Listen to the Rain

I keep letting ideas and thoughts slide by without writing them here. On the other hand, at least I do still write occasionally. So many people on my friends list have basically stopped.

I managed to sing a whole song in Japanese at karaoke that I hadn't previously memorized, following the furigana fast enough to keep to the beat. Though it wasn't a particularly fast song: Kalafina's 光の旋律[1]. My earlier attempts to sing Don't Say Lazy and the song listed under current music both exploded against the lack of furigana and speed, though I could manage さくらんぼ's chorus. Not surprising because it sticks in your brain worse than Gaga[2], at least if you can make out the words. 愛し合う二人幸せの空隣どうしあなたのあたしさくらんぼ。。。もう一回！”

I really need to study Japanese more. Picking it up by osmosis is working, to a point, but, especially as I'm jobless at the moment, I really should just buckle down and study for a couple hours every single day. In the 10 months I've got left I could come pretty far, especially if I do manage to get into that class in the city I found on Hiroshima's website.

Every day, every moment, there's always the sense that I should be doing something else. Something more important. More likely to contribute to my life in some way. I'm beginning to suspect that this happens to everyone, to a greater or lesser degree. Much like the existential pondering about what one's life is really about (though that's a luxury of abundance, really).

I've been thinking a lot lately about the old Bungie game Myth, probably my favorite game they ever made (though I haven't played Marathon all the way through). I'm a sucker for dark fantasy, and Myth is one of the better ones, though more in terms of worldbuilding rather than morality. It's a bit like the Black Company novels, actually--the men and women of the Legion slogging it out with Thralls[3] and Soulless in thigh-deep mud while their Avatara high commanders fight badass magical duels with the Fallen Lords offscreen.

The names were really evocative as well. Balor. Soulblighter, the Twice-Born. The Watcher, Mad Goat of the Fens. Shiver. The Deceiver. The Trow, and their "melted cities" in the north. The Myrkridia, the ancient monsters that almost drove humanity to extinction, who you never see in the first game. The Avatara: Murgen, Alric, Cu Roi, Rabican and Maeldun. Muirthemne, the ancient empire destroyed by the Dark during the first few years of the war. They're obviously taken from Irish myth as a base, which was pretty new to me when I first encountered them.

Myth also brought us The Siege of Madrigal, which showed up as an Easter Egg in all of the Halo games.

The main reason I've been thinking about it is that NaNoWriMo is coming up, and I'm thinking about doing it again this year. My current idea is to do a zombie apocalypse story in a fantasy setting. I'm a bit worried that it would turn out like the plot of Myth, but that's not too much of a bad thing. Maybe if I have a more direct source of inspiration I'll actually manage to finish a novel fragment for once instead of getting a hundred pages in and losing momentum. Maybe I should just finish my last NaNo for this one. I have five or six half or three-quarters finished novels of varying quality. When I get that far, I always get torn between editing the earlier parts and continuing writing, and eventually just lose the momentum to continue. I think what I really need to do is keep outlines of my plots to make sure that I don't lose my place, and to keep things straight when I make a change halfway through the game.

Well, I still have a while to decide.

[1]: If you don't speak Japanese, hope you know Spanish and can read the subs. :p
[2]: I don't actually hate her music, I hate how it takes DAYS to leave your brain if you hear it. Though maybe that's just me.
[3]: Zombies

五万つ言葉を書きました!

The third time I've tried it, and the only time I managed to get anywhere really past halfway. Fifty thousand words in just over three weeks.

And I'm still not done with the story. Oh well...I can finish that. This is a lot easier to write than any of my other novels were, and finishing it won't be so bad.

And hey, maybe I'll have something publishable when I'm done!

This is partially an update and partially a test of my new userpic :-p

We've picked out a time and a place for the wedding. We should be sending out invitations within the next month or so. It depends entirely on how much of my/our time is taken up with NaNoing and filling out our JET applications. Speaking of which, I need to work on my essay...

NaNo is going well. Up to 13K words on day 6. I'll be done with plenty of time to spare if I keep my current pace. I might even finish my novel, which would be amazing.

Life is good. I like it that way.