Stroke my ego plz? :D

THE FANFICTION LOVE MEME

Not gonna lie, I wouldn't mind it tonight. Last twenty-four hours have been rather abysmal, both health- and emotional-wise. Won't say much more in a public post, but ... yeah. Anyway, throwing this out there - if you guys feel like commenting, great, if not, that's okay too! And post your threads so I can return the favour, mmkay? :)

New icon! I, uh, thought it suited me. ;)

So, surprisingly, this is a non-fic update, sandwiched in between me doing Saturday chores on Sunday. Believe it or not I actually put down on my to-do list "Update LJ with something other than fic updates" just to prove how pathetic I am. Heh. But I have been writing a lot lately, and as I was saying to trialia the other night, I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the fact that I'm not buried neck-deep in papers and essays and assignments and reading and studying for the first time in ... well, since I can remember, really. November has historically been a really shitty month for me creatively due to all the deadlines, such that I have usually been able to get almost no writing done because of school. Obviously, school had to be the focus when I was still attending it, but I'm not gonna lie, it drove me UP THE WALL sometimes when I had to start on the umpteenth paper or whatever instead of writing.

This year I've got none of that, and so my muse has gone into absolute overdrive. Which is AWESOME. :D I whipped out two chapters of Insanity Underrated this past week and another last night, and I am praying to the fic gods that I can continue to use all this free-floating inspiration to push through the rest of the S2 arc and perhaps even into S3. That would be SO awesome, and might even allow me to finish up this fic by the time 2010 rolls around. Which would be more awesome still. Unlikely, perhaps, but awesome. I adore Insanity Underrated, I honestly do, but I don't particularly want to spend almost three years working on it like I have with To Ignite the Stars. Granted, TIS was always going to be a much longer and more ambitious project, and I knew that going in, but it still kind of ticks me off that it will be three years come June 2010 that I started it, and I am not even anywhere CLOSE to being finished. Real life has had a lot to do with that, since various collections of catastrophes have befallen me since June 2007, but still. I've never been able to write fast. It is a slow, painstaking process for me. I wish I could do it faster. >.>

( Thoughts on the latest plot arc of Insanity Underrated ... don't click if you haven't yet read Chapters 9-10 )

I began Chapter 11 last night, and wrote exactly 900 words of it before going to bed. In keeping with the unofficial NaNoWriMo theme, my word count since the start of November is 10,024, which, although probably still way behind where I should be if I was actually doing NaNo, is not too bad for me. This is, of course, not counting the work I did on the fic before November - Insanity Underrated is, in total, 29,860 words long right now.

*crosses her fingers* Fic gods willing, I should have more for you guys relatively soon. :)

The "You Should Write..." Meme!
my thread here

I am nothing but a sheep, LOL. Oh well.

*goes back to editing Chapter 51 of To Ignite the Stars*

This is partly for jeebs83 and partly for xkatie_kittenx, since both have requested at various points over the last few days to see the Insanity Underrated playlist ever since I mentioned that I was making one. I did something similar for TIS, as readers of that longfic will know, and I'm beginning to think that a barometer of how serious I am about a fic is whether I make a playlist for it. Heh.

Basically, I as a writer cannot seem to produce anything worth reading unless I listen to music while I am doing it - preferably music that has a lot to do (in my own mind) with whichever characters I happen to be writing about and their story. It's another of my idiosyncratic kinks, just like the fact that I need to have an outline before I start writing any longfic. Since I do make those outlines in advance of a single word getting written, the task of putting together a playlist is made a lot easier.

So. Here be the Insanity Underrated playlist. It is culled partly from my Kara playlist - which in turn heavily influenced my writing of The Sound of One Hand Clapping - and partly from the songs I tend to naturally listen to while I'm working on the fic. In most cases I've included only partial lyrics, but each song title is a link to the full lyrics if you want them. Some songs are further explained by my notes, but I've left others purposefully vague due to spoilers. Those of you who want to figure out their meaning or the reason they're included, put on your thinking caps! ;)

Oh, and the icon? Very, very, VERY relevant. And that's all I'll say for now.

( The Insanity Underrated Playlist )

And if you got through all that, I think you deserve a medal! Hehe. ;)

(Icon is used because it's one of two multifandom ones I have, and besides, I adore it. :D)

All righty, enough angst. ;) I'm in the midst of both working on fic and replying to comments, but I've been meaning to put this particular poll up for quite some time, and hey - there's no time like the present, right?

