Milestone
Oct. 28th, 2025 06:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
azurelunaticVideo appointment with chemotherapist today. I'm done with immunotherapy! The scan says I've been stable.
I still have:
* bone strengthening (not marrow encouraging) med every 12 weeks, infused
* Scans every 3 months
So that means a trip or two to the cancer center every 3 months, although if they keep it at 3 months for the one and 12 weeks for the other, they may fall out of sync.
I should probably celebrate this?
I still have:
* bone strengthening (not marrow encouraging) med every 12 weeks, infused
* Scans every 3 months
So that means a trip or two to the cancer center every 3 months, although if they keep it at 3 months for the one and 12 weeks for the other, they may fall out of sync.
I should probably celebrate this?
Creative constipation
Oct. 25th, 2025 04:34 pmchristophineI've got this short story idea in my head. Dark sci-fi. And I still find it weird that this gets me fired up to write, when I primarily saw myself as pure horror, with ambitions toward dark fantasy. I love reading sci-fi, but long before I ever got my first thing published, it was always either fantasy or horror that interested me to write.
Then I had the inspiration for and wrote the short story "Green" for a call for post-apocalyptic dystopian sci-fi. It didn't make the cut for that call, but it found a home in the next place I submitted, the now-defunct Hybrid Fiction magazine. It paid better than anywhere else I've been published, before or since. And then got sold for reprint rights after the exclusivity period in the contract was up. It has been my best earner so far.
(And as an aside: I still, five years on, am sad over the shuttering of Hybrid Fiction. I loved that magazine. It had only just started in tandem with the Covid-19 lockdowns, and it did not survive them. Its last issue was the October issue, five years ago this month. I had artwork in one earlier issue that year, and "Green" was in the final issue.)
And now this idea has gotten me fired up to write the same way "Green" did. It's exciting somehow in ways that horror and dark fantasy haven't been for a while. I've got the characters figured out. I've got the premise, the major story beats I want to heat with the plot, the ending. And a particular twist I want to have in there.
And my brain is fighting with itself from there.
One side says that for a better impact, the story ought to be written in first person. But the way it was originally envisioned in my head, should be third person, and a big part of my brain is clinging to that. I'm trying to reconcile this and find a way that won't dilute anything and will stop this stupid war in my head between these different parts and the way they each want to write this story.
The logjam in my head is actively mentally painful. And starting to be physically so. It's giving me a headache.
I briefly considered just writing it in third person and then going back to change it to first, or vice versa, to try and resolve the conflict. But that's not as simple as changing a lot of "I" to "he" or "she." That'd make the task of editing at the end more complicated to make sure verb tenses align correctly, among other things.
I wanted to get started on it this weekend, and here it is approaching time to get dinner started cooking, and I still haven't worked out a satisfactory solution to this. Not a word has been written. Half the writing time gone without making a dent in this conundrum.
Some days I'd like to detach my head and trade it in for a model that works better.
Then I had the inspiration for and wrote the short story "Green" for a call for post-apocalyptic dystopian sci-fi. It didn't make the cut for that call, but it found a home in the next place I submitted, the now-defunct Hybrid Fiction magazine. It paid better than anywhere else I've been published, before or since. And then got sold for reprint rights after the exclusivity period in the contract was up. It has been my best earner so far.
(And as an aside: I still, five years on, am sad over the shuttering of Hybrid Fiction. I loved that magazine. It had only just started in tandem with the Covid-19 lockdowns, and it did not survive them. Its last issue was the October issue, five years ago this month. I had artwork in one earlier issue that year, and "Green" was in the final issue.)
And now this idea has gotten me fired up to write the same way "Green" did. It's exciting somehow in ways that horror and dark fantasy haven't been for a while. I've got the characters figured out. I've got the premise, the major story beats I want to heat with the plot, the ending. And a particular twist I want to have in there.
And my brain is fighting with itself from there.
One side says that for a better impact, the story ought to be written in first person. But the way it was originally envisioned in my head, should be third person, and a big part of my brain is clinging to that. I'm trying to reconcile this and find a way that won't dilute anything and will stop this stupid war in my head between these different parts and the way they each want to write this story.
The logjam in my head is actively mentally painful. And starting to be physically so. It's giving me a headache.
I briefly considered just writing it in third person and then going back to change it to first, or vice versa, to try and resolve the conflict. But that's not as simple as changing a lot of "I" to "he" or "she." That'd make the task of editing at the end more complicated to make sure verb tenses align correctly, among other things.
