In the mist, under the ivy
Oct. 13th, 2019 03:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12It's been a drizzly, miserable, rainy weekend, which did not inspire me to leave the house. Thankfully, this was one of the rare weekends when I had no social commitments (a friend and his girlfriend had been planning to come up from London and we were going to have lunch in one of the pubs in town, but they cancelled at the last minute, which was actually kind of a relief after the exhausting week I've had), so there was no real need to go outside. Matthias and I did make it into central Cambridge to pick up library books and run a couple of other errands, and I need to go shopping in the market every weekend, but other than that, we've remained blissfully house-bound.
I spent most of the weekend working on a fanfic which utterly consumed me. I don't think I've ever had this happen to me before: I normally only write fic for exchanges, which always feels a bit like writing to a commission. I never sign up to write something I feel unenthusiastic about, or incapable of, writing, but the process of writing for exchanges is very different to being grabbed by a story that won't let you go, rendering you incapable of thinking of anything else until you've got the words out. And suddenly, after only a few hours, I'd written more than four thousand words in one sitting — and that's just the first chapter.
Other than that, I've spent the weekend reading: finishing up The Secret Commonwealth, Philip Pullman's long-awaited follow up to His Dark Materials. I had been planning to write a longer review of this, but in the end a couple of things left me feeling dissatisfied with the book, and other than chatting with![[twitter.com profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico)
McDougallSophia in Twitter DMs about it, I'm not sure I have much more to say.
Matthias and I have also gone through a period of watching movies in the evenings. Last night we watched a rather well-matched double bill: Eighth Grade, a brilliantly scripted, acted, and shot story of the exquisite terror it is to be thirteen years old, and navigating the minefield of social media on top of everday adolescent woes and fears, and Booksmart, Olivia Wilde's directorial debut, an American teen comedy about two nerdy girls who decide to have one wild, partying night on the eve of their graduation from high school. We also managed to finish off two TV series: Elementary, whose final episode was a solid conclusion to the show, and The Capture, a six-part British political thriller in a similar tone (but of higher quality) than last year's Bodyguard.
I'm going to close out the weekend with some yoga to heal my painful wrists and shoulders, a roast, stuffed butternut pumpkin (yes, in Australian English we call them 'pumpkins', not 'squash') for dinner, and figuring out my next book to read. How have you been spending your weekends?
I spent most of the weekend working on a fanfic which utterly consumed me. I don't think I've ever had this happen to me before: I normally only write fic for exchanges, which always feels a bit like writing to a commission. I never sign up to write something I feel unenthusiastic about, or incapable of, writing, but the process of writing for exchanges is very different to being grabbed by a story that won't let you go, rendering you incapable of thinking of anything else until you've got the words out. And suddenly, after only a few hours, I'd written more than four thousand words in one sitting — and that's just the first chapter.
Other than that, I've spent the weekend reading: finishing up The Secret Commonwealth, Philip Pullman's long-awaited follow up to His Dark Materials. I had been planning to write a longer review of this, but in the end a couple of things left me feeling dissatisfied with the book, and other than chatting with
Matthias and I have also gone through a period of watching movies in the evenings. Last night we watched a rather well-matched double bill: Eighth Grade, a brilliantly scripted, acted, and shot story of the exquisite terror it is to be thirteen years old, and navigating the minefield of social media on top of everday adolescent woes and fears, and Booksmart, Olivia Wilde's directorial debut, an American teen comedy about two nerdy girls who decide to have one wild, partying night on the eve of their graduation from high school. We also managed to finish off two TV series: Elementary, whose final episode was a solid conclusion to the show, and The Capture, a six-part British political thriller in a similar tone (but of higher quality) than last year's Bodyguard.
I'm going to close out the weekend with some yoga to heal my painful wrists and shoulders, a roast, stuffed butternut pumpkin (yes, in Australian English we call them 'pumpkins', not 'squash') for dinner, and figuring out my next book to read. How have you been spending your weekends?
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Date: 2019-10-13 04:48 pm (UTC)The fic inspiration sounds both fun and demanding. I hope it continues to grab you, but with mercy for the rest of your life!
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Date: 2019-10-13 06:51 pm (UTC)I suppose I feel unproductive because I've been so singlemindedly focused on the one thing, whereas normally I do a lot of stuff on the weekend. I've written enough of the fic for now, and I'm likely to be extremely busy for the next two weeks, so it's anyone's guess when I'll next have time to come back to it.
Eighth Grade and Booksmart were both great, although I'm really glad we watched them in that order, as I found Eighth Grade pretty tough going. I was never that painfully shy, or with the level of anxiety that the main character had, but I was an awkward teenage girl, and it was painful as an adult woman to watch what she went through, knowing exactly how each excruciating moment was going to unfold. It's very well-captured, as you say.
no subject
Date: 2019-10-13 10:19 pm (UTC)I really miss the feeling of being consumed by the need to write fic ...
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Date: 2019-10-14 06:01 pm (UTC)Being consumed by the need to write fic is a very new feeling for me, for all the reasons I outlined in the post. Normally I write only for exchanges, so this experience of being grabbed by a story that won't let me go until it's all written down is very strange!