Personal Note: Lent

[nebroadwe]

Happy Lent to those who observe! I've given up reading fiction again, which I mention not to blow a horn before me on the information superhighway, but to explain why I won't be commenting on anyone's 'fic until early April. (It's a slightly better excuse than the current one, which is that the all the uses of this world have seemed weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable since the New Year. Touch of SAD, maybe.) I'm going to use the time to read some commentaries on Paul's epistles and do some background research for Knot of Fire, that Avatar novel I've worked out a plotline for. Dunno if I have the discipline to complete an actual novel, but in case I do, it'll be good to have the information on Asian agriculture and cuisine and court life that I'll need to make it sing. And it would be a shame to waste all the effort I spent over Christmas working out what Ozai and Zuko would say to each other during a prison visit. (Must also get one of either "An Inconvenient Season" -- formerly "In My End Is My Beginning" -- "Errands of the Eye" or "The Weight of the Paper" finished before Easter. They've all been sitting around in draft for far too long.)

Comments

[juxtaposie.livejournal.com]

Ah, Lent. One of my roomies and I are going to attempt to go the whole 40 days without ice cream and the soda of our choice. We're hoping we'll be able to keep each other strong.

But to the real point of this comment (and I think you know what's coming): Avatar novel, you say? I am intrigued... *strokes chin*

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

So, you're not giving up internetz, just reading fanfic? Okay. Okay.

And ooh, for possible new things coming from you in response.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

We're hoping we'll be able to keep each other strong.

It's always easier to do Lenten resolutions in groups. kanja177 and I are both giving up fiction; we can eye each other's backpacks suspiciously and stuff. :-)

But to the real point of this comment (and I think you know what's coming): Avatar novel, you say? I am intrigued... *strokes chin*

It's that same one I was nattering about in comments back around Christmas: yet another Zuko and Aang go looking for Ursa story. Which I'm not sure the world needs. On the other hand, I now know How Ursa Did It, which I haven't yet found all that plausibly in anyone else's 'fic. Whatever it was, it couldn't have been obvious, because you can't cover up obvious. Hmm.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

So, you're not giving up internetz, just reading fanfic? Okay. Okay.

Giving up internetz is a bit too penitential for me. But fanfiction does, sadly, qualify as part of fiction. kanja177 reminded me that it really ought to cover serial narrative as well, so there goes Girl Genius and all that translated manga. I usually draw the line at foreign language stuff, though. I read slowly enough in all the foreign languages I'm literate in to make it an educational experience rather than a pure for-fun one.

[juxtaposie.livejournal.com]

Which I'm not sure the world needs.

I respectfully disagree. 0:) I've read a few, and while I enjoyed them, I was not all together too impressed with some of the plotting or the execution. I think your addition would, more than likely, solve both those problems. It would be welcomed with open arms (and possibly with a trumpet fanfare, at least in the section where artemisrae and myself will be sitting). Not that you need me to push you or prod you or anything. That wasn't my intention at all.

No, really. I swear.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Good. Because I'm a bit counter-suggestible. :-)

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

Giving up fiction???

Oh, you're a braver man than I, Gunga Din.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Heh. As long as I have something to read ... and I don't give up movies or t.v. shows. There's self-discipline, and then there's masochism. Lent is not supposed to be about the latter.

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see. *nods*