Ishmael Dreaming

 I'm sick.

(Apologies to people on twitter, where I have talked about this at length already.)

I believe I have acute laryngitis - my voicebox is swollen and tender and doing anything to do with my throat, breathing, coughing, swallowing, talking or making any sound, laughing - hurts so so much. 

I'm usually very healthy, lucky me! And so I have no experience of being in this kind of sharp, prolonged pain before, which punishes me for reactions I struggle to control. Normally the only sick I get are heavy colds that I can sleep off, but even sleep my dear friend is difficult at the moment; it's difficult to get to sleep, and when I do I can manage little more than an hour before I wake up in agony, having swallowed harshly and panicked that I can't breathe properly. 

Bleurgh. 

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Before I got sick though, I had a lovely Christmas! Still not 100% well actually, but these things happen, and by about 5pm when we do presents I was feeling better than I had for days. Among the bits and pieces I got lots of books! :D Yay! I think I'm properly set for original fiction to read until about Easter now. I haven't actually started reading them yet - despite predicting I would fall on Storm of Swords part 2 like a starving tiger - I just keep looking at the and beaming and patting them.

The Doctor Who Christmas Special... wasn't all that, but it had its moments, and I did really like the final scene d'awww.

Other people talking about Steven Moffat's issues with gender and women enough so I'm not going to talk about that, but I think the real problem is that he is repeating tropes more and more blatantly. IDK maybe he'd say they were themes, but they're getting a bit tired. The real problem with Moffat as showrunner is that he has no Moffat figure himself - when RTD was showrunner, Steven Moffat episodes were rare, distinctive and brilliant. And now we're seeing that diluted and stretched, and there's no particular secondary writer IMO that we can look to and shelter in their episodes when the show runner gets a bit overbearing. And that hurts the whole show. Don't get me wrong, I love Eleven and Doctor Who, and I think Moffat is certainly very talented, but to me that's one of the places Doctor Who has lost out on recently.

Or perhaps, all the good stuff is being channeled into Sherlock. I am so excited that it's finally coming back - in just three days! Popping my head around the door of the fandom again to get back in the mood. So to speak XD

THE DOWNTON ABBEY CHRISTMAS SPECIAL WAS FREAKING AWESOME OH MY GOD!!! Screaming my face off is adoration and excitement. 

 So I saw the Bloggess saying how boring and Kardashian infested Barbara Walters' most interesting people of 2011 list is, and she was suggesting an alternate list. I thought that would make a cool meme, the dinner party guests with a spin of who has been eye catching and happy making in particular this year.

So, in no particular order, the 11 people from 2011 I would invite to a dinner party are:

Darren Criss
Emma Stone
Jesse Eisenberg
Caitlin Moran
George RR Martin
JK Rowling
Chris Hughes
Victoria Coren
Ryan Gosling
Maureen Johnson
and Rob, from The Great British Bakeoff.

Would you want to come to this party? Who would you invite to yours?

 Oh well.

I'm not cut up - I realised, after I went a week without writing anything, that it was very unlikely I'd catch up, and I actually gave up about a week ago, but here I am confirming it: another year, another Nano, but still no novel.

I have no discipline, I'm not good at making myself sit down and write, and I never got into any kind of daily rhythm. I did write about 10K, and most of it doesn't make me want to aggressively delete it, so that's good. And I sent some of it to lc2l and she liked it, so the month hasn't been a complete bust writing-wise.

The thing I need to decide now is this: do I want to keep on with this book, or should I give it a break and try at one of the other ideas patiently queued up in my brain? It seems ridiculous, but I've been very slowly working on this book for about 5 years now. That has included more plotting than writing, granted, but that's a long time to keep an idea to yourself, and I've been wondering whether part of the problem might be just that part of me doesn't want to share these characters and their world and their story that has been my private thing for so long. 

Two and a half years ago I had the idea for, and plotted out, Shades, the other book I think of as "on" ie more than a vague idea, something I really want to write and share, but I haven't yet written a word of it, because I've always said I wanted to get a first draft of at least the first part of The Misfit Witch done first. My instincts still say this - that for better or worse I should try to keep moving forward, however slowly, to complete this to a point that someone could read it. I do want to. But I'm wondering if maybe I should try something else instead. IDK.

 In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

 Happy Hallowe'en, and Happy Samhain to those that are celebrating! 

 Devon is lovely this time of year :) Apparently it's about to get colder in the UK this week, but for now it is mostly dry, crisp and cool and autumnal. I love it here. Right this moment I am in Cafe Nero with wifi and coffee and happiness :D

I made my pilgrimage to the only independent bookshop I ever visit, and took time to find a book not only that I hadn't heard of by someone I hadn't heard of, which is one of my independent bookshop rules, but also to find one with a female protagonist (And happily, also by a female author, though I don't mind so much about that). This was slightly trickier than I would have hoped, but hey, it's a small bookshop so the sci-fi/fantasy area I tend to inhabit doesn't exactly have the widest selection. Anyway, I found a few eventually to choose between, so, triumph and victory! So far it seems good, but I've hardly started.

