Stuff Read, Stuff Written
Mar. 1st, 2019 02:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maplemoodRead: Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich; I'm in a Russian lit class this semester, and I'm pretty sure this is the only nonfiction book we'll be reading. It's both absolutely wonderful and incredibly depressing--in the first monologue a woman remembers nursing her husband, one of the very first responders, while he was dying from radiation poisoning, and it only gets heavier from there--and I think I might end up writing my final paper on it. Maybe. It all depends on if I can work out an okay thesis, but I've already got one critical essay that could be a possible secondary source (there aren't that many critical essays on Voices from Chernobyl, especially in English) and I ordered another one through interlibrary loan, so we'll see.
I haven't had a whole ton of time to just read for fun this week. I'm about halfway through The Left Hand of Darkness, the Ursula K. Le Guin book that I've always wanted to read, and tried to read, but never got around to finishing before. I think a lot of that had to do with me coming to it when I was in high school because I'd loved the Earthsea books so much, and then bouncing off the sci-fi elements pretty hard. I like them a lot better now, and the story doesn't move anywhere near as slowly as I felt like it did the first time, so I should be able to finish it over the weekend.
Written: The first draft of my![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
worldbuildingex fic, which is...rough. Super, super rough, but I have a workable draft and a good amount of time left to beat it into shape, which was all I really wanted. I have a bad habit of waiting until the very last minute to start exchange fics, and since March is shaping up to be the Busiest Month Ever I didn't want to pile that stress on top of everything else. For a week or two I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to come up with an idea at all (even though I really, really loved the prompts) and so once I finally got the beginning of something that was working (at least kind of) on paper, I pretty much forced myself to just sit and write it all out. So, obviously, it's only a first draft, and it's not pretty. I finished it on Sunday and I'll probably try to get the second draft done over this weekend--I had to fight the urge to scrap everything and start over right away, but after letting it sit for a week I'm glad I did. It might be rough, but I do like the story, and I'd rather have something to work with than nothing to work with. Also, I don't edit nearly as much as I should, so this'll be good practice.
I haven't had a whole ton of time to just read for fun this week. I'm about halfway through The Left Hand of Darkness, the Ursula K. Le Guin book that I've always wanted to read, and tried to read, but never got around to finishing before. I think a lot of that had to do with me coming to it when I was in high school because I'd loved the Earthsea books so much, and then bouncing off the sci-fi elements pretty hard. I like them a lot better now, and the story doesn't move anywhere near as slowly as I felt like it did the first time, so I should be able to finish it over the weekend.
Written: The first draft of my
worldbuildingex fic, which is...rough. Super, super rough, but I have a workable draft and a good amount of time left to beat it into shape, which was all I really wanted. I have a bad habit of waiting until the very last minute to start exchange fics, and since March is shaping up to be the Busiest Month Ever I didn't want to pile that stress on top of everything else. For a week or two I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to come up with an idea at all (even though I really, really loved the prompts) and so once I finally got the beginning of something that was working (at least kind of) on paper, I pretty much forced myself to just sit and write it all out. So, obviously, it's only a first draft, and it's not pretty. I finished it on Sunday and I'll probably try to get the second draft done over this weekend--I had to fight the urge to scrap everything and start over right away, but after letting it sit for a week I'm glad I did. It might be rough, but I do like the story, and I'd rather have something to work with than nothing to work with. Also, I don't edit nearly as much as I should, so this'll be good practice.