swim through the fires to stay in this world

 I feel blagh.

I know what I want to write for my current fanfic prompts, but I can't seem to get myself to sit down and write them.

I am bored with all 3240 songs in my iTunes.

Also, I finished the latest Harper Connelly book and loved it (so much better than the Sookie Stackhouse series) but it was in no way what I should have read right before bed.

I was thinking of trying a one-sentence meme to get the fanfic fingers typing:

Give me a fandom, character/pairing, and one-word prompt and I'll write you one sentence of fic.

Also, today's poem is one I adore both for the sentiment and the grace with with Bishop uses the form (I am blanking on the term at the moment).

One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.


--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

 I am sick.

I have been sick since Monday, and every subsequent day has only seen me as more miserable and ill. Seriously, today, I got up (at around 10:20 am) stumbled into the shower, had some breakfast, and collapsed onto the couch (11 am). Where I was unconscious for the next four hours. Seriously, my mom was getting ready to take me to see the doctor. There are also a host of other ailments and annoyances that are making live not worth living, but I'm so tired it's too much work to type them up.

So let's avoid reality and talk about AUs, for a bit, shall we?

(Another old-school fannish5 ):

1. AUs: yes please or what's the point?

I favor the latter position more, largely because a lot of the AU's I've seen (band AUs, HS AUs) do not do the work to keep the character relationships consistent, which makes me go 'just call original fiction original fiction, because these are NOT the characters you're claiming they are).

2. What's the best AU you've read?

Tempest in a Teacup. It was so good I was late to a French test because I couldn't stop reading.

3. What's the worst AU you've read?

I have a pretty fast hand with with back button, so nothing sticks out in my mind.

4. How would you like to see your fandom altered that you haven't seen yet?

? Do you really want the list of every authorial choice in every fandom I'm in that I have a problem with?

5. What AU worked that you never would have expected?

I honestly haven't read enough AUs to have found one that took a universe I never expected and put a new cast of characters in it in a way that made me go 'this is AWESOME.'

For further meta on AUs, cofax7  categorizes them here (I admit my preference for coin-toss AUs and it's sister, 5 Things/Times fics) and hradzka talks through his dislike of them with thefourthvine (this was a very interesting read, and I disagree with some of what he says and completely agree with other parts).