#that nanowrimo one is from 2010

[friendshipgun]

shuffling back from the depths bc @kaitheenbydoesthings tagged me (thank you Kai!!) in this meme which sounds really fun so here goes: Rules: Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! Then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

not gonna actually post all of them bc 1) it's a lot 2) most are just part of inktober challenges so the title for like ten wips is 'inktober 19' or whatever 3) most of my wips are detailed outlines with no actual scenes written, save for (at most) dialogue. there's still plenty here tho lol. anyway:

where i go the ancient curse follows the same ghosts every day fucked up rich people Karl/Sturm au where time compression fucked shit up jethan fic doughboy spn -nanowrimo beatification, canonization, benediction spirit hat reverse au wintersberg blades fic the succ ch1 untitled kannazuki hanzo fic genya fic houndwoof at the moon

if i tagged as many people as i have wips it'd be too many so i'm tagging everyone who sees this. if you see this and you want to do it consider yourself tagged.

[starscribes]

StarScribes Introduction

About Me

Star (she/her)

Married

Middle School Teacher

I have a lot of responsibilities and don't get much time to myself but when I do I spend that time watching TV, writing, reading, playing D&D, playing video games (the Sims 4), and spending casual time with my family

US located

I used to be @houndsofcorduff but then I disappeared and started a simblr blog and now it's time to get on writeblr again

Writing

Mostly fantasy of varying levels, although I have dabbled in science fiction (I like to watch sci-fi more than write it - that's where my name came from actually, the Stargate franchise)

My favorite author is Brandon Sanderson

No, I don't think I'll ever publish anything, just scribe vibing

I love worldbuilding, magic system building, monster building, etc

Warning: I rarely finish anything I start

Blog

Ask game, tag game, ask, etc friendly

Reblogging stuff I like about writing

Posting snippets of my own writing

Participating in Nanowrimo (buddy me: stargatetribe)

Main/Simblr: @starandsims

Thanks for visiting and learning about me!

WIPs under the cut

Current WIP

Crescent Unbound - A stand-alone fantasy novel following Astrid Vale, a girl left orphaned by the last battle between good and evil. 20 years later she awakens an artifact with great power, it whispers of the return of evil. She must return it to the Chosen One so that it can be used to banish evil once again, but the quest is not as easy as it may seem.

Main Series: The Destiny Chronicles

Overall Synopsis: A generational series that follows a variety of supernatural beings: The Devlins (monster hunters); Seers (see the future), Sandmen (travel/control dreams), Mages (control a variety of magics), Cruth (control elements), and hybrids. Follows certain individuals chosen by Destiny to stop a great evil, and involves a lot of crossover until the end when everyone meets up for the big bad battle.

Book One: Retrospection - 1976 Earth - Russell Walker is a 16-year-old Seer dating Alexis Devlin a 16-year-old monster hunter. When she reveals his identity as a Seer and subsequently explains he's being hunted by a Seer-eating monster, they run away together - unfortunately not to fall in love but rather to save his life.

Book Two: Otherworld - 2007 Otherworld - Maxine Devlin was born into a family of monster hunters, but after 17 years she still hasn’t been allowed to fulfill that role. She has read every journal her ancestors have written and knows everything there is to know about monsters…or so she thinks. After her uncle and cousin go missing, she takes it upon herself to investigate and find them. Very quickly she finds herself in over her head as she travels to a dimension called Otherworld, where she discovers there is much more to magic than she once assumed.

Book Three: Shades of Night - 2010 Shadow - Sebastian Devlin has been to other dimensions before - technically just the one other than the one he was born in. That doesn't make it any easier though when he's dragged through a portal by the monster he's hunting. On his own this time, he'll have to find a way home, if that's even possible. Before he can do that though, he'll have to solve this new dimensions monster problem.

Book Four: Lost in Atlantis - 2011 Atlantis - The Devlin family is back together on a special mission to search the dimension of Atlantis for a particularly dangerous monster - the one that's been hunting Sebastian. The dimension of Atlantis has been abandoned for centuries, but almost immediately they find a single survivor, an impossible face from the past.

Book Five: Vengeance at the Door - 2013 Earth - Sebastian Devlin the monster hunter has become the hunted, chased across multiple states and dimensions by a horrifying visage either of his imagination or reality. Now in Boston, he's just trying to live off the radar of any monster or creature. As the patients at the mental hospital where he works begin to see the same visages he's been seeing, does he run again? Or get himself slaughtered?

Book Six: Heartwood - 2015 Shadow - Janina Heartwood is a good little sister, she picks food off of her brother's plate, puts leaves in his hair, sticks up for him, and trusts him to the edge of the world. After a mysterious man reveals that her brother, Jake, is adopted and descended from a line of monster hunters called the Devlins, she follows him to another dimension to protect him. Now she, Jake, and her boyfriend, Ethan, find themselves trying to destroy an evil entity known as the Sluagh. Janina fights shapeshifters, gremlins, pirates, and more to protect her brother, but will it be enough?

Book Seven: Bring Me a Dream - 2015 Earth - Reynolds McNeil is a Sandman slowly turning into a Nightmare just trying to live out his final few months keeping his friends out of trouble and protecting his little sister from his scary world. Instead, he gets kidnapped and taken to an underground fight ring for augmented humans like himself.

Book Eight: Dream Treader - 2016 Unnamed Dimension - Rescued at the last second by their thought-to-be dead brother, Reynolds and Louie discover there's a lot more to their strange powers than they thought. Things continue to get complicated as they are hunted by a different kind of enemy determined to rid the world of Destiny's chosen - them and their friends.

Book Nine: Moonlight Dreams - 2017 multiple dimensions - Still on the run but now without their leader, Reynolds and his friends try to learn everything they can about why they're being hunted. In the process they rescue their leader, who now must accept that it's time to start the endgame and bring together all of Destiny's chosen before they're hunted down.

Book Ten: Among Infinities - 2017 Isfyd - Carson has lived his entire life in the middle of a Civil War, and most of that was on the wrong side. Although he's on the right side now there are few who believe he's anything other than a spy. When Carson discovers there is a real spy out there he must discover the spy's identity before he's found guilty himself.

