#good thing i'm worldbuilding/attempting to outline now lol

[ghost-town-story]

Things I have discovered on this journey of hella worldbuilding I've been doing the past few months:

Fandom.com is hell due to ads. Especially on mobile

Fandom.com has very good lists of magic abilities/superpowers

I've been staring at it so much that magic will probably not feel like a real word by the end of the night lol

The biggest difference between what we call "magic" and what we call "superpowers" is the genre.

But! Progress is being made in some regards so yay for that

[bomberqueen17]

trying something

OK so. I was working on a draft of the solarpunk tallships disaster bisexuals novel, and figured I'd just do whatever as long as I had some momentum, and the momentum ran out and now I've let it sit and looked at it and it's sort of coherent but. Now we're to the point where I know of old that I for sure could use some help on this thing. I can do a lot writing alone in the dark but I would like some company.

A bunch of lovely people had commented that they'd love to help, but it's lost in Tumblr notifications, and trying to go back and find that post and track down people is prohibitive. So, lol please clap, I realized I could make a Google form and get people to tell me who they are so I can keep track of who is reading, and what their email address is in the same place, and then i can give access to those people via email address which is more secure than the "anyone with the link" thing. And then I can kind of keep track of what's up! So I'm going to talk about that a bit more under the cut and then put in the link to the form for anybody who'd said they were interested in either beta-reading or cheer-reading or just in general being there so I can talk this out with other humans rather than trying to get my disinterested cat to have an opinion.

Ah writing this post made me think of one more good thing to include in a beta contact info form: warnings. I am a big fan of putting warnings/ratings on published fic but it's easy to forget about them in a beta doc, so I've put in a checkbox thing asking what people would like to be warned about. I made it required, too, but the answers aren't that important-- what's important is to consider it, and make it clear that it's something I'm open to discussing. Also the list on there is surely not comprehensive, but it's the idea that's important.

Anyhow.

This first one is specifically about the novel I have done a shitton of planning for, which is based in a solarpunk kind of worldbuilding situation I've worked in before, and features a young officer in a tall-ship-based naval power, and his geeky radio engineer genius wife who has rather taken over the first draft so far.

I have another one in the planning stages which is me filing the serial numbers off the more unhinged bits of my Fit For Pearls continuity but that one is still very tentative in development.

So if the idea of me doing an original novel is something you're into, but you're not quite there for the Tall Ships Disaster Bisexuals Vs A Bunch Of Solar Flares And Some Pirates, just wait and I'll do another one of these for Lesbian Queen of the World and her Competent Girlfriend attempt to rehabilitate a pathetic Warcrimes Meowmeow while saving the universe. But that one's on the backburner for just now.

Anyhow. Give me your email addresses if you meant it and I'll have a doc of the first couple chapters with notes about what I'm worried about to share soonish. I can't do outlining so I just need idea-rattling instead and I can only do so much rattling on my own, y'know?

Here is the Google Form, which I am also accepting feedback on, LOL. Let me know if you're interested in this!

[risingshards]

I'm reflecting on my writing a bit, once more thinking about the creative cycles I get on because I'm maybe hitting a familiar roadblock again. Thinking and writing about my personal creative cycles could be useful, but I'm prefacing that I usually just do all these over again so this could also be egotistical navel gazing that doesn't accomplish much of anything.

Maybe important to note I don't feel I have as much of a cycle for the web novels, this is mainly for me attempting to do the equivalent of building an insanely hard Lego kit without instructions that is me writing a manuscript with the intent of shopping it around for a traditional publisher. So once again (this is like my fifth post about this I'm sorry LOL) my cycle for trying to write a tradpub manuscript post college:

I get hit with a sudden desire to do tradpub project (“something to bring to my workshop group,” “A way to flex different creative muscles,” “just want to write something for traditional publishers,” “the beat sheet,” “something to tinker and experiment with,” “trying to climb that big tradpub mountain,” etc.)

I get really excited about it!

I write 1 (one) chapter and bring to workshop, then ride the buzz of them liking it!

I maybe get some more work done on worldbuilding or some more scenes and it feels good and fun. Maybe an outline gets done.

I try to write more chapters. Keyword try. Suddenly it’s not fun. Suddenly writing it is like pulling teeth. Suddenly I'm just trying to write for a publisher and it gets too cynical and I think about all the trends and tropes and corporate stuff and I don't like that feeling.

I then have an epiphany about writing Rising Shards and my other web novels (well just one other at the moment with Reborn but I have other WIP web novels that are going fine) and how I should focus on my main projects first and foremost and how nice it is I have projects I really truly enjoy that express my soul with a medium/format I really love.

Interest continues to wane for new WIP while still I note something like “it’d be fun to have a side project, just something to tinker with, and I’d love to tackle that tradpub mountain someday…”

I write in my diary/post on here about it and then remember that I have this cycle and do this constantly (seriously I've done this like 5 times lol) .

Parts of WIP make it into another project, tradpub ideas abandoned.

Repeat at step 1 after a while.

Going through this so many times you think I'd just get the hint and not try this again. IDK if I'm just like incapable of writing that Mythical Tradpub Project™ but some days it feels like it. When my web novels flow so well and are such fun projects to work on and make me so happy, that I shouldn't worry so much about that tradpub mountain. Generally, that's the way I go. And it's worked out for me so far. I don't make much money on my writing yet, but I have readers. There is a big thing from the Tapas True Love contest coming that I am not entirely sure how much I can say about it yet, but it's something that's bigger than any of my tradpub manuscript attempts, which probably says something big about my weird wrestling game wlw isekai doing better than my "surely publishers will like this" manuscripts.

Maybe I won’t ever be able to take on that tradpub challenge, to build that mythical bajillion piece Lego set, but I am feeling good about the path I'm on writing wise. A writer friend was talking to one of our college profs, who's a published author that works on scripts and such so they're in the know was saying how full our genre is and how big print publishing just kinda sucks right now. That whole mood was a big part of me deciding to self publish Rising Shards as a web novel (including time of me working at a publisher that helped motivate me to get RS out the way I wanted it), and I haven't regretted that one bit.

Again, why do I keep trying when the fruitful path for me has been rejecting that and forging my own way without trying to appease some lit agent or whoever? Maybe it's a chip on my shoulder. Maybe it's just the like "I've been thinking about going about it this way since high school, I should at least try." A lot of my writer friends are trying and it makes me want to try too. It's that pie in the sky big lottery ticket win of writers (but probably a lot more attainable than a big lottery ticket win.)

What does that mean for my Wolves of Hope and Stardust project? IDK. I love that name. I like the premise, I thought it'd be the one to break through my "ugh feeling at chapter two" vibe. I’ve put a lot of thought into it so surely it’ll end up somewhere. I have notebooks specifically for it, one for worldbuilding and one to try and hand write it. Maybe this is just a blip and I'll pick up work on it again. For now, this summer is gonna be Rising Shards, Reborn in a Fighting Game with My Rival, and Collab Project as my big ones. I might tinker a bit with Wolves, but maybe this time I really need to go SLOOOOWLY and build it up to try and find a way around me hating it by the second chapter. Having an experimental project is fun, and I have a rough idea for a thing I wanna do at some point (I'll put that in a separate post) but I usually fall on this loop and end up going "Wait I love Rising Shards and Reborn and collab project the most." So next time you see me talking about some new tradpub project to finally climb that mountain, maybe link this one so I can give myself some reasonable expectations.