mistressofmuses

I am alive!

I just haven't felt like I have much to say.

Work hasn't left me in tears, but it is just a constant demoralizing drag. (I know, "so it's like... work?") Practicing just not giving a shit, which probably is really the best thing to do.

Writing still hasn't been happening. I just don't have any drive or interest in working on anything. It's frustrating, but I'm not making it past the "stare at the document and feel worse about it the longer I do that" stage. I do at least still get brief bouts of *wanting* to work on something, which is better than nothing! It just hasn't translated to being able to do anything about it.

I've let myself doomscroll a little more than I usually do, and I need to cut back on that again. I want to figure out bluesky as a site (as tumblr goes through another biannual "is this when the site finally dies?" round), and I also want to be at least somewhat informed about all the ways the US is deeply fucked... but in combination, it's not been great for mental health stuff. And then I feel bad that it makes me feel as shitty as it does, because I know so many people who are being impacted in vastly worse ways.

Is it the seemingly inescapable creep of fascism? Is it my job getting more and more demoralizing and frustrating? Is it the untreated depression? WHO KNOWS.

It's another month!

( January: )

( How did February go? )

So, this year I set myself a deliberately lower word count goal (75k for the year) because I knew that I really wanted to devote a lot of my free time to reading (and happily, I have so far succeeded!) I didn't want to put myself in a situation where I felt guilty for focusing on one goal over another, or realizing that I would have to give up one goal completely in order to succeed at the other, so I wanted to be certain that I was aiming for things that were achievable even when combined.

While I definitely adjusted my word count expectations... I somehow did not ever connect that to needing to adjust my project expectations.

Considering that my preference is for long fics/short novel-length projects, completing even one project would most likely tip me over the 75k goal. (Particularly once there've been multiple rewrites.) Yet I was still putting together my monthly goals with the expectation that I'm aiming to complete four or five things this year. (And feeling guilty - that feeling I was expressly trying to avoid - for not making progress at the rate that will allow me to do so!)

Oops.

As I was initially putting together this month's goals, I was forlornly looking at the list and thinking to myself that yeah, I guess I'll just aim for... the exact same things that I haven't made much progress on... But actually, I really need to realize that if I thought 75k was a reasonable goal for the year, that means I probably shouldn't expect to complete multiple drafts of multiple 50k+ works. That's not how math works!

So time to adjust expectations for myself a bit. With that in mind...

Goals for March:

• Continue working on the iddy romance WIP
• Edit the next chapter of my friend's book

...That's it. I don't think it's likely that I will finish the WIP draft, but if I could get at least a little closer I'll be glad.

Goals for April and beyond:

• Finish the iddy romance WIP first draft
• Outline the Cyberpunk AU
• Start the snowflake outline of the Worldhopping Fairytale Monstrosity fic
• First draft of the Cyberpunk AU
• Outline the next iddy romance
• Continue the snowflake outline of the WFM fic
• Reoutline and rewrite iddy romance #1

We will see how much of that I get through this year. It feels wrong to trim the project plans down so much. I know that last year, when I did my idea inventory stuff, I had really ambitious plans on how much I'd need to start writing in order to make a dent in it, and how best to balance the original works that I don't necessarily plan to share at all vs. the fanfiction that I can post, etc. At the same time, I'm not at all mad about the choice to really try to get through more of the reading I've wished I was doing for the last couple years. Unlimited time and energy would be extremely helpful, but alas.

After a brief break, I have now read Part 5 of Never Say You Can't Survive by Charlie Jane Anders.

(Only semi-related, but I noticed that Taylor has this author's All the Birds in the Sky on one of their TBR shelves. I haven't read any of her works besides this one, but it felt like a cute coincidence.)

Chapter 22 is about finding and cultivating your voice as a writer.

On voice:

This is something I could stand to cultivate a little bit more. I feel like my general writing style, such as it is, shows my early influence. I read a lot of Mercedes Lackey as a teenager, haha. In general, I feel like my writing isn't terribly flashy, but is more the type that's designed to be relatively unnoticeable, so that the content takes center stage as opposed to the style.

But also... I have been very reluctant to really try for much "style." I don't think I can really blame this one on specific bad advice (the way I've attributed some of my struggles to baggage from early exposure to Mary Sue Litmus Tests and such), so it may just be a general symptom of lack of confidence. I feel very reluctant to "go for" any sort of flourish-y description, for fear that it will land badly.

Then again, I followed some writing snark comms in ye olde LJ days, and one of the things mocked most brutally was "purple prose." And while there are some egregious examples out there, and I've cringed at plenty at various times... I also saw a lot of stuff torn apart for including any amount of description or imagery. Perhaps this is another thing I took to heart a bit too thoroughly!

I don't think I'm ever destined for a particularly poetic style, but it probably would be worthwhile for me to at least give it a try to see if I can find a style that incorporates a little more in the way of imagery and such.

Chapter 23 is about the narrator of your story, and the importance of both POV and tone.

On narration:

This is another of those things that I'm very familiar with as a reader, but go back and forth on how confident I am in harnessing it deliberately as a writer. 

Everything I write obviously has its narrator, and its general POV and vibe to the story. And I have worked in different stories to cultivate those fairly specifically. I wanted (and I hope achieved!) very different tones between "All Strange Wonders" (the Kingdom Hearts/Howl's Moving Castle mashup, with a mostly-light, romantic fantasy tone) and "Outbreak" (the Silent Hill fic about a supernatural illness.) Even so, I feel like some of it is the sort of "learning by osmosis" rather than deliberate action on my part. I have done those things on purpose, but by trying to do the things that "feel" right, rather than a formal understanding? If that makes sense?

I appreciate the suggestion to think of tone as a venn diagram, where you have all the different moods that the story encompasses, and how they all overlap with each other. The overlap may be the meatier aspect of the story, or that overlap may allow you to shift in a really meaningful or impactful way toward one single mood for a time.

Also appreciated the shoutout to The Fifth Season's second person narration, because agreed, it is so effective when it crops up. (Fuck, I want to reread that trilogy, but no I will be strong and minimize my rereading until I get through more of the things I haven't read yet...)

It was also funny, because as I was thinking about one of the examples (how two very different narrators may describe a castle, and what that description would tell you to expect of the story's tone), and was considering how describing the same series of events from the perspective of very different narrators would be a fun writing exercise... and then that was a writing exercise she suggested later in the chapter, haha. (Though her suggestion went more in-depth than my thoughts did, lol.)

Chapter 24 is about the structure of your story, and how you use time.

On structure:

This is something that I feel like I haven't really considered in much depth. As with the stuff I talked about above, yes, I do make choices about what things I want to focus on vs. what things I plan to skip past and summarize with just a few sentences, but it feels like something I don't plan for so much. 

One of my fics I like best (the Silent Hill one) has prose chapters about different characters' experiences alternating with epistolary chapters detailing one character's report on the events, which is probably the strongest example of something I wrote where the structure matters a lot to the story.

She mentions NK Jemisin again, and man, not to keep bringing it up, but The Fifth Season (and the Broken Earth trilogy as a whole) really did do great shit with the passage of time and breaking the story into multiple timelines. Witch King by Martha Wells did a good job of two separate timelines that I really enjoyed recently, too.

In general, I really love stories that fuck with time in some fashion. Both the Zero Escape series and the AI: The Somnium Files series come to mind for some of my favorite examples... and though those are both video game series (by the same director), they are also *visual novels*, which means they get some of those same advantages that prose can offer that this chapter talks about.

This is a way in which I feel like my writing does tend toward being quite straightforward. As much as I love it as a reader, I don't tend to do much to mess with the timeline in my stories. I tend to want to write chronologically and tell the story itself chronologically. I wonder if this is something I should try to break away from?

Chapter 25 talks about emotion in the work, specifically...

On empathy and irony:

She talks about both of these being frequent strong points in writing, both the ability to look at a bigger picture and the flaws and hypocrisies within it, and the ability to empathize with all sorts of different characters, whether they initially seem sympathetic or not.

The easier of the two for me is empathy. That is something I value deeply as a reader and as a writer, and want to do my best to cultivate in fiction and in real life. She points out that a good bit of succeeding at this with written works does come down again to the strength of your character and their POV and how well you get into their head and perspective... which is again where I end up struggling, and am trying hard to get past some baggage around. I struggle with trying to preempt criticism and make my characters likeable, and prevent them from doing or thinking anything "bad" or that would make people dislike them. Of course, that tends to make them flat and bland and again, it's the "sanded into a shapeless blob" problem.

