#Nano 2021 project

[just-another-storyteller]

I realized I haven't posted about my WIPs in ages so I should uh, probably do that at some point again. So.

Main WIP: Finding Magic

It's a High Fantasy story, and I'm currently working on its 4th draft! Once that's done I'll ask a friend to read it, incorporate the feedback, ask other friends twice more and maybe then I can start trying to get it published?? Feels unreal but here we are. Story follows Runa and Laith who, after getting a strange letter from Laith's grandpa, leave their home village and go looking for him, accompanied by a Duskian (regarded as Evil, I used to have just named them demons and still need a new German name for them lmao), a unicorn, and a dog.

Seldnacs

Seldnacs are an open species by FelonDog over on dA, but they're original enough I'm putting them here - They're getting mostly short stories, but will pop up every now and then.

Started but currently on kinda sorta hiatus

Changes: This one, along FM, was one of my first stories and I definitely want to finish it eventually... Bear with me because you'll be able to tell it started when I was a teen lmao. It's kinda sci fi-esque, the story starts with a strange laboratory experimenting on mostly teens and children by adding animal DNA to theirs, basically creating beastfolk, just that it often isn't as pretty as most fantasy beastfolk. The characters eventually decide to try and fight/escape, leading to them having to figure out how to survive now that they look Like That.

Rainbow VN: An Urban Fantasy Visual Novel/Dating Game; it'll have six different characters, and the plan is that every character gets a Get To Know route followed by a route split into Romance, Friendship, and Supernatural routes. Quite a bit has been written for a NaNo once, but I gotta re-plan a lot of it.

Unnamed Horror WIP: Another former NaNo WIP, its first draft is pretty much finished but it'll need a lot of editing. It follows two kids whose trip to the local woods turns south when they end up somewhere very, very far away from home...

Solarpunk WLW WIP: Started for last year's NaNo, though I actually had to give up that year 😔 It has, as the WIP title suggests, a Solarpunk setting (futuristic but very hopeful, lots of Green Tech, etc), the protags are two older ladies (70s-80s) who meet and fall in love.

Fallen or Loyal: After humankind got sapience, the Heavenly Host split into the Loyalists, who want to follow God's Plan and lead humans back into Safety, and the Fallen, who believe that humans' free will is more important than safety. I've already written quite a bit, but I'll probably have to re-plan a lot of it and figure out where I wanna go.

I've been rotating these in my brain

Unwanted Transformation: It definitely needs a better title lmao, set in the same world as Finding Magic; a young woman got cursed by a Duskian to be in a dog's body for reasons she doesn't know, and she's trying to get a young Orc guy to help her a) track down the Duskian and make him explain, and b) get back to her friends and girlfriend.

Dracula Sequel: I may have Dracula Daily Brainrot, and a Vampire OC lying around with no story to be. I'll hold off on actually starting until DD is finished (vampire was originally a Van Helsing OC, but I want the story to follow the OG book more closely), but it'll be about revenge; a while after the happenings of Dracula, one of Drac's "children" (biological from before he was a vampire? Someone he turned? Idk yet) decides she's finally ready to get revenge on the people who killed her father.

Hyenas: I just really like Xenofiction and love hyenas; the story will probably follow a young spotted hyena who's just left their pack and has to join a new one, working their way up from the bottom, but naturally, there's now things threatening her new pack. I'm considering adding some fantasy elements (like, say, the yeens having magic), and/or including more hyena species aside from Spotted Hyena.

Rebels with a Cause: In a cyberpunk dystopia setting, a ragtag group of misfits tries to take the unjust government apart. Still gotta figure out a lot about what said government is actually like... Doing... Tho.

#long post #my wips #writeblr #writerblr #I have some more on Indefinite Hiatus but the post is long enough as is #finding magic #changes #Seldnacs #rebels with a cause #rainbow #rainbow vn #NaNo 2020 #nano 2020 project #nano 2021 #Nano 2021 project #dunno how to do read more on mobile sorry mates

[rollingwiththedead]

Ok it’s rough and I still need chapter names for the last few chapters but this book is done and I can rest in peace

#it is technically a #nanowrimo #project bc it started as a #nano #back in 2021 #and I am finishing it in the month of our lord November #so yeah!!!

[mangoisms]

re last rb LMAO i mean all the ideas in my head are just so Big. like long form projects. that’s my default. which is fine! but it’s also A Lot. the arañita wip is even bigger like just so massive especially if i do decide to add a third fic. which i. yeah. will probably do. so that’s three fics there already 😭😭😭😭😭 so it’s my main focus especially after wanting to write it for SOOOO long but… Ywah. too much stuff going on up here 😵‍💫

#i had an idea for jason #then one for dick #MAYBE one for bruce but he annoys me a lot these days so. not sure #i mean he just. You know how he is. LOL #but the arañita wip is my primary focus. i’m doing it for camp nano! #and don’t get me wrong i am ABSOLUTELY excited to write it bc it’s been so long. since 2021. then i REALLY wanted to write it during winter #but i was in the middle of writing frmb and needed to finish that #so this is very much a long time coming and it’s a lot of fun. it’s just a lot i can only focus on one project at a time so #anything else will be much much later

