#//mostly because i didn't feel like doing that much editing lmao i got tired

[djsangos]

everyones required to look at my beautiful girlfriend right now immediately no exceptions

[murasaki-cha]

Just finished This Woven Kingdom and yeah it was like really hard to go through during the first 50-60% of the book but the latter part got me so excited I literally flew through it!

I love Alizeh so much she's literally the sweetest and the kidest and she looked so cute absolutely massacring those 5 armed mercenaries with her sewing supplies! God I just love her so much! How bad tho is it that I legit saw close to nothing in her romance with Kamran. Like he was going insane thinking about her 24/7 meanwhile Alizeh thought of him like a total of 5 times mostly when she was reminded by other people. Honestly good for her, girl was just trying to stay alive👏👏

Kamran was so funny, not as in "lol he makes funny jokes" but as in "lmao he sucks I love bullying his ass". He's such a nepo baby, like an entitled little ass with major anger issues and a side of mommy issues. Nah but fr he was a bit on the obnoxious side sometimes and it got on my nerves, I say this with love. Unfortunately I've heard he only gets worse, shame I quite liked him. Loved his simping tho fr he was so down bad it was sad to read sometimes. Also absolutely LOVED his interactions with Hazan, had both me on the floor every single time🤣

Cyrus literally appeared so close to the end but I really like his character because he is just SO PETTY🤣🤣🤣 He's just trying to do his job and shit like literally does not want to interact with anyone, I absolutely get him. Also he has red hair and is a dragon owner instantly he goes up on the favorite scale I don't make the rules. No but can't wait to read more about him and Alizeh in These Infinite Threads like I can tell they will give me the true enemies to lovers my heart desires, not whatever Kamran and Alizeh were giving. Their bickering sound hilarious already.

And by far my favourite character os Hazan. I ADORE HIM!!! He is literally so freaking sassy and so very tired of Kamran's shit. Every time he opened his mouth he wiped the floor with Kamren istg it was amazing🤣🤣🤣🤣 AND HE HAS A LOYAL LITTLE FIREFLY ISN'T THAT JUST THE CUTEST!!!! Also his devotion to Alizeh is just so sweet, I was so pleasantly surprised when he was revealed to be Alizeh's childhood friend. I really am hoping he doesn't become a love interest but just stays a loyal besgie through and through to Alizeh (like Kenji and Juliette)

All in all, this book is like an 8.5/10 for me ONLY because it was so hard to get through the first half of the book.

Queen Tahereh Mafi has gone and done it again folks and more people really should talk about this series more!

I'm gonna go read These Infinite Threads now✨️

Edit: I would like to clarify, just because I made it very clear I'm team Cyrus from the start, doesn't mean that I did not find Alizeh and Kamran cute! No they were super adorable actually when they interacted. And Kamran was legitimately down horrendous like boy get up! My only problem was that there were so few interactions between them, that it felt like they just developed these feelings for the image they had constructed of the other in their head. Like they literally had a conversation a total of what 3 times?? (Since the first book takse place in a total of 3 days) It didn't really make sense to me.

Right now I'm chosing to trust the forced proximity with Alizeh and Cyrus, also these two literally can't stand each other's ass already and they've just met so I feel like they're giving more enemies to lovers than Alizeh with Kamran. And since Tahereh Mafi herself said this is an enemies to lover romance, I'm going to trust my instincts

[lettersandinkstains]

congrats on finishing a wip!! Whats ur secret!!!! lmao

This isn't my first WIP I've finished, so that helped me a bit. (There's a reason I don't talk about my Vampire WIP anymore, it's done, just sitting archived for me to go in and edit it, and do a new draft of it)

Knowing my limits, taking breaks, and shelving when I start to get frustrated. If I find myself dreading the writing process, it's time to take a break and focus on something else.

