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So I've obviously been terrible about updating again.  It's been for a few reasons, all of which I'm very aware of, but it doesn't seem to make much difference.  For one, it's been summer reading at the library, so I've been very busy at work.  But I think more importantly are two things going on at home.  Firstly, I've really made an effort to not get on my home computer much.  I'd developed a very bad habit about coming home from work, where I'd often been on the computer all day, and just getting on the computer again for the rest of the evening.  But secondly, I've been doing a daily journal this year.  A lot of the time, once I write about my day in my journal, there just isn't the impetus to write it all up again for LJ.

Of course, part of it is not really being involved much in any kind of fandom, either.  I was doing pretty well with making icons for theiconthrone there for awhile, but that's fallen off my radar, too.

I continue to miss LJ, especially my first couple years on here; I miss having messages to respond to, and having assorted amounts of fun.  I don't know - it just seems more difficult for me lately to make the time for it.  I always go to bed each night thinking of all the things I didn't get done; there just isn't enough day for me anymore, it seems like.

(It doesn't help that I feel guilty for not keeping up on y'all's blogs.  Like, if I can't make the time to stay up-to-date with what's going on in your lives, what right do I have to post anything here and expect any of you to read it?  I have the oddest social media-related anxiety sometimes, IDK.)

Anyway, I'm going to try (again, as always, ad infinitum) to be a bit more dilligent about checking in at least weekly.  I need to, like, set aside one day in particular for LJ stuff.  Maybe that'll work, heh.

Ah, guys.  It's been an emotional couple days.  I honestly feel as though I am grieving for a family member and not just an actor.

Unlike a lot of people my age, my first experience with Robin Williams was in Mork and Mindy.  I watched a lot of Nick and Nite as a kid.  As a weird, hyperactive child, I had such an affinity with Mork, though I wasn't remotely conscious of it at the time.  This might sound strange, but I really do feel like Mork was a positive role model for me growing up.

And then there was Hook, and Aladdin, and Jumanji, and Mrs. Doubtfire.  Hitting high school age, I saw him in more dramatic roles - Good Will Hunting, Insomnia, Dead Poet's Society, Awakenings.  (Dear God, was he wonderful in Awakenings.)

One of my little sister's favorite movies is RV.  Not one of his most critically acclaimed roles or films, not by a longshot.  But I've seen it probably ten times with her, and every time I watch it, the scene where he's typing up his report and climbing on top of things trying to get cell phone reception makes me laugh even harder.

There are still many movies of his that I haven't seen.  I think it will be a little while before I get to them.

I saw a comment somewhere yesterday that put it best for me.  Robin Williams wasn't just an actor, and he wasn't just a comedian.  He was a part of our culture.

I just miss him so goddamn much.

In my last LJ post, I said I had started a new screenplay but it wouldn't be done in time for anything.  And that was true - I haven't written a single page since then, actually.  It's dead in the water at 30 or so pages; I'll have to sit down, actually write a fucking outline, and think about it.

But I did write a completely new, different screenplay!  I started like May 3, finished like May 30, just in time to submit to Austin Film Festival.  It was a comedy - I've never written a comedy before.  I didn't have an outline, a synopsis, even a log-line.  I just sat down one day and started writing.  On the whole, even if it's not the best thing I've ever written (and it's definitely not), it was just such a fun experience for a change, to have an idea and just go with it.  And it was heartening that I knew how to write a movie without having to actually write out all the technical framework first.  So quite fun.

Community was canceled.  I started watching in the beginning of S2, so I missed that first "will it be canceled or renewed?" crisis, but every season after that, I lived it.  S2, S3, S4, each time I was sure this was it, it was finished.  And then it would get renewed!  This year was the first time that I had been confident in renewal - the numbers were good, Sean Saves the World and The MJF Show tanked, #sixseasonsandamovie, etc.  I wasn't even worried!  And then.  And then...  So yeah, that was pretty devastating.  For the next two weeks, I would remember "Community got canceled" at the most random times and would literally get sad.

More work on the basement.  Closets framed in, sump pump framed in, a couple more walls.  We found a desk someone had put out for trash that just needs one drawer to be fixed up, new hardware, and a fresh coat of paint, so that's sitting in our basement waiting for my next big Project Day.

We also put in a garden!  It's doing really well so far, though I think we haven't harvested anything yet.  But having a yard feels more legit when there's a garden in it.

