Shadowlands word count: 989. A bit less than half a chapter, but I'm just going to make myself keep adding a bit each day and refining what's already there until the story is done.

I also worked on sewing - two quilt blocks done for two different projects, the rows sewn together for a third, and a hopefully-ongoing project started.

Got the minutes for my quilt guild typed up and mailed out to my fellow officers and have done and resent the three corrections that have come back so far.

And I went to the thrift store with my mother. Got some sewing things (fabric, books, magazines), some glasses to replace the set the boys have slowly but steadily broken four of over the past five years, and a Swedish Christmas candelabra for $1.50. It's missing one foot, but I might just take off the extant one and go to Ganahl Lumber and look at their moulding. If I can find a style that works, I'll buy two samples, paint them red, and use those for new feet.

Normally I think my classmates in my writing class are relatively intelligent, sane people. Well, with a possible caveat for the one person who takes Fox News seriously.

But tonight, somehow, the topic of colleges putting trigger warnings on works for literature classes came up, and I am AGHAST that at least one of my classmates and the teacher were comparing this to censorship and book banning.

What. The. Merry. Fuck.?!

How the hell does saying "this work contains scenes of rape/incest/racism/ableism/name-your-social-ill-here" equate to changing or removing a single WORD of that work? All it does is warn those people who might be hurt by it that they need to either shore themselves up or have a word with their professor.

To boot, the classmate who was against it blamed the ACLU.

She has been in a wheelchair for years.

I guess the ACLU is only useful when it's putting in wheelchair ramps, not when it's taking care of people's psychological health?

I am just, ARGH, I have no words. Frothing at the mouth at the cruelty and callousness of people I like. You can BELIEVE I argued my point.

Maybe it's because I'm younger (by a generation or two) than these people, and cut my writing teeth on fanfiction and the internet, where warning tags are more notable in their absence than their presence.

But saying "this story contains these things" is NOT censorship. It's not book banning. It's saying what's in the story.

When did common courtesy become oppression?

So I've been in a Halloween-y mood recently. (Wonder why. ^_^) Today's reading material was Pratchett's Johnny and the Dead, which left me with thoughts about its relations to Good Omens and The Graveyard Book.

I've also (finally, finally!) been back in a writing headspace. Which I haven't done much of today because of The Squiddle. But perhaps this evening...? We'll see. Maybe fanfic (probably RotG if so), maybe Field of Stars.

And somehow these interests have converged to cause a really good RotG fanfic to rise again on my radar. And, bonus of bonuses, it's now finished! Which, well, it didn't have the swiftest of update schedules, so it's now less frustrating to try to pick up plot threads after weeks or months between chapters.

In short, if you're in the Rise of the Guardians fandom, and want a seasonally appropriate fanfic, go check out So Darkness I Became. It is well worth the read, and the ending is one of the best uses of the autumn trope I've seen.

Squiddle's taking an early nap today. I should be on the bike right now, but I just can't. I've been being very good about doing it five days a week, but I'm also suspecting that's what's causing the persistent ache in my left calf, and until I can stretch that away, I'm giving myself some slack.

The Santa Ana winds are blowing today. Joy. I should've suspected it when I looked at the weather forecast and saw it was going up into the 80s this weekend. Luckily, I did a spot of gardening yesterday which included watering everything. And also putting bean and parsnip seeds into the ground. I apparently had three packets of parsnip seeds. I used up the oldest, spreading the seeds liberally down the rows, and will see what sprouts in the next month or so. Of the seeds I have going in flats, right now the zinnias, alyssum, cucumbers, and the second round of corn are sprouting. Oh, and one jalepeno. :/ But the radishes in my radish-and-carrot rows are also poking their heads up, and if I can clear the space in the bed this weekend, the first round of corn is ready to go in the ground.

For dinner, I've put a pork shoulder in the slow cooker along with some homemade applesauce-based barbeque sauce. Hopefully it will turn out well and we shall have pulled pork for dinner. First time trying the recipe, and I had to make a couple of substitutions. And ran shy on paprika, alas.

Time to go make a sandwich for lunch, and then either convince myself to bicycle, or work on Field of Stars.

ETA: Wrote ten pages during the Squiddle's nap. 2239 words. Booyah!

ETA 2: The pulled pork recipe shines. This one's going in the keeper pile.

December ended up being a decided no go on the novel writing thing (though I did manage to squeeze out three fanfic chapters for Christmas), mainly because of the Squiddle being jealous of &/or wanting to use the laptop himself. That being said, this morning I managed a page and a bit of novel writing (343 words) before everyone came downstairs and conversation and breakfast became a thing. No promises on further writing today, though.

