Hi hi!

Just FYI, like half the people on your flist, I have kind of abandoned Livejournal and am now mostly over on the dreaded tumblr. I am Prairie-Grass over there toots.

I'm not a 30-billion re-blogs a day lady, but would love some more people to squeal about Things with, so, you know, if you're tumblr-inclined, come hang out.


Second point the second (but not really):

Fandom wise, I'm ALSO like half the people on your flist and have sunk DEEPLY into the DEPTHS of Teen Wolf fandom. I am deep-sixed by the shirtless werewolves and their flaily human companion...

So there's that.

Meanwhile tonight after getting out of bed at 8:30pm, I am finally getting some shit done and listening to Florence's new album REALLY LOUD and it's awesome coz it's Saturday and my bro is playing video games online with my other bro so he can't hear me and my flatmate is in Brazil so she can't either. YAY FOR LATE-NIGHT LOUDNESS AND DOING OF STUFF!

Hi all, been a while since I’ve mustered up the brain to talk about anything. I actually have three different tabs open with drafts of journal entries, so let’s hope this one actually gets published, right?

Life stuff:

I survived my road trip. (Pic below.) And survived spending a week with my Dad. (I think the driving was the easier of the two.) ( Road trip... )


My Grandma died this week. I’m okay with it, she’d had dementia for 13 years so we all were glad her suffering ended. It’s still a downer though. Nuff said about that. :-/


Writing stuff:

I imagine many of you have struck this before, but I’m really struggling with feeling at the moment that I’m so close to the point where after just a little more writing, contacting an agent and a producer for my TV show is really really close, and in a nutshell, I’m totally freaked out. I’ve always been a pretty driven person, so I’ve never really questioned that one day I would get published, (simply because if so much crap gets published, semi-decent should be okay, right?) but now that it comes to it (especially with the TV show, because it’s so out of my comfort-zone) I am seized by this panic of ‘what if it doesn’t work?’ What if I try and fail? What if all this work is for nothing? What if no one likes it? What if they laugh in my face?

It’s a strange experience for me because there are actually logical answers to each of those questions, but every time I answer them the question just rolls around and comes back as if the answer never happened. Is this what it’s like to be an irrational person? (j/k ^_^) Somehow I have to get around this freezing panic and finish my work. I don’t really know how.

Unrelatedly, (mostly,) said TV show recently pointed out to me (in the nature of non-sentient beings) that it would be much cheaper to produce, thus more likely to get picked up, if instead of being written in a futuristic post-apocalypse utopia, it was sans the utopia and just post-apocalyptic semi-third-world-but-with-cool-future-gadgets. While this was a good point, it has meant that I’m in the process of re-writing the whole blasted thing. Wah, brain, why be helpful, huh?

I’m taking part in thewritinggame to get myself sticking to my writing goals. Looking forward to joining in, I’ve missed the start due to busy busy.

That’s all from me!

Comic books have become a BANE to me. Between DC and Marvel, basically they've got every possible character, power and concept covered by their enormous, bloated, wonderful, annoying sphere of influence.

It doesn't help that because I've interacted with these canons at various times, I keep accidentally plagiarising them without realising! Some things I know I came up with myself so I'm willing to fight for it if their happens to be a similar thing in comic-verse, but other things I just can't be sure. Last night I was trying to find a name for a character who was a Russian teenage boy who was a big, quiet, shy, family-orientated guy and something of an artist. I'd originally called him Andre but then realised that was my cousin's name, so could get me into trouble, so I was going through babynames.com (my SAVIOUR!) and I saw 'Pyotr' and really liked it, but I suddenly got this weird inkling. I new X-men's Colossus was Russian, and kinda nice, but he's BARELY in the X-men cartoon, so I didn't know much about him, and couldn't remember his first name. Luckily I've learnt to be suspicious, so I looked it up anyway, and sure enough, Piotr Rasputin, also known as Colossus, a shy, quiet man with a love for family and, surprisingly, a fantastic artist.

*headdesks*

Luckily I hadn't written him in yet so I can make some changes. Swapped his and another girl's powers so it brings out different things, made some personality-changes. Siiiiigh.

Then I was trying to figure out a code-name for a different character, was thinking 'puppet-master'. Again, a suspicion came over me, and upon checking, I find that BOTH DC AND Marvel have a villain named Puppeteer/Puppet Master respectively. SIIIIGH.

I'm off to have lunch.