I'll say this is something my current read (The Luminous Dead) has done really well. The perspective character has gone through bouts of anger and paranoia, has made good and bad decisions, and I've enjoyed all of it! Trying to keep in mind that my characters are also allowed to make bad choices and be wrong about things.

I have a harder time with the irony side. I'm actually not 100% sure I understand her idea of what using irony well is. The one example she gave was from a piece of media I'm not familiar with.

I agree with a lot of the individual points made, like not letting your use of humor undercut your characters or story (which is one of the reasons I think my knee-jerk reaction is to say I don't like humor in writing, when actually I often really do! Just not when it seems like getting in the "funny/quirky/clever quip" was prioritized at the expense of the story or the characters.) 

She also points out how the concept of irony as a whole has been sort of warped in recent years by things like "ironic racism" or "ironic sexism." She also points out the frequent attitude that irony is almost a sort of nihilism, where it's just deciding that nothing really matters or has any real meaning to it. 

I think this is my general issue with it as a whole, because so much out there feels "irony-poisoned." I am frustrated by people who refuse to allow themselves any glimpse of sincerity, as audiences who refuse to engage with a work genuinely, but especially as creators that refuse to engage as well. There are so many works that go out of their way to undercut themselves, like they're trying to do it before the audience can, or that feel like they're trying to mock the genre that they're a part of. Sure, sometimes it IS funny to have a character in a horror story be aware that they're making a terrible character-in-a-horror-story mistake, or a character in a fantasy story to acknowledge fairy tale tropes. Self-aware stories can be really good! But too often it instead comes across as sneering about "yes, of course genre fiction is stupid, so can you believe the stupid genre stuff that's happening? Ugh, it's so lame, am I right?" That is usually what I expect from something that's intended to be ironic, so I again have that knee-jerk negative reaction to it.

It leaves me feeling better equipped in terms of what NOT to do than what TO do. I'll let it keep turning over in my head.

Chapter 26 is the final chapter, about the importance of writing the story that only you can tell.

On self:

This one is a bit tricky, because to an extent it feels like everything could only be written by the person who writes it. Even the sort of bland or derivative stuff... the person who wrote it is the only one who would write it exactly like that. The same plot bunny could be executed completely differently by any number of different writers!

But I also get it. Writing something to chase a trend (when it's something you don't care about otherwise), or because you think it's what you should write, or because you're trying to mimic something else too completely, is all likely to not be your best or most unique or meaningful work. Projects that you have personal investment and connection to really do seem to have something extra to them.

I appreciate the encouragement to not try and force yourself into following a too-specific outline format. (She calls it mad-libs style structure.) 

There's a lot of stuff out there, like Save the Cat, that really do have the "exactly x% of the way through, on page #y, this specific event must happen" advice/commands. I know that has its utility, and for a couple years I was trying in vain to unlock some foolproof way to outline that somehow works for every project, and does basically just let me fill in the blanks and have a workable story to start writing. I used seven point outlining for a few projects, and at least for one it lined up really well, and helped me to avoid massive issues with pacing in the middle!

But now I've been struggling with a few of my more recent projects because the various events don't line up at the "correct" points where climaxes or setbacks or whatnot are "supposed" to happen. I kept trying to make the story fit the outline structure by removing bits or shuffling them around... and it kept making the story feel worse. So fuck it, lol.

(Though it does make me think some about deliberately formulaic writing, like a lot of the romance ebook series and such. The quantity demanded by the almighty algorithm means that having a formula to fall back on is about the only way to produce it, and it is about writing to a market that wants more of the same sorts of stories that don't deviate too drastically from expectations. And even before it was the sea of kindle unlimited series, it was true of category romance, which produced new books following the same general sets of tropes every month. I don't feel like these books, even if they are sometimes of iffy quality, somehow don't count as books, or that I don't believe any of the authors cared about their work... but it also definitely doesn't feel so much like "only this one person could have told this story.")

I also do wonder what she might have said (in this chapter or others) if generative AI for writing had been the issue that it is now, because "write the thing that only you can" is very much the opposite of "have chat GPT spit out the writing for you." (And maybe she has shared thoughts on AI! I haven't looked.)

This section is also about how the act of writing and finding your own stories can help you know yourself better. And it's true that looking back at older stories (or even just the ideas for stories that I didn't ever write, but spent time thinking about) remind me of who I was at the time. Looking at the things I'm focusing on now will probably make me feel similarly in the future. And as she said about her own writing, there's an aspect of future projects being about the person she wants to be.

(On one of my bad teenage fanfics, a friend said something like "this definitely sounds like you wrote it!" It was meant positively, I'm fairly sure, but it has haunted me for almost two decades now. What did she mean by that? lol. Was it the word choice? Something about the plot? I don't know!)

Though now there's a part of me trying to decide if anything of mine is truly a story only I could write, because I'm not sure I believe that any of it is unique enough for it to be the case. I think it was supposed to be encouraging advice, but instead I'm just anxious about it, haha.

BUT. I'm gonna try. The book as a whole has reminded me of many of the things I haven't always thought about enough, and reminded me of some of the places where I'm still carrying some baggage that I need to figure out how to put down. I'm not 100% convinced that it's worth it to try and go for it on writing through The Times We're Living Through, because I'm still not convinced there is a "through." But I also know that doomerism isn't helpful, and like I said before when bumping up against a loved one's doomer feelings... Worst case, I spend some time reading books and writing stories before everything collapses completely and I die. Best case... we come out the other side (somehow) and I still spent time reading and writing and have something to show for the time.

Now we're into part three of Never Say You Can't Survive.

Chapter 12 starts this section off discussing anger.

On anger:

There are several different aspects of anger that this chapter talks about: channeling your own anger into motivation, putting it into the story you're telling, using it to connect to other powerful emotions, finding out what makes a character angry...

The author touches on this, but anger is a thing I have a hard time with. Being angry about things was definitely not an encouraged emotion at any time in my life, ha. At least not expressing that anger. It's been pretty well drilled into me from childhood that no matter how angry I am, I should always be calm and collected, because anything that appears angry will be immediately discounted as irrational. I'm not good at dealing with anger, mine or anyone else's, frankly.

But I am... really fucking angry. Often. Especially now. At *gestures toward everything.*

It's a good point made in the chapter about how channeling your anger into your writing doesn't necessarily mean writing about what makes you angry directly, or even focusing on a fictional scenario that inspires similar feelings. Anger can push you to write any sort of tone or scene. An example she gives is anger making you want to protect the things you care about, so you can use your own anger to fuel a scene that's actually just about the love and caring you want to make room for, no hint of the anger on-page. 

(This feels applicable to my own experiences with writing. I haven't always deliberately channeled anger into my work, but I can see ways in which focusing on the positives I want for the story - characters finding people who love and understand them, triumphing over whatever evil they're facing - it comes from a place of anger at feeling like those things are being denied.)

There's another bit about finding anger inspirational: writing about characters standing up to injustice being an inspiring thing, reminding the writer and/or reader of how people can make a difference and fight back against the evils of the world.

Struggling more with this bit, again. I don't know how to get through my general cynicism to feel that as "inspirational" instead of "deeply demoralizing because it doesn't work that way in real life."

Chapter 13 is about the importance of the relationships between your characters.

On relationships:

The author mentioned that it sort of unlocked things for her when she realized that she writes about relationships as a central aspect of her stories, rather than characters in isolation.

Big "me too!" reading that, haha.

It really is often some aspect of a relationship - for my stories, it's usually romantic, though hopefully with more layers to it as well - that creates that one scene that makes me want to tell the story as a whole. It's about the vibe, when something finally clicks between them that feels worthwhile. (It doesn't *have* to be romantic, of course, but I usually have at least a romantic b-plot.)

That's what tends to stick out the most for me in works that I most enjoy as well. I love good worldbuilding and fun plots... but it's often something about the way the characters themselves interact that really sticks things in my brain.

There are perfectly excellent exceptions out there, but in general that's the thing that grabs me.

Chapter 14 is titled "One Easy Way to Feel Better About the World," and it is about making your characters want something.