I've seen this on a number of f-list journals, and the basic idea is this: an author takes a fic they've written and basically writes a DVD-style commentary about it. If you've ever listened to the commentary track on a DVD, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. The director (or fic author) discusses why they made the creative choices they did, what inspired a particular scene, what they thought about while filming/writing, etc. There's a movement afoot to write commentaries for fics, and I'm wondering what you guys would think of me doing one (or several). Incredibly, boorishly self-indulgent, or actually somewhat interesting? Below is an informative poll that asks you to decide and, should you vote yes, requests that you pick one or more fics that you'd most like me to provide commentary on.

A few notes with regards to the fics included: 1) I haven't listed either of my works-in-progress. Both Insanity Underrated and the 50-chapter monster are, for the purposes of this exercise, unfortunately off-limits. Because I haven't completed To Ignite the Stars or Insanity Underrated, I have doubts about my ability to reliably comment on them - and in some cases, it would be difficult to do so without mentioning huge spoilers for upcoming plot points in both. That's not to say I would never write commentaries for these fics, just that I'm not able to do so right now. Maybe in the future! 2) The fics listed in the second part of the poll are the ones I'm willing/able to comment on at the moment. I don't list all the fics I've ever written, partly because ticky-box polls have limited boxes and partly because some of my earlier stuff is so jaw-droppingly bad that I should probably just pull it off the internet altogether. However, if there's a fic not listed here for which you really want to see commentary, do mention it in the comments, and I'll consider it. 3) Commentaries, if I do them, will be posted to jedionpaper and linked back here, so no worries about missing them. The anal part of me just wants to keep everything organized.

Poll #1416350 Fic Commentary by Liz
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 4

Should I do a fic commentary?

If yes, for which fic would you like to see my commentary?

Any other questions, comments, or other gripes about this exercise? Throw 'em at me in comments and I'll see what I can do. :)

(I started typing this at work when it was relatively slow this afternoon and Twitter was broken, and I'm now finishing it at home. Heh. I pretty much fail sometimes, heh.)

I've been thinking some more about bsg_bigbang, and I have to say that I am leaning towards not signing up. It would suck on one level because I wouldn't have the fun of participating and seeing my fic made into icons and vids and so forth, but at this point I'm just not sure whether making Insanity Underrated into a bsg_bigbang work would be the best thing for the fic. For one thing, it would delay it being posted until November-ish, when online stuff will not be first and foremost in my mind, and when interest in BSG fics may have dimmed significantly. I don't like to think of the fandom potentially dying, but it's a possibility I need to plan for. And it's not even about the reviews - far from it. If that were the case, I'd have abandoned TIS a long time ago. I just think that posting Insanity Underrated while there is significant continuing interest in BSG fandom would be more fun, and there's better potential for that to be the case now as opposed to in November.

The other thing is that I seem to have at least partially rediscovered my inspiration to write Insanity Underrated. Now, signing up for bsg_bigbang wouldn't necessarily preclude me working on it right now, but it would preclude me posting Chapters 3 and 4 once I've edited them, as well as any future chapters. And I'm not sure whether waiting to post a longfic until it's done is really my style. I did that with The Sound of One Hand Clapping, but that was kind of a special case. I didn't originally intend that to be a longfic, and it wasn't until it was about three-quarters done that I did a word count and realized, "Whoops, I'm going to need to post this in multiple chapters." Insanity Underrated was a multi-chapter longfic from the start, and I never had any illusions that it would be anything else.

I wasn't sure at first why I lost my inspiration to work on it, but that was one of the only reasons I had considered signing up for bsg_bigbang. (The other had to do with the special icons and vids, but I'm sure that if I really want icons from it, I can hit up the lovely folks on my f-list. :D) I thought it might keep me on track as far as writing Insanity Underrated goes, but I'm now starting to realize that a lot of my anxiety towards the fic had to do with a major plot point that's going to come into play in the S2 arc, and whether said plot arc would be believable and true to character. I think it will, so long as I handle it carefully, but it's going to mean a few changes to the canon arc of Season 2. I just hope I can do those well, and that folks will forgive the long period of time between chapter updates. Heh.

