yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
([personal profile] yhlee Nov. 13th, 2025 07:15 am)
Possum blend from Ixchel, two-ply!

I still love the wallaby blend best, but this is great too.

handspun yarn
osprey_archer: (art)
([personal profile] osprey_archer Nov. 13th, 2025 08:07 am)
It has been some time since I’ve given a hobby update! In the months since my previous post, you will be glad to know that I’ve kept cross-stitching.

In fact, I’ve been enjoying cross-stitching so much that I’ve finally managed to set up a morning tea routine: get up around 6:30, make tea, put one (1) chocolate-covered hobnob on my favorite little plate, and then cross-stitch till 7:15 when it’s time to get ready for work. Life is so much better when I get up in time for a gentle on-ramp to the morning, and yet until now I haven’t been able to convince myself to actually get out of bed in time.

I finished my Halloween cross-stitch in time for Halloween (want to find a better frame for it though), stitched a tremendously round little red Christmas bird as a break (amazing how fast you can cross stitch when the whole thing is just one color!), and am now working on a little Victorian Christmas tree which is for my ornament exchange with my friend Caitlin.

This little Christmas tree is WAY more involved than I expected, so I probably won’t finish my little cornucopia in time for Thanksgiving. But I have acquired the cornucopia pattern and will at any rate have it ready for NEXT year.

Other patterns on deck:

The absolutely adorable Puss in Boots from Veronique Enginger’s book of fairy tale cross stitch.

A Tiffany window inspired pattern of birds and bamboo and flowers from a book of Art Nouveau cross stitch. (I have the floss for this one but have been momentarily stymied in finding the right color fabric.)

And I’ve promised [personal profile] troisoiseaux a Nevermore, garnished with ravens…

I’m also taking a two-part embroidery class. On Monday I started my jellyfish, and next Monday I will hopefully finish the jellyfish. The backing fabric is a dark navy blue so the tentacles are pink floss, and the top is going to be gold and turquoise and dark royal blue beads.

Book projects: since the previous post, I finished the Newbery project, and then just this weekend finished the Postcard Book project! (Jules Verne was the last Famous Author postcard from the set.) Which means that I COULD start the E. M. Forster readthrough...

But I’ve decided to hold off until after Christmas, because I just had a brilliant idea for a Christmas project: a picture book Advent calendar! I have MANY Christmas picture books on my list this year, so I’ll get them from the library, wrap them up in brown paper (or newspaper or whatever paper I have available), and then select a surprise book each night to read.

I probably won’t end up posting about most of them because I often don’t have a lot to say about picture books. Although maybe a weekly round-up with a line or two about each book?

At the moment I’m actually a bit short of books (I thought the list was AMPLY long, but some of the books are only available in the archives etc.), so I may have to poke around to find a few more. We shall see!

And of course I AM planning some December archive visits to enjoy those Christmas books! In fact, I believe I can schedule an archive visit next week (not for Christmas books of course; a firm believer in saving Christmas season till after Thanksgiving), as registration is at long last winding up. Perhaps it’s time to begin A. A. Milne’s The Princess and the Apple Tree.
House has been one of my favourite shows for a very long time; it's strange that I've never written more fanfiction for it! Here is my first attempt at House fanfiction in, er, nineteen years.

It's really struck me, on my current House rewatch, that Wilson and Cameron seem to be friends. They get along well; they have some good conversations. In the episode 'The Right Stuff', House doesn't question the idea that Cameron would call Wilson socially. I've always found the interactions between Wilson and Cameron interesting, but somehow I've only just registered that there seems to be a real friendship there; it's endearing!

Anyway, I made them sleep together.


Title: The Unseen Third
Fandom: House MD
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Wilson/Cameron, unrequited Wilson/House and Cameron/House
Wordcount: 1,900
Summary: Wilson and Cameron spend a night together. It’s no secret that they’re both thinking about House.
Warnings: Infidelity, by which I mean Wilson cheating on his wife as per usual.


The Unseen Third )

Buzzing
Written by Samuel Sattin with art by Rye Hickman

Description
A moving middle grade graphic novel about friendship, belonging, and learning to love yourself despite the voices in your head.

Isaac Itkin can't get away from his thoughts.

As a lonely twelve-year-old kid with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), everything from studying to looking in the mirror becomes a battle between him and a swarm of unhelpful thoughts.

The strict therapy his mother insists on doesn't seem to be working, but when a group of friends invites him to join their after-school role-playing game, the thoughts feel a little less loud, and the world feels a little brighter.

But Isaac's therapist says that exposure to games can have negative effects on kids with OCD, and when his grades slip, his helicopter mother won't let him play anymore. Now Isaac needs to find a way to prove to himself, to his mother, and to the world that the way to quiet the noise in his head may have been inside him all along.