[materialsscienceandengineering]

Water-purifying cup makes drinkable water from creeks and streams

A rash of storms in Texas in recent years—from Hurricane Harvey in 2017 to the deep freeze in 2021—has put big chunks of the population in danger and left millions without electricity or water for long periods. These calamities have also served as motivation for a researcher at The University of Texas at Austin to refocus her work on innovations that can help communities respond to severe weather events. Her latest project is a mug-sized device that can quickly clean water using a small jolt of electricity to fish out bacterial cells. In lab experiments, the device was able to remove 99.997% of E. coli bacteria from 2- to 3-ounce samples taken from Waller Creek in Austin in approximately 20 minutes, with the capacity to do more. "We are able to clean water using very little energy because we steer the bacterial cells with electric fields, and most bacterial cells are natural swimmers who propel themselves to electrodes and got captured alive," said D. Emma Fan, an associate professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering's Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering, who led the research published recently in ACS Nano.

Read more.

#Materials Science #Science #Water #Clean water #Bacteria #Electrodes #University of Texas

[nanowrimo]

NaNo Interview: 2023 Camp Designer Elizabeth Goss

Camp NaNoWriMo is almost here! You’ve probably already seen the beautiful papercut inspired designs in our shop. Today, we’ve interviewed our graphic design Elizabeth Goss about her project!

Q: Your design for Camp this year is unique: it's our first time working with a papercut artist! Can you tell us a little about your history with papercut, and how you got started in this art form?

In college, I had to create a cut paper animation inspired by the work of Lotte Reiniger. I fell in love with the process of papercutting. I’ve gone through several style changes over the years, but I’ve been cutting paper since that project.

Q: What was the trickiest element of the process for you? What was the most fun?

I really enjoyed this whole process. It was wonderful to have so much creative freedom. The trickiest part was wanting to turn all my sketches into final art! That’s pretty unusual. I may try to finish a few pieces over the summer, just for myself.

Q: NaNoWriMo is all about challenging ourselves to take on the sometimes painstaking work of writing and editing. What parallels do you see between noveling and papercutting?

I think there are some powerful parallels between writing a novel and papercutting. Whether you’re working with words or paper, it takes tremendous patience and persistence to create a finished work that matches the vision in your head. I also think both processes require a little audacity. It takes courage to bring something into existence and even greater daring to share that precious creation with strangers.

Q: If your papercut practice was a sandwich, what kind of sandwich would it be?

Oh, what a fun question! If my papercutting were a sandwich, it would be a grilled cheese—simple ingredients, endless creative possibilities. Papercutting is a wonderfully accessible art form. It doesn't require specialized or expensive tools, just paper and something to cut with, yet you can create an enormous variety of work. I love a classic grilled cheese sandwich, but I appreciate that, if the mood takes me, I can throw in some caramelized onions or pesto and enjoy something totally different and delicious. Papercutting is the same way. It offers endless variations and styles to explore.

Elizabeth Goss is an illustrator, author, and papercutter based in the Pacific Northwest. Her first picture book My Way West: Real Kids Traveling the Oregon and California Trails (West Margin Press, 2021) won the Paterson Prize for Books for Young People. Her new picture book, All About Nothing (Charlesbridge, 2023) is a collaboration with decorated children’s author Elizabeth Rusch and celebrates all the positives of negative space.

#nanowrimo #camp nanowrimo #camp nanowrimo 2023 #graphic design #design #interview #by nano guest #elizabeth goss

[radiowrites]

2023 Writer Year-In-Review

Hi, I’m RaisedonRadio & FortressofmyPast on AO3 and FF.net. This is an on-going tradition since 2015. Check out my past year-end posts: 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015.

Tagging a few, but if you come across this, consider it an open tag! You’re welcome to tag me back, I’d love to read it!

@writercorianarose @shesailsships @talesofsorrowandofruin @azdesertwillow @goneahead @littlemissfandomworld @dreams-of-kalopsia @halleyuhm

Big change for me compared to last year—in addition to NaNoWriMo, I actually posted fanfics! I tried to add some new questions to this year’s edition, I hope they might even move out of my tiny circle.

Total Word Counts: 51,920 for 2023 NaNoWriMo 15,570 on 2022 NaNoWriMo project 19,193 for July 2023 Camp NaNoWriMo (mostly fanfics) 28,310 in published fanfics (this number is overlapping with camp nano, I wasn’t paying attention, so I’m not going to add everything together)

Total Number Of Completed Works: 10 Total Number of WIPS worked on this year: 10 or so How Many WIPs do you still have: 23

Looking back, did you write more than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d expected? I wrote way more than expected! I seriously didn’t think I would do NaNoWriMo again. And I published ten fics! That’s ten more than last year!

Did you take any writing risks this year? The NaNoWriMo project was definitely a risk for me. I basically had an idea and no outline. It was quite a challenge to my perfectionism issues—I had to basically never reread anything and just keep going, fully aware that I can better foreshadow the ideas that came up halfway through in the next rewrite.

