April–July 2024 Writing Wrap-Up
Aug. 28th, 2024 05:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fractoluminescenceWhoa, it’s been a while. Lots of stuff happened, and I tried continuing to write these, but I kept taking too long and messing up the timing. Well, here I am this time. Things have died down. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep this up from here on out.
Things have been…strange. Turns out I wasn’t fit for the job I was being trained for. My time there ended mid-June. By the time I’d caught my breath, we were having guests over for nearly two weeks straight. It was nice to see them, but it was very overwhelming for me and my executive functioning fell apart to an extent that hadn’t happened in a while. I still haven’t completely managed to get my shit together since, but at least I’m working on my writing again and am feeling good on most days.
Despite the mess that these past few months have been, I’ve been quite productive GYWO-wise. Here are my numbers: 17 for April, 11 for May, 21 for June and 14 for July. Note though that many of these were quite short sessions—but they do stack up. This is a good reminder that I was still able to get a lot done despite my muse not working with me on so many days.
It makes me think that next time I might be able to try the tier above. I picked the lowest one this year not just because it was the easiest, but because, to be honest, I felt like even that much might be a struggle. Turns out, I’m way ahead of schedule, which gives me plenty of hope for the future.
When it comes to the IchiBowl story—at this point I’ve mostly lost track of what I did when, and to be honest I’m too lazy to go back and check. Thankfully though, this project has been rather straightforward so far, so I do remember what I did, even if the order escapes me.
First off, partway through June I decided to scrap everything I’d written for Spring up to that point. It just wasn’t working—I needed some kind of major change to get things going in the right direction again. After a bit, an interesting solution came to me: I needed to bring Rukia into the story.
Now, that was completely new for this project. Completely new to me, if I’m being honest, because she’s currently not important in my series (although I’m hoping I’ll find a way to insert her eventually), and I hadn’t had the opportunity to write a story featuring her since I got into fanfiction. My original niche is AiShin, after all, and she has no place in that for the most part.
But the moment I came up with it, I knew I needed her to be involved this time. It made sense from a worldbuilding standpoint, first of all—Ichigo is isolated, but not enough to not have any friends at all, and, just like in canon, she didn’t have to live close by, which would explain why she hadn’t shown up in the story yet and why Ichigo was spiraling down. She’s one of the lynchpins holding him together in canon, after all—she doesn’t protect him physically like Orihime does, but she keeps the rain at bay and can pull him out of a rut in a heartbeat. Even in canon, Ichigo feeling down during the Arrancar and Fullbringer Arcs at least partially hinges on her not being around 24/7 like she was at the beginning of the story.
She was perfect thematically, too. Her powers in canon rely a great deal dancing, which evokes being in tune with yourself, as well as emotion, and control, which is necessary to make sure her powers don’t hurt her. She was the perfect foil for both Shinji and Ichigo, and both of them needed the support of someone who wasn’t part of the looping dynamics of the Ichigo-Zangetsu-Ossan household.
I ended up approaching this new draft of Spring under a completely different angle than I had previously, and it’s been working great. I’m taking a break right now—I wasn’t going to make the deadline anyway, and I also have proofreading to do for another author of the project, as well as needed a break from all the pressure I was putting my muse under. My teammates said they would stick by me anyway, which I really appreciate. Still, I’m nearly finished with Spring 2. There’s likely going to be three parts in Spring though, because what I thought would be just one scene ended up splitting into two. Regardless, things are looking up now.
Regarding my series—considering it wasn’t my priority these past few months, what with the IchiBowl and all, I managed to make a surprising amount of progress. Shisei’s been at the back of my mind a lot—but nothing too concrete has come out of it yet. I’m still too unsure about what the plot of the later books will be—which is also why I’m not sure Kiyo will get to use her powers much during the story, despite having come up with a Bankai for her—a very interesting one, may I say, that is reminiscent of that of her parents while being also very different in its use—as well as, more recently, a Shikai that, if I decide to keep it in the story, may solve one of the logistical problems I thought I’d be having with certain in-story dynamics. I spent three sessions working on establishing the rules for Hell regarding souls and the state of soul death, too—a little element of my worldbuilding that had been giving me trouble for months. That’s definitely a win.