Review
This book has the best depiction of intrusive thoughts I've ever seen. Issac's OCD is represented by cartoon bees that swarm his head, saying awful (and often repetitive things). The bees can become fewer in number when Isaac is interested in something and if something (or someone!) is really engaging they can disappear completely. Or if things are going badly, they can swarm Isaac and drown out almost everything else.

Isaac's friends are a great comfort to him and he's most animated and engaged when he's with them. In contrast, he shuts down when he's with his overbearing mother and hateful sister. The art does an amazing job of reflecting it, with the colour literally leeching from the panels when Isaac's family are present. As someone who grew up with a mental illness in a shitful Family of Origin, this all feels so real and believeable. The mother especially is a hall-mark 'doing my best' but actually ignores the emotional needs of both her children, constantly criticises them and has a sour comment for every interaction.

Unfortunately its this strong identify I have with Isaac that makes the ending fall really flat for me.
Spoilers hereAfter spending half the book despising Isaac, his sister suddenly decides to help him connect with his friends after his mother bans him from hanging out with them. And then at the end the mother puts aside her over-bearing self-absorbtion and starts taking an interest in Isaac and his hobbies, letting him hang out with his friends again and is generally a totally different person.
If you've ever dealt with schemas in Family of Origin you'll know that those roles don't just get thrown aside on a whim. So... I didn't like the ending. But it's a middle grade book. Isaac growing up, moving out, finally getting therapy and going no contact was not an option. Shame though, because I would read the hell out of that.
vriddy: Dreamwidth sheep with a red wing (dreamsheep)
([personal profile] vriddy Nov. 13th, 2025 08:58 am)

Community Thursday challenge: every Thursday, try to make an effort to engage with a community on Dreamwidth, whether that's posting, commenting, promoting, etc.


Over the last week...

Posted & commented on [community profile] bnha_fans.

Commented on [community profile] booknook.

Signal boosts:

In news of the day that was not technological balls, [personal profile] spatch let me know that despite the best efforts of the American federal government, the tradition of the Christmas tree gifted by the province of Nova Scotia to the city of Boston in recognition of its aid after the Halifax Explosion continues. We had worried. Apparently so had Mayor Wu, who made a point of traveling for the first time in the tradition's history to the tree-cutting ceremony and taking part in it herself. Fingers crossed for the tree-lighting, whose centenary we wandered into in 2017 and wandered out again wondering why no one was singing Stan Rogers. Today was also the fifty-fifth anniversary of the exploding whale.
https://www.scottedelman.com/wordpress/2025/11/12/a-dream-denied/

On August 12, 1971, my 16-year-old self mailed the first story I ever wrote off on its first submission. The publication I hoped would buy that story, my dream market, was The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

[...]

...earlier this week, after what by my count were 23 back and forth emails between me and the new owners of F&SF as I attempted to transform that initial boilerplate contract into something acceptable, I had no choice other than to walk away from my dream.

Let me explain why.

But before I do, I want to preface this by making it clear I have nothing but good things to say about editor Sheree Renée Thomas. Her words of praise as she accepted this story moved me greatly, and her perceptive comments and suggested tweaks ably demonstrated her strengths as an editor. It breaks my heart to disappoint her by pulling a story which was intended to appear in the next issue of F&SF. But, alas, I must.


Short version: Must Read Magazines offers garbage contracts. I'm not in contracts or law, but I started in sf/f short stories 20+ years ago and IMO Edelman correctly refused to sign.

Based on this account and others, I would not go near Must Read Magazines (or F&SF, Asimov's, Analog under their current ownership) with a 200-foot anaconda, let alone a 20-foot pole.
gwyn: (bucky with mask)
([personal profile] gwyn Nov. 12th, 2025 08:47 pm)
Frankenstein made me sick! Not because of the gore or anything, but for the first time in six years, I caught a freaking cold. I mean I knew it was a matter of time before I picked up covid or a cold or the flu if I was insisting on going to the movies, because I cannot go to a theatre and not eat popcorn. It's simply not possible. So I end up unmasked for most of the running time. But I had forgotten how terrible a cold can be, and it's lingering and lingering for me (yes, I've tested many times, and while I know that home tests show false negatives all the time, I'm pretty sure the tests are right and it's not covid). I'm so sick of the coughing and snot.

All that on top of surgery on my back for melanoma (a word I've dreaded my whole life, what is it with me and cancers starting with M?) in situ. Which isn't as bad as it could be, but is still fairly bad and scary, and the biopsy site on my forearm is "something we have to watch" and got infected, so that was fun. I have to go in to the dermatologist tomorrow before chemo because I have a "spitting suture" on the back. But otherwise, she said the surgery margins were good and they got all of it, so I just have to cross my fingers that the spot on my forearm doesn't get worse. Cancer just stalks me.

Anyway. I thought I'd try to do that alphabetical list of fics that's been going around as a distraction. I just picked things mostly at random, not for any real reason, I guess. (And following the rule that A and The don't count as first letters.) I have learned through this that I have an inordinate amount of stories starting with I and L and W. I should work on that.