As far as To Ignite the Stars is concerned, I posted Chapter 50 last night, so I am just a little proud of myself. I knew it was going to have to go at least 50 chapters length-wise, but what I didn't know was whether I'd be able to keep up my interest in the fic. That's been a problem for me in the past - I don't know how many writing projects I've started and then subsequently abandoned because I lost interest or got bored. With TIS, though, I soon discovered that it was a story I had to tell. I didn't really have a choice as to whether to write it or not; it was going to make its way out regardless. I've learned a lot about myself while working on it, and I'm sure I'll learn even more before it's finished. Ideally, I would like that to be in October, which is another reason that going out for bsg_bigbang might not be the slickest idea. TIS is very important to me, and it tends to try and snatch my attention away just when I'd prefer to be working on something else. It usually succeeds, too - let's just say I have like zero willpower when it comes to that sort of thing. Heh.

Right now I am once again being pulled between two projects, and while Insanity Underrated is currently winning, I don't want to leave TIS un-updated for very long, at least not as long as I'm working my way through the current plot arc. The last chapter ended on a crazy cliffhanger, and even though that was mostly by design, I get the feeling I'll have some very freaked out readers if I don't update soon. ;) It's wonderful to know that they're so wrapped up in the story, though. While the response to To Ignite the Stars has been small, those who read it leave some amazing and very flattering reviews, and although I emphasize again that my world does NOT revolve around comments, it is nonetheless wonderful to know that something in which you've put your heart and soul is being so well-received. Which reminds me, I really need to respond to those comments on the Anonymous Feedback Meme. Yet more proof that I fail, heh.

I have stillness community stuff to do tonight - lots of it - but I will in all probability squeeze some writing in there somewhere. Along with more True Blood. SO glad Andrew and I decided to do a Season 1 rewatch before the S2 premiere on June 14. I LOVE ALAN BALL and I don't care who frakking knows. *grins*

What the hey, I'll throw my hat into the ring. Honestly not expecting much, but you miss 100% of the shots you don't take! ;)

THE ANONYMOUS WRITING FEEDBACK MEME

(Real post and fic to come later, I promise. And the "sick" mood? I HAVE A COLD, OKAY? ;) *snerk* *pets the mother hens*)

So'm, I haven't posted much over the last few days because there hasn't been much going on in my life worth posting about, other than that I have a slight cold, and I don't think it's necessary for you guys to know the details of that. Heh. ;) My big focus this week, and much of last, has been writing To Ignite the Stars, and trying to push through a pretty major plot arc therein. I seem to have rediscovered my motivation, at least where TIS is concerned, but at the rate I'm writing I'll probably reach the A New Hope part of the fic by the time I'm, oh, 90 or so. *facepalm* I don't know what it is about this particular arc that's causing so much difficulty, especially since I've been visualizing it in my mind for months now.

But, as ever, I am valiantly carrying on. Chapter 49 is basically ready to post; it just needs one last editing go-over with Katie via IM, which we'll probably do in a couple hours or so. I've written 3,472 words of Chapter 50 but haven't yet reached said chapter's "Big Reveal," as it were, so I also need to do that today. I haven't even looked at the Drabble Request Post lately, though I do have a few of those ideas written down and some plans percolating in the old brain. However, as I said, my primary focus is TIS right now and I probably won't turn my attention to the drabbles (or those poor old birthday fics I owe some of you guys) until I'm finished this particular plot arc. I also really need to make a decision about bsg_bigbang, since said decision will affect what I do with Insanity Underrated and when.

Believe it or not, though, writing is actually not the main point of this post! Well, it is and it isn't, really. A couple of plotbunnies have been distracting me from writing over the last little while and I figure the best way to keep them from doing that is to put them in an LJ post and blab and ramble about them a bit. So, here goes.

( Attack of the Plotbunnies! RUN! )

All things being equal, I'll post Chapter 49 of To Ignite the Stars likely tonight or tomorrow, depending on when I can get it edited. The WS fic ... well, I'm hoping to finish it once and for all, and if I do, that'll also be put up asap.

I was going to blather about stillness community stuff too, but I think that's a topic for another, friends locked, post. So I shall leave you folks with this, and head back to writing and watching the hockey game.

Good morning, dear f-list! Hope y'all are having a good day so far, though judging by some of the posts on LJ and tweets on Twitter, it's not going very well for some of you. :( *hugs* I hope it gets better soon!

I've been grappling with a dilemma the past several days, and while it's not really that much of an issue in the grand scheme of things, it has nonetheless been occupying a rather large portion of my brainspace. And since I'm evidently incapable of making a decision for myself without consulting teh intarwebz, I decided to hop on here and ask you guys - particularly the Kara/Lee shippers - about it.