Book Eleven: Diplopia - 2018 Isfyd - Carson, now a prisoner of his mother and in the process of resisting her brainwashing, discovers this isn't the first time she's brainwashed him or erased his memories. Exploring his memories and his old home reveals answers and more questions.

Book Twelve: Splintered Crown - 2019 Earth- Freshly rescued, Carson and his friends flee to Earth to find the one thing that can stop his mother and her army - a girl with no idea who she is or how to use her powers, and absolutely no interest in joining their rebellion.

Book Thirteen: Destiny - 2020 Earth - Earth is invaded by soldiers from Isfyd, it will take all of Destiny's chosen to defeat the great evil they've been waiting for. The Devlins, the McNeils, the Moons, and Carson and his friends are the only chance this dimension has. It's looking increasingly like it won't be enough.

Other WIPs

Hounds of Corduff - 1800s Isfyd - A four-book series following the three Cruth apprentices of Corduff as they battle with and against each other in the middle of propaganda and other lies forcing them each further away from the truth.

The Elder Mage - 1976 - 2015 Various dimensions - a series of short stories following Denham Moon, who some would call Earth's most powerful mage. He's been entrusted with bringing together Destiny's chosen at the appropriate time, but he's mostly just procrastinating since he's pretty sure he won't make it through that appropriate time.

Old Gods - a 9-book series following Em'het, a curious and multi-talented boy with great magics who fights the gods to save his family, but after several years of doing the same thing over and over again he wonders if there's a point to any of it if the gods he faces just keep getting stronger and smarter.

Prince of Fireflies - a TV series that follows teenage twins Charlie and Riley as they attempt to keep their younger brother Liam out of trouble with his mysterious light powers. They're mostly unsuccessful.

The Peculiar Adventures of Michael Mallory - an unnumbered book series that follows 9-year-old Michael Mallory after he sneaks aboard his older brother's spaceship. While in the process of trying to return Michael, Nicholas Mallory and his crew are attacked and forced to hyperjump without their navigation machines online. Now they're lost in space, who knows how far from home, and somehow raising a 9-year-old.

The Disappearing Place - just one book - 12-year-old Martin Ramsey has a bad habit of disappearing, blinking in and out of existence seemingly at random. His brother Bartholomew tries to help but ends up making things worse when he starts disappearing too. In a wacky time-traveling dilemma the brothers have to figure out what is happening and why to try and get back home, while continually randomly jumping in and out of time and space.

[alpaca-clouds]

Why I am blocked on Thick as Thieves

Or: Help! I need help! 😫

Okay, you know what? I hear you. I did the NaNoWriMo poll and you folks really want me to finish Thick as Thieves. And like, I get it. So, let me tell you about why I am right now blocked on the story and what stops me from continuing on it.

The answer is short: Xenk. Xenk is stopping me. Or rather... the lack of more official backstory for him is. Or to be even more specific: My lack of knowledge of Faerûn's history is stopping me a bit.

Let me explain.

One of my framing devices for the romance in the story is supposed to be about the "Ballad of Xenk Yendar". Basically: Ed, crushing on Xenk, starts the story out writing this ballad about Xenk. Given what he knows from Xenk himself, he focuses mostly on the tragedy, which Xenk then is not much of a fan of.

The general idea was, that there were going to be four total versions of that ballad, that kinda symbolize Ed getting to know Xenk better. The first one (at the beginning, where they have not interacted since Neverwinter has been saved) focuses on the tragedy, the second one was going to focus on the hero Xenk, the third one on the paladin (mixing both tragedy and hero), and finally the last one on the man that at that point Ed admits to loving.

Soooooo, the next chapter is supposed to feature the second version and herein lies my problem.

I need some good heroic stories about Xenk (that are not played for laughs) that I could write verses for. But I cannot think of any. Because there is no official stuff on him for the most part - but, well...

I am still fairly new to DnD. Like, I have played some DnD, yes, but always with homebrew worlds, never with Faerûn. Sure, like back before 2010 I played the old Baldur's Gate games and Neverwinter Nights, but... Look, I would lie if I said I remembered much more than the general feeling. Like, I for sure do not know anything about the story of those games.

Now, yes, I am very aware that the general rule for worldbuilding in DnD is: "Just make shit up!" Buuuuuut... My brain blocks me on that front on regard of feeling to badly informed. (This is a general hang up of mine, mind you. It is the general reason why I always had a hangup about writing for giant fandoms with lots of lore like Marvel of Star Wars, because I felt there was too much I didn't know.)

Like, by now I have a general feeling for what the Sword Coast looks lke in the late 15th century. Alright. But that does not help me much with Xenk and what his life looked like between "Szass Tam takes over the Thay" and "plot of the movie happens".

So, yeah... This is what is blocking me right now.

And even with all my nerd friends... I somehow do not have a single one who is super into the lore of Faerûn, whose mind I could pick about this.

Soooo, what I am saying is: Say, is there anyone here, who knows a lot of shit about Faerûn and the Sword Coast, so that I might pick their brains for ideas?

Or alternatively: Do you have any great ideas about heroics that Xenk Yendar could've gotten into prior to meeting Ed, Holga and Co.?

[astudyinimagination]

Okay, okay, so what I'm hoping in the future is to return to my Star Wars AUs, and these are all going to take a lot of planning, but I'd like to continue them and actually finish them. Because, looking back at them, there's some good stuff in there! I want these finished just for me! :D

But if you guys want them, too, here's what I hope to get back to:

Legacy of Thrawn: AU to the Hand of Thrawn duology, wherein Thrawn's clone wakes up before Luke and Mara can kill him, and convinces them to let him help them restore order to the galaxy. This one is VERY old — I dropped it in 2010 and never finished it. It's so old that I am a significantly different person with significantly better writing skills, and I have a desperate need not just to finish the thing but rewrite it. I just... I know so much more than I did when I was twenty. xD

The Gentleness That Comes not from the Absence of Violence: My "Padmé Lives" AU. Padmé survives childbirth and takes her twins, Obi-Wan, and several of her handmaidens with her into hiding. This was my last NaNoWriMo project, and I think it's one of the best things I've ever written. The story isn't just about how Padmé's survival changes events, but how she copes with everything that's happened to her. She and Obi-Wan and the handmaidens... and eventually Ahsoka. (It was also written before the Padmé novels, so it's not rooted in the novels E.K. Johnston wrote, with all due respect to her.)

