#hrarbywritingdiaries

[onwriting-hrarby]

on writing, 22.09

august was such a productive month novel-wise! but september has come with a lot of work, so i've not been able to let my head roam that much. i have stopped writing my novel at 119 pages (45k words) and now i'm focusing myself on doing the second draft of the chapters i've written.

i know my novel now, and i know what i want to say, so i think it's easier for me if i go back these pages and edit them to leave them prepared for the new chapters to come.

while i'm doing that, and because i have a lot of work and my mind needs to write the most when i'm very busy, i'm writing a eremika oneshot that right now has 5k words (and we haven't even made it to the middle of the story) and i'm wondering whether i should upload it in two chapters or just one.

i hope you're all fine!

[onwriting-hrarby]

I second what Nuri says! I used to be a multiple drafter, but I found I grew tired of editing a piece in one go. So now I split the work in multiple sections and when I have them finished I go over them rewriting (or "second drafting", the editing is so severe it ends up looking very different from the original).

After I have the work edited, I go over it all in one go to edit some more and touch up dialogues!

Fun fact: I have never done a second draft in my life :) I have no idea what those actually include

(Yes, this is a cry for help)

[onwriting-hrarby]

on writing, august recap

august has been one of the most productive times for me. i think it's because i just got back from vacation, and so i wasn't tired or with a lot of stress and i had time to delve into writing.

it is, at times, exhausting. i really do wonder if this is the novel, or it's not, if it's good enough and compelling enough to win the heart of the publishers. who knows. but, for the first time in a while, i've felt like i truly have a story to explain and this motivates me enough to keep on going!

this first draft makes absolutely no sense though, hehe. i've written more than 20k this month! so i'm happy!

anyway i hope your days have been going well!

a little recap of the projects i'm working on:

a short story which will need a beta in english (if anyone wants to read...)

the novel! (if you're curious, ask away)

for you chapter 2 (it's not going well)

a rivamika oneshot (it's going.. well)

[onwriting-hrarby]

on writing, 18-06

i haven't been able to write that much this past few months because i have been swamped at work and also getting everything ready for my vacations (i am so nervous i can't barely sleep). not only work has been damaging to my creative side, but also having a lot of meets. i often say this: i love my friends and having time with them, but i also need my alone time a lot (which is what allows me to rest and be creative), so i'm very excited to go on a long trip just with my bf to recharge in that sense, too. i want to get bored! i want to stare at the nothingness. yesterday i went to my mum's new house and i painted a wardrobe for 4hours in silence and god, i felt good.

so, with this in sight, i haven't been able to write neither "liquid confidence" nor "for you". i wrote two or three lines for this last one, and i'm also finishing liquid confidence, but because i have been writing just because i had to, i really don't like how the chapter and the english prose is turning out, so it will need a lot of editing. if it didn't, i could probably upload before going on my trip, but... i think i will resume both stories when i come back on mid july.

but on a personal note, i'm revising (yet) another novel, so i'm also prioritizing this, i guess!

anyways, probably my last update before mid july. maybe i'll make a promo post for my stories before going!

have a nice summer,

-hera

[onwriting-hrarby]

on writing, 21-10

i've been kinda missing, lately, but i've been writing a lot. some wins:

i've kept rewriting the draft 2 of the novel, and the good news is that even though i haven't been doing it everyday, i don't feel guilty.

i've arrived to scene 5 (out of 10) of the ploy, my new eremika fic. i like how it's going, but i need to revise a lot scene 1 and 2 to make it coherent with where the story is going. it's pure fluff, with occasional pining, and i'm loving writing armin and historia as a couple too (can two people be more intuitive than these?). i am now heading towards a scene called "the professor", in which mikasa reunites with her favourite teacher in high school... bets on who is that?

i've begun reading annie ernaux "l'écriture comme un couteau", where she talks about her writing with another writer. i love reading how writers explain writing to themselves.

[onwriting-hrarby]

on writing, 5-03

long time no see. how have you been? i hope you're all fine. i decided to take a break to finish rotten judgement, but i'm still not done with it (although i have been progressing a lot), so maybe i won't be as around as i was! i am also writing this in a mild fever: i don't know why i've been catching all the flus lately...

on rotten judgement: well, this is ending, my friends. thanks god i managed to edit and correct chapter 19 in the beginning of the week when i was feeling alright, because i don't think i could have done so in my state right now. i am liking how the chapters are coming together, specially the last chapter, although it's been a mess: i have had to change scenes and do macro editing in a way i hadn't done from chapter 7! i've had a hard time deciding where the action needed to go, i've changed the plot i had in my head and the tone of the chapters, completely obliterated the planning i had in my head... i'm not proud at all of how i've managed the writing for these last chapters, but little by little i think i'm finding my footing. i hope it's worth it.

