I've been accumulating a list of things that would be interesting to journal about when I actually have/make the time for it. So I don't forget, I'm writing them down.

- Why malpractice suits against clergy is a bad idea
- How I wish professors would stop trying to reassure quiet students by mentioning that student who talk a lot in class and seem to have things together don't always do well on exams
- Those times when I realize that something that seems perfectly normal to me is considered strange by most people
- How strange it is to think about being part of a minority religion and how, aside from the fact that I haven't been practicing actively, I'm uncomfortable with the very real concept of being discriminated against for it in my future profession
- Reconciling the fact that I feel like I've finally found my calling with the fact that said calling is horribly over-populated

I could spend an hour in each of those, really. But alas, I have studying to do. Back to it!

More than three weeks since an update. It doesn't surprise me. The first few weeks of school things were going so smoothly that I occasionally worried that I was missing something. I think now that I was just so fucking thrilled to have found something that I both really enjoyed and was actually good at that I didn't notice things like how much work I was doing and how tired I was, and how little free time I had.  In the last couple of weeks that's caught up with me big time. I still love it, mind, but I do catch myself zoning out in class because I'm so tired, or really missing the free time I had back when I was working. The thing was, I wasn't happy when I was at work, but I was generally happy when I was at home.  I was reading a ton, writing a ton, spending a pretty good amount of time with my friends, getting into exercising... life was good. I gave that up to go back to school, and I think I didn't realize it until just recently.

One thing that I think this is making clear to me is that as much as I want a career I can really sink my teeth into, I don't want it to consume my entire life. I've entertained the thought of doing a couple of years of private practice after graduation (assuming I have the grades) but I'm less sure of that now. I haven't heard back from hardly anyone who's read my novel, but I do really miss writing. NaNo's coming up soon and every time I get an email about it I get a little sad. I've been reading Transmetropolitan, but otherwise all my reading is school work. I feel like I'm losing touch with my friends, and that often when I do talk to them I'm stressed.

In any case, what I need now is sleep.

1. It is okay to be single.  Being single does not mean that there is something wrong with me.  There are a lot of really awesome things about me that exist regardless of whether or not I'm in a relationship.  I don't think poorly of other people for being single.  There is no reason to hold myself to any other standard.

2. It is not unusual for me to be single for long stretches of time.  This does not mean that I am going to be single forever, or that there is something wrong with me.

3. It is okay to be unhappy about being single.  However it is not a good idea to allow this to shadow every other part of my life.  There are a lot of really great things about my life.  I am more intellectually engaged than I have possibly ever been.  I have a group of friends who I care about and who care about me.  I have a relatively good relationship with my family.  I'm not rolling on money, but I have a place to live, good food and enough wiggle room to go out and enjoy myself on a regular basis.

4. I am a fairly solitary person.  I need regular time away from other people.  While I was working, my main hobbies - writing and reading - were solitary ones.  As a student, I both want and need to be able to focus on studying above almost everything else.  Some people aren't like that.  This doesn't mean that there is anything wrong with me, or with them.

This is all.

I just finished my third week of law school.  I continue to feel pretty good about everything, and definitely very excited and interested in everything I'm studying.  The most difficult thing for me has been the social aspect of things, although this has gone reasonably well.  My section is full of smart, interesting people who generally seem more interested in helping one another out than competing.  The most difficult thing for me is the generally constant level of stress associated with being around new people all the time.


It's also been tough adjusting my relationships with my non-law school friends.  Our weekly pub quiz has changed hands (not to our pleasure) and so we're switching to having get-togethers at people's houses.  And of course, I miss getting coffee in the morning with B.  K is back from Africa, which is awesome, but again has created a little shuffling around of the routine (I hate that word).  I feel extra needy and at the same time distant, because what I'm excited about right now is a bit difficult to convey to people who aren't going through it.

I have a sore throat and really hope it doesn't mean I'm getting sick.

I haven't heard back from anyone about the novel yet, which I sort of expected (it is pretty damn long).  I hadn't planned on doing any writing, but found myself bored on the bus (I'm not reading for fun and school reading is tricky on a crowded bus given how big the books are) and started working out ideas for a new novel.  I'm trying to plot out the entire thing before writing it, which is a new approach for me.  We'll see how that goes.

I've been single for well over a year now.  I wish that didn't bother me so much, but it does.  Ah well.  I'm busy enough as it is.

