Whispers

So I’m writing a story again, go me. I’m actually writing stories all the time and there’s of course, the commission and the Big One hiding out in my Big Fear timeline that I don’t even know when it’s supposedly due. Ahem, anyway.

Then there’s this thing. I brainstormed it over the last two days basically and lo and behold! a story! I know how it’s supposed to end and I know all the big emotional stuff going on through the two big mains and absolutely no clue how much of the backstory’s going in or how to organize any of it.

Yeah, so thoughts about structure. I’ve never been big on the idea of this straightforward plot nonsense. It just really doesn’t quite work for me. I’m far more into the business of structuring an emotional journey. And right now, I know absolutely the emotional journey I’m going to throw these characters through, but how that’s going to play out for the reader is a whole different ballgame.

There’s backstory, the first. There’s backstory, the second. There’s present time over a longer period of time where the two mains meet and one gets over her natural skepticism and one gets over (or at least finds more peace with) his overwhelming longstanding grief and then there’s the wrap-up for those two.

I’m absolutely not going to write three stories and marry them, so good luck to me figuring out how much of this stuff is needed.

Plus main storyline invites some meta and in-world nonstandard texts, but that doesn’t mean it’s a great idea for me to get sidetracked by that.

In short, I’m gonna do the thing I do when I’m writing about a universe I know too much about: I’m going to write the main story as if the reader knows everything I do. Then good luck to future me editing in all the pieces necessary to understand.

What kind of structure does one plan for a three in one story? In my case, as little as possible.

Work has been intense, but I’m heading in for a weeklong holiday, so just trying to make it through to tonight.

I’ve been formulating goals for the year, and stuff I want to deal with, but more on that in the days ahead when I’ve thought it through better.

And while I’m thinking of it, because I am.

Conlanging

So I was a flat failure at Lexember, which is new for me, but I’ve decided I’d like to actually see if I can bring Akachenti to a usable/finished ish state, even without building a proto-language because guys, I just want to write fiction, so I’m gonna try to stop worrying about perfection. (More like, unfinished things are starting to feel heavy.)

That said, I’ve started rereading my notes and realized something I should have all along. The unmarked stem is indicative and the marked stem I started with is inchoative. Simple as that.

So if you say abaga:, you’re saying, “I love,” with an indication that this is true in the past and the present. Aka, it’s true, factual, already happened. If you say, abaga:sha, you’re saying, “I love now,” or basically it’s true in the present but not the past.

I’ve looked at all kinds of aspects and tenses to explain why the unmarked is past/present without thinking about basic aspect. It’s indicative. It doesn’t really have tense at all. It can be used for past or present, even if you’re referring to something you did and completed before now, so long as you haven’t undone it since. They have a past discontinuous for that, which is actually just a specific negative or discontinuous prefix, e.g. vibaga:, or “I no longer love”. I’m guessing this originated from some word meaning “to stop or cease.”

Weekends used to be when I got everything done I didn’t have time for during the workweek. So often now, I have to just stop and rest. I’ve got the ideas for how to write out stories right now, but not the right headspace to write them.

There’s so many things I want to do, including put together those story or poetry collections and I know just how to do it too, but the energy’s just not there. It’s frustrating and yet, I feel like that lesson I learned in childhood that just accepting and choosing to rest is still important. If you’re stressed and guilty while resting, you don’t come out refreshed on the other side of it. If you actually stop and break and accept it, you feel better afterward.

A hard lesson sometimes, to stop and rest.

That said, I was gifted with a 2-day pass to crunchyroll for the purpose of watching the first episode of the Fifteen adaptation and I loved it. Sooooooo much. I love little bundle of fierceness Chuuya, his belief he’s going to keep growing (awww, nope, you’re done, kid), and his protectiveness of the Sheep. Also, his distaste for the Port Mafia specifically because they bathed Yokohama in blood and violence under the previous boss, which puts into perspective some of his later protectiveness of the city. He just really is a protective personality in general, I think, and chooses to use his gleeful love of destruction against targets he feels merit it and are harming people or places he cares about. Interesting. To me anyway.

I love how he rejects the label of king so strongly and how he absolutely loved going up against Hirotsu, and he kicked Dazai in the face! And picked up on the suicidal thing instantly at the first warning sign and they’re absolutely delightful bickering!

Ugh, I’m just so happy right now.

I thought about rewatching Dead Apple while I have the opportunity but instead braved the first episode of Yuri on Ice because every red flag for a potential favorite character is waving in Yuri Plisetsky’s direction, so here’s hoping I make it through the incredible amounts of secondhand embarrassment the first few episodes of an anime always seem to have. (Why? Can’t any of them just skip that part? :headdesk: )

Tomorrow, I have to do taxes and sort out how bad did I screw over my finances when I bought essentials on payday, so I can send off bill money. And I even forgot to buy some things, soooo that’s gonna be interesting. I don’t recommend living paycheck to paycheck. This is where getting on publishing a few hundred poems would be a good thing. Get right on that.

I still have that list of 8 people I intended to properly write after my negligent, hi y’all, I can barely function phase. Hopefully tomorrow?