I also managed to strengthen the structure of YODT’s second act. For one, I worked on the subparts of the Lie Lydia has to overcome in this volume, using that one method where the first thing you introduce is the last that you wrap-up. I think it’ll go in this order: Shinji, Kureri, Ikue. For context, each of these three characters has something Lydia needs to learn from them, but I wasn’t sure what order to solve them in. I think this should work though.
Beyond that…Remember that thing I said in January about cutting out the backstory parts of YODT? Yeah, about that…It’s actually really, really hard to do. Those were supporting beams—I can’t just outright delete them. Also, I’ll be honest—a part of me is quite fond of them. That doesn’t change how little it has to do with the second lead’s story, of course—but it has to do with Lydia and her relationship to her world, which to be honest has had to have been one of the strangest things about writing this book for me so far.
I don’t like Lydia’s world. I find it profoundly uninteresting. I don’t really want to write about it. But this means something, as most instances of disinterest have done along my writing journey, which I’m ready to bet in this case is that Lydia herself doesn’t give a damn about her world. She mildly cares about her family, and she cares about the duty she has towards her organization, but that’s about it. It’s key to the plot and to her character that she does not, in fact, and despite the effort I put into it originally, care about her world at all.
And that comes through. And for that reason, describing her world is…hard. But the reader needs to know—needs to know at least a little bit about Lydia’s world, at least enough to have an idea of what it is like, otherwise it’ll be this big mystery that never gets solved. It’s interesting, after all: the isolationist scientifically advanced world that the main character is choosing another world over. The reader will wonder why. I’ll have to show the reader why. If I don’t, they won’t be able to let it go.
And to be fair, neither will I. I need to write Lydia saying goodbye to that world—but she can’t say goodbye to a world that doesn’t exist. That’s just embracing life. …Not me coming up with a cool way of phrasing her decision mid-explanation lol. But regardless—
I think I’ve found a way to keep the backstory chapters—’memory chapters’, as I call them—by making them relevant in a different way. See, originally, I was supposed to have journal entries strewn throughout the story—a leftover from my earlier writing days when the methods I had of approaching storytelling were fewer and more limited. And journal entries were one of them, so I used them a lot. In fact—and maybe I’m misremembering, but—I think I recall my very, very first attempt at a novel being made up of them. It’s funny, in a way, that that method followed me for so long.
I think it might be time to bring that back. Maybe this is just another instance of me going AHA! I have found a way to fix the memory chapters in YODT and then not actually doing it, but right now, the more I think about it the more doable it seems. Changing the second-person flashbacks into autobiographical retellings might be a bit hard in practice, but I should be able to make it work. What worries me a tad more is how to link the two together—but I think I should manage, because while Lydia doesn’t really read fiction, she would definitely read the autobiography of some famous scientist if it happened to be at her school library. She could be remembering excerpts of it. And it could be even more impactful, because instead of simply putting her memories up against the facts of her situation for the reader’s benefit only, this should let the horror of what is happening to her stare her right in the face.
It might also just give me a little more freedom with Arthur’s character. I can modify his fate—save him, maybe. Let whatever last entry we are shown imply that he lived a happy life afterwards. That maybe he’s still out there somewhere, maybe even that he took Simon with him, who knows. A runaway. I might not go with that, to be clear—but now, the option is open to me. I can tie all this in with my themes better if I try…
Anyway. Maybe this is misguided—again—but I think I might just have got the true solution now. I can fix this. And it might just work to make my job writing this story easier—for once.
Well. These last few months have been a bit messy, but I did get some stuff done. This is why it’s important to look back on one’s progress. You often find you did more than you thought.
A good few months. It’s been hard, but the fun is kicking in again. Good times.
That aside, I’m thinking I might start grouping months together. My previous entries were a little short, methinks. Three months might be good.
Well. I’ll find my ideal pacing eventually.
