Whining about things! (also -- sunlight!)

 

Big Decision has not been made in actuality, but it has essentially been made, which is hard to come to terms with; both are options were good options and had different strengths, and I can’t help but wonder how my life might turn out differently if I chose Option B instead of Option Y. But it is Option Y, I’ve decided.

I’m simultaneously extremely excited and horrendously nervous and I wish so much that I don’t have to go through Exams to get there. I’m not too worried or stressed and am sort of oscillating between quietly confident and vaguely anxious, but I really just don’t want to do them. I’m good at exams, normally, but I’m not the sort of person to thrive in that atmosphere. And I’m fed up with the worst part of the year (weatherwise) being spoilt by Exams, year after year after year.

I am also a bit ambivalent about my writing. It’s not dreadful, but characterisation and dialogue is so hard!

The major problem at the moment is that I’ve almost exhausted Dark Matter fic in my head. I don’t have much more to say. But the fandoms that I do want to write for feel out of reach. Mostly because the fics in my head are mystery type things set interwar or otherwise historically, and a. I don’t know enough of the social history. This could be rectified but not right now and not in the foreseeable future; I don’t have the time, funds, or freedom. b. I’m not good at plotting. c. linking to b., I don’t have the life experience to plot murder mysteries because they depend on small details, and d. I don’t know what it was like to be an adult before the internet and that’s really hard to research or find out about, because it didn’t need to be written down!

These are to a certain extent excuses. There are bits of research I could do – and that would be enjoyable. And there are smaller stories that don’t need full out plotting  or in-depth historical knowledge, but then my problems with characterisation and dialogue come in!

There are things I’m writing, mostly in the HP fandom, so it’s not all bad and tbh I need a bit of a break anyway. Writing a treat for Yuletide, four fics for Chocolate Box, and now three (? – depends a bit, but probably) for H/C was a bad idea.  Writing is good stress relief for real life issues right now, but looking back I’ve probably overdone it – not that I regret doing any of these exchanges, I absolutely don’t; they’ve been amazingly fun!

 

~~ (a couple of days after writing the first bit)

 

England is in the occupation of some absolutely glorious weather! I have been lazing with a book on the grass, mostly, and watching the cats! This makes me very happy.

I reread the first two Murder Most Unladylike books, which are brilliant even though I’m far too old for them. I wish they’d been around when I was little because I’d have adored them. I am also making my way through Not In Front of the Servants by Frank Victor Dawes, which is the best sort of social history, comprehensive and illuminating – everything about the period and its ideology and ethos just snaps into place as you read it, everything makes sense suddenly. I might talk about it more after I’ve finished.

Oh, it’s such lovely weather!