A: And the Whirlwind (Logan, Laura)
B: Better Left Unsaid (Buffy, Spike/Buffy)
C: Cellies (MCU, Captain America, Thor, Bucky & Loki)
D: Dipping Toward the LIght (Sunshine (2007), Mace/Robert Capa)
E: Every Picture Tells a Story (Captain America, Steve/Bucky)
F: Five Cakes Marcus Thought Were Bombs and One He Knew Was Fire (The Bear, Marcus)
G: The Gift of Forgetfulness (Pacific Rim, Herc Hansen/Stacker Pentecost)
H: Heliotrope (Buffy, Spike/Buffy)
I: I can't remember how this started (but I can tell you exactly how it ends) (Captain America, Steve/Bucky)
J: Just Passing Through (Schitt's Creek, Captain America, Bucky Barnes, David/Patrick)
K: Knight-Errant (The Expanse, Amos Burton/Chrisjen Avasarala)
L: lucida/ obscura (Captain America, Steve/Bucky)
M: The Moon Cannot Be Stolen (Life (tv series), Charlie Crews & Ted Earley)
N: Not My Cross to Bear (The X-Files, Skinner/Scully)
O: On Beds of Sorrow (The Fast & the Furious, Dom/Brian)
P: The Perfume of Kismet (Buffy, Spike/Buffy)
Q: nothing!
R: Reverie (Captain America, Black Panther, Steve/Bucky) OMG I'm almost finished finally
S: The Sun Was the First Star We Knew (Sunshine (2007), Mace/Robert Capa)
T: There Must Be a Joke In Here Somewhere (The Middleman, Captain America, Wendy Watson & Bucky Barnes)
U: Urban Legend (Captain America, Steve Rogers)
V: The Valorous Vampire (Buffy, Angel & Buffy & Spike)
W: Welcome to the Party, Pal (Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Captain America, Steve Rogers & Jake Peralta)
X: x=y (The X-Files, Mulder/Scully)
Y: You Can Have the Town, Why Don't You Take It? (What's Your Number? Ally Darling/Colin Shea)
Z: nothing!
mrkinch: Erik holding fieldglasses in "Russia" (bins)
([personal profile] mrkinch Nov. 11th, 2025 07:09 pm)
Again, rain is forecast in the next day or two, and I wanted to get up there before it got muddy again. The morning started well. A Red-shouldered Hawk took off from the first oak down the trail, and there was quite a bit of activity in the dip including hearing two White-throated Sparrows. I was looking forward to sitting there on the way back and listening more, but on return the overcast had thickened and everyone seemed have hunkered down. The California Quail came out, but no sparrows, and non warblers anywhere. The north end of the trail was similarly quiet, although there was a (silent) Say's Phoebe and two beautiful Western Bluebirds. The list: )

The day's real significance was in the collapse of a huge snag, dead for some years, at the north end of the trail. I've been expecting it to go, and there was a lot of wind with the not-much-rain of last week. I'll miss it. It was a landmark, very tall, and a handy place for Spring migrants to land as they came over the ridge.
white_aster: stacks of books (books)
([personal profile] white_aster Nov. 12th, 2025 11:09 pm)

I totally fell off the wagon with these.  I have been reading, just...keep missing Wednesday somehow.  (I had to think really hard about whether it was Wednesday again).  Also I've been reading a lot of books that I just wasn't excited about (and some I DNFed or kind of wish I'd DNFed.)  But I am brought back by the need to talk about this awesome book I read:

Finder by Suzanne Palmer

Palmer also wrote The Secret Life of Bots, which I loved. This Finder series I originally passed over because I thought "a space repo man named Fergus Ferguson tries to steal back a spaceship in an old mining colony made of hollowed-out asteroids and various large tin cans" was going to be more absurd than I usually enjoy. Oh boy, I could NOT have been more wrong. 5-star book, A+ characterization and wonderful worldbuilding, totally.

The more I thought about what was working in this book, the more I was really, really impressed with how (despite Fergus' terrible name) this book took its characters so seriously.  Like...ALL the characters, from Fergus to the side characters to random folks Fergus met for a page or less.  Everyone had understandable goals and motivations which changed realistically as the plot unfolded and they reacted to events as much as Fergus did.  This led to very wonderfully ALIVE-feeling settings.  The asteroid colony and Mars both felt filled with peoples' hopes and dreams and tragedies.  Somehow this author made the politics of this collection of asteroids and tin cans feel messy and realistic and interesting.

