entire night and woke up seven minutes before the alarm clock went off at 7:00 this morning and did not even resent those seven minutes of being awake.  This is epic.  I also did not go back to sleep between dropping Rose off at the high school at 7:15 and T's normal wakeup time of 8:30.  Epic I tell you.  Now if I can do that for a few more nights in a row I might actually kick this stupid bronchitis in the butt.  I'm starting week four on antibiotics and I am so sick of them.

I hope to finally get some writing done today, but I dunno.  My brain is still kind of foggy.  Not from the pills but from not sleeping right for a week.  We will see how it goes.  Chances are since I am still highly distractable I will instead watch more of season 2 of Lost which I got for Christmas or watch season 6 of That 70's Show which I got from more nefarious sources.  But I can play That 70's show in the background while I goof off on Facebook without actually having the picture going since I watched them all before back in the day.  My city is getting quite large on Cityville and it's fun to play but sort of mindless without something else going on.  Even my laziness likes to multi-task apparently.

Anywho...writing is sort of in that limbo place of I want to but I'm probably not going to quite yet.  Which sucks for me because I'd really like to, but it's hard when you don't feel good and your muses can come up with only one line (i.e. The Doctor moved his hands with slow and deliberate care to the insides of Rose's knees,) but I'm not even writing smut at the moment so it's sort of a useless line. *sighs*  I will use it when I get back to writing smut again, though, because I do like it.

Yeah.  Screw it.  I'm going in circles even trying to write this five times fic.

*goes back to writing smut instead and hopes new challenge will be somehow easier*

1.  Day One.  Open laptop, open blank Word document, promptly spill water all over keyboard.  Turn off computer.  Wipe up mess.  Wait for laptop to dry out before using again.

2. Day Three.   Open laptop, open blank Word document, stare at page.  Hear, "Mom, Grandma fell in the back yard and can't get up!"  Run out to help Mom up.  She's fine, just the mud was too slick to get up on her own and didn't do anything else but coat us both in it while I pulled her to her feet.  Chase all the chickens and ducks, who made good their escape, back into the fenced area.

3.  Day Four.  Totally get distracted by Battlestar Galactica and don't even open blank Word document that day.

4.  Day Five.  Get call from Elementary School--Your son has left school grounds and we cannot find him!  (He walked in the front door literally two seconds later while I was still on the phone).  Go to elementary school with said child in tow and deal with resultant fall out.  No real consequences as his reason for leaving was yet again a child messing with his lunch.  School got an earful about not stopping bullying in regards to his food allergies.

5.  Day Six.  Husband is home from Alaska and wants to snuggle.  Have no desire to protest said turn of events.   Doubts fic for this challenge will ever get written, but is still attempting to try since they've moved the deadline back a day.

Well, I haven't really written anything since Monday this week.  It's kind of hard with all the painkillers, I guess, to really focus on anything long-term.  Reassurance, my first real entry into the then_theres_us challenges, got tied for third place, so that was a nice surprise.  I didn't expect to place considering I was pretty out of it on hydrocodone when I wrote it.  I really enjoyed all the stories that came out of the last challenge.  I've got a few paragraphs written on the new challenge, but it's hard.  I kind of feel like I've already written the perfect fic for that prompt a few months ago with Unexpected Outcome.  Still, I've gotten an idea after much staring at the new prompts.  If I can get myself to focus enough, it should prove interesting.  If not, well, I probably won't write for this challenge.

( Life Stuff )

Writer's block, I hate you.

Left knee, I'm not too fond of you either, at the moment.

Hydrocodone and ibuprofen and ice pack, if you could be a bit more effective, I'd appreciate it.

I have been having a devil of a time writing oneshots and shorter fics lately.  It seems like the only time I'm in the mood for writing, it's to work on LoF or Stars.  So you can imagine my relief when I finally got a brian wave after listening to a song I heard for the first time today.  And it worked perfectly with the picture prompt I wanted to use for the Bump in the Night ficathon.  I've been trying to write this fic for weeks!  Finished it three days before the extended deadline, so yay me.  And it's not Nine fic for the first time in...ages.

Still seem to be blocked on writing anything smutty.  The smut muses have fled the building and seem to have no intention of coming back. *sighs*  Maybe once all this school crap is taken care of and I can relax again it'll be better.

Oh, well, at least I wrote something, and it's off to beta and hopefully it's as spooky as I wanted it to be.  I don't know, I'm not used to writing scary, slightly horror-edged stuff, so I'm not the best judge of it.  I'm just glad to have it done at this point.

I'm having a hard time writing these last ten days.  I'm averaging about two paragraphs a day right now.  I think I've written about 1000 words on Leap of Faith during that time.  Normally I average about 1500 words a day on the days that I write, which is usually every day.  Right now though I just don't seem to have that momentum.  I've spent more time than I care to admit staring at empty white space on the computer screen.  It's weird because I know exactly where the story is going, I know exactly what is supposed to happen in this chapter and yet...the words don't come easy.  I hate it when this happens.  It happens enough that I know it will pass and I'll go another three months or so being able to write again before I hit another one of these patches, but while I'm in one it's not all that comforting.

It would help if I could sleep properly.  I'm not getting enough for my brain to want to function in story-telling mode, or much else.  I think it's time I made an appointment at the sleep disorders clinic here in town.  This type of insomnia is just not normal.

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Yes, I was afraid of the Sleestaks from the Land of the Lost.  My sister told me they lived in my grandmother's basement in the laundry room so that my cousin and I wouldn't go down there and bug her and my other cousin when they wanted privacy from the youngsters.  I was a teenager before I could go down there by myself without getting the full on heebie jeebies.

Well, I just spent about two hours updating my Master Fic List and putting links in on old stories.  I've yet to finish linking Repercussions, Of the Vortex Born, Just Another Shop Girl (which reminds me I need to get cracking on finishing that rewrite), and one of the Crossing Boundries stories.  I've taken the WIP notice off two of the fics that have been finished for a while.  I've still got one thing to bring over from Teaspoon, I still need to link each of the Moments in Darkness Stories to the one that follows it, but each story has been linked within itself now, and there might be one other fic I'm forgetting to mention, but other than that it's done.  I even dug up all the drabbles.  Good heavens I've written a lot of drabbles.  I'm debating whether or not to add story summaries in now that I've got all the titles and links listed.  I probably should, but that is definitely a project for another day.

Again I say (like I do every time I update that monster) if you are just starting out writing fanfic start your master fic list now and add to it as you go.  And link every chapter to the next one as you go.  As soon as you publish chapter two go back and put a link at the bottom of chapter one.  Because if you don't you will find it a major undertaking two and a half years later when you've written a boatload of fics with 30 to 50 chapters each and lots of little ones with 3 or 4.  Well, if you're like me, anyway.

( And the rest of my day )

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I'm not actually embarrassed by anything in my music library.  My tastes range from Dvorak's New World Symphony to Alison Krause and Union Station to Kelly Clarkson to Simple Plan to Bon Jovi to Air Supply to David Bowie and Pet Shop Boys.  I'm not even ashamed of my Tiffany album from high school, though I'm aware that I should be. *laughs*  I listen to whatever I'm in the mood for and don't hide it from anybody.