See, there's this really awesome new community, and it's called bsg_bigbang. The idea is that authors, artists and vidders will sign up, and from May to November the authors will write a 20,000+-word BSG fic. When said fic is complete, it will be posted to that community, and the artists will make special icons from it and the vidders will vid scenes from the fic. Cool cool cool, right? And good for those of us who may need a kick in the pants to finish those AUs languishing around our hard drives.

As most of you probably know, I am the writer of one such AU. I love Insanity Underrated, and I'm excited about and devoted to its plot. The problem? Zero motivation. Part of the issue is that To Ignite the Stars is consuming my motherfrakking LIFE right now, but the other part is ... zero motivation. And I figure that if I signed up for bsg_bigbang, I'd have at least a fighting chance of getting back to work on it due to the guilt complex that will ensue if I didn't finish it in time. (I am good at guilting, yo. Almost as good as Obi-Wan or Lee.) The comm is even offering cheerleaders to each author, and while I have a ready cheerleader/beta reader in Katie, other peer pressure can't hurt, right? I asked the mods if it's okay to use a fic that you've already posted two chapters of, and they said that's fine as long as you hold back all further chapters until the November deadline. And ICONS. And VIDS. Of MY FIC. Seriously, it doesn't get much cooler than that!

So why have I not gotten my ass over there and signed up? Well, first of all because there's always a chance that I'll rediscover my motivation without the help of a fancy-shmancy community. It's certainly happened before, as TIS readers can attest. Plus, there's the fact that if I did sign up for this, Insanity Underrated readers wouldn't get any more chapters of the fic until November. I'd be working on it, I'd be completing chapters, but I wouldn't be able to post them since I would have given first rights to bsg_bigbang. And now to November is a looooooong damned time not to post a fic in which, presumably, you want there to be ongoing interest.

My dilemma is therefore this, f-list: should I sign up for bsg_bigbang? If I did, it would have to be with Insanity Underrated, since monster fic plotbunnies are somewhat difficult to come by. The pros are that I would finish it, and I'd get it iconned and vidded to boot. The cons are that readers would have to wait until November to get the whole thing - but I'd probably finish it in October due to certain, ah, time constraints. ;) At least it would be completed, though, and there wouldn't be any fear that I'd suddenly abandon it.

So. Opinions? Suggestions? Yays, nays? Lemme hear 'em! :D

Okay. So. I want to make something very clear up front: this is totally, completely and entirely viva_lla_gloria's fault. She posted the drabble request meme on her journal, I was perusing my f-list, I saw it, I commented to request something from her, and so I am now bound by the Meme Gods to do the precise same thing lest they smite me! 'Cause they do so love to smite, y'know. ;)

I am, however, making a couple of significant alterations to the original. If I get smited for that, well, then I guess I get smited. Yaaaaaay masochism!

The first fifteen people to comment in this post get to request a drabble from me. You don't have to repost this in your LJ if you don't want to - just be sure to read the guidelines/caveats below. :)

The aforementioned guidelines/caveats:

1) Fifteen slots rather than the original ten. Because I am generous like that. :D

2) Despite the "drabble" moniker, I reserve the right to transform the drabbles into ficlets depending upon the prompt and the vagaries of my muse. In fact, they probably will be ficlets, since I SUCK at the 100-word-limit thing.

3) My two main fandoms, as most of you probably know, are Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica (2003). Anything else I'd be kinda twitchy about writing, not to mention inexperienced.

4) Things I will not write. Every writer has them, and I am no exception. Anything involving marital infidelity and non-consensual sex I am absolutely not comfortable with, for personal reasons. Similarly, though I'm pretty equal-opportunity when it comes to most BSG pairings, I can't abide Kara/Leoben and Tigh/Caprica Six in a romantic capacity (those damn personal reasons again). Sorry, guys. I'd also shy away from requesting BSG slash, but only because I'm really inexperienced at it. Heh. No real issues with most SW pairings - aside from Qui/Obi, which I'm just sort of "eh" about. I'll say this as well: suggest Dormékin, and I WILL shoot you. Yes. Through your computer screen. With my invisible non-existent gun.

5) Slash is perfectly acceptable set in the SW 'verse.

6) I will write all ratings, from G (K) to NC-17 (MA).

7) If you request Obi-Wan/Padmé - totally legit, by the way - it may be set in the TIS universe, as my brain seems to be incapable of placing O/P in any other context at the moment. Heh.

