Someone at the Archive of Our Own FB page asked how many fics people had in various length categories, so being me, I counted mine up.

Micro-fiction (under 100 words): 0
Flash Fiction (100-1000 words): 1341 (between 50-100 co-written)
Short Story (1001-7500 words): 141 (3 co-written)
Novelette (7501-17,000 words): 17 (2 co-written)
Novella (17,001-40,000 words): 7 (2 co-written)
Novel (40,001-110,000 words): 3 (1 co-written)
Epic (110,001 words and up): 4 (2 co-written)

The flash fiction/short story counts may be slightly off, since a lot are actually multiple chapters in a single "story" which is really just a drabble/ficlet collection. Some of the flash fiction might technically qualify as micro-fiction, too, for the same reason; I didn't go in and count every word for every chapter in those collections and there are some filks and poems and such that might be fewer than 100 words.

The total word count for all those together is probably upwards of 1,000,000. OTOH I haven't written *anything* in about a year; these are mostly a number of years old. *sadface*

Posting this here just since it was a lot of work to count all those up!

If you observe a phenomenon, and come up with an explanation that is based on other observed facts and that then explains the phenomenon completely (as far as you can tell), would you feel that your explanation is inadequate and requires further knowledge?

Because me, I would be satisfied at that point. If I later made observations that my proposed explanation did not explain, I'd revisit it, but otherwise I'd just let it go and call it good.

I'm working on tagging my books in LibraryThing, because librarian. I'm trying to add either "fiction" or "nonfiction" to every entry, as well as more specific and (to me) useful tags like "historical fiction - medieval" or "mystery - london" or "ya - fantasy". So I am (for instance) classifying poetry as fiction. I'm highly tempted right now to classify the religious texts as fiction also... I probably won't, but I'm tempted.

Number of trick-or-treaters in 2018: 133

Number of books read in 2018: 224 total (186 fiction, 38 nonfiction)

If I have the ability to do something, that is, I technically possess the skills and physical/mental capacity for it, but I lack the will or the drive or the time... do I really have the ability to do it?

1) We had 146 trick-or-treaters this year. The most popular non-candy item was the mini plastic dinosaurs, next most popular was the Halloween pencils.

2) I'm off to Montreal tomorrow, just for the weekend. SO has a conference and I'm going along to see the eldest nibling who is a first-year college student there.

3) In a fit of total insanity, I have signed up to do NaNoWriMo this year, which I have never done before. Wish me luck as I am already a day behind.

I was going back through some really old entries and came across this, which I originally posted on January 1, 2006. It made me laugh, so I'm re-posting. (Note, not all of the links still work correctly.)

( Aziraphale and Crowley's New Year's ResolutionsCollapse )

A few months back I joined the social medial network thing that is for neighborhoods in my city. I don't actually participate in it, but I get email digests of the day's posts and an email if there's an important official announcement/reminder, e.g. "if your regular trash pickup day is Tuesday, your trash will be picked up on Wednesday this week because of the holiday."

Last week there was a reminder that city law prohibits the purchase or use of fireworks of any sort, down to and including sparklers, within the city limits. (The city itself does put on a civic display.) Immediately there were people getting up on their high horses about how this was so unAmerican, how it was a repression of their rights to honor the patriots of the past, blah blah blah, and how they were going to shoot off all the fireworks they wanted because AMERICA.

I wanted to, but did not, point out that if they did so, they'd be criminals. That's what you call people who break the law.

The fireworks thing pisses me off every year. It's dangerous, for one thing, but in the context of my life, it upsets my dogs and prevents me from getting to sleep at a reasonable hour (I have enough trouble with that anyway). Moreover there seems to be little or no effort to actually enforce the law. It's not a very high fine (something like $150) but just having some cops go around and cite people who are breaking the law might help. Figure out how many cops you have available, and assign each one to a neighborhood to issue citations to everyone in that neighborhood who breaks the law. Use random numbers to pick the neighborhoods each year so it's unpredictable.