Today in Torts (for the non-lawyerly, that's non-criminal law making people pay money for doing bad shit to other people) the professor asked about the McDonald's case where they had to pay a million dollars to a woman who burned herself on coffee.  She asked for a show of hands who agreed with the decision and who didn't.  It was split about 50/50 in the class (about 100 people).  I raised my hand with the people who were opposed to the decision.

Then she elaborated that the coffee was twice as hot as a normal cup of coffee (which is pretty damn hot already) because McDonald's was trying to hide the fact that they were using shitty cheap beans, and that the woman ended up with third degree burns, and did that change our opinion?  Point made.

The first day of orientation went quite well. Actually probably about the best I could have been realistically expecting. I got there at 9:00, spent 15 minutes standing around a bit awkwardly, got a locker, went on a tour, stood around a bit awkwardly for another few minutes until one of the orientation student people came and talked to me for a few minutes, then on to programming!

( In which I blather about stuff )

Tomorrow is the first day of orientation. I'm balancing between being nervous, being happy, and just wanting the next two weeks to be over so I can be done with the whole "meeting new people and getting used to a new situation" thing. Yesterday was kind of lame and today seems to be heading along the same vein. I think it's just that I'm antsy over classes starting and antsy over putting the novel down soon. Is it early enough to start drinking? Right, have to get up early tomorrow. Got to watch the drinking.

I'm working on what I'm calling a polish of the novel. I've been going through one part a day (maybe 25k words) fixing sloppy sentences, removing a scene here and there, catching typos. If I had another two weeks I'd follow this up by making a list of the things I'm still concerned about and then trying to find a way to address them before sending the draft out to my beta readers.

Unfortunately, I don't have another two weeks, and I think if I hang onto the damn thing I won't end up ever sending it out. Also, I think the main issues at this point are sort of subtle ones that are tricky to figure out how to fix without taking some time away from the story: a couple of characters that might not be as well realized as I'd like, some confusing plotting going on in the middle, that kind of thing.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not hugely confidant that the story or writing are awesome enough to stand out in a really really really competitive fantasy market. This upsets the part of me that believes that it's not worth doing anything if you can't do it perfect, but that part of me is (mostly) a stupid asshole so I try to ignore it. If I want to improve as a writer I MUST learn how to take critique. So come hell or high water, this thing is going out by Monday.

So! I finished what I've been calling the first draft of The Light in the Groves (usually referred to as "the novel") yesterday, right on schedule! I spent most of the day staring at the last couple of paragraphs going "I HATE ENDINGS!" until I finally just sent it to Ben. This morning he kindly suggested I chop off the last two sentences and end it right there, which worked quite well. Over thinking it for the lose, awesome alpha readers for the win!

Now I'm reading through and polishing again. I've made changes to almost every paragraph, which is less depressing than it sounds. For one thing other than deleting a paragraph or scene here and there, I'm mostly making small changes in wording. For the other thing, I'm usually able to see right away what's awkward and how to fix it. Today I worked on it for maybe nine hours (with breaks to do laundry, take a shower and pick out garb for tomorrow) and made it all the way through part one - about 75 pages out of a total 450.

I probably won't get much work done tomorrow - I'm going to the Ren Fest (WOO!) and will probably be tipsy and exhausted when I get home - so Sunday through Tuesday are going to be my big days. I'm pretty confidant I'll be able to edit at least as much as I did today each of those days, probably more if I'm not doing laundry.

Orientation starts on Wednesday, scary. I'm going to be working on this thing right up to the wire but I should have it in beta reading condition by the time classes officially start. Crazy crazy. My original plan had been to offer to print copies for people if they wanted, but I was sort of assuming it would cost maybe $5 a copy. Don't ask me why I thought that. It'd likely be about $20 per, so my grandma will be the only one getting a hard copy (and um, I might be abusing someone else's work privileges for that). Sorry!

And I want one.



Also, they are giving them away to people what link to them. Hey, you never know!

So it seems like one of the weirdest things about me is that I don't watch TV. I have no idea what the national average of hours per week is - I remember in high school I was around normal, maybe three or four hours a night - but if that's still about the same I'm nowhere near there. Now that So You Think You Can Dance is off the air I don't touch the TV unless I decide it looks dusty and I'm in a cleaning mood. I thought about watching a DVD last week but apparently our TV doesn't have the right hookups for our DVD player. So it goes. When I'm bored (which I haven't been in a while) there's always something to do - take a walk, play WoW, clean the apartment or read.