on hate: one of the last posts i shared is one comment on "die for you". although i didn't respond to it, two weeks later the anon has come back and has begun a hate streak that now means that i everyday receive not one, but maybe two, three, or four hateful comments onn all of my stories, telling me that i'm boring and so thankfully today i've received a bunch of positive commenters who, somehow, had seen the hate on the comments and decided to leave nice things. i am very, very thankful for them. i had talked about it a lot with my boyfriend, and he said that this fandom has brought me more pain than good things (aside from writing, which i may have done independently of the fandom): i agree, but receiving positive comments change my perspective of things, too. i don't know how to tell the anon hate that i already made my mind on stopping writing eremika on april the 7th, 2022... they won't gain anything from leaving hate to me, honestly, but i think it's still a shame that i'm being hated for what i write. for the hours they comment, i am thinking they are from the us... and i'm temped to send them links on the censorship in Tennesee, the banning of books in their libraries, the burning of books in communities. Anyways.

on the latest episode of aot: i have lived it with my boyfriend, waiting for the right time, no spoilers, no discourse on twitter: just the calmness that i knew before joining the fandom on twitter and tumblr. i loved it: it was a masterpiece of pacing, animation, music, and tension-building. i would have waited for months to see the two parts together as a film...

[onwriting-hrarby]

Engraved — Writing workshop week I

I needed to get off my novel for a while, so this exercise helped me a lot in imagining other things! It is quite long, but I don't think I have ever uploaded any og fiction inn here...

This is part of the Writing workshop by @books and @bettsfic!

Engraved

The wife later swore under oath it had been an impetuous reaction—lights on her face and the moustache man holding a clickety pen in front of her—but the truth is that she had seen it from the first instant she had entered the kitchen.

Her legs felt stiff and wobbly, that day. They carried her body like a strange weight, even though the scale had shown her that she needed to eat more. All bones, all bones, her man had sighed while lunch, gnawing at his steak. She would later think that the effort in which she walked was telling her that she should have stayed quiet. To never enter the kitchen. Never lay her eyes next to the stove. Never begin cooking. Never saying to her husband that she would begin cooking. Never hearing him exclaim, Finally, for fuck’s sake. Never thinking she was not a worthy woman, never feeling so angry, so ready to burst up, so—never never. But she did carry herself to the room, and her eyes did focus next to the stove, where it had been years she hadn’t seen it, the cutting knife her mother had gifted her on her wedding day.

It came along with a lot of fine china. They had shoved them away in the living room, where they couldn’t be seen and wouldn’t get dirt on them. She had said to her husband, “What a pity, those are very expensive”. He had hummed, had kept on putting thin ceramic plates and golden-rimmed teacups into the wooden cabinets, and had barely thrown her a glance as she inwardly apologized for the ingratitude. When she found the knife in the box and took it in her hands, it weighed. She felt it into her fingers for some seconds. The steel was cold and polished. It reflected the orange light of the living room, the way the snow was pouring outside, and shone in a myriad of decisions not taken and secrets better kept. The wife faintly heard his husband say, That will come out handy. She had glanced at him, held the knife sturdier against her palm. 

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a fine blade”, he had answered. “It will cut meat just great.”

But the knife had been left unused for almost all of the marriage, stuffed into the utensils drawer just like any other knife. Upon inspection the day of the china, she had found her initials engraved: M. A. The lettering was beautiful, adorning one of the tangs of the handler. The M was curvy, the ends pointy in riveting ribbons, and the A had a full stomach, protruding to the interior part. Years later, the wife realized the knife hadn’t lost the scale, nor the sharpness of the blade, but the letters had mysteriously given up their fullness and were starting to fade onto the metal.

Nevertheless, the knife was there after so long, so she thought, I better use it. She couldn’t imagine why her husband must have taken it out of the drawer and left it next to the stove. He had long given up seeing her cut with it, although it was true that no knife she had tried quite cut the meat like he wanted to. Always too thin, or too thick, or it couldn’t get through the veins, maybe couldn’t tear into the grease well enough.

She took the filet for supper out of the fridge. It had defrosted well, but some icy tears were still stuck to it. She brushed them off with her hand and they melted on her fingers. She brought her fingers inside the mouth and sucked. It tasted like watery iron. She put the meat on the cutting board, grabbed the engraved knife made an incision in the middle. He would complain that they had the same amount of meat. But then again, she could say, Wasn’t I all bones? As she cut the meat, the knife boiled in her hand. Strange, she thought. She felt a rush of dizziness overcome her, and as she closed her eyes, she could hear her mom’s voice—no, a scream, so loud she had to brace herself onto the marble counter, the knife hanging from her fingers nimbly.

She recomposed herself. The cut was perfect, though. She thought, a momentary anaemia. She was old after all, too many memories and too many years on her back.

