MOOP!

NEFFA was pretty great, despite missing all of Saturday first-session (we stumbled in just before the 5:00 medley, yayyy candidate class.) I will try and write a proper good-bad-ugly report, but mostly it was quite great.

On a no way whatsoever related note, it's been a while since I reminded folks that I keep a sexfilter here. It's a combination of opt-in and opt-out, which is to say that when I friend people (and periodically when I think about it) I decide whether I think they'll want to be on the filter, and whether I want them there. Regardless, you are welcome to ask me to change your status, in either direction. (I have had people explicitly ask to not be on it anymore, and that really is completely fine.)

I don't post in it much usually. If you wanna see if you're currently on the filter, check the "sexfilter" tag.

Comments on this post are screened, for people to safely say "oo me" or "no thanks" as suits.

~Sor
MOOP!

Also, what is it with all these fics with Sheldon and chess? I mean, not that I object, as it is very him, but goddamnit, I suck at chess and will therefore never manage to adequately seduce the man.

...yes, yes, I'm going to bed.

~Sor
MOOP!

Postscript 1: Yes, this is why I have a twitter, to save you lot from posts like these. Oh wait. Apologies.

Postscript 2: Tonight will be an interesting test of what direction people read their livejournals in. Does this entry make any sense whatsoever? Have you read those that come before?

I myself read chronologically. Like you should.

Postscript 3: Wevs, you know? It's my journal and I'll post if I want to.

Unrelatedly, "wevs" is pretty much my word for the month.

There are fireflies in My Tree, and I find myself nostalgic for a year ago, when I remembered that there are places near here worth exploring, and sometimes I even get to spend time with someone who is worth exploring those places with.

And the only reason this entry sounds happier than the other is because I don't always write as well as I Feel.

~Sor
MOOP!

There are two numbers right now, which seem to be defining my existence as a writer.

Oh sure, there are lots of things academically. 500 word essay. 6 page research paper. Cite 10 sources. All sorts of numbers fly by in the pursuit of writing something for school, but they tend to be inconsistent and unimportant. No, when I say there are numbers defining my existence as a writer, I mean my existence as a writer of interesting things. A writer of stories, of essays, of rants, of vignettes, of quotes, of lines, and of anything else there is I can think of to write. Those numbers are 750 and 140.

You might've noticed that I've been incredibly light on actually updating my livejournal recently. There's a couple of reasons for that, notable among them because I've been busy as hell. One of the bigger reasons is because I've been tweeting instead. The other big one is that Tho finally pushed me far enough towards actually signing up for and using 750words.com.

I've been using it for a month now. And it is abso-fucking-loutly *BRILLIANT!*

The idea is the same advice that is given to every aspiring writer by every successful writer --the secret to being a writer is not hard, all you have to do is actually write, every single day. But somehow, having a nice clean website to store your words on, and more importantly, having a nice fun point system to give you that extra inch of incentive, has meant that I've actually had incentive to write, outside of the logical and internal.

It has succeeded where every single other thing in all the world has failed. It has given me a reason to write, every day, because if I don't, I won't get the points for actually doing my writing, and I'll ruin my streaks, and it'll be Just Terrible.

There are two steps I still need to manage. Using it more to write actual stories, as opposed to just personal babble about whatever's on my mind at the time is the less important of those goals --sure, it'd be great to get better, and more consistent, about putting my fiction down onto paper. I'm never going to be a novelist without a finished novel, after all. The other thing I'm lacking is a little more important: I just need to do something with my output, and if they're short little bits of writing, well, that just means I'll be making more short little posts, or longer posts that jump across a lot of topics (see also: rm). Once I've got that down, well...

750words really is the best toy I've got in my writers toolbox right now.

Now, that being said, you'll note I also babbled something about Twitter in my initial explanation for why livejournal's been so light. Over the last couple years, I've had a twitter account, and therefore, when I first get a stupid little one line thought, I can just toss that in there, instead of on my livejournal. Quoteposts especially have suffered from my increasing reliance on the 140 character format, it's just too easy to drop a nicely worded sentence into twitter instead of making a post.

I'm not really sure how to fix this, and every once in a while (when I'm not tweeting emotastic song lyrics, that is) I will say something on twitter that I think is probably worth reading by a larger audience. This means I either need to expand the one line of brilliance into a lot of babble, make a supershort post, or do that most dread of things --export my daily tweets to livejournal.

I figure the way to solve that is the same as solving 750words --whenever I write something good enough, just go ahead and drop it in my livejournal anyways. I've spent the last six years making (wait, six? That can't be...holy fuck, six and a half?! Really?!) this journal a repository of everything public I have to say. Consolidation can't hardly hurt.

750 words and 140 characters. Minimum and maximum writing limits, and it's hard to say which has forced more creativity out of me so far. All I can really say is that I do so love being a writer in the era of the internet.

~Sor
MOOP!

Postscript: That being said, I cannot express in words how frustrating it is to finish a piece on 750words, look at the counter, and realize I'm like...thirty words from being done. I can add a few extra words, but not thirty, and when I'm that close, it feels a little ridiculous to start a whole new thought, because there's no chance I'll actually finish it. Or, well, there is a chance, I just want to finish the first one first.

At any rate, with this post script I've topped eight hundred, so I am just fine with everything ever again. Ta!

Every once in a while, something will happen in my private life, that I don't feel would be kind to share in the public journal, usually because it involves someone else, but occasionally just because I do have my own life (kinda) and a right to at least a little bit of privacy.