P.S. My Nana died on Tuesday. Had the funeral on Friday. It's been a really tough time and I'm not dealing too well with the stress of that plus losing two weeks in my last month of Uni between flying to Wellington to see her in hospital and the funeral and stuff. PLUS I have crazy job-related shenanigans going on. So yeah. Um, barely-functional Peeji is barely functional. :/

Hi all. Been ages I know, ra de ra.

PSA entry is a PSA.

A few things of note:

1. I'm changing my LJ handle. page_r is finally transforming from a random name that people confuse with an obsession with pagers, to prairie_grass. This will occur shortly, just thought y'all should know.

As part of this, this is gonna stuff up Dreamwidth for a bit, because I can't afford TWO name-changes. THUS, what is happening, is prairie_grass already exists at dreamwidth, but is not linked to page_r at dreamwidth. I'll be uploading (downloading? side-loading?) my livejournal to that journal soon, and posting a PSA to the old one that the links will die when I eventually delete it, but all the same content can be found in the new one. Does that make sense to everyone? I doubt there will be TOO many people with links to fic or whatever at my Dreamwidth account, so hopefully it won't cause a major inconvenience. Please re-friend the new account as you so desire.

2. My thesis is due in four weeks, as well as the first part of my original novel. As you might understand, I am a little crazy right now. A year and a half of work finally coming to a close! @_@ Don't expect to see me much before then. Though after that I might suddenly be around a lot bugging everyone! XD

3. I'm gonna be taking part in the Sam/Dean OTP mini-big bang this year. It's not a huge amount of writing and everything I've been working on has been so Srs lately that I want to do something fun. Wooo!




Also, my reaction re finale? \o/

Now, off to engage name-change!

Bad guys don't carry clipboards any more, they have tablet-PCs. Or evil smart phones. Highly evil. This is so important to remember, we don't want no clipboards with their brown-ness, and their ancient metal clips that grab fingers, and certainly not a pen attached with a STRING (heavens!) wandering on stage.

No paper, either, probably. Bad guys, especially science-y bad guys are far too advanced for paper and shun the thought of natural products in their places of evil science.


I'm working on original fiction at the moment for class, (can you tell?). The first 10,000 words of a novel. It's quite strange for me to be returning to standard prose after working on scripts for so long, plus it's hard to gear down from one creative project (script) and gear up for a different one that, while it's been sitting on the back-benches for years, hasn't really had my attention in a long time.

Part of me wishes I could be writing the middle ten thousand words of this novel, or even the end. I don't know about other writers, but I almost always have a very sound concept of how a story will end, and all the drama involved, long before I have a clear grasp on the rest. Beginnings are the worst, because I actually have to convince the readers to love these characters as much as I do, when it seems like it should be so obvious they should already know.


Meanwhile, university is in tents! I'm gonna take my camera in next week and maybe make a video, because it's just so surreal. No news yet of when I'm going to be back in my building. Working from home and glad the BF and I shifted before the Quake, coz in my old bedroom I couldn't sit at the desk, and I really find the idea of writing an entire hons thesis from bed to be a painful sounding excursion.

(I've been away lots and not replying to comments much lately. Apologies! And thank you to the people who posted on my HELP! post a while ago. Promising myself that I will improve my internet responsiveness over the next few months.)

I desperately need your help!

(Contrary to all appearances, I have not died, and I even have plans to inform any who care of the various things that have kept me away for the last four months AND an attempt to be more interesting in general that should begin very shortly, HOWEVER, in the mean time...)


It's an emergency and I believe you have skills to save me!

I'm doing a paper this coming semester that involves writing 10,000 words of original fic. Which would be amazingly exciting, but my university's creative writing department is pretty fail, and the only person they can find to supervise me is "unfamiliar" with Sci Fi as a genre. ;_; The story I'm writing is an urban fantasy/sci-fi mixture and my supervisor wants me to recommend her some books to use as a "point of reference" that are in that genre.

My problem is, I'm hitting a total blank. I don't tend to read Sci Fi, I watch it. This story is kinda spies with superpowers, so think X-men, Alias, Dark Angel, a lot of the DC and Marvel comics cross fantasy and sci fi really well, all I need is some sweet technology being used with superpowers or something. Surely that's not too much to ask? You guys know of some really good novels in this genre, right? Even chuck in something really cliché and trite to show what I want to avoid if you can?

Ask your friends, too? Come on, with the power of the internet we can do anything, right?

