I don't really know what to write here, so I think I'll just go off on little streams of consciousness.

I feel very alone. I suppose that's my aim, I am intentionally avoiding the world after all, but it's a rather sorrowful outcome, the one I've stumbled upon.

Writing's going well; I broke fifteen thousand words on my story today. I suppose I should probably explain a little bit about that.

Nocturne, the thing I'm writing that none of you will ever read because... yeah -- anyway, it's projected to be +750,000 words. I suppose that might not mean much to people that aren't from the FanFiction culture, because most books don't carry their word count with them.... Well, at any rate, take my word for it that 750k is absolutely enormous. Originally I wanted to keep this story down to something like 300k -- which is still considered mammoth; the fifth Harry Potter book was less than 300k words and it was 870 pages long (frightened I know that? So am I...).

So yeah, Nocturne is really long.

I wouldn't be overly surprised if it exceeded 1,000,000 words. 750k is unprecedented in FanFiction -- at least in the Harry Potter FanFiction realm; I don't know much about the others -- but 1mil is unfathomed. I'm fairly certain there is not a single story (series yes, story no) that exceeds one million words.

It is hugely ambitious, and most writers (myself included), would pale at the thought of writing something that huge. I'm considering writing a condensed version first, and then writing the huge, end-all version after the condensed one is established. I dunno; depends on how I decide to do things at the very last minute, I guess.

Have I talked about the FanFiction site that me and some friends plan to start? The name for the site that's been thrown around most is "Elite [sometimes Elitist] FanFiction." It is not strictly Harry Potter-oriented; one of the guys I'm making it with wants to have West Wing stories there too [for the record, I had no idea there was West Wing fanfiction]. I think that pretty much means that we'll accept all fandoms -- or at least that's how I think it's going to turn out.

What I'd really like to do is make a site that is owned and operated completely by me. It's not that the other guys are bad people -- they're not -- I just think we're not going to see eye-to-eye on everything.

The only problem with going solo on a site is that I know absolutely nothing about CSS, HTML (other than the mark-up codes, like italics and stuff), PHP, MySQL or any of that stuff. Which is really depressing.

The guy who is going to make the site for me and my friends is a technical wizard -- he made the site that I use most frequently now, where I am also a staff member (www.siye.co.uk/siye). He'll be on our little tribe's board of operators, and I kind of worry about his politics. Not real-life politics, but his inclination and disinclination toward certain things in fandom (NC-17 rated fics, certain happenings in stories, et cetera).

Dammit I wish I knew how to make a fanfiction archive. I've got the ideas to make it good, I've got the contacts and friendships to get some exclusive fics which will make it popular quickly, and I've got the drive. I just lack the ability to code a site and all that stuff. Oh, and I guess I lack the money too -- Steve owns a hosting company, so he's giving us a huge discount for the site we're all making.

Have I written the latest about SIYE, by the way? No? Okay, well here's a quick rundown regarding a few things about Sink Into Your Eyes (SIYE).

1) Our former leader, Lord Dreadnault (that's his penname on the site), left us maybe two months ago to go on a Mormon... thing. As a Mormon, he was a bit too conservative for me on some things. He left (though only the staff knows this -- the userbase doesn't) and "officially" handed over the reins to his younger sister, who wasn't actually a member of SIYE before this point. Unofficially, however, she is a simple puppet who comes in only to make decisions that our Head Administrator (Ms. Dreadnault's official title is "President," which is above Head Admin) can't resolve on her own.

2) Valerie, our Head Administrator, was chosen because the others didn't want the job and because she's extremely conservative. She sacked a friend of mine on the staff because she wanted to talk about changing a rule (one which proclaims that Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley cannot die in a one-chapter story [a one-shot or one-off, in HP-Fandom]). The rule was first enacted because people that just wanted to see the romantic pairing of the two (called a ship) collapse would write stories with the express purpose of defacing the ship. An official decision had been made to keep the rule in place, but my friend wanted to continue talks about repealing the ban. She was sent a scathing email from Valerie (which I've read) that, in the harshest of terms, told her that she was not to question a decision made by the Administration. It should be explained that she (as well as I) were lower-staff members, Archivists to be precise [which means we took care of accepting or rejecting new stories into the site], and therefore had no real say in matters pertaining to the site.

Valerie is very outspoken in her distaste for anything rated beyond a mild-R. There has been some discussion about perhaps adding an NC-17 section to SIYE -- maybe someplace where only 18+ year olds were allowed. Valerie was extremely adamant that there would be absolutely "no NC-17 on SIYE!!!!" Valerie is not highly-regarded, even by people with standing equal to her; it is partially because of her that I want so much to break away and make a site of my own. She is often unbearable, and I -- and I'm not the only one -- am at best reluctant and at worst terrified of speaking up, in fear that she will crush down anything I have to say. I don't want to get fired -- I like my job there.

It's really that that makes the site bad. Yes, the general quality of stories written has taken a nose-dive since summer of 2005, but I really think Valerie is the driving factor in our problems there. I want to leave that place in the worst possible way, but there's nowhere for me to go.

So again, I am incredibly frustrated by my lack of knowledge regarding coding sites.

And that's the end of my very, very long speil on that.

All my love,

NF