All drabbles/ficlets will be posted to jedionpaper and linked back here. Just basically my way of keeping things tidy, and there's no need to worry about missing any of them since I'll also comment back to you when your drabble has been posted.

I believe that's it, so ... GO!

I'm bored and lazy today, so you get a meme. An oooooold meme at that.

Swiped from emavalexis and GOD KNOWS how many other people.

Post a single sentence from each WIP you have (or as many as you want to pick). No context, no explanations. No more than one sentence!

( Right over here! )

I apparently have way more works-in-progress than I thought. Heh. Then again, once I started digging around my hard drive for parts of half-finished and half-remembered fics, I turned up quite a few. Some of them will definitely be completed at some point, while others I'm not so sure about. Some are waiting in the wings for me to finish other major projects, and they'll then get their turn. In any case, you guys should see if you can guess what they're from!

Priorities for today include finishing up the revisions to my Women's History paper (and sending it on to noobianrose, who has very kindly agreed to look over it before the resubmission deadline!), dealing with stillness community stuff, figuring out once and for all whether I do want to change my layout, and posting SOMETHING resembling fic. I've delayed that last thing far too long, I think.

Some random notes:

1. I may be the first person in the history of the world to burst into tears over their own fic. *FACEPALM* Just for fun today I decided to go on YouTube and find a certain scene in the OT that will be extremely important for TIS. I muted the volume and coordinated it with a certain song from the playlist, and ... yeah. GEEZ. Yes, I am apparently really that pathetic, move along now.

2. It is really, really fun to stay home during a snowstorm and laugh at all the poor souls struggling to get around on the sidewalk below your apartment. I actually had no idea that said storm was supposed to hit when I booked my sick day for today, so this turned out to be just an added bonus. Evidently, in addition to being pathetic, I'm also a sadistic bitch. Heh.

3. Sorry, gals ... Hayden Christensen is officially engaged. Katie's reaction to hearing the news? "It was as if millions of fangirls suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced." XD! (I know how y'all feel ... Ewan's been married for years. >.>)

4. I get to see Obama tomorrow!!!! *squee* Well, maybe. He's coming to Ottawa, anyway, and although all the officials are saying ordinary folk probably won't be able to see anything except his motorcade speeding past, I DON'T CARE. I'm going down to Parliament Hill and if that's all I see, then I'LL SEE HIS FUCKING MOTORCADE, DAMMIT. I just want to be able to say I was there, period, and anything else is pretty much a bonus. Hehe.

5. I pretty much fail at posting things when I say I'm going to - which should be news to absolutely no one, by the way - but I'm going to make a supreme effort to get both the remaining TIS chapters and that association meme up tomorrow. Which means poor Wendy will have to deal with my spam, unfortunately. :( Ah well, I can't possibly be as bad as those Anakin/Dormé shippers who crosspost their shit to five million communities ... can I?

6. I have comments and junk to get to, which I will also do tomorrow.

- BSG peeps: if you don't already know, there be a Galactica friending meme over this way! Great chance to add some new folks to your list - I know I'm always glad to have more BSG people to squee with!

- Talking of which, if you're new 'round these parts, welcome! I've added and been added by several people of late, both from the friending meme and elsewhere, and I'm most glad to make your acquaintances! Hopefully you'll be able to stand the insanity, hehe. ;)

- Assignment from hell is finally DONE, which is a huge relief. It was for Women's History and involved reading a supremely boring book and writing a supremely boring response to a supremely boring set of questions. I zoned out through much of the first and second periods of the hockey game to finish it, so those of you who read Bleed Black & Red (all ... 1.5 of you, maybe? LOL) will have to forgive me if my game review's a bit scanty. They played well tonight though, which is one of the reasons I felt justified in only giving it half my attention. So glad to get the assignment off my back, too, so I can hack through the rest of the items on my to-do list. Next up: STUFF FOR OVOC!!!!!!!!! Holy shit, I am so behind on dealing with OVOC. Heh. *facepalm*

- TIS is yet another concern. Despite having at LEAST two or three chapters sitting around on my hard drive, I haven't made Katie's corrections and have certainly neglected to post them. To those of you following the fic, I can only offer my sincere apologies and promises that I'll catch up probably this weekend at the latest. The Assignment from Hell has been eating my brain the past number of days, and my body hasn't really helped either, but I did get some good work done on TIS today, and in all likelihood will probably end up posting five or six chapters at once. Heh.