Today I was reading Newsweek on the ride to pub quiz and there was some stuff about the health care debate. I've cut down on my blogs a lot because they were taking up too much time and depressing me, so between that and my lack of TV watching I haven't been deluged with the health care stuff. Reading Newsweek, I think I made the right decision because damn, what's with people just being STUPID?

A couple of weeks ago I went to pub quiz at Brits with some people from my last job and ended up in a conversation with a Libertarian about politics. It was tough trying to defend my position, but I enjoyed it. The guy had obviously spent time thinking about his position and was willing to listen to me.  I think he thought I was an idealistic child, but it still worked.  But how do you talk to people who think that health care reform means the government is going to start killing old people?  Honestly.

The current health care system sucks balls.  I've been pretty solid middle class all my life, pretty damn fortunate as those things go.  Because I couldn't find a job right out of college and then worked retail for a year, I didn't have insurance until late 2006.  And because I've been treated for (relatively minor) mental illness since I was 14, I got hit with the preexisting conditions clause and didn't have my once or twice annual psychiatrist visits covered for two years.  Cry me a river, right?  The point is, why is it so hard for people to imagine that a couple of months bad luck won't screw them out of everything they have?  Got a heart condition?  Child with a developmental disorder?  Lose your job?  Good luck getting that covered!

This random assortment of thoughts has been brought to you by the letters G-U-I-N-N-E-S-S.  We won pub quiz tonight.  I finished chapter 23.  My first day of law school is in 16 days.  ZOMG!

So my initial goal to move my wake-up time gradually back so that waking up early for classes wouldn't be a shock?  Not going super well.  In spite of my alarm being set for 9:00am all week, I slept until 11:30 both yesterday and today.  Of course, if I didn't stay up to damn late I might get up earlier.  Just saying.  Yesterday I was up until 5am AGAIN, thankfully not because of being traumatized by a small flying insect-eater but because I was reading The Name of the Wind. 

In spite of having gotten into it enough that I was reading until five, I'm afraid I'm ever so slightly disappointed by it.  I'd heard so many great reviews that I was expecting something really groundbreaking and instead it's turning out to be a very well written but fairly formulaic fantasy.  It's not that formulaic is bad, but it isn't even an especially interesting take on the formula so far.  Ah well.  I'll go into it more when I finish.  I'm still liking it, just yeah, kind of got the expectations up a bit too high there.  Ah well.

Yesterday I got behind on the writing for the first time this month (sad!).  Having slept until 11:30 I left at 1:30 to catch a bus to the U, of course during the 10 minutes of the heaviest downpour of the day.  FUN!  I got my Upass made with barely even any waiting in line.  I don't really like the picture but it's not that bad.  My bangs were kind of bleh but given that it had been raining and I was kind of sweating a lot I guess they were as well as could be expected.  Rain + humidity + really nice colored dress that doesn't breathe at ALL so I end up all sweaty = slightly bad hair.  So it goes. 

I turned in my two forms to very nice people at the law school, went "OMGWTF I'm starting law school in two weeks what was I thinking?" a little, then came home and proceeded to watch Matrix Revolutions with the housemate and split a bottle of wine, my thanks to her for saving me from that small flying insect-eater.

Today was the first day of BlizzCon.  The livefeed started at 1:00 and I watched until 4:00 when they started covering stuff I didn't care about. Sadly there were two panels I did care about during that time, but they decided to cover Diablo 3 and StarCraft 2 instead.  Lame!  The new WoW expansion looks super ambitious and super cool and I'm really excited about it.  Assuming I have any time at all to play in winter of 2010 or whenever it comes out, it should be good times.

So I ended up writing until 7:00, watched the last panel of the day, decided I'd rather go for a run and write more than watch the costume contest and so I did that.  And I am very proud to say that I managed to jog the entire mile without stopping once.  Hot.  I'm 3800 words into chapter 22 so I'm only 700-1200 words behind, which isn't too bad at all.  I think I have three chapters left.  Crazy.  The last few days of this vacation are going to be an insane mass of editing as I want to do at least a couple of full passes looking for various things.  Phew.  Home stretch!

I should really think about some sleeping, but instead I think I'm going to play for an hour or so.  But I totally am going to get up at a decent time tomorrow, I SWEAR.

So yeah.  A half hour or so ago I woke up because of a funny noise in my room.  George is standing by where my two rooms connect and pawing at the air.  I look up to see this black shape zooming overhead.  HOLY FUCKING ASS MONKEYS.

I really don't like bats.  Do. Not. Want.  When I was a little girl a bat flew out of a closet at me at a house we were renting.  I don't know if it actually got tangled in my hair for a moment or if I just exagerated it, but regardless.  They freak me the fuck out.  So I do what any red-blooded girl would do.  I wake up my housemate.

