Whispers

So we wrapped up the Bungou Stray Dogs Rolling Remix, Christmas, and I'm utterly buried in work, which put a crimp in all my late treat plans when they didn't come together on first (or tenth) tackle.

That said, highly recommend all the stories from the remix. There are eight, including mine, and I read the whole collection. It was so, so good, even the stuff for a ship I'm not normally into. I love how they all delved into the characters and relationships, and you should go read if you haven't.

I am halfway through commenting because I was raring to comment and realized that I would de-anon if I did so at the time, so I waited and then was in the thick of the buried at work stuff. And I'm more interested in writing good comments that express how I really feel than Loved it! Not that there's anything wrong with a Loved it! but seriously. I've been doing a lot of that lately what with everything that's happened.

We made it through Christmas. It's hard, and it hurts, and I'm spending a lot more time than I can afford with my family just because it helps raise my grandfather's spirits and that's priceless right now. It was a good Christmas overall and that was more than I truly expected, so I'm grateful. I haven't sent out cards this year and I reserved my funds for gifting family members, but if anyone does want a fic / ficlet, feel free to comment and I'm going to try and do a little January treatathon. Maybe the fic that doesn't want to be written will come together as something better than snippets and snatches in the interim. (I was going to do a lot of Fandom Stocking treating, but the way it's all rolled out has just made it impossible to retain enthusiasm for that project.)

I'm maybe a quarter of the way through my Chocolate Box letter, and I think I'm going to keep my exchanges this year down to Chocobox and Multifandom Drabble, which I run, so not skipping that one.

I've had a really successful Lexember, a month-long challenge to coin a word a day for your conlang. I went with Akachenti because I finally got somewhere on the protolanging business this year when I was grieving hardest and found that fiction wouldn't come. I haven't coined words every day, but I've coined lots of words several days, and so am way ahead on the average.

There's been so much good new content coming out for K Project, lots of delightful or heart-wrenching shorts and K Seven Stories is already live and available and free—and in Japanese. I need to learn it so I don't have to keep waiting for translations.

I'm almost to the need for a year wrap up post with an indication of what I challenged myself to write, what I actually wrote, and all that good stuff for the year, but I didn't do quite as good a job at logging things as I ought to have, so I'll probably be a few days late with that. But on some fronts, I was surprised at how productive a year it was considering how bad the year has been overall. I started off having a meltdown in January, barely keeping head above water at work through the middle, and lost my grandmother towards the end, who's pretty much the most important person in my life, alongside my sister. And yet, it wasn't all bad either. I picked up new fandoms, made new friends (whom I adore), better reconnected with old friends (whom I also adore), wrote roughly 700 poems and more than 100 drabbles and actually committed original fiction again. Didn't finish that novel, but did finish a 15K novelette I'm still itching to write the sequel to. Not horrible everywhere.

I hope you all are doing fantastic and have an excellent last weekend of the year!

I just want to stop hurting. I need to work.

So part of my vanishing into the ether and being down to the wire and not getting projects done is in the middle of not feeling well and having the sciatic nerve announce its presence grandly (in case I forgot it was there, seriously) was that my work life blew up.

Which is to say, we have a huge project and I was a split asset and couldn't really afford to spend only half my time on it, so tried overtime in the middle of being sick and laid up with sciatica. Not fun.

I am no longer going to be a split asset in the next 2-3 weeks. I'm transitioning from half-content optimizer on one site to all IT software quality assurance (SQA) tester. With a raise. :grins:

Very, very happy.

On the writing front, I apparently now have a fairly tried and true method for writing a fic that will not be written. Find a song. Tracing Trouble is now coming along (and it sprawled!* :wails: ) because I accidentally found a song for it. This thing is huge and heartfelt and delves waaay deeper into Cate's psyche than I'd intended, though I always meant it to dig into how she thinks of and processes family, so fun that.

I'm also hipdeep in reading for hiddencait and guys, she is such a good writer. I LOVE this story and whoever wasn't reading for her before obviously doesn't properly appreciate superhuman abilities fiction because this is awesome.

Ahem.

Back off to work. I really should be working and not fangirling today. :rolls eyes at self:

ETA: *Apparently I wrote 2025 words on my tablet yesterday just listening to song, then sketching out scenes and snippeting. Wow.