On wanting:

The thesis here is that allowing your characters to want things (whether those are good, achievable things, or impossible terrible ideas) can remind you that it's okay for you to want things in your life, too.

She's definitely right about how hard it can be to want things when everything is terrible. (She calls everything being awful "trash fondue," and that feels pretty accurate right now.) It feels small and petty and selfish to want things when things are in general so bad, when they may only get worse, when other people are in so much danger and suffering as well...

She's also right about how an awful lot of people (anyone marginalized in any way, in particular) are often already told that their wants and desires don't really matter, or that they should be quiet about them.
I agree that making characters desperately want something is one of the best ways to make them interesting and make a reader invested. (And is a good reminder for me as I try to NOT sand my characters down into nothing. Make them want, and make that guide their actions, rather than stumbling blandly from plot point to plot point.)

So this falls into... I'll try. Again with my cynicism and struggle with the world as it is right now... but I'll try! And maybe it will make me feel better, too.

Chapter 15 is about revising, and turning shallow emotion into deeper real emotions.

On emotion:

Couldn't agree more with this one! This is one of the things I find the most frustrating (though it at least seems to be a common complaint!) I'll have a super rich, detailed scene planned out in my head. Sometimes I've gone over this scene dozens of times in my head, as a daydream, when I'm falling asleep, when I'm actively trying to plan out story beats. It's super emotional and cool and well articulated, and every little detail has been accounted for... and then it's on the page and... oh no, what is this flat, terrible stick figure scene??
(One of my favorite relatable writer memes is about this. An image of Starry Night captioned "the scene in your head" and then a silly, blocky MS-Paint redraw of Starry Night captioned "the scene when you write it.")

So this chapter is about revising as a method of getting from that too-flat version to the richer, more viscerally emotional scene you've been envisioning.

She suggests three things to address this: The set up, drilling down into the specific details of the scene, and making sure that the character's specific buttons are being pushed. Set up is kind of like when talking about endings, where you go back and make sure that everything leading up to this point is setting it up properly. Details of the scene is looking into the small things that your character takes notice of or thinks about, which may or may not be directly related to the big Thing that's happening, but can hopefully make the scene itself feel richer and more grounded, as well as being realistic to how people tend to experience Big Emotions. Pushing character buttons is again about making sure the characters themselves have a nice strong foundation as to who they are, and why this thing impacts them so specifically and in what ways. It came with the helpful reminder to not be afraid of pushing your character's buttons.

All of this is good stuff, and is absolutely part of what I think I should be mindful of when going through the rewriting process. Especially the "don't be afraid to push your character's buttons." This is again, another symptom of the "sanding characters down to shapeless blobs" problem... but I am often afraid - or at least really reluctant - to needle at my characters, especially when it comes down to interpersonal interactions, and doubly when it's between a romantic pairing. Still fighting against the bad faith crit that I took far too much to heart, trying to ensure that relationships I wanted to be positive and supportive don't have any "toxic" conflict... which in the eyes of that bad-faith no-nuance crit is any conflict.

So. Good chapter, good things to keep track of!

Chapter 16 closes out part three with "Twelve Ways to Keep the Fun of Writing Alive"

On the 12 things:

Definitely a topic worth thinking about. I've struggled a lot on and off with continuing to enjoy writing. While I've always come back to it, I have often gone through patches where I got super burned out and just... couldn't find any reason that it seemed like a good idea to keep going.

1 - Rewards. Talks about rewarding yourself for successful writing sessions, but also on redefining what those sessions might look like. Sometimes it's better to focus on how a session felt rather than how many words you got. (Now, I do mostly track my wordcounts, but I try to give myself ways to track other necessary work, too. While I don't think I'll change wordcount being the primary measurement, I have encountered the downsides as well, when it comes to pushing overmuch for quantity even at the expense of quality on some sessions.)

2 - Make up stories. Have fun with low-stakes opportunities to make up stories just for fun. This... would probably be a good idea to try, though I'm also a bit scared to try, haha. I mentioned before how I feel like I don't have a wellspring of ideas to draw on, so it feels wrong to "waste" creative energy on ideas I don't intend to do anything with, but maybe it'd be a good thing to attempt.

3 - Cheat on your current project (jump between multiple different things to not get bogged down.) Noooo, my one weakness. This is the one thing that I feel categorically incapable of doing. I have tried to work on multiple things at once and it tends to just overwhelm me/burn me out/destroy my enthusiasm or inspiration for both projects, and make me not want to work on any of it. At the same time, this is what I'm trying to find a way to do! I want to try and bounce between projects... but in practice, it's always made me unhappy. I'm working on it!

4 - Community! Nooooo, my other weakness because there's actually more than one. I am a part of several online writing communities, and I should really try to start actually participating in them. And I do post completed fanfic to AO3 and such, and treasure when people like or comment on it... but it's up to them to decide if they want to read it or not. The idea of sharing excerpts with a group (not all of whom are necessarily interested in my thing specifically, and didn't choose to read it), especially a real-life group, gives me hives. I think I'd rather just not write.

5 - Find a routine. Yes! This has been helpful... er, mostly. I haven't really been able to carve out the time as something super special or distinct (in a shared one-room apartment it's hard to carve out much space.) But I have tried to at least sort of get a routine together, where the time between finishing other stuff (sim game, dinner, DW, etc.) and taking the dogs out for their final trip of the night, is time that is just devoted to writing. It's mostly worked! Unfortunately, if any of the other stuff gets derailed or takes longer (if I'm making a longer DW post, I have a lot to catch up on with friends, there's something else I need to do at home, we had to run an errand, etc.) then the writing is usually what ends up getting steamrolled. I may need to still find new ways to prioritize.

6 - Make time to read. Can confirm, this has helped, or at least I think so. I have spent multiple years struggling to find time to read, and I've often not even tried to carve out more time, because it would specifically cut into my writing time. Trying to make more time for reading this year (granted, only a month so far) has led to MORE writing, not less. (Again, data for a single month only, but promising so far.)

7 - Reread something of your own that you like. I haven't done this for a morale boost, though I have gone back to reread things, because hey, I wrote them because they were a story I wanted to have exist. I like reading stories! So I have done this, though I don't know if I have any short little bits that I'm especially proud of.

8 - Change how you write (typing vs. hand writing vs. dictation etc.) I ostensibly have a notebook that I carry with me specifically to make sure that I can always write if the fancy takes me. It helps at work, because writing in a notebook doesn't seem as sus as long unbroken strings of typing, ha. And it means while waiting for an appointment or in the car, I'm free to jot down notes that occur to me. In practice... I don't do a lot of actual writing in it. I do a lot of planning, and a lot of daily "what I intend to do" things, but little actual writing. I should try to do more, but I'm very afraid of it being spied on at some point. And since I only want to work on one thing at a time, I don't like having two different continuities of scenes to deal with. But I should try to push through, because it was helpful in the past.

9 - Leave things that are broken, and just move on: you really will figure out how to sort it out later. Eeeeh... I remain unconvinced. It sounds solid, I want to believe it! Sometimes I have left "uh, somehow they get to point B with xyz" and that is fine. But this comes paired with the "eat your dessert first"/"write the bits you're most excited for first" advice. This advice has very strongly NOT worked for me. If I write all the cool bits that I'm excited for, I have approximately zero motivation to try and do the connecting bits that do not excite me. And when those cool bits are all I have written, but they also feel flatter than I want them to (per the earlier discussion about revising as a chance to layer in the important emotions), then it seems like even the cool bits aren't good, and the idea as a whole should go in the trash.

10 - Write random bits, even if they don't have a place yet/ever. She talks about having a separate "dump file" where snippets of dialogue or random scenes go. This is something I have very often done, and it is definitely worthwhile! This is also as close as I let myself get to writing the cool bits first - if there's some really strong image or line of dialogue that I love for it, I put it here to wait its turn.

11 - Keep brainstorming. She mentions not taking your work too seriously, and remembering that all of it can be considered temporary and changeable. (Not that the work isn't serious, but that you don't have to treat your outline as if it were carved in stone, or be overly precious about what you've written or planned.) A good thing to keep in mind, especially if a cool new idea comes to you but contradicts the original plan in some way. It's worth letting yourself explore.