I was also super impressed by how this author dealt with the really rather high amount of randomness in the plot.  Fergus is a thief.  He's doing a heist, scheming some schemes, and things go ass-up fairly early on.  He's realistically forced many, many times to make a bad plan, just because it'll make SOMETHING change and then he can reassess.  This could very easily have felt capricious and slapstick and unearned (a pet peeve of mine in some books), but it did NOT, because of the wonderful CHARACTERIZATION.  Fergus spent the whole book understandably stressed about everything, convinced that he was going to get himself and everyone he cared about killed.  He felt the GRAVITY of all this unplanned chaos, and passed that tension on to the reader, while moving forward anyway in the smartest way he could come up with (and he is SMART!  It's a whole plot point that he several times amazes people with his knowledge because the first thing he does is READ THE ENTIRETY OF THE ASTEROID INTERNET so he knows what's what.  A protagonist!  Actually looking shit up rather than winging it!  <3 <3!)  Yes, he was lucky, and yes, he had some help from many quarters, but it somehow all made sense and held together without feeling random.

Also, the science felt like it held.  There was a lot of dealing with zero- and low-G and crawling around on the outside of asteroids and habitats, and it felt realistic without being overwhelming.  Which was just icing on the great characterization and smart-plot cake.  

Also there was no extraneous romance, which is also a plus for me. 

I immediately needed to track down everything in this series, after reading this.

A++, do recommend.  


china_shop: An orange cartoon dog waving, with a blue-green abstract background. (Bingo!)
([personal profile] china_shop Nov. 13th, 2025 05:01 pm)
Pandemic life
My mother-out-law's birthday dinner on Sunday was my first meal inside in a crowded restaurant in a long time.

Previous poll review
In the "Time is" poll, 48.9% of respondents answered "relentless", and 31.9% said "elusive". In ticky-boxes, "blue-haired punk red pandas" and "colouring in" tied for second place (51.1%) after hugs (72.3%).

Reading
Finally finished Five Red Herrings. It was fine -- I mean, it kept me reading till the end. I missed Bunter being more active, though. Now I'm a quarter of the way into Have His Carcase.

In audio, I'm still listening to Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer, read by Candida Gubbins, and I've also started Katabasis by R.F. Kuang, read by Morag Sims and Will Watt, which is fun so far, though I'm slightly perplexed by the choice to have Alice's dialogue be American but her inner narration to be British. Also, I was hoping Will Watt would get more to do; I've really enjoyed some of his other performances.

Still dipping back into Take Off Your Pants! by Libbie Hawker. And I forgot to mention last week that I tore through Alison Bechdel's Spent! a while ago, before returning it to the library at the last minute.

Kdramas
Typhoon Family is getting a bit "this script was written in crayon", but I'm engaged and I like the main characters. I miscounted the Mystic Pop-Up Bar episodes; we finished yesterday. It was good but didn't quite hit me in the feels. (I'm a bit neutral on Hwang Jung-eum.)

Other TV
Nobody Wants This -- season 2 is less of the cross-cultural stuff and more "addressing psychological quirks", which isn't as interesting to me. Oh well.

Half of the latest season of Slow Horses -- the episodes always feel so short! I guess this is what successful pacing is like. A bit grimmer than earlier seasons, but I'm enjoying Ho a lot. (It helps to have read the book, I think.) We're finishing that tonight.

All of You (Apple+) -- a movie starring Brett Goldstein and Imogen Poots, which maxes out on the "pining while fucking" concept. Great chemistry and Big Feels.
Spoilers. Contains infidelity and an unhappy ending.


Rewatched some Bluey, plus a couple of episodes of Krapopolis season 3. :-)

Audio entertainment
Writing Excuses, Letters from an American, Tech Won't Save Us, and Ex Urbe Ad Astra.

Writing/making things
I came up with a great title for a fic I'm working on and am now 20% more motivated to finish it up and post it. Other than that, I feel like I'm still juggling a bunch of things, but my general intention is to finish this one, bash out a flashfic for the FISH challenge on [community profile] fan_flashworks, and then dig into my Yuletide assignment, for which I've been doing canon review.

Note to self: Don't forget about Guardian Bingo!

I bought a pack of coloured pencils yesterday and have been watching a few Youtube "technique" videos and practising blending. I still can't actually draw, but hey.

Life/health/mental state things
Down Under writers' hour is currently at 10am New Zealand time (8am Melbourne time). In winter, when it's at 8am here, writers' hour is the first thing I do in the day; that means I get started early, spend most of the morning at my keyboard, and sometimes spud in for the afternoon too. In the transitions periods (when only one half of the globe has switched into or out of daylight savings), it's at 9am here, and I generally try to get the dishes done beforehand. This sets the tone for the day -- I do more chores overall, more offline stuff. Now writers' hour is at 10am: I get up and exercise, then sit down mid-morning to write. By the time I'm done, it's 11am, and if I have lunch plans, I have to get my skates on pretty quickly. And because I've primed myself to exercise, I've been going for walks more in the afternoon and generally being more active. Which is great, but... *grabbyhands at keyboard* tl;dr, I am controlled by scheduling.

