we are not lost

Aubrey; also Birdie.
Student and writer. Polyamorous and really gay. Chronically ill.
Local queen of cait sidhe. Powered by caffeine, anxiety, and spite.
mortalcity: Two people sitting on a hill, looking at a darkening sky with stars. (stock | with your face all full of stars)
I spent basically all day today syncing stuff off my old dying desktop, setting up my shiny brand new computer (a winter gift from [personal profile] actuallyclintbarton, which I really don't deserve but is amazing and deeply appreciated), and setting up my bullet journal for the next month and the new year. That last one took... way longer than expected, but I feel a lot more like I got my shit together now.

New computer is named Eliza, and will hopefully be as reliable and long-lived as her namesake. She is perfect and I love her.

I signed up for [community profile] getyourwordsout again for the next year, this time for the next level up. My word count this year came out to 137,056 (give or take anything I write in the next... hour or so) - short of the modest pledge level I just signed up for, but nearly double the pledge level I was doing this year. A lot of those words are things that only sort of count for various reasons, but fuck it, they went in the spreadsheet anyway. Hopefully next year I can step up my game and I will have more actual stories to speak of, but this year I figured out that maybe I actually haven't forgotten how to write after all, so that's good too, I guess.

...hopefully they post the new word tracker spreadsheet very soon, because I am going to lose my mind pretty quickly if I don't have a place to tally up my words come midnight.

Fireworks are already going off and have been for hours. Olivia Natalia is having a slow, mostly quiet neurotic meltdown over them. I am trying very hard not to join her because the passage of time is scary and stressful and I feel like I am not prepared for it. 2015 tried to kill me. So did 2014, for that matter. 2016 has to be better, somehow.
mortalcity: Girl and a wolf, sleeping together in the grass. (wolves | pack animals)
So I kept falling in and out of consciousness at random yesterday, and therefore did not write at all. Today has been more productive, but I only woke up at 7PM, so... uh... still have a lot of catching up to do. :\

Bright side, the insomnia/nightmares problem is apparently over for now. A couple of friends on Plurk suggested I put a headvoice out to guard my dreams. I have Mouse from The Dresden Files hanging around in my headspace, and if there's a better guardian of dreams, I can't think of them. I still had weird dreams - zombies and biochemical attacks and a journey into the land of the dead - but they were normal weird for me, and therefore non-traumatic.

Words Today: 1052
Total Words: 6084
Reason for stopping: Once again, I'm not actually stopping. It's just midnight. And therefore not technically "today" anymore.
Animals: Obnoxious. If they're not trying to climb into my lap, they're chasing each other around the house. They have settled down since Mat came home, though, and now he can yell at them instead of me. Hah.
Caffeine intake: One can of Coke and half a cup of coffee. But I haven't been awake that long today, so... yeah.

At the moment, I have a zombie trying to eat my main character's face, both of them trapped in a very small space with no immediate exit. Therefore, I am a happy writer and will hopefully get this chapter done before sunrise. And then keep going. I am catching up, god damn it.
mortalcity: Text: "Can I assume from your total silence and blank faces that you're all with me?" (text | total silence and blank faces)
NaNo count for yesterday and today, because... it was a weird couple days. Insomnia and nightmares and... yeah. However, I'm not sleeping tonight, and am planning to hang out in the word sprints chat the whole time, so hopefully I'll make some progress tonight.

Words Today (& Yesterday): 2355
Total Words: 4211
Reason for stopping: I haven't, technically. It just ticked over to midnight, so I figured I might as well update.
Animals: Hell if I know. They were in a pile of fur on the couch last time I saw, and presumably are still there. All I care about is that they're being quiet.
Caffeine intake: A cup of coffee and one can of Coke so far today. That might be why my head hurts so much...

Abby is dead and my prologue is over. I feel like I'm doing a lot of terribly uninteresting rambling no one will care about, but there is more action in the first few chapters than there was in my last draft, so that's something. And I get to play with a zombie soon. Always something to look forward to.

...yes, I am the literary equivalent of an Irwin. GIVE ME A ZOMBIE AND I AM HAPPY. PERIOD.
mortalcity: A crow in a tree, in front of a cloud-covered moon. (corvids | were they telling me to run?)
[personal profile] thatrainbow and I went to a midnight write-in at the diner for the kickoff last night, and it was awesome. I was more social than I have been in I don't know how long, and despite our table being the chattiest and least productive, we all actually did get stuff done.

Words Today: 1856
Total Words: 1856
Reason for stopping: I was starting to hate myself and everything I was writing. Jae pointed out a break was good for my sanity.
Animals: Ace is curled up on the pillow on the floor by my desk. Michaelcat keeps wandering in and out, occasionally claiming my lap. Simba is probably exactly where he has been on the couch all day long.
Caffeine intake: Uh... six cups of coffee and a Coke. Plus one cup of coffee I didn't actually drink, because I passed out first.

This year's NaNo is going to drive me even more insane than usual. I'm shooting for 80-90k rather than 50k. This is not as crazy as it sounds, because I already have a chunk of it written - I'm just not sure how much, because I haven't yet determined how much of that needs to be rewritten due to plot changes. Yes, I am breaking all the rules and I don't care. I am finishing this book this year, god damn it.

I'm still in the prologue right now. And, uh... I might've had a mild freakout just before I stopped and started butchering stuff to move it around and, y'know, doing exactly what you are not supposed to do in NaNo, with the editing and deleting words and stuff. I came to my senses and... stopped, and will get it sorted out when I have a chance to chill out again.

I've suddenly fallen in love with a character who for years I have only been neutral toward. I still have to kill her soon. Sorry, Abby. I promise I'll give you a short story when I'm done with this book.