Laughter Through Tears

8 more hours before Yuletide reveals, but since it comes out late at night, for me it's "one more sleep til Yuletide". I'm gonna have to make it an extra sleepy one, because last night I was up until 3 AM for no clear reason. Which means that I barely scratched out 6 hours of sleep. After a morning errand that was kind of draining, that means that even with an extra dose of caffeine in me, I doubt I'll be doing any writing today.

It's okay. Yesterday was a good writing day (finally working on chapter 2 of Project Ghoul, after extensive edits on chapter 1). I'm also quite pleased with my Yuletide fic, which I will link to in January, after reveals. I'd hoped to maybe write treats or at least drabbles, but realized eventually that it wasn't in the cards for this years.

Of course, as soon as Yuletide is done and dusted, it's time to switch seamlessly into Purimgifts mode. But I'm pretty busy with unrelated stuff, so I probably won't get into nomming or finalizing my sign-up for a bit. Even though I have approximately a billion new fandoms, due to reading quite prolifically this year (compared to previous years).

All in all, other than the sleep deprivation, I'm doing quite well on a personal level.

I nominated some fandoms I'm excited about for this year's Yuletide, but given the workload on the new project (and some other factors), I've been putting off signing up. Part of me is not entirely sure that it's a good idea for my time management. If I'm stressed about making a gift on time, I won't even enjoy the process (or the gift I receive) as much. So I'm thinking about it.

Meanwhile, I'm taking a short break from playing Galaxy Princess Zorana and watching a bunch of Blue Prince videos on YouTube.

Yuletide! An exciting year for me this year, since many/most of my requested fandoms are ones I nominated, also.

General wants: ( general wants )

( Opt-ins )

General DNWs: ( Read more... )

Fandom-specific prompts and preferences:

( The Saint of Steel - T. Kingfisher )

( Their Majesties' Pleasure (Interactive Fiction) )

( Wylde Flowers (Video Game) )

( Seven Kingdoms: The Princess Problem (Visual Novel) )

( A Sorceress Comes to Call - T. Kingfisher )

I will make a Yuletide recs post, for sure, but I'm still slowly working my way through several longer (9-10K) fics, and also, I have today earmarked for an important chore, *and* finishing an incredibly important scene in TC. So I've got my plate full. Oh, and I have to feed the sourdough starter tonight, too.

Yuletide promo post is up!!

Hello! I am lea_hazel both here and on the AO3, and leahazel on Tumblr.

Blanket likes: I *am* interested in interactive fiction gifts, and I *am* interested in in-universe documents like history books or newspaper articles. I am *not* interested in a gift that's primarily poetry.

( Seven Kingdoms: The Princess Problem )

( Beware of the Villainess )

( Still Star-Crossed )

( The Sims 4 )

( Cinders )

( The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance )

I got in my gift in (somewhat) good time. I'm pretty sure I know what I'm getting (or what fandom at least) and I'm looking forward to it. I was gonna try to write a treat, since we have at least one new fan who joined during the nominations phase, but I couldn't finagle it in time. I was working on a battle scene for my game and that ate up a lot of my creative energies.

I'm really looking forward to reveals tomorrow, although I never get in as much Yuletide reading as I'd like.

I wanted to write tonight, to see if I could squeeze a few hundred more words into the last month of the year, to make the word counts look a little prettier. Not sure that's in the cards, though. I'm pretty worn out. Last night a back pain kept me up, and it took a while before I remembered that, uh, I can take something for that. It cost me some rest. And tomorrow I have to make up some time at work. I may get home too exhausted to write then, too.

I will definitely be too tired to celebrate, so I've preemptively given up on that, too.

And navigating the rain and cold is drawing off some of my excess energy, too. The rain is good for us, but it still makes my life just a bit more of a pain in the ass.

I will try to do an end of year post tomorrow, at the very least. I also have some Verity stories scattered that need to be pieced together. And then the next day is YT author reveals and I'll probably do a post about that. Even though I have not read much of the YT archive this year. Yet? Hopefully yet.

This year I'm determined to be a better recipient for Yuletide than in years past. Reveals start going up in about four hours and I intend to read my gift on my lunch break and comment on it immediately. And you can hold me to that. In fact, I'm gonna read and comment on all the 7KPP fics for this year (they're here). We're a small fandom and deeply dormant, and fic authors deserve all the attention they can get.

I am also deeply anxious about the gift I wrote this year, but that's par for the course.

...and i am /astounded/ at how badly my entire right side, and especially my back, are all knotted up. i gotta get a handle on this type of thing to keep it from happening too often.

and today is evidently not gonna be a writing day. i don't want to strain what i just spent fifty minutes softening up.

i made a choice script community of pillowfort here: https://www.pillowfort.io/community/choicescript

there was an interactive fiction challenge for yuletide that i only just found out about here: https://yuletide.dreamwidth.org/141781.html#comments