(...well, felties I guess). When I saw people carrying homemade Barna-Bunny plushies around AUSA I fell for the idea of doing them in doll scale, so here's a shot at it. Tiger could be a lot better, but I'm learning. =)

Amalgam has joined the international protest against SOPA/PIPA because, among many other reasons, I have a bad feeling that sites like mine, which exist to comment on and use images from copyrighted material, would be or would become illegal under the new regime. I have never offered episodes of Champloo for download and do not plan to, but I have many, many screengrabs which were obtained from fansubs well before the series was licensed--and I have other fansites like it. And I want to keep them.

I know the point of these bills is (allegedly) to defend American material from foreign pirates and not the other way around, but you know what they say about not standing up until they come for you. So my beloved site is dark today. I hope it never is again.

So! I have until June to edit, complete (at least 30,000 more words) and polish my NaNoWriMo manuscript into publishable form, with the end goal of taking CreateSpace up on their offer and holding, ohmighod, an actual paper copy of my own first book in my hands this summer. Wow. =)=)

Took December off from writing, but here we are in the New Year, and I've started the editing process and the seriously-thinking-out-what's-wrong-with-the-first-draft process. My biggest hassles at this point are these: (1) in the first draft. Komori, though nominally and intentionally the hero, ended up pretty much being yanked from plot point to plot point and never actually came up with a coherent strategy, ending up just another survivor of events. This Will Not Do. So Priority #1 is Ko-sama's Awesome Hero Plan for Awesomeness. (2) I ended up with nothing important for my secondary cast to do once they arrived in Japan, causing nagging feelings that their entire subplot is superfluous. This can't be so, so I need to retune the crucial event they were brought there for (Yue's reunion with Shao) and make it work.

Ideally, Komori will come up with (meaning of course that I will come up with =) something that requires him, Tsuki, Shao and Yue to all contribute. I suspect that will take more of the next few months than all the rest combined. but we'll see.

OK, after a flurry of emails between laeta and me, the transfer plan is a go.
=) It won't actually take place until January, but, at her suggestion, we're starting by opening a new LJ home for Minus Wave. It will be a Community this time instead of an individual journal. Membership is open and only members can post, so I hope you'll all join and make yourselves at home there.

The new name is minus_wave_news.

Thanks so much for your encouragement!

Well, I have been so oblivious that, while i was nostalgically re-reading Befanini's "Sol Invictus" at the Minus Wave Saiyuki archive, as i do every Xmas, i had no idea the site was in its last days and about to close (this was announced in August, but yeah, i didn't notice). So I have put in a last-minute bid to acquire it; $6/month hosting bill seems a small price to pay for so much. If this happens, nothing or very little will change, I promise. Fingers crossed.

OK, you want to hear something totally mind-bending? Check this: the total final word count of my NaNoWriMo novel, The Assassin's Flute, is 51,551 words. I wondered how it compared to my epic fanfic Sleepwalker, which, as you may know, took me over a year to write (and still isn't actually finished...). So I went to check.
Sleepwalker is 51,400 words.

I wrote something longer than Sleepwalker in just 27 days.

...whoa.

And that's just the first draft.
Holy-blue-Hannah, it really IS a book.

....

My gosh, I did it. I actually got there. at 11:30 last night I typed the ritual "The End" at the end of 50,005 words of story, and validated on the website. I wrote a freaking book!!! and it isn't a fanfic and the characters are all mine and holy wow, I wrote a BOOK. All mine. =)

Okay, it's a total mess. It's got garbage and holes and great big jumps and I gave up trying to keep day/night/day straight a third of the way in, I have no idea how long it takes to happen, and it needs a very stringent edit (at the end of which it is still likely to be longer than shorter, because strange as it seems, when you're trying to write in mass quantities with a daily quota, you actually leave a lot of stuff out that you would get into a shorter piece). But I have a complete draft, with a beginning, middle and end, and character development, and surprises, and it even makes relative sense. And I didn't have to kill anyone except the bad guy and a noble associate of the bad guy who made the supreme sacrifice and all. (And Kurotsuki. I'm sorry about that.)

But WOO FREAKING HOO. My very first NaNo and I WIN. =)=)

[[edit for massive fail: 50,005 (now 50,067) WORDS of story, not PAGES. Sheesh. It's a novel, not an encyclopedia. Actual page count @ this point is about 162.]]

40000+ words in, and I'm sure I can finish, but i have so many plot threads and character bits and iconic bits to stitch in that I'm a little dizzy. So I sat down and wrote it up in High Speed Condensed for the lulz and to get a grip on the shape of it. Here it is: the last ten thousand words of "The Assassin's Flute" in three pages or less.
( 10K words in 90 seconds, under the cut )

Apparently, Week 2 regrets are a typical hazard of NaNo, so this is a not-to-worry: but I am beginning to worry that keeping to this pace is not sustainable for me. Specifically, that with no time to polish and cross-check and actually write as opposed to just producing words, I'm gonna end up with 50K worth of junk.
I understand that this is a typical qualm, and that what you are producing is a refinable first draft here, not a finished product: but man. I love my story, I love my characters, but I feel like I'm writing in a cyclone here.

AND [[rant mode on]] what is WITH these people who are fretting that they're stuck when they openly admit they began with no plot, no characters, no ideas whatever? They just started writing in the hopes that things would magically gel, and they haven't, and they've no idea what to do. Who would even do this? is that what the cool kids do this year, write 50,000 words about nothing? What in Isis' name did they expect? SHEESH. Next year, y'all, pack a suitcase, a compass, and at least know your fellow travelers' names and what they're hoping to see when you get there. Oh, and where 'there' is is also nice to know. *fumes* [[/rant mode off]]

I actually skipped last night's episode of Fringe to go on writing. Yes, really. Liz called in that it was Fringe time, and I did not even hesitate, because ***OMG I'm heading into the scene where Komori and Shao meet for the first time and if I drop it now I just KNOW I will not get the vibe back***. So I just yelled back "Sorry! Important plot point!" and barely broke stride. Yay for understanding roomies (and for "Mark Watches" =)