12 - It's okay to feel crappy about your writing. This does feel contradictory to the "keep it fun" advice, which she acknowledges, but I like her point. Treat it like a point of curiosity and try to troubleshoot the problem. Is it general burnout? Is it dissatisfaction with the project? Is it something in your non-writing life getting in the way? Etc. I think back to last year when I had months-long block that wouldn't let me write much of anything... and ultimately really did figure out that I was mostly feeling guilty for having fallen behind on my part in editing a friend's project. The longer it took, the worse I felt, and the more anxious I was about acknowledging it at all... but it felt deeply wrong to try and focus on my own stuff when I was holding her up. Once I bit the bullet on that one and got caught up with her stuff, and profusely apologized for how long I'd let it take, I was able to start thinking about my things again.

And now we're into Part Four!

Chapter 17 is about how writing is inherently political.

On writing politics:

I feel like I'm not sure what to say about this chapter... I just sort of feel like "yup! Correct!" Though I think I was in a poor mindset when I read this chapter, and felt uncharitably cranky toward it.

I absolutely agree that yes, writing is political, because there are always assumptions and biases in place from you as the author, how the issues within the work interact with the current world (and I like the point about how the same story may feel very different depending on what is going on in the world at the time), what you're expecting based on genre and intended audience, etc.

It does talk about the risks of clumsy metaphor, which is a good reminder, and how it's often a good idea to complicate the tropes and metaphors you decide to utilize. Simplistic "this is an obvious stand-in for real world group x" tends to feel shallow and insulting when it's poorly thought out and lacks depth. Making it more complicated can make it more about the actual situations and characters you're writing about (with similarities to real life situations) instead, which can actually make it matter more.

I understand and agree with the idea that everything is inherently going to be political, and I even agree about how important it is to see reflected in the things we write and read... And she talks again about the inspiration to be found in seeing the struggles and triumphs of very real-seeming characters dealing with their own situations. I know that this is true, and is one of the things I genuinely love about fiction! It's part of why I read, if not always why I write (though sometimes that, too.) 

Right now that just still feels... exhausting. Trying to reflect the important politics of the disaster world we're in right now just feels... pointless. I don't think that it is pointless, it just feels pointless. 

(I'm trying to think about like... the fact it's important to me to see fiction that treats queer characters and relationships well, even if politically it feels terrifying right now in the real world to be queer and to care about so many queer loved ones who are also terrified. It's important to me to see, it's something I actively seek in what I read, and it's important to me to include in any of the writing I do... but when it comes to doing the writing, it also feels like a pointless thing that can never be enough to matter.)

Frustratingly, I think I might just be too pessimistic right now for the hopeful messages to reach me, even though I'm trying.

I've been continuing to read Never Say You Can't Survive by Charlie Jane Anders one chapter per night.

Chapter 5 was about the sort of crux of the whole thing, to me. What do you write about when everything is on fire?

On what to write:

This is the biggest issue that I'm having, and at least part of why I'm reading this book. When the whole world feels like it's just the worst, how can I justify spending time and energy on writing frivolous stories? How can I be happy about them, or stressed about them, or think they hold any value compared to the evils of the world?

And I'm not sure that I have an answer for that, still.

I appreciate the point that the book is making, saying that the right thing to be writing is whatever you want to write. What you want to write, not anything that you feel like you "should" be writing. (I do also very much appreciate that the author is supportive of all sorts of writing, giving room for even the most-maligned genres to be valuable and legitimate.)

I'm just still trying to believe it!

The thing that was honestly most convincing so far, while trying to get myself to believe this central tenet, was the author talking about writing back in September of 2001.

September 11th happened, and it was such a major, life- and culture-altering event, it was very hard for her at the time to feel okay working on her queer identity exploration novel that she was writing. It seemed like she "should" be writing about war, or something else "of the moment."

Now I can't imagine how awful it would be if every book that came out in the years after September 11, 2001 had been devoted to The Big Issues. I am so glad that every book that came out when I was in middle and high school and beyond was not solely confined to being about The War.

(But at the same time, the author's book about exploring queer identity and gender and such does seem far more important than anything I'll be writing, ha.)

It does also make me think about how there's basically always horrible shit going down somewhere. It will never be practical to wait for a perfectly peaceful, conflict-free time in order to write.

I'm not sure I'm yet convinced of the inherent value in my stories specifically. In general yes, I fully do believe that it matters to keep writing stories of all kinds, no matter what is happening in the wider world. The weird little queer romances, the aspirational stories of worlds without the kinds of prejudice that we're facing in our real lives, or conversely, stories that examine the hatred and fear and pain and portray it writ large, or the horror stories that make the horror a very literal Thing... 

I'm just still working to feel that my stories are included in that.

Then it was on to part two of the book!

Chapter 6 started part two with a chapter on starting more projects than you finish.

On false starts:

Basically the point was that it's a good thing to treat stories like first dates, in a way. It's okay to start something and then realize that it's just not working the way you'd hoped. It's okay to do this several times, until you find the right one to work with. And nothing says you can't come back to an old idea, even if it didn't work the first time around.

Again, this is nice to hear someone else say, haha. I tend to want to finish everything I start, and am reluctant to start things unless I think I'm going to finish them. Maybe it would be worthwhile to start a few things just to see whether they pan out, and not feel bad about it (or try to force myself to stick with it) if it isn't working.

(Though I think I sometimes do run into an issue where I can't quite tell if it just isn't working as a whole, or if I've just hit a snag that will ultimately be worth pushing through. Is the project not working or is it just me struggling? I may have to learn to discern between those sorts of issues better.)

It does make me feel slightly less bad about a couple projects I've started and then just utterly failed to get anywhere with. Several were old NaNo projects that I had a lot of initial enthusiasm for... but then just a little ways in discovered I had no idea how to make it do what I'd hoped for, or just couldn't get the different components to gel into something that worked.

This section also brought up the fairly common "advice" (or just... saying, more than advice) that ideas are cheap. There are infinite ideas out there, so you shouldn't approach writing with a scarcity mindset. It's okay if an idea doesn't pan out the way you'd hoped, because there will always be more and more ideas to try out.

I'm really trying to avoid that scarcity mindset, but this is something that I have some actual anxiety around. Because I used to have endlessly spawning ideas that occurred to me as easy as breathing, it seemed like. Mostly through high school. I still have those word documents started back then, and have been adding to those lists of story ideas (for fanfic and original) for twenty years or so now! 

Random things inspired those sorts of ideas - advertisements for media I was unfamiliar with, daydreaming on a car ride, a particular stuffed animal, snippets of song lyrics, what I wished would have happened in a different story's plot, dreams, someone else's comment or conversation, etc. Then at some point it just... kind of stopped. I've gone a year or more at a time adding at best one or two ideas to those lists. Sometimes none. 

I can just go for upsettingly long time periods without thinking of anything that seems like an interesting story seed. I don't know if the problem is truly that I have no ideas that occur to me, or if I've just gotten bad at following them, or recognizing them when they do occur... I have enough backlogged ideas that I'm still in no danger of truly running out (and even one or two ideas per year is more than I can reliably turn into completed works!)

To an extent, this is maybe the place where I feel the keenest sense of impostor syndrome. All the "real writers" talk about how they get endless ideas, how ideas are cheap, how anyone can come up with a dozen ideas before breakfast, and how the true hard part is narrowing it down to the ones worth exploring... So the fact that I don't have all these great ideas flooding my brain at all times makes me feel like I must not really be much of a writer!

(Though maybe the author here is right too, that the more ideas you do explore, the more ideas come to you. Perhaps the dearth of ideas has simply been the longer tail of the years and years I did almost no writing at all. I've been writing again for a few years, but maybe getting a few more things out, whether completed or even just started, will help unstick the ideas themselves, too.)

Chapter 7 was about how writing a complete story is just writing good scene after good scene, and the importance of each individual scene.

On scenes:

This is definitely worthwhile advice. It's not the first time I've heard it, but it's a really useful reminder about the importance of those individual blocks that you're building the story out of.

This is also what I'm currently... not struggling with, exactly, but am very aware of in my current WIP. I've basically stumbled through the most basic versions of the various middle scenes, and have managed to keep up a good pace at writing... but I'm also extremely aware that they are very basic versions of those scenes, and that they should be more interesting, have more tension, go through something a bit more dramatic, or introduce more conflict of some kind. Right now I'm happy enough to leave that for a much-needed future rewrite, and am turning over some ideas for how to improve it in the back of my mind, but it was sort of nice and validating to see advice that so exactly syncs up with what I'm currently noticing.

