Wow. I just spent the last hour and fifteen minutes actually writing. I suppose it might be a little strange to be inspired by one's own podcast, but tonight it's true. After we finished recording I realized that I've been making too many lame excuses and that it's past time to get back to what really matters in my life. Sure, I might have my doubts, but after re-reading a few things that I've already written and receiving some praise from my lovely co-hosts, I've realized that I was being too hard on myself yet again. Somehow I got so wrapped up in being ABSOLUTELY PERFECT ALL THE TIME OH MY GOD NO MISTAKES EVAR I forgot to notice that what I was doing was just fine. So I decided that I wasn't going to make anymore excuses. I'm not sure if this is something I'll be able to do consistently, but I'll try. I'm also not going to deny the fact that I also spent a good portion of my time sneaking a quick peek at my Last.fm profile or Twitter account, but nobody's perfect, right? =D (Least of all me)

New goal: Monday through Friday, write something every day. The more, the better, but even if it's just a paragraph that's OK. Do NOT veg out in front of the TV for hours whining about your lack of energy. Weekends are excluded from this because my work load is much heavier on the weekends, though I might have time to write something before I go into work.

I also can't wait until the weather starts staying warm consistently, so I can start running/walking on my days off, both as a way to de-stress and continue to build muscle. MANDA SMASH! RAWR! *ahem* Or something like that.

I got some more goodies today. =D Simple Things and When it Falls by Zero 7 arrived from Amazon today, along with the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack for dad. I'm very excited since I absolutely love Zero 7, and this is the first step towards making my music collection a little more legitimate. As for work, I had a good day. Despite forgetting my glasses this morning plus a long shift, I ended the day on a high note and had fun. Having friends rocks, and so does running into interesting customers. The next two days I have off, which is going to be awesome. Lots of cooking and playing of video games is going to occur. =D Oh, and did I mention the weather was absolutely GORGEOUS today? The temperature was easily in the 70's. I actually spent my last break napping outside in the sunshine. Awesome. I can't believe it's actually December!

...is that you can listen to any kind of music while you do it.

No, seriously, you can. Try it. Loudly blaring J-pop? No problem. Beethoven? Easy. ELO? Bring it on! Soft, muted jazz? Go for it. Enya's incomprehensible warblings? Cool beans. Weird electronica that may or may not have bits of it that sound like a horse neighing? Do your worst!

Now, see, fantasy is not such a forgiving genre. Oh no. If you're really focused or have a really great cup of tea, you might be able to fudge a little bit with the J-pop, unless you're the kind of person that hears J-pop and immediately exits the room, (I, on the other hand, am drawn to it like a moth to a flame, don't ask me why I don't know) but beyond that your choices are limited. You're basically stuck with instrumental stuff all the way, otherwise your concentration is blown. Electronica is especially bad, because it'll blow you out of the water faster than dynamite strapped to a trebuchet.

Yet one more reason why Amanda loves sci-fi! Don't worry, she loves fantasy too. But not as much. Because she has not had such oneness with her music library in a very, very long time.

Something else I learned to day? Romance novels make me sad. They make me sad because they are full of silly things like characters looking in mirrors so the author can describe them, as well as phrases like "raven haired beauty" and "glistening orbs of green/blue/gray/whatever color the char's eyes are". I suddenly realized this afternoon that this is where bad writing comes from. Somehow, in someway, even if you have NEVER READ A ROMANCE NOVEL IN YOUR WHOLE LIFE, these silly things that romance authors do seep into your consciousness and take over your writing. If I had a dime for every time one of my pack mates in the WRPC had used a foolish description like "emerald orblets" or had stuck their face in front of a shiny lake to describe their wolf's features, I'd be able to fire Bill Gates. I want a romance novel that is not silly in this way. Romance is such a wonderful, intricate, complicated thing that I think fluffing it up with orbs and raven hair and really wordy sentences that don't go anywhere does it a grievous disservice.

Obviously I will have to write an amazingly good romance novel in the future to fix this problem. =D

Leah, you often ask why otherwise talented and skilled fanfic writers do stupid things? This is why. It is romance novel syndrome. Somehow they got these rules downloaded into their brains, probably without even realizing it, and now they do silly things like writing "the gray orbed drummer casually observed the glistening flesh of the agile young fan jigging in the mosh pit down below, his mind casting back over the years of his youth when it would have been him jumping up and down in the crowd..." Or something like that. (Also, you have no idea how hard I had to work not to put "nubile flesh" in there somewhere. Obviously I have had too much caffeine today.) I don't know. I don't read fanfiction anymore and am pretty cool with that.

THIS HAS BEEN ANOTHER INSTALLMENT OF "WHAT AMANDA LEARNED TODAY!" THANK YOU FOR STOPPING BY! Please tip The Doctor on your way out.

New layout! =D WOW did that take a long time to tweak. Almost two hours. But, I think it's worth it, and the layout certainly looks snazzy. No more boring green and white, and this time around I'm a little more experienced with these premade layouts so I added in a bunch of shiny icons, extra links, (you can see my tags!) quotes, blurbs, etc. It was fun! =) I also updated my usericons. It's scary just how many of those things I've collected. (But delightful at the same time) Next up will be going through my memories and organizing them, and after that I think I'm going to start going through all of my old entries and begin giving them all tags. That will also give me a chance to copy important ones into my offline journal, just in case something awful happens to the LiveJournal servers. (Because I'm sure they're one of those things that Can Never Go Wrong)

I didn't get Ted's profile done today. In fact, I barely started on it before I got hungry and lost interest. (Also see: Started listening to The One Doctor again. Hee.) That was earlier this afternoon. But, hey. It's Saturday, and I did at least get a little work done on it. So it's not a total loss, and I do occasionally deserve a day off. =D And mom brought home dates from the store! Fresh, gooey, cool, delicious medjool dates! None of those dry, pitless Deglett Noor imposters. Mmmm. Better than chocolate. I really want to get my hands on fresh dates someday.

