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You know you're stressed when...
Thursday and Friday were shut-downs for me. In truth I don't have an established name for these days, but "shut-down" seems fairly accurate.
I was completely exhausted on both days. Keeping focused on work was incredibly difficult, and forget about meeting the quota. These shut-down days happen periodically. I'll be the walking dead for two or three days, then perk up and be normal again for a while. They occur when I'm under severe stress and working like mad. I'll work and work and work until finally my body says "ENOUGH!" and pulls the plug to force me to rest. What's surprising is that a shut-down was the last thing I expected this week. I didn't realize I had been working that hard. X_x
Script for New title volume 2 arrived the other day, so I did the math to reveal a 4 page per day quota with a buffer of 13 pages. I've had worse, but I've had better. With only Skip and Temp currently on my plate, it shouldn't have made too big a difference. But as I was flipping through New title vol 2 to determine page difficulty, I faced a rather unpleasant realization: vol 2 isn't any easier than vol 1. >< Usually in manga (and anime too) vol 1/episode 1 will be incredibly busy and high-energy to snag the audience. Then things slow down a bit. Not so with New title vol 2. That first chapter--BAM!! Dive right in with half the pages being orange and pink. Ghaaaaaaa. Normally for each title, I'll do easy/average pages except the last one for the daily quota, which I'll make an orange or pink. This is so that I can focus on the difficult page without having to worry about the rest of that day's pages. But with such a high difficult page ratio for New vol 2, I'm having to do two difficult pages a day. I had to bump it up on Temp as well. My Temp quota is 6 a day, so I'll do two easy, one hard, two more easy, one more hard. Those difficult pages really add to the day's work, especially if I end up tackling 2 or more Pinks on the same day. I try to avoid that whenever possible. X_x
But in any case, I guess that explains part of the reason for my needed shut-down. Worry about my horse, Mac, must be calculated in there as well. And the prolonged fight scene that is the 2nd half of my current Temp volume. Joy.
Script for New title volume 2 arrived the other day, so I did the math to reveal a 4 page per day quota with a buffer of 13 pages. I've had worse, but I've had better. With only Skip and Temp currently on my plate, it shouldn't have made too big a difference. But as I was flipping through New title vol 2 to determine page difficulty, I faced a rather unpleasant realization: vol 2 isn't any easier than vol 1. >< Usually in manga (and anime too) vol 1/episode 1 will be incredibly busy and high-energy to snag the audience. Then things slow down a bit. Not so with New title vol 2. That first chapter--BAM!! Dive right in with half the pages being orange and pink. Ghaaaaaaa. Normally for each title, I'll do easy/average pages except the last one for the daily quota, which I'll make an orange or pink. This is so that I can focus on the difficult page without having to worry about the rest of that day's pages. But with such a high difficult page ratio for New vol 2, I'm having to do two difficult pages a day. I had to bump it up on Temp as well. My Temp quota is 6 a day, so I'll do two easy, one hard, two more easy, one more hard. Those difficult pages really add to the day's work, especially if I end up tackling 2 or more Pinks on the same day. I try to avoid that whenever possible. X_x
But in any case, I guess that explains part of the reason for my needed shut-down. Worry about my horse, Mac, must be calculated in there as well. And the prolonged fight scene that is the 2nd half of my current Temp volume. Joy.
BTW, Mac is much better now. When he was banging his feeder against the fence again, I almost cried with relief. I never thought I'd be glad to hear that horrible racket of metal-on-metal. *sobs*
I've been in the mood to read fanfic lately, so I visited Lunaesence and decided to read the first fic listed for a fandom that I know, regardless of how bad the summary might be. And of course, it was Naruto. A "reader insert" fic, which I had never tried before. So yay, something new! I click and begin reading.
For those who might not know, "reader insert" means the fic is written with "you" as a character in it. IE: "You walked down the path, looking from side to side for your missing cat." Sometimes they'll leave blanks for you to insert your own names. "'___-chan,' Orihime called to you." That type of thing. But hey, could be fun, so I clicked on the Naruto fic.