Biggest Surprise: I wrote for NaNoWriMo again, which I was pretty sure wouldn't happen lol, and hit the word count, all through discovery writing, and having very little idea where I was going with it.

Biggest Disappointment: I dropped that above mentioned project the moment November ended! I can tell it has potential, hidden in there. I will definitely return to it.

Do you have any writing goals for the new year? I’d love to at least finish the first draft of the 2023 NaNoWriMo project, bringing it to a tentative end so I can actually reread it and go from there. And keep writing fanfic, and maybe even work on the 2022 nanowrimo project…

Fanfiction Questions Below! (if you don’t write fanfiction feel free to skip or rework the questions for your original works.)

Fandoms I’ve written in this year: I wrote fics for 7 different fandoms! For the following kdramas: Island, Tale of the Nine Tailed, Memorist, Royal Secret Agent, W: Two Worlds, May I Help You?, and a little Korean Web drama called Handmade Love.

Your most popular story of the year? That would be Besides You with 327 hits and 47 kudos. However Superhero got the most comment interaction with 4!

The story that was easiest/or most fun to write: I Think He Knows was fun to write! I do just love brooding with a heart of gold formerly immortal male leads.

Hardest story to write: Rescue Me, Superhero, Restore, and Prayers & Promises were four works that I had left for dead, and came back and found them to be basically finished and just needed proofreading. (So just in case anyone wondered how I turned out three of those in like two days: they were actually done and I was hellbent on getting them out of my WIPs list)

Your sweetest story: That would definitely be Superhero. I altered my normal narrative style to better fit the child’s character, and I was really pleased with how it turned out.

Your saddest scene: I feel like I hit a lot of angst this year, but nothing really sad?

The sexiest moment you’ve written this year? *coughs* I wrote five pieces of smut. (Half of my fanfics were smut this year?!) Umm, I’m torn between Beside You and Don’t Blame Me? But also Never Be the Same and Take On Me???

Your favorite tag: (whether you use it the most or just something witty/perfect for the story) My brother announced to me that he reads all my tags (he was trying to embarrass me about one of my smut pieces) so I did a shout out to him in the next fic. He saw it within the day, I was actually impressed.

Most unintentionally telling story: (have you accidentally or purposefully exposed a detail about yourself?) Religious guilt seems to be a reoccurring tag this year. In all seriousness, not quite sure why, but yet it kinda makes sense? (its complicated lmao) And for some reason not one, but two fics ended with marriage proposals?! (I’m so single.)

Are any of your fics named after/heavily inspired by music? I’m RaisedonRadio and it would be concerning if—checks list—less than 8 of the 10 fics weren’t named after songs, haha! (I’m actually just really bad at naming fics…)

Good To You and Besides You are both songs by the band Marianas Trench, and are heavily inspired by the songs. Rescue Me is by OneRepublic, one of those more vibes than lyrics inspired. I Think He Knows by Taylor Swift was definitely on repeat for that fic, as well as Don't Blame Me. (Poems), Prayers, and Promises was more a steal the name of the song by John Denver, for some reason I think Cold by Corbyn was on repeat when writing that one. Take On Me was named more for the similarities between the MV and the series! Never Be The Same was for the vibes of the song by Camila Cabello but not really the lyrics.

What’s your own favorite story of the year? Maybe it’s cheating but I’m not sure if I can really choose? I know it’s not a common writer sentiment but I really do like them all for different reasons.

Like I churned out Good To You and Besides You within ten days of each other in July, after not writing any fanfic basically for a year and a half.

And then I pulled Rescue Me out of the dead drafts pile and made myself work on more description.

I Think He Knows was my first foray into a brand new fandom.

Don’t Blame Me is one of my rare canon divergence fics.

Restore was another dead draft that I found to be mostly complete, and decide to release into the world even if I knew there was so much more I could have done with it.

Prayers and Promises was not only another new fandom, but for some reason, I decided to write for a side character. It’s still sitting on just 1 hit and that makes it all the better that I really wrote it for myself.

Superhero was out of my comfort zone of writing for a kid’s perspective and I was so happy with how it turned out.

Take On Me was a draft sitting at less than 1k words and I challenged myself to finish it before the new year, and got it done in two days.

And then, to finish it all off with the intense desire to have ten fics under the belt for 2023, I wrote Never Be The Same in less than two days for the last drama I had watched, and the speed that the last two fics were actually finished was a huge change for me.

Fanfiction risks you took this year? I wrote fanfic for not one, but two fandoms that I had to create the first tags for on AO3! Also, as I started to slip into just writing for kdramas this year, I’ve basically become my own proofreader and editor at this point. Any mistakes are my own, lol.

My favorite part of fandom this year: That would be getting two kudos and a comment on I Think He Knows, one of the fics that is the first in its fandom tag. To actually connect with more fans of such a tiny project was so cool!

Thanks for reading and here’s to next year!

