<–The State of the Writer: 10/1/17          The State of the Writer: 10/15/17–>

A weekly post updated every Sunday discussing my current writing projects and where I stand with them.  This will include (but not be limited to) any and all work(s) in progress (WIPs) be they creative writing, essays/analyses, and reviews.  Additionally, this post will showcase what writing projects I’ve completed in the past week as a sort of weekly roundup, as I’ve seen other cooler bloggers do.

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Finished This Week: 0

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Project: Story
Title: The Broken Rose
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Type: Fanfiction (FFVII) Novel
Current Word Count: 260,204
Prior Word Count: 260,270
Word Difference: -66
Status: Revising
Progress: Chapter 2

Did I make progress in my revisions this week?  Kind of…I did more prep than actual revising, but I guess that’s what happens when you decide to go back to the beginning.  I finished Chapter 1 fairly quickly, because there wasn’t much to change in Chapter 1, just some clean up of stuff I somehow missed in my multitude of edits.

Fact: you will always miss something no matter how often or closely you edit.  This is why beta readers are so important and why a professional editor is paramount if you’re going the self-publishing route.  Thankfully, since this is a fanfiction, and, since those are already looked down upon, most people are beyond impressed I edit at all.  I’d love to see that change, but it’s much more of a cultural consciousness bias that keeps it so.  It’s also seen with indie and self-published writers.  There’s this idea that adequate gatekeepers are required to filter worthy work.  It’s understandable with self-publishing and fanfiction (which is by nature “self-published” insofar as it’s put up by the author.  This, of course, doesn’t include things that are hosted by Kindle Worlds where fanfiction authors can be paid.  That’s something else entirely), since everything from the most golden wheat to the dustiest chaff lie in the same pile, forcing any would-be readers to sift through on their own.  There are particular sites that lean more towards one over the other, but to the layperson not involved in either fanfiction culture or with adequate knowledge about publishing, there’s an almost automatic derision. 

I recall years ago when I was in college that there were some fanfiction sites that would review submissions and provide feedback to bring the work up to their standards.  Since there are numerous sources where you can post fanfiction without such scrutiny, I don’t think this is a terrible idea in the least, and I wish I had the time to facilitate a site such as this…dammit now I’m thinking about it.  I’d need a ton of editors though who’d have to have an extensive knowledge of all fandoms, because I’d want the site to encompass them all. 

It rankles me a bit that I’m thinking of ways to prove that fanfiction is worthwhile, but, well…I am a black, female gamer, so I’m used to the necessity of proving why what I say matters and presenting the best example of anything I do, since any “failing” on my part would be chalked up to one of those labels.  Soooooo yeah…I write fanfiction, which is already derided, for a fandom in a bastard medium, and because of my identities, I usually have to “prove” why I’m knowledgeable enough to speak.  This is more so IRL than on the internet (so long as I’m speaking from a point of anonymity and/or have any identifying factors hidden), but it’s still hella frustrating, and why I’m happy I’ve fallen into the crowd I have.

So as for revising, it’s going as well as I could be given the circumstance of my health both physically and mentally.  I feel like this is a huge downer update, and I apologize for that.  I am going to try to work on the story tonight.  I’m desperately attempting to create more time for myself, which I’ll talk about more below.

Quote: Strong arms gathered Aeris up within the great, black coat.  She squeaked, the shiver riding her skin, despite the warm, heavy leather.  An angelic face coalesced into view, silver hair a pale halo around. Emerald light spilled down concern, as she blinked up at him in full awe. 

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Project: Book Reviews
Title: The Beauty Thief
Series Title: Twelve Realms
Author: Rachael Ritchey
Status: Drafting
Word Count: 732

I was hoping to have this posted by today so I’d have something to put in my Finished This Week section, but though I’m pretty much done with the body of the text, I still need to proofread/edit it as well as post it on Goodreads, and that takes more time than many think.  It’s probably at least another hour if not two on a Sunday that’s quickly slipping away.

I did DNF this novel for reasons I explain in the review, and when I looked at the categories/genres it had been put in, that explained another reason it really didn’t strike my fancy.

Project: Book Reviews
Title: Various
Status: Upcoming

Two more reviews added this week:

1. Promethea, Vol. 1 by Alan Moore
2. Hunting for Spring by Katherine McIntyre

Total Reviews: 27

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Project: Game Review
Title: SOMA
Developer:  Frictional Games
Let’s Player: ChristopherOdd
Current Word Count: 5694
Prior Word Count: 5694
Word Difference: 0
Status: Drafting

I’m still reading Peter Watt’s Blindsight, which is becoming more interesting as I go along.  It’s starting to remind me of George R. R. Martin’s Nightflyers which is making me think about how and/or if that story connects to SOMA in any discernible way.  There is some in terms of displaced consciousness, but I’m definitely seeing similarities with Watt’s story in terms of the ship, which is the same as Martin’s, but in a different way.  It’s also made me think about how far could we expand the definition of AI.  Would you consider a human consciousness inside a robot (non-organic being) AI?  It’s technically intelligence inside of an artificial casing. 