Community was renewed!  So I read the news, then I texted my friend, "YAHOO has picked up Community.  YAHOO.  Is this real?  It this a thing that is happening?  YAHOO."  Seriously, I had to read like three articles before I was convinced it was real and wasn't a prank or something.  I'm very excited, obviously, and glad to hear the budget will be the same; after my initial swoon of joy, I worried it would be all cheap and low-rent and such.  I know a lot of people have been disappointed with the show's last couple seasons (I mean, seriously, S4 was not good at all, really), but I wasn't ready for it to be over, and S5 was such a comeback, and like.  I'm happy.  :D

Worked a lot on The Orphan Queen.  I'm over 200,000 words now, and a lot of the random little details I stuck in here and there are finally paying off, which is so satisfying.  I guess you could say I do the George R.R. Martin style of writing when it comes to this novel, in that I plant a lot of things to sort of see what happens later on, knowing the rough end goal but not having a strict outline as such beyond that.  So when disparate threads come together, there's this wonderful click that just can't be recreated.  (Of course, that also means I sometimes go back and weed out things that didn't pan out, like some random love triangle-ish subplot runner that went nowhere.  But even that can be fun!)  It's turned into such a monstrously long novel, I just write and write and write and I make progress, of course, but the idea of ever finishing it seems very unattainable.

Someone plagiarized a wallpaper of mine.  That means I've made it in fandom, right?  They apologized and took their posts down, which is the best-case scenario, I guess, but it was still pretty frustrating, especially since I think they still don't quite understand why I was upset over the whole thing.  (Sadly, my overall reaction to the whole thing was being kind of sad that I don't really do graphics anymore.  I need to get back into that thing, even if it's just random icons here and there.)

I also had a falling out with some friends, but that kind of thing warrants a post of its own, I think, so suffice it to say I haven't been as social as usual.  I'm okay with how things have ultimately turned out, but that doesn't mean I'm sad when I think, "oh, normally I would ask so-and-so to come over, but that's not happening now, welp."  Such is life.

I thought it had only been a week or so since I posted last - time does fly.  I've actually been fairly productive this month.  I finally started a new screenplay, having not worked on anything screenplay-related since last June.  I started relearning a bit of French through Duolingo, which has been a fun little diversion thus far.  We'll see how long I stick with it once it gets actually tough.  (I was violently reminded of how finicky French is with articles, though, ugh.  After having not worrying about articles at all doing Latin all these years, it was a jolt.)

I need to get back working on The Orphan Queen.  I go through fallow periods with it, but even when I'm not actively writing, I am usually thinking about it.  I have a very clear sense of so much of what is to come, and I think one of the reasons I take breaks now and then is because I know how long it will take me to write all I have planned.  I think I end up feeling discouraged not at the amount of work, but that I can't just download the novel out of my brain.  I always worry that I'm going to lose something in the process - which is silly, because nine times out of ten I end up writing something I didn't expect, or dramatizing something in a different way than planned, and it's far better than what I had tumbling about in my head prior.

For some reason I got it into my head that I couldn't post until I had finished my edit of Part One, because to do otherwise would somehow admit defeat?  I didn't think of this literally or articulate it to myself, but every time I thought of a post, I would think, "no, I'll be done with the edit soon, I'll post then."

I am actually done with the edit now!  I ended up feeling that I needed an epilogue of sorts, instead wrote a full chapter, and had to go over that enough that I felt it was as polished as the rest of Part One.  But it is, in fact, done now.

(Of course, not posting has nothing to do with why I haven't been reading my flist.  I get the weirdest social media-related anxiety and issues sometimes, I don't even know.)

One of the major things that stalled my progress was the absolute glut of video games I either received or purchased for myself around Christmas.  I hadn't really been playing games much the last few years, and I'd forgotten what it was like to come home from work (or, in earlier years, school) and just sit down and play Civ for like five hours straight.  (What is it like?  It's great, except you start feeling like you haven't showered in a week, even if you did, in fact, just shower.)  I think I've gotten it out of my system, but for about three weeks there, I wasn't doing a whole lot else.  It was kind of sad.

Randomly this last week I have found myself actively missing fandom, specifically B5 fandom circa-2010, and landcomms, specifically scifiland, a whole lot.  I've been saying for over a year now that I was going to make a new fun B5 comm that was going to be like half-meta, half-landcomm, and I've never gotten around to it, so it's hard to whine about there not being anything going on when I'm not even attempting to be active myself.  But 2010-2011 was like a great period of time fandom-wise and I really miss it.  :(

And here is my favorite gif from the last month:

And only 300-some the day before that!  Right now I'm on track to hit 50k on December 11th, I think, which isn't too bad.  I have next week off, though, so I'm looking forward to at least one whole day spent inside, all by myself, a big thermos of coffee and something baked fresh, cats meandering nearby, classical music in the background, and I'll probably knock a huge chunk out.