Well, here’s hoping you’re all having a lovely weekend!

So the goal by the end of the month is to have:

1. 27 ficlets


2. 4 short stories


3. 93 poems

At the moment, I’ve logged:

1. 24 ficlets


2. 91 poems


3. 0 short stories

Despite my best efforts. Technically, there are 11 poems waiting to be typed up, so I’m on track for poetry and three days to add three ficlets, so doing fine there too. It’s the short stories that is a slight problem. And of course, there’s Chocolate Box, which could either help or hinder. We’ll have to see which.

And I spent most of my time this weekend reading and commenting and giving kudos for the Exchanges After Dark discord server’s birthday bash, which was a badfic and badart exchange. I have not yet doled out comment replies.

General update on the year’s writing goals (which I still haven’t gone back and finished adding stats for last year :grimace: ). Thirteen days in and we’re at:

• 14 ficlets: 2 original, 12 fanfic


• 54 original passing poems and 2 fannish bad poems that I am not counting


• 0 short stories

And technically a little novel work too, which is good. So in short, not a bad start but not quite where I want to be. Still, I’m grateful.

I need to put a day of treating in on Fandom Stocking, I have a shortlist of candidates but yesterday, my brain wanted to write crack and uh, yeah, not what was requested. Also, can’t wait to shift to treating Chocolate Box.

I’m still reading Sun Knight. Hulu has been in and out and my favorite overstimulated-right-now crash method of watching singing competition shows has been largely cut off. I’m not happy. Also, since when did one trip to the nearby grocery store wipe me out this bad? Gotta do something to get my nerves back under control. I lost two hours to aftermath coping.

Hope you’re all doing well!

1. write that last comment for the remix


2. finish my chocobox letter


3. do work for work 😥


4. write a couple ficlets or get that story for morne whipped into shape (it’s fighting me)

But not taking on new commitments because apparently I have no idea when my truly horrible days will occur and they tend to spread a bit, wearing off a few days later.

That said, my grandfather is going to be getting medical bills soon for my grandmother and a kind person set up a gofundme to help defray expenses. That’s here.

Everyone in the house has had bills go up and I’m going to try and get a patreon going soon to hopefully cover the difference in cost my paycheck won’t cover and also get out the several hundred poems and stories I haven’t published yet. Apparently, I logged 438 poems in 2017 and so far 565 poems in 2018. I’ve also written more than 100 drabbles this year and a handful of short stories, so it’s past time to start collecting and publishing everything not really done up yet and making available what hasn’t even been posted. It’s a chunk of work, but even the difference of a hundred bucks a month would solve a major bill problem, so Patreon seems like the obvious solution. (Getting a better-paying job or a promotion right now isn’t really an option.)

That said, on a more funnish front, I’ve been eyeing some treats I never got written due to my life going south in a bad way that I might sit down and finish. Would anyone be interested in an anonymous AO3 collection, like Happy Belated Treatmas, with work reveals on New Years and author reveals a week later? There was some sort of collection like that a year or two or ago and I like the idea of treating people with a tiny (emphasis on tiny) bit of structure but no pressure since it’s a late treat and the recip isn’t technically waiting on it.

I’ve been spending a ridiculous amount of time watching World of Dance and The Voice because apparently I cannot brain while grieving and that’s about my level. But I’m in love with Charity and Andres and really, the creative advice is good for writers too if you pay attention.

And I’ve been conlanging again because of course the right kind of comfort is untangling how diphthongs fit into a vowel inventory in light of sound change and I decided somewhere along the way I couldn’t make a proto-language without knowing how the vowels changed over time (this is actually true) and that I couldn’t make related languages without making a proto-language (this is debatable but true if I want an even remotely good one) and most of all that I needed to flesh these languages out at all to write the stories where they appear (this is likely completely false). But whatever. I do seem to enjoy the exercise, and there are worse hobbies to have even if it’s an extraordinarily unproductive one for me, considering how much energy and time I have to put into it and how many people aren’t waiting on any finished product.

Hope everyone is doing better than I am right now. Love you all and thanks for all the well wishes you’ve sent, the good thoughts, and for being so kind about my lurking generally non-communicative state.

So I just need to finish 2 more BSD fics to get Bungou Stray Dogs above the fold on my dashboard’s top fandoms list.

Crossposting is hard.

My old fanfic is on FF.net. Some of my MCU made it there and most of my MCU fic is on AO3. Everything since AO3, namely the growing pile of exchange fic, K and BSD drabbles and fic, etc. is all on AO3. The poetry and some of the more recent drabbles are on tumblr. The original fiction is… a mess. Let’s leave it at that.

Crossposting is really hard.

I’m partly tempted to knock off with FF.net, but that’s not a great idea and I’d like to get back to it, but if I just pick up where I’m at now, it’s going to get hard to figure out where I “left off” crossposting and ever gap fill. Maybe I’ll just schedule time blocks to get these two archives synced.

:headdesk:

I’m so giddy, you don’t even know. I share an anime fandom with one of my pre-existing fandom friends. This has NEVER happened.