#'IT'S MY PANDEMIC NOVEL'

[semperintrepida]

WIP progress update: hey hey, finished chapter 34 last night. I’ve three-ish chapters left to go...

I also hung out with @chantgirl the other day and talked her ear off about this book for three hours. Thank you for your service! 🤣

[dollsome-does-tumblr]

today is one of those days where i'm really grumpy at writing. like, for reals?? i'm wasting my one wild and precious life trying and failing to do THIS dumb activity for NO DISCERNIBLE REASON???

[atissi]

okay all of the reviews for "severance" by ling ma said it was a hilariously deadpan satire on the post-apocalypse — and maybe that was true in 2018 — but now that i've read it i can say i probably laughed Once and felt a bone-deep nihilistic dread Constantly. the bit about the protagonist's company gifting her a self-care kit of 2 N95 masks, a nutrient bar, and an expanded insurance plan in response to a worldwide pandemic isn't really funny post-2020, it's just realism.

[jen4k2]

Between this and, like, all of Frugal Wizard, anybody else think Brandon Sanderson has gotten really, really angry and really liberal?

[darcyfirth]

finished reading another book for this year 🥳

[benevolenterrancy]

Can you draw some more dimwood forest fanart? Your multi fandom animal piece is some of the only art I've ever seen for the series. If you want a more specific idea, could you either draw poppy and ereth being friends or ereth with his fox cubs? Thank you so much

getting a break from the kids

[kohakhearts]

cons of going to a “good schoolTM”: insane workload, unbearable classmates, next to no support when you have any kind of extenuating circumstances Including literal hospitalization, etc

pros of going to a “good schoolTM”: the 9-5 lifestyle is genuinely a major improvement

[ban-joey]

maaaaan i want to be studying emerging disease right now are you joking. give me the data on that thang. is it in pigs yet? what the fuck

[littlebigmouse]

Anyone who says "fandom moves on too fast" has never been to a german anime convention.

[absentmoon]

i finished severance, it was eerily relatable since the pandemic and also because of some of my personal experiences……. it was also SO much to digest & so heavy while simultaneously being fast paced and gripping. its a commentary on consumerism and on capitalism on work on race on immigration on the human condition……… amazing.

OMG YOU FINISHED ALREADY its so so so so goodddgfhbggfhfjfhfgdgdfd GOD. you UNDERSTAND. can you believe that was ling ma's debut novel

[britneyshakespeare]

should i start reading russian avant-garde theater

[maybebabyplease]

tell me something abt "fast days bad company" if ya like!

absolutely! this is the novel i've been working on forEVER. the working title is a riff off of slow days, fast company, which is one of eve babitz' essay collections (highly recommend if you haven't read)

the novel itself is based on the idea that you can move as many times as you want, but you'll end up following yourself wherever you go -- you cannot run from your problems bc they tag along in your suitcase anyway!

i have written and trashed so much of it, but the most recent like 15k i wrote are starting to feel like what i'm actually going for! which is cool! i'm a short story writer at heart so the novel has been really challenging.

it's also very much why i got into fanfiction -- i wanted more practice writing longer works!

(wip game here)

[not-poignant]

i seriously cant get enough of your writing. every update is like a gift from the gods. part of me wants to wait until underline the black is finished so i can binge read it and not go out of my mind waiting for each chapter. but i have a weak will and cant ever resist when it comes to your stories xD

are there any writers you feel that way about? or simply love their work so much you cant get enough? either on ao3 or not

Hi anon!

Over the years there have been writers I feel that way about! Though it's muted over time (often because most of my favourite AO3 writers / non AO3 writers I've ever had has stopped writing over time). The latest author I've really loved over the past few years on AO3 is dgalerab, but he stopped writing the way he used to a while back, and now I just you know, wait and hope and we'll see what happens (though a new fic did go up recently!). So right now I have no authors I'm really like...intense about, because...authors sometimes just stop writing for years, or they can drastically change the way they write due to just time and interest and so on.

So I would say right now there's no authors I really feel the way about. There's a lot of authors I love and support, who I have subscribed to on AO3, or who I look for new updates from on social media, but even some of my favourite m/m authors stopped writing m/m and started writing m/f instead (which I can't read), so...yeah I'm sort of in flux on that right now. Which is a shame, because it's a really nice feeling to sort of drop everything for an author, and immediately read what they've put out!

I know I'll find more authors like this, and then probably years later, something will change. Most authors do eventually stop writing, or change their work so much that like, it's always a fleeting feeling. There have been years where I've felt like that for 20 authors at the same time and it's been awesome, and then like this year where I don't really have it at all, and have watched a whole bunch of my favourite published authors (particularly in m/m) depart and go on to do other things due to the lack of success they found in m/m.

I've been reading a lot of manwha lately (South Korean long-form webcomics) and there's a few that I do drop everything for when a new chapter/episode comes out, like Dangerous Convenience Store, B-Class Guide, Love So Pure, XXX Buddy, Semantic Error (the manwha, not the novel/s), Mr 100% Perfect, Define the Relationship, Full Volume, and Love for Sale. But I'm not specifically following the authors, and in some cases, these are the first works by these authors so I don't know what they might do next etc. But yeah, I check daily for new chapters, and I usually immediately read them when they come out. It's different to what you asked being more story-focused than writer-focused, but it's still a really awesome feeling, and I reread these stories all the time up until what's out in English. :D

So I suppose I do have a similar feeling to how I used to, just...kinda different to being hooked on specific authors? It could always change though! The fact is I'm subscribed to like 300 authors on AO3 (where I'd read almost anything they write) and only about 3-4 of those authors update stories nowadays, to give you an idea of how many authors do just stop writing. All your faves will almost always eventually just...stop. (I would like to say I won't be like that, but I'm also a weird exception where I'm doing original writing on AO3 as a job, and most authors on AO3 aren't doing this). And when that happens 280~ times (I'm sure there's another 20~ authors that will update in a few months or a year), you just kind of have to wait until another one pops up klsdajfas

[cjadewyton]

**screams**

what do you mean I literally only had 7 and a half?? chapters??? left on my novel before it was finished???? Oh my god I was so fucking CLOSE

[werewolfmack]

This is a little left field but... What if... I did NaNoWriMo this year? 🤔🤨

[m0e-ru]

the golden anime soundtrack is so romantic actually all the battle music is also like burned into my brain so when i listen to any of them i cry hell i’ll listen to the marise true story duet and i burst into tears i have 294879356234 fight sequences in my head wait holy shit tummy hurts