Ren the Ghost

First of all, on the gaming creation situation; I've uploaded the basics of STO 3.0 & 4.0 to a carrd. And right now I'm trying to write a ver 5.0 where instead of leveling up a character you're building a whole town. Potentially in the trees? I don't know, I have a lot of ideas. It's even gonna have NPCs and everything, because I know no self-control and have no chill. (I'll drop something eventually for v5.0 but I haven't gotten far yet.)

tinyfandomflash is also moving along! It's on challenge 3 right now, which just seems wild to me. And I am still entirely unfamiliar with all fandoms that have been posted so far, which is even wilder, LOL. (I need to get around to making that round-up post.)

Lately, I've been going on "join a lot of writing-dedicated discord servers" sprees, but I still haven't entirely found what I'm seeking for so I've been toying around with setting up one of my own. Not gonna lie, have done that before, didn't pan out, deleted them, and pretended it never happened. But like, I'm fine if that's what I do with this one as well?

I legit love organizing and sorting things, and putting together a discord server, getting everything just right, is genuinely a great time. I'm not very good at, like, actually keeping it alive, but I assume that's what other people are for *sweat*.

What I actually want, which is hard to find trawling through disboard is what I wrote on the welcome channel in my shiny new server "...digging deep into writing; world-building, characterization, how to do research (help), editing, etc. and even deeper into publishing (particularly self-publishing). It's all about those nitty-gritty details that make you realize that becoming a better writer is basically like building a functional town. Everything has gotta be just right, and it'll be a lot easier to get away with potholes if the whole thing is mostly the same level."

But a lot of servers don't dig that deep, or conversations get derailed, or there are so many conversations happening one after another and things get buried too quickly to read much less participate in. Sigh.

I guess if anyone wants to peek into the server, toss me a line? (Maybe I should start spamming originalfiction but honestly it seems dead? Possibly set up a new DW comm dedicated to writing? But like. Spoons.)

Also, I recently made the decision that I *won't* be monetizing THE GEEK TRAP, my current writing project. That was the plan, but honestly this project has been a coping method for my mental health from start to finish and I kind of can't stomach monetizing it right now. Like, I might have to someday but I still have disability benefits so *not today*.

So it'll be going up on Wattpad, Tapas and Scribble Hub soon (I'm at 70k of 78k words, so...) and then when it's finished posting at those places I might toss it onto AO3 for posterity.

Also in other news, the scrolling wheel on my computer mouse has begun to malfunction the last few days which is. So frustrating. Like it's not all the time, it's still usable, but it's enough to bother me. I've changed the battery, but no dice. I even tossed it up on my wishlist because I got so annoyed, LOL.

In happier news, I've got a package inbound that got caught by customs and I don't know what it is, LMAO. It either has to be books from a Kickstarter I backed or a book I bought from ViaLactea like 2 years ago. Either would be great! So I am keeping my eyes on my mailbox.

I'm visiting grandparents tomorrow and so am in the final stages of packing right now. Looking forwards to it; haven't seen them in a year! Will hopefully also get to see other relatives living there but who knows, they're kind of flaky.

Writing-wise, I have tossed up a project (the same one as in April) on NaNoWriMo and am slowly adding words on it. Nowhere near fast enough to hit my goal (which is how much is left until it's complete, ca 40k) since I'm meandering along at just enough to maintain my 4thweords streak right now. I don't have any great ambitions about getting a bunch of words out, I'm just trying to get back into the rhythm of writing it.

New books have arrived and I've also already spent the entire portion of my budget allocated to the smashwords' sale. Oops.

The amount of money I've spent on clothes this month too... I've already had to adjust my budget this month (less in the piggy bank) and will likely do so again if I'm to spend *any* money on holiday. So many things no longer fit; this whole regularly working out at the gym thing is proving quite hazardous to my wallet. Sigh.

On less happy notes, I had a massive headache recently that took 2 doses of painkiller and about 2 hours of pacing to get rid of, and even then it wasn't totally defeated. It's mostly better, but not entirely gone now, and I need to make sure I'm not up to late or that's definitely going to trigger something. Sadly, my mental health is not stellar at the moment so I'm getting caught in lots of loops. Which makes going to bed on time particularly difficult to achieve.

