Wibbly Wobbly, Timey Wimey

Yesterday, I started feeling very shaky - tired, wobbly, run down, headachy. I could joke that this was because I'd just announced a new schedule and therefore life had to prevent me from keeping it, but I'd already missed on it for this week because I didn't Tribe the past two days. Blah. It looks like I must have canceled my reminder on it last time it popped up. I'll have to watch that.

Anyway, I felt a little better after a nap and I feel fine today. I think it was probably the result of overworking because not only have I been updating a lot, I've been out there on the net talking to folks, I've been doing site maintenance and upgrades, and other stuff. The new schedule with its "safety valve day" should help prevent that from happening again.

On the subject of reminders, I need to set one to tell me to eat lunch... my tendency to forget that probably isn't good for non-wobbliness, either.

By the way...

Along the lines of my post about not trying to work all the information you have about a world and its characters into the story, there are things I know about MU that aren't necessarily going to find their way into the story. So, I've started using Twitter to slip out a tidbit about MU or the MUniverse.

I've also put out a Twitter call for people to remind me of characters they'd like to see at the Veil Ball. There are a lot of characters who have been defined on campus... and there will be 2-3 more installments revolving around it, so I'll have plenty of chances for characters to be encountered. Students, teachers. It's a party. Whatever.

You can throw your suggestions out here, too, but the main reason I'm making this post is to call attention to the fact that I'm doing fun stuff on Twitter, for a certain value of "fun". Feel free to join in! (And if you want the random tidbits but don't want to set up a Twitter account, bookmark the search I linked to.)

Memory fail.

You know how Mackenzie sometimes plans three things for the same time and has no clue she's done it? And some of the people reading the story marvel at this wholly unrealistic and bizarrely over-the-top representation of an unbelievably absent minded person?

Besides writing and such, I had two important side tasks I did yesterday - working out and announcing a new schedule I'd start following, and making arrangements to cover for an upcoming break. The part of my brain that's capable of realizing I have two or three acquaintances with a birthday on the same numerical date of the same month and not put it together that this means their birthday is on the same day didn't realize it would maybe have been a good day to announce my plans for the break and hold off on the schedule.

It's not a huge thing... just maybe a bit of a mixed signal.

Anyway, in July, some of my IRL friends are going to be visiting from out of state and they and some of my in-state friends are conspiring to drag me away from the keyboard enough to prove that I exist. During that time, I'm going to follow the "make sure every story gets updated a few times a week" model for the smaller stories. I can write them relatively quickly so there may not be as much of a disruption to them. The Tales of MU stories, though, take a bit longer, especially as I'm working on giving more thought to pacing and the visible plot.

So, for the week of July 13th, I'm going to be running guest stories from some very talented writers of my acquaintance. Depending on who you've got on your friends list/Twitter, you might already have seen reference to this. I told them they could think of it in the same terms as a typical guest comic - it needs not be bound by canon, continuity, or seriousness. I have three confirmed guest writers. I suspect at least one of them will be fairly serious, and one fairly silly. I don't know about the third. There are still a few more I haven't heard back from yet. I wasn't able to give anybody a lot of notice about this, unfortunately, as it was kind of sprung on me.

Now, as I've alluded to more times than I can remember, I do not have the best of memories at the best of times. This has caused me to miss opportunities, not just because when I forget them but when fear of embarrassing myself by forgetting a person's name/face/identity stops me from doing something. I'm learning to get over my embarrassment and just be upfront about it. If you're a writer of my acquaintance and I haven't asked you, don't take it personally... it's just that I've probably forgotten your existence entirely.

No, seriously, I had to struggle way harder than you might expect to think of the folks I did ask. Remind me and I'll put your name and email address on a list for next time.

(Now, you folks know me, I'm pretty egalitarian about these sorts of things, but what I'm specifically looking for are people with an established body of work and/or some sort of following, not three dozen random people with a great idea for a story in which Amaranth dies horribly in a way she doesn't enjoy and Ian becomes the main character. I may end up regretting even mentioning that I'm making a list for future guest writers, but I can't rely on my own memory to do this.)

The second part of next week, the week before July 13th, might be a little spotty, too. My out-of-state friends haven't been able to take a vacation in a while so they've got a lot of paid time off coming. I've got a lot of things like Lucinda doing interviews and a couple of lore stories that just didn't come out very long, though, so I think I can make sure there's something interesting to read every day.

And when it's over, I'm going to start the previously posted schedule. That week or the following week, I'm going to start the promotion effort that will include the chance to win the west tower name.