(And at one point it was very exact, haha. I was already sort of thinking about what I was working on, and the specific scenes I want to rewrite... which include a meal and the character going shopping. The next bit of the chapter gave examples of "lower-stakes" scenes that can still be given a lot of tension... and used arguing over lunch and a shopping trip as the examples, lol. Uncanny.)

Sometimes I think I do think of scenes in a bit too much of a utilitarian fashion, where I treat some of the scenes that have to happen, but aren't terribly interesting in and of themselves, as necessary stepping stones to get to the next "good part." I definitely need to work harder to just... make that scene good, too. Not to make every scene have a huge, dramatic conflict, but to make sure that there's some arc to it. There should be some sort of tension to make it worth continuing forward.

Chapter 8 is about change, specifically the need for characters to change throughout a story, as well as how seeing that potential for change is one of the ways that stories can be inspiring.

On change:

Here is one of the specific areas I struggle with! It's nice to see it laid out in a fairly straightforward way, just so I can try to make sure I'm keeping it in mind and can try to do what I can to improve my work.

This is mostly a continuation of the issues I have with sanding my characters down until they're just smooth blobs of nothing... that also means it's really hard to give them much growth or ability to drive their own stories. This is fear-based and not helpful, and very much what I'm working to overcome. (And she does acknowledge that the desire for a character to be "likeable" is sometimes a culprit for struggles with this.)

I liked her discussion of how this is usually called a "character arc", but that arc implies both a rise and a fall. She gives the additional example of pressure turning coal into a diamond as another way to look at how a character could change.

Making sure that my characters have definite wants/desires/goals and have to actually experience some sort of change is... just something I need to keep in mind and work at.

(I think this has been easier when it comes to fanfic - I write AUs, but already have characters that I'm working with. I can extrapolate how their wants and needs and flaws would apply to a new setting and new plot, and I like to think that I do reasonably well with that.

When it comes to characters I'm creating, that's when I struggle to make characters with enough edge to them [since I don't mean that in the "edgy" sense, maybe I'll just say enough "texture"] to be interesting. They need rough spots to interact with other characters or the world or the plot. When I've sanded them down into a shapeless blob, I can't figure out their true motivations or points of conflict or flaws. And if I don't find them interesting enough to write a story about, then no one is going to want to read about them either.) 

I will say that I remain less convinced about seeing characters in fiction change as being inspiring in real life. She talks a bit about how real life change for the better can and does happen, but it feels glacial and difficult... In fiction we can see the change happen, but even if it's slow in-story, we still see it happen over the course of reading a book. 

I have found fictional characters inspiring to me when I am working to become better at something or about something. (Blorbo from my book grew out of this attitude/wouldn't say that to someone/wouldn't let this stop them! Maybe that's cringe, but I don't care.) 

But in general? I think I'm just... too cynical about things right now. A recent book I read, for instance, featured a background character changing from a minor antagonist in the first book to at least a sort of neutral-to-minorly-heroic ally at the end of the second. It's meant to be inspiring, that even someone who was once a bigot can realize the error of his ways and stand against the true bad guys to protect the neighbors he was once so prejudiced against... but to me it just felt very artificial, because right now, I do not believe that kind of change is realistic in the slightest. I do not believe that the bigots of the real world will do anything except grow more bigoted and empowered to do harm.

In that case, fiction showing me the change that I wish would happen in the real world does not inspire me to believe it's possible... it reminds me that that was more of a fantasy than the magical creatures in the novel.

(Though perhaps the author means it more in the sense of main characters going through change; it might seem less of an impossible fantasy if you get to see the character's internal journey.)

Chapter 9 is about plotting.

On plotting:

This section talks about two components of the plot: plot devices (all the stuff that happens) and turning points (the spots at which the story changes.)

It was nice not to hear about "plot devices" in a sort of condescending/disapproving tone. It's one of those neutral descriptors that I mostly hear people sneer at in bad crit. "Ugh, that was just such an obvious plot device." Uh, yeah. Because the plot of the story is in fact a plot. (To be fair, the chapter also talks about how a really good plot starts to feel like more than just the combination of those two things. I think some of that sneering is what happens with a weak plot, where that scaffolding is just still a little too visible. But like with "tropes" [which this book promises to discuss but hasn't gotten to yet], it feels like people have gone a bit overboard with declaring "plot devices" to be some sort of evil in writing, when they're actually a building block.)

That was a tangent.

It was a relief to have her repeat - a couple times! - that it is not a bad thing for an early draft to have fairly easily replaced or substituted plot devices. If you aren't sure why the characters go somewhere to do a thing, it's okay if you end up changing the motivation later on. (Though at some point it becomes a lot more difficult to do that without changing a lot more about the work, as those devices become more embedded in the plot as a whole.)

This chapter also talks about rethinking two different binaries that a lot of writing advice focuses on: planner vs pantser and character- vs. plot-driven. She suggests looking at these as spectrums rather than either/or, which is another thing I was happy to see! I'm probably more heavily to the planner side, but not to the exclusion of following tangents or having to redo an outline midway through because the story worked better going in a different direction. The character vs plot one has always bugged me deeply, because the works I truly love and care most about focus so heavily on both!

I think the thing I appreciated most was her saying "it's an ecosystem!" in regards to why something might not be working. If the plot lacks urgency, maybe it's because there's not enough tension in the devices being used. Maybe that's because the character motivations themselves are weak. Remembering that all the aspects have to fit and work and influence each other is really important.

Chapter 10 is about putting your characters through bad things

On the bad stuff:

Still sorting my feelings out on this one, I think.

Basically good reminders that a) you don't have to put your characters through the worst things imaginable if you don't want to. There are other ways to develop tension and raise stakes. b) Particularly in a real-world climate where everything is awful (she mentions "cruelty becoming public policy" and boy does THAT hurt right now), you really may not want to or be able to handle having similar levels of horrible things happening to your characters (though if you do want to fictionalize or explore real horror, that's also valid!)

There's also some discussion about whether particular terrible things are necessary to include or not, as well as respectful/realistic depictions of trauma as response to those horrible things. I admittedly have a really knee-jerk negative reaction to people bringing that sort of thing up, because there's so much discourse of the "you should never ever depict a bad thing, or else you're automatically condoning it, and you need to consider ~the implications~ of including something and ~take responsibility~ for it, and anyway, ew, why would you want to write Bad Things unless you're a Bad Person" type.

BUT. Thee discussion in this chapter is a lot more nuanced than that, and isn't condemning the choice to include terrible or traumatic things. It's not about never depicting something terrible, it's just about being thoughtful when you do (and not forcing yourself to do so.) Make it a decision to include or not, rather than doing so out of a sense of obligation to the genre or current trends. (She's not wrong about the way in which people will insist that horrible thing after horrible thing in a grimdark story is "realistic", while finding good things happening to be inherently unrealistic unless they are very carefully "earned.")

I don't think I often do so much of the "torturing my characters" thing, and probably need to allow them to go through more bad things, haha. But yes, it's worthwhile to remember that "just make things worse forever" isn't actually the only way to write a story.

Chapter 11 was about endings.

On endings:

Oh no, another weak point! I love when something I'm reading really nails the ending. (And *not* nailing the ending of books I otherwise enjoyed was just my strongest complaint about two of the fiction books I read in January. Though maybe I should say they just didn't nail the ending that I was hoping for.)

I'm not sure if the endings of my stories tend to really hit with the strength one could hope for. Some fics probably have, or at least I like to think so. (I really like the end of that Silent Hill fic I wrote, though I'm not sure it could have ended in any other way.)

With my original stuff... unfortunately a lot of times the ending is something I have the least idea about when I'm going into the thing. I usually have ideas for a few pivotal scenes, and maybe a sense of where the characters start out... but not so much what the actual ending is.

The advice in here is definitely something I'll try to use... That you can come up with the best, most amazing ending possible, and then you can go back and write the rest of the story in a way that will earn that ending. Figure out what makes that ending as cool/impactful/exciting/dramatic as you wanted it to be, and go back through the story to put in everything you need to get up to that point.

...But I still need to figure out what those endings are.