The Hermit and the Orphan: The "Obi-Wan adopts Mara" AU. Nine-year-old Mara Jade discovers that her beloved Emperor murdered her parents, and runs away... and right into Obi-Wan Kenobi on Tatooine. They proceed to adopt each other, and Mara becomes best friends with Biggs Darklighter and Luke Skywalker.

Where Light Can Be: The "Mara joins the Rebellion" AU. Same starting point, different age — Mara makes her life-changing discovery a year after the destruction of the first Death Star, and defects to the Rebellion. She ends up joining Rogue Squadron, and joins Luke on his quest to learn more about the Jedi, hoping to learn how to use her abilities in ways that don't remind her of Palpatine. Of course, she and Luke fall in love, which will have a significant impact on the aftermath of Bespin...

Star-Crossed: The hardest of all of these. Sherlock Holmes in the Star Wars universe fusion. What do an orphan-turned-Jedi, a Chiss healer, a Queen, and a Senator-turned-Chancellor have in common? Oh, that they're a private consulting detective, a former army doctor, the doctor's wife, and a mathematics professor in another universe...

Unnamed Leia time-travel AU: Double Agent Vader AU, never started. Sometime before the Battle of Hoth, Leia falls back in time to the Clone Wars, to meet General Kenobi and his former apprentice who seems eerily familiar. When she finally meets Padmé Amidala, the mysteries of her biological family and her mentor Ekkreth finally start to fall into place. Permission to write the AU given by Fialleril years ago, and I had forgotten that until recently! And now that I have some pieces of the story in my head, I am not letting this one go again!

So that's... it, I'm pretty sure. That's the stuff that I've started, mostly within the past decade, that I really want to continue. And I'm hoping to have time this coming winter to do it. (I have... other commitments plus family stuff that is definitely going to keep me from fic writing until then.)

But in the meantime, if you want to come chat with me about stuff, ask me questions... I would be so happy to talk about all the ideas I've got that are hopefully going to all make it onto AO3 someday!

[words-after-midnight]

15 years of Life in Black and White 🌙 (draft start date: June 7th, 2008)

In honor of the 15th anniversary of the day I started the draft of Life in Black and White (June 7th, 2008), I'm sharing some of the contents of "Annex C," my personal collection of "memorabilia" from my years spent writing the book of my heart - these include photos, journal entries (I kept a dedicated "novel diary" for Life in Black and White from 2008-2013), original concept art and notes, and other things. Hope you enjoy!

Here I am at age 20 (and, notably, pre-transition lol) in 2011, with the finished second drafts of both novels - the story was originally written as a duology totalling over 400K words, but the second drafts pictured here total about 370K. I believe Life in Black and White (then the first novel) was around 220K, and It's All Inside My Head (then the second novel) was around 150K.

More under the cut!

My tattoo appointment card + the actual tattoo I got for the novel on February 12th, 2013 (aka the two-year anniversary of the draft completion date). If it gets published, the publication date will most likely be added under the original completion date.

My original cover concepts for the two novels, designed in 2010. I kind of dislike these now, but I've kept them for posterity. Last name redacted because I was using my real last name at the time, which I'd rather not share!

Me (right) and a friend at her place on Thursday, February 10th, 2011 - two days before I completed the draft of Life in Black and White. I had about five chapters left to draft/finish drafting at this point. I was Very Tired.™

The original opening to Resolution, originally the second of three parts in the first novel, Life in Black and White. Today, Resolution is the first of two acts in the single novel, and Gabriel's story starts much later in his life. Note the third person narration.

Me with Saturday in 2013. In case you didn't know, she was named for Life in Black and White - specifically the draft completion date, although the draft start date was also a Saturday. I adopted her in October 2012 - she's going to be 11 in July!

Card from our community NaNoWriMo package from my first of three consecutive NaNoWriMos I spent drafting this story. I'm talking about the regular NaNoWriMo in November, to be clear - my first Camp NaNoWriMo was July 2013, during which I started the draft of The Dotted Line.

My first ever entry in my dedicated novel diary for Life in Black and White, exactly one month after I started drafting the novel. I was seventeen years old here, having just finished my junior year of high school. At this initial stage, I was so obsessed with the project that I barely left the house the entire summer of 2008. All I wanted to do was write this story. Side note: I had a prologue? I had a Part 4? At least I can rest with the knowledge that "Chapter One" (now "A Rush of Blood to the Head," I don't number my chapters) is still completely dysfunctional, despite being a completely different chapter and part of the story.

More evidence that all I did the entire summer of 2008 was write this novel.

Back when I still referred to Gabriel's relationship with Jeff as a "subplot" and decided officially to develop It's All Inside My Head (now Act II of the novel).

Date of the ending change, six days after I started drafting It's All Inside My Head. I no longer believe I was blindsided - it was more like a puzzle piece falling into place, a fragment of subconscious knowledge that finally found its way to the surface.

February 11th, 2011, re: composing the ending sequence and finishing the novel. My feelings haven't really changed as I approach the finalization/querying stage, tbh.

2012, re: second draft of trainwreck.

[cozycryptidcorner]

I was okay with AI art, pissed off when I learned more about it, and am now in the "It Can be used ethically but the biggest and most common models are not created in a way I'm comfortable using," but AI character specific chat bots have pissed me off from day one from the content side. They're not good! Bad writing! Bad characterization! Incorrect """headcanons"""!!! I'll roleplay with real people any day, I've BEEN role-playing since I was eleven, I know the type of people I'm looking for and who to ghost instantly. Maybe it's different for people who want to self insert with a character, idk, couldn't be me, I have every variation of the X reader tag blocked for a reason, but I've hated chatbots from the start lol

Same! I thought the chatbot as a character was weird, then tried it out after seeing so many insane TikTok’s about it. I’ve also been role playing since I was 11 (on youth nanowrimo, holy shit raise your hand if you remember role playing on ynanowrimo in 2010). I like to think the quality of my own writing is extremely high, to the point where I want to read books that are equally eloquent. I will literally return irl books if they aren’t to my standard. The writing style in character ai is soooooooo bad, and soooooo generic you will get the same responses from wildly different characters.