Independence Day seems like an excellent day to uphold the rule of law.

Can we just say I'm not good at keeping up with stuff online lately and leave it at that? One of these days I really will get more of those prompts written, I promise.

On the writing front, though, I am going to take the plunge and do something more "official," to wit, I am enrolling in an undergraduate Intro to Creative Writing course this fall. My uni offers an MFA in Creative Writing, which I am thinking about doing (because four degrees isn't enough for me, apparently, or else I am trying to personally embody the Lifelong Learner idea that unis all want to promote), but since I have never actually taken any coursework in creative writing at all, it seemed like a good idea to start with, say, three or so undergrad courses to see if it works for me to write in that kind of environment. If it doesn't, no harm no foul; if it does, then whee and I can think seriously about trying the MFA. [I'm going to have to tame my complex compound sentences, though.]

So yeah. That's where it is just now.

Also, I am really looking forward to MISTI-Con later this month, and to a vacation in England in June; I've never been to the UK as just a tourist, only as a student or researcher, so this should be a lot of fun.

Designing a database is HARD. The last time I built one from scratch was back in the late 1990s, for my dissertation research, and it was non-relational and with a different program. Now I'm using Access 2016, setting up lots of relationships and forms and bells and whistles. But slowly I'm getting there. Useful skills, whether or not I ever write up the research.

Thanks to everyone who left prompts for my last post - they are percolating in my brain. *g*

I was going to do this last week, for my birthday [because I am a Hobbit, and Hobbits give other people presents on their birthdays], but (a) busy, and (b) IJ down and I prefer doing auto-crossposting, so.

Having at long last managed to write ficlets for the last batch, I'm seeking new inspirations. If you would like a ficlet, or drabble, or if my muse gets really cooperative, maybe a short fic - please leave me a prompt!

I usually work best with: (1) your preferred fandom [see below]; (2) a character [1 or 2] OR a pairing; (3) a one to three word prompt.

My smut muse has been long absent, but in the unlikely event she puts in an appearance, let me know if you really would NOT want smut.

Fandoms I can probably write in just now: Harry Potter, Tolkien, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Hunger Games, Good Omens, Jane Austen, The Breakfast Club, Narnia, The History Boys, Star Trek [Reboot only]. Any other fandom I've previously written - maybe. Something else you think I might know well enough - it's possible, you can always ask, anyhow.

In the past, anyhow, I've managed to write pretty much any character(s) or pairing that have been requested, within moderate reason. (Harry/Giant Squid might be too much of a stretch.) So don't let that stop you. :)

So I wrote three ficlets today. (Yes, I did work too. They were written on breaks/lunch.) Which is, like, unheard of for me lately. I'm not going to count on it continuing though. What really makes me go o_O, though, is that I posted them on AO3, and the first one, which went up less than 8 hours ago, has 151 hits and 15 kudos already. WTF. I'll grant that it's Harry/Draco fluff, but still. WTF. I'm not trying to be braggy here, I'm just genuinely baffled.

Anyhow, here's the links for anyone interested. All are general in rating:

• The Scent of Lilacs [HP; Draco/Harry]: It's a spring afternoon at Malfoy Manor. At IJ. At DW. At AO3.



• Sight Lines [Hunger Games; Peeta, Katniss]: Peeta watches Katniss in school. At IJ. At DW. At AO3.



• A Small Indulgence [LotR; Elrond, Thranduil]: Elrond visits Thranduil, in the early Third Age. At IJ. At DW. At AO3.

Day 4

Comment to someone you haven't ever interacted with before or introduce yourself to someone you've interacted with and friend/follow them.



I'm participating in this friending meme, which ought to qualify. :)

I'm celandineb at LJ, IJ, and DW and when I'm actually around, I check them all. I post from DW using the auto-crosspost function, which mostly works fine. So yeah. Friend me wherever you prefer, and I'll friend back.