Nia's DW

Haven't posted in a while, but except from posting in my own journal I'm quite active in fandom(s) at the moment. :D

The muse is back, and she came with a vengeance. Nope, not complaining. On the contrary, I'm so very happy about it. I'm slightly ahead of my schedule with the MCU fic and decided spontaneously to reward myself. How do writers reward themselves? Yupp, I signed-up for more writing and claimed a prompt of hp_nextgen_fest.

Might have started this fic today and now there are two stories I'm eager to write. LOL
Months of no writing at all and now... can't even decide what to do first. Such a shame I have a job and a family and cannot write all the time.

So, in case you haven't looked at the fabulous nextgen prompts so far, here they are:
come join hp_nextgen_fest!

Art by anemonen, Banner by capitu

Oh yeah, and have you visited this year's crossgen fest? No?! You miss out. It's the last week of posting and the art has been great so far. Wonderful fics have been posted too. I can't even name all my favourites without wronging the other stories. Please, go and take a look.
come join hp_crossgenfest!

Art by thilia, Banner by capitu

← Isn't that a shiny and lovely icon? Grabbed it from capitu some time ago and, as I still haven't anything naughty to tell, I just show it off like this because LOVE!

Today was a good day because - finally - after nearly 8 months of intermitted work I've activated my epic lung cancer text at work (ok, one of them). Yeah, I know, it's an weird thing to be happy about. But our team, who answers all cancer-related questions, was in dire need for that to happen. The old text, though up-to-date in general, had the important topics all over the place and one had to really know what they were looking for. Now it's usability should be much better.

I'm not sure the same can be said about my hp_nextgen_fest fic though. My beloved beta called me brave for going for this prompt and that's been the last thing I heard about it before she was going to go through it. That kind of set the bar higher than I'm comfortable with. I know the signs. Next thing will be for me to go into a love-hate-relationship with the story. Why must it be that way every single time? It would be so much better to just love my own stories. Ok, I'll stop this pointless rambling now. Sorry.

Oh, there's something else I'd love to share. I've started to read one of my favourite children's tales to our little one and she loves it. We've always read stories to her, but this is the first long one and we read one chapter each night before she goes to sleep. It's so much fun and I've dreamt about that moment (me reading to her) the second I'd learnt we would be parents.
The story is called 'The Little Ghost' by Otfried Preußler and I'm reading from my own copy which has been my uncle's beforehand.
( Read more... )
It's the 1st edition from 1966 and it has pictures in it which mostly I coloured some 35-36 years ago. OMG, I just learned that it's actually the 1st edition and now I feel a bit bad because it looks so used and I've scrawled into it and my uncle did so too - the poor book!
Anyway, the little one loves not only the story she's over the moon about our couloring. Every time a picture comes our way she asks me if it was really me or my uncle who coloured it. ♥

Btw, the second part of my nickname, Kantorka, comes from another of Preußler's tales. He wrote brilliant books.

For the las'ight or so I really thought I had to withdrawl from the fest I'm writing my current fic for. No words, no ideas, nothing. I wrote the start of that story in May and since then not a single word. It was ok during June because I wanted to read all the things (worked well), but I've been getting more and more nervous since the 1st of July. Last Friday (after having procrastinated for hours on the internet while trying to write some words in that doc) I sat at my desk and asked myself what to do if things would go on like this.

Well, I told myself that I'd try one more week before I'd give up. Thanks to all the deities (or whomever I have to thank for sending my muse back to me) it's no longer necessary. Wrote some prompt required things yesterday and today (while making coffee and foaming milk ) it all came together; How to end this damn story and where to go from the scene I stopped yesterday.

Hurray- I don't need to drop out of the fest or submit some story I'd have been embarrassed about. Probably shouldn't shout out that loud as it isn't finished yet, but I'm so relieved. It's irrational to get that angsty about such a thing (nobody's about to die, the world is still spinning and there are so many bigger problems to think about), but for unbeknown reasons I just do.

So, yeah, crisis averted. :D

I'm going out with a friend tonight (late b-day present :D) and just wanted to wish everyone a wonderful morning/day/evening/night!

Cheers! ♥

P.S.: Thanks to digthewriter I'm able to decorate this post with some oh-mime of John and that wonderful smirk of Sherlock.

P.P.S.: I want to change my LJ layout and I've found one I like (the colours, the clean style) except for the header pic. Is there a way to change the header pic without me crashing the code? And how do I even get into the code (there's a shortkey I sometimes enter and than I see the page's code, but I never pressed those keys deliberately)? Maybe some of my more css-talented friends could help me? If it's too elaborate, I'd skip the whole idea.

At work a few people know I'm writing fanfiction. Those women are not only my colleagues but friends too. Today I got feedback from my friend A on one of my fics. She hasn't read any of my stories before because A doesn't like fantasy- therefore she's not really interested in anything that's got to do with magic. I showed her the beautiful art sylvaticginger did for said fic the last time we met privately, A got interested and wanted to read the story too.

Well, today A told me not only that she really liked "this collar story of yours", but that she'd read parts of it aloud to her husband. Lets say I was delighted. And then it got even better. Mr A was astonished about the collaring and other D/s elements in the story and asked her if I'm active in the BDSM scene.
OMG, that's so cool. The biggest compliment ever. That my description sounded so real to him that he had to ask her such a question. Haha, I could feel A was curious too.

Well, I did a lot of research on the matter, read a lot of blogs from people who live their D/s kink proudly (so many great people are blogging about such private things) and I loved to get a grip on the topic, but I'm not participating in BDSM. Anyone who does probably recognises that at a glance, but nonetheless Mr A's question made my day. And as I'm still insecure about writing stories in a second language today has been a huge boost to keep going.