[liminalpsych-in-teyvat]

…I have written ~32,000 words of a single story in the past month. I haven't done that since high school.

Wait. No. Holy crap. I take that back. I stalled out at 25,000 words during NaNoWriMo in high school in I think 2003 or 2004, and that was the farthest I got in a month's time. So this is the most I've ever written in such a short time. But I haven't written this avidly, this many words, this consistently since high school, at the very least.

(oh no I adhd'd in the morning when my meds were half kicked in. That's always a mistake of uncontained rambling. I'll be surprised/impressed if anyone actually reads the rest of this post; ...actually I'm going to put it under a cut because it just got out of control)

It's such a nice feeling! I had given up on writing fiction for a long time, especially after working in residential treatment (2008-2010) when I just. Stopped reading fiction and stopped writing it, because I felt like I "should" be spending my time on "productive" things instead whenever I had time to write (it felt like a trauma brain, survival mode kind of mindset; I was pretty shut down and dissociated).

And when I tried to write any time after that, I got blocked too from overthinking it, knowing just enough about psychology to feel like I was Doing It Wrong with character portrayals, but not knowing enough to do it "right" or for it to flow more naturally. 13-15 years, a graduate counseling degree, and 8 years of post grad experience in the counseling field later, that's not a problem anymore, and not even a stress point.

It's been interesting trying out different approaches to writing. I'm not doing pure discovery writing anymore (aka seat-of-the-pants writing aka pantsing, not having any outline or any solid idea of where you're going, discovering as you write); I've outlined more for this story than I ever have. I'm doing more editing than I did when I was younger (I'm gonna blame adhd meds for that one, thanks adhd meds, you're the best!).

I've also been using a thesaurus for the first time in my life as a writer, which is just embarrassing. It's because I haven't used my extensive vocabulary nearly as actively, not unless it's psychology related. So while I know a lot of descriptive words, I don't have easy access to them. I'll be like "…all I can think of is this direct/simple word, but it's not the Right Word, I know the right word exists but I can't remember what it is, it's kind of like this word but not quite" and so I have to look up synonyms until I stumble across the word I was trying to remember. 9_9 I'm sure it'll come back as I read fiction more and write more.

(Possibly some of it is the head pressure/health issues? Because I'll lose words when I'm having really bad symptoms, and lose a sentence halfway through speaking. But that feels different. Pretty sure this is just because of atrophy from not writing prose for so long, and for not reading fiction nearly as voraciously as I once did.)

(But I hadn't realized I could lose access to my vocabulary from disuse. It makes sense, because I certainly have lost access to the Spanish I was once fairly fluent in. I can still understand a good amount of Spanish when I hear it spoken or read it; I just can't spontaneously access the vocabulary to speak it anymore.)

but man. you definitely get more hits and comments on AO3 for fanfic in a larger fandom like Genshin Impact (65 million active players in March 2023) than in a tiny one like Arthurian literature (20 gay people on Tumblr, that's it, that's the fandom. ...this is hyperbole, but only barely, we might be up to 40 gay people on Tumblr by now with all the Reddit refugees).

and very likely you get more hits for Explicit rated fic / erotica than for non-erotica, but I'd have to post a general audience fic in the Genshin fandom to find out. (I definitely can't say it's porn without plot, the label I used for this fic before I figured out a title was "Kushiel's Impact", basically sex-and-trauma-and-sexual-trauma political intrigue story.)

[jennablackmorebooks]

2022 writing wrapped

you edited and released one book this year! super pog! that makes eight novels and one poetry book

you wrote 10K words of a project on summer vacation and then abandoned it because you were scared the ill-advised romance arc was actually happening to a couple of people you know on the internet

you typed out your handwritten novella from nine years ago and remembered all over again just how bad it was!

you wrote 11.5K words of a book but it's in ten different documents. girl have you heard of writing a "chapter" :D

you tried to write the circus knife throwing book's first chapter twelve times

you had at least five miscellaneous book ideas that you swear you're going to commit to someday, really!

your longest planning document this year was "television station identifier bugs that turn people into vampires" at 2300 words

you tried to edit last summer's 60K word unfinished manuscript to make it less dreadful twice. one of them was a botched werewolf rewrite

you wrote 4431 words in NaNoWriMo before giving up after the third day!

you tried to write another vampire book four times and a werewolf book twice

you wrote one short story and submitted it to one competition!

the oldest of your old stories you tried to revive this year is from 2010

[daimere]

Nanowrimo update

Here I am trying to write this update for the third time. Here we go! I don’t remember what my last update was about because a few days later, I got hit with the flu hard. At that point, I had written 17k words with no plot to be seen. Well, other than boy meets girl. Or monster meets girl. Or really girl meets monster. In the middle of the feverish haze, I was like, “wow, does this story suck? Should I be writing this? Maybe I just suck overall.” I still don’t know where else to take this novel. I have a few good scenes left. In my daydreaming, I haven’t came across a “aha moment” that will fuel the rest of this novel.

Side note: I have written an entire book with no main plot. I had the b and c plot because this was book 2 in a 4-5 book series. I have an idea what I actually wanted for the main plot. It would be Nice Guy (tm) gets rejected and joins up with Bad Woman to cause FMC to have The Struggles(tm) while dealing with plot b and c. I just didn’t know what to do to create all that stuff between the b/c plot.

Back to the Nanowrimo 2022: I really don’t know where to go from here. I really wanted to try to query this to someone that was specifically looking for a high heat monster romance under 75k.

Here’s the current WIP lineup with some ideas: Saved by the Pirate: I did write a bit on this one this week. They still haven’t boned. They are currently fighting over their feelings.

Hitting the Boss: Haven’t touched this one. I roughly edited it and then posted a new episode on Kindle vella for Monday.

Don’t go to Sleep: I need to edit and upload a new episode for tomorrow or Thursday. This one also was roughly edited last week while I had flu. Editing this one is harder because I am having to shift a lot of things. This is #nanowrimo 2010? story.

Hunting his Prey: This one I last wrote on a week ago. I think she may be filing a police report to another wolf as her mate finds her again. So ya know rage ensues.