#fic in review #writer year in review #fanfiction #radiowrites #raisedonradio #fortressofmypast

[winnieleighwrites]

writeblr intro (2023 edition)

hello! i have been part of the writeblr community for over five years, and my last introduction post was back in 2021, so i will be re-introducing myself for the new year!

about me

my name is winnie. i go by she/her pronouns. i’m in my mid-20s and i’m a june cancer. i’m canadian (half-acadian, half-irish). i’m hard-of-hearing and wear hearing aids. i also have three cats with halloween-themed names (salem, male black cat, hallow, female tortie, and boo, female grey tabby).

my writing experience

i have been writing for over a decade now, starting with writing fanfictions. i was previously in a professional writing program in college. i have also written a 100k word-count manuscript after winning the 2018’s NaNoWriMo. is it normal that i haven't been able to write that much for a project since? i don't currently have a wip i'm working on, but i have this intro post i did for a heist book.

my outline progress

check out this post for a more detailed explanation, and check out this tag to see all of my outline progress posts.

my 2023 goals

i want to have five outlined story per month; i have 40 stand-alone story ideas in total, and outlined 3 of those so far. this should take eight months max.

i will participate in April’s Camp NaNo to zero draft an outlined stand-alone.

i will participate in July’s Camp NaNo to zero draft a second outlined stand-alone or finish the zero draft from April.

i will outline my halloween short-story collection in September, and will write the short stories in October in between preparing for NaNoWriMo.

i will participate in November’s NaNoWriMo to zero draft an entirely different outlined stand-alone.

#writeblr intro #writeblr introduction #wtwcommunity #p; writeblr intro #u; winnieleighwrites

[lynzine]

#I don't know if I'll do what the poll tells me #But I wanted to see thoughts

[outpost51]

🌬️⚡️🌌

WIP Weather Asks

🌬 Wind - What was the easiest part of your WIP to write?

so far? i think the dream/hallucination sequences in blinding neon and stellar parallax have been the easiest and some of my favorites. like jane was off her entire ass on so many sedatives because of her biotics and also like. ancient ai brain damage. and then frankie is literally just not getting any sleep and she is quite literally a ball of stress rn

⚡️Lightning - Have you ever spontaneously added something to your story that you wouldn't have added normally? If so, what made you do it?

answered here!

🌌 Clear Skies - How long have you been writing your current WIP?

oh man let's see.

botls: early 00s, it was started some time in middle school

irregular orbit: i think i started this in 2012? it needs to undergo major rewrites before i'm willing to share like, any of it lol

caught in the crossfire: started like juuuuuust after irregular orbit

what you will i will not name: i've been writing this one on and off in tandem with crossfire because i'm as incredibly autistic about destiny as i am about mass effect

tomorrow isn't promised: 2015, i think. started revamping it in 2020? ish.

arsonist chronicles: this was my 2021 nano project! i won with it and this sucker hasn't even hit the end of act i lmao

blinding neon: 2022!

helix: also 2022, a few months down the line from blinding neon!

xatal: either late 2022 or early 2023

#ans.txt #why yes these are all the longwips i'm working on more or less at the same time #i tend to grab like three to chew on at once and then rotate them out. sustainable farming or something

[mrbexwrites]

Writing Whispers

Accepting @sarahlizziewrites open tag for this, as an excuse to dive into the archives and see how far I've come.

Rules: find a few paragraphs of writing from as long ago as you can. Re-write them how you would now.

Gently tagging @words-after-midnight @queen-tashie @deanwax @cee-grice and offering up an open invite to balance out the one I took! ;)

I actually have a good comparison project from my very first attempt at writing (and finishing) a novel!) It's from an old high fantasy project that I never did quite get round to finishing, but did attempt to re-write one NaNo a few years back.

2003

From where she crouched on her vantage point, Ylarae could survey the entire grounds of the townhouse she now perched upon. Hidden in the shadows of the stone gargoyles that stood as silent protectors against evil, she watched the Numen Warriors make their rounds as guests at the party stepped outside and mingled with one another, quickly heading back indoors when the colder weather forced them back.  Gaining entry to the townhouse had been surprising easy, despite the many guards that patrolled the perimeter. She had, with ease, scaled the wall that lead into a voluptuous rose garden, a skeletal twining of branches in the dead of winter. Keeping to the shadows, she had slipped silently past two of the Numen guards who stood shivering in their boots, trying to pull their thick woolen cloaks tighter about them. Once past the guards, she grabbed hold of the iron cast gutters and used them to scale the thick grey stone walls of the house.  Inside the house, she could hear the soft cadence of the music intermingled with laughter as it filtered through the open windows. The lady of the house was holding a party and Ylarae was using the distraction of the multitude of guests as a disguise to hide her presence within the grounds. Her footprints in the snow were lost within the steps of the partygoers as some sought nightly congress with masked strangers. The suspicion of who stole the necklace would fall on one of the guests, rather than looking outside.  Ylarae smiled despite herself; this was easier than she thought. All she had to do was break in, steal the necklace and then leave it in the hollow of the Hanging Tree in Byre’s Wood where she would find her fee. Ylarae disliked being used in such a menial task and had asked why Gristle could not do it himself. Each time, he merely laughed, a sound almost akin to a bear’s, and told her that she was the one to retrieve it. Despite her loathing of being used as a common thief, Ylarae found it impossible to refuse Gristle’s orders. Just thinking of the necklace caused her to shift with impatience, longing to get her hands on it, and have this menial task completed.   Shifting her weight to ease the cramp on her legs, Ylarae’s crossbow dug into her back. This once again ignited her ire at being used as a mere burglar. She was a highly skilled assassin, one of the best. She was trained in the shadow arts and the secrets of covert killing. But her most valuable abilities she had inherited from her mother.

