Fifty "fun" facts

1. The first character I ever rolled was a druid
2. It took me five or six tries to finally stick with a warrior
3. I once thought my warlock would be my main
4. I've deleted a level 50 priest
5. And a level 30-something rogue
6. I have tried gender-bending many times but there's always something about the movement of a man toon that irritates me to where I can't keep it
7. I think that people who won't play a certain class or race because "it's too evil" are stupidlame
8. I also think that no one is going to get addicted to something in real life just because they played a belf who was addicted to magic
9. Speaking of addiction, the idea that WoW is harmfully addictive is a crock. It's fun and some people just have no self control 
10. My baby huntard is still BM because I sort of like lol ez mode
11. I also deleted a 20-something mage back before they super accelerated 1-70 xp gain
12. I find the death knight class to be boring as hell but I'll get one leveled anyway
13. People who act like their time is more important than that of anyone else they are in party/raid with make me stabby
14. PvP is unhealthy for my desk/keyboard/mouse and At's ears, so I try not to deal with that aspect of the game
15. If someone leaves my guild on bad terms I will carry a pretty unreasonable actual hatred of them to the point where I have cheered to hear that someone's real life fell apart
16. And yeah, I know it's just a game
17. But that doesn't mean that people can't be real douches in a fake environment
18. I once had a GM tell me that my opinion as an officer wasn't worth his listening to it
19. That may have been the reason I cheered when I heard his real life fell apart. Maybe
20. I find that there are some struggles to being female and in a leadership position
21. But I will never ever use that as an excuse when I make a bad decision or am otherwise stupid
22.  I don't think being female gets me any perks in WoW
23. Unless you count being told that being a bossy raid leader is hott
24. I have gotten a couple pervs before - that was interesting
25. Even though we sometimes struggle with content for a while I do think Blizz is making the game as a whole too easy
26. At scoffs at me whenever I start in on how no one should get ponies at 20 or flying at 60
27. I used to think I would never level fishing or cooking on any character
28. My main is max exalted with all WotLK factions except Ashen Verdict
29. Lately I change Alas' hair every few weeks because I would do it in real life if I could
30. I think Renaissance faires are an awesome excuse for dressing up
31. Alas was not supposed to be my main because of her name
32. I have a different name I use everywhere else online but that name ended up attached to a nelf huntard
33. That huntard got deleted at 44 to make way for my DK with the same name
34. I've met several of my guildies irl even if it did mean driving to the deep South (imo) to do so
35. Alastriona is the Gaelic form of my middle name
36. And I cringe every time someone pronounces it "Alas-tree-OH-nuh"
37. The first time I healed a raid it was in Kara and I didn't have any helpful addons, such as grid or healbot
38. Of course, that was the PUG raid that wiped on chess, trufax
39. I call At "At" in real life but I almost never call him by his real name
40. I'm ridiculously addicted to FarmVille, even though I see how brainless it is
41. Of course, I also deal with faculty and buying random crap for a living (me, every other day: "How the hell do I buy printer memory? Printers have memory?") so I try to avoid that as much as possible
42. Unless I plan on writing either the fanfic or the novel, then I'm all worky worky worky
43. I lol at people with naming conventions
44. I am super cheap, to the point where even though I have over 30k across my toons, I still won't buy anything off the AH unless I absolutely have to
45. The cheapness also means that many of my characters don't have epic flying 
46. I will not play undead, trolls or orcs because they're ugly
47. I will not play gnomes or dwarves because they're short
48. I would totally do any draenai  - male or female
49. I have some moderate OCD tendencies 
50. I needed this list to have a random number and an alliterative title   

No rants today

Not from this quarter anyway. Working on Emergent. Two versions of the first part of chapter one over there.

Further incoherence

Random crap from a tired, hurty mage. 

 

I'm not really into Role Playing. Every time I have logged onto a RP server, I have felt distinctly squicky. There are always far too many people in Goldshire and far too many of those people are wandering around with perfectly matching outfits. They also wander around at a walking speed and I am left wondering how that could be enjoyable in any way, shape or form. 

 

However, if I ever were to take up the RP game, I would do so while at my folks' house during the winter months. I would huddle next to whatever wan scraps of sunshine I could find, my laptop in front of me and putting off a small bit of heat and a lot of smoke, like a fire made from wet wood. I would shiver in the chilly air (the house is kept right around 30 degrees, honest) and pretend to be in Northrend. My character would spend all her time sitting in a snow drift and bitching about how cold it is all the time and damn, she should have just stayed in Goldshire for the holidays, even if it is a backwater little town with nothing to do and nowhere to go. At night, I would park her in a coffin somewhere to get some sleep so she, too, could complain about how horrible it is to be away from one's bed and how much it makes one's back hurt.

 

Gah. I think I am getting old. 

 

In other news, I created a place to post excerpts of the aforementioned book. However, nothing is there yet because I keep erasing the first paragraph and mumbling incoherent words of rage at the keyboard and monitor, as though either of those things were responsible for the fact that I just can't seem to get going. 

 

And I am ignoring work, wondering why the clock seems to have stopped moving, and contemplating the idea of calling in "sick" tomorrow. 

 

Anyone else bored yet? Yes? Welcome to my life. 

Observation

It's ridiculously difficult to start a novel that begins with a stormy night and not come across completely cliche all "It was a dark and stormy night."

So, um... "It had been a long day, made longer by a heavy and persistent drizzle that trailed through [] Valley."

Err, hum... buh?

Before I croak

One of the things I want to do some time before I die is to write and publish a novel (or, you know, many wildly successful novels). I've actually finished a few but aside from one query letter, I made no moves to try to get either of them published.

The first was something I wrote back when I was about 15-16 years old. It was terrible. Terribly formulaic. I am ashamed to this day that I let anyone else read it. 

The second book was written more recently, something like three years ago. It was one part an experiment to see whether I could, in fact, finish something on the scale of a full-sized novel. It was also terribly arrogant of me to write it. Why? Well, I went into it with the thought that surely I would have no problem getting something published if I wrote for the Christian market. I arrived at this conclusion after a lifetime of reading bad Christian novels. The cherry on that Sunday was a book by a more successful Christian author that was set during the Revolutionary War. Within the first chapter I walked away in disgust. Who greenlighted a period novel and then let whole paragraphs about dating and being happy to see one's boyfriend slip by? I'm still appalled. 

"I could write any old piece of crap," thought I. "If only I dress it up a bit in Christian colors, it'll still be better than 90% of what is already out there." 

Ugh. I was such a jackass. 

Since that, I've started and stopped a half dozen projects. I more or less abandoned the first blog I had and went from posting nearly every day to posting about once a month. Another series of blogs centering around WoW (something I played heavily while not writing) were started and stopped within a few weeks. I did manage to write a decent amount of a WoW-centric fanfiction during that time, but that's about it. 

Maybe it's because my interest in WoW is waning. Maybe it's because of recent personal events that have re-awoken areas of my life that had been dead. Maybe it's because I've recently had the experience of reading stuffchristianslike.net from start to finish and was challenged and humbled and inspired nearly every post of the way. Maybe it's because I recently discovered Brandon Sanderson and was blown away by his books. Maybe it's a combination of everything I just mentioned. Whatever the reasons, I find myself wanting to write again. 

Unfortunately, all my ideas are very rough. I have no idea what to write. But I'm working on it and that's a pretty good feeling.