Monster at the Haunt: I haven’t written more on this but I am not forgetting this story in case I get accepted into the monster anthology that I applied for. Fingers crossed!

Untitled Holiday Short story: Okay, I just thought of this a few days ago. I don’t have any holiday themed stories on vella. Since I was already thinking of doing a set of shorts to complete between bigger stories to make a bigger book in the end, this could go there. Idea is that a woman (supernatural or human, I am not sure) goes to a silly Halloween party in December party. She hooks up with a supernatural or monster of some kind. What monster? I don’t know! But falling in love ensues. Is this an awful idea?? I could probably do something with this in a week to start posting December 1st.

Monster under my bed: he just ate the guy. she told him to pay rent. And now I have to figure out what happens next.

The Alpha’s Demon: They also haven’t boned. I need to update inkitt/wattpad. I have gotten two reviews this week. I haven’t forgotten it. I just haven’t had a moment. And I am kind of lost. Like when will they bone? The sequel will be a why choose with Ruby. That will be a mmmff.

And I got my kindle vella bonus today and I was a bit disappointed. I was hoping for a little more than I got. I only made 4 dollars more than my first month. Then again, I didn’t get any crowns this month and I don’t know if I will ever get another crown. I don’t have a fandom yet.

[artificialdaydreamer]

Preface

My name is Spencer Morrison and I was twenty-six when I died. It may seem strange to anyone reading this for a dead guy to be writing something without using a Ouija board, but also, I don’t especially care what people think anymore. I’m dead. I’m not going to lose sleep just because someone thinks I’m not “ghostly enough.” Maybe re-examine your concept of what ghosts are before continuing.

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ve been told by my boss to pass on the message that the stories I am about to share are all true, for the most part. I wasn’t around when some of these stories took place, but I’ve been asked to organize the different cases and the notes for them weren’t exactly detailed. My boss has tried to fill in the gaps with what she remembers, but I have been given express permission to summarize the events as best as I can with the information I’ve been given. I just figure it’s best to get the “unreliable narrator” disclaimer out of the way if I’m not involved in a case. Do with that as you will.

So, let me tell you about my boss. She’s... well she’s a unique person, as you are no doubt about to find out. Actually, it’s probably best for you to make your own judgments about her.

So, without wasting any more time, let me tell you about Norah McKenzie’s paranormal investigations.

Case One:

Client: Jennifer Olsen.

Start Date: 7/22/2016.

Complaint: An Invisible Stalker.

As stated, Norah was created yonder back in 2010 for nanowrimo, it was the only time I won and actually wrote 50k in a month. Norah is a paranormal investigator who takes over her family’s failing business after her father’s passing, and essentially the book was a serious of short stories detailing different cases she worked on.

Spencer was introduced in the first story as a throw-away ghost, but during the writing process it became clear he wasn’t going anywhere and became Norah’s assistant and reader-stand-in for Norah to explain things to.

I do have a proof copy of the book with my terrible drawing of Norah from when I was in high school. No I am not sharing it.

I hope to rewrite her stories and add some new ones when I have the spoons.

Oh shit I remembered I have like, legit original story ideas I should work on and stuff instead of fanfic

[artemismatchalatte]

My WIP got me googling The Day of Silence, checking to see if my memory is right. Wikipedia is wrong. The Day of Silence is much older than 2012. We did it in High School for my GSA and I graduated in 2011. I participated in 2010 during my junior year. Come the fuck on, now!

[nanowrimo]

Lessons from a Twenty-Year NaNoWriMo Run

What lessons have you learned during your experiences doing NaNoWriMo? Long-time participant Kathy Kitts shares some of the takeaways from her impressive twenty-year streak of writing novels: 

NaNoWriMo has always been an important part of my November, but this year it’s more so. It will mark my twentieth win in a row. (If I make it. No pressure.) 

When HQ found out about this big milestone, they asked me to describe the lessons learned over the years as a participant, Municipal Liaison (a.k.a. ML, a volunteer regional leader), ML mentor, site debugger, ML handbook contributor, fundraiser, translator, and occasional MOD. (If you stick around long enough, nonprofit organizations will always find something for you to do.) I agreed. Why? Because NaNoWriMo has had such a profound influence on me, it actually altered the direction of my life. 

2003 – The First Year. At the time, I was a planetary science postdoc and should have been concentrating on my research, but I was tired of writing about what is. I wanted to write about what if. Except, what if I failed? Taking no chances, I told no one. Under the name Apollo16, NaNoWriMo became my late-night secret. And I won! I donated out of gratitude and got a tiny little pin that read: I WRITE BOOKS. Nah! It was a fluke, a one-off. That “s” was a problem.

2004 – October Is For Preparation. This is when I learned about crockpots. You could make a bunch of soups and stews and freeze the leftovers. I won and treated myself to a chest freezer. You know, in case I tried for a third year. (And yes, that sucker is still running.)

2005 – The Magic of Write-ins. Being brave, I told a few friends about this November writing thingy, and we had our own unofficial write-in. I fetched my “I WRITE BOOKS” pin and wore it to our celebration party. Three was a big enough plural.

2006 – Cheap Halloween Candy and Perth, Australia. As a newly minted ML, I passed out pixy stix at every write-in. (Or as it is known in Wrimo circles, Writer’s Crack.) As for Perth, our two regions fought word wars, exchanged care packages, and egged each other on. I can still taste the Tim Tams, and they are probably still buzzing from the pixy stix. 

2007 – Some People Lack Imagination. While running a word war, a Wrimo yelled out, “How much time do we have? I have to kill someone.” I shouted back, “Seven minutes. I could kill billions in seven minutes.” All twenty plus writers whooped in agreement. A woman who had just purchased her coffee stared at us in horror. She backed out of the coffee shop not daring to stop and collect her change. 

2008 – The Muse and Flexibility. Many Wrimos have significant others who are not writers. Shocking but true. To make them feel loved before we utterly abandoned them for a month, we hosted a Halloween party from 9 to 12. At 12:01 AM November 1, we pulled out the power strips, sent the non-writers packing, and started typing. Up to this point, I’d always considered myself a “plotter.” Such a hardcore plotter, I once calculated the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere of an alien world to get the weather I wanted. With my stack of notes at the ready, prepared to bang out my 1667, a little boy appeared, saying, “You have to tell my story.” I argued, “But I have all these orbital calculations!” Didn’t matter. I learned not to argue with the muse and that flexibility makes winning easier.

