Liminal Space

There's not much going on, so there isn't much to write about. The swelling from the abscessed tooth isn't going away, although I got a wound revision (meaning it was opened, drained, flushed with iodine solution, and had a drainage put in, which got changed on Friday - and yes, it was as pleasant as it sounds), so I guess I'll have it pulled next week. I'm going into the fourth week of taking clindamycin, and I'm exhausted. The damn tooth just isn't worth all this trouble.

I still went to work, because although I'm one of the people with the least amount of sick days, whenever I do have to call in sick, you can bet that at least two other people decide not to show up for a whole week, either, so I drag myself in because we're such a small practice that the work load would get unbearable for the few people who still show up. I can't wait until all the Boomers and GenXers go into retirement. I'll stock up on popcorn and watch how Gen Zombie fails to manage then. 

I'm at scene 26 of 36 now, so the rough draft should be done around the 25th. It took me only six weeks to get it all written, which is nice. Don't see the need to hurry up with editing, seeing the ROI on my other stuff. Maybe it'll stay on my harddrive, wouldn't make any difference. But writing it was fun, and I like editing, too. So I'll do it for my own enjoyment. 

Life: Temperatures are freezing here, but apparently nothing compared to the 'killer storm' across the pond. I ordered way too much tea, both black tea and fruit tea, because I need to make winter cozy somehow. January is, as every year, the only month that's a hundred days long. I made lentils Hamburg style (the city, not the food), which means they're cooked in water mixed with vinegar and plum juice, with a slice (or several) of pork belly (in celebration of Veganuary), and a side of flour dumplings. It's so filling that I'm skipping dinner - a true winter dish.

Crafting: The shawl is still not done, because for the whole past week, I was too tired after work to knit. It's about 3/4 of the needed length, so maybe I can finish it until next weekend.

Reading: I'm trying to get past the first chapter of Michael Rabiger's Developing Story Ideas (because I spent so much time writing this one series that I'm drawing a blank when it comes to writing anything outside it). But he's very clearly teaching Litfic at some college, and assumes that you have 'peers' who'd want to work through the exercises with you. Clearly, he developed his process in a classroom setting. I had to laugh at some of his claims, like this one:

(...) you can e-mail outlines to interested friends around the globe and get feedback almost immediately.

Yeah, that hasn't been my experience. I only get to have a conversation with my writer friends when we have our bi-weekly video chat, and the rest is tumbleweeds. I mean, we all have demanding jobs and etc.

And then I came across this gem:

An important part of writing is showing it to others for their reaction (...) the object and gratification of all artistic endeavors - acting upon your audience and considering all the ways they react.

Clearly, the good professor needs to get his head set straight by the fandom Karens that infest Reddit and the like, for the audacity of expecting an audience reaction. I dunno, maybe I should just skip to the exercises - the ones you can do without the help of your 'peers'.

Writing: I drafted two more scenes for my WIP; tomorrow, I'll have completed the first act.

This week brought me an abcessed tooth, and the intriguing question of whether I want the damn thing pulled (after giving me trouble on and off for the past ten years), or if I'll give it the last chance of a root tip resection. Either option sucks, but only one of them has the potential of a nerve injury. I'm currently under antibiotics, so I have the whole weekend to come to a decision. 

Instead of doing medical risk assessment like a functioning adult, I spent the whole day uploading the rest of the chapters of The Enemy to AO3. The thing has close to a hundred views now, and zero new comments, and I'm torn between the giddiness of having written a damn fine story (even if I'm the only one who says so), and the depression of getting absolutely no interaction from my readers. I'm getting to the point of fading out of fandom over this. There is no community, no interaction, and I slowly stop seeing the point of sharing my stuff. I have no intentions to stop writing these stories, but I'm seriously pondering the option of only writing Drawerfic going forward.

The shawl has grown to half of the length it's supposed to have, and I need to hurry up if I want to wear it before winter ends. I still have another shawl and a knitted hat project waiting, but I guess those will be knit for the coming winter. 

I'm trying to get better at posting regularly in here, but it's January, so we'll see how long my New Year's resolutions will last...

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I made cake for the first time since I moved in — unfortunately, I used a cake mix, so that if the cake would fail, at least I wouldn’t have invested a lot of effort in making it. Well, the cake was perfect, but whatever additives were in the flour wreaked havoc with my gut. Lesson learned...

I also ordered some yarn and started knitting again, and omg it’s the best decision I’ve made in at least a decade! Knitting is soo restful for my poor, overstimulated brain! I don’t even need any noises in the background, like music or a show; just letting my mind drift while my hands are moving. This is already cutting down my screen time, and I caught a knitting fever, so I’ll probably be even less online in the future.

