I Read Your Post and/or Story and Enjoyed It

Ah, yes, I knew I was forgetting a step: My interview for McShep Match is over here, posted a week ago, and, ooop, now having several comments that need responding to. If you've got any questions for me, give 'em an ask, and I'll be happy to answer them promptly.

Also: McShep Match posting starts TOMORROW! There should be a lot of great stories and art, and I can't wait to see what everyone's come up with. I'm nervous about my story, and can't tell whether it's just because I rarely go this long between finishing a fic and getting feedback on it, or because I haven't written anything SGA (or non-work-related, really) since January and was really rusty. Really. And made some odd choices in the type of story I decided to tell, vis-à-vis my strengths as a writer. Le sigh.

winkingstar and I chatted today (IRL, because she came for a visit and we spent two and a half hours looking at rocks and then saw Morris dancers on the street, yay!) about how much harder it's been to write and podfic and generally be creative since leaving school & entering the workforce. I'd thought that having structured work/non-work time would make it easier, since there'd be these great expanses of evenings and weekends that I could devote to writing, but then I get home from my job (which I love!), sometimes rather late, and all I want to do is turn my brain off for a little while.

To that end, I think I'm going to try a little experiment. Last October, my friend M. gave me a list of 30 prompts to use in a not-quite-NaNo "write something every day in November" challenge. That . . . did not happen, clearly, and I doubt I'll ever succeed in writing something every single day in a given month -- my work schedule just won't permit that. But! I'm going to try doing something for each of the prompts over a relatively short period of time, because I need to try something to get my writing mojo back. I think I'll call it 30 Days of Writing: Non-Consecutive.

And I think I'll start tomorrow.

If you still haven't voted on some/any/all of the mcshep_match fics, you've got about 7 1/2 hours left! Same goes for the Guess-the-Author contest, and there are some pretty sweet prizes for winning (with multiple ways to win, I believe!), so why not give it a try? At least tell me which one you think I wrote. :-)


In other news, it took me less than 4 weeks to break my "No LJ at Work" rule. (Which is surprising, given that I've had "Barely Any Internet at Home" for much of that time.) Back to work!

Status Update: I'm alive!

The bar exam . . . went, and is over (which is the really important thing). Now I'm slowly getting used to being a non-student who doesn't have to take exams, and who is also a marginally pleasant person to be around. (Current project: remembering how not to pick apart every sentence said to me by someone else because, hey, it isn't a multiple choice question with a trick hidden somewhere in the depths of its syntax, Mom really just wants to know if I want to go shopping with her.)

I'm staying at my parents' house for a few days and catching up with them and some local friends, then headed back up north to pack up my apartment (and work on my mcshep_match story -- check this space next week for pleas for betaing!) and get ready to move to the DC metro area (which winkingstar and I plan to quite thoroughly conquer, once she gets back from gallivanting around Europe).

Mostly, I'm looking forward to catching up on all of the fun things and life-having that was going on while I've been in seclusion. Links to greatness are always appreciated, as are any suggestions for how to deal with my impending first September in twenty years that won't involve going to school.

Voting for the mcshep_match drabble challenge is up! You can check out the 468 drabbles here and then vote for the team that made the best showing. Team members can't vote, but we can campaign, so: vote Team Peace!

My seven drabbles are here (with HTML provided by the amazing altyronsmaker, who coded all 251 Team Peace drabbles):

Peace is worth fighting for
Peacably to Assemble
Peace!
Promise of Peace (semi-sequel to two drabbles by lavvyan)
And by that I mean Peace
Time enough for Peace
Peacetime

As I'm sure you've all seen already, the winners for McShep Match were announced, and the Home Team was victorious! (Well, by 12/100ths of a point, so it's more like "the Home Team squeaked by on a statistically insignificant margin!" But still: !!!)

I contributed the Home Team story For Future Reference for the "chapter and verse" prompt. It's a fairly fluffy piece -- I caused myself much consternation trying to figure out what kind of epic, angsty story I should write, and then I thought, "Wait, why did you pick this prompt in the first place? Oh, right: boys making out in libraries."

Huge thanks to winkingstar for betaing this 10 hours before the deadline. I promise that no library materials were harmed in the making of this story.

Voting for the mcshep_match drabble challenge is up!  Go here to see a list of links to all of the wonderful drabbles, and then vote for the team you think did the best.  (Or, vote for the HOME TEAM for me, because team members aren't allowed to vote, and the urge to click is killing me.)

You only have until midnight GMT (or, 8:00pm EDT, I think?) to vote, so go now and revel in your suffrage!