2009 – How to Suck It Up. That was a terrible slog of a year. I really wasn’t feeling it. I was farting around on the forums when I met a Wrimo who had to finish early. Why? She was deployed in Iraq. She had put her novel on a CD, handed it to her CO, who returned to the base, and uploaded it for her so she could win. Yeah, no inspiration there. I faked a cough to get out of a faculty meeting to make my word count. 

2010 – The Reach of NaNoWriMo. To make new friends after my move, I volunteered at the local community library. I was shelving books, when someone shouted, “Apollo16! Is that you? Mom! It’s Apollo16!” I recognized one of my Young Writers from Chicago. Her family had moved a couple of months before I had. She dragged over her mother and explained how excited she was to still have her Wrimo friends. Her mother gave me the eyeball and said, “You know, she’s going to be a writer now. It’s all your fault.” I grinned. “No, ma’am. It’s Chris Baty’s fault.” 

2011 – Debugging and Love. With the growth of NaNoWriMo worldwide, the old website just couldn’t hack it. After some fundraising, we moved on from Druenemy (okay, Drupal but that’s not what we called it) to Ruby on Rails. We had a massive “debugger” team that spanned the globe. We slew bugs like they were dragons and we were Knights of the Round Table. Few organizations could ask and get so many volunteers to donate so much time and resources. It was awe-inspiring. 

2012 – No Plot No Problem v. 2. Chris Baty asked a bunch of the MLs to provide quotes for his second edition of No Plot No Problem. All the lessons I’ve learned can be found in that book. While you wait for it to be delivered, here are three I shared with him. (1) Buy lots of underwear for the entire family so you won’t have to do as much laundry. (2) Rack up a bunch of childcare credits early in the fall. That way they are beholden to you and can’t weasel when November rolls around. (3) As for the transition to normal life, sometimes it doesn’t happen. Sometimes you get the strength to retire early or change careers so you can continue to write. This quote will haunt me later.

2013 – The Year I Tried To Cheat. I decided to turn one of my scripts into a novel. Should be simple, right? Nope. At day 18, I hit the wall. The script was a script and not a novel. Panicked, after this long of a run, I had to win! I was an ML, a mentor! So, I did what I’ve told countless other Wrimos to never do. I deleted the whole dang thing, all 30,00 words. On day 19, I came clean and started over with a blank page. I made 50,284 at 11:52 PM on Nov. 30. 

2014 –The Night Of Writing Dangerously. The year I finally got to attend. To go to San Francisco. To have dinner in that fantastic ballroom. To sew a costume for the grand event. Unfortunately, I had just developed a food allergy. How could I go and not be able to eat? Grant Faulkner and Sarah Mackey invited me to come up to the buffet table and serve myself first to avoid cross-contamination. The staff of the Office of Letters and Light didn’t just care about writing, but about the writers too. Did I win that night and get to ring the bell? No. I wrote a total of six words. Yet, I was so inspired, I finished early. I didn’t have to hide in the bathroom with my laptop during Thanksgiving like all the other years.

2015 – The Grad Student Figures It Out. When you are the prof, you get to make up the syllabus and control the timeline. For years, mysteriously, there were few tests, problem sets, or projects due in November. Occasionally, one of my grad students would join me for NaNo. In the middle of a write-in, one such grad student jumped to their feet and shouted, “Oh my god! It was never about us! About being nice to us during crunch month! It was always about NaNoWriMo!” Duh.

2016 – Lack of Imagination Part II. That year at our write-in, a guy walked into our section with his food, shot us a judgy glare as we typed, and plunked down opposite my table. A new Wrimo began to cry. I asked her, “Are you okay?” “Yes,” she sniffled, “I just killed someone. I’m embarrassed.” “Oh don’t worry, we all cry when we kill someone. It means you’re doing a great job.” The guy’s eyebrows met his hairline and he hustled right back from whence he came. For the record, this time, we did have signs up everywhere.

2017 – Catch-22. This is the year I started to teach creative writing on the side. Being new and unknown, I feared nobody would sign up. My Wrimo buddies filled the class. I told them how grateful I was. They said the joke was on me. “Now, you have to read all of our novels.” D’oh!

2018 – The Prof Figures It Out. That was the year I taught NaNoWriMo. Got paid to do what I was going to do anyway.

2019 – Website and Young Writer Redux. Technology marches on and we fundraised for yet another website that folded NaNo, Camp, and Young Writer’s into one place. Speaking of young writers, remember the girl from 2010? She got a novel published, and dedicated it to her Wrimo support group.

2020 – 2021 The COVID Years and Family. I was never worried about the survival of the Office of Letters and Light. The support runs too deep, but what of the local groups without in-person events? Silly me, the pivot went without a hitch. We ended up having Zoom write-ins for thirty days straight during both Novembers. Even on Thanksgiving. Why? Because we’d become family. But mostly, because we didn’t force anyone to eat lime Jell-O with an expired can of fruit cocktail suspended inside it like a scene from The Blob.

2022 – Twenty Years and A Million Words. According to my lifetime word counter, I have written 1,380,023 words. However, that number includes all my revisions from Camp. In my heart of hearts, I know I won’t break 1,000,000 until this November. Malcolm Gladwell suggests that we become experts at the 10,000-hour mark of working our craft. Several writers have translated that as 1,000,000 words. I’ve been selling my work since 2010, but with 1,000,000 words so close, I have faith that some of those words might be good words.

Remember, up at the top of this stroll down memory lane, I mentioned how NaNoWriMo altered the course of my life? After twenty plus years as a planetary geologist, I have retired. This fall I will be starting over as a graduate student in an MFA program in Creative Writing. But this time, it isn’t entirely Chris Baty’s fault. It’s Grant Faulkner’s too. He wrote one of my letters of rec. 

See ya in November!