I am NOT looking forward to the "arctic blast" we're supposed to get tomorrow. ;-; Sounds like we may have a couple of days where the high temperatures could be below zero. I hate it already! At least the heat is fixed, and we still have the forbidden space heater from my mom. Dreading having to get out to go to work, and dreading the night-time dog outings. Ugh.

-

Cy was sick for a couple days early in the week, which wasn't fun. Somehow, for better or worse, he seems to time it for my exact weekend - he's done it a couple times now! At least that means it's not the worst hardship when I have to get up with him several times overnight and end up with only a few hours of sleep, but it sucks that it means I spend a chunk of my weekend napping.

This time was just some sort of stomach trouble. Couldn't keep food down, obviously uncomfortable, wanted to go out more often than usual. It started with an emergency bathroom trip at 5:00 on Monday morning, and then it was pretty clear when it finally stopped for him around 4:00 on Tuesday morning when he stopped grumbling and fell asleep. Glad it ran its course pretty quickly, but man is it not my favorite to stay up all night for it. (Alex sleeps through everything. I always get up a couple times a night to tuck Cy back into his bed, because he's a spoiled monster who wants to be under a blanket and still doesn't like having to sleep on his own bed. Usually I fall right back asleep within ten or so minutes, but if I have to take him outside, I'll be all the way awake, and it's usually a couple hours at least before I can get back to sleep.)
I'm also just always worried that any illness or injury could be The One. He's old, and doesn't bounce back like he used to. (Plus he had the big mystery illness that nearly killed him many years ago, so I'm always afraid the instant there's a Symptom, heh.)

-

On a more positive side, writing and reading have been going really well this week! I've actually now finished three books and am working on a fourth! Granted, one of those was one of the ones that was incomplete from last year, and one was a novella, but I'm actually on pace-ish for a much more ambitious total than the original goal of 25. I don't know that I will manage to stay at that pace, but I'm riding the enthusiasm as far as I can.

I already mentioned a tentative plan to alternate novels and Wayward Children novellas, at least until I get through a few of the books that were "high priority" for various reasons. After completing those "high priority" books (Somewhere Beyond the Sea, Never Say You Can't Survive, and Trouble and Her Friends), then my plan is to alternate novel - Wayward Children novella - ebook, all from the TBR list. For the ebooks, I'm starting with the humble bundle of horror books. We'll see how I do once I'm trying to read more serious ebooks, since ebooks have historically been a struggle for me. (I've done well enough with the lighter romancey ebooks, but partially because it's not terribly hard to reorient myself in the story/remember where I left off, and I'm less concerned about forgetting minor details that could be super important. With some of the denser novels, I'm a little more concerned about missing details, but hopeful that I'll maintain my focus!)

While the goal I set at the start of the year was to get through 25 books, mixing my TBRs with fluffier ebook fare, that would barely put a dent in the TBR list, so I've set a "stretch" goal of sorts. I'd really like to get through 44 of my TBRs. 40 that I already have, plus the four new releases that I'm most excited for this year (which will jump the line as soon as I get them.) That's just under a book a week, which is not historically a pace I'm good at maintaining by any stretch. Though some are novellas which may go much quicker, others are longer and denser. That also isn't counting any of the fluffier ebooks that I still intend to use as time-fillers, or any of the books I read with Alex or Taylor, which wouldn't be part of that 44 book goal. 

I've also written almost every day for the last week, and while I don't think I'll finish the rough draft of the current WIP, I also can't be mad that I'm moving along at a steady clip.

-

I'm trying to decide about participating in NaMoPaiMo next month. (National Model Painting Month.) The woman who organizes it has had a really rough year, and the last couple months have been especially terrible. Her horse died just a few weeks ago, and her family home is in Altadena. While it's still standing for now, she's watched a lot of familiar places burn down. She's still planning on running the event, though. That makes me want to participate, because I want it to feel worth it to her, and it's often a big fun social thing for the hobby, but... I also know that historically, putting my energy toward that means that it is the ONLY creative thing I end up doing. I'm doing so well on my reading and writing goals that I don't want to put those on hold for a month (also knowing that such a long break means I often struggle to reestablish the routine.)

My project from last year - the art deco/stained glass peacock horse - has also done well at a couple of shows (including getting first place in his class from a really well-known artist), which is super flattering, and makes me want to do another. (Alex suggested I do something in reds, since I have blues/greens with the peacock and purple with the wisteria one... maybe roses? I could try and put together a stained glass-ish rose pattern... It's a little tempting to do something really dramatic like a dragon, but it's also relatively common for people to do dramatic resculpts of horses into dragons, and so I'm afraid one that just has a dragon painted on it will look quite basic in comparison, haha.)

I should decide soon, since ideally I'd get whatever I need to prepped before the challenge starts on February 01.

Today was at least less of a miserable slog. Still overly busy with too much to do, and no ability to anything extra, but I did get caught up with the things that I had to punt from yesterday.

Still no news of the instructor who didn't come in this week. It feels just really unlike him, so I'm more worried as time goes by, but also don't know how I'd find out anything.

-

I think my original plan today was to figure out my TBR list for this year, because... well, rather than shrinking, it's definitely grown! But I don't think I have quite the brain power for that tonight. Though maybe I can at least start to read something.

I also need to sit down and look at my writing plan again. December was sort of a wash on that front, but we were busy enough with other things that it doesn't bother me too much.

-

For the first time in a while it actually feels like winter, and was snowing as I left work. (Though about a mile or so away from my office, there was a very stark line between where it had snowed and where it had not.)

We have a lot of fog, which is a nicely spooky atmospheric setting... ~just like Silent Hill~ I promise to not say every single time but unfortunately it is very cold and it sucks.

They STILL have not fixed our heat. I don't think Alex followed up with them when he was supposed to. Understandable when he was sick. My mom loaned us a space heater, so now I'm afraid he just feels like it isn't urgent because the space heater is nicely efficient. I can call them, but it'll have to wait until Monday. The space heater, plus the fact that we're on an upper floor and heat rises, has kept it from getting too cold, but dammit, they still need to get it fixed!

I am actually writing one of these up close to the beginning of the month. Will wonders never cease?

( January - October: )

( How did November go? )

My goals for December:

• Finish the rough draft of the iddy romance. This may be a bit unrealistic, because I am less than halfway through the story at the moment. Granted, it didn't get my full focus in November, but I also wanted to set a smaller goal for December. (I know that the holiday stuff will derail me for a bit, plus I have other stuff that I'm wanting to work on.)
• So for a maybe more-achievable goal: write 15000 words for the month. (Mostly on the iddy romance, but on whatever I end up working on.) That's only 500 per day, and while I'm not on pace for that, there's at least hope that I could hit it.
• I need to set my goals for 2025. I plan to still do both getyourwordsout and inkingitout for next year. For GYWO I've been at the 75k goal level for a couple years, and have gone past it both times... I'm considering nudging up to the 150k goal, but I think it'll be difficult for me to meet it, so I'm not sure. (Some people are more motivated by a goal that's difficult to reach; I find it extremely demoralizing to try for something I can't do, and it tends to make me quit completely. I wish there was a 100k level, but alas.)
• Not quite writing related, but one reason I want to lower my goal for the month is that I want to try and focus on reading. I bogged down bad mid-year on reading, so I'm not at my goal, but I'd like to see how close I can get. (I'm currently part way through four books: one physical book, one ebook, one book I'm reading with Taylor, one book I'm reading with Alex. The two that I'm reading with other people I can't rush the pace on, but I'm hopeful I can get through a few more on my own. Not sure I can get through more than a book a week, but we'll see!)
• Considering trying to outline the holiday rom-com AU thing. It's not typically my type of story (which was part of the idea behind it: how can I make that type of story into my thing?) But this year I'm surprisingly enthusiastic about the holidays? I feel all festive and shit, it's weird! Maybe this would be a good thing to channel it into.

For January and beyond:

I'm less sure of this than I felt last month, but...

• In January, actually finish the iddy romance
• Also January, start outlining the Cyberpunk AU that I want to write next
• February, start writing the Cyberpunk AU
• February, start outlining a fantasy romance original thing
• March, continue on the Cyberpunk AU
• March, start on the snowflake outline for the Worldhopping Fairytale Monstrosity AU
• April, continue/finish the snowflake outline
• April, finish the rough draft of the Cyberpunk AU, if needed
• April, start writing the fantasy romance thing

That's very tentative, and I may end up doing completely different things, or in a completely different order. Depends what happens this month and how I'm feeling in the new year!

