So . . . I am horrid about updating this. Absolutely horrid. Partly because I feel like I'm talking to thin air, and partly because I know my parents would flip. They are *so* not into the blogging idea . . . the things on the news a few weeks back about how dangerous it is for kids did not help.

 

Regardless, I try to be pretty scarce about what actual personal information I put online, so . . . I feel okay about this. I don't think anyone is going to try to track me down, do you?

 

Please don't. You'll be disappointed. Then again, I would have someone I could legitimately use the sharp side of my tongue against . . . (it doesn't get a whole lot of exercise).

 

Well, I'm back in school with classes that I adore, but are very reading-intensive. And bah, I have to take midterms and finals this semester--usually my English classes skip those little pesky technicalities in favor of final papers.

 

Life is generally well . . . I have been sucked back into the POTO world (blame Erik), but I am trying to keep my obsession . . . controlled.

 

Which, on that note . . . my story on ff.net, Voice without a Soul, is finished! I just posted the two 'finale' chapters. Yay!

 

My other writing . . . I'm stuck. I feel like I need to at least have a grasp, in my head, of the political atmosphere of this world I'm writing about, and I don't. Someone spent a great deal of time yesterday arguing with me about why I *didn't* need to know the political associations, even though the main characters are the sons of the President (and she's been president since before their birth) and so were raised in a very political atmosphere. Instead, he said, I need to concentrate on the emotional relationships . . . which is true . . . but . . . (dang, too many ellipses. Those are the . . ., right?). I don't know. I still feel like I need it, and a whole lot of my writing is feeling. I don't want to say "I'm right, dangit, because it's my story!" but I know he is trying to help me. It is possible that I might be fixating on this one vital but minor detail in a very OCD way, but . . . I mean, literally, to write the next sentence, I feel like I need to know what two politically active older teenagers would be discussing at the last political social event of the year when their two families are opposed to each other, and I don't. Garghl!

 

I submit to the Orson Scott Card philosophy on writer's block, by the way, which is that writer's block is (usually) a sign that something is wrong.

 

Well, I don't know what more to say now . . . think I'll sign off.