- I've got a whoooooole buncha links I've been meaning to spam you guys with, but as it's almost ten-thirty and I have to start on Wednesday night's crop of fandom newsletters, I don't think I'll have time tonight. Yet another thing to put off until tomorrow, sigh.

- I'm really impressed with how well you guys did on the Music Meme! When I did it before on my other journal I was used to more blanks than guesses, but as of this posting all but seven songs were guessed correctly! That means there's still a few left, though, so if any of you want to take a second look, feel free. Internet cookies to the first person to guess #12, hehe.

Just for the record, it's somewhat embarrassing when you happen to be working on a particularly smutty scene in your multichapter AU and one of your old Journalism profs walks up and engages you in conversation while simultaneously peering at your notebook. *headdesk* I guess I should have expected it considering I was sitting in a relatively public area near the Journalism and Mass Comm department, but still. Heh. This guy's pretty open-minded, but I don't generally parade in real life my prediliction for writing about fictional characters having sex. So, I have to admit, my answer to "Hey Liz, you working on your next news feature?" was a muttered "Uh - um - well - uh - sort of - HEY I REALLY LIKED THAT ARTICLE YOU WROTE FOR THE CITIZEN LAST WEEK, IT ROCKED!" Without the capslock, of course. That'll teach me to write smut where my old professors can just randomly happen upon me. *facepalm @ self*

Anyway, so not the point of this post, but I wanted to mention it. Heh. ;) I've been musing tonight on the nature of drabbles vs. ficlets, these ruminations mainly having been prompted by a comment to last night's edition of jedi_news. There were a few cases in the post where authors of linked fics hadn't provided titles and word counts for those fics, and so I classed them according to my own personal classifications: anything under 500 words without a title gets linked as an "untitled drabble," while untitled fics over 500 words receive the designation "untitled ficlet." And although I obviously won't lose sleep over this next question, as a journalist who imbibed "avoid personal biases" right from first year, I'm now idly wondering whether I was wrong to impose my own classifications.

Of course I didn't go through every one of those fics and perform actual word counts myself. It's not my responsibility to do so, and I'm often tired and/or pressed for time while completing the JN updates. So I use my own system, as is the case in other areas of the update. (I don't want to puzzle over whether something's news or miscellaneous, if a pic belongs in "Pictures" or "Graphics," what indications should appear for SW icons in multifandom posts, etc., so over a couple years of doing JN I have developed the aforementioned system.) And it works fine for standardized stuff. Not work-safe posts are always going to be not work-safe, multifandom posts will remain multifandom posts, and once I've made up my mind that an item belongs in News I usually leave it there. With the possible exception of News/Miscellaneous, these things don't have multiple interpretations so far as I know. But the drabble vs. ficlet thing does, and so that's why I'm wondering a bit about it.

When dinosaurs ruled the earth and I last wrote a drabble, it was most definitely over 100 words, but I still marked it as a drabble because in my view, it wasn't long enough to be a ficlet. By comparison, the stuff I do for TM (or will do, if they ever get around to accepting me) is usually 500-600 words, and Kara!pup has a "ficlet" tag on her journal for just such occasions. No one has yet questioned this, although that could simply be because no one pays attention to her tags. (And they should! The pup's tags are entertaining! *whiiiine* XD) But I definitely realize that some people have different definitions of what constitutes a drabble and what does not.

So, this brings me to my questions for you, the writers on my f-list. What, to you, constitutes a drabble? Where does one draw the line between a drabble and a ficlet? At 100 words? At 500 words? At 1,000? Do you get annoyed when you see a "drabble" or a "ficlet" defined as something you don't believe it to be? If you need to make an executive decision about what to call a drabble and what to call a ficlet, what would you say to people who hold the opposite viewpoint?

[A few notes: 1) Although this post is public, I will in all probability not be linking it on JN simply because I don't want the person who commented to me to feel singled-out or picked upon. 2) Similarly, while this might have been a good topic to address solely to my fellow editors, I'm looking for wide-ranging opinions on this, so restricting the discussion wouldn't really be appropriate. 3) Now I really really want to do that drabble request meme again. Sigh.]

So, I survived this week, go me! Tomorrow I will in all probability have to put in some overtime at work, but things definitely won't be as crazy as they were on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. The special issue is almost done, which makes things a lot easier.