2021

Her fingers tingled as she knelt atop one of the stone gargoyles that protected the perimeter wall. Carved out of granite, the stonemasons had imbued the stone with magic to ward off evil and protect those who lived inside.  It was an old magic, and ironic that these sentinels were being used to guard the very people who had scorched the earth and were trying to wipe magic from it.  Ylarae ran a gloved hand over the glyph-marks that had been etched into the creature’s head, rendering it nothing more than stone; the magic dissipated.  “What a shame,” she whispered to herself. “You would have stopped me, there is no doubt.”  She slid to a crouch beside the stone beast, hidden in its shadow as she watched the guards make another loop of the skeletal rose garden. In the summer, it would be a sight to behold; a manicured lawn with knee-height hedge mazes, flower beds and the roses that climbed to reach one another across the gravel path, forming an arch.  Light spilled out of the manor house, casting long shadows across the garden. Laughter, music and the sounds of glasses clinking filled the night air.  Gristle had told her to expect a heavily fortified home, given who lived here, but the party had been unexpected. Normally, she would have slunk back into the shadows, and returned later, but an urge, a need, pushed her onwards.  She surveyed the garden once more; she could balance her way along the wall and climb up into the house, but risk being seen by one of the guards. Or she could loop round the garden, which appeared to be the safer option, despite losing her vantage point.  A few guests would come out of the manor to mingle, have a quick stroll or to seek a quiet corner for congress in the shadows. But they never stayed out long, the cold pulling them back inside the house. A light dusting of snow covered the garden, but with wandering couples and the patrolling guards, any footsteps she left behind would be quickly lost amongst others.  As the guards passed once more, she tried to still her heart that was racing in her chest. Her hands trembled at the urgency to get going. Normally on a night like this, when she would be hunting, a placid calm fell upon her, but not tonight; tonight she was filled with electricity and need.  She dropped from the wall, landing silently on the lawn, only a few snowflakes drifting down behind her. On cat-like reflexes, she ran in a low crouch along the perimeter wall, staying to the shadows.  The shutters that hung from the wall, along with the iron-cast gutters made a simple ladder she used to scale the building.  Balancing on a third floor window ledge, she drew one of her twin blades that she kept in her sleeves, and popped the latch open. Her fingertips burned as she wriggled them under the window frame and slid it open enough for her to climb inside.  The third floor of the manor  was dark, and most likely off limits to the guests downstairs.  She stepped hastily away from the window, pressing her back against the wall; the last thing she wanted was to be outlined in the moonlight and easily visible. She knelt behind a dresser and waited for her eyes to adjust. She slipped off her gloves, feeling her heart pound. A cold sweat formed on her brow, which she wiped away, frowning at the perspiration.  The burning sensation in her fingers traveled further up towards her hands, and she balled them into fists trying to stop the feeling. 

#tag game #I used to worry so much about describing every single detail #but have since learned to show not tell #well...i'm still learning that

[smallblueandloud]

2023 fic roundup

2023 was the year of the comeback. in 2021, i wrote about 25k; in 2022, i didn't even keep track. meanwhile, my total wordcount last year was 119,226 words. while that doesn't come close to my 200k from 2020, i am arguably prouder of last year and what it represented. my writing isn't dead! my abilities haven't vanished! i can have fun making art again :D

as always, the summer was the most productive for me. you can see that i wrote more in the spring than the fall -- this roughly corresponds to how i was doing during those times, lol. i had a Much Better spring semester than the fall. september was very rough, i had a very bad time, and it meant my mental health suffered for the rest of the year. but hey, at least i was writing essays :')

some more scattered thoughts:

i was arguably pretty consistent this year? may/june/july all had about the same wordcount (roughly) and i think that's cool. my goal isn't to be doing NaNos, it's to be writing consistently, so i'm very happy with this

ao3 says i published 67k in 2023. minus the first chapter of something out of a dream, which was published in 2020, i believe that's 65k or so total. i wrote 72k of fanfic last year, meaning that there's about 8k from last year still sitting in my google drive (a rough eyeball at my WIPs folder confirms this). these numbers don't QUITE make sense to me, since i used a fair bit of old material in what i published last year, but i'm not going to think about it too hard

i published fic for a whopping fifteen fandoms in 2023. nine of those were fandoms i'd never published anything for before! i am so, so proud of this stat. i remain multifandom as all hell and seeing that represented in my work makes me really :D

two fics -- be amazed by the sky and i got your back (and you got mine) -- were crossovers! i'd only ever written one crossover before (stay all day in the sun, which i still love dearly) and it was fun to play in these playgrounds (mostly by sticking the librarians into other universes, xD)

i published 25 fics last year! and five of those fics were less than 1k, which i also really love. this year i really tried to let go of my idea that my fics Had to be more than 4k (and super polished) before they could see the light of day. i think my writing has been more fun and less stressful because of that.