Now that would be an interesting story.  Two characters, one who is a human consciousness transferred (or copied) to an artificial form (it can be humanoid robot-looking, but it’s clearly not a human body), and the other character is the standard definition of artificial intelligence where the intelligence arose from an inorganic/non-human source, but the body/entity looks completely human.  Who is more human?  Are there then degrees of humanity?  Dammit…I don’t have time for all of these ideas.

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Blog Updates

The plan was to update the default font color to d9d9d9, but in order to do that, I need to mess around with the site’s CSS, and while I’m pretty good with HTML, I’m apparently not quite good enough to move onto learning about CSS.  I’m currently reading the recommended tutorial starting HTML located here if anyone is interested.

I suppose I could’ve updated my About, but as mentioned above, it’s been a bit of a rough week.  I’m going to do the HTML/CSS tutorial, and maybe get to the About if I have some time.  It’s pretty outdated

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NaNoWriMo 2017

I mentioned last week that I’m going to be participated in NaNoWriMo this year, and I’m may do a separate post for this announcement, but I wanted to bring it up again at the beginning of the month so it’s not a huge shock when it happens.

For those who didn’t click the link or who don’t know, NaNoWriMo stands for National November Writing Month.  It takes place every year, and writers from all over the world (?) participate and attempt to write 50k words of a novel in that 30 day time frame.  I’ve taken part in in before, but always with my own stipulations: write every day or write 30k words in a month.  This year I’m going to try to follow the rules and write 50k words of a novel in a month. This…is an extremely daunting task for me since it usually takes me at least a year to write a novel, but they’re usually over 100k words.  I will have to write around 1667 words a day in order to accomplish this, so as you can imagine, it’s going to take up a great deal of my time.  This means some things have to give…

I’ve already gone through my blog subs and changed many of them to once a week and a few to daily.  I would love to read and comment on every single blog I follow, but since that’s over 400, there’s just no way, and even the ones I receive email notifications for, I just cannot get to in a timely manner.  This is causing me no end of anxiety, because seeing all of those emails in my mailboxes tells me I’m not getting things done in a timely manner.  I know receiving the weekly sub dump on Friday is going to heighten it as well, but at least I have the weekend to try to clear it.  With NaNoWriMo, I will probably be able to get to even less, but I am going to continue to try.

This also means that I’ll be suspending my weekly status posts in November.  So there won’t be any State of the Reader, State of the Writer, State of the Gamer, or Final Fantasy Friday throughout the entire month.  Even the shortest of these, State of the Gamer, takes around 2-3 hours to post, and I prep it on the weekend along with (usually) updating on a daily basis in draft.  State of the Writer has taken upwards of 6 hours to post, and it is also prepped on the weekend and updated every day.  I probably will also not be writing any book reviews and I may or may not work on my SOMA review throughout the month.

I’ll still answer comments and participate in group conversations, and of course, if you need to talk to me you can always shoot me a message on various social media!  I’m not going to disappear off the face of the earth (yet, hehe).  This is also not going into place until November, so I’ll still be here all of October to annoy you with my Final Fantasy VII obsession among other things.  I just wanted to give the heads up now just in case you really love my status posts for some reason.

This month is me figuring out what else I can put on the back burner to make more time as I plan for the writing.  I’ve been reviewing and prepping my notes, and I’m going to have to start putting things into better order.  I’m a planner as opposed to a pantser aka I have to plan out what I’m going to write before I write it whereas other writers just write “by the seat of their pants.”  It took me ten years to start writing The Serpent’s Tale, and Northern Lights was in my head for over a decade (nearly as long as FFVII had been out).  The only reason I was able to start The Broken Rose so quickly was because it was an offshoot of TBR and it also was a precursor/test for the very story I’m going to work on in November, which has the same characters that are in The Serpent’s Tale.  So yeah…planning is important to me 😉

Let me know if you’re doing NaNo this year, too!  I’d love to be friends ♥

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What are you currently working on?  Is it a creative writing project, essay, review, or something else?  Have you just started something new or are you wrapping up a long term project?

<–The State of the Writer: 10/1/17          The State of the Writer: 10/15/17–>

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