I'm rewarding myself tonight by playing with Kara!pup a bit, and also by putting in some heavy work on TIS. I'm about to write a scene that is ... well, quite pivotal in the fic, and in the lives of Obi-Wan and Padmé themselves, and this got me thinking again about the TIS playlist, which follows the overall arc of my baby quite closely. If you looked at some of the song lyrics and thought about them, you could probably gain some insights into exactly where things are going, although matters are of course fluid and subject to change without notice (hell, sometimes this thing doesn't even notify me, the author, before deciding to make changes!). There are definitely some very broad plot points that will follow canon and are therefore pretty much set in stone. My brain is starting to think a lot about the Original Trilogy right now, since the fic will be reaching that point in the not-too-distant future (well, okay, probably not for another couple months' worth of writing, but still) and what will change and what won't given how things are setting up. Some plot points will certainly be made a bit clearer, that's for sure.

Anyway, awhile back I made a post about the TIS playlist, as it was on November 8th. Since then it's gone through some revisions, to say the very least. All of the original songs are still on there, but I've begun adding some stuff that will apply more to the OT, as well as songs that examine the Obi-Wan/Padmé TIS relationship in different ways. I recently discovered the band Within Temptation, whose album The Silent Force (HEH) could practically have been written about TIS, so a metric ton of their songs are on there. I've only included the songs added most recently in this post - for the others, the ones that haven't changed, feel free to check out the above post. :)

As always there are some notes explaining the inclusion of the songs, although some contain more details than others. This is for spoiler reasons, obviously. XD In most cases I've included only partial lyrics, but each song title is a link to the full lyrics if you want them.

( The TIS playlist, v. 2.0 )

... my muse decides to go AWOL in the middle of a pretty promising fic. UGH.

Said fic is not TIS, thankfully, and in fact the muse wants to go back to it and finish up Chapter 36. It's probably my own damn fault for having two different projects on the go in the same fandom, but still. I was totally inspired after finishing Wild Space and decided to write a follow-up AU piece set in the TIS universe where Padmé and Obi-Wan basically spend the three days it takes to get back to Coruscant cuddling while she tries to get him to tell her about Zigoola and he does his darndest to avoid telling her. Heh. And it was a really awesome idea that was sorta-kinda devolving into a character study of Obi-Wan, but now my muse is saying she'd prefer to work on TIS again, and has simultaneously taken away ALL my inclination to finish Cool Idea Fic. GRAWR.

I may try to push through it, although I really don't like writing when I don't have the inspiration for something because inevitably it comes out crap. Heh. But I also don't like leaving things unfinished, so I try to follow most ideas through to their conclusions. That may not be possible with this, unfortunately. But we'll see.

Meanwhile, brain is also poking me to continue working on the New Caprica fic, which I should be able to do since it's not set in the SW fandom. Again, we shall see. Tomorrow is going to be a major writing day, but I am also - FINALLY!!!! - going to finalize and post the schedule for bsg_pairicons. I'm really looking forward to getting that comm off the ground!

This is something I've seen basically all around my f-list, but I'm giving credit to trialia and taragel because they posted the coolest versions of it, the versions that I'm now going to proceed to steal. :D First, I'm going to list every single thing I wrote in 2008 - shortfics, TIS chapters, ficlets, claim fics, fest fics, whatever. These will be divided by month and subdivided by fandom, and at the bottom of each month will be two numbers - a total word count for the month and a total fic count for the month. After the December fic and word totals I've put a fic total for the year and a word total for the year, and after that will be a series of questions ganked from taragel about what fic I'm most proud of, my best fic, my most underappreciated fic, etc. etc.

Also, note that some fics will not show with the correct date stamp since they were re-posted to my writing community after their original posting date on this journal. This is because I prefer to link to jedionpaper wherever possible - as I no longer put up fic here - but if you're really picky about making sure I've matched fics to their correct month, you can look back through amidala_thrace's archive. The original posts are all still there. ;)

Now, onward!

( Liz's 2008 Fic Roundup )

Apropos of nothing, I discovered to my annoyance that apparently you can't backdate journal posts in a non-personal journal (i.e. a community). Who knew? >.> This must be a recent development, however, because several communities I belong to have entries that say they were posted in the 1970s and 1980s, which is obviously impossible without backdating since it's waaaaay before LJ even existed. Anyway, my sincere apologies if you guys got spammed with a couple of fic reposts tonight. I tried to backdate them, only to be told that there was an error because users aren't allowed to backdate in communities. :( (And as I subsequently added to those posts, Deborah, you don't need to link the fics in jedi_news, because they are reposts.)