Good things
Coloured pencils, and colour generally. Guardian and the Slo-Mo Rewatch. Sleep. Podcasts. Kdramas. Biking, TV-watching dates, walking. Chocolate. You all, hi!!

Note: Poll results are private; please vote freely.

Poll #33831 Making friends with chatbots
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: Just the Poll Creator, participants: 25

In the last seven days, I've used AI

for work
1 (4.0%)

for fun / personal reasons
0 (0.0%)

for interacting with organisations
0 (0.0%)

against my will
5 (20.0%)

not at all, that I'm aware of
18 (72.0%)

other
0 (0.0%)

ticky-box full of fandom-adjacent profic
6 (24.0%)

ticky-box full of fish fish fish fish fish
6 (24.0%)

ticky-box full of vague groaning noises
9 (36.0%)

ticky-box full of alpine octopuses practising their yodelling
9 (36.0%)

ticky-box full of hugs!
17 (68.0%)

Oh, boy, emails from everyone's favorite dead sex criminal calling Trump the worst person he knows, and the Trump defense is "But look how transparent we are!"

I have Ben Vereen singing Mr Cellophane with Muppets to console me, because now I want a vid of 47 to that song once the files are released -- not necessarily that version, but it's my favorite one to watch.

*

In other news, the comment threads on Ask A Manager's post about what to do if ICE comes to one's workplace made me cry with both rage, for the obvious reason, and hope, because people really are trying to help each other through all of this governmental horror.
lovelyangel: Tonikawa Episode 6 (Tsukasa Camera)
([personal profile] lovelyangel Nov. 12th, 2025 07:16 pm)
Japanese Maple Under Gray Skies
Japanese Maple Under Gray Skies
Strolling Pond Garden • Portland Japanese Garden • Portland, Oregon
October 30, 2025
Nikon Z8 • NIKKOR Z 24-120mm f/4 S
f/8 @ 33mm • 1/500s • ISO 1600

The weather forecast for Wednesday, October 29 was sunshine, and I really, really wanted to go to the Portland Japanese Garden to get photographs of the trees in autumn glory. The red and orange leaves are aglow when backlit by the sun, and this was the perfect opportunity.

The only schedule conflict was the contractors coming to bring me the extra bookshelves I had ordered. They were scheduled to come at 10:00 am, and I figured they’d be no more than 30 minutes. Easy.

Unfortunately, that morning I received a text from my interior designer saying the contractors were delayed and would arrive between 11:00 am and 11:30 am. OK. That wasn’t great, but I could still get to the gardens by noon or 12:30 pm.

I was dismayed when the contractor did not arrive until 1:30 pm, and they departed at 2:00 pm. I could maybe get to the gardens by 2:45 pm. I know that the trees and the west hills begin blocking the sun much earlier than sunset. Basically, I had to cancel the attempt to get photos. I was pretty disappointed as sunshine during fall colors is uncommon in Oregon. Also, I knew the forecast was for overcast skies on Thursday.

Thursday, With Cloudy Skies )
settiai: (Peebee -- settiai)
([personal profile] settiai Nov. 12th, 2025 10:12 pm)
I took a nap after work so that I'd be able to stay up for D&D tonight, only to wake up from said nap to find out that the game had been cancelled at the last minute. Oops? At least I'm well-rested even if the reason for it isn't happening anymore.

My plan was then going to be to play Mass Effect: Andromeda, but my game doesn't want to load and a bunch of files apparently need re-downloaded to fix it. So I figured that I'd try playing Dragon Age: The Veilguard... only to get the same error message. Thank you, EA, for continually having this issue. I appreciate it so much. Really.🖕🏻

(I have all of the BioWare games through Steam, but they still have to load through the EA app first because EA as a company sucks. And the EA app is a horrible piece of crap that stops working if you look at it wrong, which then leads to files getting corrupted and having to be redownloaded constantly. It's, unfortunately, a common issue.)

Since the universe clearly doesn't want me to play anything tonight, I said "fuck it" and am reading some fanfiction from my Marked for Later list on the AO3 instead. Maybe next time, huh?
torachan: cats looking at a crow out the screen door (cats and crow)
([personal profile] torachan Nov. 12th, 2025 07:05 pm)
1. My evening meeting got cancelled today, so that was nice.

2. The rain isn't supposed to start until late night tomorrow, but both yesterday and today have been super overcast. I took an after lunch walk today and it was muggy, which was less than ideal, but still very nice to be able to take a walk without the sun blazing down.

3. Carla wanted to go to Disneyland today and get that bulgogi baked potato one more time before it's gone (hopefully just for the season and will be back again next year), so she went down for a solo trip for lunch and had a really nice time. Since it's between holiday seasons, it's a little less crowded right now, especially on weekdays (I'm sure it got busy with the after school/work crowd but she was gone before then), and it was nice and overcast down there, too.