I also shelved other WIPs to focus on one, otherwise I wouldn't finish anything. Too many projects meant my mind is split onto too many things, and HEMLOCKS was already established with a few interested beta's that weren't on Tumblr or any writing server - just a couple of friends I could trust with the document and liking the synopsis.

I also had Lyric's voice stuck in my head until I wrote her story and re-wrote it until I was mostly satisfied with it. I also did writ a lot of it when I was feeling low or in a bad state of mind, so some of it was just mostly vent works, drawing from my own past or a late partner's past (minus the "parent killed the other parent" part of it all), especially something that Lyric talks about that I and my late partner personally went through at different times.

It was also just reminding myself that there's no rush to finish it, perfection is never going to be achieved so I may as well just do it and write what I want to write and see in a story. It helped me that it is actually an entirely different genre than what I normally write, so I actually had to test myself and see where my limits actually lied.

Also, I didn't talk about it too much on social media so I didn't feel like I had to write a WHAM line every time or feel like I had to create, create, create and make every sentence and line meaningful and deep. It felt pretentious more than normal.

I also stopped complaining. I stopped complaining about the writing process, how I didn't know what to say or what to call it or what to do or how much I hated it, hate that, and jokes of "why can't it write itself" jokes. I stopped insulting it. It didn't feel good, I didn't feel good, it just made me hate what I was doing more, so I just decided to stop complaining about it, and started sharing what I was proud of with a select few friends.

If you speak negatively about your stuff, why should anyone else like it? Why should anyone else read it? "This story sucks and I hate writing it" vs "Some scenes are giving me trouble and I'm getting a little annoyed" are two incredibly different statements, one puts most readers off and the other is relatable. Like on A03, "I suck at summaries" won't net you shit. "This story probably sucks" won't do anything. And you'll also eventually start to believe that - what then? If you hate what you're writing it, why are you writing it?

Was it frustrating sometimes? Did I run into writers block? Yes, so I shelved it and came back to it later when I had some more inspiration. I wrote it in Google Docs entirely and would link my friends to get live responses, I wrote at home and not at work because if I wrote at work, I'd associate it with work.

If I wanted to stop writing it, I did. HEMLOCKS got put aside for awhile for fanfiction because I found not working with my own OCs for awhile genuinely helped me.

I stopped editing as I went. The best advice I ever received was, edit later, write now. Worry about mistakes and perfection later and then accept that perfection isn't possible, and that's okay!

I start writing it when I was awake and stopped when I was tired, I took breaks, I ate when I needed to, drank water when I needed to, etc. None of that, "I won't eat or drink or do anything until I write 5K words today!" Absolutely the fuck not, and I still see shit like that in writing spaces. TAKE CARE OF YOUR BODY, your brain needs that shit to WORK. A healthy body DOES equal a healthy mind, drinking some water does wonders, so does going for a short walk or focusing on something else. You need to listen to your bodies signals :/

...And I honestly stopped participating in NANO. Camp or Novembers. I honestly didn't like it, didn't like the pressure - it stopped feeling fun after awhile and started to feel like work. And I stopped talking about it altogether, except with a few friends who are close to my heart and may be the only ones to ever read it. Likely if I am asked if someone can read it, I will say no.

Lastly, I stopped posting on here. Like, I absolutely love writeblr, I've met some great people on here but - I found not posting in writing communities helped me a lot. Notes had become a big thing and I was too fixated on it, and then I realized that if it was wrecking my mental health, it's time to leave. I hate sanitizing things or writing for the masses, I like to write what I like and often times, that's WLW and not MLM. And sometimes even not romance and more something like HEMLOCKS. And I found that I was posting more about my WIPs than actually writing them or feeling motivated to write them.

I have plenty more, especially when it comes to HEMLOCKS but that's between me and the two people that know why I was working on it and what was happening like two nights ago that made me finish it.

SO this is Novel Number Two that is finished for me and I feel like I've only been able to talk about it with like three people. I am incredibly proud of myself.