And let me tell you, she was a freaking hero.  She grabbed a towel, went into my room, was clearly also freaked out by the bat (it was a wee black one) but she caught it in that towel and tossed it the hell outside.  Woo!

Which should have been where the story ends, only I remembered too late that a friend had posted something about how if the bat is in your room when you're asleep you're supposed to capture it for testing.  Oh boy.  So I do the best thing to ensure I won't be able to get back to sleep - I go on the internet.  And of course, yes, one is supposed to do that.

So now I'm freaking out all over again.  What if George got bit?  What if I got bit?  OMGWTFBBQ!  So what do I do?  I wake up the housemate again.  She calms me down.  The bat was acting totally normally.  It was scared of her, flying fine, and was clearly only in my room because I've been sleeping with the top of a window open without a screen on it.  I was sleeping under blankets and have no sign at all of being bit.  George has actually come up to me twice while sitting on the couch (once after the bat, once after talking to the housemate) and appears perfectly fine.  She assures me that if she had any concerns whatsoever about me or the bat she would say something.

I think worrying at this point is one of those "what if" things that I need to just leave the hell alone.  Going in for treatment and having George euthanized would probably be the equivalent of wearing a helmet in a car for the rest of my life in or something.  Overreacting to an exceptionally minor chance of something happening.  Right.  Deep breaths.  I still don't know if I'm going to be able to sleep any more tonight.  We'll see.  I'll just have a really tired looking picture for my student ID, I guess.

There hasn't been super much to report the last few days and it feels sort of silly to post when I don't have anything to say, but I guess I have news now?  I finished part four of the novel and started part five today.  I've been very slightly behind but am now caught up.  I'm debating writing more tonight or playing WoW.  Maybe I'll do both.  It's really scary moving into the home stretch.  One of my soon-to-be beta readers posted a comment to my facebook update being all "when do we get to read it!" which is just a really scary concept for me.

I've written a lot before, but other than a few bits of fan fiction what ended up on the internet, the only people who've read anything I've written are a couple of boyfriends, my therapist in high school, my parents and my grandma.  I've never gotten any bad feedback, but I've never gotten any tough feedback either and I know that's the next step in improving my writing.  I know it's not the best it can be, but it's approaching the best I can make it without help.

I think the worst thing I could hear is that it's boring.  I know it's not bad, but I'm worried about pacing.  I'm also a bit worried about characterization, though I'm planning on making another pass on that before handing this off.

Phew.  In other news, The Guild music video has been linked on quite a few of my geeky blogs and reminded me that I've meant to watch that for a while, I took a couple of hours this afternoon and watched the first two seasons.  Good stuff.  Felicia Day is adorable.  For some reason I love really pale red-heads with freckles.  Can't imagine why.

Woke Up: 10:00-ish (going to have to start moving the alarm back)

Writing Progress: Finished chapter 19.  As this chapter was almost 100% new stuff, I feel pretty good about getting it done.  I'm getting worried about the overall structure and pacing again, but feel like I need to press on.  I'll figure out how to fix it, get good feedback on that needs doing, or it's totally broken.  Either way, I'm finishing this fucker.

Jogging Progress: No jogging today.  Alas.  But yesterday I actually jogged almost the entire mile, go me!

Other Stuff: Sushi with Sam.  Yum.  We walked back during a rain storm, which was also much fun.

There's a contest going at Fantasy Magazine asking people to vote on the best gateway fantasy novels. It's one of the better lists of really good fantasy that I've seen in a while - maybe because my tastes run more toward "readable" and less toward "groundbreaking"? I mean, I love a good mind-fuck, but have less and less patience with books that feel like work.

Another reason I liked this list is that my housemate has been asking me for books to read, which was initially a challenge as I read mostly F/SF and she hadn't read any before, but I've loaned her three books so far (Mort, Neverwhere and The Princess Bride) and she's loved them all, and all three are on the list below!  Going through the list, I think those three actually stand up as the first three I'd recommend to a general fantasy newbie.  For kids I would probably go with The Belgariad, Harry Potter and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.

Anyhow I don't know how long this round of voting goes (I'm not finding the layout of Fantasy Magazine's blog especially easy to navigate) but Voting goes until noon next Monday.  Below is the list and some of my thoughts.