Ta-da! The reader gets to fall in love with Sasuke. Oh boy! I'd prefer it to be Gaara-sama or Lee-kun, but hey, why not? I was rather enjoying the story until I meet myself. In the story, I have long, wavy "raven" hair, and bright "amethyst" eyes. Helloooooo, Mary Sue stereotype!!! But hey, why not? Being a Mary Sue could be fun! So I kept reading. Of course, Sasuke's first impression of me is..."beautiful". *snerk* Very amusing. And it gets better--my name in the story????? Artemis. And I have a twin brother named Apollo.
is that not hilarious???? I kept reading strictly for the Sue funness factor. (How much worse can it get??) Truth be told, I didn't last for too much longer. Sasuke kept getting more and more out of character, which I now realize very much gets on my nerves. The final straw was when Sasuke told me everything about Itachi after we'd only known each other for 30 minutes. Yeah.
So I gave up on that fic. If the author had kept Sasuke as Sasuke, I'd have kept reading. Who doesn't want to have long wavy raven locks and amethyst eyes??? Ah well...
Today I tried another Naruto self-insert This time the love interest was Shikamaru. This fic was much better than the Sasuke one, even with song lyrics interspaced as some sort of commentary for the story.I ignored them. It was enjoyable, but I wish the author had found something for Shika to say/think besides, "This is so troublesome." But at least she made him not-so-fond of women. Yay to keeping Shika mostly in character!!
I then tried a third self-insert (BTW, these were the only fics from fandoms I knew. All self-inserts about romance with the boys. Weeee!) this time, I was going after a horribly OOC Ichigo, in Bleach. And again with song lyrics, which I again ignored. This story was cute, which is why I kept reading even if Ichigo and Rukia were both nothing like their real selves. This fic made frequent use of the name blanks, too. Very annoying.
So to sum up my fic adventure: these fics were written to explore the reader meeting (and invariably developing a relationship with) a fictional character, right? So why bother with the "you"s and the insert-your-name-here blanks??? Why not simply write in first person?? It's much less distracting to read "I leaned forward gently press my lips against Shikamaru's" than "You leaned forward...." Or at least it's less distracting to me. But "I leaned forward" is much better than "[your name] leaned forward...", ne??? Alas, from what I've learned in my breif time in the fanfic world, first person is hard to accomplish. So it's easier to use the "you"s and the blanks.
Ta-da! The reader gets to fall in love with Sasuke. Oh boy! I'd prefer it to be Gaara-sama or Lee-kun, but hey, why not? I was rather enjoying the story until I meet myself. In the story, I have long, wavy "raven" hair, and bright "amethyst" eyes. Helloooooo, Mary Sue stereotype!!! But hey, why not? Being a Mary Sue could be fun! So I kept reading. Of course, Sasuke's first impression of me is..."beautiful". *snerk* Very amusing. And it gets better--my name in the story????? Artemis. And I have a twin brother named Apollo.
is that not hilarious???? I kept reading strictly for the Sue funness factor. (How much worse can it get??) Truth be told, I didn't last for too much longer. Sasuke kept getting more and more out of character, which I now realize very much gets on my nerves. The final straw was when Sasuke told me everything about Itachi after we'd only known each other for 30 minutes. Yeah.
So I gave up on that fic. If the author had kept Sasuke as Sasuke, I'd have kept reading. Who doesn't want to have long wavy raven locks and amethyst eyes??? Ah well...
Today I tried another Naruto self-insert This time the love interest was Shikamaru. This fic was much better than the Sasuke one, even with song lyrics interspaced as some sort of commentary for the story.
I then tried a third self-insert (BTW, these were the only fics from fandoms I knew. All self-inserts about romance with the boys. Weeee!) this time, I was going after a horribly OOC Ichigo, in Bleach. And again with song lyrics, which I again ignored. This story was cute, which is why I kept reading even if Ichigo and Rukia were both nothing like their real selves. This fic made frequent use of the name blanks, too. Very annoying.
So to sum up my fic adventure: these fics were written to explore the reader meeting (and invariably developing a relationship with) a fictional character, right? So why bother with the "you"s and the insert-your-name-here blanks??? Why not simply write in first person?? It's much less distracting to read "I leaned forward gently press my lips against Shikamaru's" than "You leaned forward...." Or at least it's less distracting to me. But "I leaned forward" is much better than "[your name] leaned forward...", ne??? Alas, from what I've learned in my breif time in the fanfic world, first person is hard to accomplish. So it's easier to use the "you"s and the blanks.
I'm writing a veritable book tonight, aren't I?? Oh well. I had to share my fun with self-insert fics. At least now I know to avoid them. Heh.