Okay, so I'm coming back to the internet in two days after my last assignment for the year goes in, but I was just compelled to post because I just hit my minimum-goal for mininanowrimo of 3,000 words (100 p/d) and we're only 6 days in! Woot! And that's WITH working on the world's most massive assignment. My very hopeful goal is actually 10,000 and I'm also on track for that.

Wrote 2,000 words of nummy Spike/Xander porn on Thursday. Whoops. XD

I MISS PEOPLE, AND I MISS THE INTERNETS! SEE YOU GUYS SOON!

Muuust stay foooooocussed! *glares at screen*


Don't you just love it when you have an essay that's really due URGENT URGENT DO YOUR WORK NOW due, and all you can do is rotate through LJ, Facebook, three different emails, look back at the essay, write one word then repeat process? That is today, for me.


I have post S5 fic that I am trrrrryyyying to finish before Show (AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!) tomorrow, but see essay for why it probably won't get done on time.

I am REALLY FUCKING EXCITED about Show tomorrow. Oh my GOSH. It'll be coming out in the early evening tomorrow (Saturday here) and can take between 1 and 5 hours to download, (if I compare to previous experiences) and I know I won't be able to do ANYTHING in the mean time. I could re-watch? I guess? *flails* I just hope I can finish watching before, you know, 2am. I have Kung Fu at 8AM on Sunday, which I think is AWFUL and CRUEL and UNUSUAL.

Also, GLEE! Yay! Rachel/Michelle is WAY TOO SKINNY, oh my GOSH girl, go eat a PIE!

Right, yes, essay. I'll get right on that.

Hi all. Long time no post, I know. Post-graduate work is not always fun!

So! Let me update you on my so-interesting life, yes?

1. I went to a party last night and FLIPPED OUT. Seriously, the closest I've been to a full-blown panic attack in ages. The Boyfriend was awesome and super-nice and took me home even though we'd only just got there, and he was really looking forward to the free food. I felt like such an awful party-pooper, but so glad when I got home to be able to snuggle up on the couch and remind myself I didn't have to go outside again until it was DAYTIME! YAY! I think the stress of Honours is feeding into the mild agoraphobia I'm pretty sure I have. :/ Going out at night has very suddenly got much much harder in the last few weeks. This does happen to me from time to time, but not as badly as it did last night. So. In some ways I don't really mind. I'd rather be socially crippled than physically, in terms of where the stress is going, because at least I can still work on thesis when I'm freaking out and hiding in my room rather than sick! I'm deciding not to worry about it, because I'm pretty sure it will get better once the pressure of this year is lower. *nods firmly*

2. Wrote the synopsis to an entire original fic last week. Woo. Full-on. It's very very weird, so if I ever got around to writing it it would only be for online. No publisher would go near it! *laughs* Still, it was fun to see that my creative-brain is still operating in there somewhere, even when it's been smothered by a million essays and what-not this month. Other writing projects are being prodded-at later this week, I hope, depending on my progress with MORE essays. ;_;

3. SPN! New season starting in what, three weeks now? I had a S5 coda half-written, so I might try push that into shape this week, otherwise it'll get eated! I'm SO nervous and also excited for this new season! Very mildly spoiled, and it doesn't SOUND like it's going to be shit, so we'll see.

4. I've been keeping a food-diary to hopefully sort out the digestive problems I've been having lately. Good GRIEF it's a frightening experience to see all your bad eating-choices permanently inscribed on paper in front of you. I bought VEGETABLES at the supermarket this week. LOTS of them. @_@ I also printed out the better pain-chart to put at the front so the doctor can refer to it. Hyperbole and a Half has recently changed my entire world.

5. I bought a new computer! Did I say that here? *checks* No! I didn't! I haven't updated in SO LONG! She's called Isabella (not a Twilight reference) and is very very pretty and very very nice to me, and has a remote, so I've been zombie-ing out to Naruto in the evenings and it's AWESOME because I don't even have to get up to load a new episode. BUT, now I have NO MONEY so I can't afford to buy Star Craft II, which is why I bought her in the first place, (there were other reasons, too, but that sounds more geekily dramatic,) which I think is HILARIOUS.

6. I've been invited to do my MA at Washington University! Which is so fucking cool! But also so incredibly never going to happen because it costs 50,000 USD a YEAR for me to study there. Hahahahahahhaha. But so awesome to be invited. Sigh.

