<–The State of the Writer: 4/18/21         The State of the Writer: 5/16/21–>

A post updated every other Sunday discussing my current writing projects and any completed the prior two weeks.

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Finished Projects: 0

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Project: Story
Working Title: The High Archon
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Type: Original
Length: Novel
Status: Preparation
Progress: Setting up notes in Scrivener/Working on Chapter 1 Outline

And I’m back to working on the chapter outline.  I think I’m pretty much done with the notes, though there are some things here and there I can work on.  I was talking to another author friend, and she made a really good point about how you can spend too much time working on the prep as a way to put off writing the story, and I think I’m starting to do that.  I’m not sure when I’ll start writing, because I’ve managed to get myself wrapped up in yet another project, but I have been looking at what I’ve written before.  I actually started writing it again about a year ago, so I’m not completely starting from scratch.  It’s just that I needed to hash out the details of the world for my own knowledge before I continued.

Project: Story
Working Title: Helpless (The Broken Rose AU)
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Type: Fanfiction
Length: Novel
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Status: Drafting
Progress: Chapter 1

I JUST CAN’T LEAVE THINGS ALONE CAN I??   I’ve had this one in my drafts for a while though, and I just love exploring the hurt/comfort motif.  Obviously, everything written doesn’t wind up in the final/presented copy, nor do all story threads get explored.  There were so man places I could’ve gone with The Broken Rose, and I choose the particular direction I did, but the others were always in the back of my mined *inserts joke about disparate timelines and defying destiny* ahem.  I really wanted to explore more options with the “Helpless” chapter (4), so that’s what I’m doing.

I think I mentioned a while ago that I had notes about how Northern Lights and this story take place in their own little bubble AUs.  I wrote it all out because I’m a dork lol.  Anyway, what makes this just the slightest bit easier is I not only have a lot of notes on it, but I have the “original” chapter to go with, so maybe I’ll exhaust how much serotonin I can squeeze out of this project soon.  Maybe?  Maybe??

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Project: Story Audio Recording
Title: Northern Lights
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Type: Fanfiction
Length: Novel
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Status: Finished edit of Chapter 2
Progress: Prepping to record Chapter 2

I broke the chapter up into three two page sessions.  I’d meant to do some recording this weekend while my husband was away, but I didn’t get around to it.  I’ll probably do one session this Tuesday.  I figured out two pages is about the limit of my voice’s capacity before it starts to get “creaky” (I noticed that at the end of the first chapter of TBR).  I also marked parts of the dialogue with notes prior to it so that I’ll know how to read it before the dialogue tag.  It’s interesting how it’s more akin to reading a play than a story since stories usually have tags afterwards whereas plays will have how something is said before.

I’ve also been considering how I’m going to do the visuals.  I would love to do what I did in Chapter 1, and while I don’t think it will take another two years, it will still take a long time to do the images as I did.  I suppose we’ll have to see.

Project: Story Audio Recording
Title: The Broken Rose
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Type: Fanfiction
Length: Novel
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Status: Editing
Progress: Adding credits to slideshow

I am pretty much done and currently working on the credits.  I have been having some issues with Windows Movie Maker, and I think it has to do with the looped video I use throughout.  Whenever I reopen the project, things are shifted and I have to re-trim and move the credit music back into place.  The program has also been crashing, so I’ve had to make sure I save after doing anything.  I don’t think WMM likes the video.  I really need to learn either Filmora or Da Vinci Resolve especially since I’m seriously considering doing looped videos for Northern Lights’ audio project, too.  I think after I finish up this chapter I’ll go through the provided guide for Filmora.

Going back to the credits; they are so much shorter than NL due to mostly using that video from Pexels.  I had the artist credits scrolling like I did for the other project, but I think I’m going to do them similar to the music credits because I certainly have the time.  I only need one song, and as of now I’m not even using all of it, and I want to.