i polished off 4 multi-year WIPs last year: but the verse is sweet, something out of a dream, don't wanna see you go (but it's not forever), and all we can do today. it felt so, so good to finally get those out there. the only one i have left from The Great Hiatus of 2021-2022 is éponine de bergerac. i will finish that someday, but i'm letting her take her time, because she deserves it. (i DID make good progress on that fic, which is something at least!)

most popular fic of the year was sit there in your heartache, which. is a spirk fic written right after a relevant episode, so not a surprise lol. the fic that surprised me most is actually the sisterhood of the travelling main character plotpoints -- i kinda expected that one to vanish quietly, but the hatchetfield fandom is WAY more active than i expected! which is very cool :D

the fic with the fewest hits was sidenote, which doesn't surprise me, since the librarians isn't a very active fandom and it's a rareship within the fandom anyway. the people who DID read it were very sweet, so i am very grateful for them. (i'm doing fic with the fewest hits because i feel like it's better to focus on that than What Didn't Get Kudos)

i started 2024 with 5 WIPs. i actually already finished one (and then immediately started its sequel, whoops) (shoutout to the ds9 modern au, i'll make a real post about that sometime). none of these fics are particularly progressed, but i'll keep working on them and try to find the Finishing A Project Dopamine from ficlets if i need it.

i didn't really have any Writing Goals for 2023 aside from doing any writing at all, lol. i think for 2024 i want to try to get more consistent with my writing -- instead of doing x number of words per month (which usually happen over 3-4 Big Writing Days), i'd rather try to write for 5 days out of every week, or something like that. we'll see what i can get done.

in the meantime: thank you guys for listening. i'm proud of what i did last year, and i'm excited to see what happens next year :D

#fic roundup #2023 #sb and l rambles #sb and l is writing #let's see what 2024 holds :eyes:

[chayscribbles]

chayscribbles’ monthly writing update ☆ november 2022

☆ STATISTICS.

words written: 9835 drafting; 17606 redrafting/editing

projects worked on: Andromeda Rogue, Andromeda Rising

proudest accomplishment: i published my first art zine! oh and finishing the first draft of AR3 is also a thing that happened

books read: Memoria by Kristyn Merbeth; Cinder by Marissa Meyer, A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

☆ GENERAL COMMENTS.

(book comments first: Memoria (the sequel to Fortuna, which i read a few weeks ago) was MUCH better imo than the first, 4.5 stars. Cinder was very enjoyable but i do feel like i am simply getting too old for YA and would have liked it better if i had read it a few years ago, 4 stars. A Memory certainly wasn't bad, but in the end it fell a bit flat for me, 3 stars.)

this month has been Very Weird. within the span of like 3 days a lot of things happened, including finishing AR3 and other Personal Stuff that resulted in me suddenly having a lot of free time on my hands that i did not know what to do with. but everything ended up working out! and a lot of that free time went to working on my wip.

i had thought that after finishing AR3 i'd work on one of my lower-effort sidewips, or work on other hobbies like drawing, but the motivation for those things just... didn't manifest itself? (also the Secret Space WIP, has become bigger than i thought it would, and i felt it would require more commitment than i am currently willing to give it)

anyways i just ended up going right back to AR kjdfgkjfds whoops

more specific wip-related comments + featured excerpt below.

☆ COMMENTS: ANDROMEDA RISING (finishing the draft)

did i really finish this draft this month? it feels like forever ago jkfdjk

so my unofficial NaNo goal was to finish AR3. i had originally estimated it would take 15k, and then adjusted it to 10k. i didn't quite make the 10k either but i DID finish the draft, so that's still a win. to me.

this draft turned out way shorter than i had hoped... and there's a LOT that needs to be fixed, and i'm not completely satisfied with how it turned out. but i really was at the point where i had to just get through it to call it done otherwise i never would, so thank fuck that's over with.

(trying not to think about how much needs to be fixed yet. gritting my teeth.)

☆ COMMENTS: ANDROMEDA ROGUE (draft... 2!!!!)

so i had this whole plan of letting the entire series rest, then rereading, reoutlining, reworking some plot, character and worldbuilding stuff, and only starting draft 2 in 2023... and then i got impatient lmao.

i was somewhere in the reoutlining stage about a week after finishing AR3 when i realized it felt like i was wasting my time. not much of the main structure of this book is gonna change, so i was pretty much just rewriting the exact same outline i already had. (i plantsed through draft 1 but made a reverse outline as i was writing.) most of the changes are adding or changing certain details to scenes and no amount of planning was gonna help any more than just writing out the changes. so, on the 18th, i started draft 2.