7. RE #6 - I had this really odd conversation with the BF yesterday where we basically talked about how the hell we're going to stay together next year with me probably flying off to another country and him probably starting Masters here. :( I had kind of been ignoring the fact that I have a BF when planning the next stage of life, because a friend recommended it as a way of toning down my life-complications, and also because I kinda didn't think we would last this long. But we have and things are good only getting better, which is GREAT, but also really a :( moment when approaching next year. For now though, I'm going to keep ignoring the problem. *sticks fingers in ears* lalalala~!

I think that's enough of me talking. We all agree? Yes? Okay. Ta ta for now.

Hey all. Today was the first night in about 2 weeks? 3? I've had home alone by myself and nothing super-pressure to do. Seriously, that's actually not an exaggeration. I'm not all woe-is-me about it because there has been many good things, but also those weeks have contained visiting my family (which SUCKED, for the record. It was great seeing my brother but then I spent four days in the same house as my separated parents and an 8 week old puppy, which meant that I was stressed out and tired (puppy) and put through an emotional roller-coaster (parents) but was still a welcome reprieve from my infuriating flatmates) followed by interviews for my thesis, followed by a two-day photo-shoot for a Suicide Girls hopeful, followed by my BFF breaking up with her bf of six years and needing a place to stay. AT THE SAME TIME as one of my other besties going on the rocks with HER bf, which resulted in DANGER DANGER EXTREME SUPPORT REQUIRED for both of them, which wasn't a problem but was pretty worrying and meant I was either out lots or had ppl here. AS WELL as that I'm behind-schedule on my thesis. AS WELL as that my BF and I haven't had a lot of time together lately due to all of the above so I was trying to juggle spending time with him as well as my girls, which kinda made me feel guilty coz I was so happy to be spending time with him I possibly wasn't being the most focussed support!friend I could have been.

ANYWAY. All this means is that I haven't had any time for anything really, but on the very few days I've been able to sit down with my computer and a bit of time, I've been doing my best to keep to writing targets. I wanted to make a post for all interested parties, (and I just checked the read-count on Pomme de Sang so I know that there are at least a few of you *cough*) that this month I am actively working on Dry My Tears and have been making genuine progress. I have a secret goal for when I'm going to get the next chapter up and while I'm not telling in case anyone gets disappointed, let's hope I can hit it!

Meanwhile, new addiction: Bleach. Though the gender issues annoy me quite a lot. Still. Fun and the episodes are short enough that I can use them as a mini-break in between studying.

Ooh, and my Foo has given me the details of a Professor in the USA who studies some of the same field as me who might be able to give me advice about the next educational step, so that's exciting!

Oh, and I just got my marks back for last sem. All I'll say is that I am very happy.

Enough for now.

Peeji over and out!

I'm having one of those days where I just feel a general pissed-off-ness with nothing in particular. I think it's just because I'm really busy and I have been all holidays. I haven't had a chance to get anything really done, and semester is about to start again and then I'll be even busier than before. Which sucks, because there are things like emails, and writing, and reading (both for fun and thesis), and catching up with people that I just haven't had a chance to do.

However, in an attempt to take some control over my life, I've made up a plan for July to make sure that my priorities don't get submerged in the rat-race. Particularly writing. Because I don't have any specific deadlines, like a lot of amateur writers, I think, it's so easy to just say, 'oh, I'll get around to that later' but I don't have TIME to say that if I hope to get this TV show off to a producer before the end of the year. ANYWAY, I've got a daily writing target like for mini NaNoWriMo and trying to stick to it. Wish me luck! I've spent some time on Dry My Tears as well, this week. In an ideal world I'd like to finish that before the end of the year as well.

In other news, I've been roped into helping out with Dr Sketchy's Christchurch. Which is going to be a lot of work, (already is!) but has been a lot of fun. So if anyone around here is in the 'hood, come check it out!

So many awesome Big Bangs this year! I may post a list of some of my favs, later, but I've barely had the chance to read this week! Last week I was up north delivering a PUPPY to my Dad. (OH YES, I WIN!) I'll post a piccy when I'm home.

Okay, now I feel less guilty about not posting for ages. My brother gave me 55 new albums of music when I was in Wellington so I may have some music recs soon, too.

Love love, everyone!

Good things:

I've just got to make it through today and assignment 6 and 7 of the seven due in the last five days will be done and I can maybe stop wandering around with this startled-hen look on my face.
(Of course, then I will have to catch up on 5 books and 4,000 words of writing I've been NOT doing due to said 7 assignments, but hey, SO NOT THE POINT!)

