New Year's Resolutions / Year in Hindsight
Somehow I got into the habit of doing these things, but today I feel quite lazy.
Last Year's highlights:
[The year in hindsight]January: I put out one chapter (yes, I know... all the blame is mine,) of The Elven Heritage Legacy last year. For those of you who showed up to the journal at some point since last January, The Elven Heritage Legacy is a serial Sims 2 machinomic in a Legacy format, wherein we follow the descendants of a single family... or in this case, because I hate following the rules, four families of Elves who have emigrated from the vaguely medival-ish world of Elphemera to areas in and surrounding the modern, mildly rural community of Riverblossom Hills.
Since I have no clue when I started the EHL anymore (I think it was some time in the summer of 2010 or even earlier... my notes say that the first post was in late August of 2009,) I'm counting this year as the official fifth year of my legacy. New readers be warned - I didn't take the first five or so chapters seriously beyond editing for grammar and consistency. The quality has increased exponentially since then, so it might be best to hop in at The Three Musketeers part two or three. Or if you want the quick version, start with Memoria. Either way, the EHL is by no means required reading, and definitely not dead, despite my extremely awful updating schedule. The next chapter, Sophomoric, will be chapter twelve on my official counter and out soonish. Emphasis on the ish.
June: I went to Israel. I also dug up some stuff. I saw every single Corinthian column in the country, it seems like. I then came home and spent the rest of the summer working on the Thesis which shall not be named, which went badly enough that I had to start over.
August - December: I worked on Thesis, take two. I also researched and wrote Poor Unfortunate Souls, the forty-thousand-odd word novella length spitefic that was born after I got so mad that Fifty Shades of Grey existed that I decided to research the crimes that were actually committed in the book and end it as civilization, human decency, and common sense intended: with Christian Grey's arrest. The fic was primarily intended for members of das_sporking, and anyone else who likes mysteries, hates Fifty Shades, or blunders by my journal. As of the new year, I'm cross-posting what chapters I haven't already shamelessly promoted to twispitefic.
Longtime browsers over here might sort of recognize the two detectives starring in Poor Unfortunate Souls, probably from snippets of my past attempts at Nanowrimo. Allie Veldon, mage (not wizard or magician, thank you!) and Lindsay Pilot, detective, are in fact part of their own original series, which brings us to my plans for 2014: I'm having a go at writing their first novel, Switchpoint, during spring semester. So I'll probably babble about that at some point without giving you guys anything much to read for it, as I intend at some point to try and get them published. :D
New Year's Resolutions:
[Setting the bar realistically low because I don't polevault]
1) Finish Thesis and then forget it ever happened. I have to defend the sucker in March. After March, assuming I pass, I can cheerfully kick the monstrosity to the curb, secure in the knowledge that I will never have to do it again and that I hate academia anyway.
2) Graduate. I've been at my college four years - longer than I've known most people who actually come to this blog. While I'm terrified to leave, it's high time for me to go, and Roommate has already expressed her desire to move to the city with me, where we will hopefully have accomplished resolution 3.
3) Get a Job. I'm looking at a lot of chemistry/practical microbiology/water and food safety type of jobs for now. I've been told conflicting things about the job market. I keep hearing of places that supposedly will hire graduates right out of school because they're so focused that they don't care if you have higher education, they'd have to train you on their instruments regardless of how many degrees you have.
The dream job is one at the state water and food safety lab. The c-string backup option is water management... for those of you not in the know, that's often water reclamation, as in purification of wastewater.
Yup.
4) Move out. Insofar as I live anywhere, since I am a college gypsy, I live above my parents' garage in a room stacked full of boxes, because the damn things follow me from school to home like needy puppies. Assuming I get a job, somewhere, I'd prefer my own place by this time next year, and I'm sure my parents would prefer it too. (I know this because my mother keeps giving me secondhand furniture and dishes.) I'd prefer to get it with Roommate, and potentially some of the other girls from college, but that all depends on who gets jobs and grad schools where. We've located a suitable rental as a best-case-scenario, and for me the worst case scenario continues to be waking up whenever the garage door opens or closes.
5) Write Switchpoint. It's high time for me to finish something geared towards actual publication. I've had Allie and Lindsay as characters for nearly the same amount of time that I've had everyone from the Elven Heritage Legacy. This won't be appearing on Live Journal (undoubtedly, yelling about the research process will, because there's always something you haven't yet researched,) but it's a major goal nonetheless. I've been writing more or less continuously since I was seven, and though college has done it's best to throw a monkey wrench into that fifteen-year streak, I think I've done my ten thousand words by now.
Switchpoint is a dieselpunk science-fantasy mystery (with a cherry on top) involving smuggling, the mob, sarcastic detectives, take-no-shit police officers, a railway timetable (or several), magic, and lots and lots of trains. You will not believe how many trains there are.
6) Put out the yearly two chapters of The Elven Heritage Legacy. In theory, doing this will keep me more or less sane through research, job hunting, graduation, and the mysterious world of actual adulthood.