My cat got sick on the 28^th, so I had to take her to the vet, but it’s not clear what the problem is. She has lost considerable weight since our last visit two months ago, and there’s too much calcium in her blood (her bloodwork was completely normal two months ago). Ultrasound and x-ray was normal, so we have no idea what’s causing it. For the time being, she’s getting an anti-emetic, so she’s at least no longer throwing up, and eating normal again, but we're due for a checkup on Wednesday. Fingers crossed.

Aand I also set up my Bullet Journal, another measure to get me aways from screens more. All my to-do lists will go into the BuJo. I’m not talented at visual arts, so my hand lettering is pretty wonky, but still better than my doodles. Which is why I’m not going to post pictures of it anywhere, haha. As long as it works, I don’t care if it’s pretty.

Writing-wise, I’ve finally finished The Enemy, the third story of my second series for Planet of the Apes (TV), and the 15^th long story in that cycle. I’m still editing it, but it’ll land somewhere between 60K and 65K. I’ve also outlined the next story for it, and plan to start the first draft this week. Once that story is complete, I’ll have written 1/3 of series 2.

I’m honestly not sure if I’ll live long enough to finish series 3. Not that anybody would notice, heh.

I was alone, as usual, over the year change; I stayed up until 1AM for my dogs’ sake (and I also had a prime view of the fireworks from my kitchen window. My frugal self noted with satisfaction that I was enjoying a great spectacle without having to pay a penny for it), and I had a glass of sparkling wine, but otherwise, I didn’t feel celebratory... for the first time, I really felt like we were trying to beat back the darkness with all that light and noise... at least for a time. 2026 carries a feeling of dread, I can’t pinpoint a specific thing, though.

Vibes, man.

Anyway, I spent the remaining days of my vacation mostly on my couch (except for walking the dogs), and discovered that Gemini AI is great at tag identification. Tags have been my nemesis from day one; and while I’ll never use AI for anything creative (like brainstorming or, gods forbid, writing fic), identifying tropes and tags with it isn’t different from running a spell or grammar checker to me. YMMV, of course.

Today, it snowed — really heavy snowfall, too. It’s always like this up here on the coast: you have a much too warm winter until Christmas, and then, when all the bling and glitter of the season has been taken down, and it’s just dark all day and everyone is fed up with winter and impatiently waiting for spring: then you get all that snow that you don’t care for anymore. Argh.

Another month has passed! And we’re back to goddamn Daylight Savings Time aka Fake Time. I was suddenly wide awake at 2.30 a.m. (Real Time, though come to think of it, that’s when they manipulated the clocks in all of Europe, so maybe I sensed a disturbance in the force), and couldn't fall asleep again for a whole hour, and I’m feeling that now.

Writing: I wrote about 2200 words yesterday, which included the Dreaded Sex Scene - but when I read it at our writers' chat tonight, I was told that it was smokin' hot, so I guess I've ascended from the mud of Gen to the olympus of Smut. I do feel rather smug, I must admit. Today, no drafting happened, but I outlined the next two scenes. Muses willing, I'll have completed the first draft by the end of April.

Reading: I discovered that I apparently own a book titled Elegance, by Kathleen Tessaro, and I was in the mood for some light reading, so I thought why not? I have no idea why I bought this, it's not my genre of interest at all. I still would have enjoyed it, if it had just one character in it that wasn't a flat cliché, or worse, a caricature. That book is a Sunday Times bestseller. I don't want to be a snob, but moments like this, when I put down a book and regret that I can't hurl it against the wall because it's on an e-reader that can't handle the impact like a physical book can, I wish I had some inspiration for an original novel... I sure could use that money.

Health: So, the antibiotic worked, and I was pain-free, until the dentist told me what that root canal plus new crown would cost me...

Home: Painted the kitchen, and it's so much nicer now than it was before! The shade of green I chose is called Lemongrass, and while it's not as pastel as I'd thought, I'm completely happy with it. I also mounted the hanging cabinets, which was a pain, but it was worth it.

Work: Me and a colleague did inventory on Thursday and Friday, while the bosses were away for some training thing (no idea what, but apparently, the evenings had a wine tasting or two... LOL). Surprisingly, two days without patient traffic were just as exhausting, so at least I know it's not them, heh.

*cue Chicken Little*

So apparently, Amazon is shutting down the download via USB function of your Kindle books as per Feb 26th. There are a lot of youtube videos about this, which is how I learned about it, and I admit, I freaked out about that, too. As it turns out, this wouldn't have affected me at all, because I never owned a Kindle reader, I always used the app for pc, and the download option there is unaffected.