I am barely creeping earlier in the month with these. At least this one is (barely) within the first half of the month!

( January - September: )

( How did October go? )

My goals for November

Well, the primary one was "Novella November" - to write 30k for the month. My intent was to do this on the Kingdom Hearts Angels and Demons AU. (Two angels and one demon are sent to influence a pair of humans. Some other people involve themselves.)

Unfortunately, I hit a major wall with it.

( More on said wall-hitting: )

I was also already really feeling dissatisfied with the writing quality in what I'd gotten done, which I was trying to push through because I was hoping this would be just "shaking the rust off," but with nothing about the fic feeling worthwhile... I think this one needs to go back into the "maybe someday" pile.

So that leaves me scrambling to find a new project in order to get something done with this month. I've written almost nothing since the election, so I am likely too far behind to accomplish the Novella November goal, but I want to at least try.

( I've got three possibilities for what to try and pivot to: )

I thought I was pretty set on the cyberpunk AU, but on further consideration, I think I should go for the iddy romance. It's the thing that I actually have outlined, and can just get straight into writing it. If I'm really wanting to still hit 30k for the month, I probably need to go for ease.

This does mean that I likely won't have anything ready to share until closer to the middle of next year, assuming I focus on a fic after that, but oh well.

Plans for December and beyond:

• December: finish the first draft of the iddy romance
• December: outline the Cyberpunk AU
• January - February: rough draft of the Cyberpunk AU
• February - March: outline the first part of the worldhopping fairytale monstrosity (possibly working on the more in-depth snowflake outline method for the story as a whole)
• March: outline a different iddy romance
• April: work on the second draft of the Cyberpunk AU

The above is obviously pretty tentative. It assumes that I can make myself write at all, and also that I keep up a fairly steady level of productivity. As always, I'd love things to go faster than planned (if an outline only takes a couple weeks, I could start a rough draft earlier.) In all likelihood, things will go slower than planned, lol. Something will need to be reworked, or I'll get burned out, or something else will come up. I could also change my mind and decide that something else catches my interest more!

( A pessimistic whinge: )

("Yeses" looks like a garbage fake word.)

Continuing my cataloging of fanfiction ideas for personal posterity...

After narrowing down the top 20 fic ideas I'd selected, I whittled it down to eight that I want to actually try to get outlined:

Kingdom Hearts: Cyberpunk AU
This is one of those ideas that keeps coming back, ha. The KH series explores a lot of different themes that I feel like sync up well with cyberpunk as a genre, especially exploring identity and self and what it means.
The plot is regarding the nobodies of KH2 as clones of the “somebodies” in question, and people who want to control them vs. their desire for control over their own lives, plus how much it matters to the people that they’re clones of. The main trio are hired to investigate a supposed “break in” at Kairi’s father’s lab, and are told to get stolen tech back... but it turns out it was more of an escape than a break in, and some of those escaped clones include genetic material taken from Kairi and Sora. At one point I’d intended for this to parallel the canon as closely as possible, while shifting to a different setting and genre, but that’s not really my intent any longer.

Pros and Cons of this fic:

Pros: It’s a genre I like but haven’t ever tried to write for. I like the ways in which the themes intersect and think it will be fun, and as mentioned above, I think it's a really suitable genre. I hope that I can make this a fairly mid-length story, though that’s maybe debatable. I’ve thought about this one on and off for long enough that I have at least a little bit of a plan in place.
Cons: There are aspects of this that are very similar to the conceit of Potentials; that there are alternate versions of the mains. But that’s basically the canon, so I’m not too worried about that. I’m not extremely well-read in the cyberpunk genre, so I know it is possible that I could trip over in-genre issues/cliches that I’m unaware of. I do want it to suit the cyberpunk aesthetic, but I also want to try and make sure the thematic underpinnings are there too, but I think those are. Somewhat unfortunately, I’m given to understand that there are a lot of applicable themes that are explored differently and with different characters later in the KH storyline... after the point where I’d sort of noped out. I did at one point put this idea on hold in the hopes of catching up with canon and using those future bits as further fodder for this fic, but at this point I don’t think the canon catch up will ever happen, so I have to risk my story feeling as if it’s “missed” obvious connections.

Silent Hill: Documentary
This one is intended to be a longer SH fic. The main character is a young woman planning to do a documentary on the weird history of Silent Hill. She brings her brother along, an urban explorer looking for new places to explore, plus their mutual friend who is focused on a more traditional local history. The three quickly wind up drawn into bizarre happenings of their own within the town.
It’s probably the one that’s the most “game” like, as in it’s about a specific character coming to the town and experiencing the classic fog and otherworld horror aspects. It’s also fairly self-indulgent in terms of how much I want to look at my favorite bits of lore. Though because it is somewhat similar to the games, I wanted to incorporate some sense of the multiple outcomes that the games offer, which originally I figured would just mean having a couple different endings, though I wasn’t completely sure how I’d make that work for the story.
The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like maybe I should incorporate more of a choice system... as in ultimately making this a Choose Your Own Adventure story, to at least some degree. However, I’d need to figure out how to design it to both make the choices feel like they matter, while also not making any of the paths miss the bulk of the plot. I don’t want it to require a bunch of read-throughs to get all the bits, but also don’t want the choices to be meaningless.

Pros and Cons of this fic:

Pros: The fun and challenge of writing a CYOA story! The more I've thought about it, the more I find that to be an exciting thing to attempt. I also really enjoyed writing the last Silent Hill fic I did, and want to write another horror-focused story. It is fairly self-indulgent in terms of liking to explore all the fun settings and lore bits that I like, and I count self-indulgence as a positive. And I am really proud of one specific game setting that I adapted to the fic setting.
Cons: The challenge of writing a CYOA story! It’ll require some research on how best to structure those. It’s also a little bit of a “risk” because if the paths branch too much, it’s possible a reader would completely miss large parts of the story... which with a fandom that’s as small in terms of fic reading as SH, could mean it basically doesn’t get read at all. I also feel a bit like I already wrote my “better” SH fic idea in Outbreak, which makes me feel like this is a step backwards. Though I hope it’s more just different. (Outbreak did feel more unique, though.)

Silent Hill: "Ghost Town"
Another Silent Hill fic! This one was inspired by a very specific place we used to drive through (abandoned train tracks!) and some idle daydreaming about it. I was initially planning to nix this one, because the idea for it was so small... but in looking at it, I sort of found a plot that interests me more. Basically the idea is about the influence from Silent Hill spreading farther beyond its borders, in this case, via a missionary from the town who traveled out west, spreading the early cult’s message. Now there are still lingering traces of his presence and the corruption that it spread.

Pros and Cons of this fic:

Pros: Again, some more horror writing, which is something I find fun. I’m also pretty happy with the newer version of the plot, which has some shiny and new vibes still.
Cons: This one probably needs some research, because I want to make the history of the missionary feel appropriate to the time period. I think that is very doable, but again... needs research. Looking into spiritualism and occultism in the old west will be an interesting topic, but that still takes a lot of effort and time commitment for something that's not likely to have any real readership. I also would need to work to make it fit within the lore of the series, though it may just have to get a bit handwavey.

Kingdom Hearts: Angels and Demons AU
This story idea has been rattling around in my brain for several years now. I think it probably came about right around when the first season of Good Omens dropped, though it’s not at all based on it. The angels and demons of this story are more like... I don’t know, that CLAMP series “Wish” or something. That sort of... utterly not-accurate-to-any-religious-portrayal sort of thing that at least felt pretty popular in the anime of my teenhood. Really, I just like pretty people with wings. I’ve got Riku, Kairi, and Naminé as my angels, with Axel as a demon trying to thwart them, while they’re sent to watch over mortal Sora and Roxas, plus Xion when she shows up. Riku has a lot of particular angst because he’s afraid of falling. All three of the guardian angels wind up falling for their charges, and so does demon Axel. I need to sort out the ending, because I’m all about my happy endings, but I don’t want it to feel TOO contrived for everyone to get theirs.

