#lately i've been back to my old habit of reading books written by dead people but this week i'm reading fanfic by alive people

[arielmagicesi]

I literally cannot stop thinking about that A:tLA fic oh my god. On the one hand it was a lovely way to get me to cry cathartically which I needed to do and it was a good way to escape reality, but on the other hand, I'm having conversations with my mother and thinking about Aang or whatever instead of paying attention. anyway if you too crave this experience you should probably read this fic which is already extremely popular but if you have not read it, you should

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

Hi, Rachel! I was wondering if you’ve written anything that you’re especially proud of recently. It doesn’t have to have been published. Love your YouTube videos! :)

First, thank you for sending this question! <3 I've been going through a hard time lately with finals season and missing home, so this is just a really nice message to receive!

I have written a couple things I'm really proud of! I guess this isn't technically recent, but last semester I polished up my short story Phantom State (used to be Phantom Limbs in D Minor then just Phantom Limbs and now it's Phantom State) and it's my favourite short story I've ever written, I think. For some backstory, PS was one of the very first short stories I wrote. I started it in grade 12, and it took me a very long time to actually complete a first draft (a year) which is a long time for someone who usually drafts my stories in one sitting. I actually vlogged this process HERE! While I was happy to complete the draft, the story was so far from being finished, haha. That draft was such a pieced-together mess of the year it took to write it, though the foundation of the story was there. Flash forward to working on the story with CPs, etc, I thought the draft was in a good place, and submitted it to a couple magazines before re-reading it last summer and just not liking it.

I decided to workshop it for my fiction workshop this year and I’m so happy I did because it really forced me to edit the story before I submitted it. SO MUCH labour went into bringing the draft into workshop, even though the changes were small (the smaller changes I find can be the most difficult). I’m forever going to keep my prof’s editorial letter for this story, lol, it means a lot to me. Idk, working on something for so many years on so many drafts (which is unusual for my short fiction process) and then FINALLY finishing it was such a magnificent feat. This story took me from age 17-20 to complete! My magnum opus, lol. The characters, especially our narrator, Linda, mean a lot to me. I don’t usually feel attached to my short fiction characters at all, but Linda feels like my baby! I was thinking of adapting this story into a novel for that reason.

In other news, I WROTE A REAL NOVEL OPENING!!!! I hate to say the Fostered books don’t feel like real novels, and absolutely not to discredit my own work because my work is great in those books, I just haven’t written a non-Fostered novel opening since, I think I’m Disappointed (omg)?? Anyway, if any of y’all were here for The Sun Only Drowns Us hype that happened in April 2020 before the project intimidated me so badly that I fled into writing Feeding Habits out of fear (lmfao), then y’all know what this book is about! Here’s the summary (it might be a bit outdated):

The summer the sun turns poisonous, 15-year-old Eva commits to living off-the-grid with her neighbour Lillian Radoccia and her children, Charlie, Vera, and Jack. Lillian is convinced the sun is an evil, poisonous force that drives people to their ultimate deaths, so to protect herself and her family, she swaps her bustling life in a small British Columbia town, for a secluded life on a desolate island. They settle at a remote cabin where they only live at night, which Eva is thrilled about at first, having come from an emotionally absent household, though she quickly realizes something is not right when Lillian’s only daughter, Vera, turns up dead shortly after her sixteenth birthday. Coupled with Lillian’s increasingly peculiar relationship with eldest son, Charlie, Eva’s new life as an honorary Radoccia child begins having more consequences than benefits.

I never finished the novel opening back then because I got so intimidated by the retrospective timeline where the narrator dips back in time during flashbacks. I am honestly short-storied out right now, and really felt nauseated by the idea of having to write another short story for workshop (literally nauseated, like I can’t do short fiction for another couple months lol!), so I chose to do a novel opening for my second submission this term as a change. I discovered the sort of apparated pieces of this opening and absolutely fell in love with the writing (2020 Rachel was SO GOOD at detail!!!) and the characters all over again. I’m very happy I never finished the opening back in 2020, because truthfully, I was not skilled enough to play with the timeline back then, which the chapter needed. 2022 Rachel was legit STRUGGLING through figuring out the timeline myself, and I think I finally fixed it?? I know there’s a writing vlog where I talk about this struggle... I can’t remember which one but oh god, I was so thrilled to have finished the chapter! Honestly, this is the biggest thing in my writing career that has happened in a very long time, because I’m debilitated by novel openings. They terrify me so much to the point where I cannot write (y’all don’t even know--I actually restarted writing the opening of Houses With Teeth for this workshop, another book I fear-quit, but then also fear-quit that LOL), so I was so relieved that this opening worked out.

I want to make a video reading some of the writing I’m really proud of recently (unfortunately no short fiction or poems that I want to get published but lots of novel stuff) so this ask also comes at the perfect time!

Anyway, this was fun! If anyone wants to learn more about these projects or want to read some excerpts, lmk...!!!