Of course, it being me, I immediately want to get the input of the world at large, for virtually everything that ever happens ever. Breaking up with Blue Canary is a prime example of this --the day it happened, I made a filtered post, to some of the people I was closer to at that point, and I didn't bother to tell anyone else until a few weeks later.

So yes. Something kindof completely unexpectedly sweet and mature and wonderful just happened, and I'm not gonna give you more details than that, nyah nyah. There is a reason I have a cryptic tag on here.

((Man, if you could tag twitter entries though, that would get waaaay more milage than over here. I use twitter as my immediate "THIS IS MY MOOD" all the time, which leads to a lot of crypticness.))

Semirelatedly, I'll never understand why I find it so awesome when people act like sane adults. I was clearly brought up by society to be cynical and emo or something, because it throws me for a loop when I *don't* get abused by the world sometimes. So yay?

*smiles like a ninny*

~Sor
MOOP!

So, Arisia was pretty awesome. I was at a bit of a weird place hormonally (Anyone want to trade?) but the incredible emotional high of spending a weekend with a lot of people I really quite like totally made up for it and gave me a wonderful rush of homeness.

"Steampunk is easy. All you need is goggles and a top hat." "Yeah, if you WANT to look like a poseur."

(Sorry. Am having conversation while updating. I am scum like that.)

Annndyes.

So.

Here's the awesome(?) news. The fun of Arisia last year was that the monday of it was the day I could move back into my dorm. So, like a sensible person, I assumed that the monday of this years Arisia was the day I could move back in.

Classes start on the 26th. Dorm opens on the 25th. I have a week in Boston to screw around!

So, yeah. I'm going to enjoy being able to spend time in my city as it's meant to be, what with the good and glorious SNOW everywhere to play in. (I suspect I'll be sick of it as soon as I have to walk anywhere ever, but in the meantime, ohmygod, SNOWWWW!)

My shoulder is being read over, which is always slightly disconcerting not because I mind the words being read, but because it always tends to make me self-conscious when I am watched in any way, and doubly so for what I lamely consider my art. 'Specially because I tend to have just abysmal grammar.

Annnnd I'm going to finish packing now. Byeeee.

~Sor
MOOP!

Hokay, elljay is kinda stupid.

I posted a private entry this morning. Later in the day, I decided to make it all public-like. So I filter it right, and edit the time to be in the afternoon.

Elljay apparently went "fuck this" and decided to keep showing it during the morning, which means that anyone who read their flist between me posting it private and making it public, did not see said entry.

(I've checked, and while it lists it's time as 5:30, it doesn't show up then in my flist. This is stupid.)

So yeah. here, read.. Normally, I would not be doing this, but this is spilt emo, and a bit of explaining to my current state of mind, and the general sort of thing I'd be filling people in on if their pants were bankrupt.

~Sor
MOOP!

....Kay, in other news, I have a new entry for the collective "Livejournal is stupid."

See, for a couple weeks or so, I've been having trouble with my tags --they won't show on the entry, meaning I can't tag entries, meaning I can't find things in my journal (Not that I can much find them anyways)

So, since I specifically wanted to search a particular tag (conventions) I actually hit the "tags" button on the bottom of my last entry, to try and enter the tags there, since they weren't showing up when I entered them in the tags box on the update page.

When I tried to enter the tags there, THEN it gave me the helpful message that, by putting all the tags I wanted on there, I would exceed my limit of 1000 tags. Hm, gee, I would have really liked to have heard that message the first time you fucked up and didn't tag my journal, elljay. Fucker.

Soyeah. I have to re-reread* my journal and go through the tags and see if I can cut it down to under 1000 easily and in a way that makes sense. This is such bullshit though. If elljay is going to keep me from using enough tags to get to the entries I want, can it at least have a better search function? If I want to find a specific entry, I search my gmail inbox to find the entry, not the journal itself.

Yep. Elljay sucks. What else is new?

~Sor
MOOP!

*I reread it just before Seren died. Fucker.

Ha, I am done done done done DONE with reading livejournal, all caught up my flist! Only took me...geeze, when did I start? Six days ago?

So, uhm, yeah.

In other news, I have a New Years +6 days resolution (Because I had a Katters for six days already this year, and it's hard to make resolutions when the world is in the same state of slightly different it was when you ended the last year.) Anyways, I have this lovely new sketchbook that I bought that I actually really like --the cover is nice and sturdy, and silver and says "Create" on it. Create is a good word for the Sorcy.

It's a nice sketchbook. Spiral bound, which is great for drawing, since I can flip the book around and lean it against my knees or whatever, and about 150-200 pages. Which brings me to my New Years resolution: I want to have filled the sketchbook by the end of 2008.

The ulterior motive for this is to become a better artist --it annoys me slightly that OtherKat can just pull out a pencil and draw something fabulous in seconds. Butyes. One sketchbook, full by Dec31st 2008.

You can watch my progress on deviantart, which will update much more often when I have access to a working scanner, or you can wait for me to post here, because I really like showing off stuff I've drawn.

I've got other halfassed general resolutions (including "give blood 4-6 times", which is actually an awesome resolution) but this is the one I'm actually working on at the moment. Really, once you've made a Mission101 list, you don't really need to focus on resolutions so much...

~Sor
MOOP!

So, Izolda was posting about names, and I decided to toss my two cents worth at her about mine.

( On Katarina, names for kids, and my last name )

( On Sorcyress and Sor )