That, or lounge and watch TV.  Either works, really.

I finally finished one of my big projects this last weekend that has improved my mental health considerably.  We have a very small "linen" closet next to the bathroom, but we don't really have a lot of linens and such, or extra towels, or whatever.  There were some sheet sets and some random fabric, as well as a bunch of assorted bric-a-brac.  I packed stuff up in a plastic tub and took it to the basement, then went through a box of papers and threw most of it away, and cleared out the majority of the closet.  We have no room for food storage in the kitchen, so there was stuff shoved everywhere, stacked on counters, stacked on the baker's rack we have for mason jars and tupperware and appliances; I moved all that food to the linen closet, and arranged it by type, and now everything's put away and accessible, and our kitchen doesn't look like eight grad students share the house anymore.  We also cleaned house and put up the Christmas tree and the Christmas decorations, so it's just lovely.

It really is amazing how much better a clean house makes me feel.  Like I'm just at peace now.

One of the reasons I only wrote 300 or so words on Sunday is that I started writing a John/Delenn fic.  Yay!  I got about 1700 words on it, and am feeling very motivated to having it finished and posted by Thanksgiving.  My goal for December is to edit part one of the novel, and finish my WIPs.  I have two chapters on Metamorphoses, one of which has been sitting at 75% finished for months; a chapter on Alma Mater; probably an epilogue on both of those; and then two or three chapters on Conquest.  I hate that I turned into that fic writer I hated that would start a series and just putter out and never finish.  The endings are there!  They're just in my head!

Okay, so things haven't been that bad, but September wasn't the greatest month for me in a lot of ways.  But they're all kinda boring ways, and to enumerate them would be to throw myself a pity party which eh, so onwards!

The one good thing that did come about last month was that we finally replaced our basement stairs.



Our inspector had told us that they weren't the best, but we kept putting it off because it's quite an endeavor, especially for a bunch of people who have never built stairs before.  In taking the old ones down, we realized that the bottom of the stairs wasn't even attached to the concrete floor; the whole staircase was just resting on the ground.  Three nails were holding the stairs up at the top.  That was it.  So now at the very least we're not facing our deaths every time we go down to do laundry!  As you can see, we also put up some paneling between the stairs and the basement wall, where we wouldn't have room to put up a real framed-in wall and drywall and all that jazz.  The eventual goal is to finish two rooms in the basement, but we need to put a wall on the other side of the stairs so we can put in a railing and finish that up, first.  Then comes replacing the wiring and tearing down the last of the half-ass rotted out walls that are down there!  Yeah!

The other item of note this past month was our trip to St. Louis last week to see Sigur Rós in concert.  The concert itself was fabulous, but I ended up with a migraine that very night, which is just profoundly and cosmically unfair.  I ended up going to the concert anyway, after my sisters and our friend had already left.  I had the front desk at the hotel call me a cab.  And then I got to cross something off my bucket list!  "Throw up out the open door of a moving cab."  Such fun.  But I got there and I didn't die and I did get to see the show,  which was perfect and flawless, as one would expect.

Continuing to work on my novel, printed out last year's script for a revision, and starting work on a new script.  That about sums it up.

That awkward moment when you're out and about and someone comes up to you all, "Well, how are you doing, lady!" and tell you news about themselves and are all smiley and happy and you have to make some small talk and they tell you about someone else's news and you have to respond and then they leave and you HAVE NO IDEA WHO THAT PERSON IS.  Like, who are you and who is Tonya, I don't know, but I guess I am glad that you're now working at GM and good for your long paid vacation!  (I don't know who you are.)

So yesterday my ear finally opened up, and of course I got one of those day-long headaches that won't go away no matter what you do.  Just screw you, head, really.  Just screw you in general.  I am done with you, head.  I'm waiting for my tonsils to go next or something.  But thank you everyone for your well-wishes yesterday.  Much appreciated.  Sometimes it's just good to whine, you know?

Still tinkering with my two features, trying to finish up this dumb sitcom pilot I'm writing (no seriously, it's dumb, I don't know why I'm bothering), getting ready to do a quick-and-dirty rewrite of my drama pilot from last year, and pondering writing a Hannibal spec.  AFF deadline is next Saturday, and as always I'm finding myself trying to do too much with too little time, but what the hell.

I signed up for het_bigbang!  I'm writing Jaime/Brienne this year, because while I have lots of John/Delenn fic ideas, none of them would support a 25k-word story, so.  Plus I'm not really finding the J/B fic I personally want to read, so that means I have to write it myself, right?

My sister and I are doing a very serious diet/fitness regimen, so right now I'm hungry and my legs hurt.  Whee!