Dr. Kathy Kitts, AKA Apollo16, is a planetary geologist who has served as a science team member on the NASA Discovery Mission Genesis among others. Her latest speculative short fiction has appeared in Compelling SF, James Gunn’s Ad Astra, and Amazing. She has a collection of stories titled Getting What You Need available worldwide on Amazon. Born and raised in the desert southwest, she is moving from New Mexico to Alaska mostly because she isn’t dead yet.

Top photo by Nils Stahl on Unsplash.

[kimyoonmiauthor]

Character Agency

Yeah, I had it on my old blog--it’s somewhere in there, but the page keeps reloading preventing me from finding it. And then people stole the list and then claimed they made it up. Per the usual, don’t steal kids, it doesn’t help anyone. (If you didn’t see the reason not to steal--did you read about the real history of the 3 and 5 act models and the gigantic mess of not citing sources which caused a bunch of issues later?)

This time I’m adding caveats to the rules of character agency with some jargon, ‘cause it makes me look cool, like Aelius Donatus using Greek? Nyahh, ‘cause it’s pretty easy to look up.

The Basic rules:

1. The character makes a decision

2. Which affects other characters

3. Such that the events change direction based on those decisions

4. Preferably more than one time.

Originally it took me a long time to think this through and it was spurred by someone asking on Nanowrimo why their character (in a query I was reviewing) didn’t have agency. And also the Bechdel test. Had to be around 2010-ish. I let it brew for a while. I’ve been taught philosophy... so I looked at books, etc.

The Mako Mori test *definitely* wasn’t out yet. (2013) or the Sexy Lamp Test (2013).

Anyway, the argument goes like this:

1. The character makes a decision

If plot is an interaction of setting, character who create events, because it’s not “Character-driven” (Which is why Picard is failing), and it’s not “Event-driven” because events don’t come from nowhere, ideally. Then to get the event chain to advance, characters need to make decisions.

You also get this rule in acting classes within the US. There is a lot of discussion about actors making decisions which change the nature of the script.

OK. That makes sense, right?

2. Which affects other characters.

If the decision has no impact on the characters, then there is no agency in terms of events.

It’s like this, if the character simply agrees with everyone else, they aren’t making an independent decision, are they? They are invisible, because they simply are going along. It’s like the Princess in the tower. She gets rescued by the prince. If she goes along with this narrative, she’s an object in the story.

He goes up, finds the princess, she says nothing, climbs down. She has no say in her rescue. A boring Victorian idea of Medieval romances--believe me the real stuff was far more interesting.

OK, let’s say she makes a decision.

She’s in the tower. She says to the prince she doesn’t want to be rescued. That’s a decision.

Prince ignores her and she decides to go along with it. No agency, no effect, doesn’t phase the prince a bit, though the reader might think that the prince is an a-hole. You get the same outcome. There is no real gain overall.

But say in the third scenario, she screams, slaps him, asks him why he’ trespassing, and the prince is flabbergasted and asks her what she needs?

The plot has potential to change at that point, doesn’t it?

3. Such that the events change direction based on those decisions.

So if she slaps him, tells him what she needs and he goes on to rescue her anyway, against her will (making him a bigger jerk in the reader’s eyes) then there is no gain in the agency of the character. Her decision meant nothing at all. The conclusion/result is the exact same, and then what was the point?

But if she tells him she doesn’t need rescuing and furthermore her parents are going to be back soon, so please come visit in a more civilized manner, and he takes that under advisement and actually does so, then the plot has changed direction, hasn’t it? (Also he’s not a royal asshole).

4. More than one time

‘cause if she only has the ability to make decisions one time in the course of an entire novel that affects the outcome, then there is no sense she can change anything. If her only effective decision was to tell him to come back in a more civilized manner, then what if he comes back and immediately goes on about how he wanted to rescue her and she refused and she said nothing--we’re back to Plot A, which isn’t that dynamic. (Also the prince is back to royal asshole with the gaslighting, but let’s not go there.)

But if she chooses to, in an unprincess manner kick him in the balls, imploring her father to raise his sword to this foreign prince, and put him in jail--didn’t the plot suddenly change and become thicker? If the King actually puts the prince in jail, then the decisions are back to the Prince and what he’d do next. (Which is hopeully not try to be an asshole and gaslight the princess again).

Why would you want character agency to fail?

- You’ve never made a foolish decision, seen the result of the decision fail, and then were relieved at a later date that it failed?

- Nothing is more infuriating than seeing a character make *good* decisions that fail in the face of adversity. That frustration is a rather cheap way to bring the reader to the character’s side.

- The character doesn’t have a real choice. The character might have delayed agency to make big decisions, such as being a minority, slave, or the consequences of their actions could be crushing if they took action. (This is good for teasing out morality)

- They don’t know to think better because they’ve been somewhat brainwashed by expectation.

Sometimes authors need to establish a baseline.

- Time to pause and self-reflect.

Yeah, I know this one is not one that USians and most English speakers like that much, but it’s common in East Asian, South Asian and a bunch more localities’ fiction. The idea is if one makes a decision without consideration and self-examination, it is no action at all, and it becomes inaction. So sometimes making the agency fail, is actually time to succeed. (Fail fast, right?)

Sometimes heightening amount of conflict and faster action isn’t what the characters really need. They need to slow down and figure out and *discover* the problem.

It makes absolutely no sense to have say, a samurai do the same wrong action over and over, getting more people killed without some sort of self-reflection--because self-reflection is baked into Shintoism, Buddhism, etc. It might be funny for something like the Black Knight of Monty Python, but really, some cultures simply call for more than advancing the events as quickly as possible. This may also vary on genre. Self-reflecting every time for suspense might be tedious, but maybe self-reflecting for when someone got into a fight with their ex in a romance might actually be useful.

I’m sure there are other reasons you need it to fail, but I’d ask you to make it at least look thoughtful and purposeful and evoke an emotion in the reader, if not the character. The reader and the character can have different emotional states.

How effective one’s decisions are within a social framework can also tell what rankings they are. If other characters take credit for their ideas, it can also say things about their social standing.

[filet-o-feelings]

Final word count for November: 47,477

So, technically a fail. But it kinda feels more like a win.

