Fiction
Writing
Writing and Other News
Suddenly
AatW Music Playlist
Descriptions
Photos
Misc
July 4th
Weeds
Introversion: A Description
Smoke
Lappy
Joke
Stillness
…
Vacation
I am a Nerd
Perception
Tag: blogging
June 2021
Short Fiction
Lartmann and Hambert Are Dead (humor) (Don’t worry if you don’t think it’s funny, I was just being absurdist)
Quotes
The Scion Suit Multiverse
TSS – Not Worth Helping
About Writing
Whining
Carol
Carol, again
Exploring What ifs
Photos
Spider Bro
Sometimes…
Bumblebee
Dragonfly
Glitter
The Predicament
Clouds
Sunset
Misc
Things about being creative…
Introvert mom vs Extrovert mom
10 Years Ago
Low Immersion Dye
Homespun Yarn
The Broken View – Something Better
…
A Rant About Adult Conversation
Tamagotchi
Chickens
Dub Tee Eff
Exercise
Nextdoor
Thank you for sharing my work!
10 Years Ago
WordPress has informed me that today is my ten year anniversary.
I distinctly remember something different, but who knows. The whole 2011-12 era was an alternate world.
In June 2011 my husband and I were living in southern California, and hating every minute of it, lol.
I guess some people like cities, but I thought that the cost of living was ridiculously high, I couldn’t open any windows in the apartment because the smell of pot would instantly stink up everything, and there was absolutely nothing to do.
Not kidding on that last one, too. I asked one of the locals in my age group what they did for fun, and they answered, “Drinking at bars.” Wow. So stimulating. I think I’ll pass.
Other than that, everyone was a massive workaholic because the cost of living was so high. The only people we met who did anything remotely interesting were homeless hippies.
I just ain’t a city girl.
Heck, yesterday I took the kids on another mile-long bike ride, and the only person we saw during the whole time was a UPS driver. I waved, and he waved back. That’s how I like it.
Thank you for sharing my work!
May 2021 in Review
I figure that if I’m going to be more haphazard in general, then doing a monthly wrap up is probably a good idea. So here we are, everything neatly organized just for you.
Fiction
Quotes
Souls Can Fragment
Lucky
Enormity
Alternatively
Writing Project Updates
White Space
In the Zone
Adding Romance to TSS
Random Thoughts About Writing
MSG Hartmann
Dishes
In the Wild…
Personal Life
Blogger Recognition Award
Animal Crossing 5/7
Animal Crossing 5/14
Gray vs Grey
New Pokemon Snap
The Internet ‘n Stuff
Baby Summer Dress
Life
The Program
What’s Going on Behind the Scenes?
Currently Reading
The Quarter Percent by Lily Nicole
The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander
The Non-Designer’s Design Book by Robin Williams
Also, having tons of fun playing Tamagotchi ON with my 9-year-old.
Thank you for sharing my work!
The internet ‘n stuff
Lately I’ve been wondering how much blogging matters.
You see, I’m old enough to remember Neopets, Gaia Online, and LiveJournal, and the internet sure as heck ain’t what it used to be.
I’m pretty convinced that certain monoliths suppress literally everyone, then select which individuals they want to become popular, and there’s nothing organic about any of it for anyone.
‘N stuff.
But don’t worry, this isn’t my “farewell forever” post. If my calculations are correct, I’ve got about 11 real live actual people who come here to read, and I’m not going to up and abandon you just because of something as silly as stats.
Actually, I’m getting tired of trying to be structured.
And if I get the impulse to post a random pun at 10:43pm, I might as well do it without explaining anything.
I’m also tired of pretending like I’m not as cynical as I am. After a certain amount of bullying and ostracism throughout my childhood, I made the conscious choice that fictional friends were considerably better than real ones — 90% of everyone will go out of their way to hurt you purely because they can.
Hell, five years ago I tried to get out and be more social with the assumption that adulthood changes how people interact with each other, and it ended up mentally fucking me up pretty badly. Conclusion: adulthood has made the bullying even worse.
And let’s face it, modern fashion trends are purely an experiment in how far people are willing to debase and humiliate themselves for the sake of fitting in. Yes I said it. If you don’t look at yourself in the morning and immediately feel good about yourself, then you should trust me when I say that *you* aren’t the problem, it’s your fucking ugly clothes. Change your style. Just do it already.
Aaaaaanyway.
I’m gonna do what I want for awhile.
Thank you for sharing my work!
Random notes about AatW
- I feel like I’m writing the baby too much like a prop. I’m always mindful to make sure that she’s present and accounted for (instead of simply not being there for some unexplained reason), and newborns really do spend most of their time sleeping, but I want to throw in more descriptions of her to make her feel more like a character.
- I want to flesh out the friendship between Kate and Gertie. I know how they’d interact, but I can’t quite figure out how to slip it into the story. My brain is being totally blah about this.
