Nico's Journal

Yes, Marmageddon (as they named it) is over! Marmite returned to the supermarket shelved last night and went on sale today - daiseechain, rejoice! Countdown offered a free jar to anyone who spent more than $50 there today, but we had a large almost full jar when production stopped over a year ago and still have some left. I thought I'd let the deprived addicts at it.

I've actually managed to write a trope story but haven't posted it yet because I'm so terribly behind and haven't yet done the Pasifika or the funnel-headed cat one. I'm finding it hard enough just staying up with reading, let alone commenting and actually posting. I've even thought up a couple more; I'll have to get them down and also make a start on the unconventionalcourtship one. [worries]

Thank you everyone for the kind comments about the accident. You guys are great! The car has been written off (so sad; it was a great car) but Greg's planning on getting a newer one, probably a Jazz (a Fit in the US). Some people asked about the old guy who was driving the vintage Cadillac. He was still in the ambulance when we left because his blood pressure was up, but he wasn't injured, just shocked (as were we). He rang Greg up this week and was terribly apologetic. The Caddy was a 1979 model he had 'classic car insurance' for meaning that it was only meant to be driven occasionally and he usually only took it out on weekends and to car shows. He almost didn't last Saturday because of the rain; I wish he'd decided not to. As I had also suspected, it was a left-hand drive car which would have made it even harder in those conditions when it fish-tailed (since we drive on the left here). Greg was very kind and said to him not to worry about it, things sometimes just go wrong. Ah well, if it hadn't been us he'd hit with that solid car, it might have been worse for someone else, who knows.

I've signed up for the "ficathon walks into a bar", which looks like a lot of fun. It's being run both on Dreamwidth (where I'm signed up for it because I can get to DW easily) and on LJ, and it doesn't matter where you sign up, but you have to do it in the next couple of days.

You only have to write a minimum of 500 words. Anyone else? :-)

If you're interested in getting an invite to the multifandom Archive of Our Own, you can sign up to be sent one; just go to the site and click on "SIGN UP NOW". I did that yesterday, and they said I was in a queue and might get my invite by 20 November. However I got it today. :-) I haven't loaded up any fiction yet, and I do think the Hip Deep archive is a better and much easier place to find B7 fiction. However this will be a good place for me to post my non-B7 stuff, to find fanfic in other fandoms, and to provide another backup for my stories on my site and Hip Deep. It seems to have some very nice features like being able to save drafts, bookmarks, reading history, and subscriptions.

In other news, our soccer team (we have to say "soccer" here because "football" means rugby) has made it into the World Cup for the second time. Yay! :-D

Not only have I have finished my finishathon story, I have also done a poster for it! It just needs some lettering. W00t!

And here's a fun puzzle which matildabj posted in which you have to find the titles of 50 films made in the last 20 years, using cryptic visual clues in a painting. It doesn't work in Firefox; but Opera and IE6 are fine. It's a lot of fun, and you can save it and come back to it. I got all 50, but it took me quite a while over the weekend; it's very addictive. :-)

Everyone's doing this, so I'll have my rather pedestrian go at it. I'm just not very self-analytical, I suppose, because I have no idea what my personal writing rules are. And you know, doing a commentary on one of my stories is something you'd have to pay me to do. A lot.

I am however planning on putting up some writing guidelines on my site, so I suppose I'd go for:

1. Know the mechanics (punctuation, how to write dialogue, when to start a new paragraph etc) and use them. It makes things a lot easier for the reader.
   
   
2. Do find out how to spell the names of characters and places. I have to look them up fairly often and for B7 find the Sevencyclopaedia and Liberation very good for that. Well, Liberation had to be worth its price somehow.
   
   
3. Don't be afraid of the little word 'said'. It's an almost unnoticeable way of telling the reader who's speaking (take a look at pro fiction). I do use words like 'shouted', 'whispered etc when I need to tell the reader how someone is speaking, but there's no excuse for 'returned', 'intoned', 'supplied' (I mean, supplied?) or my personal hate, 'pronounced', a verb which caused me to throw a Hollister Twins book across the room as a 10-year-old and swear off them forever.
   
   If you really don't like 'said', you can always use 'beats', which have the character doing something. In fact they're a good way to break up dialogue and give readers some visual clues.
   
   
4. Don't be afraid of characters' names and avoid epithets like 'the curly-haired rebel' or 'the blonde pilot'. They should only be used if you're writing from the POV of someone who doesn't know the characters and would think of them that way.
   
   
5. Otherwise, I have no rules: everyone has a different style. In fact you can even throw a lot of #1 out depending on your narrator.

So now I'm back at work and the weather's been glorious both days: sunny, summery, and still. Thanks, Auckland. Why didn't you deliver that last week? Never mind, I'm just grateful it only rained one day.

I went to the Kings Garden Centre after work today to buy a pot plant as a gift, and they have a resident cat. She came up to me and I gave her my hand to sniff before I stroked her and she was so impressed with my cat manners, she followed me round the place until I found a plant I to buy. :-)

There are only three more days to go till my finishathon story is due and this is the closest I've come to defaulting on a ficathon after more than two weeks of failing to write any of it. [worries] At last I know where it's going, but I'm not sure I have time to get there. Even if I take a shortcut, this one will probably not be beta-read. :-(

Annoying

I feel so stupid. For a start, I'm so tired I just want to sleep which is probably making things worse. I've been up early for about three weeks now, and this has been an incredibly busy week at work as well.