However. 

It's still true that Amazon keeps full control over the books you supposedly "bought," and it's perfectly possible to open your library one day and discover that your books have been edited, the covers changed, or that they've even been deleted. People who had books vanish from their libraries report that they didn't even get a refund. Turns out you don't buy the book (despite the button saying otherwise) - you buy a license that allows you to read that book, at least as long as it pleases Amazon.

That's a quite novel interpretation of "buying" and "ownership," if you ask me.

I had known about that problem for a while, which is why I stopped buying ebooks and returned to physical books instead, but I had downloaded Calibre to save the ebooks I had already purchased - but of course those books come encrypted, so Calibre sat on my computer unused and useless. This latest internet chicken run about Amazon's Kindle practices got me off my butt and made me dive into various subreddits (there's one dedicated to Calibre, for example, which is currently being flooded with panicked Kindle users) and seek out Youtube tutorials, and without going into the details (though I uphold that making a single copy of books you already bought, for the sole purpose of storing them out of reach of Amazon's grubby paws, isn't illegal), let's just say I was able to race my books out of that burning library.

And now I'm a wee bit obsessed with Calibre! Because I also discovered the fanficfare plugin, and have been importing fanfics (my own and my favorites from other authors) like mad.

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In other news, work is even more crazy because one toxic coworker has been on sick leave since the beginning of the year (her contract has been terminated now, after she pulled that stunt for the nth time), and our apprentice has dropped out (as it turned out, he didn't take the intermediate exam, although he had the opportunity three times...), so we're down to three veterinarians and three vet techs, one of whom can already see retirement from here (and it's not me, sadly). Weekends are still spent with DIY my apartment, which on the one hand is satisfying, but otoh doesn't leave me any downtime for writing or just sitting on the couch doing nothing. I feel pretty wiped out. All of us got yesterday off, which was great, but now i'm feeling the exhaustion even more.

Sigh.

Well, I need to get some groceries, and then maybe start sanding off the tabletop of my new kitchen table so I can glaze it in a color that matches my kitchen countertop... maybe. If I want to get it done this weekend, I need to do it today, because on Sunday, you're not allowed to make noise. We'll see.

1. Comments on my fics

Comments are like chips, you can never eat have enough of them. While I'd love to drag someone over to the dark side, aka a tiny dead fandom, I've also written stuff in a few other fandoms - Star Trek, Earth's Children, Willow, to name just a few. And not all of them are 50K long, so do have a look!

2. Art for my fic

While I can at least hope for some kind soul to leave a comment, I harbour no illusions about this one, but a girl can dream, right? So yeah, art for PotA or my Star Trek fics would be awesome.

3. Netflix discovers my PotA series and turns it into a TV series, I can retire from the money I earn and can write all day because I don't have to go to work anymore.

Fandom offered me a means of escape - first by watching canon and obsessively reading fanfiction, and many years later, by writing (most of series one was written while my mother was dying of cancer. My sister and I were her caretakers, and I don't think I could've managed if I didn't have writing as a kind of pressure valve).

And fandom made me mad and obsessed enough to get over my perfectionism and fear of failure and *start writing*. I always wanted to write, and while I had studied all the writing crafts books for years, it was one fanfic that inspired me so much that I finally put fingers to keyboard (though I also credit NaNoWriMo for making the jump from outlining plots to actually turning them into stories).

Finally, fandom gave me a similar push to learn to draw, though I'm still a long way from posting anything (because I'm still a perfectionist 😁).

I've thought long and hard about this, but I can't think of any fannish opinion that I've changed over the years. I don't know if that means that I'm the most stubborn and self-important person imaginable (I hope not), or that I never had that many opinions in the first place.

I obviously prefer to think the latter 🤡. For one thing, I was never part of any fan community, even when I read fanfic in the big fandoms like Star Trek or Buffy. I was a silent reader (I did comment now and then, though), but I never took part in any ship wars (because I was utterly disinterested in ships. I'm a Gen reader and writer to the core. I don't have anything against including romance as a subplot, but give me a case to solve or an adventure to be on for these two or three or however many). Same for what is and isn't canon. I don't care. I do what I want in my fanfic, which is the point of fanfic IMO.

For another, I'm generally not interested in how other people do fandom. Live and let live, as long as you don't tell me what to write or read or like, I'll leave you alone to play in your corner of the big sandbox, too.

As for the strong opinions I do have and which did not change - well, that's probably a prompt for a different post 😉...