- Because I originally intended this to be a novelette, I’ve been typing it on the laptop. Right now, I’m really missing the ability to scribble notes in the margins. I have no clue if LibreOffice has a similar feature, because I never bothered to learn anything beyond the bare basics.
- I’m also really terrified of my laptop crashing and losing everything.
- I wrote a really sexy scene, and now I don’t know what to do with it. What’s this story rated anyway?
- I need to describe pretty much everything better, and figure out what the heck that English thing is. You have no idea how mortifying it is to publicly post a first draft.
- Nobody’s reading it anyway (except for you, of course).
- I’m starting to worry that the pacing is too slow, and I need to get on with it already. But, given the speed of the rest of the story, doing that might make the ending feel unpleasantly rushed.
Thank you for sharing my work!
Personal Note
I got a million things to do.
At the end of the day, I consider myself to be an author and not a blogger. So when something’s gotta take a hit, it’s going to be my blogging instead of my fiction writing. I like to fantasize that all of my visitors are here to enjoy the fruits of my imagination rather than my incoherent babbling, and would prefer that I maintain my fiction updates.
Side note: I didn’t sleep last night.
Anyway, the gist is that I’m tired and busy and I don’t feel like blogging — I’d much rather spend my free time working on Alice and the Warden. And napping. I’m also having anxiety about Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, but we don’t need to get into that.
So, Alice and the Warden will continue to be updated every Monday.
But I’ll only check in when I feel like it.
Thank you for sharing my work!
Observations
It’s one of those hot and sticky days.
The advertisements in my inbox assure me that this is the last weekend of summer, but the weather feels like it has other plans. I’m sitting outside with a floppy crocheted sunhat, freshly washed hair spilling everywhere, and a bunch of kids completely ignoring their new splash pad.
Smells like cats.
Crows are cawing in the distance, cutting over the music I have playing on a bluetooth speaker. The neighbor’s door slams as they let their dog out. A semi truck rattles by. The baby starts to fuss as she achieves a death grip on my hair, and the two-year-old informs me that she needs a new diaper.
…
The air conditioning inside feels nice and cool. The baby is settling down to nap as the kids beg for ice cream.
Sounds like a great idea.
Thank you for sharing my work!
Basil Hackett
WordPress finally forced me over to the block editor, and now I know why everyone complains about it. It strikes me as something that a bunch of tech geeks thought would be AWESOME, and they completely forgot that a lot of us users have skills that are more in line with typing up articles in Word.
But le sigh, I will have to learn it anyway.
Or I’ll start copy-n-pasting, and bypass this change all together. Everything keeps popping around and disappearing too much for my tastes.
Back to our originally scheduled program…
Basil Hackett.
For those who don’t know, he’s my fictional character from Alice and the Warden
It’s taken quite some time for me to get a clear mental picture of him, so thus far he hasn’t been properly described. This is the sort of thing that I usually add in while working on the second draft, but that will be awhile. My current goal is to write about 1000 words a week, which is comfortably steady and works well with where I’m at in real life right now, but it’s definitely not fast.
So we’ll go ahead and describe him now.
Physically, he lifts weights a few times a week (lunch break in the prison gym sort of thing), but he also has some extra padding from never saying ‘no’ to dessert. He’s bulky, but not “beefcake.”
His hair is short, combed back, mid-brown with a few gray strands at the sides. He’s always clean-shaven.
His eyes are the one thing that I do describe, a striking hazel-green that can make you forget what you were saying if you look too closely at them.
The impression he gives is being like a boulder, impassive and unmovable. The part that Alice never sees is that, as the warden, he likes to run a tight ship to ensure the safety of everyone in the prison (guards and inmates alike). He takes his job very seriously, doles out discipline when necessary, utilizes psychological methods to promote good behavior, and provides lots of training and resources to help inmates transition to the “outside” world.
Of course, the story mostly portrays Hackett behind the scenes in his private life.
Those are most of my non-spoiler thoughts about him. Honestly, it’s a little weird to be openly writing about characterization with an unfinished story, but hey, first time for everything.
Thank you for sharing my work!
*QUALITY* CONTENT
One of the cats got into the chicken run. Not entirely sure how she pulled it off, but she’s the one we joke about being part liquid, so she probably turned into some sort of gelatinous blob and slithered in while we weren’t looking.
The chickens FREAKED. The cat FREAKED. Every animal involved was terrified out of its mind.
The chickens eventually retreated into their coop, and we got the cat out of the run.
A little bit later, my husband asked for help because one of the chickens hurt the comb on top of its head during The Great Panic. We went out to the coop with a bottle of iodine and a flashlight, because it was getting dark.
My husband picked up the hurt chicken. With the flashlight, we can clearly see that its comb was torn off and quite literally dangling by a thread.
He said, “I’m going to need the scissors.”
I replied, “You’re on your own now.”
True story.
By Autumn Rain 