Today I went to the Ribbon Rose (local craft and gift shop) and bought beads because making a pair of earrings to go with a necklace I made in March would be a lot faster than drawing anything more than a very quick sketch. I thought I had headpins. I have no headpins. I cannot buy the damned things till Monday or Tuesday now, so there goes that idea. Now I have to think up something to draw before I go to bed. [hits self over head]

I'm also annoyed that I only submitted unwritten stories to the Finishathon when I have a more than half written B7/Star Trek TNG crossover that, if it won the voting--which would be one chance in four--would be a lot less work to finish off than writing a whole new story. [bangs head on desk]

Satisfying

I bought a really nice Chinese teapot and three bowls from the Ribbon Rose really cheap because someone broke the fourth bowl. Eh, even with two, it would be a nice set. Maybe I'll have to draw it. I may be desperate enough for subjects to do so.

This morning I went to that local church jumble sale/fair/garage sale that I went to last year and bought:

• one of those tall jars for pasta (the seal on my old one is perished and disgustingly tacky)
  
• two more Petra Ceramics coffee cups--a different pattern from the lemon and the flower ones I already have, but hey, Petra!
  
• a wooden Finnish plate, square and slightly concave like a sushi plate. It's very spare and modern, completely unused, and made of birch with an off-centre strip of curly birch and was only 50c. Underneath it says, "Valm: visa/koivu" which I deduce means "Wood: birth/curly birch", and "M-real Simpele". If snowgrouse reads this, I'd like to know what that means.
  
• a biography of James Cook for Greg (Cook is one of his heroes)
  
• assorted homemade pickles and biscuits

LJ, you're back ! I missed you! Or, more accurately, my friends on you.

I was a bit stalled on my PicoWriMo story because I had some problems with the concept, which has Vila in Narnia.

Firstly, it seemed that the overlap with Narnia lasted only from 1900 to 1949. But then I decided that was only with Earth; Jadis came from an ancient world with a dying sun which might have been in the far future, so why not have a connection with Xenon in quite a different time?

Secondly, at the end of Prince Caspian, Peter and Susan were told that they were too old to go back to Narnia. Wouldn't Vila also be? Then I remembered that King Frank (the London cabby) and Queen Helen got there as adults, so perhaps it's a state of mind--a lack of imagination and readiness to believe--rather than age that keeps people out. But that left Avon out and I thought his reactions would be fun. Ah ha, but if Jadis could get to Narnia by holding onto Polly's hair (if I remember correctly), then Vila could grab Avon and pull him in to prove he wasn't making it up.

Thirdly, I wanted this to be light and fun to write (and, I hope read), and season 4 isn't either. Then it hit me: having Vila write the story in the first person would make it so much easier. I could show his reactions to things like an entrenched aristocracy, and he'd be funny even when the story was more serious. I don't usually go for first person unless there's a reason the narrator would write it all down, but I can see Vila doing so as a sort of proof that it happened.

Now I've sorted that out, I can rewrite what I've already written, then let Vila take over. I'm feeling much more positive about the project now.

I'm thinking about doing picowrimo because it's a great idea (500 or 5000 words in November) and a very clever name to boot, but I don't know what to write. I have several unwritten stories, but they're all fairly angsty. I want a change. I want to write something light and fun. Any ideas?

I have written:

• The crew being captured by aliens and sold as pets - Pets
  
• Blake in a bottle (he's a genie) - Wishful Thinking
  
• Body swaps (every series should have one) - Mistaken Identities
  
• Everyone with a cold but Cally - Cold Comfort
  
• Dragon fic (more serious than the others) - The Stuff of Legends

Oh, go on then, I'll play. This looks like fun.

If you give me one or more titles of stories I didn't write, I'll give you a summary of the nonexistent story.

executrix and astrogirl2 already did this meme. I'm not very good at analysing my own stuff--I have no idea what works and what doesn't till I get feedback--so I could only come up with five seven things instead of the required ten.

Top five seven signs it's one of my stories

1. Vila's in it.
   
2. No matter how angsty it is, it has an upbeat ending: if not happy, at least hopeful.
   
3. No matter how angsty it is, it has humour, because RL does.
   
4. There's a lot of dialogue.
   
5. And semicolons; I like the little bastards.
   
6. [Edit] It often has an ensemble cast.
   
7. And it's gen.

hafren

Bad: So much for the summer solstice. It's been cool and wet and very windy, and just a couple of weeks ago it was hot. I hope it improves by Sunday because we're supposed to be going to a barbecue.

Good: I'm home! My contract is finished and I'm so looking forward to a few weeks off. I'm off out shortly to buy a cappuccino frosty to celebrate.

Excellent: I got an advance copy of Chronicles, which includes one of my stories. I'm going to enjoy a sit down and a nice cup of tea later today while I read the stories and admire the editor Andrew's illustrations and jokes.

Not so good: Andrew is stepping down as guest editor. I'm sorry because he was great to deal with. I do hope Chronicles continues. There aren't many B7 zines left and this was the only gen one.