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void-botanist · 1 year

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My Year of Writing

After reading @theskeletonprior's review, I thought I would write one of my own. Original prompt by @maguayans (whose blog theme on desktop is excellent for writeblr and might be something I borrow).

Part 1: Spotify Wrapped version

This year was all about The Fourth Android and bringing it from a half-baked rewrite of an older story to something edible. To that end, I wrote 158,587 words:

30,000 for Camp NaNo in April

30,209 for Camp NaNo in July

50,363 for NaNo 2022, plus

18,013 for a May goal and

30,002 for a June goal.

I archived a lot of those words as I iterated, though, and my current draft is sitting at 43,278 words right now.

Obviously Dez was on my mind the whole time but I also invented a ton of new characters as I fleshed out species concepts and the cultural geography of the world. I also frequently got distracted with other stories in this world and started writing extra scenes about characters who had captured my attention, several of whom are on Dez's future space crew.

My Spotify Wrapped was boring. It pretty much just said "hey you got real into pop this year. We probably classed all the 80s rock and 00s indie you listened to as 'nostalgia', which is silly. Also you still listen to a ton of Approaching Nirvana, like you're in the top 0.5% of listeners". If you want my recommendations, go listen to Wreck of the Day (the song or the album or both) by Anna Nalick, and literally anything by Approaching Nirvana (but I have probably listened to the albums Cinematic Soundscapes Vol. 1 and Illusions the most). Also go (re)appreciate that 38 Special and Fitz and the Tantrums are bands that exist.

Part 2: A More Detailed Review

General

This year I continued working toward improvement, in both my writing and art.

With writing, that looked like getting more invested in planning and analyzing my own work. I finally accepted that the typical plot charts I find don't make sense to me when I try to use them, and not because I'm trying to make my stories Special (TM). Something just doesn't connect for me, and that's okay. That's not the only way to get plot structure. Instead I spent a while figuring out how to use Scrivener to outline in a way that works for me. I also tried to apply my own media analyses and those of YouTubers like Princess Weekes, La'Ron Readus, Jessie Gender, NerdSync, and James Somerton to my own work, to consider what works and what might not.

With art, that looked like learning more tools and tricks in Clip Studio Paint and Procreate, changing my settings to help me not mess up my arm constantly (adjusting my pressure curve!), and drawing at a higher resolution. I cannot stress enough how much of a difference that has made in the way my work looks and how it feels to edit it. I tend to draw small, so I'd never thought about it much, but wow everything is so smooth now. I've also been working on accepting that the imperfections in my work don't make it bad, and that being a slow and indecisive artist is also fine. angrymikko, Nadiaxel, and Chroma Moma on YouTube have been super helpful to me as I try new styles and ways of working and just having fun with my art. ronillust also makes delightful art memes and some tutorials.

P.S. if you're on desktop and you despise the format of YouTube's Shorts page, you can play Shorts as regular videos by changing the "shorts" portion of the URL to "watch". You can also set up Redirector to do this automatically (I wrote a tutorial for this on my main blog).

Writeblr

I was so much more active on writeblr this year, especially during the last few months. I followed a ton of other writers (I won't list them all here but I've been trying to reblog from them to make sure people are also aware of them) and started posting some excerpts of my own work and participating in ask/tag games. I'm having a very good time so far. Please feel free to tag me liberally in future games and prompts!

WIPs

I started working on The Fourth Android after I lost NaNoWriMo 2021, where I was working on Triad and I ran out of steam after about 28k words. On the last day of NaNo I just sprinted some stuff about Zel and Anni and a fledgling form of TFA in which Zel is a journalist and Anni teams up with her to locate Dez, who has absconded over some misunderstanding. Then I thought, what if I just worked on this? So I did. Triad is still going to happen, but it needs a lot of restructuring to work properly.

As always, my writing went from high angst to low angst as I developed that first TFA concept further, which I think speaks to how I just like stories about people being friends. Which is, you know, a pretty broad qualifier, but I find that even in stories with high stakes and high drama the thing I find most delightful is friendship dynamics (can you tell I'm thinking about Hunter x Hunter as I write this? I got kinda into that too). A lot of my thinking about character arcs has been related to "how is this friendship interesting?" and the cultural worldbuilding I've been doing is going to help me explore some of those dynamics. (This also applies to romantic couples, not least because friends to lovers is the only thing that seems to work for me in my writing.)

Books and Other Things I Consumed

I read a fair bit this year, especially compared to the last couple years (I'm actually pretty proud of this because I read maybe 2 books in all of 2019 and 2020 and only got back into reading last year). Like Harrowben, I've starred my favorites.

*The Expanse series 4-7 by James S. A. Corey (4, Cibola Burn, was a particular favorite just because I love stories set on alien planets. Overall I think The Expanse could use more theys and gays, but I'm pretty happy with it)

I, Robot by Isaac Asimov (I enjoyed how clever this one was, and also it has robots. For some strange reason I have become incredibly interested in robot stories)

Artemis by Andy Weir (honestly I think about this one a lot. I think it had some of Weir's character writing flaws as seen in The Martian but the worldbuilding was pretty compelling and I'm a sucker for epistolary bits)

*Fearless by Shira Glassman (a wonderful quick read about snowstorms and lesbian moms. I also bought several of Shira's other books but haven't read them yet)

*Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao (I rarely buy books in physical form anymore but I did buy this one after I read it. Superb. Waiting for the sequel)

Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki (I enjoyed this one a lot. I can definitely understand the criticisms, and the formatting was kinda weird. But on some level I felt like I was reading something that was in my own genre)

Currently reading

The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes by Cat Sebastian (the sequel to The Queer Principles of Kit Webb. It's just a super fun read)

Finlay Donovan Knocks 'Em Dead by Elle Cosimano (the sequel to Finlay Donovan is Killing It. Honestly disappointed in this one, especially compared to the first book. There are some excellent moments but there are also a lot of things that don't really seem to make sense, and I'm very frustrated with the romance part of it)

Tiamat's Wrath (The Expanse book 8) by James S. A. Corey

Books I started and plan to finish (I often put down books because they're not what I want right at that moment)

Xeni by Rebekah Weatherspoon

Mrs. Martin's Incomparable Adventure by Courtney Milan

The Doctor's Discretion by E. E. Ottoman

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Prelude to Foundation by Isaac Asimov

Murmuration by T. J. Klune

I won't list out all the shows I watched but I do think that Hunter x Hunter, Exception (the Netflix anime), Mob Psycho 100, and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners have all influenced the way I think about my writing and to some extent my art (seriously the color and visual storytelling choices of Edgerunners are so interesting and cool). In video games, the environment design of Hades, Risk of Rain 2's Survivors of the Void expansion, and Slime Rancher 2 really fascinated me, and I spent a ton of time using Sims 4 to build places that exist in TFA to better visualize them. (I really want a game that is just Sims 4 build mode, but with more detailed building capabilities and endless building space. I just installed Sweet Home 3D, which might do it for me.)

Here's to another year of writeblring and creating. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the stuff I mentioned above (especially Exception if you've seen it), and/or your recommendations for anything but especially cool stories about robots/androids/gays/theys.

#writing #art #writeblr #ayearofwriting #wip #to read #wip: tfa #wip: triad #wizardly things

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