In happier news, though, the 2nd challenge for tinyfandomflash is up! I'm still working on my fic for the first challenge, but will hopefully manage to squeeze that out soon. Also! There are already four (4) fics on there! And I am completely unfamiliar with all four fandoms, so quite clearly this is already working. Nice!

I've made chocolate cupcakes for the trip, but I think I left them in the oven too long. I'm overly cautious on them for some reason, but last time they were still edible so hopefully they're fine again. Just not as gooey inside as they should be.

Alright, gonna get back to packing now. *pumps fist*

I've made an account on the new Ad Astra archive and even posted a quick fic there. I'm not sure how I feel about the fic itself but man has this resurrected my Bashir/Garak feels. A DS9 rewatch might be in the future.

Anyway, so far that fic isn't anywhere else.

I'm also slowly crossposting all my fics (currently going through the completed ones) to my new DW community wraithvault because as much longevity as the OTW might aspire to have, it's still an all-eggs-in-one-basket kind of situation. Especially because I tend to write my fics right on AO3 in the browser so I'm not sure I actually have backup copies of everything.

Or where they might be if I do...

(Yes, I've lost a thing or two when the drafts got automatically deleted and I forgot to back it up. Wince.)

But I'm extensively tagging everything (from fandom to pairing to wordcount etc.) on the DW comm so it should be easy to browse. It's set so memberships are invitation only, and posting is members only, so only I can post, but subscriptions are more then welcome! Comments are registered accounts only, though.

I've never actually done this before—I went right from ff.net to AO3 with no pitstops, and I'm only recently getting into DW. But I'm really digging it.

Like, to be honest, AO3 isn't that welcoming anymore? Like, it kind of feels like the Borg; it's one big hive where everything that's posted is assimilated into one gigantic blob of content. It's kind of loud, in a way, and I've figured out that I'm not made for that kind of loudness.

Also, I just like the fact that I can pick and choose between so many themes. XD

(I thought about doing it on Neocities and while that'd give me a lot of freedom in design, quite frankly I'm not in the mood for all the coding. Because, like, I would wanna do Things™ (that I can't actually do) with it.)

Also, I've uploaded a bunch more icons. I feel like a proper DW user now! XD

Edit: Also I do have a Squidgeworld account, I'm just not using it much.

I was trying to delete a comm I never used and accidentally deleted my blog instead. Oops? I activated it again super quickly! ...I sure do hope I didn't mess anything up.

Also spilled just. So much milk. But I'm proud of handling it like a person who's got better things to worry about than some spilt milk. I just chucked it all in the laundry and didn't worry about it.

Also also I thought it was about time to try out my other icon and see if it works wrong. Something went wrong when I tried to upload it and now it's literally nothing. Like, it's not an image of nothing. There is literally *nothing there* but DW thinks it is, LOL. I think it's kind of cool now.

So I hate editing. This, I've learned, is a fact.

I finished the 1st draft of AGSH (my winning NaNo project last year) in the start of Feb. I felt good about it! It's a cool world with cool characters and I adore... a lot about it. And that pause there is kind of just the tip of the iceberg. Because once I finished it I set it aside; I wrote the whole thing in 4 months, my previous record was about 15 months, and the project before that about 4 years. So 4 months? Amazing!!

But I set it aside, finished the outline for my current project (which was also my Camp NaNo project) referred to here as TGT. Kind of flunked out of March; I only wrote 5k on TGT in March, and was only starting to get my groove back at the end of the month. I updated a fanfic, started a new one, officially abandoned an old one -- the usual.

It's now been about 2 months since I finished AGSH and I just don't wanna touch it.

I hate editing.

It's not that editing and revisions needed are too daunting a task; it's the process itself I hate. It's a chore; annoying, dull, and entirely critical of my own writing in a way that also entirely steals the joy of writing something. I can't imagine a life not writing. It's joyful, it's curiosity, it's coping with shitty things. Writing is fun! I wanna do it forever!

I'm not actually sure I can properly articulate my problem with revising and editing. It's not fun, I dread it with every bone in my body, and the idea of a draft going through multiple rounds of edit like everybody says a draft need? Nauseating. I can't do that. That's the thought that's paralyzing--the idea that it needs to be done over and over and over again.

