First, I had a job interview today (this job is not gonna happen, but I didn't actually expect to find a new job a mere week after I lost the old one, so all's well). But I was very busy freaking out. (Damn it, are all job interviews this stressful!?) So in the future, if I disappear for two or three days — I'm at home, freaking out.

Thanks

A huge thank you to everyone how wished me a happy birthday (and to everyone who said lovely words to me about my job loss). And thank you to all that posted birthday greetings or sent me a message. They all meant a lot.

Thank you to heathen_ursidae for drawing me an awesome Harry/Draco pic. And leochi for drawing me a gorgeous Harry. And thank you lotus_lizzy for writing me a sexy fic: Knicker Thief.

And thank you to everyone that promised to write me something. Take your time. *takes a moment to reflect on all the fics she owes* In fact, do be late; it'll make me feel better. (LOL!)

And thank you bryoneybrynn for LJ Paid Time. And thank you romaine24, zebrui, kisa829, kcstories, cleo_jay, lotus_lizzy, byaghro, tmkline, nightlo and kaykayen for sending me VGifts. They're so pretty!

And WANTED! Um, guys, who sent me two more months of LJ paid time and an LJ gift certificate? Please to be telling me. I need to squish you!

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

To me, it looked like I was gone for months, so I thought that maybe you've forgotten me. *blush* Nice to see that's not true.

Question and a Poll

Please read, dear flisters. I need your advice.



Right. So given that my metessay is called A Beginner's Guide to Fanfiction, I thought I should include a word about posting, HTML coding, lj-cuts, using document templates and stuff like that. So I did.

Then I remembered another thing. But now I'm not sure: Is this my problem or has anyone else had trouble with this?

See, I hate the Rich Text editor, and I use the HTML one. I hate RT because it messes up my code, inserts pointless tags and then fails to recognize them, and is completely whimsical. I also don't like applications that process your HTML code, because they, too, are quirky and add a bunch of code I don't need. And godforbid I made a mistake. If I try to fix the code manually, it takes me an age to find the mistake, because the code is usually ... messy.

So I like to type my own code. Y'know, using <i></i> and <b></b> and the like. But that's annoying. And if the story/post is long, and contains lots of italics and bolds, time-consuming.

I've only solved this problem recently. I've set up my MSWord to insert more common tags such as: <a href="">, <lj user=""> and <img src="">. And, more awesomely, everything I've written like this, Word turns into text looking <i>like this</i>. And everything I've written like this, Word turns into text looking <b>like this</b>. I just type my story as I normally would if using Rich Text editor, meaning, using italics and bold, and then after one click, everything that was italicized or bolded gets appropriate tags (no matter how long the text is, it takes a couple of seconds).

For my purposes, this is very useful, but maybe I'm just odd? Maybe you are all using the Rich Text editor, or some awesome application I don't know about, or you don't have problems with messy codes?

Would you consider knowing how to do this useful, or pointless? Should I include this in the metessay?

Poll

[Poll #1338578]
Thank you!


Oh and PIMP!

Love this idea: A poll for all HP fanfic writers: New HP writers' community. Do check it out.