4. Ollie getting his mall portrait taken again.

What I’ve Read
Literally nothing!
Which was kind of an interesting experience. I did this as sort of a “see what bubbles up when you’re not filling your head with words” and some stuff did! Can’t call it unmixed, but not without merit.

I found the experience a bit like going to the abstract wing of an art museum. At first it's all, Why are there no landscapes? Where are the people? Who is an allegory in these blobs of color? What does the vague square here Mean? But you go and you gaze slowly into the washes of color and the suggestions of a shape and it seeps into your brain that that’s sufficient to be Art. You float on a formless tide, dreaming without concrete shapes, synthesizing the Art inside of you. It stabilizes and you stop wanting someone else's allegory.  You know what that blob means, what that vague square is saying to you and you alone. 

Then you step out and go out into the portraits gallery. You are assaulted by the grounded, constructed, firm, Realness of all the other Art. It overwhelms you. Why can I see this man's actual nose. Whose horse is that. 

In the space I was not filling with words by other people, I did a lot of Feeling My Feelings (exhausting but do recommend) and writing (exhausting but exhilarating) and also puttered very productively around the house, accomplishing many a small and valuable task (comforting and rather nice).

What I’m Reading

The Artists Way – Week 5 – Sense of Possibility
Alien Clay – very early on – We are getting into the big scifi questions.

What I’ll Read Next
Witness for the Dead Katherine Addison
The Fortunate Fall by Cameron Reed
Next Earthsea book?
marginaliana: A cat typing on a laptop. (Cat + computer)
([personal profile] marginaliana Nov. 12th, 2025 07:45 pm)
When we watch old Taskmaster episodes on Channel 4 there are only two types of ads these days: the sponsor ads for Tesco Whoosh and then the endless, endless gambling ads.

I know from friends and relatives that online gambling is everywhere in the UK, that almost everyone does it at least somewhat. And I suppose I should be comforted by how often the ads mention the website's 'how to not get obsessed with gambling' features. But there's nothing else being sold anymore (there used to be ads for washing machines at least!), just the chance to throw your money away on online slots - and how sad is that, that I want to be sold something else if only to feel like capitalism can at minimum create objects that you can use?

And then today I did see an ad for something else!

It was Chat GPT.
theemdash: (M Bored)
([personal profile] theemdash posting in [community profile] getyourwordsout Nov. 12th, 2025 07:50 pm)
Welcome to everyone joining us for the Year-End Marathon and to everyone looking for a peek behind the curtain at GYWO. Each month volunteers post discussions about writing craft, life, and publishing. This rare public post is to give a taste of the full GYWO experience. We welcome you to interact, comment, and share your own experiences on the topic.



Establishing a Writing Routine

The idealized writing routine looks something like this:
  • make a cup of tea or coffee while getting in a creative mindset
  • sit down to free write with a fountain pen as a warmup
  • light a candle or incense to draw the muse and other creative spirits
  • put on the perfect music or silence, as needed
  • get comfortable and write 1,000 or 2,000 words in an hour or so

Mmm, sounds nice, doesn't it? That aesthetic set up is absolutely the ideal. It feels more writerly and like it’s what’s missing from our writing lives. If only we could free write with a fountain pen, light a candle, and be blessed by the muse with inspiration to write for an hour. If that, then we could be successful and productive writers.

But writing routines are not that idealized or consistent. Writing routines have to fit around real lives and incorporate personal quirks. Writing routines are not one-size-fits-all and they must be flexible so you can write on days when you’re busy, tired, or just not feeling it.

Writing routines won’t make you write, but they can help you find your way to words.


What Does a Real Writing Routine Look Like?

Probably the best way to figure out what writing routines look like is by examining an actual routine that works for someone. So, mine, heh. Let's talk about my writing routine on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, the days when I write with a fairly steady schedule.

Three days a week, I meet with 2–3 members of my in-person writing group on Discord for a mid-day write-in.

Prep Time: My writing prep starts about an hour before when I eat lunch, take a break, and let my mind rest and switch tasks. I usually watch a TV show and play a phone game. I make sure to choose a show that won’t adversely affect my writing, specifically by making me want to watch the next episode, flail about it with a friend, or otherwise pull my thoughts away from writing.

I then check-in with the other writers who join me. This is when we confirm attendance or delays to our normal start time. Then I clean up from lunch, make tea, and open my files.

Hopefully I also have time to clean up my file from the previous writing session and get a grip on what I need to work on today, which usually includes rereading the last couple paragraphs in a scene or notes I made about what comes next. If I run out of time, I finish my prep in the first 5–10 minutes of our first sprint.

Writing: I have a desk in my home office where I write. Aside from my laptop and/or iPad (and various desk fidgets), I try to clear my desk except for my tea, phone, project notebook, and a set of colored pens. (Sometimes I clear my desk by setting things out of sight on the floor.)

I set the timer for our first sprint and get to work.