The pan sizzled with some oil. It splattered all over the knife she still had in her hand. I can’t let go, she realized. Maybe I don’t want to. Her mom had died in a painful scream, her father had confessed. She had looked at him through the plastic glass and saw his eyes full of grief and guilt, and swore to herself not to be consumed by rage. “Some things run in one’s blood”, her dad had chuckled, “even though you hate me so”.

On the pan, the meat smelled like burnt.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck it”. She swore some more and then swore to herself she could never swear again. Her husband didn’t like it, and wasn’t she such a proper lady?

 She left the knife next to the stove and took the pan off the fire, but the meat was far off saving. The wife sighed, felt the tears coming to her eyes. They wet the rim of her eyelashes. She patted her free hand against them. She breathed out, invoked patience. He could hear him say, It’s not raw enough. I want to see the blood, see? I want to see it, for fuck’s sake. If it’s not raw, then—It tastes like a shoe! Have you ever tasted a shoe?, and she would say, no, I’ve never, and he would put the filet away, or maybe smash it against the wall, and the dish would crack, yes, she could evoke it because it had happened before, and the husband would say, You’re such of no use, why did I marry someone that useless, yes, you, I’m taking about you.

She heard the steps approaching the kitchen. Light as ever, but threatening. She knew the sound because she had to train herself to listen to it all of her life. He appeared on the door frame, watching at her with his mouth open in surprise, the canines hanging pointily, the tongue layered with yellow saliva onto it. His spit reached her face as he screamed:

“What the hell have you done?!”

And because she had seen it in the first instant she had entered the kitchen, the knife rested on her hand, with a weight of something unconfessed and the pride of something long foreseeable.

[onwriting-hrarby]

first semester

so, i was doing some wordcount on the first semester and i managed to write... 95,600 words!!!! hOW????? i have no fucking clue, because i thought i had not written that much this year. but, recounting what i had done, of course:

I finished the last three chapters of Rotten Judgement, which accounted for 35 k.

I wrote the whole Liquid Confidence, which accounted for 27 k.

I wrote the first chapter of For you, which accounted for 6k.

But I think what makes me the happiest is that, unbeknownst to me (because I write on a notebook, so I can't count the words until I put it into a computer) I've written 27 k on my novel!!!!

[onwriting-hrarby]

ah, two days writing my novel! I feel both happy and relieved and liking it very much 🥵 it's been hard coming back, but i am slowly slowly pulling myself into the story again and writing something that wasn't scripted just for the sake of HAVING FUN! (hopefully it makes sense somehow, and gives the characters more background) I guess I had sold to myself that I should be making my novel short, but WHAT IF IT'S NOT!

also, I have been loving my readings lately 💖

Also, i activated twitter again, this time (for real) just to update any writings (in fact, i activated it and logged off immediately, since i don't have anything to share).

[onwriting-hrarby]

on writing and fandom, 22-04

hello, everyone.

diving into new works can be haunting and enticing both at the same time. i've been forgetting to come here (although i wouldn't say i've been very active on twitter, either) because i have been writing my novel, which is going good. today, i finished chapter 4, and now i want to dedicate this week to write it down on the computer and do a little editing on the pages i've written for now.

i have also found the fun in writing fanfiction again, if only barely. it's taken me months to do the click, and i've been feeling much more drawn to something lightweighted than pure angst: that's why i haven't been writing about rivamika a lot. but i have been preparing an eremika 3 chapter-fic, and i have the first chapter written (mainly because i only needed two lines to finish it: i wrote it in july). i am not very adamant to update it because i fear of the response BUT i still want to crush my fears.

anyways: i said that on twitter yesterday, but since i have been interacting with the fandom less and less (my interactions: writing about ships, maybe reading something sparsely) i have felt very free from pression and also free from toxicity. this is the way i used to interact as i was writing "i did not live unti today", but then i decided to shift into the whole "let me be a writer present on fandom twitter" and everything went to caca for some months. i think interacting like this it's been the way i feel comfortable the most. there's something quite special about just having your own headcanons and reading and writing whatever you want, without sharing all the time (just when i want to).

[onwriting-hrarby]

on writing, 21-03

wrote the first chapter of my novel today.

Also, I need to catch up with all the comments here and in ao3 and dms on Twitter, but thank you so much for the warm embrace to the ending. I'm still figuring out what I want to do in regards to my participation in the AOT fandom, but I've felt very seen and understood. 💖

[onwriting-hrarby]

on writing, 16-03

hello! I've been quite busy these last few days and I haven't been writing the last chapter of RJ at all. Part of me truly feels discouraged to do so, even though I love the last chapter and when I think of it I get literal goosebumps. However, I just want it to get over with it, and truly it's hard to find balance between wanting to do amazing and wanting to put out anything I have written. :')

I love, love this story to bits, and admittedly, I feel guilty that I have talked about the hate in my author's note because I've felt like I have brought in attention to it in detriment of the attention of the story. I think it's hard to navigate! I wish I could insert myself like the author in the author notes, but I just want people to care about the story, and at the same time, I want them to know about the hate. Boh.