Pros and Cons of this fic:

Pros: Pretty people with wings! This is one that has a lot of iddy potential that I want to really lean into. I’m perfectly happy for it to be basically blasphemy all around. I get to write a ship I haven’t ever actually written for (Axel/Roxas/Naminé/Xion) in addition to my usual.
Cons: I have some strong angst about how much I hate the over-prevalence of Christian iconography and such, and the whole general “culturally Christian” country we’re stuck with, and I feel like using angels and demons, even as just what amounts to romance tropes, is furthering it in some tiny way... but then again, it’s angels and demons having threesomes and moresomes with humans and each other, so this is pretty fucking blasphemous, and I kind of enjoy that.
The other big con of it for me is that second ship is going to be a HIGHLY controversial one to write in this fandom. Axel/Roxas is super polarizing - it was one of the absolute top ships in the fandom back when the second game came out (what with lines like “he made me feel like I had a heart” and all), but sometime after that, it became the pet target of the fandom antis. They have decided that it’s an unconscionable age gap (even though canonically both characters are fantasy!clones who have existed for the exact same amount of time, and even the "somebodies" they're clones of don't have an age gap of more than a few years), or the fact that there's arguably a "found family" vibe to Axel, Roxas, and Xion, that means Axel must be their "father", which creeps me out about 100 times more, to be honest. But that also means the ship gets derided as “basically incest” despite them... not being related. SO it’s quite possible that this would be the first fic I’d write that could be the target of some pretty nasty and vitriolic antis, which is a thing I’ve watched happen to people I know in the fandom, and that does make me nervous. I know I can archive lock and all, and if it bothers any of my “regular” readers, then they should mind the pairing tags.

Sparrow Hill Road x Alice Isn't Dead crossover
I love this idea, and I’ve wanted to write it for years now. Sparrow Hill Road was a really fun book (I liked the second and third books as well, though I enjoyed the first one being a set of self-contained short stories about Rose, rather than the bigger plot of the second and third.) Alice Isn’t Dead was a fun podcast. Both of them have great spooky road trip/liminal spaces vibes, and I think having the two of them intersect would be great! It’s not a long or involved plot, and would probably be a pretty short fic, with Keisha picking Rose up as a hitchhiker, and then encountering some sort of monster. Probably at least one mention of “your Alice better not be Alice Healy...”

Pros and Cons of this fic:

Pros: How great a crossover I think this would be! It’s also a short fic, which is nice. I had a pretty complete outline already, I think.
Cons: I need to do a canon refresh on both of these. It’s been a while since I read the book, and while I’m happy to set this fic sometime around that time (so not taking into account all those later plot developments), I still need to remember what all the norms for Rose *are.* Ghost abilities, limitations, timeline, etc. It’s also been a long while since I listened to Alice Isn’t Dead, and I feel like I have chunks of that canon I don’t remember as well either. But... for a fic that’s going to be a few thousand words, probably, it’s really hard to justify listening to a whole three-season podcast and reread a novel when I struggle so badly to find time for either of those things as it is.

Kingdom Hearts: Fantasy!Bachelorette
This was one of the AUgust ideas from the first round of the challenge that I did. The prompt was "arranged marriage," but the idea sort of went sideways, ha. I functionally wrote chapter one of this fic: Kairi is set to marry someone from Destiny Island to cement some sort of alliance. The idea of an arranged marriage is abhorrent in the culture of Destiny Island, so they send an assortment of eligible partners, trying to make sure Kairi has a choice. Hence... high stakes fantasy!The Bachelorette. Wakka, Tidus, Selphie, Riku, and Sora all have decided to offer themselves up as potential partners. They wind up disqualified one by one, until Kairi winds up with both Riku and Sora.

Pros and Cons of this fic:

Pros: this one is pretty light-hearted, and should be fairly fun and straightforward to write. I do already have a first chapter (though I’ll likely rewrite it, should I go with this one.) I think it should be a relatively direct story to outline, without too much in the way of subplots or complicated twists to keep track of.
Cons: I don’t generally *like* straightforward romance fics; I love romantic subplots, or some additional component to the romance that makes it interesting. This has the whole alliance type thing, but that’s really more of the b-plot for this one, which I don’t know if I’ll enjoy as much as I hope. It’s also several characters I’m not used to writing, whose characterizations in the KH series don’t necessarily match up well to their original canon characterizations from FF, which I am *also* not wildly familiar with. I feel like my wanting to match most of the others up with their canon love interests (Tudus with Yuna, Wakka with Lulu) is kind of a boring choice.

Kingdom Hearts: Holiday RomCom
A sort of dumb idea about “how would a holiday rom-com be made to appeal to me?” (Along the same lines as "what would Twilight look like if it were geared toward my id?") Because I don’t love holiday stuff and I don’t love rom-coms, I especially do not tend to care for holiday rom-coms. (Sometimes I like them in theory, because I get the appeal of fluffy, comforting romance! But in practicality, I’ve yet to find one I actually enjoyed.) So I tried to figure out what WOULD make me like one, and the answer is usually “poly romance.” So here we are.

Pros and Cons of this fic:

Pros: again, a fairly light-hearted story, probably of short to middle length, which would be a nice change from some of the much longer ones. This is also another one that’s really intended to just appeal to me, and leaning into that should be enjoyable.
Cons: it’s an example of something that I don’t typically care for, so I’m hopeful that I DO find a way to enjoy it. At the same time, I don’t want it to come across as being nasty toward the genre as a whole (though I don’t think it does; if anything, it might play some of the tropes almost too straight. But I do really hate when someone decides that a genre sucks so they’re going to “do it right”, because it’s almost always a really douchey take, haha.) This is also one that has a pretty obvious posting window, because I would want to make sure that I can post it at the holidays. However, that means I have to write it pretty significantly before the holidays, which is tough, because I struggle to keep up the holiday spirit at the holidays, so how do I try to feel it that early?

Kingdom Hearts: Worldhopping Fairytale Monstrosity
The big one! This one is my biggest source of idea debt, and has been in various stages of progress/at least thinking about it for close to two decades now. (Embarrassing!)
It started as my version of a Kingdom Hearts 3, but catering to my interest in traditional fairy tales in place of Disney stories.
Then it went through a big replotting in a foolish attempt to appease people in the fandom that I didn’t even know (because there were a handful of people who were at the time annoyed that the Disney side of the game was largely ignored when it came to fan fiction, with more of the fandom focusing on the main trio, the Final Fantasy characters, and the Nobodies).
Then it got another big replot when I decided to trim down on the parts that did not “spark joy” (because I am real burned out on Disney as a company and general entity, and writing “Disney worlds” into the fic felt like a drag the whole time, which wasn’t fun for me, and probably wouldn’t be fun for the people who wanted those worlds).
Then Kingdom Hearts 3 did come out, so this was now firmly in AU territory instead of “speculative continuation branching out from canon so far.” I’d always known it would stray into being an AU, but at this point it’s inescapably so. SO… the current thought is to leaning into that, and just making it an AU altogether, with canon events just not having ever happened.

Pros and Cons of this fic:

Pros: This idea won’t leave me alone. Almost two decades on, it feels like it’s worth going for, if I’m still wanting to work on it. While it hasn’t been something I’ve been “obsessively” thinking of the way I once did, it IS one of the stories that really captivated me at a few different points, and I miss that energy and excitement. Giving myself the freedom to just make it a full AU should be enjoyable.
Cons: This will be a very long haul. The last outline I did come up with I’d estimated would turn out around 150k words, which is roughly twice the length of the longest fic I’ve posted so far. Writing that out - twice, if I’m going to do two full drafts - is a dauntingly long process. This is also that huge source of idea debt in terms of how much energy I have put into it over years, and it really has reached the point where I either need to get the project done or turn that attention and effort to something else. I had sort of made peace with putting it aside, but as soon as I did, the interest flared up again, and I unshelved it.
I also have a few aspects that I’ve been wavering on and need to make decisions about. Originally I wanted to try and utilize fairy tales from all over the world, rather than just European ones. However, there’s a lot of pushback against western retellings of stories from other cultures. I certainly don’t feel like I’m doing anything world shattering, or that I’m a super exception who is doing these stories special justice or anything. It seems easier in a lot of ways to just not worry about it, and focus on the stories that I do have a bit more cultural context for... but is "easier" the way to go? Is it worth trying to incorporate at least a couple from other cultures? I’m still deciding.