(besides, it's not like i didn't let AR1 rest. i finished it in june 2021 after all.)

i also had a bunch of editing notes from when i was drafting, + stuff i thought about later while writing the sequels on how to better set things up, + notes taken during my reread. so i ended up just annotating the hell out of my first draft to show where i would add or change things, and then i put the old draft on one side of the screen and a new doc on the other side and started rewriting it to include the changes.

i've gone through about 5 chapters and added an epilogue so far! it's going pretty fast haha. i've already added over 2000 words just by fleshing things out a bit more, now that i know my characters and the world much better than when i started. it's SO much easier now that i have the entire series in front of me.

chapter 5 is where i've been slowed down as there is a considerable amount of stuff that needed to be rewritten completely-- it's quite exposition-heavy (it's the scene where Petra gets a rundown of her xenobotany mission), and when i first wrote it, i wasn't exactly sure where i was going with the story. and even though i now have a fuller picture in front of me, it's always hard to write an exposition-heavy chapter and include everything that needs to be said without making it drag. not to mention, foreshadowing and setting things up appropriately.

right now, i'm taking a quick break from redrafting to iron out some of the political backdrop of the story. not only did i need to rest after wrestling with chapter 5, but i was disappointed reading A Memory Called Empire, which was supposed to be a political intrigue, and it was one heck of a motivator to try to make the politics in my book better haha.

☆ FEATURED EXCERPT.

very short passage i added to AR1 to further demonstrate how much of a nerd Petra really is.

“Petra,” Dr. Derosy said, “you did your thesis on vitaplants. Would you mind giving us a brief definition?” Petra coughed and sat up straighter in her chair. “Vitaplants are a category of plants that boost the growth and health of other living organisms around them, specifically through the emission of vitawaves," she said. "Vitaplants have been found to have evolved independently on multiple planets around the sector and are not confined to a single genus, which has confounded taxonomists—"

“Thank you, Petra. I did say brief.”

☆ TAGLISTS. let me know if you want to be added/removed to either.

general taglist:

@nicola-writes @dgwriteblr @the-orangeauthor @stormharbors @quilloftheclouds @ashen-crest @writeblrfantasy @celestepens @stardustspiral @pepperdee @extra-magichours @avi-why @lefttigerobservation @chazzawrites @bardolatrycore

andromeda trilogy taglist:

@bebewrites @nicola-writes @dgwriteblr @the-orangeauthor @stormharbors @akindofmagictoo @quilloftheclouds @nora-theteawriter @ashen-crest @corpsepng @writeblrfantasy @toboldlywrite @celestepens @stardustspiral @pepperdee @cheerfulmelancholies @extra-magichours @writeouswriter @cilly-the-writer @lefttigerobservation @rose-bookblood @drowsy-quill @chazzawrites @cynic-and-chief @enchanted-lightning-aes @aesa

#chayscribbles writing update #wip andromeda trilogy #wip andromeda rogue #wip andromeda rising #this one got a bit lengthy sorry kjdfjk

[another-white-void]

Happy Worldbuilding Wednesday, Feather!

Today’s question is: Are there any sayings or phrases in your setting that would be confusing if someone used them in real life? This can be anything from swearing by a deity, to idioms referring to a setting-specific plant or animal.

Thank you for the ask! Happy WBW to you too!

I'm gonna use that project from NaNo 2021 for that actually

be wary of the Wind's whispers - common ending of farewells, wishing someone well a ray of sunlight - someone grossly evil to be a shave-head - be important politically but not trust-worthy go west (with the Sun) - go fuck yourself

#writing #sharing stuff #nano 2021 novella

[duhragonball]

Nanwum VII Update: 9037

So today was a good day.

I set out to break my one-day writing record, partly for the glory, partly to rack up a nice lead for this month, but mainly because I kept forgetting what the record was, and breaking it means I don't have to go back as far to look it up. It was 7023 in 2021, in case you're curious. But that's old news, because It's now... over nine thousand.

I just wanted to try to surpass the old record by a wide margin. I started out thinking of it as aiming for 7024, and that just felt wrong. And I'm glad I aimed higher, because this actually went pretty well today. I took a nap on Tuesday, started writing at midnight and got about 2300 words done, went to bed around 3:30am, got up at 10am, then started writing 2250 words in three hour blocks. By 9pm I was pretty burned out on the main project, but I set up some side things for me to work on in case I lost momentum, and that got me over the finish line.

So the new record stands at 9037. I think I'm probably approaching the practical limit of what I can do in a given 24 hour period. I mean, I could keep going tonight, but I've only got 40 minutes left before the next day starts. Still, this went a lot more smoothly than I expected it to. I knew I could do it, but I thought it would be more painful than it turned out to be. I think the main thing that helped me was that I had a good game plan going in.

That, and the Punt Trick I discovered back in August, where I block out relatively small word counts for each hour. In this case, rather than just say I'm going to write 3k in the evening, I chose twelve specific hours in the day and assigned myself to write 750 words in each hour. It's not a big deal if I fall behind or pull ahead, but the main thing is that it forces me to manage the time more effectively, which keeps my goals realistic and my morale leveled out.