I'm really hoping this won't be one of those trips where I never adjust to the time difference. Because after getting up to nurse Squiddle at 1:30, I laid in bed for three hours, trying to get to sleep, before finally giving up and coming downstairs for tea, toast, and internet.

The weather here has been cool and damp, though we haven't actually got rained on yet. The BBC weather reports are including 50-foot seas in the Outer Hebrides, though, which pokes my bunny brain into thinking "Hey, I can use that..." though I have no idea how or where. The Hebrides, of course, being where Berk is fictitiously located.

I have been able to poke at some writing over the last couple days, though setting myself anything like a number of words to do a day is useless. The editing program on Laptop-chan is SciTe, which has no word count function that I can find. Also, the Squiddle is not fond of me reading or typing or, in fact, holding much in my hands that is not him. Still, I'll have at least one piece to post on Christmas this year, and have managed to read my way through American Gods, which was more to my taste than I'd feared. The blurbs which mentioned horror elements had me worried, but apparently for naught. So now I'm two books behind on my 2014 book reports.

Time to finish my tea and see if I can find any of that elusive sleep before dawn.

I am, once again, frustrated by my writing class. Seriously, this is like my theme every Wednesday night! I ought to start a drinking game or something. "One drink if Kristin thinks her teacher needs to pay attention." "Two if a classmate fails to actually read the words on the page." Etc.

Tonight's bout of consternation is brought to you by the eternal struggle of "you have too many characters." Which about half my class commented on. Mind, I don't know how many of these comments are add-ons in class and thus basically "me too!"s following the teacher.

The thing is, though, the book I am writing is high fantasy. It's about an international war. It's continuing with both the upstairs and downstairs characters from book one. I have a goddamn game plan, I know where all these plot threads eventually lead, NO I NEED ALL THOSE CHARACTERS. They're not throwaways. Go read Lord of the Rings. Go read Game of Thrones. That's my genre. But no matter how many times I say this, it never seems to sink in.

For whatever reason, genre writing limits my audience. Being a genre reader, I don't get it. I can read mainstream and get it, I can read scifi and get it. It's all good. Similarly, those of my class who get it, GET IT. They realize I'm not writing Waiting For Godot, or a romance novel that only needs two people plus some distractions. But for whatever reason, over half the class has problems with "different genres have different rules and expectations." Now, granted, whenever the time comes, a romance or a mainstream book would probably be easier to sell. But that's not the book I want to write. It's not the book I want to read.

Which leads to me being frustrated by half the feedback I'm getting, and subsequently having long conversations with Wonderful Husband about this series and why I'm writing it and if it's worth it. Sorta. Something along that line, anyway. I am seriously considering whether I should stop submitting this book to the class, and eventually give them something else instead. Even I can only bash my head against a wall so often before ceding to the headache.

Sigh. I don't know. At this point I'm just vomiting words and frustration onto the Internet. I should go to sleep, and tomorrow hopefully I'll find some clarity.

Adventures in YA Contests has posted round two of the "Pitch Plus Five" contest. This time I'm entry 23. I beat out twenty-five other people to end up in round two, which is nothing to be sneezed at!

Though I did wonder about the two (anonymous) blogger judges I got for round one. One said "Loved this!" (literally, that was the entire comment) while the other made comments that made both Wonderful Husband and I scratch our heads and wonder if she'd actually bothered reading what I wrote. Most puzzling.

Round two, though, is where my revised first five pages (no major changes, just a bit of tightening up) and my query pitch get read and commented on by professional authors! And of the twenty-five of us in this round, only ten will move on to round three. Nervous....

I feel a bit strange asking people to read and comment again, but if you can, and are so inclined, I'll love it, and any of the other authors you leave feedback for will also really appreciate it! (And, if you're curious and want to compare the drafts and revisions, my first five pages from round one are here.)

I'm through to the second round of Adventures in Young Adult Publishing's Pitch Plus Five contest!!!

I need to stare at my first five pages, figure out how, where, and what I want to revise, and also come up with a 150-words-or-less query pitch by midnight Monday.

*Kermitarmspanicflail*

The funny thing about being in the hospital, and on enforced medical rest, and worrying about the state of your uterus and the little person inside of it, and, oh, by the way, the very real possibility that you might at any time suddenly start bleeding to death... is that you don't really feel like writing. All your energy is focused inward, yes, but in an entirely physical way, as opposed to the cerebral way that wants to know "What would happen if...?"

Last night I started writing again. Not much, just a scene and a half of Jamie lost in the woods, but oh it felt so good. It felt right, it felt like I'm finally getting back to normal (or at least what passes as normal for me).

I hadn't realized just how much I'd missed the movies playing in my head, and fitting the right words together so that others could see them too.

No promises on fanfiction delivery dates, but hopefully soon.