Last Year's highlights:
[The year in hindsight]January: I put out one chapter (yes, I know... all the blame is mine,) of The Elven Heritage Legacy last year. For those of you who showed up to the journal at some point since last January, The Elven Heritage Legacy is a serial Sims 2 machinomic in a Legacy format, wherein we follow the descendants of a single family... or in this case, because I hate following the rules, four families of Elves who have emigrated from the vaguely medival-ish world of Elphemera to areas in and surrounding the modern, mildly rural community of Riverblossom Hills.
Since I have no clue when I started the EHL anymore (I think it was some time in the summer of 2010 or even earlier... my notes say that the first post was in late August of 2009,) I'm counting this year as the official fifth year of my legacy. New readers be warned - I didn't take the first five or so chapters seriously beyond editing for grammar and consistency. The quality has increased exponentially since then, so it might be best to hop in at The Three Musketeers part two or three. Or if you want the quick version, start with Memoria. Either way, the EHL is by no means required reading, and definitely not dead, despite my extremely awful updating schedule. The next chapter, Sophomoric, will be chapter twelve on my official counter and out soonish. Emphasis on the ish.
June: I went to Israel. I also dug up some stuff. I saw every single Corinthian column in the country, it seems like. I then came home and spent the rest of the summer working on the Thesis which shall not be named, which went badly enough that I had to start over.
August - December: I worked on Thesis, take two. I also researched and wrote Poor Unfortunate Souls, the forty-thousand-odd word novella length spitefic that was born after I got so mad that Fifty Shades of Grey existed that I decided to research the crimes that were actually committed in the book and end it as civilization, human decency, and common sense intended: with Christian Grey's arrest. The fic was primarily intended for members of das_sporking, and anyone else who likes mysteries, hates Fifty Shades, or blunders by my journal. As of the new year, I'm cross-posting what chapters I haven't already shamelessly promoted to twispitefic.
Longtime browsers over here might sort of recognize the two detectives starring in Poor Unfortunate Souls, probably from snippets of my past attempts at Nanowrimo. Allie Veldon, mage (not wizard or magician, thank you!) and Lindsay Pilot, detective, are in fact part of their own original series, which brings us to my plans for 2014: I'm having a go at writing their first novel, Switchpoint, during spring semester. So I'll probably babble about that at some point without giving you guys anything much to read for it, as I intend at some point to try and get them published. :D
New Year's Resolutions:
[Setting the bar realistically low because I don't polevault]
1) Finish Thesis and then forget it ever happened. I have to defend the sucker in March. After March, assuming I pass, I can cheerfully kick the monstrosity to the curb, secure in the knowledge that I will never have to do it again and that I hate academia anyway.
2) Graduate. I've been at my college four years - longer than I've known most people who actually come to this blog. While I'm terrified to leave, it's high time for me to go, and Roommate has already expressed her desire to move to the city with me, where we will hopefully have accomplished resolution 3.
3) Get a Job. I'm looking at a lot of chemistry/practical microbiology/water and food safety type of jobs for now. I've been told conflicting things about the job market. I keep hearing of places that supposedly will hire graduates right out of school because they're so focused that they don't care if you have higher education, they'd have to train you on their instruments regardless of how many degrees you have.
The dream job is one at the state water and food safety lab. The c-string backup option is water management... for those of you not in the know, that's often water reclamation, as in purification of wastewater.
Yup.
4) Move out. Insofar as I live anywhere, since I am a college gypsy, I live above my parents' garage in a room stacked full of boxes, because the damn things follow me from school to home like needy puppies. Assuming I get a job, somewhere, I'd prefer my own place by this time next year, and I'm sure my parents would prefer it too. (I know this because my mother keeps giving me secondhand furniture and dishes.) I'd prefer to get it with Roommate, and potentially some of the other girls from college, but that all depends on who gets jobs and grad schools where. We've located a suitable rental as a best-case-scenario, and for me the worst case scenario continues to be waking up whenever the garage door opens or closes.
5) Write Switchpoint. It's high time for me to finish something geared towards actual publication. I've had Allie and Lindsay as characters for nearly the same amount of time that I've had everyone from the Elven Heritage Legacy. This won't be appearing on Live Journal (undoubtedly, yelling about the research process will, because there's always something you haven't yet researched,) but it's a major goal nonetheless. I've been writing more or less continuously since I was seven, and though college has done it's best to throw a monkey wrench into that fifteen-year streak, I think I've done my ten thousand words by now.
Switchpoint is a dieselpunk science-fantasy mystery (with a cherry on top) involving smuggling, the mob, sarcastic detectives, take-no-shit police officers, a railway timetable (or several), magic, and lots and lots of trains. You will not believe how many trains there are.
6) Put out the yearly two chapters of The Elven Heritage Legacy. In theory, doing this will keep me more or less sane through research, job hunting, graduation, and the mysterious world of actual adulthood.