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This morning, I got my creative writing over the 20,000 word mark! Yay! This is very exciting to me. I am hoping to go into Nano with about 30k under my belt, and am feeling happy and positive about this as totally possible. 

Unfortunately, this means I am vaguely uninterested in writing fic right now. I really wanted to finish the bandom AU this holiday, I got about 2000 words in. But. Well, it's unlikely. It's all there in my head, but the urge to pass it on has rather... passed. Maybe I'll come back to it when I'm blocked on original.

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Next week is my birthday! I am a bit more excited than usual, I don't know why. For the record, if anyone here wants to give me something without spending money (this is the internet after all) I would LOVE a fanmix. I never have enough music. So, please feel free *flutters eyelashes* Just putting that out there...

Non-spoilery thoughts about The Magician King. Contains information that might be considered generally spoilery for plot twists in the previous book, The Magicians.

I read some books. I had some thoughts about them. I wrote those thoughts down. Ta-daa!

I can't be bothered to post them all at once though, that would be exhausting. Here are spoiler free reviews for Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healey and The Traitor Game by BR Collins, which were for the record, both further steps along the way toward my rehabillitating te first person narrative :P 

( Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healey )

( The Traitor Game by BR Collins )

 include:

~ Let's Kill Hitler finally went out (longest 12 days ever?!) so I can actually talk about it now without fear I'll accidentally say something spoilery. WHAT DID YOU GUYS THINK?? As I said before, my actual favourite moments were a) flashback Amy/Rory, the terror in Rory's eyes, oh bless, that is a feeling I know very well and b) the Doctor's talking to the voice interface inside the TARDIS, both how he reacts to images of Rose and Donna and particularly lovely, wonderful and much maligned Martha, and the hologram of Amelia insisting he will be dead in 32 minutes. Plus, I am really loving the evolution of Rory, the badassery not removing the adorableness. Actually, I am shipping Amy/Rory way harder than ever before now - the way they said "I love you" when they thought they would die awwwwwwww AMAZING.

I wonder if/when the BFI will post the Q&A session.

~ I GOT MY POTTERMORE EMAIL. It is cool in there you guys. I am in absolutely no rush to get through it or anything, so I have mainly been hanging out making potions thus far and adoring the extra bits of insight and backstory that I've got to so far. I was so freaking relieved to be sorted into Slytherin you have no idea - I worried at one point that I might come across as a Ravenclaw (uh, no offence Ravenclaws) and was like, if I don't get into Slytherin I shall cry all the tears. But I did. THANK YOU POTTERMORE.

~ I drank lots of cocktails with various people. That was nice :)

~ I fell into really liking My Chemical Romance. There I was, watching their set at Reading and appreciating Gerard's red hair, which is either pretty much or exactly the same bright red as Benjamin Cook's btw, getting Play to telling me who these people are (despite me actually having read fic featuring them in the past) and then IDEK I noticed that Mikey Way is very hot and now I am listening to albums and reading fic and looking for interviews? It's pretty fun :D

~ Most of the books I am taking on holiday turned up. (Did I mention I am about to go on holiday?) I am just about managing not to read them yet, but I have not managed to resist opening the packaging and stroking them a little bit. Still waiting on two.

~ A VERY POTTER THREEQUEL IS CONFIRMED AND HAPPENING with Darren onboard and everything!!! YOU GUYS, WE'RE GOING BACK. This is totally why he said he was growing his hair out again. I am very happy and excited.

How is everyone? 

 So basically I am being a massive pile of fail at the moment. I have only a thin layer of denial and fandom protecting me from the stress, misery and utter breakdown of epic proportions beneath, and it keeps cracking, adding yet more stress - ie, how long until I lose it completely worrying - to the unhappy scenario.

This has translated into a lot of generally failing in smaller ways, I don't know, as an expression of the other larger looming freakout. Like fail aftershocks. Sorry if anyone or anything has noticed or been affected by me suddenly becoming even less reliable and even more moody than usual. I'm sure what passes for regular service around here will resume shortly.

Particularly, to those people that I know are also having a shit time right now, I'm sorry that my own shit time has left me feeling less capable of being supportive to you. I really do care about you, and hope that you have other friends too right now because you are all wonderful and deserve to be told that and hugged lots while I am failing even at that.

So, that's great. Just wanted to get that off my chest.

God.

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The original writing isn't happening right now, but a couple more bits of TSN fic have magically happened. The train home from Bristol helped. I'm not really sure what to do about this tbh, I haven't properly tried to write fic for ages. Also, despite not even having anything postable yet, and let's face it there's still about a 75% chance I never will, yet I am already remembering the insecurities about things like people reading your fic and hating it, or worse, no one reading it at all.

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God, what a miserable post. Christ.

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To end on a high note, the new song from Florence and The Machine is fucking fantastic.

It is kinda about suicide though. Bollocks.