I wanted to get started on it this weekend, and here it is approaching time to get dinner started cooking, and I still haven't worked out a satisfactory solution to this. Not a word has been written. Half the writing time gone without making a dent in this conundrum.
Some days I'd like to detach my head and trade it in for a model that works better.
...p...p-p-PENIS?!!!
Oct. 21st, 2025 10:56 pmazurelunaticToday Belovedest had to bust the teenagers for playing "the penis game" in the library.
[You say the word increasingly loudly, in turns, until someone loses the game by being told to cut it out or being asked to leave.]
The weather's getting colder, but I have evolved myself an outfit to wear outdoors for lounging while the weather's in the high 50s F -- my slightly ratty plush bathrobe underneath my much more windproof corduroy floor length duster. And the ta'al fingerless mgloves Mama knitted for me, in rainbow stripes. They're just the thing for keeping my hands warm while I'm on the phone.
I've discovered I do enjoy cauliflower "wings", even though I don't enjoy chicken wings.
The scooter has arrived. I am plotting how best to bedazzle it. It does have its own USB power outlet! It also has head and tail lights. It's better for approaching counters than the wheelchair, since the tiller is so close to me.
norabombay points out that given all the poorly supervised international visitors who have been in and out of the White House, they're going to have to take it down to the studs when they refit it for #48 to use. So the general devastation in the East Wing is small potatoes as far as outrage fodder. And anywhere that the last major update was 1947-ish must really need some yanking out of the century of the fruitbat.
My legs are doing better. In part this is because I stuck ibuprofen in my nightly pill box, since I'd been waking up with aching legs and shouting knees pretty consistently.
Medication: the medication definitely has some activity. The main activity seems to be that my appetite has been fading in and out of "did we recently have chemo?!" mode. I'm tempted to give myself a week off every few weeks.
Makeup: currently waiting on a liquid formulation of the eyeshadow that promised to match the eyeliner, because the color is fantastic and I want it in a wide brush. I guess the powder can work for blending it out. (The powder just does not want to cooperate and layer on thick enough to get the color shift effect, even with a wet brush.) My skin continues to behave itself better than my ability to use foundation; there are only a few spots where I want to color correct if I'm doing Full Battle Makeup.
Games: keeping up with all the Gems of War events is sometimes tiring, but it does make winding down my brain at night much easier than other things I could be doing.
Perfume: went through my massive perfume spreadsheet and filled in the formulation for all the BPAL (which is the same except for that one spray). Cracked myself up at some of the descriptions I've left. One particular exceedingly long-lasting one
( Read more... )
[You say the word increasingly loudly, in turns, until someone loses the game by being told to cut it out or being asked to leave.]
The weather's getting colder, but I have evolved myself an outfit to wear outdoors for lounging while the weather's in the high 50s F -- my slightly ratty plush bathrobe underneath my much more windproof corduroy floor length duster. And the ta'al fingerless mgloves Mama knitted for me, in rainbow stripes. They're just the thing for keeping my hands warm while I'm on the phone.
I've discovered I do enjoy cauliflower "wings", even though I don't enjoy chicken wings.
The scooter has arrived. I am plotting how best to bedazzle it. It does have its own USB power outlet! It also has head and tail lights. It's better for approaching counters than the wheelchair, since the tiller is so close to me.
norabombay points out that given all the poorly supervised international visitors who have been in and out of the White House, they're going to have to take it down to the studs when they refit it for #48 to use. So the general devastation in the East Wing is small potatoes as far as outrage fodder. And anywhere that the last major update was 1947-ish must really need some yanking out of the century of the fruitbat. My legs are doing better. In part this is because I stuck ibuprofen in my nightly pill box, since I'd been waking up with aching legs and shouting knees pretty consistently.
Medication: the medication definitely has some activity. The main activity seems to be that my appetite has been fading in and out of "did we recently have chemo?!" mode. I'm tempted to give myself a week off every few weeks.
Makeup: currently waiting on a liquid formulation of the eyeshadow that promised to match the eyeliner, because the color is fantastic and I want it in a wide brush. I guess the powder can work for blending it out. (The powder just does not want to cooperate and layer on thick enough to get the color shift effect, even with a wet brush.) My skin continues to behave itself better than my ability to use foundation; there are only a few spots where I want to color correct if I'm doing Full Battle Makeup.
Games: keeping up with all the Gems of War events is sometimes tiring, but it does make winding down my brain at night much easier than other things I could be doing.
Perfume: went through my massive perfume spreadsheet and filled in the formulation for all the BPAL (which is the same except for that one spray). Cracked myself up at some of the descriptions I've left. One particular exceedingly long-lasting one
( Read more... )