nor so wide as a church door

It was pouring at 4 am when I had to wake up and separate two fighting cats; it sleeted somewhere in between then and now, coating all the delicate little branches on the bushes outside, and all the needles of the pines, with ice; and now it is snowing, giant fat flakes falling almost fast enough to look like rain. I'm supposed to go meet up with M, J, K, Ka, and Q - and possibly a friend of J's from school, the prospect of whom fills me with terror - for lunch, so I ought to hope it stops soon, but I'm willing to drive carefully as long as it keeps snowing and sticking. :D

The tablet has arrived, as have the books I ordered; I'd forgotten just how long it's been since I'd drawn anything. I have giant flashing neon failure issues, and my sister is so much better at art things than I am that I have a feeble love/hate thing going on with drawing - even when something comes out half-decent, it's never quite good enough for something off in the back of my brain. Luckily, when I show her things I write, she likes to draw for them, so the pictures I wish I could put on paper still end up there most of the time. \o/

( Monday shows. )

( NaNo and fic talk. )

( Thanksgiving. )

I would put a big poetical list of things I'm thankful for here, except I'm thankful for so many things it kind of defies belief, and making a list would just make me think of more and more. In summary, though: my family, friends, job, fandoms, and life are all more awesome than I usually give them credit for, and I am grateful for all the small sources of joy in between. ♥♥♥♥♥

Okay, so matching my NaNo word-for-word with ItO is not going to happen. Long shot anyway. But switching off between the two seems to be doing wonders, as long as I make sure I stay on my NaNo for enough total writing time to get to the word goal for the day. \o/

The NaNo's awful, obviously, because I've barely planned it and I'm still shuffling names and character attributes, and I'm sure it's going to get horrid and preachy and anvilicious because I have ~thoughts~ about the genre. But! So far, I'm enjoying the writing, and it's pacifying my mother, who, despite losing a couple small arguments with me about the merits of fanfic, still nags me about getting something original written. (Besides the dwarf pirate captain story, which ... still isn't done. I should really go back and clean that up some.)

More importantly, though, ( Hawaii 5-0. ) Basically, ♥ EVERYTHING.

I also finally got a movie I had not watched before from Netflix, which was Newsies - yes, that musical where tiny!Batman sings about Santa Fe. I had never seen it before yesterday, despite having run across The Refuge and devoured everything in it several years ago. And ... wow. Terrible timing, because the absolute last thing I need right now is a new fandom, but that movie is ridiculous, in the best possible way. Oh, god, the dancing.

( Cut not for spoilers, since this movie's only four years younger than I am, but because nobody else cares about this. ) I actually had a Newsies dream last night, which is the shortest transition ever from the initial media to my subconscious. (Although, granted, the fact that I read the fics probably gave it a bit of a head start.) And Christian Bale's New York accent is just precious.

But! Now I should get back to work. :D

I am SO RELIEVED to have Chapter Seven out; now that I don't have to feel guilty about it anymore, I can post again! \o/ I cut out all the nonessential scenes I was considering in my outline, and it still ended up being 11k. Clearly, by the time I hit Book Four, every chapter's going to be like 50k. D: Let's just hope Chapter Eight doesn't also take a month. I was hoping to do an original fic for NaNo - I hadn't quite decided between self-indulgent dragonrider story or Austenesque steampunk romance - but maybe, just maybe, I should work on ItO instead. 50,000 words should be close to enough to finish Book One, if future chapters don't balloon on me too much.

Part of the reason I am so torn is M; we have a writing exchange system that, at least recently, has been kind of tipped in her favor, but she's simultaneously great at making me feel guilty for not having sent her anything recently and incredibly difficult to nag herself. For her sake, I want to work on the HP AU, because I haven't gotten a chapter of that done in ages; for my own sake, I want to finish ItO, because I adore writing it and there are so many things that still need to happen; and for the sake of the official rules of NaNo, I want to start something new. And, of course, always in the background are the Dead Mom Fics; I never stop wanting to work on those. **hands**

Anyway. Went to the Pumpkin Festival with M and Ka this weekend, which was fun, even though Ka still says things that bother me about once every ten minutes. ( Namely, things full of stereotyping, misogyny by extension, and misandry. ) Mostly, I think Ka just doesn't think about this shit before she says it, because her friends at school don't call her on any of it. I hope that's it, or our quasi-friendship is headed nowhere nice.

We also saw someone I used to know in high school, who, at that time, was a giant creeper. I have no idea what he's like now, to be fair, but I'm not super interested in finding out, either. It was weird to see him again, and I had to explain the whole backstory to Ka, since she had already left school by the time the whole extended thing with this guy went down. :P

But! It was a beautiful day; we mostly hung out and talked, which was great despite the issues noted above, and I bought myself a lovely little pumpkin. It was also nice to go back to Cedar Circle again. I'll admit that I had maybe been avoiding it a little, and I think it was feeding my failure issues, so it was good to have a reason to go there. Closure, or something.

And now I should probably stop taking breaks to write this, and get back to work. :D Or at least use my spare moments to work on Chapter Eight, instead.