We usually write for three 20-minute sprints, giving about an hour of writing time over an hour-and-a-half period. We report what we worked on, complain about various things (including how mushy our brains are), and share pictures of our cats.

Wrap Up: By the end of the third sprint, I’m usually done writing for the day. If I’m really on a roll, I might continue long enough to finish a conversation, but if it feels like it will take longer than about 10 minutes, I jot some notes about what comes next and trust I’ll be able to pick up where I left off the next day.

At that point, writing time is done and I move on to other things I need to do with my day.


How Do You Make A Routine Happen?

The writing routine I described above happens in a group. Meeting with a group is a great way to establish a writing routine. When you make a plan to meet with others, you are more likely to show up than if you just tell yourself that you’re supposed to write at noon.

You know how I know that? Because the days of the week when I don’t write with other people, I don’t write on a schedule. I do write, but I fit it in wherever makes sense in my day, which means on a very busy day, I’m squeezing in words at the last possible second. (Not my best choice.)

Routines also happen when you take similar steps to get there. The whole “routine” part is that you have a consistent set of actions that lead you to writing. You may not need lunch + break + tea before writing, but a series of steps before writing that can become your pre-writing routine can help you get there.

You know how I know that? Most days if I follow lunch with tea, I sit down to write. My brain has associated mid-day tea with writing, so it’s become an easy way to get my brain to shift into the writing gear. (It’s also a way for me to tell my brain to shift into writing. If I want to write and have been dancing around it, if I make a cup of tea, it’s a short-cut to my brain being able to settle.)

The other Big Secret to a writing routine is figuring out what works for you. While tea and a writing group work best for me, maybe you need something different. Maybe your routine is:
  • Make Breakfast + Notebook to Freewrite
  • Take Shower + Let Hair Dry + Write 20 Minutes
  • Walk to Park + Eat Lunch + Write 15 Minutes
  • Pick Up Kids + Fix Snacks + Write While Helping with Homework
  • Everyone Else In Bed + Write Until Sleepy

Your routine can be whatever helps you get to writing, so figure out what works for you and is something you can achieve—whether that’s daily or a handful of times a week. Remember, routines can be adjusted for specific days (my MWF routine is different from other days) or you might have a routine for Busy Days that’s different from your routine for Extremely Busy Days. As long as you have your own secret to get you writing, you have a routine.

Think about what you did the last time you sat down to write, is that your writing routine? Do you think something might work better for you?
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
([personal profile] redbird Nov. 12th, 2025 06:25 pm)
After putting it off for a while, I read through the manuscript of a non-quite-autobiographical book about my mother's life, and sent the editor some comments. This was difficult because it's largely about her experiences as a child survivor of the Holocaust. It's based on a series of interviews with my mother, which the editor was doing and compiling when my mother died unexpectedly. So that went back this afternoon.

The delivery pharmacy somehow got the wrong dosage of one of my prescriptions. This is annoying partly because I noticed the problem, told them, and we both contacted my doctor. (The prescription is 1/day, and they filled it as half a pill every day.) I thought we'd agreed that they would hold off until one of us heard back from her, and I took delivery yesterday because I thought they were bringing the other thing I'd ordered. So now I have to contact Carmen again, and figure out what to do here.

After several days of looking at Medicare open enrollment stuff, I sent an email this afternoon to the state-funded office that provides free advice on the subject, asking for an appointment. The questions are, roughly, do I want Medicare Advantage next year, or do I want basic Medicare, a separate (Part D) drug plan, and a Medigap policy. My existing Medicare Advantage plan isn't being offered next year, so I have options, but also have to decide something.

We have, however, heard back from the handyman/moving guy, and arranged for him to take the air conditioners out of our windows, and also bring more things from the storage unit. He took just long enough to get back to us that Adrian was trying to find someone else to do the job, but I'm glad we don't have to.
tassosss: Ye Zun Energy (Ye Zun Energy)
([personal profile] tassosss Nov. 12th, 2025 05:23 pm)
I want to take a second and say goodbye to this break from the grind. I am very lucky to be able to say that given we have the savings to weather missing three paychecks. This is the longest break I've had from working being a student full time since I was 17. I think 3 weeks in 2012 was the last time. (I was a contractor in 2019 and so worked that shutdown).

I think what this has really hit home is how much I would love to have a sabbatical every few years from work. I'm not sad to be going back, but it's so frenetic, and everything is a crisis, and the day in and day out is so wearing. I know I'll get used to it again, but it would also be nice not to be looking down the road at 27 more years of this. This is where midlife crises come from. I mean, fantasizing about not working full time has been a full time hobby of mine for about 15 years, so my definition of midlife is generous, but the point stands.

So farewell time to work on author stuff and editing. Farewell long hikes in the middle of the day. Farewell not having to cram everything into the weekend and feeling like a bad friend when I have to say no. Farewell kitty playtime and reading a book while doing nothing else. It was nice while it lasted.

