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Life signal
Jul. 16th, 2023 03:42 pm"Don't worry I'm still alive just really busy" is a classic blog post, isn't it? Haven't made one of those in over a decade, but it's an absolute classic.
That said, I am both still alive and busy with life stuff. Turns out going back to finish my bachelor's takes a bigger part of my schedule than I expected, so I don't have a lot of time to write and think about writing. It's fun to be a student again, though, after all this time. Class hits differently. Everyone is young and living through things that make you go "oh, sure, I remember being like that". You feel a little like you've been isekaied.
Absolutely recommended (but only if you live in a "free and public education for all" country.)
On writing:
I have been working on Masks. Chapter 30 is mostly written, chapter 31 is completely outlined and has some scenes and dialogues already done. Beyond that it's all outlines and snippets. But, hey, as long as I manage to make up my mind about a specific plot-related decision, I could get chapter 30 out next week!
(except, if I'm gonna be honest the one fic-related thing I'll post next week will be a Childe birthday fic. Assuming I pick one of the WIPs to finish and do it on time.)
The point here is that Masks is not in an actual hiatus. It's just taking too long because it needs me firing on all cylinders so I can pick up all those threads and make sense of them. But I think about this story everyday, and write at least twice a week. It's just going slower than I'm used to, which feels like punishment because the one thing my brain wants to do is hyperfixate on a thing and do it for 20h at a time.
This, by the way, is why I dropped so many smaller (though not really small) fics from exchanges this year. When I have very little time to write and know it will do me no good to the efforts to try and wrestle the plot of Masks into submission, I just sit and write 2k words of whatever. That Childe/Xiao fic I wrote took me 3 sessions on evenings, with an extra one for weird research and a couple more to edit.
To be perfectly honest, the best thing that could come out of writing an absurdly long fic was that I learned to move subplots around, something I had a really hard time doing in my original fiction. It's like writing it expanded my ability to keep track of a story.
Going back on the story to do an extra coat of revision (while picking up any dropped plot threads) I also noticed that my writing evolved a whole lot. Not only because I learned about proper dialogue punctuation in English (help!) but also because I learned to write things in different ways. If you pick up one of the most recent fics-- Once, under the plum blossoms-- and compare it to the first chapter of Masks, it's almost like it couldn't be the same writer.
I think that's really cool.
As long as you're alive, you're changing. As long as you keep going, you'll get better. That's a good feeling.
That said, I am both still alive and busy with life stuff. Turns out going back to finish my bachelor's takes a bigger part of my schedule than I expected, so I don't have a lot of time to write and think about writing. It's fun to be a student again, though, after all this time. Class hits differently. Everyone is young and living through things that make you go "oh, sure, I remember being like that". You feel a little like you've been isekaied.
Absolutely recommended (but only if you live in a "free and public education for all" country.)
On writing:
I have been working on Masks. Chapter 30 is mostly written, chapter 31 is completely outlined and has some scenes and dialogues already done. Beyond that it's all outlines and snippets. But, hey, as long as I manage to make up my mind about a specific plot-related decision, I could get chapter 30 out next week!
(except, if I'm gonna be honest the one fic-related thing I'll post next week will be a Childe birthday fic. Assuming I pick one of the WIPs to finish and do it on time.)
The point here is that Masks is not in an actual hiatus. It's just taking too long because it needs me firing on all cylinders so I can pick up all those threads and make sense of them. But I think about this story everyday, and write at least twice a week. It's just going slower than I'm used to, which feels like punishment because the one thing my brain wants to do is hyperfixate on a thing and do it for 20h at a time.
This, by the way, is why I dropped so many smaller (though not really small) fics from exchanges this year. When I have very little time to write and know it will do me no good to the efforts to try and wrestle the plot of Masks into submission, I just sit and write 2k words of whatever. That Childe/Xiao fic I wrote took me 3 sessions on evenings, with an extra one for weird research and a couple more to edit.
To be perfectly honest, the best thing that could come out of writing an absurdly long fic was that I learned to move subplots around, something I had a really hard time doing in my original fiction. It's like writing it expanded my ability to keep track of a story.
Going back on the story to do an extra coat of revision (while picking up any dropped plot threads) I also noticed that my writing evolved a whole lot. Not only because I learned about proper dialogue punctuation in English (help!) but also because I learned to write things in different ways. If you pick up one of the most recent fics-- Once, under the plum blossoms-- and compare it to the first chapter of Masks, it's almost like it couldn't be the same writer.
I think that's really cool.
As long as you're alive, you're changing. As long as you keep going, you'll get better. That's a good feeling.