But the paralyzation can be worked past. It can be ignored. It's only an obstacle if I let it, right? It's a drag, but I could do it. That's not what's stopping me in my place.

It's the fact that, once I get some distance from a project I kind of... don't like it. It's not the writing that bothers me, really, or that I think I wrote it badly and it doesn't work right or something. I just lose interest in it. There are a thousand other stories in my brain clamoring to get written down, and my brain has designated that draft as 'complete' and the idea of returning to it, even if a I have a solid idea of what should added, removed, changed, etc. is kind of incomprehensible.

I'm not sure I'm explaining myself very well, or if I'm actually getting across what I mean. But with AGSH, it's a profound unwillingness to work on it. It's not the idea of editing and revising that freezes me, it's the fact that I just don't want to touch it. And maybe that'll change! That would be great! But I'm not hanging all my hopes on that!

And that brings me to this; somebody I follow on Mastodon posted a link to this blog post about how to write a clean (basically a publishable) 'first' draft without using subsequent editing aside from proofreading.

That sounded really interesting, because my brain designates things as 'done' and then won't get close to them again, so not needing to fix things after? Sign me the fuck up.

So I bought the author's Writing Into The Dark book which touches some on the whole cycling method but doesn't go into any details, and the good feeling continued. Also, I saw a comment somewhere where somebody referred to it as 'looping' instead of cycling and honestly, that sounds cooler so I'm just gonna call it that now.

The distinction with is that the editing, revising etc. all occurs while writing that first draft in a lot of series of loops. It's not that the draft is an agonizing mess and you refuse to keep working on it, it's that you do that additional work without every saying 'stop, this is done now' until it actually is all done.

I have started a new short story (well, it's at 4k already and not even half-way done so it probably won't be that short, LOL) specifically to try out this method of writing. Gone through some editing loops already of the earlier parts and so far... it was pretty painless. It didn't feel anything like editing a completed 1st draft does for me. Both in the comments of the post and in the book I read, the author places a lot of emphasis on creative vs critical voice when writing, and evidence so far points to it helping.

That said, I'm not gonna make any judgments on whether this works for me or not until I actually finish this short story. And probably another one for more data. I want concrete evidence before I turn over my entire writing process, LMAO.

But even if it doesn't work for me at all, if the progress right now is just beginner's luck, all writing practice is valuable and if nothing else, I might figure out how to make editing bearable.

So I like it so far.

Some things have happened since I last posted:

1) I finished the 1st draft of my NaNoWriMo novel! A GRAVE SO HAUNTING ended up at 85k words, and I wrote it in four (4) months. And barely at that because February has just started! I'm kind of still so baffled that it's done already that my hype about finishing a thing is barely getting started. Like, the previous record was something like 15 months, so this is... a big change, LOL. I keep alternating between excited that it's done, and befuddled that it's done...

2) I bought more books!

3) I've started going to the gym every week! I have exercises to do at home too, but I love going to gym so much more. I'd rather go to the gym twice a week than do my home exercises because, well, the gym is just so much cooler. It feels more official, you know? Anyway, I went yesterday which was like the third week in a row, and I am super proud of myself.

4) In celebration of finishing a book (in 4 months!!) I'm going to buy even more books this month! I'm still deciding (insert cute emoji here) which books I'm buying; there are so, so many books I want. Like, just, so many. Honestly, the books on my wishlist are like a drop in the bucket, LMAO. I even have a spreadsheet of books I'm going to buy, but I'm adding books faster than I can buy them so it just keeps growing...

5) I've moved my list of Official English Danmei Translations onto a carrd so it's easier to navigate.

...Yeah, so like I said, some things happened.

I got more money than I expected from various relatives over the holidays and in the end, I successfully bought 13 books from my wishlist! (They're paperbacks, that's why I couldn't buy more. Like, these are all self-published through Amazon and unavailable anywhere else, and I refuse to use kindle, so... paperbacks it is.) In fact, I picked them up today and after the morning I had, this is awesome.

So this morning I woke up because my head hurt. I took meds for that, spent an hour turning in bed without the headache receding, and then threw up.

I haven't thrown up in years, not since surgery. (TV lies to you. Sometimes morphine just makes you throw up.) I am wildly unhappy with this but silver lining; because I was up taking meds I wasn't wearing my retainer when things went wrong.