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I usually have a half-month lull after October, but somehow this week managed to be even busier (how?). That said, I did manage to read a good number of things, namely:

What I Finished Reading This Week

Embers of the Hands – Eleanor Barraclough
In Embers of the Hands, Eleanor Barralough sets out to recount the history of the Viking Age through what the archaeological and written record can tell us about the people history "forgot": commoners versus kings and warriors; women and children versus men; the enslaved versus the free; and about the activities of everyday life: falling in (un)requited love, religious belief, play, and homemaking, among others. She does this very, very well, with clear prose; a commitment to making clear what's fact, what's conjecture, and what's just not known; a wickedly mischievous sense of humor, and a true love for the subject. The section on Omfim the artist (just read it!) is just charming. This book is an absolute treasure and worth multiple reads.

I Will Blossom Anyway – Disha Bose
I Will Blossom Anyway is a strong contender to be the best novel I've read in 2025. Bose is a phenomenal observer of human beings: these are some of the most fully-rounded characters I've encountered in recent memory. They have strengths, flaws, and blind spots; they think and act in believable ways; they grow. Her depictions of the exhilaration, confusion, and immaturity of early 20's independence and interpersonal relationships are spot-on, as are her depictions of Bengali family dynamics and the good and bad of being an immigrant professional far from home. I'm not saying anything specific about the plot and that's deliberate: there are some real emotional gut punches in this book and they should be encountered exactly as the characters do--with no forewarning. Moreover; Bose sets up a lot of the common tropes and beats and then completely subverts them in ways readers will not expect precisely because she avoids the easy character or plot progressions that leave you grousing "But no one would actually say/do/react like that IRL!" and it is so, so, fun.

TL;DR--this book is so well-written and satisfying; read it.

The Happiness Files – Arthur Brooks
Per its promotional blurb, "Imagine if your life were a startup. How would you lead it and shape it to be most successful?" is the question that underpins the writing of The Happiness Files. Ironically, this book is at its best when Brooks is writing for a general audience versus the sort of people who found and run start-ups (who are apparently emotional imbeciles judging from how Brooks does write for them; namely, as though he were confronting a toddler having a Big Emotions meltdown in the supermarket.)

Luckily, those sections occur toward the front of the book and are soon out of the way, and the rest is quite readable and enjoyable. Much of what Brooks discusses in the volume's 33 3-to-5 page chapters is common sense (e.g., don't hold pointless meetings; don't give disingenuous compliments; focus on having experiences versus acquiring money, and on making progress toward goals versus having achieved them) but it can be helpful to have these things stated outright, and Brooks has a knack for making the point without belaboring it. There is a Christian bent to some of the examples he uses, but it's not particularly heavy-handed, and far more of the book's content is grounded in scientific studies (thankfully endnoted should readers want to follow up on them).

TL;DR - This is a solid book of grounded advice on how to live in a way that fosters contentedness and satisfaction in your personal and professional life.


What I Am Currently Reading

Shield Maiden - Sharon Emmerichs
As a wish-fulfillment fantasy it's great, but oh god, Emmerichs' attempts at diversity and representation are dire.


What I'm Reading Next

This week I acquired Ruin and Rising by Leigh Bardugo, Swiz by Alex Daniels et al., Shield Maiden by Sharon Emmerichs, and Nimona by Noelle Stevenson.


これで以上です。
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sovay: (What the hell ass balls?!)
([personal profile] sovay Nov. 12th, 2025 04:54 pm)
Does anyone know how to remove the floating Copilot button from a version of Microsoft Word on which I disabled all so-called connected experiences the day I bought the new license more than two years ago and which has nonetheless just sneakily updated itself so that I have an AI-inducing rainbow-colored heartworm constantly keeping pace in the down right corner of the document, blocking out text which I am trying to write? I have looked for suggestions online and most of them seem to require preference options not available in my Mac. But what I need in a Word document is words and nothing else and I cannot deal with a planet-killing visual fault in the middle of them, on top of which the fact that this obscenity can be intruded into my software makes me want to headline the news for the disappearance of the Roko's basilisk boys who put it there. If a program is on my computer, the only person who should be able to tinker with it is me. I am not even eloquent, I am so furious. Any actionable suggestions would be appreciated.

[ETA 2025-11-12 22:23] JESUS CHRIST AFTER AN EVENING ON THE PHONE WITH APPLE SUPPORT WHICH WAS FLABBERGASTED BY THE PROBLEM AND NO SUPPORT WHATSOEVER FROM MICROSOFT I FIXED THE PROBLEM MYSELF WITH A CLEAN INSTALL OF PRE-COPILOT MICROSOFT WORD BECAUSE I NEVER THREW AWAY THE ORIGINAL INSTALL PACKAGE FROM 2023 IT WAS STILL IN MY TRASH I SHOULD NOT HAVE HAD TO REINSTALL FROM MY LITERAL TRASH WELCOME TO 2025
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