This time last year, I hadn't written anything creatively since my first attempt at nano in 2010, which still sits in my google docs at 3,784 words. Before that, I don't think I'd written anything at all in several years.

Even when I wrote fanfiction back in the early 2000s, it was always very short one shots and failed attempts at chaptered fics.

I started writing again less than a year ago, and I have over 140k words published on AO3, with another 10k ready to update on my current WIP.

I still have over 29k words written for a fic I'd only thought about writing a few days before November started, and I have a plan to finish it. It's already the longest thing I've ever written, still an accomplishment even if it doesn't reach 50k.

I made progress on everything's too cold...

I wrote a smutty fic, which was a huge step out of my comfort zone.

I wrote another one shot tonight, I just need to do some editing and come up with an ending.

I rediscovered devil!Patrick and wrote a few hundred words of that in my attempt to reach 50k tonight, which makes me excited to continue working on it.

So sure, another 2,523 words and I would have won nano, but I definitely didn't lose anything by pushing myself this month.

I have gained so much from joining this fandom. Honestly, I don't know if I'd have started writing again if not for SC fanfic. This time last year I would not believed you if you'd told me I'd written anything, let alone 41 published fics and *redacted* WIPs. Including several completed chaptered fics.

I don't think I would have even attempted nanowrimo this year if I hadn't started writing SC fic, and been given so much support here on tumblr and on AO3.

This year has been life altering, and I owe it to this brilliant, wonderful community.

Special thanks to @treluna4 and @statueinthestone for checking in and cheering me on all month. Much love, friends. ❤️❤️❤️

So originally my nano goal was to write 50k of one specific work (Library Boy) but almost immediately after the word count of that surpassed the longest thing I wrote at about 29k I just lost motivation in favor of working on other projects... but I've been tracking all of my writing, and if I write about 4600 words tonight I can still hit 50k words for the month. Not my original goal, but still something to be proud of. So, I'm working on a mainly stream of consciousness fic with nothing but a sentence and a sad personal memory twisted for creative purposes and hopefully lots of fluff.

So here goes... 269/4579

[who-is-page]

Nonhumanity & Roleplay: On Not Taking Things “Seriously” Enough

Author: Page Type: Essay Words: 777 Summary: A short look into the idea that the "fluffy" ways people express themselves or interact with their alterhumanity are markings of legitimacy.

[Part of the Sol System’s Alterhuman Writing Project for NaNoWriMo 2021. If you don’t want to see these posts, block the tag #inkedpaws]

Though not as much of a problem within community spaces in modern times as it has been in the past, the idea that engaging with your kintype or theriotype in a more light-hearted fashion is functionally “fluffy” and delegitimizes otherkin, therian, and fictionkin identities is something was existed in an extensive and radical way in most alterhuman places up until the late 2010’s. While this is something of a belated response to it all things considered, it should be noted that this attitude hasn’t dissipated entirely and can still be seen at the peripherals within certain groups and communities.

The logic of such usually goes that if someone is engaging with their kintype through roleplay, such as playing themselves in a live action roleplay (LARP) or a tabletop role play game (TTRPG), or is otherwise finding more whimsical ways to express their kintypes, such as creating kinsonas or by wearing clothing items which relate to their kintype, then there is a higher chance that they are “fluffy” or not taking their identity seriously. These accusations can be aimed at younger and longtime members alike, over the smallest of things—one alterhuman Tumblr user in the early 2010’s was dogpiled on (no pun intended) by many therians, otherkin, and fictionkin after fundraising for and obtaining a paw tattoo that related to their own nonhumanity. In other scenarios this can also crop up as personal attacks against “unrealistic” kintypes, such as wolves with wings or blue eyes and using such as an excuse to gatekeep individuals out of specific communities.

There arises an issue when how someone engages their own personal nonhuman identity is taken as a marking for their identity’s legitimacy. I’ve mentioned this before in previous essays, most recently in “On Ugly Instincts,” but it bares repeating: while it is fair for an individual or community to be upset if others are misappropriating their terminology and experiences, such as we see happening in real time with “Kin For Fun” groups, there’s a necessary line to be drawn about someone who is outright attributing false definitions to previously established terminology, and someone who fits within the boundaries of terminology in a nonstandard way or while also engaging in atypical actions.

It’s no one else’s place to be the judge, jury, and executioner on someone else’s identity, especially in regards to their creative expression, connections it may have to hobbies, and potential species dysphoria-reducing or euphoria-inducing tactics. Not only is it unhealthy for people to be so strict and judgmental on personal relationship levels, but this is also just a toxic and embittered attitude overall. It curbs stomps so much self-expression and enthusiasm, muting the incredible amounts of bright variation that exist within alterhuman community spaces. It’s also just generally an excuse to be an enormous, gatekeeping asshole.

Plus, admittedly, the idea that people must be always treating their alterhumanity with near-reverence and utter seriousness just isn’t realistically. Our identities may have their nitty gritty aspects, sure, but for every wolf intent on devouring entrails, there’s an elk bugling obnoxiously in the distance. For every protagonist dealing with their exotrauma through therapy, there’s also a protagonist trying to recreate the horrible handmade alcoholic drink their best man dared them to chug from their wedding. And hell, those examples could be the same person just at different times! No one’s relationship with their alterhumanity is static and they shouldn’t be expected to portray it as such. It also just isn’t healthy to try and treat alterhumanity almost as this pseudo-burden, something that shouldn’t ever be viewed lightheartedly and should instead only ever be spoken about in either professional, impersonal terms or regarding the Serious And Important Experiences with no in-between.

It’s been a relief to see the community start to shift towards more accepting viewpoints on this. More and more when I see people speak about their relationship with their alterhumanity, they also include things which aren’t strictly alterhuman and which expand into categories that five or ten years ago likely would have been avoided entirely. Connections between alterhumanity and queer identity, hobbies, self-expression…it’s great! We’ve also seen this result in the sprouting of entire new terminology in the communities, such as terms like kinsona and concepts like kinpunk and ontopunk. It’s a small thing for sure and likely something I’ve only really noticed due to how long I’ve been lazing around in alterhuman spaces, but it still warms me to see. I love that our communities have become more inclusive over time, even despite all of the KFF and anti-otherkin nonsense floating out there in the space of the Internet.