Okay, so basically I'm posting for the sole purpose of showing off this LOVELY icon own_the_sky made for me. Heh. But seriously, YAY for the Girlfriends finally being represented together in a userpic!! (There you go, Katie - 100x100 validation of the nickname you first gave Padmé and Kara. Hehehehe.) own_the_sky also made another one just like this, but with different pictures, so of course I had to upload it too. XD

Also, for once my hockey team is kinda-sorta not sucking! Which rocks, and I'm planning to enjoy it for as long as I can. Knowing the Sens' propensity for blowing leads, that may last approximately five minutes, but meh. I'm easily satisfied these days. ;) Yay to Brian Lee, who got his first NHL goal tonight!

On the writing front, I managed to beat back the BSG bunnies long enough to start editing the fic I owe Anakin/Obi-Wan shippers, and I'm hoping it'll be ready to post by tomorrow. If not, gizzi1213, please feel free to shoot me. Bwah. :D

Also also, I need a Girlfriends tag. *creates* There we go!

Uh, WOW. Has anyone invented, like, Raid for plotbunnies yet? (Get rid of your plotbunnies the fast and easy way!) I could really use some right now, because at this point I'm afraid I'll be up all night writing fanfic if the damn things don't vamoose in a hurry. >.>

And yes, part of it is my own fault since I had a (relatively) free evening and decided to spend it looking for Kara/Lee smut to read, but I certainly wasn't expecting this. Frakking things. I haven't had an infestation this bad since last May when school finished and I was on vacation from work, and we all know how that ended. Y HALO THAR 23,000 WORD MONSTROSITY THAT ENTIRELY DEVOURED MY BRAIN. If Liz!muse births yet another longfic project - and okay, The Sound of One Hand Clapping wasn't long the way, say, TIS is long, BUT STILL - I think I will scream.

Luckily it's still churning out shortfic ideas at the moment, and it really really really really wants me to work on the New Caprica thing I keep promising jeebs83. So I'm guessing that will probably be my next project where BSG is concerned. Brain is also poking me about potentially writing another fic set in the same universe/timeline as The Sound of One Hand Clapping, though that would absolutely be a shortfic and would probably be more devoted to exploring how things might change during Season 4. I don't know. WE'LL SEE, BRAIN.

And then of course there is TIS. Poor, poor TIS, which is now afraid that it'll get abandoned for BSG like it did last May. I don't think that will happen, or at least I'm hoping not. Strangely I still feel as much of a compulsion to work on it as I do to tackle the BSG bunnies, which is ... awkward. Rather like listening to a group of squabbling children, actually.

The daily_snitch update was surprisingly light tonight, although I suppose that should be a given since the Sunday editor seems to have returned. We shall see. It gave me more time to wrestle with plotbunnies, in any case.

Also also, Team Canada won again at the World Juniors, which is awesome, and my own personal hockey team still sucks donkey balls, which is ... not. Ah well. I tell myself that if I could get through the four straight playoff defeats to Toronto, I can get through anything, and that's probably true. Heh. ;)

Fic count: 5 fics to write. 2 completed and ready to post. 3 to go.

I keep getting distracted by cookies, mince tarts, wrapping presents, Christmas programming and family. To cap it off, my brain has gone hardcore into SW-mode, meaning that trying to get it to write BSG is like pulling hen's teeth. And, of course, 95% of the fics I have to write are BSG.

Liz: *500 words into Adama/Roslin fic* *pause* Wait, what was I talking about? *looks at screen* This is awful anyway. *pokes brain* Come up with something better, huh?

Brain: Oh, Padmé should write Obi-Wan a love letter. And then they should take the twins on a picnic and have ice cream! And don't forget the whole starship incident you and Katie came up with ... oh, and -

Liz: Um, Battlestar ...?

Brain: What?

Liz: BATTLESTAR GALACTICA?!?! The show you've been obsessed with for like 12 MONTHS?!?!?!

Brain: Well, maybe Kara ships Obidala ...

Liz: o.O You did not say that.

Brain: Heh.

*headdesk* I will be posting SOMEthing later on tonight, hopefully in the form of gifts for some of the fine people on my f-list. They'll revolve mostly around some of the prompts I've been given over the last couple of weeks, but in terms of making actual sense ... nope, can't promise that. ;)