Glee club tonight. (Yes, I've joined a Glee Club, and no, it's not lame and full of weirdos, it's AWESOME and full of AWESOME AND SCARY-CRAZY PEOPLE.)

I've done at least half of a 5x22 coda. I think it doesn't suck, too.

I watched Star Trek last night AGAIN. (This is about the 7th time, I think.) And yes, it is STILL AWESOME.

I bought the game Jeanne d'Arc to go towards my research and it's SUPER FUN and really addictive. ^_^ Really good thing to have to do before bed because I can't read fic when I've been staring at words for about 12 hours solid.


Less good things:

My Sammessiah fic needs some work, it's a bit average. :/

From next week I have to start recruiting participants for my research. Which means I need to power through these damn video games and I DO NOT HAVE TIME. >:[

I need to get my shit together and start making some serious plans about where I'm going once I've finished honors. This is scary because I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO and I have no idea who to ASK because none of the lecturers here know anything about Japan, and the only Japanese lecturer who WOULD have been helpful has LEFT. Wah. :(


Um, to end on a positive note..... My kitty is adorable, YAY!

( Spn 5x21 reaction in brief )

Oh, also, I wrote fic for the antichristmas commentfic thing over at sammessiah but I'm not posting it yet coz I've learnt my lesson about posting right on top of a new episode. I'll post on Monday. (But yaaaaaay fic!)

Don't wind yourself up over minor or non-existent issues. It's a waste of space and time. The Doctor would not approve of such abuses.


( Things I'm learning about post-grad )

I'm feeling like writing at the moment. Did some original work yesterday, being tempted by a million other fannish pursuits. Don't have time for either, anyway.

By the way, the BF's mother was really nice! And I think I passed without her hating me! Yay!

Have Danneel and Jensen got married yet? Does anyone know this? Is anyone other than me interested in my epic Danneel/Genevieve & J2 fic I keep almost-writing?

I don't know if anyone else gets this, but if I go for long enough without writing anything it's like I go INSANE. No, seriously, I can't concentrate, I have fits of BLINDING RAGE and yell at people and kick things lots and generally feel like I'm losing my mind.

I was trying to figure out why I was so pissed off the last couple of days and it clicked.

Anyway, despite the fact that I am completely STUCK with all FOUR potential things I'm writing at the moment, I have two hours tonight before I absolutely have to sleep and I absolutely HAVE to write something. Because I can't handle another day like this where I am a CRAZY PERSON.

So, any suggestions? Prompts? Requests?

EDIT 11:30pm: Can't keep my eyes open anymore so sleep now. 600 words, slightly less peeved and a random little Sam/Dean fuck-or-die started. (This fandom DOESN'T HAVE ENOUGH OF THESE. So I will write one. Yey.)

Kind of.

Hi all, sorry that I've disappeared completely over the last year couple of months. I'm home sick from work today which is the only real reason I have time for this entry today, but because I'm sick I'm pretty tired, so I'll try keep it short.

Where I've been:

-Mostly work. Been working 40-60 hour weeks, which isn't the end of the world for some people, I guess, but I'm not used to it at all, so I just have NO ENERGY at the end of the day. None. Whatsoever. I haven't even been reading, I just come home and refresh facebook a few times then sleep. Also I have two hour-long commutes on top of 9-hour shifts so there isn't really any time, quite apart from the tiredness.

-Family. My parents announced mid-December that they (dad) had decided they should definitely split up. So. Um. Yeah. Things have been pretty stressful and busy on that front. My mum has moved down here for the time being, staying with her sister, but since they've been married for 36 years, and she's never been independent, there's kind of a massive learning curve for her. So any time I'm not at work I'm usually helping her out with things like opening her own bank account and all this... CRAP that... anyway, I'm not going to get into the emotional side of it, it's just a huge time and energy suck right now.

-Other people. On the maybe two nights a week I'm not at work or with Mum or sleeping I try to schedule in my poor boyfriend (he's earned the word now, mostly... on the days it doesn't freak me out,) or one of those weird people that think I have time to be their friend. Silly, silly people.

That's about it. I'm really tired. I have another month before uni starts and oh MAN I'm looking forward to it. And to think I thought I would have MORE time in the holidays. After mininano I haven't done really any writing these holidays.

BUT

I have been working on Dry My Tears over the last few weeks. (!!!)

I gotta go lie down, but I just want to say sorry to the world for turning into a ghost lately, can't guarantee non-ghostlikeness for the rest of the month, but I'm trying my best. :)

As always, love love!