PS: It wasn't needed with the previous entries, but since this post is longer, I felt it needed some section breaks. After much struggle (this took me half a day I swear), I managed to create several classes of hr in the custom CSS bit of my blog's theme config. Very happy with myself.
Things have been…strange. Turns out I wasn’t fit for the job I was being trained for. My time there ended mid-June. By the time I’d caught my breath, we were having guests over for nearly two weeks straight. It was nice to see them, but it was very overwhelming for me and my executive functioning fell apart to an extent that hadn’t happened in a while. I still haven’t completely managed to get my shit together since, but at least I’m working on my writing again and am feeling good on most days.
Despite the mess that these past few months have been, I’ve been quite productive GYWO-wise. Here are my numbers: 17 for April, 11 for May, 21 for June and 14 for July. Note though that many of these were quite short sessions—but they do stack up. This is a good reminder that I was still able to get a lot done despite my muse not working with me on so many days.
It makes me think that next time I might be able to try the tier above. I picked the lowest one this year not just because it was the easiest, but because, to be honest, I felt like even that much might be a struggle. Turns out, I’m way ahead of schedule, which gives me plenty of hope for the future.
When it comes to the IchiBowl story—at this point I’ve mostly lost track of what I did when, and to be honest I’m too lazy to go back and check. Thankfully though, this project has been rather straightforward so far, so I do remember what I did, even if the order escapes me.
First off, partway through June I decided to scrap everything I’d written for Spring up to that point. It just wasn’t working—I needed some kind of major change to get things going in the right direction again. After a bit, an interesting solution came to me: I needed to bring Rukia into the story.
Now, that was completely new for this project. Completely new to me, if I’m being honest, because she’s currently not important in my series (although I’m hoping I’ll find a way to insert her eventually), and I hadn’t had the opportunity to write a story featuring her since I got into fanfiction. My original niche is AiShin, after all, and she has no place in that for the most part.
But the moment I came up with it, I knew I needed her to be involved this time. It made sense from a worldbuilding standpoint, first of all—Ichigo is isolated, but not enough to not have any friends at all, and, just like in canon, she didn’t have to live close by, which would explain why she hadn’t shown up in the story yet and why Ichigo was spiraling down. She’s one of the lynchpins holding him together in canon, after all—she doesn’t protect him physically like Orihime does, but she keeps the rain at bay and can pull him out of a rut in a heartbeat. Even in canon, Ichigo feeling down during the Arrancar and Fullbringer Arcs at least partially hinges on her not being around 24/7 like she was at the beginning of the story.
She was perfect thematically, too. Her powers in canon rely a great deal dancing, which evokes being in tune with yourself, as well as emotion, and control, which is necessary to make sure her powers don’t hurt her. She was the perfect foil for both Shinji and Ichigo, and both of them needed the support of someone who wasn’t part of the looping dynamics of the Ichigo-Zangetsu-Ossan household.
I ended up approaching this new draft of Spring under a completely different angle than I had previously, and it’s been working great. I’m taking a break right now—I wasn’t going to make the deadline anyway, and I also have proofreading to do for another author of the project, as well as needed a break from all the pressure I was putting my muse under. My teammates said they would stick by me anyway, which I really appreciate. Still, I’m nearly finished with Spring 2. There’s likely going to be three parts in Spring though, because what I thought would be just one scene ended up splitting into two. Regardless, things are looking up now.
Regarding my series—considering it wasn’t my priority these past few months, what with the IchiBowl and all, I managed to make a surprising amount of progress. Shisei’s been at the back of my mind a lot—but nothing too concrete has come out of it yet. I’m still too unsure about what the plot of the later books will be—which is also why I’m not sure Kiyo will get to use her powers much during the story, despite having come up with a Bankai for her—a very interesting one, may I say, that is reminiscent of that of her parents while being also very different in its use—as well as, more recently, a Shikai that, if I decide to keep it in the story, may solve one of the logistical problems I thought I’d be having with certain in-story dynamics. I spent three sessions working on establishing the rules for Hell regarding souls and the state of soul death, too—a little element of my worldbuilding that had been giving me trouble for months. That’s definitely a win.