But this also suggest that I can't push myself much further, since I'd need to block out more time to get 11k, or 12k, or whatever. Past a point, I'd have to cut in to time spent on meals and sleeping. Or maybe I can find a way to consistently rack up more words per hour, but that seems unlikely to me at the moment. Maybe one of these years I'll look back on this post and laugh, because I'll have mastered some trick that lets me knock out 2000 words in an hour, but for now that sounds impossible. So the record will probably stand somewhere between 9 and 10k for a while.

As far as the Nano event goes... year, I'm 18% done. That's a really nice place to be on day one. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to goof off for a while and then go to bed. Tomorrow I just need 3000 words, and that sounds like a day off compared to what I just pulled off...

#nanwum vii #one day record is 9037

[mjjune]

[Image description in alt text]

2022 Writer's Wrapped

So to mimic spotify, I thought I would do a "wrapped" and review everything I did writing-related this year! Since 2021 was pretty... unproductive due to personal crisis reasons, I really made a comeback this year and I'm quite proud <3

Putting it under the cut just so I won't clog your dash lol

Reading:

8 books total

Genres: short stories, paranormal, fantasy, sci-fi, queer ya romance, memoir, comic book

Favorite: She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

Beta read @aritany's amazing peter pan retelling ❤️

Beta read a bipoc fairy tale retelling and a queer fantasy romance with crit swap partners

Writing & Editing:

Novels: 2

Words: ~190k

Hit 1 million words lifetime total for Nano projects!

Participated in Camp Nano and Nanowrimo

AVOF2 draft 0: 125k (72 days)

TWTR draft 0: 65k (33 days)

Genres: paranormal urban fantasy & dark fantasy fairy tale retelling

Edited down AVOF1 from 120k to 102k

Edited AVOF2 Act 1 and got the total down to 118k so far

Alpha reads in progress for both AVOF2 and TWTR!

Final beta reads in progress for AVOF with shortened word count (@jamieanovels, @bebewrites, and @isabellebissonrouthier ❤️)

Querying:

Learned how to write a synopsis & query letter

Made a website

Started querying AVOF

Participated in #PitDark and #MoodPitch and got 2 agent likes!

Rejections: 23 (including 3 from maybe piles ;-;)

Out: 7

Currently in 1 maybe pile

Writeblr Stats:

October: made this blog and started participating in writeblr

Gained 200 followers so far!

Most popular post: TWTR Playlist (click)

Biggest fans: @little-mouse-gardens @isabellebissonrouthier @elijahrichardwrites @spookyceph

Other:

Made my own discord server :3 (message me to join!)

Started twitter

AVOF art commissioned here

#writeblr #writblr #writers #writeblr community #writers of tumblr #amwriting #fantasy #dark fantasy #excerpt #wip #writing #mj mumbles #2022 wrapped #monthly review #2022 review #december 2022 review #mj posts

[anneapocalypse]

End of Year Fic Writer Round-up

I got tagged by @noire-pandora, @rosella-writes, @barbex, and @nirikeehan for this one!

Words posted: 50,362 words!

Additional Words Written: tbh, I did not keep track of that last year except for NaNo! I just wrote. Keeping track of overall word count isn't a huge priority for me these days. I really just use word count to drive me forward on individual projects. That said, I have 71K (give or take) of Briala/F!Tabris fic I wrote in 2022, as well as some 5K of unposted Lavellan fic, and there's probably something else I've forgotten about, but let's call it 76K.

Grand total of words: If I total the two, it comes to 126K, but I'm not actually sure if that's accurate since I'm pretty sure some of A Pot to Piss In was written in 2021 and at this point I've forgotten how much, though it probably wasn't more than a few thousand. Let's call it 120k. Give or take.

Fandoms: Dragon Age primarily, with a side of Mass Effect and Person of Interest for exchanges!

Highest Kudos: Between Us, the Tali/F!Shep fic I wrote for the Rare Femslash Exchange, with 99!

Highest Hit Oneshot: Also Between Us, with 1018!

Smut scenes: ...I actually didn't post anything with smut this past year. Not intentionally, it just happened that way.

New things I tried: Completing NaNoWriMo in November. (Successful, and never again.)

Fic I spent the most time on: Definitely A Pot to Piss In, my Sera backstory fic.

Fic I spent the least time on: Probably Sencha Green, just because it's the shortest.

Favourite thing I wrote: At this point it's a toss-up between A Pot to Piss In and the Briala/F!Tabris fic that's still in progress. Working on those two stories has absolutely been the highlight of my writing year. So much fun.

Favourite thing I read: In published works, Nona the Ninth without a doubt! In fanfic, there's been so much good stuff it's tough to narrow down (Dragon Age fandom is BOUNTEOUS), but (Tell Me) The Colour of the Rain by commoncomitatus really stands out as a Sera fic that has stuck with me. I've also been loving a lot of fics by @darethshirl, @rosella-writes, and @fireferns.

Writing goals for next year: Finishing A Hero Sleeps In Gwaren, my Briala/F!Tabris longfic, is about as far ahead as I've thought. When that's done, I'm sure something else will seize my attention!

As it's a bit late in the month, I'm sure a lot of people have already done this, so I'm not going to tag anyone specific; if you'd like to do this meme, consider yourself tagged!

#end of year fic writer meme #tag meme #annefiction #2022