What's Making Me Happy Today: Cloudward, Ho! ep. 1
Jun. 5th, 2025 12:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
( Some Notes About the Premise (Moderate Spoilers) )
I'm looking forward to seeing where the campaign goes from here! Anyone else watching or planning to watch?
Inspired by fred_mouse, I'm working through Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. A lot of it speaks to me, but the Christian spirituality of it all is a struggle. I'm fine with skipping things over, but the Basic Principles are an integral part of the process - so I decided to write my own version, one that I could actually accept. Here they are:
(The original, for reference).
A bit arrogant to think I can do better, maybe, but I needed them so I made them. I really enjoyed writing them up.
I'm posting them here because I'm proud of them - and maybe someone else could find them useful?
I am 57% into my beta edit preps – not the edits themselves based on the actual beta feedback yet, but the list of action items I intend to go through. I'm more or less following the plan I had set out, though I ended up using Scrivener comments a lot instead of a separate file as I had expected. So I have 3 files/file types:
Having said that, I still had massive, massive, massive issues with getting started. Like, I had built this all up into such a huge thing in my head, and it's in the first time I handle feedback on an entire manuscript at once, and from several people... Below the cut is a list of things I did to finally make myself Just Do It (tm). Maybe there'll be a piece of inspiration for someone else, though mainly I want my future self to remember to check here next time I'm stuck! In my case, it was definitely a process problem, like, just not knowing where to start or what to do.
( vriddy's weirdo productivity tips on actually getting started )
In general, I am tremendously enjoying working offline. I got the feedback back in 3 formats: GoogleDocs, Ellipsus, and LibreOffice with tracked changes. I am loving the LibreOffice one, so much that I downloaded all the GDocs too (thankfully the comments are included!) and work like this for everything. Ellipsus didn't work for me for reasons I mentioned earlier, and as a note doesn't seem to allow exporting with comments either, as far as I could see.
Making progress feels nice! Once I have a system, it's easier for me to let momentum carry me. We'll see if that continues to work when it's time to do the actual beta changes! I do intend to take a short break before jumping in.
Picture me: sat on the sofa, opposite the French doors, vaguely paying attention to what was going on at the bird feeder, mildly amused by the extremely ungainly magpie.
The magpie that inspected the water bowl (that someone had thrown off its stand) and the feeder (that was empty) and the me (on the sofa) and Came To A Decision.
It did a tiny hop-skip-flap over and landed, very deliberately, on the workbench just the other side of the glass. It turned its head from side to side to get a good look at me from both eyes.
And then, having glared at me, it started yelling.
And kept yelling until I was up off the sofa and clearly heading for the door, whereupon it retreated to a safe distance, i.e. the garage rooves, and Continued Observing.
I sorted out the water dish. I got the crates of Misc Birdseed out of their cupboard. I sorted out the feeder. I sorted out the other feeder.
I went back inside.
Some time elapsed.
Eventually I got sufficiently puzzled about why the magpie hadn't come back yet to actually notice that I'd left the crates of seed out, and their cupboard door open.
I heaved myself back off the sofa.
I returned the seeds to their cupboard, and shut the cupboard's door. I returned myself to the sofa, shutting the patio door behind me.
Not terribly long after that, the magpie returned, and drank, and nibbled suspiciously (I had changed which food was in which feeder position), and appeared satisfied at least to the extent of not yelling any further...
... right up until the squirrel showed up to claim a portion of the restock.
I am absolutely delighted to have made this neighbour's acquaintance.
How do you dry your hair?
air dry
42 (76.4%)
towel dry roughly
21 (38.2%)
towel dry carefully / squeezingly
16 (29.1%)
hair dryer or other device
13 (23.6%)
other
0 (0.0%)
not applicable
1 (1.8%)
add styling stuff
9 (16.4%)
add conditioning stuff
10 (18.2%)
add anti-frizz stuff
6 (10.9%)
other
1 (1.8%)
ticky-box of other people are, generally speaking, quite mysterious
21 (38.2%)
ticky-box full of poll votes
17 (30.9%)
tickybox full of a yawning cat broadcasting calm and satisfaction into the world
38 (69.1%)
ticky-box full of the tickly froth edge of a wave on pale sparkly sand, at dawn
29 (52.7%)
ticky-box of rationing your exclamation marks
14 (25.5%)
ticky-box full of hugs
37 (67.3%)