Artemis

Last weekend, I finished the first draft of my bang fic (though I already have a head full of ideas of things I want to change or expand on - I didn't get neat ideas for the big final battle until I was already past that part)

Now I'm living in dread of edits

It's 47k, I haven't written anything this long in many years, and my WIPs currently in the 20-30k range are all post as I go.

Having such a huge chunk of writing to edit all at once is very daunting, though it will be interesting to see how I handle it. it will certainly be educational.

Also, don't laugh, I already have a list of missing scenes extras to write, too. But after editing, that will be my reward for finishing main fic.

I went and updated the interests tags in my profile, which had been woefully out of date. But damn, it's hard to summarize my Genshin interests. I wanted to throw in some favorites but who are my favorites when it really is "everyone." I keep cycling through a large cache of favorites there.

I wrapped up another scene of Chengxian Bang fic last night, finishing act 1 with this, and wrote a line or two of the first scene of act 2 (since one piece of writing advice I found helpful is to never end your session at the end of a scene, add at least a few words of the next one even if you end up deleting them so you won't start with an empty page when you next write.)

It wasn't many words last night but I'm still pleased by my progress since it felt so nice to tick off that whole act on my outline.

Act 2 is the one I have the least details on, which I had been leery of, but it might prove a blessing in disguise since I had a thought last night to make changes that would completely overhaul act 2.

I had been noticing since I was having trouble with the layers of secrets and suspicions getting in the way of developing a romance since with the current outline, the disguises won't come off until the final battle. So they will both basically only be seeing a mask.

But last night when I couldn't sleep, I realized that one layer of disguise (that Wei Wuxian is a huli jing) actually doesn't NEED to be kept up for the whole of act 2 since Jiang Cheng has already found pretty damning evidence in act 1, and they still have the back and forth over whether Wei Wuxian is the specific huli jing who is killing people in town. So I'm thinking of reworking the second act to have this secret out in the open, which should make the romance go smoother when he can interact as his real self instead of only his human peasant persona.

Challenge #12

In your own space, set yourself some goals for the coming year. They can be fannish or not, public or private.

So this is actually surprisingly easy and fast to answer (unless other days which I mean to get back to, though it might be after January.)

My main goal for writing is... to write. Actually have some somewhat consistent writing... not even schedule again, but just some regularity instead of going months without writing a single chapter. I miss the times when I would write at least a few words every day for weeks on end (usually when I had an exchange deadline to meet) and would regularly write at least 1-2 days a week.

I don't know if I'll go back to doing more exchanges or fests or bangs in 2023 since deadlines are pretty stressful to me these days with my RL full of uncertainty, but I know I want to get some regularity to my writing again.

I have so many ideas for MDZS/CQL, in particular, I still have so many stories I want to tell, some of them longer and more complex projects than I feel up to handling right now for energy reasons or simply for not having the necessary genre/culture knowledge yet, nor the time to research as in-depth as I'd need to in order to gain it. But even with the ones I COULD write now, I have so many ideas and I would like to get to at least some of them.

It has already been the ongoing struggle of 2022, especially in the second half of the year, that it feels like the Chengxian community is drifting apart as people get eaten up by RL or focus on other fandoms, and it feels like I lost my opportunity to get these stories out while there is still anyone who cares. Which is silly, I know, I have been writing for ships with 5 fans before and this community is still far larger, but I've been feeling this urgency but at the same time as I didn't feel up to act on it so that has been at the back of my mind a lot. And I'm tired of feeling restless without feeling up to doing anything about the cause of this restlessness. So in 2023, I want to actually do that.

Whenever I'm working on entrapped harmony, I'm reminded that this dumb arranged marriage story ended up a lot heavier and more serious than I had intended, what with how Wei Wuxian is dealing with years of pent-up grief and trauma catching up to him now that all his secrets have been forced out of him and he is completely powerless, nobody left for whom he needs to be strong.

I never intended to go there, it was supposed to be dumb tropey angsty romance, but now that this is where I landed myself I sure feel the pressure to do right by it.

Which is honestly why this story updates so much slower than Lingchi. Every chapter has me going back and forth for ages over every choice I make.

But if I can pull it off and get this story to a point where he is healing, then I know it will have been worth the struggle (and then it should be easier writing, too.)

(Fuck it, I'm gonna crosspost my writing ramblings, even if it feels silly and self-indulgent enough already to navelgaze in one place.)

I discovered last night that my layout isn't well-suited to reading on mobile, so I'm going to see about changing to one that is more mobile-friendly. It is time for a new one anyway, I've had this one for four years now.