in the moderate Aristotelian city

Grabbed from naraht.

Rules: go to page 7 of your WIP, skip to the 7th line, share 7 sentences, and tag 7 more writers to continue the challenge.

"Hold on, okay?" said Marco. "I can be there in half an hour."

"There?" Juliet asked blankly, wondering where he was going. A police station? Why would that take half an hour?

"Your place." Marco sounded surprisingly gentle.

Not tagging anyone, but feel free if you like!

Almost 17,000 words this week!

~7.5 on WIP Big Bang.
~9.5 on my original sci-fi porn.

My mood is all over the place, but I am getting words written, so that's something I can at least call an accomplishment.

By organising my bunny list. Oh my god, there are so many things I could write. Including prompts that are more than five years old (I'm so sorry, guys). But yay, ideas! Including many ideas for original stories, which is amazing, and not a thing I ever thought would happen.

So that is a positive.

And I'm currently being really inspired by a story I am writing, with the aim of submitting it to bb_shousetsu. Which is extremely good news!

Focusing on writing is a useful thing when I'm down. So having it coming back to me is awesome.

I have finally decided on a pen name for my original writing, after much deliberation. The name I'll be using is Jules Thorpe. I kind of like it.

Now, I guess, I have to do some actual writing. But in the meantime, I've created social media accounts for my author identity, because obviously that makes sense.

So you can find me here on DW as jules_thorpe, on Twitter as JulesThorpe, and on Tumblr as jules-thorpe.

I am still figuring out how to be a presence in these three places. (Tumblr is the easiest - I reblog writing stuff to jules-thorpe and my usual mishmash of social justice, fandom and cat pictures to randomling.) So there may not be much to follow just yet. But I'm working on it.

And I'm also working on the novel. I'll probably be posting some stuff about that over on jules_thorpe.

That may be the most usertags I've ever used in a single post, and they're all mine. Hello, I'm self-absorbed.

Anyway - feel free to follow me in any or all of those places if you are interested in original writing chatter!

So. I am in theory writing a novel, though it's somewhat stalled right now, but it's not the novel I'm thinking about tonight.

I'm thinking about how one of my kill-time activities (and calm-down activities) is doing codewords. They're also known as code-breaker puzzles, and they're the kind that's shaped like a crossword, but instead of clues, there's a number in each square. The puzzle is to crack the code by figuring out which letter is represented by each number. Fill in the correct letter in every square, and you complete the codeword. You're left with a grid full of words, just like a completed crossword.

The part that interested me tonight was the part where you're left with a grid full of words at the end. See, in a crossword, you're trying to figure out the words on a semantic level. In a codeword, you're trying to figure out the words on a purely structural level - which words fit into this hole? And it means that the words themselves, when you get them, feel to me somewhat more surprising, because you never had any clues to what they might mean.

How does this relate to writing?

Well.

I completed a codeword earlier tonight, and afterwards I was looking at the grid and thinking, and I remembered that writing exercise where you have to write a story including certain words. And I wondered what it might be like to write a story based on the words in my codeword.

I haven't done it yet, but since I completed a second puzzle tonight, I thought I'd share the words, and maybe some thoughts on what kind of story the words might generate.

Puzzle 1: chubby, jejune, image, maze, leg, snap, awry, diary, alert, accepts, safes, tells, expunge, piled, toque, vole, boys, win, gunk, notch, trendy, tetchy, clematis, pub, over, mercifully, boa, swan, eased, yield, tinny, cascade, unquote, pin, jelly, eight, aster, jogs, nit, needlework, nova, pot, severely

( Musings on these prompts )

Puzzle 2: animal, baroque, unify, boom, togs, eked, prize, sail, blue, icing, vows, junk, city, isle, ibex, cold, stun, goat, earth, grew, oxen, gnaws, tier, warn, upon, alder, revert, faking, adverb, grocer, lasso, beau, anew, mood, eject, name, lump, ingle, gnat, rick, damn, mini, aide, zinc, stow, byte, girth, surf, rags, vying, took, sago, rein, where, exiled, wiring

( Thoughts on these prompts )

I think I like this idea.

Feel free to share where you might take these prompts if you feel like it! And if you do write something of your own based on these prompts, I'd love to read it!

If your characters had their formative teenage years during the 80s or later, and they are music fans, and they grew up in the US or UK the Now! That's What I Call Music series is a really excellent resource for finding out what kind of music they might have enjoyed as a youngster. All the track listings for both series (the US and UK versions) are on Wikipedia, and so far I haven't had trouble finding any of the songs on Youtube.

I'm currently using this to do some deep background on my current characters, whose teen years were in the late 90s/early 00s. (Yes, I was a teenager myself in 1999. My memory is terrible, and actually hearing the tracks helps.)

So apart from Harry Potter and the Methods of Anti-Gravity, I haven't posted any fic at all in almost three years. And I have written very little of anything in that time, either. I keep starting things and then abandoning them.

And yet I'm tempted to do two different Christmas exchange challenges this year. TWO.

One is Make the Yuletide Gay. I did it for the first three years, but have skipped it for the last two. It's in my old main fandom, popslash, and it must be admitted that I miss popslash dreadfully.

The other one is the famous Yuletide. This is much more work, because I have to figure out what fandoms to request and offer.

I think, however, that writing two 1000 word stories in 3 months is not impossible.

Friends, tell me if I am reckless and insane?

It's been... I don't know how long since I posted anything new. In fact, yes I do - it was Christmas 2009, the last time I took part in MtYG, the popslash Secret Santa challenge. I just haven't been writing.

So it seems like weird and unusual circumstances that I have a new fic to share with you all.

It's called Harry Potter and the Methods of Anti-Gravity and that link goes to the story on AO3.

It is, as the title suggests, a Harry Potter fic (my first and only).

Enjoy!

I'm baking bread and doing laundry.

I have an email to send, a cover letter to write and a CV to tailor, and an interview to prepare for (it's for a voluntary post, but that's okay). All of that is deadlined for Monday, so it's today or tomorrow.

I've also got an ongoing knitting project - no deadline, but "watching TV and knitting" is my go-to relaxation activity. Noticing those depression warning signs means I'm trying to allow myself lots of relaxation time, in the hopes of preventing myself going totally to pieces before I can get more drugs on Tuesday.

And there is stuff to be done to stop the entropy in my room. Five minutes of picking-up and putting-things-where-they-live will totally make my bedroom back into a haven.

So I am working hard on the self-care thing, while also trying to keep an eye on the various balls I have in the air.

I also still want to do writing but I'm totally floundering. Thank you to everyone who gave me links for prompting communities - I have lots of stuff to play with now! But something is still missing, I just wish I knew what.

Grr, this whole thing of having to figure out what you need before you ask for it. It's frustrating!