I also spent part of the day organizing my MP3s, mostly in an attempt to clear out some more hard drive space so I can download more Fifth Doctor episodes because I'm going into withdrawl and I don't like it. It's amazing how much crap I had in there! Equally amazing was how much good stuff was in there. I have officially decided that Yuki Kajiura is my favorite Japanese artist after Nobuo Uematsu. I swear, that woman is amazing. Her music is amazing. The people she works with are amazing. Emily Bindiger has a voice that could make angels cry. (Heck, she has a voice that makes ME cry.) So it was very exciting to find a bunch of Yuki Kajiura MP3s hiding in my folder that I didn't know were there previously...makes me wish there was a decent source of Japanese imported CDs somewhere nearby. (And by "decent" I really mean: Won't cost me an arm, a leg, and small blood sacrifice just to get one tiny album.) Anyway, I enjoyed myself (organizing one's music is surprisingly zen) and actually managed to clear out a LOT of hard drive space! It went from 1.33 GB to 13.5 GB, which is a marked improvement. =D (Planet of Fire, here I come.)

Anyway. Good day. I ache a bit from sitting in this chair so long, but it was worth it. Let me know what y'all think of the layout! :)

My edits are going really well tonight. True, I haven't actually done any hard up editing, but my character profiles are growing beautifully, as is my revised plot. I've accidentally stumbled onto a process that has really helped me to create some really fascinating scenarios and fix major plot holes. Basically what I do is create a section in my story bible for "What If". Then I start writing things down like "What if so and so was a lesbian robot? Or what if they had a secret agenda to breed mutant poodles?" OK, so there isn't really anything in there about lesbian robots and poodles, but there could be. It's basically a chance for me to "talk" to myself and brainstorm, because apparently when I just sit still and try to think about these things without writing or speaking, I don't get very far. But as soon as I write these ideas down, new ones start flooding in almost faster then I can keep up with. My "What If" section is now about three pages long, and it's been so much fun. (In addition to helping me create a really kick ass plot with none of the instabilities of the previous one) Mike Stackpoles inverted "what if" idea also came in handy, allowing me to explore what would happen to my protagonist if her situation was reversed. Or, reversed, then sucked through a worm hole and reversed again. THAT was fun. And now I get to have a brand new character whom I'm coming to like quite well and who really should have been included in the first draft, except that there she was just a mindless body (literally) and the only change to her character was a cosmetic one. She gets a new name -- riveting, isn't it? Yeah, I was on the edge of my seat through the whole thing. *eye roll* I've also found the advice of "If you're not excited by what you're writing, your readers won't be excited by it either." quite useful, because there were times during the What If process when I got stuck and started playing around with my yo-you more then I was actually writing, because I got bored. But then I started to think about what would excite me, and I wrote that down. "What if the mutant poodles evolve into a super intelligent species, take over the world, and start creating lesbian robots? That are poodles!?! Then that starts a war, and then..." *ahem* You get my drift. It was really helpful, because through writing the most off the wall, absurdly exciting situation I could think of, my brain shifted into other lines of thinking and I was able to come up with some really good stuff. (Though perhaps not as sensational as my original idea. To be fair, it's hard to beat lesbian robots that are poodles when it comes to sensationalism.) Apparently those energy bars I made earlier today are really paying off. I feel like my eyes are bugging out squirrel-on-caffeine-style and I'm about to bounce out of my seat with sheer excitement and creative energy. =D

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT! *pictures of a disembodied foot float past...in hot air balloons. With lesbian robots that are really poodles on board.*

I cannot get enough of my .hack//SIGN soundtrack in about the past week and a half. This is noteworthy only because apart from the first year I bought it, I've been skipping songs from this soundtrack for ages. Now they're all I want to listen to. Isn't that weird? I've owned the things for like, four years now and I've been ignoring them for all that time. Makes you wonder what changed in my brain chemistry to make the songs appealing again.

Also, I moved my webcam around, so now you get to see more of me. Literally. I have entirely too much fun playing around with this thing. XD

Oh, and Colin Baker and subsequent Doctor Who audios (Haha. Just when you thought you'd escaped my talking about Doctor Who. XD) involving him have taken over my brain. Literally. Yesterday I was talking to my mom about something completely insignificant involving seeing things in the dark, and I said "Well why didn't you just get a torch and fix it?" She looked at me and said: "You mean a flashlight, right?" So damn you, Colin Baker! I hold you entirely responsible for the fact that I am slowly turning into a Brit and that my grammar has improved dramatically...

Seriously, though. A ♥ for Mr. Baker. If I meet him I'm giving him a fiver (DARN IT, MORE BRIT SLANG) because my dad said he loved Doctor Who for the shaky sets.

By the way: Muttering to yourself in a Scottish accent is way too much fun. *is listening to Medicinal Purposes right now* XD

Yup. I've been sufficiently random and insightful. Time to call it a night. =D