( Gateway Semi-Finalists (as voted by readers of Fantasy Magazine) )

Woke Up: 10:00 AM-ish

Writing Progress: Finished editing chapter 18, wasn't happy with it, did some outlining, rearranged and slightly rewrote chapter 18, feel much better about it.  Hurrah for white boards.

Jogging Progress: Probably jogged 2/3rds of my mile. Not bad. Is it too much to ask to see some improvement already?  Say around the belly area?  Oh, it is?  *sigh*

Other: Dentist appointment (no cavities, woo!), played WoW, signed promissory notes for the loans.  Good times.

Not terrifically much to report today.  I had an appointment in downtown at one so I was good and did some writing this morning.  I'm a bit over halfway through chapter 18 and have readjusted my writing schedule so I'm right on time (rather than a bit ahead).  Got to stick with it!  Becky sent me a message asking me to sub for her monthly pub quiz team tonight so I did - I've subbed in for them three or four times over the last year and it's always much fun, more current events and pop stuff than the Sunday quiz so I feel fairly useful.

Tomorrow I have a dentist appointment at noon so I'll have to try and be good and get my writing done before then.  I can do it!

Oh noes, I forgot to post anything yesterday!  It was a fairly uneventful day, actually.  I got up, played WoW, did some writing, played more WoW, got into an altercation with some stupid idiot in the SGA channel, went for a jog, was still upset about it, had a smoke, was still upset about it, did some more writing, went to bed.  Didn't edit half a chapter but got a good chunk done.

This morning I bussed into Minneapolis to get my hair colored and my bangs trimmed, then went to the Wedge.  When I got home I finished chapter 17 and started chapter 18, then went out to dinner and now I'm playing WoW again.  Yeah, I know.  I've started working on an achievement on my druid that involves completing 700 quests on each of the two major continents and am having a really nice time visiting the old content (especially with a fast mount).

I didn't hit 2500 words edited either yesterday or today (my bad) but am still well ahead, not having eaten up the lead I got myself last week.  I shouldn't push it though.  MORE WRITING, LESS WOW!

Today was the first day I didn't meet my writing goal of at least 2500 words editing.  Alas.  The alarm went off at 10 but I turned it off and slept until 11, then played WoW for most of the day, pecking out the last couple hundred words of chapter 16 while completing a fishing quest.  My dad called and sort of kind of lectured me about money, then the call dropped for 10 minutes and when he called back apparently he'd thought better and sort of kind of apologized.  So that was all good.

Went to Merlin's a bit early and wrote the first 1000 words or so of chapter 17 so I'm only maybe 1500 words off my daily goal.  Also worked out the structure of the next few chapters with the tall guy which was something that had been sort of bothering me.  It was just three of us at quiz tonight but Sam and the tall guy were on fire and we ended up winning the cash by a pretty big margin.  I'll take credit for two answers, one of which was a completely random, out of my butt, last minute change to a answer we were unsure of, so I was really excited about that one.

Got slightly bummed out coming home alone, broke down and bought a pack of cigarettes.  I'd finished my last pack on Monday and had kept not posting about it so as not to jinx myself, but so it goes.

You know what's fun to do when one gets back from a movie at midnight?  Write another 1700 words or so!  Good times.  In fact, I actually wrote an almost entirely brand-spanking-new chapter today.  Well done, me.  These last couple of chapters have been why I love writing and keep doing it even when it's depressing and lonely and hard.  It's actually been fun, giggling maniacly to myself, looking up random junk in the internet to try and get the details just right, sitting on the floor to try and figure out how people move FUN!

So yeah, 4700-ish words done in chapter sixteen today!  It's got maybe another 300-500 words to go to finish, then I'm done with part three, woo!  Last night (morning?) there was a mad crazy thunder storm and rather than try and sleep what with the windows above my bed actually shaking, I was up until late (early!) plotting out parts four and five.  Sweet!  It wasn't nearly as bad as I'd worried it would be, so I'm looking forward to keeping on.

That I've been able two write/edit a full chapter in a day twice now this week hasn't hurt my confidance in being able to finish this fucker so much either.  The schedule I set myself assumed I'd edit a half chapter a day and had me finishing on the 3rd of September.  As it turns out, I forgot that I had 26 chapters instead of 28, plus every time I get ahead I move the schedule back a day, so now I'm finishing on the 28th of August.  Very nice.  I'm hoping to tighten that by another couple of days, giving me a week or two to go through the whole damn thing looking for all that stuff in those revisions checklists I posted a few weeks ago.

Oi.  I hit that bit where you're just kind of going on auto-pilot and don't really register how tired you are.  I think that means bed time.