Anyways, my personal novel is progressing a lot in my head, so I am excited to finish with fanfiction for a while and write!

[onwriting-hrarby]

on writing, 12-03

I've just finished editing Chapter 20 of Rotten Judgement. I needed to change the order of a pair of scenes, make sure that it made sense with the changing of scenes in Chapter 19—try not to repeat things, make the laddering swift—and rewrite a scene and write a new one. I've basically spent a week editing this chapter.

But now that Chapter 19 and 20 are done: they amount to 60 pages. With Chapter 21 (the last one), the ending of RJ will amount to 80 pages, and I think more than 520 pages overall.

Damn. It's been a year since I started writing. That's... quite a feat. Not in general, since I almost take up the same time with the novels I've written, but I don't think I've ever spent a year with fanfiction before—I tended to write non-stop for 6 months, at most. Yet RJ has been very challenging in terms of style and structure, and I feel I've poured myself into this.

____

Honestly, I am thinking of updating the last chapter two weeks from now: mainly because these two chapters are so long (30) I want people to be able to catch up before uploading the last chapter. I'm not a celeb in fanfiction so people won't do any spoilers hahaha But I think it would still be nice to give people the chance to catch up before uploading. If you're reading this, what do you think? Should I upload on the 20th, or the 27th of March?

[onwriting-hrarby]

on writing, 7-08 (also, jia torrentino's trick mirror)

on writing from a noiseless place

this past week has been quite calm. i got to enjoy it from my mom's house in the forest. it has always been my ideal house, waking up at six and a half and watching the dawn from the balcony as i eat some breakfast and write. i realize how lucky i am that i get to spend time like this, in silence, before coming back to the hustle of the city. we don't earn enough money to save for a home of our own, but when we do, we're convinced that we're leaving the city for good—although, i gotta say, i am quite privileged because i can work from home if i choose to.

i've been coming back to writing for some days, now, and i've managed not to burn myself out or feel the despair that i'm not liking the story (although, in general, i am not liking it). travelling to japan, i believe, has been an eye-opening experience for me. i was alone, with my boyfriend only, not caring about what happened home except for the occasional whatsapps and photo-sharing. and honestly, i realized: i am happier this way. without so much noise, so much interference into my life (of course, coming back to work has meant this frenzy again). when i deactivated my twitter account and logged out of the other one i've held, i experienced a sense of liberation. i want to focus my energy to writing and living.

trick mirror and the internet scam

reading jia torrentino's trick mirror (which i started on my 14-hour-flight back home) has also played its part. there's a quote i liked a lot, which i think summarized my experience of fandom:

this is why, on twitter, making a righteous political statement has come to seem, for many people, like a political good in itself

and also:

our world—digitally mediated, utterly consumed by capitalism—makes communication about moral very easy but makes actual moral living very hard

she's a brilliant mind that talks about the performativity of the self, the narration of one's life, the tricks of the feminist movement... i just can't recommend her enough.

substack?

i still wonder whether it would be nice to have a substack, but i think i would just lose more precious time i need to dedicate to writing, so maybe i'll just stick with this tumblr, which is going to be a dedicated space for writing and art and literature

[onwriting-hrarby]

writing a novel--on writing, 1.08

it's been so long since i haven't written about writing in itself. you might know that i have been writing an original novel for some months, now. honestly, it's not going that well.

but i have been doing a lot of reading, and i have it outlined and i've been writing in my spare time. i wanted to tackle a chapter by week, but so far in three months i have only written 5 chapters (on the first draft). i have been thinking about my drafting process, finding that writing by hand allows me to think better but also be slower... and i'm still deciding what to do!

i've also toyed with the idea of opening a substack for my process. in which i will talk about outlining, abstraction, how the draft is going... more like a monthly diary with reading and film recommendations. but i have a huge impostors syndrome so i don't know if i should keep it in here, maybe?

what do you think?

[onwriting-hrarby]

on writing, 25-03

Oh, what a difference it makes when I write without any expectactions or pressure on myself, when I don't need to prove something--that I'm good at style, at crafting, at building characters. I have only written two chapters of this, but it's been liberating in the way fanfiction is: I am completely forgetting about the public and the readers, and I'm writing something I'm truly interested in FOR MYSELF.

I think it's been.. nine, ten years? since I've written something indulgent in my native language. I want to be published someday, so I've always struggled and forced myself to be better and write more focused and wirte something no one talks about and... until I forget WHY I was writing in the first place. Maybe this is why I haven't finished the corrections on any of my novels. Although, to be honest, I have always experienced this kind of rush when I begin a new work. (With the subsequent fear of stopping in the middle.)