Rather a Story

Hi all!

By now you've probably given up on me in despair, which is understandable. I'm still kicking around, though, and starting (slowly) to get back into writing. I've been kind of lazy of late and have been lax in crossposting back here from AO3. I think there are one or two Teen Wolf fics that never made it back here. Whoops!

So, me in a nutshell, and why I haven't been posting to my fandom LJ:

• Summer was incredibly hectic. After the very traumatic death of my cat on a personal level, there was also the shooting of several RCMP officers by an armed gunman in New Brunswick, and I was among those who were flown in from all over Canada to help the local RCMP cope with the tragedy. I spent two weeks working 12-hour night shifts with no breaks.


• I am single again. I won't go into details in a public entry, but as of May of this year I was no longer in a relationship, and as of August I am once again on my own.


• I spent the end of the summer and beginning of fall trying to sell my house while still commuting to my 60-hour/week job in another city, which translates to driving roughly 600km a week.


• The house is now sold (yay!), which means I am in the midst of a flurry of packing and trying to get all my ducks in a row before November 1st.

On more fannish notes:

I am pretty much done with Supernatural. I've taken several steps back from not only the fandom, but the show itself. Maybe especially the show. After last year, it went in a direction that I just couldn't follow. I haven't watched any of the episodes of Season 10, nor do I plan to. I might change my mind and maybe binge-watch them farther down the road, but I doubt it. The show has stopped doing the things I loved about it, and I can't watch it or even think about the current events without feeling a bit upset about it. That tells me that it's time to stop and watch and participate in things I actively enjoy.

I am slowly getting back into writing, as I've said, and as such I will probably be updating my 'verses. No one get excited. It's not a done deal yet, and while I used to be able to pull off thousands of words in a day, that's not the case lately. Writing is a muscle, and mine is severely atrophied. That being said, I still have lots of ideas for almost all my 'verses, and I do want to get back to them.

I'm still being fannish about lots of other shows, though much more casually. I've gotten sucked into Teen Wolf, as you may have noticed, and am currently finishing a Hawkeye-centric story for marvel_bang, which I will be posting on November 11th, along with artwork from the lovely and talented branquignole. I hope I spelled her name right. /o\ I've been watching Person of Interest, which continues to be awesome in spite of last year's horrifically tragic feelsfest. Also Sleepy Hollow, which is utterly delightful, as well as a host of other TV shows that I don't feel quite as strongly about. I love watching TV, but not all shows bring out the giddy fangirl in me. Mostly I flail about the shows I love on Twitter.

In fact, Twitter is my social media of choice these days, mostly because it's very portable and I lead a slightly nomadic lifestyle for now. If you don't follow me there and would like to, I'm @ratherastory, though you should be warned that my tweets are not all fannish. Indeed, I tweet about feminist issues, about a number of things that I guess can be lumped under the "social justice warrior" heading, and about my everyday life. Oh, and I tweet a lot about my pets. I remember a few years ago there was a complaint about how much I tweeted about my pets (specifically my cats), and that hasn't changed. My pets are very photogenic. Luckily, following me is not actually mandatory. :)

In the meantime, I've been mucking around with the notion of participating in NaNoWriMo, which kind of has me excited. The problem is that, unlike those people who have more plots than time rattling around in their heads, I've been devoid of new ideas for quite a while. I'm hoping inspiration will strike in the next two weeks or so, before November 1st rolls around. I would love to finish November on a high, with 50,000 new words of fiction to my name. Now I just have to think of a plot.

Okay, so I'm, like, five days late. Whoops.

Still, I hope 2014 is treating everyone beautifully so far! If it's not, I hope it mends its ways very quickly for you.

I have actually written words this year. Only 1,000 of them, but that's 1,000 more than I managed to write in the last 6 months, so I'm taking it as a win.

I'm trying to get back into the swing of things. I sat down and plotted out just how much free time I have for writing these days, and figured out that I have about 10-12 hours a month in which I can write. On a REALLY good day I can write about 1,000 words in an hour. Given that some of that "writing" time will have to go toward research and plotting, I think that a goal of 6,000-10,000 words a month is reasonable. Time will tell, of course, if that's feasible.

I am making a serious attempt to turn my life around, to be more present for my family, and that means a lot less time spent online when I'm at home. When I'm at work (or, rather, in the city where I work) I allow myself to be online more, because that's basically the only interaction I get with friends. But when I'm home, I want to spend as much time as possible with my family. When they're not home, I need to maximise the time I do have to do chores, run errands, and also sometimes write. That means no more screwing around on the internet when I could be doing things.

I will also be making extra special efforts to stay on top of the community stuff I'm in charge of. I've been doing okay, but not great, and I am determined to be a better mod this year. Here's hoping.

What's everyone else up to these days? Inquiring minds want to know!

I am having issues with my internet connection at home. That, coupled with Christmas and work, means I won't be around as much until I get it all resolved.

Sorry to anyone who's waiting on something from me. :(

Anyway, I'm working on getting all of this sorted out.

Hola all!

So, as I said in a previous post, I am taking a mini-break from the internet, starting at midnight and finishing December 18th (inclusively).

I'm not going to be completely gone. I have a few fic commitments due in December, so I'll be posting a few times. I'll also be checking my email once a day in case of "emergencies." However, for the rest I will not be checking LJ, Twitter, or any other part of the internet for two weeks.

(I'm kind of amused that my hiatus is starting at the same time as the SPN hiatus, but I think that may just be amusing to me)

With any luck, this little two-week detox will be just the thing for me to get my RL shit together, to get a lot more writing done, and to come back refreshed and excited to do fandom stuff again.

If you need help with anything relating to the comms I help to run, my co-mods will be happy to answer your queries.

Everyone take good care of yourselves in my absence, and I will see you on the flip side!

Anyone know what happened to hansons_angel? Is she gone for good, or pulling a Roque and staying away from the internet for a while for RL reasons?

Anyone know what happened to roque_clasique? She's not gone forever, is she?