I will say I absolutely love the song I found for the final part of the chapter when everything turns around.  Like…it could not be more perfect, and I can’t wait to share it ♥

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Project: Author Website
Title: TBD
Status: Building and Researching
Progress: Working on page headers

I’ve been talking about this in the bottom portion of this post, but I think it deserves its own official section.  I’ve been working on making an official author website for about a month now.  “But TSN!” I hear you proclaim, “You’re not an ‘official’ author.”  Yes…I know that, but after talking to my good, author friend Kat who told me it would make sense because I’m looking to self-publish my short story, I decided I need to make one.  Now, keep in mind I have NO fucking clue what I’m doing, and initially I wanted to just keep using WordPress for it, but she also told me her and a bunch of the other authors in the circle moved their stuff to Squarespace, so that’s where I am now.  I did start something on WP, but tbh the way they’re going with their shitty Gutenberg/block editor, I don’t want to make a new website here.  So far I’ve been able to still use Classic, but last time I had to get help in order to facilitate that.  I really don’t know why they’re so insistent on changing this ($$$ more than likely), but I know I’m not the only one unhappy with it.  I’m a little confused by Squarespace, but I know how to Google so I’m sure I’ll figure it out.

I not only want to set this up for the short story, but also future projects including the comparative essays.  I’m still figuring out how to talk about or market *shudders* that together, since paranormal romance and comparative literature might seem a bit incongruent to some, but it’s really not.  I guess maybe writing both is a bit out of the ordinary, but many people write in multiple genres including non-fiction ones.  I don’t know if I’d call the comparatives “non-fiction” since they’re based on comparing fictional narratives, but fiction/fantasy is telling the story whereas comparative literature is deconstructing it.

Obviously, once I get it all set up I’ll let you all know the site, but this might take a while lol.

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In Progress

• Game Reviews: Final Fantasy VI – I made some progress!  I’m currently talking about how FFVI was the first in the series to have a “bad angel” villain, though I suppose you could argue Emperor Mateus was the first in a way since he’s kind of the devil and *gestures at Milton*  Anyway, talking about religious symbolism always lights a fire in my soul, so it’s been a bit easier.  I also got to talk about my brand of nihilism (compassionate), and that’s been fun.  I also think I’m definitely going to break this up into separate posts, but I’ll figure that out once it’s all done.
• Book Reviews: Unraveling Oliver by Liz Nugent – This has been going a lot better now, too, though it is laughable that I thought I could review it before I needed to return it to the library lol. That ship has looooong sailed.

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My hubs got me a desk elliptical for my birthday, and before you all demand his head, I ASKED for it lol.  I needed some kind of cardio I could do sitting down because ya girl can’t stand for very long, and the cheap ass desk bike I had was not cutting it.  It’s too light so it would move while in use, plus it was murder on my poor knees.  And while exercise should be challenging, it shouldn’t be difficult?  Like the process of doing it shouldn’t be difficult (if that makes any sense).  The elliptical is PERFECT.  I was able to get about twenty minutes in last night while watching an episode of American Dad!, and while I had to stop for a few seconds every now and then (stupid knees and fibro pains), I was still able to do a substantial amount of exercise. 

I wish I actually had a desk so I could put it under there while I worked, but we’re still in the process of finding a house.  I think the problem is both me and the hubs want certain things.  I refuse to live in a particular school district, and he doesn’t want a condo aka “I’m not buying an apartment,” plus he’s pickier about the kitchen.  On one hand I wonder “Aren’t we too poor to be this picky??” but on the other I also refuse to just have one bathroom, and we’ve seen places that would fulfill our desires…we just need to catch them in time.  We can’t wait to see places until the weekend.  Pretty much if one pops up, we need to GO asap.  I’m just happy we were approved for a conventional and not an FHA loan, because my realtor told me straight up it would not be a good time for us to buy with the latter.

Anyway, it’s currently May, and I really should schedule a vaccination appointment now that I can on my doctors’ office website.  I’m like the only holdout in my family lol.  I just never go anywhere, but it just makes sense to get it done.

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<–The State of the Writer: 4/18/21         The State of the Writer: 5/16/21–>