I can't remember if I linked to Coaster's group portrait of the Wolf House characters or not, but if I didn't, holy shit look at this motherfucker. IT MAKES ME SO HAPPY. SO HAPPY.

And then the other day Kivitasku drew these portraits and I went AH AH AAAAAAAH again. How are people so amazing? AMAZING.

Also there was this gorgeous review/pimp post written by a recent reader.

Basically everything on this tag and this one make me boggled and delighted and then boggled again. Also, they make me feel guilty that my own tumblr is full of stuff like "I LIKE EDUARDO'S BLUE STRIPEY TIES!" when there are fanlings following it and expecting like content or whatever.

Next Novel is stressing me the fuck out. I feel stalled and useless and all-over-the-place and exhausted. I'm scared that it'll take forever and I'll put care and work into it and then the end product will be absolute shit and I'll feel like a worthless fool for bothering. (Note that this is also exactly the reason I don't date, ha. Issues, what.)

Got a call a little while ago from Swinburne, where I'm due to go back to do the last subject for my PR/Business qualification next semester. Because I already have a higher degree, my fees for this one subject are charged at a higher rate, and so that's more than $600 for one night per week of classes for one subject so I can get a formalised qualification for something I've already done 11/12s of and am already doing professionally! Yay!

Not to mention that I have to drop my hours at work back a bit to fit classes in without collapsing into a heap of overexertedness, so that's less income to cover increased expenses. It sure is a good thing I like school, I'm just saying.

Money stress is also a completely crap added complication to put atop my horrible writing hand-wringing, by the way, because it makes it much harder to be indie and punk rock and ~*~in it for the art~*~ like I genuinely want to be, like I always want to be. I don't want to write safe books about safe things, I want to write things with serrated edges and strange shadows for the people who don't like safe books about safe things. I don't mean this in a pretentious way, I swear, even though I know it sounds pretty much like that. I want my writing to be the punk rock mix tape a friend gives you that's not much like the pop stars on the radio.

But then I hear about writer X selling Y number of copies of her latest novel or whatever and fuck, even if I'm not willing (and never will be willing) to write safe, straight, whitewashed, conservative stories, sometimes it's really hard not to wish I was a pop star, you know?

Ugh, I'm rambling. Hullo. My brain is broken and full of nonsense, but yesterday I had a long conversation with former-babysitting-charge-who-is-now-a-tween about "Monster High" and the relative merits of being a vampire versus other kinds of monsters, and that was pretty cool.

Because of a) a much heavier workload at the day job and b) a desire to do more freelance writing and fiction work this year, I deferred finishing my Public Relations qualification. I figured I'd either pick it up again in second semester this year (July-ish) or first semester next year.

Yesterday I got this email from my Course Convener:

Unfortunately because the Cert IV in Business has been re-accredited, you need to keep your enrolment unbroken to finish this qualification. You will be unable to re-enrol into this qualification in Semester 2.

I'm going to look into getting Recognition of Prior Learning for my four remaining subjects (Use advanced features of computer applications; Create web pages with multimedia; Analyse consumer behaviour; Conduct market research) because they're things I already know well, but everything I've heard from people who've done RPL is that it's a huge complicated mess and they wish they'd just done the subjects instead of trying to prove existing knowledge.

I'd really like to have something to show for the year of study I've done toward this qualification, but right now I'm just frustrated and unsure of which way to go about getting it.

In other news, I'm at that point of novel-writing where I really dig what I'm doing but am becoming increasingly sure that nobody is ever going to publish it. Competing with people who are actually good and actually make money is haaaaard. Why can't my passion be something that there's high demand and low supply for, rather than the other way around? It's so terribly tragic being me, don't even pretend it's not.

Because I thought it might be of interest to somebody: a website analysis I had to do for my class tomorrow night, about promotional tools. I picked Fall Out Boy's site, because I roll like that.

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Day 3: Your My Chemical Romance favorite lyric.

These questions are HARD. Um. As I said in the 'favourite song' answer, the first lyrics tattoo I got was 'awake and unafraid', so clearly that's a lyric that's very important and dear to me. I also have a tattoo which says 'sharpest', from the line 'we are made from the sharpest things', and that's another one which I hold close to me.

I like 'so paint it black and take it back' from 'Welcome to the Black Parade', and 'I'm not ashamed, I'm gonna show my scar, give a cheer for all the broken'. I don't give a shit if it's cheesy; I didn't become a My Chemical Romance fan for cool points.

I have an inordinate fondness for the line "shoot back holy water like cheap whiskey", from 'Vampires Wil Never Hurt You'.

But in the end, I'm going to have to go with 'awake and unafraid'. Because that's how this band made me feel, for the first time in a long time.

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Case #183(a) is updated with a bunch of random junk, because otherwise said random junk is just going to keep rattling around in my head and getting underfoot.

I got to 40,202 words on book 5 last night. That's kind of cool (I promise I'm not going to keep giving wordcount updates, but 40k is a big-ish one for me and it's been hard work every step of the way, so I'm a bit pleased).

Classes start again on Monday (I'm doing Monday and Thursday nights, six until ten, this semester); I am going to be on the radio again late Wednesday night; my apartment is a bomb site; the camera I use for putting up etsy listings is busted; day-job continues to be in low-level turmoil at all times; my brother comes to stay soon and he and his girlfriend are all CHEERFUL and SOCIAL and FUNCTIONAL and FRIENDLY and there should be a law against it, I say. And how are you on this fine Friday morning, internet?