I also managed to strengthen the structure of YODT’s second act. For one, I worked on the subparts of the Lie Lydia has to overcome in this volume, using that one method where the first thing you introduce is the last that you wrap-up. I think it’ll go in this order: Shinji, Kureri, Ikue. For context, each of these three characters has something Lydia needs to learn from them, but I wasn’t sure what order to solve them in. I think this should work though.
Beyond that…Remember that thing I said in January about cutting out the backstory parts of YODT? Yeah, about that…It’s actually really, really hard to do. Those were supporting beams—I can’t just outright delete them. Also, I’ll be honest—a part of me is quite fond of them. That doesn’t change how little it has to do with the second lead’s story, of course—but it has to do with Lydia and her relationship to her world, which to be honest has had to have been one of the strangest things about writing this book for me so far.
I don’t like Lydia’s world. I find it profoundly uninteresting. I don’t really want to write about it. But this means something, as most instances of disinterest have done along my writing journey, which I’m ready to bet in this case is that Lydia herself doesn’t give a damn about her world. She mildly cares about her family, and she cares about the duty she has towards her organization, but that’s about it. It’s key to the plot and to her character that she does not, in fact, and despite the effort I put into it originally, care about her world at all.
And that comes through. And for that reason, describing her world is…hard. But the reader needs to know—needs to know at least a little bit about Lydia’s world, at least enough to have an idea of what it is like, otherwise it’ll be this big mystery that never gets solved. It’s interesting, after all: the isolationist scientifically advanced world that the main character is choosing another world over. The reader will wonder why. I’ll have to show the reader why. If I don’t, they won’t be able to let it go.
And to be fair, neither will I. I need to write Lydia saying goodbye to that world—but she can’t say goodbye to a world that doesn’t exist. That’s just embracing life. …Not me coming up with a cool way of phrasing her decision mid-explanation lol. But regardless—
I think I’ve found a way to keep the backstory chapters—’memory chapters’, as I call them—by making them relevant in a different way. See, originally, I was supposed to have journal entries strewn throughout the story—a leftover from my earlier writing days when the methods I had of approaching storytelling were fewer and more limited. And journal entries were one of them, so I used them a lot. In fact—and maybe I’m misremembering, but—I think I recall my very, very first attempt at a novel being made up of them. It’s funny, in a way, that that method followed me for so long.
I think it might be time to bring that back. Maybe this is just another instance of me going AHA! I have found a way to fix the memory chapters in YODT and then not actually doing it, but right now, the more I think about it the more doable it seems. Changing the second-person flashbacks into autobiographical retellings might be a bit hard in practice, but I should be able to make it work. What worries me a tad more is how to link the two together—but I think I should manage, because while Lydia doesn’t really read fiction, she would definitely read the autobiography of some famous scientist if it happened to be at her school library. She could be remembering excerpts of it. And it could be even more impactful, because instead of simply putting her memories up against the facts of her situation for the reader’s benefit only, this should let the horror of what is happening to her stare her right in the face.
It might also just give me a little more freedom with Arthur’s character. I can modify his fate—save him, maybe. Let whatever last entry we are shown imply that he lived a happy life afterwards. That maybe he’s still out there somewhere, maybe even that he took Simon with him, who knows. A runaway. I might not go with that, to be clear—but now, the option is open to me. I can tie all this in with my themes better if I try…
Anyway. Maybe this is misguided—again—but I think I might just have got the true solution now. I can fix this. And it might just work to make my job writing this story easier—for once.
Well. These last few months have been a bit messy, but I did get some stuff done. This is why it’s important to look back on one’s progress. You often find you did more than you thought.
A good few months. It’s been hard, but the fun is kicking in again. Good times.
That aside, I’m thinking I might start grouping months together. My previous entries were a little short, methinks. Three months might be good.
Well. I’ll find my ideal pacing eventually.
PS: It wasn't needed with the previous entries, but since this post is longer, I felt it needed some section breaks. After much struggle (this took me half a day I swear), I managed to create several classes of hr in the custom CSS bit of my blog's theme config. Very happy with myself.