Anyway, I haven't thrown up again, the headache is mildly better, and now I'm just lazying about trying to figure out if the soda I put in the fridge has gotten cold yet. Also I'm reading A DUKE FOR A LADY—which isn't one of the books I bought, it's from the library and the loan expires next week. So. Gotta get on that first.

Anyway, I hope you're having a better day than me. 😅

...only too little money.

This month, I've bought about 60 books on smashwords' vinter sale, and I might still buy even more (there are some things sitting in my cart right now...). In total, I've already spent over 100 bucks on it (yes, my budget is crying). I have no regrets because most of them were at least at 50% sale, but still. I get the feeling I might have gone a little overboard.

This was not in my budget.

I am also obsessively trying to figure out how much money I'll get this Christmas. I celebrated with my mother yesterday and got a wad of cash enough for 5 books from my wishlist, but if I can get about 40 bucks today when I'm celebrating with my father, I can add another 3 books. I already know which ones I'm gonna buy, so crossing my fingers!

Since my budget is already dead (though thankfully not as disastrously as last month) I am doing myself the favor of not counting the books/things I'll buy with the Christmas gift money as my "own" expense. I'm not counting it on my budget because technically it's not my money? It's gifts, I'm just buying them for myself with other peoples money!

So yeah, I'm on the edge of my seat with anticipation here, lol.

I had a lapse in judgment and started outlining a brand-new story—some kind of post-apocalyptic thing with bases and monsters roaming and people with special abilities fighting them. (So like, all the apocalypse webnovels) except so far it's none of that because we're focusing on a low-level thug in the city. No idea if I'll continue with it or where it's going. I do like the MC's personality, though!

I've also set up 5k3days, a writing challenge; write 5k words in 3 days. I've done this before on my own and think it's quite fun. The advantage is that it's over very quickly, so when you're actually doing it there's not a lot of time to panic. It's also very cool to come out the other side with 5k new words XD

I'm hoping that making the challenge more "official" will help me with my own writing progress. I've kind of stalled at the moment... executive dysfunction has had me in its grip for a while now. It's getting better, I think, but I'm still kind of annoyed. At the very least I want to actually fight the winter monsters in 4thewords winter event—to that end, I took a bunch of new quests. I've got like 15 ones ongoing now...

Editing because I want to yell about this: Somebody bought me books from my wishlist!!! I'm so excited!! (*꒦ິ꒳꒦ີ)

On the 27th, I won NaNoWriMo!

I've won camp nano before, but it's never been more than a 20k goal. I've also done big nano before, but never gotten further than 25k words. That said, I can't back up that data because I deleted all those old projects from my nano profile. Oops. (...It felt cluttered and messy. I had to clean things up, okay.)

But this time, I won. 50k words in 27 days, with an average speed of around 1880 words per day.

I don't think I need to state again how strange that is.

Nevertheless, here's the winning method (so I don't forget next time, lol):

I never once looked at the stat page this month. I've always done that before—looked at the stat page, seen how many words I need to write per day on average (that dreaded 1667 number) and tried to adjust things for that. I've made schedules—write this many words these days, take a day off here, write this much again. And so on.

It's never worked, obviously. I'm neurodivergent, and I can't keep track of time in that manner. A month from now doesn't exist for me and neither does a week. I'm also physically disabled so some days I literally can't write at all. I even have executive dysfunction up the hoolabalooza (hello 4 AM, my old friend).

But this time, I threw all those schedules away. I never worried about the big picture, never tried to figure out how much I needed to write to keep on track. And you know, I checked my stat page once I did win; I never fell behind, even on the slower days.

In the end, it's just about writing as much as possible today. Because tomorrow neither exists nor matters, and I can't count on it. I can't plan like that. I don't think like that.

Today is the only thing that's real, that I can feel, that I can touch and affect and change.

Tomorrow doesn't exist.

...I still can't really believe I won. I don't entirely comprehend how this happened, even though I just laid it out. I wrote as much as possible every single day, and sometimes that was 3k words and sometimes it was 500, and it was always awesome. Always okay! I didn't push beyond what I felt comfortable with!

And somehow that all stacked up to 50'000 words.

That's kind of fucking incredible.